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I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal, endoskeleton. Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. And I want to skip my long usual Preamble because we are going to run out of time before we run out of material. With today's guests, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.
I'm many many years. In fact, Dennis McKenna, find them on Twitter at Dennis McKenna for and will provide many other links. Dennis is research is focused on the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethno pharmacology. He has conducted extensive ethno Botanical, fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon and we will Define a lot of terms in this episode. So don't worry about getting lost in the woods too quickly, his doctoral research at the University of British Columbia focused on the ethnic pharmacology of Ayahuasca and cuckoo. Hey and well
Check the pronunciation to tryptamine based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. He is a founding board member of the heffter research institute, which does exceptional work and was a key. Organizer in participant in the wasc, a project that HOA SCA project, the first biomedical investigation of Ayahuasca he is the younger brother of Terence McKenna from 2002 2017. He taught courses on ethnic pharmacology as well as plants and human Affairs at the center for spirituality and healing at the University of Minnesota.
Sota and 2019 in collaboration with colleagues Incorporated, a new nonprofit, the McKenna Academy of Natural philosophy which we will discuss in the spring of 2019. He emigrated to Canada with his wife. Sheila and now resides in Abbotsford British Columbia, you can find him on all the socials Instagram at the ends, McKenna, Twitter at Dennis McKenna for Facebook, at Dennis, John Jo n McKenna and also McKenna Academy that's mck, enn a Academy on Facebook on Instagram and on Twitter.
Dennis, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim. It's a pleasure to be here.
I thought I would start with a bit of history and pull in some colorful characters. While we're at it. Could you please describe your first meeting with Richard Evans, schulte's? And that can kind of segue into who schulte's was. But I really enjoyed this story in your book, the Brotherhood of the screaming Abyss, which we will talk about. I've I printed out my Amazon,
Kindle highlights of a hundred, and eighty-nine highlights from that book. We're not going to go through them all. But let's start with your meeting with Shelties, if you wouldn't mind.
Shorty's was a professor of Harvard. He's been called the father of ethnobotany. He certainly was not because if the botany as a discipline existed before there was schulte's, but he was one of the more high-profile people. He was the director of the botanical museum at
you can first city for many years and he is, he made many contributions to Amazonian, but they, but the one he's most notorious for, and most well-known for is, he was probably the world's expert on what we used to call hallucinogenic plants, psychedelic plants, used in different parts of the world, but that was what made him so famous and like many people
People, I envisioned a career in ethno Pharmacology for myself, which is something that I sort of realized was possible. What I was 18 we can go back to this. This is earlier than schulte's, what? I got my hands on this amazing book called The ëthe do pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs, but I digress we can return to that. Social tees was a figure
just a towering figure in this field, like Einstein and physics, or of that stature and many, many people with a passion about psychedelic plants and Indigenous, say, use of these things, you know looked up to schulte's and wanted to work with him and I just one of those and in 1974, I was living in Berkeley with my brother or close by my brother who was living there and I
When to go see the great man, you know, to make a pilgrimage essentially to schulte's. And in those days, there was a deal, you could buy a bus ticket $60 for 60 days. And you can get as far as you could go as long as you kept it, within 60 days. So, I made this pilgrimage to Harvard to Cambridge and it was your starting point. Well, I started at Berkeley
And I went first down to Louisiana, Hammond, Louisiana, and visited some friends of mine who owned a leather shop, hippie leather shop. Wonderful bunch of people running a leather shop in this totally redneck town. Why did I go see them? Well, I went to see them because they live out in the country where there were pastures of cattle.
I went there basically the
hunt for mushrooms and you know, and my
Idea in my assist 1874 and my idea was well you know I'll get a bunch of mushrooms and dry him. Take him back to California and sell them. Well, it was like the worst season for mushrooms in like five years, they live there. So I went down there and I did find some mushrooms but just a few plenty for my own needs, but I didn't have grocery bags of the were anything like that? That was the
I say we're was hammered Louisiana and then I just got on the old bus and continued on I stopped and saw interestingly this Anthropologist in Maryland who had studied the Yanomami. One of the Amazonian tribes that uses the Psychedelic sniffs and he was a linguist. He was probably one of the few people in the world of actually spoke, you know, Mommy. He had some interesting samples that he collected. I went there.
Basically, to pick up those samples and hang on with him. And then I continued Up To Boston and I had an old girlfriend who happened to live in Boston, so, we were still on good terms. So, so I went there, I had a place to stay and then I went, I mean, I saw schulte's before I saw the girlfriend, but I basically got off the bus and went immediately to the botanical museum. It was an incredible experience.
Maybe because I was like, total are of this bear. I mean, it was like it was like an audience with the Pope or something, you know, but he wasn't Pope like at all. He was just a very kindly down-to-earth, ordinary person. And he welcomed me and took me to lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club and and we talked about what I could work on. And what would you like to do? Was the way the conversation started?
Shouts. Oh, because Terrence and I had been to Colombia 1971 and one of the things we were looking for was this cuckoo, hey, this orally active ver, Ola preparation, which eventually ended up being one of the foci of my doctoral work, but that was ten years in the future, but I was interested in for Rolla. I was interested in those snuffs and he's, well, you could go to the Amazon study varroa and sort out the
Chemistry of it. So he said that would be a possibility. I totally, you know, appreciate that endorse that he said, well, there are two things you need to do before you do that. And I had my degree. I got my undergraduate degree in 1973 but he said, you need more chemistry and you need to take more organic chemistry and you need to take or taxonomy
You know what, you know is plant classification the classic approach to plant classification. So I said yes sir. Absolutely. And you know I got the best seat, I got back on the bus. I went back to Berkeley and I moved back to Colorado, where I'm from even though I had my bachelor's degree. I just enrolled in a couple of portions of advanced organic chemistry and the taxonomy specialty. I chose to look in was grass system.
Alex which was like torture
Ralph
systematic. Classification is the most Arcane difficult thing. You could do I must have had something about wanting to punish myself but I studied grass systematics and organic chemistry and interesting unexpected Delight in. This was the person that was the chemistry teacher of this organic chemistry. Course, a man named. Frank stir minutes.
Turns out. He was quite a well-known alkaloid chemist. He used to illustrate his lectures with well. So here's LSD. Here's how you make LSD. Here's how the fungus makes LSD, and he was a brilliant guy, and another Mentor. He was said, well, don't go work for Schultz. He's go work for Norman Farnsworth Chicago. And I said, no, no, you don't understand showcases God.
And social tease encouraged me to apply if I was giving these horses that he thought I really needed to have on my transcripts and I applied and I didn't get in. You know, I did not get accepted into Harvard which was kind of a crushing blow, but not unexpected. It was a blessing in disguise in some ways because while all this was going on, I was living in Fort Collins Colorado, going.
Colorado State, my friend, Larry Beasley was an old friend from high school, and he was a horticulturalist. And as it turned out, he was running the greenhouse at Colorado State University when I moved there. So, I had access to the great house and brought in some Ayahuasca cuttings that we had from California. And also I have access to a sterile culture lab, they were dying tissue culture there.
You can also be adapted to doing fungal culture and I was messing around with ways to try to figure out how to grow the selasa p cubensis. And I had access to a university lab to do this work, you which was amazing and we tried a few things and actually succeeded in growing mushrooms out of these mason jars on sterilized substrates. You probably familiar with the book psilocybin.
The magic mushroom Growers guide which Terry a nice published under pseudonyms, one of
your great contributions to human kind. Maybe the
most significant contribution but that was the method that we developed there and in the process of growing the mushrooms and then sampling the mushrooms and and just getting excited about being able to grow mushrooms, I thought. Wow, well maybe I'll change my focus from the Rola to psilocybin.
Oops. And I wrote a short his about this. And I said, what would you think of that? And he wrote back a rather kind of Stuffy letter, you know, saying well I my specialty is higher plants and I think if you want to work on fun shy, you should talk to dr. Alexander eight Smith of the University of Michigan but basically saying I'm in the subtext once your traitor.
Are you? Yeah
not really. I mean he was okay, there was subsequent encounters but he basically said if you want to study Amazonian plants I'm Ali and I'd be happy to have you and there's a turned out. I didn't get accepted so that opportunity was taken away. But the unexpected benefit of this was that some years later? Well, this was 74. So after that, I did my
Stirs up the University of Hawaii. Not studying psychoactive plants. My plot to study psychoactive plants, there was undermined but I ended up applying to University of British Columbia and I started there in 1979 and my supervisor, there was a man named Neil Towers. Also kind of a giant in this field not as gigantic as schulte's but very much. No,
Known in the world of phytochemistry and ethno botany and so on. And he was quite open to me, working on mushrooms. I actually started out in his program because he had come to Hawaii while I was a graduate student there. And my supervisor, in Hawaii, was another one of these incredible mentors that I've been blessed with throughout my academic career, Sandy Siegel and dr. Siegel
Whatever anybody came to visit, a visiting Professor dignitary, he would always invite The Graduate students up to his house and we'd sit around and have pizza and beer and shoot. The breeze with the whatever luminary was in town and Doctor Towers was one of the luminaries. In the process of having this conversation, he said, well, I've got this young Master student working on the selasa Beats working on the enzyme that converts
Ert's psilocybin to psilocybin the phosphatase and she's not getting very far with it but it's a very interesting project and wish there was somebody to kind of continue that work, you know, and I practically spit my beer out and I said well dr. Prentice Howard. I've had so many interested in this. And what do you think about letting me do it? And you know, what do you think about taking me on? And they said, well, yeah, if you're interested, that's a possibility.
