Dennis McKenna

00:00It just seems the problem with the marijuana is 5 4 3 2 1 Dennis McKenna. Ladies and gentlemen, before we were just discussing how I was saying that marijuana can be your friend and it can enhance your life. But if if you take too much, it's it's such a seductive little creature cuz a little bit of it is like, ah, this is nice. This feels good. But if you get too crazy, especially if you get too crazy with edibles, it'll take you and take you away on this wild journey of paranoia and and and you'll it'll lock you up. Like some people just need to take a couple weeks off. Just relax. That's always a good idea. It is a good idea, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think people underestimate cannabis. I think it can be like you say, it can really sort of knock you off your center, especially if it's edible. And like all these things, you got to learn how to use it. Yeah. I

00:55mean, it's basically that's what you got to do. You have to learn how to use it. But you know, you know, that's my wrap. Yeah, it is your rap. But it's a great rap. It really is. It's so important. It's I think it's so important for people to realize that you got to let like regular you like you like natural sober you. It's important to be in touch with that. Like you don't want to always be high or always be caffeinated or always be anything. Well, exactly. I mean, we're, you know, people get, you know, to these places and they fail to do a reality check on themselves, you know. I mean, I get emails from people all the time said, "Well, I'm, you know, life's been pretty weird lately. I took mushrooms five times last week and you know I was and it's like dude how about you lay off for a while and give your yourself a chance because you know they tell these stories and it's like the

01:53idea of okay let's find your center go back to baseline lay off the sauce whatever it is you're taking and just chill out and try and re rediscover your center. It seems like common sense advice but people don't do that. It does seem like common sense advice, but common sense is not common. I think everybody knows that. Well, yes. All you have to do is look around to realize that. What is it about people though that once they indulge in any sort of I mean it it doesn't even have to be a substance. It could be an activity like gambling for instance. like once it gets into your bones, it just seems like you're so compelled to just continue that behavior and and the idea of stopping is almost more painful than the idea of wrecking your life. This this is this is addiction. This is this is basically these things are reinforcing. They activate those pleasure circuits,

02:49you know, in in the brain mediated mainly through dopamine and all of these I mean that the so-called drugs of abuse which I think is a terrible word terrible but you know the reinforcing drugs the pleasure drugs work directly or indirectly through the dopamine circuits and the dopamine is like your your button for pleasure you know in the same way that serotonin is kind of on the opposite side. It's your button for more like euphoria, feeling good, but not the it doesn't have the the punch, I guess, that the which is why people can get addicted to gambling, they can get addicted to sex, they can get addicted to television, all of these things. It doesn't have to be substances, you know, cuz they all hit those same circuits, you know, except the psychedelics, which don't work on that reward circuitry. They work on a different set of circuits. But yet even with those your

03:45behavior patterns can become addictive and then you can start just doing psychedelics too much and it's not even the psychedelics that are doing it. It's just this compulsive need to constantly change your state of mind. Yeah, that's quite true. And if people you know the way to use psychedelics is is uh there are many ways to use it but basically use it thoughtfully. You know, I mean you can all the question about recreational use versus spiritual use versus therapeutic use. I mean these are all ways to approach it and I am not a person who says you must do it this way, you must do it that way. What I do say is do it from an informed place and do approach it thoughtfully you know because I mean in other words don't you know plan for it respect the medicine in a certain way you know use it in a circumstance where you can learn from the medicine rather than have the

04:42medicine be sort of a you know overlay over whatever else you're doing. I mean this is something that demands attention and I think that's the best way to use psychedelics and for whatever you know whatever spin you put on it is it spiritual is it therapeutic is it recreational is it shamanic these are all labels the important thing is that you know you you have the you approach the medicine itself the medicine is the teacher right not the sitter not the shaman not the psychotherapist if they're doing the their job correctly. In my opinion, their job is to let you have your encounter with the medicine. And the medicine is what you learn from. They're there to facilitate that. They can intervene if you get anxious or if things go on, make sure you know nobody comes to the door, that kind of thing. But basically it's to facilitate a learning opportunity where

