#946 - Dennis McKenna

Apr 17, 2017

Dennis McKenna is an ethnopharmacologist, author, and brother to well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna.   http://espd50.com/

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hey everybody what's going on I got a lot of shit happening maybe too much I'm thinking too much

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well dial it back this year what I'm going to dial but well we can get into that later but what I'm going to do more of is Stand-Up motherfucking comedy I need to do more of it I really do I'm not doing enough I'm doing a lot around town but more Road dates and I have a big one coming up May 12th I'm at the Verizon Wireless theater in Dallas Texas with Tony Hinchcliffe and Ian Edwards looking forward to that and then

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why 7th at the car theater at the MGM in Las Vegas Nevada all the other ones that I have currently are sold out but I'm going to be announcing a bunch of new shit coming up soon go to Joe Rogan dotnet forward slash tour for all that stuff this episode of the podcast is brought to you by square space which is the all-in-one platform that allows you to create a beautiful website and you know like man I can't create shit I know you think that but Squarespace is taken

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things that has ever walked the face of the planet I think he is tremendously important in so many different ways I was introduced to him by my love for his brother Terrence who is no longer with us but has left behind a wealth of amazing lectures that you could hear through my friend Lorenzo's podcast the Psychedelic Salon Lorenzo was also been a guest on one of the past episodes Dennis McKenna is my guest today and Dennis McKenna is a just a brilliant human

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Ian being he's an educator he's a scientist and he is a psychedelic connoisseur Bar None and answered so many different questions and provided so much insight and so much cool shit this is one of my favorite podcast we've ever done so please enjoy the great and powerful Dennis McKenna

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I got check it out The Joe Rogan Experience trained by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day

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Dennis McKenna ladies and gentlemen before we were just discussing how I was saying that marijuana can be your friend and it can enhance your life but if if you take too much it's such a seductive little creature has a little bit of it as like oh this is nice this feels good but if you get too crazy especially you're too crazy with Edibles it'll take you and take you away on this wild journey of paranoia and and and you little lock you up like

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people just need to take a couple weeks off just relax that's always a good idea see city right yeah yeah I think people underestimate cannabis I think it can be like you say can really sort of knock you off your Center especially if it's edible and like all these things you gotta learn how to use it yeah I mean it's basically that's what you got to do you'll have to learn how to use it but you know you know that's my raps yeah it is rapidly it's a great wrap it really is it's so important

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and it's I think it's so important for people to realize that he got to let like regular you like you like natural sober you it's important to be in touch with that like you don't want them always be high or always be caffeinated or always be anything well exactly I mean where you know people get you know to these places and they fail to do a reality check on themselves you know I mean I get emails from people all the time so well

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I'm you know life's been pretty weird lately I took mushrooms five times last week and you know I was and it's like dude how about you lay off for a while and give her a chance selfish a chance because you know they tell these stories that it's like the idea of okay let's find your Center go back to Baseline lay off the sauce whatever it is you're taking and just chill out and try and refree discover your Center it seems like Common Sense advice but

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people don't do it does he my Common Sense advice but common sense is not common everybody knows that oh yes all you have to do is look around to realize what is it about people though that one thing indulge in any sort of a minute doesn't even have to be a substance it can be an activity like gambling for instance like once it gets into your bones it just seems like you're so compelled to just continue that behavior and and the idea of stopping is almost

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more painful than the idea of wrecking your life this this is this is an addiction yeah this is basically these things are re-enforcing they activate those pleasure circuits you know in in the brain mediated mainly through dopamine and all of these I mean that the so-called drugs of abuse which I think is a terrible were terrible but you know the reinforcing drugs the pleasure drugs work directly or indirectly through the dopamine circuit

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skits and the dopamine is like your your button for pleasure you know in the same way that serotonin is kind of on the opposite side it's your button for more like Euphoria feeling good but not the it doesn't have the punch I guess that the which is why people can get addicted to gambling they can get addicted to sex they can get addicted to television all of these things it doesn't have to be substances because they all hit those same circuits

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you know except the psychedelics which don't work on that reward circuitry they work on a different set of circuits but yet even with those your behavior patterns can become addictive and then you get start just doing psychedelics too much and it's not even the psychedelics that are doing it it's just this compulsive need to constantly change your state of mind yeah that's quite true and if people you know the way they use psychedelics is there are many ways to use

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use it but basically uses the thoughtfully you know I mean you can

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all the question about recreational use versus spiritual use versus therapeutic use I mean these are all ways to approach it and I am not a person who says You must do it this way you must do it that way what I do say is do it from an informed place and do approach of thoughtfully about because I mean in other words don't you know plan for it respect the medicine in a certain way you know use it in a circumstance where you can learn from the

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and rather than have the medicine be sort of a you know overlay about over whatever else you're doing I mean this is something that demands attention and I think that's the best way to use psychedelics and for whatever you know whatever spin you put on it is it spiritual as a therapeutic is it recreational is it shamanic these are all labeled the important thing is that you know you you have the you approach the medicine itself

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if the medicine is the teacher right not the sitter not the shaman that's the psychotherapist if they're doing the right their job correctly in my opinion their job is to let you have your encounter with the medicine and the medicine is what you learn from their there to facilitate that they can intervene if you get anxious or if things go on make sure you know nobody comes to the door that kind of thing but basically it's to

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imitate a learning opportunity where you and your teacher which is the medicine be it Ayahuasca or mushrooms or whatever can have this intense one-on-one interaction you know I feel like with psychedelics as well as with all these other things we're talking about any kind of drug you can even coffee alcohol whatever and behavior patterns all these different things I think one of the things that happens with human beings is you get so far along in your life and

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he's Behavior patterns become so like tight grooves that are carved into your psyche and then as you become an adult then you start to learn like oh there's got to be a better way to handle this let me figure out how to do this and it's almost like getting a car when you're really young and not learning how to drive until you look in your 20s right and so you're just driving this thing it's smashing into trees and grinding the gears and then somewhere along the line you like I'm

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my God fucking myself up I have to figure out a way to do this correctly and there's two different approaches is one the abstinence approach which is very popular people say well I'm straight edge now I don't do anything and that's it and I just you know I just do wheatgrass and I run Hills and stuff and like okay you could do that too I mean right you can do it you definitely can do that too but it's I just don't think that there's anything wrong with any of these things I think there's something wrong with the way we use them and I think it's one of the inherent problems

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with things being illegal is that we can't discuss this we don't have people like you or centers where people can go where people can become educated on the proper way to use these drugs or medicines whatever you want to call them these compounds and get something out of them that can really be beneficial right that's that's exactly right I mean I've said this many many times that you know drug education what they call drug education in this country is a joke because the whole emphasis is on

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Saint don't use them that's absurd that's like telling you know an 18 year old guy full of testosterone don't have sex don't come on it's built into the genetics they're going to go for that what you have to do what they can't bring themselves to acknowledge in the drug education field is it's not about telling people not to use drugs it's about teaching people how to use drugs

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if they choose to write I mean like any other skill people have to learn to drive like I have to learn to do yoga they have to learn to do whatever they do there's an educational process I tell people many times you know my stick is there is no such thing as a bad drug that's another problem with the dialogue the Badness is projected onto the drugs drugs are simply compounds with a certain form of ecology there's no moral aspect to them the more

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only Dimension comes and how do people use them that's where you know it's human behavior that's more alluring more like I say you know there's no such thing as a bad drug plenty of bad ways to use trucks you know but that comes from the person not the compound I've been really Disturbed Lately by these new super potent painkillers oh it's like fentanyl yeah the stuff that killed Prince and car fentanyl now is the big man

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- fentanyl is bad enough car fentanyl is something like a hundred to a thousand times more potent than fentanyl what yeah so aspect literally a pinhead or less of the car fentanyl is a lethal dose oh my God yeah so this is really not good you know because

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I am certainly not an expert on you know the sources and all this but apparently this stuff is being made in China imported here and they use it to cut heroin because it's so strong but people are dying left and right you know because of car fentanyl is far more far more toxic than heroin or even fentanyl so you know we're so there is so much

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so I don't know so much confusion and fuzzy thinking about the whole drug issue you know for example as long as we're talking about opiates for the moment which is not really what I came here to talk about but you know you've heard of Kratom yeah right now the DEA and the FDA it's a plant it's used in Thailand it is an opiate there's no doubt about it it hits the opiate receptors and they want to schedule it but the

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Mills that in Thailand traditional areas it's often used to get off of heroin so it's potentially part of the solution not part of the problem it's you know it's relatively easy to quit and the big thing about Kratom it doesn't cause respiratory depression and respiratory depression is what kills people from Narco you know from heroin overdoses it's the alkaloids and met Regina and do not do that and crowd them is

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Italy in those weird semi-legal States and the semi-legal state but the DEA would love to schedule it but again they had plans to and there was some pushback about this and people were saying things like I'm saying wait a minute let's take a second look at this this may be part of the solution because it could be a kind of innocence and herbal methadone I mean methadone is not the best way but something that people could substitute and then

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gradually taper off crown him has some weird sort of property we're at a low dose is a stimulant yes I've tried it before but only at low doses I've had there's a company that sells it they've been here we have it right here no there are lots of companies that sell it yeah it's company

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Urban Ice Organics that's the name of the company but I take two or three of those and it's like a cup of coffee and it's so like no weirdness no right I'll feel high at a low dose it is that why is that stimulant who knows just unique pharmacology how strange though at higher doses it's it's definitely an Opa and is it something that impairs motor skills well not so much

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much I mean just in the sense that it's like being high on morphine or heroin so okay does I mean you know so it really can give you that kind of a feeling absolutely wow that's interesting you know it hits the opiate receptors but then it also hits few other receptors as well which is part of the stimulating effect but you know why the pharmaceutical companies are not all over this plan I don't understand because

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a long time the holy grail and Drug Discovery when it comes to analgesics is find the narcotic that is not toxic you know the analgesic that is not toxic hopefully not addicting but that's not going to happen and is there an ld50 for this stuff oh sure I mean there's an ld50 for most things I just know for people to know lethal dose at 50 hours it would be hard yeah the Smith old else for 50% of the site of the sample

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but in the herbal form it would be hard to get anywhere near a lethal dose you have to go giant brick of it yeah probably probably throw up before you ever got to leave home if you if you're isolated one of the alkaloids 7 hydroxy Metro Gene is the strongest one that's about a hundred times stronger than morphine wow you know so definitely affect so is there any issue with that stuff though with people who have had problems with pain pills in the past maybe they started

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during this a little bit too much and well it's a better alternative than the pain pills right it's very good for people who want to get off that shit I'm sorry can I say that surely the okay this is this is one Annette people want to get off those kind of things they don't they can't quit cold turkey but they could go on Kratom and gradually cut down because the withdrawal symptoms for Kratom are much less apparently than for heroin and the

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and these things they just don't grab you so this is a gateway out of the addiction right you know or they could even just maintain because it's not particularly dangerous dangerous or impairs function or so and they could maintain as you know lots of people take heroin and managed to maintain well I know a lot of people Rick you know not everyone can do that they find some really good anti-inflammation properties in this stuff like people who exercise a lot yeah create them yeah yeah wouldn't surprise me

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me at all if that's there you know most plants have multiple effects that's one of the differences between plants and pharmaceuticals plants have families of molecules they often have you know complementary time kinds of activities you know so Kratom is one of these we've known about it for a while it needs a lot more work but potentially it's very very interesting you know and of course the other one in in this sort of

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of Universe of opa treatment is ibogaine we just not completely different kind of thing ibogaine is not itself an Opa but it people use it to get off opiates because the experience is profound but then it does something that a lot of psychedelics don't do which is it interrupts that craving for opiates depending on how its structured anywhere from a few days

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is to a few weeks and the thing I think that determines the effectiveness of ibogaine has a treatment for opiates is if the person has prepared for what happens afterwards right you got to prepare for what happens after if you go back to your old neighborhood your old buddies your old habits it's not going to work you know we're not making a serious commitment to make it work but if you have a plan going to go to this clinic at this treatment get cleaned up

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up then what you know and that's true I mean that's really I think that's the main factor that determines whether ibogaine is effective or not and it is for a lot of people it works it's a problematic substance it's not it's a controlled substance in the States but only in about six countries is it actually prohibited most countries it's either in a gray area I guess it's a gray area

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area it's unregulated use the term couple countries have put it on prescription drugs status Brazil and New Zealand

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but it's you know the framework is there that doesn't mean there's a rush of people to go to ibogaine clinics in those countries it really hasn't created a rush but the framework is there of people want to you know want to do that so ibogaine is another one of these that needs more investigation and is potentially part of the problem to the opiate epidemic there is rumors I will earn more than rumors but

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some ibogaine activists are trying to get certain states to provisionally approve the use of ibogaine you know as special waiver from the federal government Vermont and I think New York is now applied for this because their problem is so bad and it's like basically they're saying to the government here's something that may work just grant permission on a Stateside Statewide basis

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have this medicine will see where that goes you know as you I'm sure you

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I think we're all in this community acutely aware of now the government is again rumbling about how they're gonna revive the War on Drugs I mean it was a stupid idea then and it's even more stupid now but hey this government did you know stupidity are us this is kind of their their angle on things so this Jeff sessions characters we'll see how it goes I'm not too worried because I think there's going to be so much pushback on this yeah and that's the other thing about

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Pompey seems to be a populist and if there is too much pushback from that direction I think he's going to try to avoid that as much as possible yeah when they did a recent survey of the United States and how many people think that marijuana should be legal lick recreationally legal it's in the 64 cents now which is for the first time ever yeah and states have done it and I just don't think you can you know you can't go back to the War on Drugs I mean it was a miserable failure when it