We started corresponding and I was like Midway through my Master's thesis in Hawaii at that point and we started corresponding and I got accepted and I got with dr. Towers support. I actually got a four-year graduate fellowship and I started working on selasa fee and the idea and I had developed a technique for growing them.
Dennis may I pause for just one
second. Certainly I do.
Getting notified mini tangent. So
know, I love all the tangents. That is actually kind of there's any theme to this show. It is, it is embracing tangents, but I want to just mention a few things and ask a couple of questions but I want you to bookmark that. So we're sure we're in Canada or headed to Canada that point but I just want to mention a few things. So is it true that when you first met schulte's?
When you walked in, he was effectively hugging an air conditioner. And the reason I ask is that if you look at photographs of schulte's in his prime, it very much evokes. An Indiana Jones - the tomb raiding of course, resilience and durability. I mean, you see him in native dress, you see him, right? Really fully engaged as not just an observer, but as a participant, he spent more than a decade is, as I understand it. Some scouting, 18 years, 15 years in the
The Amazon and this is not flying first class. No to do the Amazon. So your first exposure to him, was him hugging in air conditioner as I understand it?
Yeah. Well, he was obviously a little past his Prime at that point but what I took this bus and got off the bus, it was like a early September, it would a sweltering summer and I got off the bus at a
By backpack. I must have looked a mess. I mean, I didn't literally on the bus for four days if you know, but I got to his office and I went to the desk downstairs. I said I'm here to see dr. Chilled, he's, they said, oh, he's upstairs in his office. So I went upstairs and couldn't see anybody there. There was nobody at the reception desk and I sort of appeared in this dark room with all the blinds closed and wiping the sweat from.
My brow, I mean, but I can see him back in the back of this office laboratory that he had there and he was hugging the air
conditioner you know when you have a nice even better if you might as well use it. I suppose someone it
was like utterly Charming, you know, because I expected this swashbuckling like you say Indiana, Jones, you know, tough guy and he was all those things. But
You got an air conditioner, you may as well hugging my so that's what he did. Yeah, it was very
disturbing. I love it. I absolutely love it. Let me, let me also pick up on a couple of other points and ask just a couple of definitions for people listening, which we'll get to in a minute. But I would like to read a few things from the Brotherhood of the screaming Abyss, if you're willing to bear with me because I don't think it will hopefully help tie some things together in the minds of those who are not familiar.
With your background and your work. So Sanford, Siegel, who you mentioned. So his research interests among many other things included exobiology, but I want to read just a paragraph about him from your book and then three sections that I pulled out about science. It's going to take me a minute but if you could bear with me. So this is from the book and on Sanford. Siegel this is where the extra begins quote, in his nasa-funded work. He was extremely creative in his thinking about stress physiology and extreme environments. For example, he wondered what would happen.
You tried to grow Cactus underwater turns out it goes fine. As long as you bubble oxygen and carbon dioxide through the water, how well does a tarantula survive under a radiation flux similar to that. A Martian surface. It survives just fine for months. Can you germinate onion seedlings and liquid ammonia as a substitute for water? Yes. When you can substitute for water and many biological processes, he had a genius for thinking of these incredibly creative, exciting, and simple experiments. And yet, they all had a rationale on a reason behind them. He was an out-of-the-box thinker and then I'm going to jump to
to what you said separately in the book about science quote. I knew scientific thought had its limits but before we could reject science, the most powerful set of intellectual tools ever developed by the human mind. We first had to learn how to do science then. If we still wanted to reject it, we could do. So as scientists with full knowledge of what it was, we were rejecting. I think these are, these are really, really important to tie together because you have such broad exposure. And as I understand it, there are many influences early on to of
Were I believe it was the yucky way of knowledge by Carlos casteneda that even though subsequently a lot of people and you're aware of this came to conclude that a lot of that, if not, most of it was fictionalized. And a book that I have about 20 feet from here, which is the first edition of something. You already mentioned the ethno, pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs, ESP, D and Rose from 1967. I have the updated I shouldn't say updated, but a second volume from 2007.
18, which you organized. It was a 50th Anniversary. Could you speak to perhaps the the appeal of science? Because what I've noticed in the let's call the Psychedelic ecosystem. Is that you have purists in many different silos if that makes sense. And part of the reason, I've been so excited to spend time with you is because you have been a boundary Walker of sorts.
Cross these different silos. What is it that Drew you most to science and the scientific method in addition to some of the facets perhaps represented by casting? Notice work, in
some respect, I think the 1967-1968 word like pivotal years for me, in terms of my discovery of my professional Direction and my professional interests as well as
Being psychedelics. These are also very personal things but that year 1968 is the year that these two books came across my desk. The teachings of Don Juan the first edition that my brother gave me for my 18th birthday and then the esto pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs, which I had not even sure. I don't even remember where I originally got the first edition but that had
Across my radar a few months earlier and these two books were very important for me. In terms of framing my interests, it made me aware that there was this ethnographic background of these traditional backgrounds, even though we probably most people agree that Casta native made a lot of this stuff up didn't really matter, it doesn't really matter it made it clear that there was a body of
All knowledge around the use of these things, whether what he described was accurate or not didn't matter, that was one page. One side of the frame and then the ethyl pharmacologic search for psychoactive. Drugs, made me aware that a lot of this was about chemistry and plants and pharmacology and molecules. And and you do a more hard science biologically oriented aspect to it. So these two things seem to fit together. Very
Well, I thought that's all pharmacology is a real thing. You know, at least to the extent that this book exists, it's a real thing. And could you
define ethno pharmacology
if don't pharmacology, there's various definitions of what the one I like is kind of tortured. It's kind of long, but I'll explain why I like it. So after pharmacology is the interdisciplinary by definition interdisciplinary,
scientific investigation of biologically active substances used or observe by humans in traditional societies and the reason it's so tortured is it's not all he's about plants, it's not always about medicinal plants, it's not always about things that humans ingest for example are all poisons totally legitimate kind of subject for Ethel pharmacology and then traditional
Society's kind of limits the scope. We're talking about not, I mean, in some sense, all of pharmacology is that so pharmacology because it's people doing it, you know, but we're talking about traditional knowledge, indigenous knowledge and that sort of thing. That's the formal definition of ethyl pharmacology. The I like
and I think it's also worth highlighting for folks and you would have I'm sure dozens or hundreds of examples. How many commonly used
Aged.
Compounds are drugs have come out of, in some form as the pharmacology. Whether it be aspirin, or you mentioned Dart poisons that, you know, cure re leading then into anesthesia and the list just goes on and on and on there's so many things that we take for granted, right that have their origins in these places.
The whole Spectrum, really of, when you're talking about natural products,
Especially for things like CMS active natural products. And so on, they come out of a cultural context. We know about these things because they have a cultural context and if you look at even just herbal medicines or Herbal Remedies, every one of these things that you can buy in the in the drugstore. The health food store has a story behind. It has a cultural backstory and then
Real forces and Commercial forces, take that and develop products out of it. For example, kava kava is a good example of that. I mean, it's now a supplement and you can buy it at health food stores, a very useful, muscle relaxant and sort of tranquilizer, but it comes out of the context of Polynesia and traditional medicine, many, many things are that way. So there's always a cultural back.
Story. That's what I like about if the pharmacology and ties, those kinds of things together, with the nuts and bolts side of it. What are the active ingredients? What's the chemistry? What's the pharmacology? So, if you
don't mind, this is a bit stochastic. But I would love to jump into this volume. The 50th Anniversary, volume of the ethno pharmacologic, search for psychoactive drugs and just as background, and please, correct, the beginning of this wrong. But the the
C7 Gathering was subsidized by the US government. I think it was that was it the
NIMH? And I am H. That's right, National Institute of Mental
Health. And so, you had this Gathering of titans of sorts to discuss. Exactly. As the title would imply. The ethno pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs, after which, a volume was produced printed and sold by the US government, which included the findings and suffice to say, shortly thereafter. You have the Nixon
In the Controlled Substances Act and game over and then you organized this 50th anniversary. And just to give people an idea of the contents and also I want to tell people. If you were interested in the science, this is published by synergetic press. You can find it on this energetic press website as well as on Amazon, this is a beautifully produced double volume where you have the original 1967 and then the 2017 addition, the contents are just fascinating.