05:42you and your teacher which is the medicine be it iawaska or mushrooms or whatever can have this intense one- on-one interaction. You know I feel like with psychedelics as well as with all these other things we're talking about any kind of drug I mean even coffee um alcohol whatever and behavior patterns all these different things. I think one of the things that happens with human beings is you get so far along in your life and these behavior patterns become so uh like tight grooves that are carved into your psyche and then as you become an adult then you start to learn like oh there's got to be a better way to handle this. Let me figure out how to do this. And it's almost like getting a car when you're really young and not learning how to drive until you're like in your 20s. And so you're just driving this thing. It's smashing into trees and grinding

06:37the gears. And then somewhere along the line, you're like, "Oh my god, I'm myself up. I have to figure out a way to do this correctly." And there's two different approaches. There's one, the abstinence approach, which is very popular. People say, "Well, I'm I'm straight edge now. I don't do anything and that's it. And I just, you know, I just do wheat grass and I run hills and stuff." I'm like, "Okay, you could do that, too." I mean, right, you can do it. You definitely can do that, too. But it's I just don't think that there's anything wrong with any of these things. I think there's something wrong with the way we use them. And I think it's one of the inherent problems with things being illegal is that we can't discuss this and we don't have people like you or centers where people can go where people can become educated on the proper way to use these drugs or medicines or whatever

07:24you want to call them, these compounds and get something out of them that can really be beneficial. Right. That's that's exactly right. I mean, I've said this many many times that, you know, drug education, what they call drug education in this country is a joke because the whole emphasis is on don't use them. That's absurd. That's like telling, you know, an 18-year-old guy full of testosterone, don't have sex. You know, come on. It's built into the genetics. They're going to go for that. What you have to do, what they can't bring themselves to acknowledge in the drug education field is it's not about telling people not to use drugs. It's about teaching people how to use drugs if they choose to, right? I mean, like any other skill, people have to learn to drive. They have to learn to do yoga. They have to learn to do whatever they do. There's an educational process.

08:21I tell people many times, you know, my shtick is there is no such thing as a bad drug. And that's another problem with the dialogue. The badness is projected onto the drugs. Drugs are simply compounds with a certain form ecology. There's no moral aspect to them. The moral dimension comes and how do people use them? That's where, you know, it's human behavior that's moral or immoral. I say, you know, there's no such thing as a bad drug. plenty of bad ways to use drugs, you know, but that comes from the person, not the compound. I've been really disturbed lately by these new super potent painkillers. Oh, it's like fentinyl. Yeah. The stuff that killed prints and carfentinel now is the big menace. Fentinyl is bad enough. Carfentinel is something like a hundred to a thousand times more potent than than fentinyl. What? Yeah. So a speck literally a pin head or less of the

09:25carfentinil is a lethal dose. Oh my god. Yeah. So this is really not good, you know, because I am certainly not an expert on, you know, the sources and all this, but apparently this stuff is being made in China, imported here, and they use it to cut heroin because it's so strong. But people are dying left and right, you know, because of carfentinil is far more uh far more toxic than heroin or even fentinil. So, you know, we we're so, you know, there is so much I don't know, so much confusion and and fuzzy thinking about the whole drug issue. You know, for example, as long as we're talking about uh opiates for the moment, which is not really what I came here to talk about, but um you know, you've heard ofratom. Yeah. Right. Now, the DEA and the FDA, it's it's a plant. It's used in Thailand. It is an opiate. There's no doubt about it. It hits the opiate

10:30receptors and they want to schedule it. But the problem is that in Thailand, traditional areas, it's often used to get off of heroin. So, it's potentially part of the solution, not part of the problem. It's uh you know, it's relatively easy to quit. And the big thing about credom, it doesn't cause respiratory depression. And respiratory depression is what kills people from narco, you know, from heroin overdoses. It's the alkaloids in Mitrogginina do not do that. Andratum is currently in a weird semi-legal state, right? In this semi-legal state, but the DEA would love to schedule it, but again, they had plans to and there was some push back about this and people were saying things like I'm saying, wait a minute, let's take a second look at this. This may be part of the solution because it could be a kind of uh in a sense an herbal methadone. I mean methadone is not the best way but

11:31something that people could substitute and then gradually taper off. Catum has some weird sort of property where at low doses is a stimulant. Yes, I've tried it before but only at low doses. I've had um there's a company that sells it. They've been here. We have it right here. Oh, there are lots of companies that sell it. Yeah, it's this company, um, Urban Ice Organics, that's the name of the company. Um, but I take two or three of those and it's like a cup of coffee and it's like no weirdness, no you don't feel high at at a low dose. It it is that kind of a stimulant. Who knows? Just unique pharmarmacology. How strange though. At higher doses, it's uh it's definitely an opiate. And is it something that impairs motor skills? Uh well, not so much. I mean, just in the sense that it it's like being high on morphine or heroin. So, it does I mean, you know, so it really can give you that