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it happened there's you know over 40 years they pounded over a trillion dollars down this Rat Hole there more drugs more kinds of drugs easier to get cheaper than ever so where's the success and more people in prison as a result of this so where's the success gnosis drug there's nothing there's nothing they can point to it's not like anyone was saved it's not like right the problem is that these people you know facts don't carry much weight with them I mean they're kind of off

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from their own private ideological fantasy yes and the fact that the War on Drugs doesn't work doesn't matter to them it's like these are bad people who need to be punished that's their their stance on it it's not about anything other than that yeah I think that's really important you just said these are bad people I mean it's they're really talking in these simplistic terms that's one of the thing that session said that marijuana is not something that good people use that which is just said

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Preposterous how many grandmas are out there that are listening this going what the fuck is this guy talking about this is crazy well yeah it is and it's clear that you know not a jot of reflection or or you know careful thought goes into these kinds of statements this is what bothers me I mean many many things bother me about Trump but the one of the chief things one of the major I guess you could say flaws in his character

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among many but you listen to him talk you listen to his General thing and you realize this is not a man who's ever had a reflective thought in his life you know there is no there there there is no inner self you know people say just give that man some Ayahuasca and that will straighten them out I don't think so I think there's you know there has to be something inside to straighten out I mean he don't you think that maybe I would like to speak to him alone and

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find out who he really is I mean you think when someone speaking in front of you know a big group of press or you know anytime there's a camera on them it's really hard to figure out who that person is yes that's I think being alone with someone would be very Illuminating I would I agree maybe alone he's different but he is such a creature of media and television this is just its inexorable right yeah so maybe there is a thoughtful person there but you sure don't see any evidence

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of that you know one that's unfortunate I mean because that's you know whatever you could say about Obama and there's many bad things that you know he was not a perfect president he was very thoughtful you know and and smart you know I'm not so sure Trump is smart I mean he's smart in a certain way but not the way that we need our leaders to be smart you know in this age we need to you know anyway

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we could go on all day about this and that's not really what we want to do yeah we could go on about this all day and let's definitely not let's instead let's shift gears and talk about this celebration of 50 years of psychedelic research and what you're doing now and it's in Birmingham as or is it said it's in buckinghamshire it's an England and it was a bee yeah one of those places it's not this is something that I've wanted to do for a long time

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and the back story is that in 1967 there was a conference that was sponsored Believe It or Not by the health education and welfare department of health education and Welfare National Institute of Mental Health US Government paid for this Symposium held in San Francisco in 1967 called the ëthe no pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs and all the biggies were there you know

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a shulgin was there Andrew Weil was there schulte's of course he was probably the one that you know more or less around whom it coalesced but this was a chance for interdisciplinary people to come together in a private conference and share knowledge and that was done and they publish this Symposium volume called ethno pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs which was the US Public Health Service publication you could get it

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from the US government printing office for a long time and but the originally the idea was that about every ten years or so they'd have follow-up conferences right well 67 the War on Drugs came along the government became embarrassed that they had anything to do with this and there was never any follow-up conference right so I though that book that came out was very influential

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to me it was one of the big influences of my life is a sixteen-year-old when I was just getting interested in psychedelics so for many years

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I've wanted to do a follow-up conference I wanted to do it on the 30th Anniversary back in 97 but it never came together to do that so this is the 50th Anniversary it's now or never and so it's now apparently we are going to do this thing and it's going to be kind of much in the spirit of the original conference we're not going to keep it completely closed you know because

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we're not that kind of people there's not much not a lot of room for people to actually come to the place it's going to be which is this place called tearing ham Hall it's like it looks exactly like Downton Abbey I mean it's an English Country House beautiful place but not a place set up for a huge conference they'll be maybe 10 guests staying there and a bunch of people staying close by but the point is not so much the people of

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tending it's going to be live streamed on Facebook which anyone can tune into that and then we're going to publish the Symposium volume for 2017 that everybody who presents its going to submit a full paper we're going to publish that as volume two will bring them out together as a deluxe edition the first one which is available for free it's in the public domain and then the one from this conference

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and we'll package them together as a collector's edition and we're pre-selling that now as part of the strategy for getting the money to pay for this thing and we're doing okay you know so I give you the website it's ESP D50.com what has it done for f no pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs 50 50th anniversary.com and then there's also a Facebook page

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page which is where the live streaming is going to be so if you go there you can order the book you can get the whole backstory you can sign up for the Facebook live stream and so on and that's what we're going to do and we've I've been very lucky you know some people you know how these conferences are you don't do it on your own when I sort of floated this idea a lot of people stepped up and said yeah

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to be involved I'll be involved not only people that are helping organizing it but also people that are providing some funding so now we have the money to pay people bringing them from all over the world they'll be about 18 presenters and some really good people some very high-profile people David Nicholls will be there mark Plotkin who runs the Amazon conservation team

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a number of you know those are maybe the two highest profile but people that are known in the field and there's you know you can look at the website yes PD got.com you can look at the program and if it appeals to you get on the you know get on the livestream so that you know those Technologies did not exist in 1967 right so

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they do now so why not let the world in you know we can't have everybody come to buckinghamshire but we can have them all over the world so that's the idea well I'm sure the response to this is going to be tremendous if you can live stream it and live streaming on Facebook is going to be huge I mean that's it's a great idea well I hope so it is for sure it's an awesome use of the technology because yeah there really isn't something like that that people can tune into and right watch

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different people speak and of course it'll all be documented right so it will be archived will generate it defeat e out of it but mainly it's the ball it's the books I mean the idea of actually collecting real physical books might like seem like a quite 20th century idea to people and it is we have to do while we still can yeah I like the idea of having a nice box set yeah but

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people don't have to get that they can get the single one they don't have to do anything that I don't but if they're interested they could do it and so you know thanks for letting me come on and let people know about this and in tweeting it and so on this is all this is all very helpful and it looks like there's going to be a lot of response and then of course the Psychedelic science conference is coming up and we have you know the sign Posey mm

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guys Psy they're they're running the stage at Maps conference the stage in the marketplace so I'm going to be on there and they're collaborating with us to on this project so I'm pretty excited about it now how do you organize the 18 different people that are talking and the subject so there's no overlap and so that you know this the the message become it stays vibrant well it hasn't really been a problem I mean for one thing

► 00:38:44

you know I pretty much knew who I wanted to come and I know what their specialty is so I invited these people and they cover a variety of Specialties so not really too much duplication everyone brings something unique their own perspective you know so it's pretty easy really I mean the idea of the ethno pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs is that

► 00:39:14

you know we wanted to focus on the frontier of this this is still a very active area and we don't want you no not another conference about Ayahuasca not and you know and that's all wonderful and I'm totally behind it and in fact truth in advertising we got for talks on Ayahuasca but different aspects of Ayahuasca that haven't really been discussed so much at conferences and then we have we do have one gentleman talking about kratom

► 00:39:44

and you know a specialist of snowball pharmacologist talking about that we have can Alper who is maybe the wreck world's recognized Authority on I Boga and ibogaine and from the pharmacology chemical clinical side we've got him we've got Dave Nichols we have another person another fight

► 00:40:14

so chemists talking about Salvia divinorum so these are things that were not even on the radar you know in 1967 and that's kind of the idea that there's been 50 years more work and a lot of work and never any follow-up conferences so that's the excuse for doing this this will be the follow-up conference and if it gets momentum then maybe we'll be able to do number 3 and number 4 while probably by the time the number 4

► 00:40:44

comes around I'll be drooling in my oatmeal so I may not have much to do with that one I think there's going to be some new science it's gonna kick you right back into gear let's hope such as a lot going on right now holding on for I think you're catching the wave right at the right time Dennis right right sometimes I wonder but yeah I'm super positive for you what is the status of salvia Salvia divinorum what is the the legal status Salvia divinorum is

► 00:41:14

more or less legal on the federal level it's still sold I think a few states have have Bandit I'm not sure which states how funny that it's the opposite way you know most things are federally illegal and then the states legalize them like marijuana at least but salvias for people don't know super potent psychedelic super potent and super bizarre yeah very weird and I think maybe that's kind of the built-in and built in

► 00:41:45

you know protection against abuse because a lot of people don't care for it you know it's like once is enough never again many I mean this is not something that you're likely to get addicted to you know unless you're just a very peculiar because it's dysphoric you know it's not pleasant most people find it quite quite unpleasant even terrifying will years

► 00:42:14

back but I think one one of the one of the things that protects against it people smoke it which is not the traditional way at all but again it's like it is a conditional and minutes the traditional way is you choose the fresh leaves and it's the sage it's a some variation of the sage plant correct it's a it is a sage or a mint it's in the mint family and yeah it's called a sage but it's really a mint I always wondered if there's some sort of correlation between the names Sage meaning wisdom you

► 00:42:44

and then this stuff now just don't let bom lock some would like you to think so yeah I think I think Daniel Siebert is one of the Specialists he has a website called sage wisdom order.com and good stuff he's into Kratom he provides I mean Salvia he provides good information on it there most people at least my own experience and many people it's like well it's interesting it's

► 00:43:13

found Lee strange and what do you bring back from it you know that's the question what do you bring back from it I think that's partly why you know most people are they don't they don't seek it out particularly my friend are took a people that do like it yeah I know a lot of people that do yeah I know I only did it once and I had this very bizarre out-of-body experience but I don't think I took enough I had a friend Ari who took

► 00:43:44

lat who over the course of ten minutes lived maybe he he believes in the neighborhood of five to six months and in this Dimension where he had a life and he had friends and he had a job and relationships and he went through this and came back and you know 10 minutes later he's like this is going to be impossible to describe what I lived a life I had like this alternative reality that I went through

► 00:44:13

through for multiple months those those kinds of experiences believe it or not are not that uncommon on salvia somebody told me once they had the experience where you know they were in a place they were like 7 or 8 years old it was Christmas morning they were at the Christmas tree celebrating Christmas opening the presents with a family that this guy had no connection to and it never seen

► 00:44:44

and like what do you make of that I mean I think sorry is interesting in that in that regard in that you know some of these ones that

► 00:44:54

you know they're worth exploring right I mean if you can distort time or actually go into you know parallel Dimensions or whatever that's looking into yeah I think it takes more intrepid Psychonauts than I am to look into that but I would encourage people to carefully explore this you know years ago when I first explored EMT you could get five Meo DMT online there is a chemical company you could buy it and I bought like

► 00:45:24

like a jug of it like a container of it like the size of this yeah Stevia container which is for people don't know enough to get hired for the rest of your life and you can do DMT once a month with a rusty and that's all you want to do by the way it's pretty five Emmy oh right 5m ego brings you to some place that feels like the ultimate center of the universe and there's nothing and it's you you're a part of the whole it's also no visuals which

► 00:45:53

really weird or if it is a visuals it's like these opaque geometric patterns that exist in this bizarre white and you just cease to exist and it feels terrifying and strange and you know again there's no accounting for taste I mean I agree it is like that there are no visuals so that's something strange about it but many people feel like if it puts you in this void place or the zero

► 00:46:23

oh energy point I don't know if you've had James oricon here know he wrote the book tryptamine Palace know which is all about five methoxy DLT what I how do you spell his last name or Rocco are Ock I think the name of his book is tryptamine Palace and you know his thing is five methoxy and as thing huh yeah now and and it's an interesting

► 00:46:54

and now you know I mean the the Sonoran Toda right yeah I've heard that that's five methoxy right sickly and so that toad you excrete something on a like glass you excrete the Venom you actually have to torture the toad a little bit or squeeze the Venom which is in the parotid glands you squeeze it out on a slide dry it out and then you can smoke it and it's about 11 to 15 percent five

► 00:47:23

Vimeo but it's it's a heavy hit do they know why this toad produces this in venom I mean is it psychoactive when you eat it well who knows yeah who knows most toads produce bufotenin right we're just very close to five methoxy it and in fact it's named after the Toads the genus of toads is bufo right before opening is found in most of these toads but bufo alvarius

► 00:47:54

is the only species known that contains five methoxy TMT so it's got this molecular know there's a probably single gene mutation that lets it produce this methoxy related compound which is much stronger than the photon need and by the way just just to caution people sometimes in the media you hear about people are licking toads that's not going to do it no they're not licking toads they're smoking

► 00:48:23

notes and yes I'm aware that yes gets tend to stall lick'em because they're nasty things that will be that will kill you if you lick it they really pyrolyzed yeah these cardiac glycosides oh God but spiralizing it burning it destroys all those things so that's that that it's okay to smoke it but it's definitely dangerous to lick it

► 00:48:47

most people don't like licking toads anyway that's probably yeah look how good that right I think various fairy tales right isn't that thing does the human body produce 5 m EO D Mt as well oh yes yeah and is it produced in the same areas like the liver and the lungs and presumably the presumably the pineal gland all of these things you know yes it does there's a lot of controversy about

► 00:49:17

whether you know these endogenous tryptamines DMT primarily but five Mao is definitely there as well do they have a function you know there is a lot of speculation and not a lot of facts about whether they actually have a function hmm I mean they're they're made and you know there's there's one school of thought that says the other they're sort of like physiological noise you know they'll never

► 00:49:47

reach a point where you could actually perceive any effect because the enzymes you know the kind of cellular enzyme will just chop up DMT very readily it's so close to human metabolism it's not going to it's going to be very ephemeral in the system even if it is released but other people maintain that under some circumstances the DMT can be stored in vesicles and neural vesicles and released on demand or when some

► 00:50:17

stimulus leads to its release like stress some stress of some sort with Jamie go out and grab that painting that that young guy sent the guy who has a Pioneer gland tumor who makes this really crazy trip to mean art this guy's I've heard him I know this got his guy sent me one of his pieces yeah and he he has a tumor do you know his name Jamie will find his name I'll give this guy some some love but he you look at his artwork and he