And one of them that I'd love to dig into and doesn't necessarily have to our discussions, have to be reflective exclusively of the content in this broad spectrum, roles of harming, an Ayahuasca by Dale. Milord could you speak to some of the more recent findings related to Ayahuasca, which could include this discussion of harming, but I think a lot of folks have assumed that Ayahuasca is this psychedelic? Brew principally containing banister EPS is copy this Vine.
I'm and a plant Source. Containing DMT like Chuck. Do it now or other psychotria viridis that the Divine really just serves to render. The DMT orally, absorbable or active, but it seems like there's a lot more to the
story. It does do that, it does do that. It's the MAO inhibitor, by the way, mean, oxidase inhibitor that renders, the the DMT containing that mixture plants Act,
Because DMT itself. As you know, it's not orally active. If you just take it Pure, or if you make a tea of chacruna, one of these and then drink it by itself, nothing's going to happen. Unless you have an MAO inhibitor on board, but it turns out the alkaloids of banisteriopsis, these beta-carbolines are much more than just MAO inhibitors. For example, one of the primary alkaloids in Ayahuasca is harmine.
And harming is a strong MAO inhibitor. But it also stimulates neurogenesis, which is nerve growth and these are recent findings. Another constituent in Ayahuasca is a related alkaloid called tetrahydroharmine, which is an MAO inhibitor, but also a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. So, it has like SSRI type activity and also some other unexpected
Things for one thing and this was came out of our wash to study in Brazil. It has long-term effects on the levels of the serotonin transporter 's in the brain that the serotonin transporter is are the presynaptic molecules that take serotonin back up out of the synapse and recycles of and re-releases it. Well like ssris tetrahydroharmine inhibits that but it also
Causes a long-term elevation in the levels of the serotonin transporter. 'S and that was a unique. Finding we didn't know what to expect, but that came out of the study and it was kind of surprising. But then when we found this effect, you know, this is all done. This is all in vitro, we took tissue samples, platelet samples, and so on, and this was all done in the lab, but we found this persistent elevating effect.
The serotonin transporter. So we thought what is that mean was really clear. We were asking a naive question. Is there anything biochemical that makes regular Ayahuasca? Tea? Drinkers different biochemically than normal. People are other people. And this was one. Clear difference, we didn't really know what it meant, but then we looked into the literature and we found out there were a number of pathologies that were associated with abnormal deficits in the Sarah.
Nona Transporters, for example, various kinds of alcoholism addiction suicidality, even homicidal Behavior. Various kinds of Behavioral pathologies, which happened to be the very pathologies that many of the people in our udv. Studied were saying, Ayahuasca had saved them. Usually from alcoholism, that was usually their problem, and if they stayed in the church in the
Supportive context and drank Ayahuasca regularly. Then they stayed on track and many they were on track. These were very behaviorally psychologically, functional people, not sick. If they were sick, they were cured and they attributed it to Ayahuasca. And then in our in vitro studies of a couple of file assays, we found that it was really tetrahydroharmine. That was having this effect and the course of action
Was over about two weeks and my friend Jace Callaway, who was one of the investigators of this and figured out how to do it. He had access to brain imaging technology at his laboratory in fiddlin. He was a good postdocs in and Finland. So he tried taking tetrahydroharmine himself and imaging himself and show. Well, sure enough, it did raise the levels of the serotonin, transporter
Part about a two-week cycle and then if you stop taking it that it went back down to
Baseline. So does that mean on the two-week cycle that after one Administration, the levels remained elevated for two weeks or that it required two weeks of administration to elevate
and required about two weeks of continuous Administration to bring it to that level. And that's kind of that was the cycle that the udv customarily, they took it every couple of weeks, not that they knew about this effect lasts just there.
Practice. Well, I guess they knew about in a sense. They indirectly knew about the effect but not the mechanism, right, that is right and right. And for people who don't know udv, I'm probably mispronouncing, but that's the one y'all do vegetal something like that. One of the syncretic churches,
founded fragile. Yeah, I should have explained that one of the socratic Church of the group that invited us in to do this. Biomedical study in the early 90s, that was one of the chief fundings.
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Does the udv
differentiate between different types of bruise for different purposes? My understanding is that the sum of the dime East has or some of the members or perhaps groups within some Todai. Me another one of these syncretic churches, do have different
I don't know sake admixtures but concentrations of different things in different Brews for different purposes. To, are you aware of that existing and within the
udv? Yes. Yes. The udv does have that, they do have different formulations and so on and they don't talk about them. I mean, yeah, we were not able to get any information out of them about that other than the fact that yes, we do have these different formulations. I mean, we came up against
Couple of interesting things about what do we were dealing with the udv? Which was that they were very concerned that Ayahuasca or wasc is they called it be viewed as a Sacrament not medicine, you know? And so if you watch, this is
a drug, right? That would be a big much
less of drug. They didn't like the idea that you would study it. As a drug they were totally open to doing this biomedical study but
As far as going, the next step and looking into mechanisms and that sort of thing, they were kind of conflicted about that. They can see the value of it, but then they didn't like the idea of Godless science delving into their Central mystery Sacrament, you know, and I could understand that but there's a result of that. We we lost some opportunities to do some interesting things. Totally.
I wonder if that would be different now because
As my understanding, I think I got this from the book is that or maybe it was from different reading that I did of yours. That part of the reason for their cooperation was politically sort of Legally motivated in the sense that they wanted the local / national government and potential policy makers to view this as beneficial. And so they were open to showing the benefits but they didn't want reductionist science.
It's too. As you put it remove the mystery by explaining some secular mechanism of
action. Yeah, there was definitely a political aspect to this. That this is a big reason why they wanted this work to be done by outside investigators. Who presumably would, you know, if it was, just you TV and there were scientists in the, in the udv. It was a middle to upper-class demographic segments but they
People from the outside to be the chief investigators to avoid the perception that the work would be biased. And that's one reason I got invited. Charlie Grobe was the chief principal investigator. I invited him to do that, he became that. So they wanted this regulatory agency called conf in, kind of a combination of the DEA, in the FDA, they wanted to present data.
To to confirm that showed that this was not a public health Menace or danger and also that it was beneficial or potentially beneficial. So, there was definitely a political sub jenda here, but as it turned out, I mean we just did the science and the science supported that it was beneficial almost. All of our subjects have joined the udv in a state of life.
Crisis. And they felt like the medicine. The t, is they called it and the very supportive context of the udv, they said that's equally necessary, but they felt like that was a vessel for Redemption essentially, and turning their lives around and it's a complex thing. It's a complicated
matter. I'm endlessly fascinated by the, the syncretic churches that use iOS because the sacrament, I think there's so much too.
Could be learned when you have these relatively large groups consuming twice per month. I mean it's an incredible opportunity question for you around Ayahuasca because I think in the we've already alluded to this but in the minds of some Ayahuasca is one thing, right? It's like a, it's like an old-fashioned that has always made the same way. But there are many different cocktails that could be called Ayahuasca in the Brotherhood of the screaming. Abyss you talk very briefly.
About and I'm not sure if you called this in the book but chuckle ponga, which is also, I think it's a dip Lop terrorist coveted honor. Is that how that's pronounced people getting Harris did? Whatever has so many words, I only read I never hear the whole song which by some like the the hour hand is called yaje and said different plant from the chocolate. And he did you ever have the opportunity to consume Ayahuasca with the chakra ponga?
Yes, yes.
Yeah, it experientially. Did you find it to be different? Well, I only
consumed it a few times. I found it to be shorter acting and, you know, in terms of the Visionary stage of the experience and also more intense. So there's something pharmacokinetic, Ali going on there with the absorption of it, but people are mistaken. If they think Ayahuasca is one thing, Ayahuasca is a very complex in the cultural context. It's a very complex.
There are many varieties of Ayahuasca the vine there, then all these admixture plants some of which contain DMT and varieties of those. And then a whole pharmacopoeia of other ethnic, stir plants that are more or less association with Ayahuasca their part of the deities, which is a common practice in the Amazon. You learn about the properties of other medicinal plants by taking them.