12:32kind of a feeling. Absolutely. Wow. That's interesting. you know it hits the opiate receptors but then it also hits a few other receptors as well which is part of the stimulating effect but you know why the pharmaceutical comp companies are not all over this plant I don't understand because for a long time the the holy grail in drug discovery when it comes to analesics is find the narcotic that is not toxic you know the analesic that is not toxic hopefully not addicting, but that's not going to happen. And is there an LD50 for this stuff? Oh, sure. I mean, there's an LD50 for most things. I I don't for people don't know, lethal dose at 50%. It would be hard. Yeah. The lethal dose for 50% of the of the sample, but in the herbal form, it would be hard to get anywhere near a lethal dose. You have to eat a giant brick of it. Yeah. Probably you throw up before

13:33you ever got to the lethal. I mean if if you if you isolated one of the alkaloids uh 7 hydroxy metroinine is the strongest one that's about 100 times stronger than morphine wa you know so definitely effective so is there any issue with that stuff though with people who have had problems with pain pills in the past maybe they start indulging this a little bit too much and well it's a better alternative than the pain pills it's very good for people who want to get off that I'm sorry can I say that on video This is this is the internet. People who want to get off those kind of things, they don't they can't quit cold turkey, but they could go on credum and gradually cut down because the withdrawal symptoms forratom are much less apparently than for heroin and the and these things. They just don't grab you. So, this is a gateway out of the addiction, right? you know or they

14:30could even just maintain because it's not particularly dangerous dangerous or impairs function or so on they could maintain as you know lots of people take heroin and manage to maintain well I know a lot of people it's a trick you know not everyone can do that they find some really good anti-inflammation properties in this stuff like people who exercise a lot like yeah yeah wouldn't surprise me at all if that's there um you know most plants have multiple effects. That's one of the differences between plants and pharmaceuticals. Plants have families of molecules and they often have, you know, complimentary kind kinds of activities, you know. So, credom is one of these. We've known about it for a while. It needs a lot more work, but potentially it's very very interesting, you know. And of course the other one in in this sort of universe of uh of opiate treatment is

15:26ibo gain which is not completely different kind of thing. I gain is not itself an opiate but it people use it to get off opiates because the experience is profound but then it does something that uh a lot of psychedelics don't do which is it interrupts that craving for opiates depending on how it's structured anywhere from a few days to a few weeks and the thing I think that determines the effectiveness of of ibel gain as a treatment for opiates is if the person has prepared for what happens afterwards, right? You got to prepare for what happens after. If you go back to your old neighborhood, your old buddies, your old habits, it's not going to work. You know, you're not making a serious uh commitment to make it work. But if you have a plan, gonna go to this clinic, get this treatment, get cleaned up, then what you know, and that's true. I I mean that's really I think that's

16:29the main factor that determines whether ival gain is effective or not and and it is for a lot of people it works. It's a problematic substance. It's not it's a controlled substance in the states but uh only in about six countries is it actually prohibited. most countries it's either in a gray area I guess it's a gray area it's unregulated is the term couple countries have put it on prescription drug status uh Brazil and New Zealand but it's you know the framework is there that doesn't mean there's a rush of people to go to ibo gain clinics in those countries it really hasn't created a a a rush but the framework is there if people want to you know want to do that. So, ibible gain is another one of these that needs more investigation and is potentially part of the problem to the opiate uh epidemic. There is uh rumors, well, they're more than rumors, but

17:33uh some uh I gain activists are trying to get certain states to provisionally approve the use of ibo gain. you know, a special waiver from the federal government. Vermont and I think New York has now applied for this because their problem is so bad. And it's like basically they're saying to the government, here's something that may work. Just grant permission on a state side, statewide basis to have this medicine. We'll see where that goes. you know, as you I'm sure you I think we're all in this community acutely aware of now the government is again rumbling about how they're going to revive the war on drugs. I mean, it was a stupid idea then and it's even more stupid now, but hey, this government, you know, stupidity are us is kind of their their angle on things. So, this Jeff Sessions character is really We'll see how it goes. I'm not too worried because I think there's