► 00:50:47

go oh yeah that's what that is you know almost like Alex Gray stuff but now it's great stuff is it's art I mean it's definitely representative of the tryptamine world it beautiful and fantastic and amazing right but it's art right this guy's stuff seems like a trip like it's the chaos of the tryptamine experience is sort of replicated in his artwork yeah that's it and so this young guy will find out his name he he sent this

► 00:51:17

I first heard of this gentleman from thank you holy moly take a look at this yeah I first heard of this guy from John ohia who organizes Alex's Advanced ways up I don't think there is enough Joe I think this is a this is a zero gravity environment up this any way that you want it to be this is pretty amazing yeah it's amazing wow yeah well I'm waiting for the building a new

► 00:51:47

video and when that's done we'll have this up prominently featured but this kids work is just incredible Jamie see if you can find it who he is but he should be is he I hope he's healthy let himself be looked at by medical people I think he's just happy to be trippin all the time he's just gonna leave it like what about science man Sean Thornton shout out shout out to Sean Thornton yeah there's his work there it is artist got cancer the pineal gland is paintings will leave you speechless yes they will

► 00:52:17

say well Sean Thornton Sean Thornton amazing yeah his stuff is incredible and apparently well he's in at least in some sort of way anecdotal evidence that it's produced in the pineal gland of course the Cottonwood Research Foundation that dr. Rick Strassman is a part of and his amazing work from DMT The Spirit Molecule of course the documentary that you and I were in his his work has shown that it's it is produced by the pineal gland in live

► 00:52:47

rats so we know now for fact that at least in that mammal it's produced in the pineal gland but that's always been for people that you know I went to the Vatican last summer and one of the really cool things was the the giant pine cone that they have in the the center of like one of the outer areas yeah and I was really lucky to have a very good guide who is a professor and he was explaining to me that that was representative

► 00:53:17

of of the pineal gland and yeah it was really fascinating because there's this enormous pine cone and it's surrounded by these two peacocks or you know to peacocks on the side of their they're supposed to represent immortality in some sort of strange way so I don't know what that whole Vision was supposed to mean but he was very adamant that that Pinecone there you see it up there on the screen that that is representative of the pineal gland and also in ancient Egypt and a lot of the hieroglyphs you see that as well right right

► 00:53:47

well yeah pie Neal itself means because it is shaped like a Pinecone yeah that's why that's why it's named that but I had no idea that is very interesting yeah it's pretty fascinating what it was also fascinating was this guy although he knew that that was representative the pineal gland he did not know that the Pinal pineal gland produced DMT he wasn't even aware of what DMT was right so he and I had this really cool conversation about it was like what you know this is crazy Italian accent this is amazing that he's writing things down

► 00:54:17

down and I'm you know writing tell him about strassmann is work and you and your brother and all these different things to look into and right you know there is a wife is rolling her eyes I saw Jesus not this shit again you just happy taken out in public Joe you always embarrass me well it's she just she knew as soon as the guy said pineal gland of my eyes lit up and I'm like here we go let's talk about drugs

► 00:54:47

well there is a guy a couple of interesting people to mention in this context one of them is a researcher a guy named ed Fresca Fresca he's been that good question Edie FR e CK s Ka I think I may have to correct myself on that he's a pharmacologist and neurochemical neural chemistry

► 00:55:17

and and psychiatrist but he is the one that's really kind of leading the charge for endogenous functions of DMT and has good evidence which has been you know disputed by some I mean Dave Nichols is kind of on the other side of it he's like God DMT doesn't have any internal function all these people are deluded you know that seems to me to be really cocky well I think that it's surprising that Dave who's a very careful

► 00:55:47

dentist would have such you know such preformed ideas a rigid ideas right there's a conference in the UK at the end of June called breaking convention which you may have heard of it's a big it's like a psychedelic conference Dave and the Ed are going to be there I'm going to be there hopefully keeping them I don't want any fistfights they're gonna be talking about this and doing a debate on a breaking convention you might

► 00:56:17

tell people to Google that that's very interesting conference for sure what it what makes Dave so confident mean when you consider the potency of it and not the knowledge that it that's produced in the body and then also the knowledge the effects of it which are just astounding right how could anyone say that you know for sure is he done it as day of course he's dominant so how did he do it and not go okay what is this well I think he does but then there's also this very reductionist side to him and you know and they

► 00:56:47

basically just as a pharmacologist he says it's never going to reach

► 00:56:52

you know sufficient concentration in the plasma to have an effect however I think he's wrong and I told him I mean I was teasing him I was saying you know I wrote back you know that famous phrase Arthur C Clarke once said you know when when I distinguish but elderly scientist says that something is possible he's very likely correct when he says it's impossible he's almost certainly wrong

► 00:57:24

well it's when you're talking about the just general biodiversity of human beings and how some people let's talk about other human neurochemistry like like depression like some people are super happy and have no problem with their dopamine or serotonin levels right and there's other people that have like real issues yeah well there is that right so if you that just look at that the variability of that and then also how that can be manipulated with exercise and all these other different things that can raise those

► 00:57:52

levels up what about the other thing like in terms of like holotropic breathing or all these different shamanic breathing and yogic exercises Kundalini Yoga which right I haven't experienced it and Kundalini on a but I did have a very bizarre experience fairly recently on yoga where I went in a class on a pretty pretty high dose of cannabis and I started tripping and the middle of one of the more intense poses it was just something akin to

► 00:58:22

the very beginnings of a DMT trip where I started seeing patterns and seeing things moving and some sort of a it didn't go anywhere but I don't pursue it in terms of like attempting to make that happen right but I would imagine that if it's made in the body and then the the the effects of it are reproducible when you take it I mean to taking DMT this is a very few people was a very small percentage that don't have an experience when they take it right very small

► 00:58:52

image we know what that number is probably something like I mean I would say a wild guess but a 2% or something that's actually an anomalous why sure that should there be people who don't write have any effect I mean that's a whole other question about what's strange about their metabolism but it's interesting that you raise this because a lot of these yogic techniques especially Kundalini is probably about inducing DMT

► 00:59:22

the surface in the pineal or wherever it occurs there's also a very interesting technology that has come to light I just found out about it last summer called the ajna light have you heard of this no a JJ n a so write down a judgment light.com the sky who's developed this as very interesting fellow he's named guy Harriman and he used to work for Apple

► 00:59:52

well he actually worked very closely with Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs had next Computing so he's basically a computer programmer and engineer worked with Steve Jobs but then he for some reason he decided he had to move to Thailand and become a Zen monk which he did but he continued to work with technology and he developed this thing called the ajna light which he claims induces DMT synthesis in the pineal

► 01:00:21

and I was at a conference last summer actually tearing ham at this place where this one is going to be and he was there I tried it a couple of times and by golly it's a lot like DMT really yeah so explain it what is it it's just it looks like a floor lamp it's you know nothing it's got a it's got this array of LD LEDs on a holder you lie under it and if they're just White

► 01:00:51

he's me programs that from his iPad I guess in different sequences but you lie under this thing for a few minutes and pretty soon you get into the zone you know these visuals begin to manifest and and it looks a great deal like DMT

► 01:01:11

so then and he claims you know it's synthesizing DMT and the pineal and it is very much like DMT would be if it's released at the site of action because you know DMT it when you smoke it brings a big body load with you have to wear that goofy outfit what's with the orange outfit seriously is this can well then they're in Thailand I understand but the expression of Monk - the pious outfit Let It Go folks just

► 01:01:41

wear a t-shirt right you know where whatever I was just think they'll or have to get into a you know into any costume to do it but I wouldn't do it a couple times how many times did you do it well I was not there long enough to do I did a couple times and this woman sitting is is a just defective sitting as it is lying down I couldn't tell you but I expect so you let you lie down I lay down yeah and you close your eyes and no well yeah you close your eyes doesn't

► 01:02:11

matter because it's coming through you don't have ice Shades all right and usually he's playing some music but then you know in me like the reductionist you know kicks in and says well Guy this is interesting how do you know it's really DMT right your that you're stimulating

► 01:02:32

and we've been going back and forth on that and how can you test that and there there are ways to do it but most of them involve some fairly drastic procedures like you can do that you wouldn't want to do on people because they wouldn't give you permission if they had any sense but you could do to rats you could do something called microdialysis you can put a essentially a microscopic tube that's absorptive

► 01:03:02

the pineal and you can collect samples that you know Jesus detect this is not something that people would volunteer for unless how much is take take your word for it well what I just want to know does it really do sit or not I am not seeing it does but it's a lot like DMT what about hovering something like that over a sensory deprivation tank like being inside of it and having it hover over your head so you have the added experience of out-of-body with that I would think that would be pretty intense and not hard to read

► 01:03:32

recreate probably not you probably what you'd probably want to do with that this to have some kind of goggles essentially that could be connected to his to his program by bluetooth or something so then you're wearing the goggles here in the isolation tank but if you just hover it over your head if you have just have an arm like a computer monitor arm and just swing it over the head and so you turned it on close the door the tank close your eyes lay back and maybe it has like a

► 01:04:02

30-second window or it lets you settle in and Begins the program lots of ways you could approach I did that just seems to me doing really ramp it up now here's the questions interesting though this is just one of an array of you know what you might call neurotechnologies you know or even spiritual Technologies maybe this will make psychedelics obsolete well this is a great way that you could do it without actually having to hold onto and illegal drug exactly

► 01:04:32

you're carrying your illegal drug with you right so far they can't arrest you for that although I'm sure they're trying to figure out a way that was your brother's classic line everyone's holding everyone's hold that's right now with this stuff did you experience the communication that you get with DMT because that to me has always been the most profound aspect of it is this feeling that I'm in the presence of something and then this sort of telekinetic

► 01:05:02

understanding the words but not hearing the words uh-huh honestly I didn't get that because I think I was not under long enough I didn't have much time so I was only under each time I was under maybe 20 minutes which isn't I think if I'd stayed in that place if I could settle into it for an hour I think that probably would manifest you know and is why what why do you think this why do you think we change it takes a while for the for the thing

► 01:05:32

to fully you know whatever the term is for if it is DMT for the DMT to reach

► 01:05:43

a critical level where you're seeing that kind of stuff you know you feel this because it was ramping up during your experience I felt like it was that if I have stuck around I thought it would you know I thought it would develop and we've talked about to we've talked about you know thinking about how to establish that this really is DMT another approach that we've tried is to take a or the guys tried I don't have access to the light I can't afford it but

► 01:06:13

guy shows his cards huh it cost about 3,300 bucks you know which is not bad but beyond my paygrade right I'm gonna buy for you for a present you should buy it and keep it yourself going to buy two of them I'll buy one for you one for me will correspond all right all right well now so I guess we're going to do that I might mention that that guy is offering a conference special here if you have to wear the outfit ya know you don't ya

► 01:06:43

don't know where if you want it you'll get a discount on it if you go through the Facebook site which I'm about to put his okay beautiful we can talk about this offline but I'll go through safe Facebook some portion of it will go toward supporting this conference well I would love that I'm very curious about this because I I know that I have a good buddy mind my friend Danny who's done Kundalini for quite a long time and he can reproduce DMT States he's actually had DMT experiences independently of the

► 01:07:13

and he says it's the same thing he says he can get there and I believe him I've just too lazy or something I don't know what it is I just I'm not inclined well I think there's a genetic component you know I mean like this gentleman although he has a tumor I'm not sure why maybe he doesn't want medical people poking and prodding him but he would be a perfect subject to settle a lot of issues is willing to you know cooperate I mean just having a look at his

► 01:07:43

cerebral spinal fluid which would be the obvious you know fluid to sample for this would be very interesting yeah but I can understand his reluctance if he has reluctance yeah people are drilling into your Dome kind of suck out brain juice it doesn't sound fun but it is interesting though that these compounds are in some way a part of normal human neurochemistry and why right and Dave Nichols what does he believe

► 01:08:11

well I don't know if he believes anything he just you know he just you know he just dis skeptical that that in normal physiological processes DMT has much of a function what about dreams dreams are a possibility and that's always been the big one right that's always been the big one and it's totally plausible you'll have to get him on here and let him explain him would love to yeah I mean yeah you know I'm not sure

► 01:08:41

just has this idea that I think for one thing I think you know he's kind of a reductionist guy I think the all the the new age stuff the new excitement about DMT the my meal and all that it kind of puts him off but on the other hand don't assume that we know everything right as in fact we know nothing you know and if it's there I think it probably does have a function you know it's not surprising that it's there

► 01:09:11

it's everywhere I mean it's DMT is interesting molecule because it's Two Steps From tryptophan right tryptophan is an amino acid an essential amino acid one of the 20 that goes into proteins so tryptophan is in every living thing on this planet and there are two enzymes that are also pretty much Universal in cells that can convert DMT are tryptophan to DMT and two simple steps in

► 01:09:41

I don't want to get too into the chemistry but basically you remove the the acid portion of the amino acid you get tryptamine and from there you add the methyl groups and there you are you know which is why DMT is you know very very common in plants for example and animals that I mean they they tell people nature is drenched in DMT drenched is a great transcribed EMT there are thousands and thousands and thousands

► 01:10:11

of species of plants that contain DMT for sure you know I mean they haven't there hasn't been any survey or anything like that but if you look at the general that have a lot of DMT like Acacia is a good example the Australian Acacia sore some of the strongest sources of DMT there 1,700 species of Acacia probably 75% of them contain DMT and I'm sure you're aware of

► 01:10:41

Israeli scientists that believe that the story of Noah is not Moses rather and the burning bush was the acacia tree and they think that that was the confusion of all the translations and of course the oral history passed down over many many years then finally written down but this idea of the burning bush delivering the word of God was most likely in some way a psychedelic trip induced by DMT and most likely because the acacia tree