And then you take Ayahuasca either in combination or after you take them and you learn about their properties from the visions that I was to give you about their so Ayahuasca is like the pipeline to plant wisdom in a certain way to tap into this. I don't know what you might have to call it guy in mind, it's represented by these many admixture class. So there's a whole lot of work left to be done with ayahuasca.
and looking into more depth than we were able to look at that time, that's one of the projects that we're trying to get off the ground with the mechanic Adam e, we want to do a very extensive phytochemical and ethnobotanical Survey of different Ayahuasca, Brews document, their preparation document, the plants that go into them and then follow that up with bioassays and and just get a
get a better handle on the varieties of these different groups and their uses. Why would we care? What do we want to do this? Well, it's Gathering knowledge, that's gathering information, but the potential practical outcome of this is that you can formulate bruise. That might be specific for different types of disorders you know maybe some work better for addiction, some work better for trauma, some work better for depression or that's
You're saying that all of this is kind of supported by the fork knowledge but there's been nothing like a control study of any of this. It's very hard to get funding to study Ayahuasca in a clinical setting because it's not a pure compound. It doesn't lend itself to the same kind of double blind, Placebo control, protocols for you can use with something like psilocybin. It's complicated
is very, very very seems very
Very complex. I'd love to ask you about one particular plant, which that's hard to tell them apart, sometimes because it depends on the the orientation, you know, it could be done, Toyota metal or could be, but of Monte. I want to ask you about putting mancilla also called float upon the or toy. Do you think there's a place for that? It scares the hell out of me. And I know it's sometimes used but what is your position? If any on
Von Berg
mancha. Well, first of all, you're right to be scared, you know, this is a very dangerous plant. It is not only toxic but it produces a kind of delirium. It's not a psychedelic sometimes, say in my lectures, it's a true hallucinogen but not psychedelic by that. I mean psychedelics you see, hallucinations sometimes behind the eyes or whatever.
You usually know that these things are hallucinations with frecuencia, which used to be called. The genus is very close to deter infect. They used to be classified as to tourists, but datura the experiences that you have, you see, hallucinations and you cannot tell if they're real or not. And so it that sense, it's improved loosen the gym but it's not psychedelic and it is, it's
This is a state of profound disorientation and delirium essentially. So, it's used for badly. It's used as a date-rape drug, and things like that in Brazil and Colombia and it's often associated with brujeria in the Ayahuasca tradition, another words black magic sorcery. And if you take a brew of Ayahuasca that contains datura or break, man,
Asia, you can tell because it causes this dry mouth sensation which is typical of these anticholinergics like like to Torah
is that the like the
Scopolamine exactly it's gopala me. So you can tell if you're taking Ayahuasca that's got a towaway is the traditional word for for these. Take stowaway teal e accent. That's a good sign that you're dealing with.
Whoo-hoo and that's a good sign that you should get the hell out of there. You know, because they do not have your best interests at heart and or unlikely to that said, you have to acknowledge that it has a place in in this whole Ayahuasca complex, and there may be people that can practitioners, that could use it beneficially but my own
Experiences with datura, which you probably read about it in the book. Yeah. You know, that scared me away. I mean, we're fighting no idea what I was getting into and I was, we were very lucky. We could have killed
ourselves. Yeah. There are documented, fated lots of documented fatalities with both of those. Yeah, and I think it's, you know, I wanted to mention to bring that up just because there are risks associated with a lot of these things. Yeah.
Documented fatalities with tobacco over ingestion tobacco juice in the Amazon have to be really, really careful. And, you know, I want to come back to a second to this kind of Hired Gun aspect. I think as you put it in the book in the world of
Vegetable is small and in this let's just call it the medicine World in South America. It's not the case that everyone is focused. It's actually rarely the case that practitioners are exclusively focused on how we perhaps view these medicines in North America for healing for the contending with and processing of trauma, the cosmovision. And the use case is much much broader and I just want to mention one more thing, which is
Even if you don't believe in black magic or anything like that, you can believe in manipulation and the big ones here, like you mentioned and Colombia is one example and elsewhere, although I think that people are kind of hip to this, and law enforcement is hip to it. So perhaps the use has declined, but it's very common that crime syndicates would take the broom oncea extract or somehow purify the Scopolamine then they would have prostitutes or other people.
Below the powder into the faces of victims and this is the crazy part. Just that I want to highlight for folks, that after which sometimes these victims would be brought to their own home. They would help the perpetrators load everything in their house into a loading van and they would appear totally normal to say the doorman. And so on, and 12 hours later have no recollection of what they did. I mean, it's wild
Brings up kind of these visions of The Serpent and the rainbow like these are the it's it's crazy to think
about it. Is they appear totally normal, except that they're helping load all the furniture into the elevator at 3:00 in the morning.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I think it was vice.com. The
vice did a good, a good piece
on this. You did a good thing. Yeah. So so that's the thing. The, the datura, the program's you confuses, you
And makes you extremely suggestible. So you get this stuff inside you. And then people say, well, let's go to your apartment and take out all the furniture. Let's go to your ATM and take out all your money. And you say, well, that sounds like a good idea. Let's go. So black magic aside. It definitely doesn't have to be magic. It just puts you in such a state of confusion susceptibility. Suggestibility
That's the way it works. It really
is so fascinating and simultaneously sometimes terrifying to go really deep into the rabbit hole with this. Could you speak to traditional use of plant medicine and Ayahuasca harkening, back to the mention of the sort of non inherent good nature of practitioners or iOS ghettos in the non inherently bad nature, sort of this neutral available for hire a
Aspect in some instances that I think a lot of people are not aware of. Could you, sort of speak to to that a bit?
There are rule hose. There are people who don't really have your best interests at heart and their other people other practitioners who really are amazing healers and they can help a great deal of people. But the thing is that the context of traditional uses change due to outside cultural influences,
Because, like anything else, the people want to give the extra Heroes that Ayahuasca tourists, or whatever they want to give them their money's worth. And so, the nature of the ceremonies changes has changed in response to this. I mean, back in the day before, there was anything like when Ayahuasca usage was still kind of a tribal based tradition. There wasn't all this outside in
Affluence, it was the shaman who took Ayahuasca, not the people rarely would the Ayahuasca, be given to a person that came to the ceremony unless there was some specific illness or something, they wanted specifically to be treated. But it was the iOS Cairo who had the visions that downloaded the information about the plants and other kinds of practices, they might engage in to help people with feelings.
Well that's all change the outside influence of the global culture and people are not going to go to South America and spend all this money to sit and watch somebody, take Iowa, they are there to have the experience and that's okay. I think it's just fascinating what? We're seeing go on. Now with Ayahuasca tourism thing is definitely a complex thing. It's not necessarily
Pletely, bad thing or completely good thing. It's, it's a mixed bag because many people are helped by this and all the tourist coming down. They bring economic benefits to these communities but then those are not equitably distributed. Get a situation where the local Iowa's, Carol, who used to be just some guy or some gal. There was a person in the village who kind of did this work on the side and they had their own livelihood, farming.
Issued or whatever. Well, now, these people are kind of superstars and they get a lot of income. It generates a lot of jealousy within the community where that could
happen. They also get priced out of the local
market. They get a price tags, actually, they get priced out of local market. There is pressure on the resource base Ayahuasca and the admixture plants are being over harvested, and there's not enough effort.
Effort being made to really make sure the sources are sustainable, but that's changing the market is adjusting to this. But these these changes take place over they take years. And there are some very hopeful Trends now, people are becoming more aware of some of the issues with overharvesting. And so on,
let me pull another paragraph here. And then I want to ask you a question about some of your personal experiences and this
Related to the science that was brought up earlier. There are many things in Heaven and Earth that are beyond the Ken of Science and may remain so forever. Anyone who's taken psychedelic seriously, or has had other Transcendent experiences, is likely to share that conclusion at the same time. Science remains most effective method for asking questions of Nature and getting back answers that can be tested and validated. So you fascinate me on so many different levels. I've actually read much more of your writing than I have read the writing of your brother and
Part of the Venn diagram that makes you such a subject of interest to me, is the the scientific, let's call it the esoteric. And then the personal, and I've heard in other interviews, you talk about when prompted, you don't just volunteer this. But when people ask about the number of sessions you have done, with let's say iOS guide seems to number even though you don't keep track in the 500
plus
Let's say, so
arrange, something in that range. And as far as I know, you are not a member of one of these and critic, churches, know where people would drink twice a month so people can do the math. If someone does that for decades, it adds up, you know I would love for you to speak to because many people will hear that and also wait a second. You do it, once changes your life and then you're kind of done why on Earth would you ever do it so many times? And I would just love to hear you speak to them.
Partly, it's because of the context in which
I have used Ayahuasca and brought other people to South America, to have these experiences. I've organized Retreats of that sort of thing. So I'm one of those type guilty. If you want to point it, the people that are fostered Ayahuasca tourism. I've certainly contributed to that. I'm a little conflicted about it. So when I do these Retreats them, I drink people expect me to drink and I do drink the other.
Reason is I think every time you take it, maybe this is the more valid reason every time that you take it or most times that you take it, not every time you take Ayahuasca, is going to be a peak experience and there's lots of times when it's disappointing and you just get sick and the Brew is bad or whatever but it has a lot to teach us. There's a lot to learn from Ayahuasca and even though you've taken it multiple times, you still keep getting new
Insight or new having experienced seems worthwhile and so I keep taking it. Maybe I'm sick scold, maybe I could maybe other people have an easier way to assimilate the lesson and say, yeah, I got the message. Okay, I don't need to do this anymore. I've come close to that a couple of times but I think Ram Dass was the famously said, or maybe it was Alan Watts. So not sure who said, once you get the message hang up,
The phone, right? And I sort of think I disagree with that. I think in other words, the message is not the same every time. There is no standard message and this is a dynamic interaction with with the plants that you're learning from indigenous. People talk about plant teachers, and you can get into the Weeds about whether that's a valid concept. Are they really
Terrific. Not the point is it doesn't really matter whether the plants, the Ayahuasca opens up some part of yourself.