18:36going to be so much push back on this. Yeah. And that's the other thing about Trump. He seems to be a populist and if there is too much push back from that direction, I think he's going to try to avoid that as much as possible. When they did a recent survey of the United States of how many people uh think that marijuana should be legal, like recreationally legal, it's it's in the 60% now, which is for the first time ever. Yeah. And states have done it. And I just don't think you can, you know, you can't go back to the war on drugs. I mean, it was a miserable failure when it happened. There's, you know, over 40 years they pounded over a trillion dollars down this rat hole. There are more drugs, more kinds of drugs, easier to get, cheaper than ever. So where's the success? And more people in prison as a result of this. So where's the success on drugs? There's nothing

19:30there's nothing they can point to. It's not like anyone was saved. There's not like the problem is that these people, you know, facts don't carry much weight with them. I mean, they're kind of off in their own private ideological fantasies. And uh the fact that the war on drugs doesn't work doesn't matter to them. It's like these are bad people who need to be punished. That's their their stance on it. It's not about anything other than that. Yeah, I think that's really important what you just said. These are bad people. I mean, it's they're really talking in these simplistic terms. That's one of the thing that Sess said that marijuana is not something that good people use, which is preposterous. How many grandmas are out there that are listening to this going, "What the is this guy talking about? This is crazy." Well, yeah, it is. And it's clear that uh you

20:20know not a jot of reflection or or you know careful thought goes into these kinds of statements. This is what bothers me. I mean many many things bother me about Trump but the one of the chief things one of the major I guess you could say flaws in his character among many. But you listen to him talk, you listen to his general thing and you realize this is not a man who's ever had a reflective thought in his life. You know, there is no there there is no inner self. Uh you know, people say, "Oh, just give that man someow and that will straighten him out." I don't think so. I think there's, you know, there has to be something inside to straighten out. I mean, he's Don't you think that maybe I would like to speak to him alone and find out who he really is? I mean, you think when someone's speaking in front of, you know, a big group of press or, you know, any anytime there's a camera on them,

21:19it's really hard to figure out who that person is. Yes, that's true. I think being alone with someone would be very illuminating. I would I agree. Maybe alone he's different, but he is such a creature of media and television. This is his whole It's inexraable, right? Yeah. So maybe there is a thoughtful person there, but you sure don't see any evidence of that, you know, and that's unfortunate. I mean, because that's, you know, whatever you can say about Obama, and there's many bad things that, you know, he was not a perfect president. He was very thoughtful, you know, and and smart, you know. I'm not so sure Trump is smart. I mean, he's smart in a certain way, but not the way that we need our leaders to be smart, you know, in this age. We need to, you know, anyway, we we could go on all day about this and that's not really what we want to talk about. We could go on about this

22:15all day and let's definitely not. Let's instead let's shift gears and talk about this uh celebration of 50 years of psychedelic research and what you're doing now in it's in Birmingham. Is that where it is? It's in uh it's in Buckinghamshire. It's in England. Um I knew it was a B. Yeah, one of those places. It's not This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time. And the backstory is that in 1967 there was a conference that was sponsored, believe it or not, by the health education and welfare, department of health, education and welfare, national institute of mental health. US government paid for this symposium held in San Francisco in 1967 called the ethnofpharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs. And all the biggies were there. You know, Schulen was there. Um Andrew While was there. Um Schulties of course he was probably the one that you know

23:18more or less uh around whom it coalesed. But this was a chance for interdisciplinary people to come together in a private conference and share knowledge and that was done and they published this symposium volume called ethnofpharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs which was US public health service publication. You could get it from the US government printing office for a long time. And uh but the originally the idea was that about every 10 years or so they'd have follow-up conferences, right? Well, ' 67 the war on drugs came along. The government became embarrassed that they had anything to do with this and there was never any follow-up conference. Right? So I though that book that came out was very influential to me. It was one of the big influences of my life as a 16-year-old when I was just getting interested in psychedelics. So, for many years, I've wanted to do a follow-up

24:22conference. I wanted to do it on the 30th anniversary back in 97, but it never came together to do that. So, this is the 50th anniversary. It's now or never, right? And so, it's now apparently we are gonna do this thing. And uh it's going to be kind of much in the spirit of the original conference. Um we're not going to keep it completely closed, you know, cuz we're not that kind of people. There's not much not a lot of room for people to actually come to the place it's going to be, which is this place called Tearingham Hall. It's like it looks exactly like Downtown Abbey. I mean, it's an English country house. Beautiful place. but not a place set up for a huge conference. There'll be maybe 10 guests staying there and a bunch of people staying close by. But the point is not so much the people attending. It's going to be livereamed on Facebook which anyone can tune in to that. And uh then