► 01:11:11

most likely the acacia tree because that was in the area the you know I mean it's an interesting idea and the and it's interesting that the you know sort of the the way that the burning bush presented itself was like DMT presents itself if you cannot take your eyes away from it but at the same time you cannot look at right right right but farming you don't have to know where you was this there was this something he smoked was it in insane

► 01:11:41

how was he exposed to this and you know because that will make a difference because you can't eat DMT because it's destroyed by monoamine oxidase right that's the whole basis of Ayahuasca in terms of these occasions has you know the question comes up also will okay most of them are native to Australia so did the Aborigines know about this and if you look at their art it's like looks like DLT it's very psychedelic art

► 01:12:11

I haven't really want looked at very much all of these pointillist kind of designs in Aboriginal art I mean they're extremely psychedelics you could find someone that but they the Aborigines I think they had to know about it no just not talking about it but one possible way that they could have used it because the DMT and the occasions is so high the leaves some of these are cases their 2% DMT wow so if you were

► 01:12:41

to take leaves and throw them on a fire in a like enclosed space like a sweat lodge type space you could potentially get quite loaded on DMT there's no indication that they smoked stuff but they may have fumigated themselves you know with TMT well that completely makes sense if you talking about a burning bush yeah wow exactly and that's how does that make its way to Israel though well maybe the who knows who knows who knows where anything makes its way anyway right

► 01:13:11

these folk Technologies it's interesting if you look at the if you look at the new world you know in the in the historical sense people have remarked why are there so more psychic so many more psychedelic plants in the new world and the old world right it's something about people people's relationship to plants in this very high biodiversity environment people are mucking around with

► 01:13:41

Lance right like a Perpetual question that comes up is how did they figure out how to combine banisteriopsis and psychotria to get the activity of Ayahuasca how out of 80,000 species in the Amazon do they figure out

► 01:14:01

combines please to to the uninitiated why that's important with the model Amy not yeah well it's important because banisteriopsis contains these alkaloids called beta-carbolines that are monoamine oxidase Inhibitors and monoamine oxidase is the enzyme in the gut that breaks down DMT so you can drink tea with DMT in it you can eat it all day nothing's going to happen because this enzyme will inactivate it and that's

► 01:14:31

probably a reflection of an evolutionary process you know we've adapted to toxins in our environment basically but if you inhibit that with the alkaloids from the banisteriopsis they're very potent very selective MAO inhibitors that protects it from degradation in the gut it can cross the into the blood and into the blood-brain barrier so that's the basis of the oral activity and people make much about how

► 01:15:02

they sort of stumbled on this combination right and in fact one of our presenters at this conference Manuel Torres as an archaeologist has been looking at this for for quite a while if you and this is you know this is one of the sort of gee whiz things how did these primitive people figure out how to combine these plants right I agree it's remarkable if you talk to the shaman they'll say well the plants told us right but

► 01:15:31

what does that mean you know and but what what is interesting to me in a way or what I've been thinking about lately if you look at the archaeology of these things the snuffs that there are two or three different kinds of snuffs that are used in South America that contain DMT the antigen anthros snuffs and the Rola snuffs the Anton anthro snuffs are ancient we have archaeological evidence that puts that

► 01:16:01

back to ten eleven thousand years they are by far the most ancient psychedelics used in the new world are these snuffs that contain DMT nobody is asking the question what possessed these people to take the seeds grind them up and show them up their nose I mean this is not something that intuitively you would you would do and yet that seems to me as easily punch as puzzling

► 01:16:31

how did they find the combination for Ayahuasca nobody's really addressed that my first impulse will I meet when I find a new plant is not necessarily to snort it but isn't that the place of the pharmacological Daredevil I mean there's always this one person who's out there dude Jack what I found yeah you know and that that Curiosity that need to explore things yeah that's exactly right somebody stumbled on this and I think the same was true of Ayahuasca you know because in fact

► 01:17:01

DMT is not that uncommon truth to tell made a car bolin's are not that uncommon so sooner or later people are going to stumble on this combination once they did then you know they share the knowledge it just took time yeah takes time well do you think there's it is possible it mean obviously it's possible but is there any evidence that points to the idea that primitive

► 01:17:26

primates maybe didn't have this model a mean oxidase in their system and that or if they did they had it in lower amounts and it allowed more dimethyltryptamine to enter into the body from consuming plants like it is is there a potential link between consuming various plants like we're talking about thousands different like you could eat a salad if you didn't have monoamine oxidase in your gut you can eat a salad a potentially trip yes if you didn't have it right right it's right and when you see Jack

► 01:17:56

ours that do trip like there's there's all this footage of jaguars in the jungle eating these plants what are they doing well do we know or is we don't know what I'm not sure how much I how much Credence I put into that footage but could be like catnip like maybe looks like happen right you know but they're eating banisteriopsis apparently which doesn't have DMT it's got the beta-carbolines right but but harming alone contains some psychoactive

► 01:18:26

yeah yeah absolutely and there are three main beta-carbolines in banisteriopsis in fact this is what I'm talking about at the conference I'm my talk is about beta-carbolines a lot of activity idea that they're not psychoactive that they're just MAO inhibitors is not really true it's an incomplete picture there are a lot of other activities with beta-carbolines a lot of attention recently

► 01:18:56

refocused on harmine which is the main beta-carboline in banisteriopsis turns out it has all kinds of activities that have been sort of overlooked until now not least of all it stimulates neurogenesis it stimulates nerve cell growth this hypothesis this is big news because it's huge yeah and potentially it inhibits a kinase

► 01:19:26

which has to do with kindness has approached A protein that phosphorylates things right very common all kinds of kindnesses around the body but it inhibits this one particular kinase called d yr k 1 whatever that means but it is associated with the with the stimulation of nerve growth from neural stem cells this is all Petri plate test tube stuff

► 01:19:56

it's not unreasonable to think that this is going on in the body so if that plays a part in neurogenesis that could potentially have some real benefits to people that have things like Parkinson's or nerve disorders or exactly maybe PTSD or CTE rather it could or you know especially dementias like hog that even cognitive timers Alzheimer's or other types of dementia that are not not strictly Alzheimer's that are just kind

► 01:20:26

kind of senile dementia as well I hope it's true because this is that's going to kick you right back man this is my main prophylactic it gets civility I figure if I take Ayahuasca from regularly a probably gonna be okay yeah right back in the game imagine if that's the case what yeah one of the talks that I listened to of your brothers from way back in the day he was talking about scientific nomenclature related to harming

► 01:20:56

and that before they one of the recent or one of the early explorers to South America when they found this stuff they were calling it telepathy mean yes they were calling a telepathy because it induced these group states of telepathy because sort of rumored rumor Deuce okay yeah I mean if you want to get into the you know what you could call the sordid history of the chemistry investigations of ayahuasca

► 01:21:26

because harmine and harmaline and tetrahydroharmine these were originally found in pegannon harmala which is where they got their names which is Siri Andrew right and a lot of people use that in the an alternative Mao when they're making that Ayahuasca analogs so that's all those alkaloids got their names and then when chemists came along kind of all through the 19th century they started looking at banisteriopsis and they would isolate things

► 01:21:56

listen they didn't know what to call them sometimes they call them telepathy name because of the rumors sometimes they were called Badness terrine and yahi nand because they didn't really know what the compound was right and then it turned out well it's actually harming and harming was isolated earlier so then they got their nomenclature right there was a long period where they never collected voucher specimens so a lot of this work was in

► 01:22:26

some ways useless because they forgot to collect the actual plants that they did isolation from hmm it got a little more rigorous there was a group a couple of investigators that actually thought to collect the plants that they did the isolation with so then they could document The Source right I mean people think this is not important but a national pharmacology it's quite important you know for example for a long time just

► 01:22:56

it's just a side thing you know for a long time there was a plan called presto Nia amazonica that was reputed to be one of the sources of these alkaloids and one of the components used in to make Ayahuasca that got loose in the literature and it took years to straighten this out because it's not true and there was no doubt there was no voucher specimen to show that this was you know it was not Presto Nia

► 01:23:26

miss Monica got so bad that schulte's actually had to publish a paper that said Presto Nia amazonica Amazonian hallucinogen or not turns out not you know so you have to beware of bad documentation if you're going to collect plants know what you're collecting so the chemists that might come along and work with that can refer back to it you know otherwise you

► 01:23:56

it's good science and chemist don't think in terms of the botany they just have something there and trying to isolate something from it but you got to be it helps to know what the identity of it is you know so it seems to me that that part of the world the Amazon jungle and are really troubling relationship with a currently it's so it's so analogous to the way human beings are kind of interfacing with the world like that's a good way to look at it there because her

► 01:24:26

there's so many different powerful things that they're learning about this one area while people are chopping it down left and right and slashing and burning and making room for cattle grazing and all this other crazy shit that's going on down there while you know there's so much to be learned still well yeah there is a mrs. this is a good illustration of you know are sort of Penny Penny wiseness and pound foolishness about these things there are literally trillions of dollars

► 01:24:56

if you just want to look at it in terms of dollars and cents which is not the best way to look at it because after all this ecosystem is you know the burning of the rainforest is about 30% of human Global greenhouse gas emissions if you could just stop burning down the dams Forest yeah 30% 30% like figure wow but then on the other side of economics and there have been assessments how would it

► 01:25:26

what use do you make of the Amazonian biome to maximize its value right if you do cattle it's worth so much per hectare if you do Hardwoods well yeah it's a Banshee right that's the big issue

► 01:25:43

but the thing is in terms of undiscovered potentially undiscovered Blockbuster drugs there's probably at least a trillion dollars worth of undiscovered drugs in the Amazon which will of course never beat its discovered because we're going to wreck it and there's already busy wrecking it insane amounts of species of plants in the Amazon has 80,000 species yeah

► 01:26:13

I mean it's about 250 thousand species of plants overall always revising this number and they always seem to revise it up but between 250 to 300 thousand species of so-called higher plants and in the Amazon it's one of the most biodiverse region about 80,000 species wow so and all of this less than 10% of this not even close to 10% of this this incredible

► 01:26:43

molecular and by OMB and biological diversity has been looked at as potential sources of new medicines you know I mean there's a whole area of folk medicine and folk knowledge but to systematically look through these species and isolate things of interest hasn't been done you know a very I mean it's been going on for years there's been a lot of work but it's not really touching

► 01:27:11

a big proportion of it yeah so that pharmaceutical companies are not interested in this you know interestingly enough they want to their corporations despite you know they tell you they're finding new medicines that will cure people and help people to a certain extent that's true but remember the bottom line is profit they want to own everything you know they don't want to share intellectual property with these Savages

► 01:27:41

just down there that are the stewards of this knowledge you know why should we let these people have any part of it so they want to make everything synthetically they wanted all to come out of Vats you know their Laboratories but it's totally wrong approach because the frequency of compounds that make it from Discovery to the clinic are very is very low and when they abandon natural products about 25 years ago the

► 01:28:11

frequency of drug discovery that pharmaceutical Discovery pipeline is they call it dried up and it took a long time for the pharmaceutical industry to realize you know essentially we threw the baby out with the bathwater we need to go back to Natural Products because that's where you find the molecular diversity the scaffolds the on which we can build these drugs right I mean think of the complex molecules that

► 01:28:41

you find in nature it may not may not be what makes it to the clinic right it may be a derivative of that or an analog of that but it's still the plants that give you the ideas for the structure if you can follow me it's not that you're going to grow this right in forestry in plantations but you can go and isolate a compound determine the structure and then you can probably synthesize an

► 01:29:11

but the idea comes from nature and isn't part of the problem in that isolating one individual compound from a plant that might have multiple compounds that work synergistically well that's another difference right right yeah like the FDA and just the whole drug Discovery process they like single compounds you know Magic Bullets for like the synthetic compound that is completely defined molecular Lee and we don't they don't

► 01:29:41

like these all these other related compounds like Marinol for instance right synthetic THC which is not nearly as pleasant for people who have cancer or glaucoma or any a host of different very good very good example Marinol it does what it does but the multi-component preparations of cannabis are much more effective that's true of almost all herbal medicines now when they isolate THC it's one of how many different cannabinoids

► 01:30:11

there's I think there's about 400 different kinds of cannabinoids and cannabis so when you're getting th see you're getting one 400 where 400 lot of other things in cannabis as well but I believe I remember reading there are about 400 kinds of chemicals in cannabis so good example incredibly complex plant chemically you know and as they all are but that's that's a good example

► 01:30:42

I've never taken Marinol but everyone that I know that has said it's just a pale imitation of what cannabis gives you yeah well it's for one particular for one particular use which is what the I guess it's pain right is that what it's used for but even then the people that take it for that said that it's not nearly as effective as just this is a good example of the of the sort of cognitive dissonance

► 01:31:11

of the FDA and the whole regulatory thing because for years FDA has been saying well cannabis has no medical use there's no recognized medical use oh but there is this one drug that the FDA has approved Marinol which has some small amount of the therapeutic use that cannabis does but it's just so incredible with so much information available today that they're making such poor choices in that regard that someone can't step up and logically address

► 01:31:41

this thing and say look where you're getting a fraction of the benefits of this just because of this bizarre need that human beings have to patent things and the own things right and it's not the plants can't be patented they can be formulations cam I think GW Pharmaceuticals which is brought out sativex it's a standardized cannabis preparation that you take orally as a mouth spray

► 01:32:11

so it's a natural product its patented it has all the cannabinoids are well characterized it's essentially a standardized extract so that's sort of represents where this is going well that's a positive that's a positive branch of it right yeah this that's a good thing that more reflects what cannabis should be as a medicine and so it's essentially all the properties of cannabis and what they've patented is the formulation is that what it is they've had that the formulation yeah and probably the use