That may present a something not the self but that knows things has information to transfer. It doesn't really matter what I say is the information good. So every time you take it or when you take it there's really a bottomless well of things to still be thought about and assimilated and so on. So I kind of don't believe in the hang up the phone approach. My
Approach would be, I guess, keep listening, keep listening because a lot of what you might hear will be stuff that you've heard before but there may be new things that come along, but make it worth it to stay engaged. And so that's how I relate to it. It's not a waste of time to keep listening
and you've also noted that in there. You're not the only person. I Luis Eduardo Luna and others have also noted that
These virtual consumers of Iowa's, cow often seem to remain exceptionally sharp and Lucid into older age. And as I've thought about this and spoken with people who have a lot of experience, like yourself, it seems like there are kind of different frames through which you can. Look at this experience. One is almost like the replacement of a malfunctioning hip so you have a hip replacement. It's one and done maybe you need it again 10 years later but that's
That's it, that's the hang up the phone approach and then there there's this way of looking at it almost like going to the gym, they're all these use cases. Historically, that seemed to, at least offer other use cases, like the use of Ayahuasca for hunting. Let's just say, right. And yet another one that kind of occurred to me as I talk to some of these folks, who drink it in South America that some people drink four, five, six times a week,
Eek, and it's almost like you could list they live in New York and go to Japan and study things in Japan. And the hopes that you can bring it back to New York and apply it in your life. In New York, you could also go to Japan and just get to know, Japan and the culture and how to operate in that space. And I'd love to hear you speak to outside of the groups that you bring down where you are expected to drink. How do you decide
When to
drink, well, just usually the occasion presents itself. It's rare that I would come to one of these places and not drink, or just when it seems appropriate. Is when I decided, if I'm in a situation where Ayahuasca is being drunk, then I would probably drink it and I tend not to go after it outside of a ceremonial context and even for a while I would say well I don't even drink it in.
The states or Canada. I just confine it to suffer America. What I down there, but then I can't really stick to that because there are opportunities here. Now, I go to a place called the salt era in Costa Rica, which is one of the higher profile Ayahuasca Retreat. Simon advisor to solve Tara, and I like, the way they're doing it, I think they're very ethical about, in their approach to all this.
so it's a matter of opportunity rather than anything else when it seems appropriate, but to your what, you alluded to before, about how it can be in some ways Ayahuasca, and a lot of psychedelic can be a big reset, but then there is the maintenance part of it and the work we did with the udv, and the finding about the modulation of these serotonin Transporters, it's really an eye-opener because it
what that speaks to is that regular use of Ayahuasca can actually repair some of these deficits. In fact, it may be the only drug or medicine that can do that. I think Peak experiences can be major recent moments and I think this is part of the therapeutic profile of a lot of psychedelics. They basically get you out of your default mode Network. They get you out of your personal.
Forms frame. They let you look at situations from a slightly move and you have insights. It's to your existential situation, whatever it might be, not all psychedelic experiences, not all Ayahuasca experiences are necessarily these Peak experiences, you know? And they don't have to be, they can be beneficial and they can help you remember. Maybe it's more accurate term, some of the insights you have from previous.
Experiences. And then I think there's a physiological aspect to particularly with Ayahuasca like this modulation of the serotonin transporter, some so on, and neurogenesis you mentioned that a lot of practitioners Iowa's, Cairo seem to be unusually, sharp and Lucid, even though there may be of advanced age. And I think that is a reflection of Ayahuasca. I think that in general,
I am kind of a skeptic about this whole micro dosing fan. I have my doubts about it, but in the case of Ayahuasca, I think micro dosing might make sense, not for the hallucinogenic psychedelic effects. But for the things, the beta-carbolines do for your nervous system, you think of them as kind of, a nerve tonic and keeping the serotonin transporter levels. Elevated is probably a very good thing.
Guarding against depression and that kind of stuff. So again just like with the plants and the chemistry, there's lots to be learned about the pharmacology of Ayahuasca to.
So I want to talk about the mechanic, enemy of natural philosophy. Going to spend a good amount of time on that. Before we get there though, since we're talking about some of the possible benefits of
In this case Ayahuasca, I want I would love to discuss perhaps the other side of the coin and I know that the experiment at La Torre era does not relate to Ayahuasca specifically. But I'd like to end. I know you've described this many many times, we don't have to spend a ton of air time on it, but the I'm going to read a paragraph. Actually, two paragraphs, and then we can use that as a way of backing into it. If that's okay, here's the
Prelude to the chapter that introduces the experiment at Latona, which again, we don't have to spend too much time on it, just enough to kind of frame this in some respects quote in some respects, everything in life, before we arrived. At La Torre, de was a Prelude to the events that engulfed us there. And everything afterwards has been a reflection of them. Terrence chronicled the events in true hallucinations though. His account may seem unlikely and bizarre. I believe it is largely accurate even if interpretations vary as to what it all meant. I can't vouch for every detail if only because in this is the part that I'm
Just going to highlight here. I was lost in hyperspace for much of the time or overwhelmed by psychosis again, depending on interpretation anyone with an interest in the facts, in quotation marks of our story. If the word even applies should regard, terrence's narrative as required reading and then we Flash Forward too much later. In the book, quote, Terrence mentions that on March 20th. We all celebrated at one of Bogut has finer restaurants and that the others agreed. I was totally back. Quote-unquote, they weren't aware that. In my mind, I was in telepathic.
Tations with all the waiters and that our dishes were being washed into the table by telekinesis rather than alarm them. I kept that to myself but except for a few episodes like that I was doing all right. Okay, there's there's lots of discuss here. I have personally experienced many upsides to psychedelic use including Ayahuasca. I've also been put into hyperspace as you put it on a few occasions or have become say, d stabilized.
You want to be a little less charitable and I have friends who have become destabilized FDF does, in some cases using Ayahuasca and other cases in some cases from LSD, we don't have to go to South America for this for weeks months at a time and I would love to just hear you perhaps expand a little bit on your personal experience and if you have had more experiences like this so that people can be aware that this is kind of one of the cards in the deck, it is one of the cards
in the deck.
Deck and people should be aware that this is a possibility which is one reason why it's important to have a strong ritual environment, a strong ritual context, and a iOS Cairo of practitioner that kind of knows what they're doing because they can keep you on track and get you out into hyperspace and get you back. And that's kind of the whole essence of shamanism.
I have not saved Slaughter era had experiences that have kept me, three sheets to the wind if you will for weeks at a time, it was not particularly Pleasant. And you know, having at the time I was I was not concerned about getting back all those Concepts that kind of evaporated, you know, but after they did get back, it actually did get bored, we stabilized
And truly back in my body and then ordinary reality on reflection. I realized what a dangerous place this was to be in and that potentially it could have gone the opposite way, where I never did reintegrate, one of the reasons that I was able to reintegrate, I think Chris because because of the circumstances that lecture era the process had to play
Out there were people in our group who sent this is totally out of control. We need to get these people out of here into a psychiatric facility and under treatment and Terrence and I both completely resisted that because we understood what was going on. At least, we thought we did, we were in communication with each other and it was like, no, you just need to let this play out. And, and I think,
That was the right thing. I mean it was a, you know, I have a lecture, I give a talk. I give who wasn't a psychotic break, was a shamanic initiation or was it an Alien Encounter, probably all three in a certain place but it was closer to a shamanic initiation in a certain, not that I call myself a shaman. I'm not, but it's the shamanic initiation is where you get to explore these dimensions.
And then you get back out, you get back onto your mundane feet in 3D an ordinary reality and whatever that is I'm kind of wandering here but I think the point is because of the fact that it was able to play itself out from beginning to end, it was actually a very healing experiences rather than being disorganized and incoherent for the rest of my life. Maybe.
People say I am, but it was actually a healing experience and I came back from a stronger and I feel like I am, even though I've continued to take psychedelics ever since on occasion, I've never gone to that place again and I'm kind of grateful for that, you know? And I also feel that I'm basically a fairly stable person, let me
ask a couple.
Follow up questions because we're there are a few things that struck me in the book in describing this and people should pick up the book and and read all of it, including this Chronicle, only the
Kindle version is available as you know,
which is perfect for me because then I can take no more hard to come by. So I can take notes and then export my notes, which is my favorite thing in the world to do rise. So I have, you know, I have my Hundred eighty-nine highlights and then I went through and I added 3 S.