25:28we're going to publish the symposium volume for 2017 that everyone who presents is going to submit a full paper. We're going to publish that as volume two. will bring them out together as a deluxe edition. The first one which is available for free. It's in the public domain and then the one from this conference and we'll we'll package them together as a collector's edition. And we're pre-elling that now as part of the uh strategy for um getting the money to pay for this thing. Uh and we're doing okay, you know. So I give you the website. It's esp.com. What does it stand for? Ethnopharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs 50 50th anniversary.com. And then there's also a Facebook page which is where the live streaming is going to be. So if you go there, you can order the book, you can get the whole backstory, you can sign up for the Facebook live stream and so on. And

26:33uh that's what we're going to do. And we've I've been very lucky of you know some people you know how these conferences are you don't do it on your own and when I sort of floated this idea a lot of people stepped up and said yeah I want to be involved I'll be involved not only people that are helping organizing it but also people that are providing some funding so now we have the money to pay people bring them from all over the world there'll be about 18 presenters uh uh and some really good people, some very high-profile people. David Nicholls will be there. uh Mark Platkin who runs the Amazon conservation team um a number of you know those are maybe the two highest profile but people that are known in the field and there's you know you can look at the website espdot.com you can look at the program and if it appeals to you um get on the uh you know get on the live stream so

27:41that you know those technologies did not exist in 1967, right? So they do now. So why not let the world in? You know, we can't have everybody come to Buckingham Shire, but we can have them all over the world. So that's the idea. Well, I'm sure the response to this is going to be tremendous if you can live stream it. And live streaming on Facebook is going to be huge. I mean, that's it's a great idea. Well, I hope so. Oh, it is for sure. It's it's an awesome use of the technology because there really isn't something like that that people can tune into and watch 18 different people speak. And of course, it'll all be documented, right? So, it'll be archived. We'll generate a DVD out of it. But mainly, it's the it's the books. I mean, the idea of actually collecting real physical books might like seem like a quite 20th century idea to people, and it is, but they still

28:38can. Yeah. I like the idea of having a nice box set, you know, but uh people don't have to get that. They can get the single one. They don't have to do anything that I tell them, but if they're interested, they could do it. And so, you know, thanks for letting me come on and let people know about this and and tweeting it and so on. This is all this is all very helpful and it looks like there's going to be a lot of response. And then of course the psychedelic science conference is coming up and we have a you know the symposium symposium guys psy they're they're running the stage at the maps conference the uh the stage in the marketplace so I'm going to be on there and they're collaborating with us to on this project so I'm pretty excited about it. Now, how do you organize the 18 different people that are talking and the subject so there's no overlap and so that you know

29:37this that the message become it stays vibrant? Well, it hasn't really been a problem. I mean, for one thing, you know, I pretty much knew who I wanted to come and I know what their specialty is. So, I invited these people and they cover a variety of specialties. So, not really too much duplication. everyone brings something unique, their own perspective. Um, you know, so it's it's pretty easy really. I mean, the idea of the ethnopharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs is that, you know, we wanted to focus on the frontier of this. This is still a very active area and we we don't want you know not another conference about Iawaska not you know and that's all wonderful and I'm totally behind it and in fact truth and advertising we got four talks on IASA but different aspects of Iawaska that haven't really been discussed so much at conferences and then we have we do have one uh gentleman

30:43talking about crow uh and uh you know specialist of of ethnob uh pharmarmacologist talking about that we have Ken Alpur who is uh maybe the rec world's recognized authority on IBOGA and I gain and from the pharmarmacology chemical clinical side we've got him we've got Dave Nichols uh we have uh another uh person uh another uh phytochemist talking about salvia Divonorum. Um, so these are things that were not even on the radar, you know, in 1967. And that's kind of the idea that there's been 50 years more work and a lot of work and never any follow-up conferences. So that's the excuse for doing this. This will be the follow-up conference. And if it gets momentum, then maybe we'll be able to do number three and number four. Well, probably by the time number four comes around, I'll be drooling in my oatmeal, so I may not have much to do with that one, but Oh, I