► 01:32:41

as well that's another way you can get patents how is their formulation unique you know that I couldn't tell you it's just it's an oral aerosol sprays so there's issues that come up with is that it that's a company called Jambo makes us pray okay yeah it's awesome yeah it's similar it's similar to that it's yeah it's an oral it's an oral

► 01:33:11

aerosol and my uncle shirts well well standardized in terms of what kanima cannabinoids are in there I think they brought it out initially for multiple sclerosis that was the treatment and then for seizures and they're gradually expanding you know I mean it's interesting how marijuana has gone from you know this sort of reviled drug of abuse to now it's the medicine of the future right

► 01:33:42

now that's a good thing I mean I think I think that I think it does have a lot of applications and why it should be illegal there's no reason for this you know but obviously there is it's in someone's interest to keep it illegal that would be my only concern with this patented formula formula that they've sort of figured out is that other people can't make a formula as well as like in patenting

► 01:34:11

they do they own the process like what if it's a very obvious process like you know like the Ayahuasca process rights a very obvious process that monoamine oxidase inhibitor along with the plant that contains DMT boil it down everybody knows how to do it if somebody figures out a way how to patent that does that does that become a real problem and that they own the rights to something that's been around forever it does it does become a problem and with as you say with some

► 01:34:41

same like that where you know it's pretty obvious how you do it it's not that complicated there's no Innovative technology there there's no there's no art right there's no art of innovation which is what would make it patentable there were attempts to patent Ayahuasca few years ago and it got you know what actually was patented and a delegation of indigenous healers from Ecuador Colombia and Peru came to the

► 01:35:11

the US patent office and petitioned against this and said we've been using this medicine for thousands of years how is it that so it was a guy named Lauren Miller who really didn't know what he was doing I forget what his company was this was when I was still doing my postdoc and I ate so this was like mid-80s he tried to patent it and what it turned out was it was a completely specious patent it was a

► 01:35:41

patent on a particular strain of banisteriopsis that he collected that had an anomalous flower color I think and that was the basis of the patent well that's absurd because flower color is highly variable it was it was a useless patent in every respect so they rescinded yeah the patent office overturn the patent as they well should have and then I believe it

► 01:36:11

it was reinstated for some reason I haven't really followed this up but I think by that time everyone kind of came to the conclusion that it was it was absurd there was no reason to do it and he didn't really have the resources to develop it so and he was not you know he lost a lot of respect because it's not so much that you can't I mean the intellectual property thing is the real issue you know if you and

► 01:36:41

why the pharmaceutical companies want to stay away from traditional medicines by and large because it's like

► 01:36:49

you know the indigenous people are that are the stewards of the knowledge they know how to use the plant they maintain the plant their habitats you know is where the plant is found so they rightly should have a place at the table you know if you're going to commercialize this traditional medicine they should get something back isn't traditionally we've been ripping things off from indigenous people for a long time it's called bye

► 01:37:19

piracy rights and that's how they operate generally so that's an issue but there are ways to address that he's just basically you know come to terms with it and acknowledge that their knowledge does count for something and they should have they should have a part of the of the proceeds if you build a if you make a billion dollar drug out of this you should be able to give something back to indigenous people

► 01:37:49

you know so it's complicated it does seem complicated also seems like like when you when everything becomes commercial it becomes like when you look at the idea that pharmaceutical drug companies at all when you look at a corporation and you think of you know this idea of you know infinite growth and this is what they're subscribing to in the constant trying to make more and more money and then you you think about compounds and compounds being legal and them trying to figure out a way to

► 01:38:19

Mark at these things it seems to become it seems to be a big issue that we're relying on that at all it's almost like that tail of the Scorpion and the Frog but the frog says tells the Scorpion hey I'll give you a ride across the river but do me a favor and don't sting me because you do we'll both drown and then halfway through the scorpion stings him and the Frog goes what the fuck and this carbon goes hey man it's my nature it seems like right that you nature of these corporations is just to make money so relying on them

► 01:38:49

to bring these intense psychedelic compounds to the market or to even saying the markets terrible word to just bring them to daily use or bring them to the making them free to use I think that corporations you know as you say their main job as they as they see it though they don't say so in public is basically to make money you know to patent these compounds and make money and make more money every year

► 01:39:19

and since we know there's no Revenue model in psychedelics there's no way for them to make money according to that mul here's a way to not make money don't give that guy who's got a leaf over his dick a billion dollars has been happy shooting arrows at monkeys for 10,000 years that's kind of it yeah it's just not so we're not going to do that if they don't have to well they won't and and you know these are they want these psychedelics if you use them therapeutically

► 01:39:49

these are things you might take a few times in your life right they want drugs you take four times a day for the rest of your life that's the revenue model yeah and the revenue model if there is one with psychedelics is not that because they have to be used in a context you know sentence setting right the revenue model if there is one is to have centers to have places you can go and take psychedelics in a controlled setting they won't look like

► 01:40:19

next they'll look like Spas right you know I mean take the family for a weekend and have a nice you know psilocybin vacation while you're busy getting your massages and doing yoga and whatever that's how it's going to work yeah if it does if it's allowed to go forward that's that's the model yeah well we'll see I mean I've often said the very idea

► 01:40:49

that you could patent or prohibit a plant is absurd is Observer line especially one is non-toxic what is not patented is prohibited that's that's that's the way they approach in most circumstances which we real weird is that we give these caveats to religions like that's what's going on now with Ayahuasca is that there are some companies that have had

► 01:41:19

exemption through the Supreme Court right I shouldn't say companies but basically that's what they are there are churches right there churches which is not really just another way of saying a company you know what out there there is a to tional I write their institution right yeah so the question is and now people are beginning to sort of recognize this or ask the question so you've got your you've got the udv which is one of these Brazilian churches that's they're the ones that took their case all the way to the

► 01:41:49

Supreme Court and got approved unanimously under sexually the first case that John Roberts decided after he became chief justice so very conservative Court they unanimously ruled that yes the unity is a real religion which is fascinating they have the right to use it well it clearly is a real religion it is a real religious fastening that a conservative Court would have would almost be boxed into doing that because of their views on Christianity exactly exactly they

► 01:42:19

not do it and then the central die me same thing they didn't have to go all the way but essentially they have the same approval and their piggy backing on this and it's their Christian based religions as well yeah well they're Christian based religion so now the question is when you go to Peru there's Ayahuasca it's used it's not as institutionalized its kind of idiosyncratic you know you've got these practitioners at the traditionals called vegetal leaves

► 01:42:49

Mo there's no institution there's no there's no Doctrine there's no hierarchy there's no there's just freelance practitioners question is is that a religious activity and should it be protected and this is what some smart lawyers are now addressing with the use of Ayahuasca in the more traditional way it sounds like they hurt us have essentially taken that they've appropriated that tradition and they say

► 01:43:19

we want nothing to do with this digitus people right this is our religion you know it's our Sacrament they don't even they get upset if you even call it a drug or a medicine to them it's a Sacrament well that's fine but elsewhere is he's a medicine but it is also you know a religious activity vegetal is mole has a spiritual aspect it should be regarded as a religion we'll see where that goes

► 01:43:49

it's almost like with the udv and these other churches that what they're they've done is they've used this scaffolding of Christianity as a trojan horse that's allowing this Ayahuasca to get through the same Strassman was telling me his experience with it with them where they were all wearing like golf shirts and they have uniforms and they they're taking these insane doses of super potent Ayahuasca right and you know and then they're all singing and singing songs about Jesus

► 01:44:19

and you know strassmann is like a really like very mellow and easygoing guy really Pleasant guy he's explaining how he sat down with these people in the morning after all this is over it's like what the fuck are you people doing besides browser raise and he's taking about his trip from the night before he's like these people are taking like super potent doses of Ayahuasca and they're saying about Jesus with golf shirts on he's like what the fuck and they you know they have like plastic folding chairs and shit

► 01:44:49

and you know on furniture and it's like what the fuck is this what it is is it's a religion you know it's a religion that's what it is you know but I pray think it's okay yeah it's spread it away so get it on yeah spread it on I mean the thing is I work I haven't had much to do with Sanskrit I mean not that I just haven't had the opportunity nor am I particularly interested in going to ceremonies where I am told that I have to dance the whole time

► 01:45:19

that's not my thing but I know the udv well you know because we did the biomedical study with them in the 90s so they're wonderful people they're very kind you know their families are good they're very nice people but I would never join they asked me to join I said look I don't do Cults right I'd be happy to come drink with you anytime what does it as Groucho the religion of the Groucho Marx once said I think to paraphrase him I would never be a member

► 01:45:49

member of any group that would have me yeah that's pretty much what I told them you know you don't want me I'm yeah heretic by nature but I'm happy to you know share your brew and they do make fine fine brewed not a tweet your organization tweeted out for you but I'm not showing up at the stockholders meeting I'm not gonna Joy but seems to me with my experience with DMT that it's so powerful and so profound that I wonder if that's a way that Christianity works like

► 01:46:19

idea of Jesus and the Saints and heaven and God and all these different manifested deities like people thumb their nose at it and say it's ridiculous and Preposterous but everything on DMT is ridiculous and Preposterous and I wonder if under the guise of the udv and they're singing their dancing if Jesus is real in a sense that you can actually communicate with a thing that takes the form of Jesus and that sense I wonder what they're seeing I mean I

► 01:46:49

Ali wonder if they're going about the whole idea of psychedelics for the non-initiated is a big part of it is how you're going into the experience set and setting and also your mindset also you know the like the the state of mind that you approach these things can greatly affect your experience hence bad trips for people that have an unstable psychological state of mind and they try to fight the experience I really wonder if these people are embracing the the all the beautiful concepts of Christianity the love the the

► 01:47:19

the family idea that Brotherhood the idea of brothers and sisters together in this sense of unity and love of the Creator if this under this idea of Christianity is actually an effective approach well I think I think what you experience you know it is not confined to Christianity what you articulated is just basically kind of the the characteristics of a religious

► 01:47:49

has experienced or spiritual experience right without necessarily tying it to Christianity I mean love crashing respect for each other you know I mean these are elements of a kind of the I don't know what you call a generic religion these are elements of the religious experience the interesting thing about the udv and and these other churches is that they have actually created a structure where this can happen

► 01:48:19

whereas most religions the last thing they want you to do is have an actual religious experience I mean it's all made it's all set up to make sure that doesn't happen because it just experiences are dangerous as a very profound thing you just said most religious the last thing they want is for you to have a real religious expound though it's all set up to make sure that doesn't happen only the priests get to have it or is that mostly original thing and then of course

► 01:48:49

if they don't have it either because they're you know I mean it's gotten away from that and so that missing is that the original idea of the rules of Christianity might have come from that the Moses and the burning bush these ideas that are passed on Love Thy Neighbor all that stuff might have been from that very experienced its might have been from that variously that experience but the thing is and this happens it's not just Christianity

► 01:49:19

like it's like any powerful spiritual technology anything that is numinous right I'm I talk a lot about the mysterium tremendum right the DMT the Psychedelic experience is a mysterium tremendum something that is mysterious tremendous terrifying spiritually powerful and must be controlled right I mean I mean it is all those things it's too powerful

► 01:49:49

powerful so in these in these power structure there's always someone who says you know who wants to sort of put a collar around that put a lasso around that to seize the reins if the if you will

► 01:50:04

there's a temptation to grab it and use it for your own purposes which is usually a man usually I don't know if any women that women don't seem to be you know it's not in Bill to do the dominance thing but there's very often a male figure who can take any spiritual technology co-opted to their purpose you know which is often sex or money or power or

► 01:50:34

those things yeah it's always a man though of course it's a mad damn it why do we suck we just do you know I mean we just that's why there's 7 billion people yeah because we're sneaking and we get you pregnant okay right sorry that's pretty much it we're not we don't want to be like this ladies it's not our fault God yeah but it's always a man it really is always a man is no argument with it you know so you get this all the

► 01:51:04

the time you know in in any kind of quote unquote spiritual tradition the incident it happens in the in the Ayahuasca thing as we know you know it's not uncommon to have sexual abuse and that sort of thing very common lately lately and more and more so you hear these stories of these guys my friend Amber Lion had it happen to her like on one of her first experiences sky was groping her and where she was under and she's realizing what's going on and just realize like this is probably how some of

► 01:51:34

these people sort of like they found this technology and you can call it technology if you want but this this Pathway to this incredible experience they provided to people but they're not really much in into taking that Journey themselves really into exploiting this thing to for financial gain and for power and influence that is what it's morphed into now that there's the tourism phenomenon and all that stuff so yes they see it as a way to two weeks

► 01:52:04

exactly that to power influence and and money you know which just illustrates again it's all about

► 01:52:12

there's nothing inherently good or bad about these Technologies there you know tone Ayahuasca can be a wonderful thing if it's used properly they can be a really terrible thing it's all about the use you make of it you know the moral Dimension that comes with with how you use it you know I mean there are iOS karos that have you know I say they don't listen to their medicine incense they they do these things they're not really upset

► 01:52:42

or being the lessons that they should be getting from a medicine others do listen to their medicine and there you know and it's not so easy to sort out who's the good ones and who's the bad one sort of like we were talking about these people that have this simplistic idea that all you have to do is get Donald Trump high on DMT and he's going to see the light yeah it's not necessarily the case not necessarily the case yeah I think it would be wasted on him I think we would have to do at least at least an indwelling catheter may be

► 01:53:12

maybe two or three hours of continuous DMT in Fusion that well I'm sorry sorry wrong wrong term why an intravenous but it's very very Freudian you said it goes through his dick right that is hilarious not that not that well we'll go through the vein no man I think you might have nailed it the first time