Asterisks to the things I wanted to follow up on. That's a six-page document. So I'm fully nerd out when it comes to my digestion of this book. And that please fill in the details or fact, check me on this. But one of the things that struck me in, this also seems to be a pattern across people who and I don't want to characterize your experience this way, but those people who might come unmoored and stay adrift for longer periods of time, is there was a real density of consumption of selasa? Be mushrooms when you're there and
Understanding is you guys had very little in terms of food, maybe some, some instant noodles and rice. And you had this just almost ridiculous. Abundance of mushrooms to to these seibu cattle who were, who were down there. And so you just, you started, spicing up meals and so on feeling and psychedelic mushrooms. So you had just a, not only a high dose experience and there's a lot more to it, of course, but you had a really high density of
Continuous consumption. Is that accurate? Is that fair to say?
Yes. Yes. Yes as so we never really in this process, we never really did give ourselves a chance to get back to Baseline as you will and look at well what's what's going on here? Now that we run Stone, we were never of stone. Most of what happened with experimental lecturer when we actually perform the experiment at lecturer was post mushroom. We
Beating them anymore. That's right. That was about two weeks there
were plenty of them in our system. Yeah. So and then, of course, on the night but we that we did experience, but mushrooms are tricky. Mushrooms are not necessarily to be trusted in a certain way because they could lead you into these delusional spaces and as a plant teacher well they're not plants. But you know as a psychedelic
Teacher, they're somewhat less trustworthy than Ayahuasca, you know, you can get into these dilutional spaces and it's something to be careful of.
Yes, certainly not to be trifled with innocence that you should. I think it's a good idea to respect my shrimps and none of these
things should be trifled
with to follow up on that. You know, you mentioned letting things play out and how that was beneficial to you and your reintegration and
Perhaps if you had been subjected at that point to a psychiatric intervention that that could have been problematic for you. You know this presents a dicey situation I suppose for people who might experience things in the sense that as a counterweight to that, I know one person for instance who went to Peru did a traditional dieta where he was consuming something called tedious, an angle and Ayahuasca on alternating days and he did this for
quite a long period of time and she takes him on was seen in a number of cases. Now people have had psychotic breaks after sort of continuous Administration not to say, it's bad. I just think error. This is, this is a observed kind of phenomenon and his family had to go down to South America. He thought he was God and convince him that if he were God, the gift he could give would be getting on this thing that was made up in his mind called an airplane and coming back to the United States. But I suppose there's there's
Plausible argument to be made that he would have been sort of among the lost and maybe would not have come out by himself. So, how do you think about when it is appropriate? And again, we're not giving medical advice. Everybody needs to talk to their medical professionals, but would there not be times when a psychiatric intervention would be called for
How do you think about that
there would definitely be times when a psychiatric intervention? I'm not saying that every time for me, the fact that the experience to play itself out what was allowed to play out? Was this process of integration and integration is really important as you know. So psychedelic experience on this process of getting back to
Some kind of Baseline but with that change perspective, with the benefit of having had this experience and changing that perspective and so on. But sometimes even this is why sentence setting is so important. And when you take it in a inappropriate sense setting, then there's the potential to come up against what we call the real world, you know, society and its conventions in a text
Peck tations. I mean, for example, I could share with you. The son of a very good friend of mine in Minnesota at about age. 18 went with his, I don't know what his previous psychedelic experience. Had been not not great, but a few low-level mushroom experiences and so on. But he decided with some of his friends to take a trip to New York City. This like small town boys in the big city you know and just having a great time.
They took a lot of mushrooms and he sort of descended into this delusional World. His friends said, well we're going back to Minnesota and he said, well, I'm staying here. What are you going to do live on the streets? Yes, and he had this whole thing. Well it didn't take very long for him too.
Come up against New York's
finest,
as you might say, because he has acting pretty strange. And he got into a tussle with the cops and punched one in the face. That was a big mistake. Next thing, you know, he was in jail and being transferred to, what is the huge Psychiatric Hospital there Bedlam or
something, hadlen Bellevue,
maybe Bellevue, Bellevue
Only reason that he was able to resolve it in some ways was that at this point, I was getting involved. I was actually in Brazil, as of Ayahuasca Retreat, what all this was going on, but my friend called me and said, this has happened, is there anybody in New York psychiatrist that could help him and as it turned out I said well yeah, as a matter fact, Steve Ross might be able to help him and I called Steve. This is
Is all done by Skype. There Was, You Know What I Call Steve and I explained the situation and he said, well as it turns out, I have admission privileges of Bellevue, which I had no idea that he did. But he went over there and was able to intervene on this young man's behalf and get him out of there. But the guy never did recover. He went back, he was on psychiatric meds and he was fairly
Functional, what he was doing that, but he hated being on psychiatric meds and it just it was a tragedy in many ways. He never fully recovered.
How old was he at this
time? He was about 18 or 19.
Did he have a family history of schizophrenia or anything like that? Potentially. Yes, there
was schizophrenia this family. It was a very strange family situation. I mean, his mother was a
Devout Evangelical Christian and his father was like a psychedelic Cowboy. He grows mushrooms in the basement and brood is own Ayahuasca and so on. And so it was a weird family situation and it was very bad. I don't want to disclose too much but
of course of course I know it's
very it's very sad. It was yeah very sad that outcome. So this is a case of
It's hard to predict, but apparently he had this family history of schizophrenia and he was in the mushrooms triggered this. So this is why you have to
approach it from an informed place and hopefully with a practitioner, whether a therapist or a shaman or whatever, who can hold that space and modulate the outcome to take it on the streets of New York. Probably not a good idea, you know, spit it out, you're not front if you are,
I don't know for sure. I mean, it, it also just brings to mind that can maybe you should be the 4S has, right? You have screening set setting and then support like you
Safety. You have a safety net in place before you get on the trapeze. That's right. That's rust. Something
supervising. This was just approached by these young men in a very recreational way and they were out to have a good time and it was not good.
Yeah. Powerful compounds. And they mean the supplies sort of across the entire pharmacopoeia, right? I mean ssris also, it can produce suicidal ideation and all sorts of states that you just really really
Good idea to have professional assistance and supervision with these things. You know what? Let's talk about the mechanic. Adam Eve natural philosophy because you bring so many.
Different perspectives and lenses and also toolkits to bear on these discussions. I would just love to hear about this new nonprofit and why you started it?
The new nonprofit, the mechanic enemy of natural philosophy, which is www.mcamillionaire.com Katha me Academy is the suffix of of the website and I wanted to create a originally. The idea that was it that we saw.
This Academy and that we would have a physical place in South America, where we could do Retreats, which we had been doing all along and then conferences and different types of educational activities, to explore natural philosophy. And a lot of it was the ideas. That would be a modern mystery School modeled after a lusus or not modeled after it, but in that Spirit a place where people could come together.
Other and share ideas and Marvel at the cosmos and Marvel existence and do what natural philosophers do. Natural philosophy, being the precursor of science. What science used to be before it became so quantitative and reductionist. Natural philosophy is the root of Science and it differs from science into the. It's that there are other ways of knowing
Rather than the reductionist way of knowing that's valuable, but that's not the whole trip. This is the limitation of science science can understand segments of reality but small in small pieces but it doesn't fit the whole picture together too well. So they kind of me is basically I guess the modern analog could be something like a solo. A place. Where ideas and Brilliant Minds can come together.
Oh, and create dialogues. And, of course, covid changed our business model. Radically because we couldn't do these conferences and so on. So we've had to Pivot and go online and that's what we're doing now. Just trying to create a online presence and continue our work. It's partly educational. It's partly research. We've got a project going on down in Peru right now. We're making
The documentary about the current state of traditional medicine in the Amazon around Iquitos, and a lot of it is about this botanist that I've worked with, for 40 years, there who's the curator of the herbarium at the University in the ketose and he's one of these people about, which it said, what a medicine man dies. It's as though a library is burnt out. Well, he's not a medicine man in the sense that he's not a, he
Healer but he has tremendous knowledge of the Amazonian Florida and the medicine properties of these plants. And he knows many many healers in the community. So we're trying to document his knowledge because even though it's a scientist he doesn't write things down. So we're trying to through videography, make a documentary about what he knows and then hopefully that will attract funding, we have big plans
Hands for this project that we call it the knowledge preservation project. The first aspect of it, is to make it short relatively short documentary about this gentleman, whose name is water reefs. And then to develop over the long term, what we want to do is work with the herbarium there and digitize the herbarium, and try to make it into a world-class resource for plant, research of all.
Kinds that would be centered at the University. So this is all described in our website and that's probably our biggest project right now, for which we are seeking support
support and so people can find that McKenna done Academy, encourage everybody to check it out the yeah, there are five key departments. Tell me if this requires updating but you have Therapeutics education, Retreats R&D and media is that still an accurate reflection or is that been modified?
That's an
Reflection. But then some of those things are kind of dormant at the moment, like the retreat's, do to covid, due to covid. I mean, eventually we want to get back to that media. Obviously is an even bigger part of it, because the internet is our teaching platform. Now, Therapeutics again not so much because they're usually associated with the Retreats, but education for sure and RD this project that we're doing with this.