31:51think there's going to be some new science. It's going to kick you right back into gear. Let's hope so. There's a lot going on right now. I'm holding on for it. I think you're catching the wave right at the right time, Dennis. Right. Right. Sometimes I wonder, but I'm I'm super positive for you. Um, what is the status of Salvia Salvia Deonorum? What is the the legal status? Salvia Divonorum is more or less legal on the federal level. It's still sold. I think a few states have uh have banned it. Uh I'm not sure which states. How funny that it's the opposite way. You know, most things are federally illegal and then the states legalize them like marijuana at least. But salvia is for people who don't know super potent psychedelic. Super potent and um super bizarre. Yeah. Very weird. And I think maybe that's kind of the built-in uh built-in um you know protection against

32:47abuse because a lot of people don't care for it. You know, it's like once is enough. Never again. Many pe I mean this is not something that you're likely to get addicted to. You know, unless you're just a very peculiar kind of person because it's dysphoric, you know, it's not pleasant. Most people find it quite quite unpleasant, even terrifying. Um, well, years back, but I think one one of the one of the things that protects against it, people smoke it, which is not the traditional way at all, but again, it's like it only lasts a few minutes. The traditional way is you chew the fresh leaves, and it's the sage. It's a some variation of the sage plant. Correct. It's um it is a sage or a mint. It's in the mint family and yeah, it's called a sage, but it's really a mint. I always wondered if there was some sort of correlation between the name sage, meaning wisdom,

33:45you know, and then this stuff. No, just total bum luck. Some would like you to think so. I mean, I think I think Daniel Sebert, who's one of the specialists, he has a a website called sagewisdom.org.com and good stuff. He's he's intoratum. He provides I mean Salvia he provides good information on it there. Most people at least my own experience and and many people it's like well it's interesting it's profoundly strange and what do you bring back from it? You know that that's the question. What do you bring back from it? I think that's partly why, you know, most people are they don't they don't seek it out particularly. My friend, I know people that do like it. So, yeah, I know a lot of people that do. Yeah, I don't I I only did it once and I had this very bizarre out-of- body experience, but uh I don't think I took enough. I had a friend Ari who took a lot who over the

34:46course of 10 minutes lived maybe he he believes in the neighborhood of five to six months in in this dimension where he had a life and he had friends and he had a job and relationships and and he went through this and came back and you know 10 minutes later he's like this is going to be impossible to describe but I I I lived a life I had like this alternative reality that I went through for multiple months. Those those kinds of experiences, believe it or not, are not that uncommon on Salvia. Somebody told me once they had an experience where, you know, they were in a place, they were like seven or eight years old. It was Christmas morning. They were at the Christmas tree celebrating Christmas, opening the presents with a family that this guy had no connection to and had never seen. And like what do you make of that? I mean, I think Salvia is interesting in

35:49that in that regard in that, you know, some of these ones that, you know, they're worth exploring, right? I mean, if you can distort time or actually go into, you know, parallel dimensions or whatever, that's looking into. Yeah, I think it takes more intrepid psychonauts than I am to look into that. But I would encourage people to carefully explore this. You know, years ago, um, when I first explored DMT, you could get 5 MEO DMT online. There was a chemical company you could buy it, and I bought like, uh, like a jug of it, like a container of it, like the size of this stevia container, which is, for people who don't know, enough to get high for the rest of your life. I mean, you could do DMT once a month for the rest, and that's all you want to do, by the way, especially 5meo, right? 5meo brings you to some place that feels like the ultimate center of the universe and

36:49there's nothing and it's you you're a part of the whole it's it's also no visuals which is really weird or if it is visuals it's like these uh opaque geometric patterns that exist in this bizarre white and you just cease to exist and it feels terrifying and strange and you know again there's no accounting for taste I mean I agree it is like that. There are no visuals. So that's something strange about it. Uh but many people feel like if it puts you in this void place or the zero energy point. I don't know if you've had James Oro on here, but he wrote the book Tryptoamine Palace. No. Which is uh all about fivethoxy DMT. How do you spell his last name? Uh Orok. O R O C K. I think the name of his book is Tryptoamine Palace and it you know his thing is fivethoxy and uh that's his thing huh yeah and now uh and and it's an interesting book and now you know I mean