► 01:53:38

some might be the way to get it what may be the way to get it to him and some perfect Russian robot fuck doll who just locks them up and you know right when he gets inside her there you go he gets him in full guard locks them in place and yeah catheter like delivery wow yeah maybe they can program it like like DMT like little Nanobots that go right through the hole right through the penis hole ready to the system they just run out of her

► 01:54:08

right in there he's broke he just takes off but again there has to be something there somebody animals that have an effect please somebody animated I know there's somebody out there that wants to that's that's do it the way to do it just some perfect super hot 10 Russian hooker looking chick no offense to Russian hookers right or Donald Trump or Donald Trump even look Donald Trump was a baby at one point

► 01:54:37

time you know and you and I were both have children we know there's it's a delicate process of turning an adult making an adult out of a child a lot of factors come into play but I'm also all babies are born well they certainly have their own personality there in many ways a blank slate and so they're in a lot of ways of victim of the environment they're raised in that's one of the weird things that I've developed in my own self over the last few years is just thinking about people as babies

► 01:55:08

I think of everyone is a baby now like since I've had kids I don't I mean obviously I think of them as being adults but I think of them as an adult that used to be a baby and I never used to do that before I had children I used to think of people as being a static State I meet you and I go well this is Dennis McKenna this is how Dennis McCann has always been and now I go oh Dennis used to be a little boy you know Dennis was a baby I used to you know and then he saw a lot of things and a lot of things and you know what I mean yeah like you know Trump he's almost

► 01:55:37

as much of a victim as he is of a perpetrator in a way he is and yeah Trump's a good example of somebody I mean in some ways he's still a child yeah I know he never really grew up I mean that's part of the problem they'll and everyone because he has so much power and money everyone kowtows to his impulses but you know I mean in some ways like Jared and Ivanka or maybe a stabilizing influence on him although although you know I'm sure they're not in this town

► 01:56:07

Ali evil as well swell confused at they're in the hole they can definitely don't deserve the amount of power that they're wielding nor does anybody what's more fascinating about him than anything is that what he holds up to the golden standard is Success right I mean this is the guy that you know everything has to have his name on it so Trump this and Trump that and if you looked at like the Great American vision of success it's to become some sort of super rich Ultra billionaire but even though everybody knows he's a super rich Ultra billionaire

► 01:56:37

he still is deceptive about his own success he still has to lie about it he still has to distort it far past whether it's the numbers that came to the inauguration whether it's the numbers that he won the Electoral College by he lies about all these different things and it's in its inherent it's a part of him this intense lack of satisfaction with any result and he's any result even if it's winning by a mile he must win by a hundred miles right you know and that's childish

► 01:57:07

so that's like an intense day but it's that same intense dissatisfaction that's inherently very dangerous in a leader because it's leading him to make these these critical judgments that aren't based entirely on reality but rather Dave what he wants people to perceive right that that's quite right I think that's dangerous that's what we were saying before no thoughtfulness there's no thoughtfulness and the man there's no reflection right reflection a lack of humility so

► 01:57:38

this is this is not what you want you know leaders because we see what's happening like the you know he's going back and forth with the Soviets he's going back and forth with no North Korea and it's like a schoolyard spat you know but these people have nuclear weapons to throw so we need to back off from that Donald you know it's just but he can't do that because he has to respond he has this impulse to respond

► 01:58:07

I mean I think that you know I don't know I mean it he's not going to be exposed to Ayahuasca I'm not really sure unfortunately because it would help him and you know what what is disturbing to me many things about Donald and this sort of reality Distortion he's created his people you know they take it seriously I mean they're sort of like intimidated by it none of the people are standing up and saying well this is not true

► 01:58:37

this is not true you're completely deluded about this here you know I mean there's a some sort of impulse to show some respect when no respect is is do you know I mean right respect for the office exactly the for the office for whatever some but then when he comes out with these things that are obviously not true I'm sorry there are no alternative facts right alternative facts are lies yeah there's only two fast

► 01:59:07

as our candy coating of bullshit alternative facts is the most hilarious candy coating of bullshit ever My Hope Is that we get through this without nuclear war and then we realize that we can't have a fucking present the idea of having one alpha champ run the entire group of 300 plus million people is insane and it doesn't work when you have technology when you have this ability to communicate instantaneously globally with everybody constantly it's just it's an archaic I

► 01:59:38

that served its time but needs to be revamped how would you do that that's a really good question I'm not the guy that be the architect of the future civilization but I would think that putting as much power as we put into one individual is insanely problematic it's just it you you're dealing with all these ego issues decision-making issues and also the camps that two separate camps the right left Camp that's crazy too that's crazy to write right now

► 02:00:07

no I mean I think one way to approach it wouldn't have to be such a such a tremendous shift from what we've got would be to go to a parliamentary system hmm like Canada has for example where you represent your party and if the other party gets enough you know they can vote vote you out without going through the whole impeachment process there is no impeachment process the parties

► 02:00:37

Coalition and vote the Prime Minister out you know and it's much easier to topple the government and in some ways that's a good thing you know it's more resilient and Canada's a good you know there are many parliamentary democracies but that's the one that's closest I think there's also an issue with dealing with the real problems of the world in a time where there the realities of say Syria

► 02:01:07

hey what's going on over there are so horrific and there's so far removed from the realities that we deal with here you you almost need to have someone who has some sort of experience with those people in those lands to understand and put it into perspective yo and I think we're entirely lacking of that perspective like as in terms of our culture I don't think we understand what a brutal military dictatorship is like I think we see it on television

► 02:01:37

vision and it seems almost too abstract but the president has to deal with that in a very real way and no one person can but that's what advisors are for exactly but if you don't have good advisors or if you choose to ignore them then you're in deep shit right horror that's I mean I mean Donald points advisors who already share his delusions of course so there's nobody there to say wait a minute you're wrong you know and based on

► 02:02:07

variants and expertise and all this you're wrong and you need to rethink it that's what bothers me about one among many things about the way that he perceives I mean you know the thing that bothers me most about the change in administration's is that they have basically looked at climate change they said we don't believe it it's not happening we're not it's not even on the table and actually that needs to be the thing on

► 02:02:37

the table that should be the primary thing we're talking about all this other stuff is important but we're talking about the accelerating changes that are that are essentially under under mining the mechanisms that keep the Earth habitable by life this is a pretty important issue and to have people that say well it isn't you know we don't believe in climate change well I'm sorry

► 02:03:07

sorry climate change is real I don't care what the fuck you believe it is real and for for this Administration to not only ignore it but then roll back all these other measures that were put into place is you know it's just the stupidest idea I can imagine not just roll back but removing the funding for monitoring yeah removes is really scary suppressing the information on all this so you know if you look at the the people in the in the

► 02:03:37

Administration are either from the energy industry Rex Tillerson you know and I think the government has become essentially a subsidiary of ExxonMobil you know and not the other way around and so you know that's that's what they're doing and that's terrifying you know it's Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil I mean corporations Run the World we've known this for a long time governments are just puppets does this in some ways it's just too eerily parallel

► 02:04:07

to what we're talking about with the rainforest like with all these all this potential in the rainforest and almost as race the race to see like can we get to these incredible new plants that we haven't discovered before we fuck it up by cutting down all the hardwoods and burning all the forest can we get to this potential future Utopia of people being able to read each other's minds being able to communicate simultaneously all throughout the what understanding each

► 02:04:37

there regardless of language can we get to that before we blow ourselves up before we get into a nuclear war with fucking North Korea or any of these crazy shit right this is insane Administration that's existing in this sort of chaotic manner alongside some of the brightest minds and most Innovative people that have ever walked the face of the planet that are influencing things in a way today that it's really unparalleled in terms of human history yeah potential that any new invention or innovation can enact

► 02:05:07

t' whether it's understanding new compounds that we discovered in the rainforest or some new technology that's made in Silicon Valley I mean it's an amazing amazing parallel yeah no I agree it does seem like it does seem like a race in some ways between idiocy and genius yeah they're incredibly brilliant people and they're developing and I'm their solutions to the problems that face us right but then on the other side you have the know-nothings you

► 02:05:37

horror marching into the future eyes firmly fixed on the rearview mirror it's like oh yeah coal technology that's the greatest thing let's go back to that I mean is that stupid or what it's called technology is obsolete it's - dude - you know there are better Solutions you know or the whole attitude toward drugs all the War on Drugs the War on Drugs was great let's go back to that I mean these are people who are not living in the present for one

► 02:06:07

thing not planning for the future and they don't really want to know it's like our minds are made up we know drug abuse has got to be bad so let's prohibit it let's go back to the old model they're not capable of entertaining new ideas and that's a problem what do you think about the idea and I've heard this brought up and I've entertained at my own self that maybe we need some sort of enemy or some sort of thing to resist in order to rise to the full potential

► 02:06:37

of innovation of ideas of that we almost need some sort of mountain to conquer we need some sort of a force to be aware of it really makes people rise up I've seen more more people politically active and politically engaged now post-election than I ever did before the election because I didn't expect Trump to win right and now that he did it's like it's raised up this resistance to this insane level that I've never experienced before in my life I mean it feels to me like Kent

► 02:07:07

stayed all over again it feels nowhere with it was a real shock that he won and it's it I agree it's been a wake-up call so now there is this strong resistance movement and there and and that's a good thing that that's happening also journalism how suddenly found itself again you know some journalists in some sectors of it are beginning to you know for so long they were essentially stenographer

► 02:07:37

so they would repeat whatever the mouthpieces of the government now the journalists are questioning everything and asking you know tough questions of these clowns and expecting answers right and it's kind of like you know when I was young I wanted to be a journalist right I thought Walter Cronkite was the pack cat's pajamas I wanted to be like him I want to or I wanted to be a foreign correspondent you know I just admire journalism and for a long time I have not found anything

► 02:08:07

to admire in it it's like there they've all been lobotomized or something yeah but they're rediscovering it you know the good ones are rediscovering it and the we emergence of investigative journalism and right now I think that's the you know that's our best hope because I think that these guys they'll just keep digging there's going to be so much bad stuff come up about Trump and the oldest collusion with the Russians and you know what

► 02:08:37

and surely enough to impeach him the question is will the Republicans find enough enough spine to you know to do that but they did with Nixon yeah you know and I think some I mean what he did was not nearly as bad as what Trump is doing and so we'll see where it goes but you know I'm Shameless in a way that Nixon never was Shameless and and you know I take a certain comfort in

► 02:09:07

in the thought that you know they have all these Draconian things they want to do roll back all the environmental regulations whole immigration thing you know warrant drugs but none of it is going to happen none of it actually will happen with the integration stuff's pretty real here in California I mean they I see he's showing up at Home Depot's they showed up at Home Depot's I have a friend who's born America he's Mexican and they asked him where he was born they pulled Maze of

► 02:09:37

Metron and he knew like how to deal with this and he knew what's legal and what's not and he even to grown man he's in his 50s and the citizens and citizens yeah and a veteran I mean he served the country in in Iraq and so they're coming up to him and asked him you know where you born he's like you can't ask me that you know like you don't you're not allowed to ask me where I'm born right and then you know he says who are you in like well you know we're immigration and whatever the IC e stands for and he goes let me see some documentation the guy shows his badge his gun he goes That's not

► 02:10:07

you're fucking documentation pull out your goddamn documentation and he pulls out his military IDs like look here's my documentation this is me who the fuck are you why are you asking people where they're born I was born in California okay you're not allowed to just go up to people and ask them where they're born but people that don't know that they're they're getting arrested they're getting taken and they're getting deported they're taking people that are dropping off their children at school the grabbing people and there's a bunch of cases this and you're just hearing about the cases that get to the Press right so

► 02:10:37

many of them that you're never going to hear about and this is just rampant and this never existed before not in the Bush Administration no I mean not in Bush senior I mean it just didn't happen before in any conservatives Administration they didn't treat it like this this is a weird time yeah it's a very weird time but I think it's temporary and I hope so but what you said about journalism I think it's important to point out that the there just as they fucked up just as hard with the left as they did with the right I mean they let the clintons get away with a lot

► 02:11:07

lot of horseshit they got to let Obama get away with a lot of horseshit they they said talking points they were given talking points and they ran with those talking points that they would get access to the president and they would get access to Congressman the Senators and they did it forever and it wasn't journalism and you're right and they are the reason why this guy got into place and this that's in this situation right now it's just as much of a fault of them of not holding the left to the fire as it is to you know what's going on right now yeah I mean

► 02:11:37

journalism has a lot to answer for it there's no doubt about it I just have a

► 02:11:44

you know maybe it's a delusion I would just I would just I like I would like to think that journalism is finding its voice and finding its function again its function is to you know somebody said I think it was I have stone you know the function is to comfort The Afflicted and afflict the comfortable right and that's often essential e the journalistic mandates Express the truth and inform the truth seek the truth and form don't assume you know play the

► 02:12:13

I'm the game be able to look Beyond it and they have to be in this environment the where people keep calling fake news they have to be undeniable and I think they're in that sense they are reinvigorated yeah I mean that's one of the things that you know you're seeing that's one of the things that the times talked about like after it was over after the election was over there like we are we're going to reinvigorate refocus our dedication on journalism you know and I think that activity that's a good sign yeah than the other side of it is that

► 02:12:43

that we can just you know the way the Trump Administration / seeds with all these things they want to do they inevitably just get bogged down and litigation protest you know at some point they do have to answer to Congress so I think you know I mean the wheels were already coming off before he even took the oath of office yeah they've continued to come off and it's just going to get its kind of just sort of degenerate

► 02:13:13

to litigation acrimony and ability to get anything past you know which is all good I mean essentially in this case chaos is our friend because they won't be able to advance this Draconian agenda thank God and you know hopefully circumstances will enable us to get rid of them quickly I don't know you know I'm not entirely confident in that I just the whole thing to me when I'm looking at these protests like what was