This gentleman that you now the university there is in the category of our
D and the mechanic Adam e is is public charity. Is that right? That in the sense that its tax exempt? As a final 1
2 3, it is it's a 501 c, 3 tax exempt organization chartered in the United States. Even though I don't live in the United States anymore, I live close enough, I live in Canada, but the academy is incorporated in
California is a 501, c, 3
and who is involved with the Academy's? Besides yourself. Are there any particular people who are acting as as advisors or research collaborators?
Oh, definitely. Yeah, we have a number of people that are associated with it. The woman who is the executive director, Christine achaia lives in Peru, and I've worked with her previously on organizing retreats.
So she continues to work with me. We have very good people on our board. One gentleman with lots of experience in the financial industry and Other Woman is a corporate lawyer. So we have that expertise and then we have just a fantastic bunch of advisors. One of whom is aleksandre to new who you know very well and Wade Davis is a visor
Paul stamets is the visor. So we have a number of high-profile
people have a strong strong
roster. Yeah,
definitely what types of projects would be on the short list of things that you would like to engage with and explore assuming that you have the resources to do
so. Well, a couple of things are on the plate. So we've got this kind of long-term project this knowledge preservation
Which would be given to Brandon, says by old gnosis, and that is the Focus right now is on the documentation part. But then the next phase, which will take much longer and cost a lot more money is to focus on the herbarium there, which one releases the curator of this herb area. So that's a long-term project that we want to do in the shorter term. We're working on, developing an ethnobotanist.
Me course in collaboration with the organization for tropical studies in Costa Rica. And we're going to be offering that course this fall. And one of the people that is working on, that is a guy named. Michael kohu is an ethnobotanist and I was on his committee, he got his degree at the University of Hawaii and he studied cultural keystone species in the Amazon around the corner.
Which is basically Ayahuasca. He is going to be the main instructor in this course which will be online and then we're planning to do a virtual Symposium probably August on the stone date
Theory. Yeah, we're
going to do that because one of terrence's books, the food of the Gods is being reprinted. Again, I'm actually doing a online event with Michael Paul.
Allen and the publisher of we're doing a essentially a podcast together, but then we're going to do a one day Symposium on the stoned ape Theory and have some interesting speakers. I wrote a new forward for it, which I'll be happy to share with you. And we're going to have this Symposium because we're going to revisit this whole idea which actually based on new discoveries is more plausible.
That was when Terrance first proposed and that's what my forward this about in part is that we didn't know about the way that these psychedelics can create these hyper-connected neural architectures, and neurogenesis and enhancing the connectivity in the neocortex and that sort of thing. And that was not known at the time, Terrance wrote the book. What was also not knowing was anything about epigenetics
Attics and epigenetics provides an evolutionary mechanism by which these changes in neural architecture. Could be propagated through generations. So if you look at the environment that we now know, from paleoclimatic data about sort of thing, Northern Africa was a wet place couple of million years ago and there was seasonal rainfall there were cattle there. There were they
Ancestors of the modern cattle and there were comments. So the three variables in this environment did exist. What was the long-term impact of that? Well, you know, the food of the Gods, basically led to the origin of Consciousness and the
imagination. Yeah, I read a draft of your intro or maybe the final version, I don't know. But it's really a great exploration.
View of more recent findings. But also great exploration of language, images, imagination Consciousness. And then also the data to support this overlap of hominids with ungulates and top row philic mutters family, right? Seems almost inevitable that our ancestors would have been munching on these and found them. Very, very interesting and compelling on
a lot of things. So
So yeah, I just think it's worth looking at this in the light of some new discovery. So I mean, you know, these things can never be proven which actually makes them more fun because then you can make these wild claims of nobody can disprove the beat, you know. So that's where we're at with that. But I think knowing what we know about neuroplasticity was the word I was looking for that psychedelics Foster neuroplasticity.
The epigenetics provides a mechanism for inheritance. And so I think that changes the speculation from plausible to maybe more than likely
this stuff is endlessly. Fascinating to me and I want to return for a second to the McKenna Academy of Natural philosophy because you mentioned something that is when underscore and that is that to do these things. That is to further the knowledge preservation project bio gnosis.
Ethnobotany course, and many other things you are currently looking for support. If you don't mind saying if you can, is there a specific number that you have determined will allow you to pursue these projects with the resources required, to really gain some degree of traction with with them?
Yes. I mean, we have we have a rough idea. We're undertaking a capital campaign
Campaign. Now fundraising campaign people should feel free to visit the website and donate if it grabs you but we're looking to raise about 600,000 by the end of the year and this is to support various projects like this and then the herbarium digitization project which is much more ambitious and much more expensive and it's going to stretch over a couple of years.
What we're dealing with is essentially an herbarium, which is a geo a scientific gym but it's in a third world developing country University. So there are a lot of deficiencies, for example, at this herbarium, there's like a hundred thousand specimens but at least half of them aren't even mounted. So we want to get enough funds to complete the herbarium essentially and then link it into
Reyes online, database resources, for natural products, pharmacology, genomics and so on just created an Open Access resource for anyone with an interest in Amazonian Flora, you know it doesn't have to be medicinal or psychedelic or whatever the interest. And that's probably going to be a two to three year project that will cost somewhere north of a million dollars. But it will be well worth while. It's just a give. I'm a big believer in
Collections, and collecting knowledge. That's the thing. Knowledge collections are important to me. Like, every plant that you can attach a piece of information to enhances the value of the plant, you know, and provides a reason not to drive it into Extinction
important. Yeah. Once they're gone. They're gone. You've mentioned a phrase in a number of other interviews I listened to that. I'd love for you to Define because I don't know the phrase and I would like to the importance of
voucher specimens. I think that was the wording.
Is that this up? What is a voucher specimen voucher specimen. This is what schulte's used to Rave about all the time. He would go on about a lead and all this chemical work on say banisteriopsis for example and there is a whole history of chemical investigations going back to the late 19th century. People looking into the alkaloids, the composition of banisteriopsis,
That's your specimen is simply an herbarium specimen that you make, and if you're collecting plants and you're dragging them back into the lab, to tear them apart chemically and see what's in there. You have to be able to reference, so a reference specimen centrally.
So keep one that you don't tear apart. In other
words, collect pieces of the plant. Make an herbarium specimen of the plant makes several indifferent or barrier of the world. But at least the herbarium of
The host country and then you can always go back to that because taxonomists love to question each other and so if you have a reference specimen you could always go back and look at the actual collection of somebody said well this is banisteriopsis copy you know, the McKenna collected in 1981. But five years later some other bought, this may come through there and say well that wasn't better stereopsis copy. That was Ben.
Your absence Loggia laptop, you know, and these people are fools. They didn't know what their Define. This is what taxonomists do all the time. You know, they fight with each other. But the point is that the chemical investigations are documented by an herbarium specimen that you could always go back and check. And now, of course, they use DNA profiling than this, the sort of thing. Just another tool in the Arsenal kind of, but if you look at the chemical history,
Of Ayahuasca. If you look at who did what when they were sorting out, what the alkaloids were the first four or five. Investigators, I can send you a key note about this, which you can look at it at your leisure, but the first four or five groups of investigators, they didn't take vouchers. So their work is not worthless but in some ways degraded because there are not vouchers to document what they actually,
They worked on. That's the thing with voucher specimens.
And I mean, just to put some more connective tissue around, let's just say the, the Amazon and the Flora of the Amazon. How many species would you say? We currently estimate plant species to exist in the
Amazon, in the Amazon? Yeah, about 80 to 90,000
and how many have we?
And this is maybe a loaded word but properly studied and examined in any way what
percentage around 10 percent. If that, of course worldwide, they're probably they're always revising the number. But the total number of plant species, higher plant species in the world is around 240 240 to 260,000
and I mean it's just such a wealth of biological.
Not just knowledge but practicality. I mean, you have such potential medicinal
application. Well, there's there's great discovery, great potential for drug Discovery because we have only looked at about 10% and those are the number that, you know. We may be took a superficial look at the number that have actually been thoroughly. Investigated is closer to 1%. So there's tremendous.
Potential to find new compounds. In fact, that's another project that the mechanic enemy is working on or collaborating with a group called woven science a group of entrepreneurs and and scientists and other types. And we're in process of developing a bio prospecting platform at that, will be affiliated with the university and in Iquitos and then you get into
Basically a search for new molecules screen them against a whole, variety of possible targets. So this is another long-term project that will probably run into the millions if it's properly done. The mechanic, how to me is kind of peripheral to we're involved but we're not, you know, we're not profit so we don't have to make profits, but it's going to be a very interesting project and it goes into these
Ethical areas about who owns this
knowledge. Yeah you on bio. Bio piracy
yeah biopiracy. So we have to be very sensitive to all those issues so that we can say you know where bio Prospectors not bile Pirates. We want to share the the wealth. If there's any return on the investment we are committed to having indigenous people have a big stake in that have a place of
Ball and a big say in how this goes forward because really they've been the stewards of this knowledge for Millennia really and it's always been the case that big Pharma big science comes in. They take what they want, they say thanks very much, see you later. Develop billion-dollar drugs off these things and that's not right. The indigenous people should get some recognition for being the stewards of this knowledge. That's the whole thing.