37:56the sonor and toad right you've heard that that's fivethoxy basically and so that toad you excrete something on a like glass you excrete the venom you actually have to torture the toad a little bit uh or squeeze the venom which is in the perotid glands. You squeeze it out on a slide, dry it out, and then you can smoke it. And it's about 11 to 15% 5 MAO, but it's a it's a heavy hit. Do they know why this toad produces this in venom? I mean, is it psychoactive when you eat it? Well, who know? Yeah, who knows? Most toads uh um produce buffotinine right which is very close to fivethoxy it and in fact it's named after the toads the genus of toads is buffo right bfotinine is found in most of these toads but buffo alvarius is the only species known that contains fivethoxy DMT so it's got this molec you know there's a probably single gene mutation that lets it produce this

39:07methoxilated compound which is much stronger than buffotine. Um, and by the way, just just to caution people, sometimes in the media you hear about people are licking toads. That's not going to do it. No, they're not licking toads. You they're smoking toads and Yeah. Isn't that weird that it just gets turned? Don't lick them because they're nasty things in there that will be that will kill you if you lick it. They pyrolyzeed. Yeah. These cardiac glycosides. Oh god. But pyrolyzing it, burning it destroys all those things. So that's that that it's okay to smoke it, but it's definitely dangerous to lick it. Most people don't like licking toads anyway. It's probably Yeah. Who came up with that, right? I think various fairy tales, right? Isn't that the Does the human body produce 5 MO DMT as well? Oh, yes. Yeah. And is it produced in the same areas like the liver and the lungs

40:06and presumably the pine presumably the pineal gland, all of these things, you know, uh yes, it does. There's a lot of controversy about whether you know these indogenous tryptoines DMT primarily but 5 MO is definitely there as well. Do they have a function? You know there is a lot of speculation and not a lot of facts about whether they actually have a function. M uh I mean they're they're made and u you know there's there's one school of thought that says yeah they're they're sort of like physiological noise you know they'll never reach a point where you could actually perceive any effect because the enzymes you know any kind of cellular enzyme will just chop up DMT very readily. It's so close to human metabolism. It's not going to it's going to be very ephemeral in the system even if it is released. But other people maintain that under some circumstances the DMT can be

41:11stored in vesicles in neural vesicles and released on demand or when some stimulus leads to its release like stress some stress of some sort. Jamie, go out and grab that painting that that young guy sent. the guy who has a pineal gland tumor who makes this really crazy tryptoine art. This guy I've heard about you know this guy this guy sent me one of his pieces and he uh he has a tumor. Do you know his name Jamie? We'll find his name. I'll give this guy some some love. Um but he you look at his artwork and you go, "Oh yeah, that's what that is." You know, almost like Alex Gay stuff, but Alex Gay stuff is uh it's art. I mean, it's it's definitely representative of the Tryptoamine world. It's beautiful. It's fantastic and amazing, but it's art. This guy's stuff seems like a trip. Like, it's the chaos of the Tryptoamine experience is sort of replicated in his artwork. Yeah, that's

42:12it. And so, this young guy, we we'll find out his name. Um he uh he sent this. I first heard of this gentleman from uh brother. Thank you. Holy moly. Take a look at this. Yeah. I I first heard of this guy from John O'Hia who organizes Alex's uh which ways up. I don't think there is an up, Joe. I I think this is a this is a zero gravity environment up this anyway that you want it to be. This is pretty amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. Wow. Yeah. Well, I'm waiting for the We're building a new studio and when that's done, we'll have this up prominently featured. But this kid's work is just incredible. Jamie, see if you can find it who he is. But, uh, he should be Is he I hope he's healthy. Letting himself be looked at by medical people. I think he's just happy to be tripping all the time. He's just going to leave it alone. What about science, man? Sean Thornton is his name.