► 02:13:43

going on yesterday where people are just beating the shit out of each other in the streets is people with Red Hats like the red Hat's are the bad people so strange and so strange seeing people these make America great again hats you know fighting with people that are wearing masks and motorcycle helmets and their sticks and people are throwing you know smoke bombs and like this is crazy and I've really never thought we'd see such a clear right versus left Civil War in fact like these little battles its innate seems to be

► 02:14:13

ramping up and becoming more and more common and and and becoming more and more violent yeah it seems that it is you know but so what can we do you know we're not out on the streets protesting on one side or another I mean I right I asked you know and then basically I think for me I continue doing what I'm doing because I think I think these plant medicines are the single most important Catalyst for changing consciousness

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witness on a global level and that's what has to happen so I'm not saying I have nothing Messianic about it I you know I tell people I work for the plants but I think it's valuable to bring people to that experience in a place that is safe they don't have to worry about those issues they can have this direct download with the mysterium tremendum if you want to call it that that can change hearts and minds I think that globally I think that Ayahuasca is a

► 02:15:13

for that you know why is it suddenly gone Global in the last 20 years I think you know I think that it's a sign that Gaia if you believe in that concept that the Earth itself is an intelligent entity is getting a little bit hysterical and it's trying to get our attention you know wake up the monkeys and this is the way it's you know so Ayahuasca is an ambassador from the community of species

► 02:15:43

to what I call the problematic primates you know this out-of-control species that needs a good talking to a seance wake up your Wrecking this place you know and you don't have to well it seems like so systems always try to balance themselves out you know whether it's through Warfare or disease or some new government usurping the old Power or whether it's through

► 02:16:13

tutors and pray and there's always some weird sort of reaction to something gained too much power and whether it's ideas or ideologies or patterns they gained too much power and then something shows up that sort of tends to diminish that and erode the very Foundation of it that's that's what I feel about psychedelics that in many ways what they're doing and even the sneaky door like the people to talk about cannabis being

► 02:16:43

you know some sort of a gateway drug it's not a gateway drug to the bad ones I think if anything it's a gateway drug to the ones that are going to change the world yeah if it doesn't do it on its own if yeah I mean this concept of a gateway drug is you know it's just stupid in a sense this is something that the drug Warriors of come up with you know it's like so I mean I'm here to tell you coffee is a gateway drug alcohol probably this one chocolate ice cream is it

► 02:17:13

gateway drug we've all taken these things and you know look where we are now we so gateway drug it's just the concept is absurd what's it if it was not sold in a in an environment where there were choice to have all sorts of other illegal drugs I wouldn't be a gateway drug what it no welding the alcohol one is the most ridiculous one because it's everywhere and it's the one that inhibits your Illusions your inhibitions more than any other drug May is

► 02:17:43

possible for the most foolish Behavior yeah it's everywhere you can get it at every restaurant you can get it almost everywhere you go this like even to the point where it's not even recognized as a drug yeah that's exactly cognitive dissonance for years you know the FDA could not classify tobacco as a drug because it was a different regulatory framework well of course it's a drug you know and somebody said yeah it's the only drug you can use when used as instructed

► 02:18:13

I will kill you is that's hilarious isn't it funny that the word drug I'm not funny but it's isn't it problematic at the very least the warlord drug is sort of this gigantic blanket that we throw over all these things that perturb Consciousness right well Ned raw good and bad yeah positive and negative no beneficial effects whatsoever and this is civil this is another reason this is another example of why this conversation about

► 02:18:43

out drugs is so shallow because we're talking about drugs right list completely scary as you say good people don't use drugs what about what about which drugs what are we talked about which drugs because there's thousands of drugs so which one are we talking about or we just battle drugs you know actually just calling them drugs as a problem yeah it's how could you call DMT the same thing that you call alcohol but seems to me to be so crazy

► 02:19:11

it's just not a useful term right you know and then also I mean the problem that they're facing and that we have to acknowledge which I've been saying a lot lately is you know we're made of drugs right that's why drugs work we are made of drugs right we are biochemical engines that run on drugs which are neurotransmitters and hormones and enzymes and all of these things and biochemical

► 02:19:42

um they're involved with signal transduction with you know organisms are networks of communication there mediated by neurotransmitters neurotransmitters if you isolated them from the brain put them into a bottle and sold them that would be a drug well they these are drugs so this idea that you know we are inherently biochemical systems you know and people don't want to acknowledge that but that's the truth you know we're made of drugs so the people

► 02:20:11

people that want to have the Drug Free America I'm sorry you know where made out of drugs drugs are built into who we are that's why drugs taken from plants or from the outside have the effects that they have you know because they affect these systems that you know our big brains this is kind of a consequence of evolution you know we have these enormous brains you know that evolve very quickly

► 02:20:41

quickly and we like novelty you know we have all of these brain receptors we like to we like to stimulate those receptors because it makes us feel good or it's interesting or for all sorts of reasons we like to tweak our states of Consciousness it's just built into who we are you know and it's not a bad thing well this is a problem with the way you're thinking you have too many facts and use too much science and you don't

► 02:21:11

no no he's a sorry excuse been of Jesus in your life if you had Jesus you wouldn't need all this nonsense and then that Jeff sessions would make sense to you right that may be true but unfortunately I don't so yeah I'll just continue to be deluded and believe in science just so important things like that so important that you Embrace Jesus and you just won't I can't do it I mean I did it right recovering Catholic I've been there I know I know the drill I know the territory

► 02:21:41

right but it's also the really on in all honesty though it's so important that you are saying these things so people can change their perspective when they realize that oh yeah we are really just water balloons of drugs we're just filled up with it I mean we're that's that's what operates the whole thing that's essentially is what we are that's what adrenaline is if you have all these different things are no yeah I didn't say it first do you know who said it it was Salvador Dali who's and they said so how do you come up with the your ideas for all this

► 02:22:11

crazy art you do you must be on drugs right he said no I am drugs which I guess that put the conversation to an end so if you think about it it's quite true speaking of our growing lot of you know without I don't want to get too far down this but a lot of the problem with organized religion I think is that it denies biology right right ideas and thence yeah somehow being in a body being this

► 02:22:41

chemical system and enjoying what it is to be that is forbidden somehow and this is partly a reflection of our devaluation of nature you know which is about includes our own nature as well as nature out there psychedelics are the antidote to this right they make you really appreciate your relationship with nature

► 02:23:06

yes so they can catalyze changes of Consciousness that's why I say the most effective thing that I can do as somebody who's concerned with the planet is bring people to situations where they can encounter the medicine and make of it what they will I'm not there to tell them what to make of it I'm there to tell them this will be the most intense personal experience that you'll ever have it's up to you how you evaluate it and you can't tell them

► 02:23:36

in all honesty you're still working it out yourself right and I'm certainly I don't want it right I'm a big believer in use your own mind use your own brain to work this out and that's what how about you know that's one of the most important things about recognizing someone who's you know quote unquote fake Shaman or someone who's using it wrong someone is telling you exactly what it is and what you're going to experience like no one of the most beautiful things that psychedelics drugs psychedelic drugs do as they dissolve

► 02:24:06

any notion that you might have that anyone has a hold of this thing yes very much so that is exactly right if somebody tells me I'm a great Shaman I'm going to lead you through this all you know I'm out of there because they obviously have not understood what it is if somebody says I'm not a shaman I just helped I just hell I just want to facilitate you know it's the medicine that's a shaman

► 02:24:35

a shaman will say I'm not a shaman I just know a few tricks that guy is the guy I want a drink yeah I just got a few tricks I just know a few tricks of can trouble I can help you otherwise I'll just step back and let you do it you know and that's that's the essential thing because the medicine itself is the shaman while I have you here I have to ask you two questions because I keep forgetting to do this to do this first of all cannabinoid receptors what is the relationship between cannabinoid receptors in human beings and the

► 02:25:05

we'll use of cannabis or The evolutionary use of cannabis like over the course of human development is our cannabinoid receptors in place because people have consume cannabis throughout history or they are just a natural function of biology know there there are natural function of biology like a lot of these things you know like opiate receptors the same thing cannabinoid receptors

► 02:25:32

and there are many kinds and they're all over the body they're not just in the brain they do all sorts of things they're involved with immune functions and inflammation and it's quite complicated which is why CBD oil works and it's not psychoactive not psychoactive at works on different receptors there's at least three kinds of cannabinoid receptors and evolutionarily

► 02:25:58

you know they're not cannabinoid receptors there's the endocannabinoids system they are referred they are responsive to things that we make in the body like an and amide and there's another one who I always which I always forget but these are endogenous compounds that bind to cannabinoid receptors so just like their endogenous compounds that bind to opiate receptors these are peptides like endorphins and kepha lands

► 02:26:27

those sorts of things you know

► 02:26:30

but the receptors just happened to buying these plant alkaloids but that's not why they evolved you know they have functions in the body related to analgesia and sleep in that sort of thing same with the cannabinoid receptors they evolved not because they were cannabis plants out there but because the body May these endocannabinoids and they mediated all kinds of functions like an animai these things

► 02:26:59

you know cannabinoids a little different than something like like DMT or psilocybin which work kind of very specifically on the serotonin receptors and that's how they mediate their effects the effects of cannabinoids are more widespread you could say more multi multivalent is maybe a good word but it's it's not because the plants were there that we've all these things we had this we

► 02:27:28

neurologically

► 02:27:31

no modern humans you might say and curious right sampling everything we could get our hands on in the environment whether stuffing it up our nose or usually drinking it or whatever naturally you're going to stumble over these compounds because you know the bio is is these are just abundance in the bile so it's not really a chicken or the egg sort of situation like what came first the cannabinoid receptor or the

► 02:28:01

consumption of cannabis The receptors were there first how do we know that how do we know that because we can actually tray we can trace the phylogeny of these things you know we have molecular methods now where we can actually traits the ancestry of receptors right for example we have ways to measure this so you know cannabinoid receptors you can look at the phylogeny and you know they were

► 02:28:31

present in president mammals long before we were around you know and tryptophan is the same thing tryptophan which is the amino acid we were talking about precursor to many of these psychedelics right so how old is tryptophan as an amino acid you can look back at the phylogeny turns out damn old right you know possibly 3.8 billion years

► 02:29:01

hold the genes for tryptophan have been found in phylogenetic groups that go back that far the so-called trip operon so

► 02:29:13

you know so these things have been around for a long time and you know in the most primitive organisms you know serotonin is another good example serotonin is which most of the psychedelics work on serotonin is thought to be the oldest neurotransmitter phylogenetically older than dopamine and norepinephrine some of these other things tryptophan serotonin is receptors are very old phylogenetically

► 02:29:42

verily

► 02:29:45

so how does that correlate with runner's high when when people have this runner's high and apparently it has some sort of an effect on cannabinoid receptors what what is going on there and does it actually mimic the hide that someone gets from consuming cannabis yeah it may I've heard the runner's high discussed in terms of the of the opiate receptors the an endorphin and so on maybe cannabis to what we do know is

► 02:30:14

is that in states of high stress you can boost the production of these endogenous compounds which is why high stress is one way to induce Altered States Of Consciousness on the natch right oh I don't need drugs because I can I can run and get high or I can do meditation and get high I'm sorry dude you're still on drugs because we're making we're made of drugs and he just figured out a way to boost her endogenous

► 02:30:44

DMT cannabinoid so when pH certain ever they're all getting crazy they're actually in some way doing some sort of a natural drug trip yeah essentially because we are drugs remember there is no State you can experience including the state that we're in right now that is not a reflection of our neurochemistry

► 02:31:09

we're in a hallucination right now this is a you know this is a reality that our brains take information in from the environment through our sensory neural interface they combine it with what we know from memories and associations in the cortex and they essentially create a model of reality and that's the reality were inhabiting you know a lot of what the brain does it receives information but a lot of the brains function

► 02:31:39

and is to filter stuff out you know if we received everything from the environment all the time we'd be nuts we wouldn't be able to take it so there are these gating mechanisms that's called neural gating and we are genetically programmed to and through experience as well to you know to have these gating mechanisms that filters a lot of stuff out so that we can function otherwise

► 02:32:09

they would be a blooming buzzing confusion all the time we wouldn't be able to focus on anything you know so a lot so for example gating is you know it's malleable it can change depending on the input so you're in a crowded restaurant for example and there's it's hard to hear there's a lot of noise in the background you adapt to that by filtering out most of what's there right you just you can

► 02:32:39

press it to some degree so you can talk to the person across from you right you're not paying attention but at the next table you hear somebody say your name suddenly your gating mechanism you know you get that that gets through the filtering mechanisms all some of these talking to me I wonder what they're saying about me over there right you know that kind of thing so it relates but a lot of what the brain does when you essentially create this hallucination if you want to call it that

► 02:33:10

of the reality that we inhabit you can call it a model of reality it's not reality itself it's a reasonable facsimile of reality that we inhabit and everybody's different hence different views to everyone is different but close enough that we can talk to each other and all that it's you know but it's not the pure objective reality you know which physicists really exist well it exists out there but we don't know what it looked but it doesn't exist to

► 02:33:39

ins doesn't exist to us we don't perceive it we know receive our own art you know our own model essentially of reality I think you explaining that different experiences create literally drug trips also can explain love affairs where people who become incredibly addicted to each other run indicted the experience of being around the person and what that does to you and that literally you are on drugs when you're with someone of

► 02:34:09

first and you know that's been studied right yeah I mean oxytocin and probably opieop Muniz in Saratoga mean all of these things are part of what mediates that relationship but including sex hormones Abyssal those thing all of those things sex hormones to or psychoactive drugs in a certain sense in which is not to say I mean this is not saying that these experiences aren't genuine or right valuable or anything they are obviously