Thing, this is what's in danger as the habitats are impacted, the community structures are impacted and the traditional knowledge. And one of the first things to go is the knowledge of plants.
Well, then is, there are a million things that I could ask you. I didn't even get through ten percent of the questions that I say more. Yeah, we are. So we have we have space for many more conversations. Yeah. I want to say a few things. One is that for those people listening
Also want to sort of extend their exploration of these topics I think Mark Plotkin is also done. A lot of great work with the Amazon conservation team in his thinking about enabling and empowering those groups to participate in in prospecting and the preservation of knowledge. He's done all. He and his and his wife and other people in the organization have done really great work. And I know you guys are friends and go backward,
Early really, really far. And I also want to ask. So just to just to confirm for people listening donations to the mechanic enemy of natural philosophy are tax-deductible since they are donations to 501 c 3. So I will the target of 600k. I will commit here to kicking that off with 50k of my own my USD and I want to encourage people, listening to consider doing the same because it 50 k pop. They'll be 12 people can be done very easily.
This is a early-stage. Bet I'll be it in a non profits. I don't expect. Of course, I can't get any returns from this in a financial way. But I really view you as a Pioneer who also has a high degree of biochemical and sort of ethno Botanical, fluency who can participate and reconcile and critically examine multiple spheres. And you have a history of producing, really?
Inge and I think important work and I definitely encourage people to also grab the as no pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs, they're in a boxed set. If you just search Dennis McKenna on Amazon, it pops right up and you can purchase it on Amazon Prime. It's a beautiful collection and will give you a taste of some of what Dennis has curated and certainly you can find as writing everywhere else. But I will commit to 50K. I encourage people to. This is not investment advice, it's a non-profit.
But I really view this as as worthwhile and you're coming into this. Also, as someone who has proven a decades-long dedication to examining and studying various facets of psychedelics and Beyond, not just limited to that much. Like I think schulte's was also very, very well versed in orchids and other things. One of the
world's experts on Orchids. That's great. Yeah.
Roland Griffiths all.
A lot of people don't realize even though he's known for this psychedelic work with psilocybin at Hopkins, one of the foremost experts in caffeine and Kathy metabolism and so you you have such a broad spectrum of expertise. I feel like this is worth supporting. So I commit to 50K and I encourage people to take a close
look. Now, it's incredibly generous of you Tim. Thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you for encouraging your listeners to contribute. If we get a few
You more donations in that range, we won't have to do a Fed raising campaign. Our goals will be pretty much met and yeah, we want to be responsible stewards of these funds, you know. And in that regard, we're also open to people who they may want to support us financially, but we want more than just finances, we want advice, we want wise people, we're creating a, we call it the symbiotic Circle button.
Circle of advisers with connections to other supporters but also ideas like people like yourself. For example, I don't know if you're interested in being joining our symbiotic Circle but you're certainly welcome to
thank you. I like the sound like the sound of it. Symbiont Circle sounds like a good thing formation about
all this stuff. I don't know how much time you have to go through all this stuff, but I'm going to send you the one thing in the
world that I seem to have time for is this kind of stuff. The one that cat
Well, I'll
send you more details about that that Capital campaign and some of the other projects that we have. And yeah, this is just been amazing. We killed two and a half hours.
Yeah. It was easy. Yeah. This is easy to do and we have plenty I've enough questions we could we could do it. Round two in short order be extremely easy to do. I would encourage people to check out McKenna dot Academy. I have a few thoughts on
Things that could be added to the website. That might be helpful for listeners. So, we'll chat about that separately. I think the be easy to do also, but check out McKenna down academy, certainly, you can find Dennis on social, where are you most active? If you're active at all, Dennis on social media.
Well, I have people handling most of the social media for the Academy, so I'm not on there. I'm on Facebook and Twitter, but not right. So not much, you know?
Yeah, pain. That's why you get more done. Yeah.
That helps, it helps, but I would love to have more conversations with you. Tim online and offline. Yeah, enjoy that. This is just spin. This is just been incredible. You're a fantastic interviewer. I'm sure I'm not. The first of told, anything have Dennis and you're informed, you really do your homework. So that's that's a huge thing. I think it Could've Been Gone.
Other right. Yeah could talk all
afternoon easily and I'm only 30 40 percent of the way through Volume 2 of ESP D and this is one of those fields. I'm sure. It's true with a lot of fields where
The deeper you go, the more fascinating and the stranger it all becomes. And, you know, it's and you spoke to at the very very well, maybe wasn't the beginning. Maybe it was in the middle about some fears around and this is related to some of these syncretic churches of science. Removing the mystery, or the Wonder and it makes me think of surely you must be joking. Mr. Feynman by Richard, Fineman faint physicist, who later in
If developed a deep friendship with a painter and the painter had the same concern about Richard through his scientific lens. Removing The Wonder of say the beauty of a flower and Richards perspective was actually, you've got it completely backwards because I can have the aesthetic appreciation. I am acutely aware of how much, I don't know. And I can also be dazzled by the
scientific findings when you go down to the microscopic level, and look at this beautiful thing in front of us, and I'm paraphrasing, of course. But I find it. So reassuring in your representation of these multiple facets that these are not mutually, exclusive silos, even though there's so much goddamn infighting in the Psychedelic space, its kind of comically tragic, we're humans, you
know, that's what we do. But I am totally on the same page with you.
This to buy mine science properly pursued only deepens the mystery. Yeah that's the thing. It doesn't take the mystery away. It shows you how mystery exists profoundly the every level. That's the whole idea of the mechanic at ameobi the mystery School. The mystery is the mystery of existence which is, which is bottomless, it's endless and science is one of those.
The tools we have not to take the mystery away but to make us appreciate what the mystery is, and I'm thinking of something that but I had a couple of exchanges. They said Tim's going to ask you what would you put on a billboard? You know, and we did get to that but I was thinking about that what I would put on the billboard. This what I get from Ayahuasca and other psychedelics which is remember
Little, you know, remember how little, you know, and science often forgets how little it knows. Yeah, so it can be kind of arrogant at times, but you can't be a true scientist without being a Mystic. I think, you know, I mean, that's the thing, the deeper you probe.
The more complex, the more beautiful the more intelligent. It all seems. Yeah and this is why I think we have to appreciate science but I understand it's not the whole story. It's not the end of the story. Just a useful tool.
Yeah. We're all holding different parts of the elephant like that. Parable. And Dennis has been wonderful. I will follow up on.
The donation, which for clarity, I'll make through my Foundation, which is explicitly for this type of thing, could not be more excited. Is there anything else you would like to mention to listeners? Any closing comments, anything like that? Any thing you'd like to direct their attention to. Before we wrap up for this round one?
No, I think we've covered it pretty well. I would say, look at the website we have resources there. We have events which
Have been done in the past that you can still register. Their all recorded think of it as a place for resources and so on, but also give touch. We want to be open, we want people to bring their talents and their their wisdom and everything else to the table and their money. But that's not necessarily, that's not necessarily the most valuable thing. Money is just a grease that lets the thing run. Yeah. So there is that but
We're trying to bring together brilliant people and propagate this world view. This idea that we're out of sync with nature, essentially, and that psychedelics is one way to help us realize that and help us get realigned with nature because that's the big challenge that we face right now. And, you know, and then that could spin off into another three
hours of discussion. That's the we won't go into that. Yeah, for sure and for those people who want it, maybe a cliff
Hanger or a teaser. I wanted to focus on a lot of the science and biographical stuff in this conversation but we didn't even get into some of the really strange and weird stuff which we might next time.
Another, that's another one. Yeah, yeah.
So I'll leave that as a teaser for around, too. Well, thank you so much Dennis. This has been wonderful and so much fun for me. I've been really looking forward to this and have done so much reading.
And I can't wait to do more. I'm looking forward to it. And to everybody listening, as always, we will have links to everything in the show notes that we've discussed course, we mentioned, McKenna Academy that is sort of the beacon that the main call to action here. Please check it out. And until next time, be safe and thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just a few more things before you take off. Number one,
One, this is five bullet, Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me and would you enjoy getting a short email for me? Every Friday is that provides a little more soul of fun for the weekend and five bullet, Friday's a very short email, where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week, that could include favorite new albums that have discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric. As I do it.
Include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance, and it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that check it out. Just go to 4-Hour workweek.com. That's 4-Hour. Workweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email. You will get the very next one and if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.
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dollars off of the smart accessories. When you use promo, code, Tim 100 at checkout, that's www.cannainsider.com. So code Tim 100 total be your strongest.