► 02:34:39

ously you know personal relationships are important it is not a to my mind it's not a devaluation to say well it's chemically mediated okay great it's chemically mediated that doesn't make it invalid write in fact it means that wow these molecules are pretty amazing yes they can do things well the feeling is fantastic like why would that invalidate it it's still real it's still awesome right but people you know again they have these artificial

► 02:35:09

thinks about well you know my mystical experience is more valuable than yours because you had to have psilocybin and I got there on that couch right but it wasn't on the natch you know you're still a prisoner of your neural chemistry no matter what it just so happens that psilocybin is a drug taken in the right circumstances in the right amount will reliably induce a mystical experience nothing wrong with that

► 02:35:39

you don't you could even study it suddenly science can study mystical experiences because we have a reliable trigger that will nine times out of ten induce a mystical experience in the right circumstances so then we can take somebody maybe somebody's meditated for 20 years or done yogur done other things hoping that they might have a mystical experience good for them but then you know you can take me an ordinary schmuck or somebody like me who has

► 02:36:09

and particularly not particularly spiritually evolved but I can take psilocybin and yeah it works that reminds me of a great story that your brother told once about a monk who study the city of levitation and he did it for like 30 years and then met the Buddha and said look I can walk on water I've studied the city of levitation for 30 years and now I can walk across the river and the Buddha said yeah but the

► 02:36:39

he's only a nickel exactly right he's 30 years man just taking mushrooms speaking of mushrooms this is something that I get wrong all the time this one of the other things I wanted to ask you what what is there's some very close relationship that mushrooms have and the absorption of mushrooms have to DMT what what is the chemical differentiation okay very very slight actually

► 02:37:09

um the temptation to start drawing structures is almost irresistible some stuff down go ahead well done awesome here hasn't been do we have a visual now we don't but I'll save that piece of paper okay well I don't want to get too far into it but basically okay so you've had organic chemistry no no okay well then this spam organic chemistry you are

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right where you are organic chemistry well this may be a useless thing but it doesn't is the you know we could see it up on the wall here we've got it up on the screen oh there you go okay well there you go yeah we don't have to draw stroke you can look at it right here so you have to turn around look to your right Dennis turn look it's almost went okay so right so you can see if you so their serotonin still Wilson and dimethyltryptamine wow you can see that psilocybin and dimethyltryptamine

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very close in structure the only difference is that hydroxy group that oah group that's the only difference so without the only difference Ellison is exactly the same thing as n n dimethyltryptamine that's correct wow that single trivial difference is what makes sillas on orally active and dimethyltryptamine is not wow wow because what's going on with that this the static diagram doesn't really show it but

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different molecular model would show up but what's going on the is that that nitrogen there in when citizens and physiological solution the nitrogen is charged has a positive charge the oxygen doesn't have the H there it has a negative charge so the nitrogen curls back and is in close association with the oxygen

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if this makes any sense numb so the the enzyme can't get to it that's why it's orally active because essentially it can't get to that nitrogen what that enzyme does is cleave off that nitrogen mono a mean oxidase it takes away that nitrogen and it can't do it with Stillson so that's why Seoul assassins orally active it doesn't require in the MAO inhibitor it's just in some ways it's the perfect psychedelic because it you know nope

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operation needed you just bend over and pick the mushroom they'll preparation is required which is probably why very Ancient Man knew about psilocybin they couldn't they could not have if they were living in an environment where it was found that's amazing you know what's really incredible is that people are using psilocybin these days in what they call Micro dosing taking very small doses and

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and seen these profound benefits you know one of the things that I'm aware of is kickboxers are using it and kick boxers are using it in a good buddy - using a says that he can see things happen before they happen and like is almost like he's reading people's minds when they're about to do something even on micro toast yeah that's very interesting and intense environment of sparring and in the the intense physical kinetic interaction of kickboxing City seeing what people going to do before they do

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in a way that has never able to do quote-unquote on the natch right no I'm not surprised at all I mean and why aren't you surprised like what do you think is happening because I think that these things let you step out of your box a little bit they let you step out of your usual reference frame and notice things going on in the environment that again this gating mechanism we were talking about were programmed to filter stuff out

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psychedelics temporarily disrupt that they let the background come forward and you notice things about the environment that we're that normally you would suppress because they're not relevant to immediate survival I don't know if you've read some of the work by Simon Powell he wrote the psilocybin solution he writes very intelligently about psilocybin and his latest book The mush magic mushroom Explorer he talks about how

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psilocybin is a lens essentially you can think of it as a lens through which you can look at the world you can look at natural phenomena and you will notice things about that those phenomena that you normally would Overlook because we're programmed to do it so in a sense he talks about how psilocybin is a scientific instrument you know it's a lens through which you can look at the world and see aspects of it

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that are always there but you've never noticed them before because we're programmed not to for example you know Kary Mullis is famous because his discoveries in molecular biology he attributes to his insights about molecular processes that he got from LSD that he could get down with the molecules as he put it and see how all this is working and obviously he invented polymerase chain reaction

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in which he got the Nobel Prize for so it's not like this is a delusion it's a real thing that he was able to notice that no one else you know what I'm saying he was able to put himself in the place where he could notice these phenomena and I think I think that's really true if you if you go to take a walk in the forest with an indigenous person you know who in some ways is in this less of this sensory gating in a more open

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place all the time they will notice things about the environment you know that you are completely oblivious to until they pointed out you know and then they'll say oh yes I never noticed the leafcutter ants are behaving this way or these different things their sensory sort of experience of a environment like the forest is very different than ours you know because we're used to

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to we're just not out in nature the same way and I dare say I think one of the things that in some ways inserts a barrier between us is literacy you know we're all literate right and we like being literate it's good that we're literate but in order to be literate you have to have this separation between the self and the external environments you know you have to pick up a book and read it I am

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I'm the point of view here's the book you know so that creates that relationship and you sacrifice you focus on one particular sensory modality and you sacrifice all the other input that is coming in I don't know if I'm making Sam yeah absolutely absolutely are but but that's that's what these substances can do they can essentially reverse this background foreground

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round relationship that we're so used to suddenly what's right in front of you is not so important and you can pay attention to the things in the background that you're normally you're programmed to suppress and ignore because you know you have to be ready for the saber-tooth tiger to come across you know over the mountain or whatever you know what I'm saying but it's good in that sense they teach different ways

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is a perception you know and I think that's a very useful thing to learn you know indigenous people call these psychedelics plant teachers and they call them teachers for a reason you know much of the what you experience comes directly from the experience but much of it also comes from your change perception and suddenly realize there's a different way to be in the world there's a different way to perceive

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Eve what you experience that normally you don't you know we're programmed to filter out I don't know if you've ever read door had Stephen buhner on your show now he writes very intelligently about this stuff he's written a book called plant intelligence and the imaginal realm and it's all about this you know this

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essentially what his rap is you can learn this you know you can learn this way of perceiving whether you do it with psychedelics are not that you can actually learn it and it's it's an interesting it's a better way to relate to Nature or more an alternative way to relate to Nature in any way I feel like we have these pre assumed definitions of things that we rely upon instead of seeing things for what they really are and you

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you that kind of yeah you box them up and you package them and you go oh well there's a car there's and then one day you look at the car and you go that's a box that has a controlled explosion encased in iron that rolls on rubber tire that's exactly what I'm talking about yeah right there's a different way to look at things if you step out of the box and yes it is all those things and it's also a car and it's if you did that all the time you never get anything done that's right

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that's right but I mean it's interesting in that respect you know with psychedelics because we're verbal people and we're you know we're inhabited we inhabit the world of language as much as the physical world

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and we're almost compelled to try to put some kind of a linguistic wrapper over everything and which is one reason why if you smoked DMT right you have a complete Revelation it's amazing that's all of these things but it's in most cases you aren't even down yet before you're trying to explain it to you Ralph you know you're trying to stuff

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this thing in the Box because it was so impactful it's inherently ineffable you know you can't really describe it in language but boy is there a desire to somehow tame this thing which is incomprehensible totally Transcendence but that doesn't stop you from rapping about it immediately to try to stuff it into a box because it's too impactful and so on the

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you'll level this is what people do well that's what religions do to right they try to take something like this and stuff it into a box because in and of itself without that wrapping or that linguistic you know filter to somehow tame it and you know nullify neutralize its power these things are very dangerous there are also seems to be some sort of a physiological component to the

► 02:48:49

the DMT trip where once it's over you have a very limited amount of time to hang onto those memories yes well exactly and so this is an attempt to entrain that to grab it and I think put a linguistic you know tag on it a certain way so that as a way to not forget it or try and you know both reduce its power but give you something to hang on because right the

► 02:49:19

memory of what it actually is is going to fade very rapidly why is that what is what's the physiological I don't know what the physiological it's like a lot like dreams and it's a lot like dreams it's a lot like dreams I think that it's just

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I don't know it's it's something like that you could probably train yourself to remember it better just like people can train themselves to remember their dreams but it it's ephemeral you know it does tend to evaporate you know which is why it's important to go to the well once in a while and take a drink right I am not one of these people that says once you get the message hang up the phone

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that's a model that doesn't work for me actually it might work for some people but I feel like this is not this is not an answering machine this is a teacher this is something that is intelligent that you have a dialogue with you know and you don't you know teacher teaches a lesson you don't say thanks very much we're done now it's an ongoing process I've been taking psychedelics for most of my life a good part of my life I feel like I've only learned

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at a fraction of what they have to teach me you know maybe I'm just dumb maybe I don't get the message as well as other people but I don't think so I think there's a lot they're full of surprises you know I've taken Ayahuasca locks lost track a long time ago but probably 500 times or more and people say well you know surely you've learned everything there is to learn actually no you know I always

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something new

► 02:51:06

and I learned certain basic things to that it always reminds me about well also your own member that you don't know anything that's the chief and you're also acquiring new data constantly in the natural world that needs to be processed and sometimes you process it with the the tools of civilization yeah versus versus the psychedelics it's well you know it's just interesting it yeah it keeps me off the streets so fast

► 02:51:37

you gonna try to get a lot of a lot of people can be grateful for that yeah you know I'm grateful I'm grateful listen yeah I think I've taken a plenty of your time here and this is an amazing conversation I really appreciate it I am pretty always happy when we can do this yeah wish we could do it more often we should do it we definitely should let's do it I doing I'm can come you know there are many people I can recommend I'm sure you get hundreds of requests but certain people yeah

► 02:52:06

to be talking to let's do it let's do it so please one more time tell people about this conference and when they can watch it on Facebook okay well it's the ESP D50.com that's that's the key thing ESP D50 the conference will be June 6th 7th and 8th in the UK you can go there if you want to attend it the cost is high to actually go there and and do it but people can

► 02:52:36

access it on Facebook and if you go to that website there's a link through to the Facebook page and we'll be live-streaming it you know on the 6th 6th 7th and 8th of June and it will be archived so I don't expect people in the states to get up at three in the morning you know to watch it although they could if they want to watch it live but it'll all be you know archives so they can look at any time and will you transfer it over to other more accessible to people who don't have Facebook Maybe on YouTube or something wrong

► 02:53:06

those lines Vimeo event we haven't made plans to live stream it on Vivid Vimeo I don't know how you do that I think you can live streaming but you could definitely take the video recording perhaps if you have a physical recording it'll all be up there eventually but just live stream real-time Facebook will be where we do it mostly because everyone has told me this is how you do okay well I will definitely tweet that out to everybody and I'll let everybody know I'll put it on all the available social media

► 02:53:36

stages and M order the book in or go to the website and Order the book and the book will come out probably the end of November it's going to take a few months for everybody to get their you know they have to not only make a presentation they have to submit a paper for this book and I'm you know I'm dangling certain rewards out to them to make sure that they do in fact submit a full paper in the spirit of the first conference but it's going to be an amazing book

► 02:54:06

and it's something I've wanted to do for a long time and I can check this off the list now and go on to something else beautiful beautiful and hope they do it more like Joe thank you Dennis I appreciate you very very much alright thanks folks see you soon bye bye bye thank you motherfuckers for tuning in to the podcast I had to get a motherfucker and because I barely swore doing that show when I'm around people smarter than me I tend to keep my my swearing

► 02:54:36

to a minimal so it's like 50% of my podcasts I would say the people are smarter than me the other 50% I'm condescending to I try to shit on them feel better for this time the time when I'm talking to smarter people not really but sometimes really I don't mean to I mean if I do it's just joking I want to thank my sponsors I want to thank my brother Tate Fletcher for his amazing caveman coffee go to caveman coffee co.com use the code word Rogan and you will save 10% they have amazing car

► 02:55:06

coffee thank you to me undies me all time favorite underwear Lads go to meet undies.com forward slash Rogan you will get 20% off your first pair thank you to Squarespace the simple easy solution for you to make a beautiful professional website on your own you can do it you don't need no help son girl daughter whatever you are go to squarespace.com /jo for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase at

► 02:55:36

space.com /jo and of course we're brought to you each and every episode by on it.com go to ONN itu's the code word Rogan and you'll save 10% off any and all supplements all right friends that's it we're done for today I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed it goddamn Dennis McKenna's awesome and Dennis and I talked after the podcast we're going to try to do this much more often the last time he was here I think was three years ago or close to it so we're going to

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try to bang one out at least once a year and going to try to get them on some drugs to keep a live forever alright that's it for today love you guys thank you for everything thanks for all the positive vibes and all the inspiration and all the feedback I it motivates me to no end and I try very very hard to satisfy and please you guys and if I don't if I fuck up believe me I lose sleep it bothers me whether it's a podcast or a comedy show or anything I'm just

► 02:56:37

I'm always trying to do my best sometimes I do sometimes it doesn't work out but I but I appreciate the fuck are you people and I will continue to improve so thank you thank you thank you much love bye bye and big kiss