43:09Sean Thornton. Yeah, I got a shout out. Shout out to Sean Thornton. Yeah, there's his work. There it is. Artists got cancer. The pineal gland. His paintings will leave you speechless. Yes, they will. Yes, they will. Sean Thor Thornton. Sean Thornton. Amazing. Yeah. Um, his stuff is incredible and apparently uh well his in in at least in some sort of way anecdotal evidence that it's produced in the pineal gland. Of course, the Cottonwood Research Foundation that Dr. Rick Straman is a part of and his amazing work from DMT the spirit molecule of course the documentary that you and I were in. Um his uh his work has shown that it's a it it is produced by the pineal gland in live rats. Mhm. So, we know now for a fact that at least in that mammal, it's uh it's produced in the pineal gland, but that's always been for people that u you know, I went to the Vatican last

43:59summer and um one of the really cool things was the the giant pine cone that they have in the the center of like one of the the outer areas. Yeah. And I was really lucky to have a very good uh guide who was a professor and he was explaining to me that that was representative of the pineal gland and yeah wow it was really fascinating because there's this enormous uh pine cone and it's surrounded by these two peacocks or you know two peacocks on the side that are supposed to represent immortality in some sort of strange way. So I don't know what that whole vision was supposed to mean, but he was very adamant that that pine cone there you see it up there on the screen that that is representative of the pineal gland and also in ancient Egypt and a lot of the hieroglyphs you see that as well. Right. Right. Well, yeah, pineal itself means because it is shaped like a pine

44:52clone. Right. That's that's why that's why it's named that. But I had no idea. That is very interesting. Yeah, it was pretty fascinating. What it was also fascinating was this guy, although he knew that that was representative of the pineal gland, he did not know that the pine pineal gland produced DMT. He wasn't even aware of what DMT was. So he and I had this really cool conversation about it where he was like, "What?" You know, with this crazy Italian accent. This is amazing. And he's writing things down and I'm, you know, writing telling him about Straman's work and you and your brother and all these different things to look into. Right. You know, there is a My wife is rolling her eyes like, "Oh, Jesus, not this again." You just can't be taken out in public, Joe. You always embarrass me. Well, she just she knew as soon as the guy said pineal gland and my eyes lit up and I'm

45:42like, "Here we go. Let's talk about drugs." Right. Well, there is a guy uh a couple of interesting people uh to mention in this context. One of them is a researcher, a guy named Ed Frea. Fresa. How do you spell that? Good question. Um E D F R E C K A I think. I may have to correct myself on that. He's a pharmacologist and neurochem neurochemist and and psychiatrist, but he is the one that's really kind of leading the charge for endogenous functions of DMT and has good evidence which has been, you know, disputed by some. I mean, Dave Nichols is kind of on the other side of it. He's like, uh, DMT doesn't have any internal function. All these people are deluded. You know, that seems to me to be really cocky. Well, I think that it's surprising that Dave, who's a very careful scientist, would have such, you know, such preformed ideas, very rigid ideas, right? There's a conference in

46:57the UK at the end of June called Breaking Convention, which you may have heard of. It's a big, it's like a psychedelic conference. Dave and Ed are going to be there. I'm going to be there hopefully keeping them a I don't want any fist fights or anything, but They're going to be talking about this and doing a debate on it. Breaking convention. You might tell people to Google that. That's a very interesting conference for sure. What what makes Dave so confident? I mean, when you consider the potency of it and the knowledge that that's produced in the body and then also the knowledge of the effects of it, which are just astounding, right? How can anyone say that you know for sure? Has he done it? Has Dave? Of course he's done it. Of course. How could he do it and not go, "Okay, what is this?" Well, I think he does, but then there's also this very reductionist side to him. Then, you

47:47know, and he basically just as a pharmacologist, he says it's never going to reach, you know, sufficient concentration in the plasma to have an effect. However, I think he's wrong. And I told him, I mean, I was teasing him. I was saying, you know, I I wrote back, you know, that famous phrase Arthur C. Clark once said, you know, when when a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible, he's very likely correct. When he says it's impossible, he's almost certainly wrong. Well, when you're talking about the just general biodiversity of human beings and how some people Well, let's talk about other human neurochemistry like like depression. Like some people are super happy and have no problem with their dopamine or serotonin levels and there's other people that have like real issues. Yeah. Well, there is that. Just look at that. The the variability

48:48of that and then also how that can be manipulated with exercise and all these other different things that can raise those levels up. What about the other thing like in terms of like holotropic breathing or all these different shamanic breathing and yogic exercises? um condundalini yoga which I haven't experienced it in kundalini yogona but I did have a very bizarre experience fairly recently on yoga where I went into class on a pretty pretty high dose of cannabis and I started tripping in the middle of one of the more intense poses. It was just something akin to the very beginnings of a DMT trip where I started seeing patterns and seeing things moving and some sort of a it didn't go anywhere but I don't pursue it in in terms of like attempting to make that happen. But I would imagine that if it's made in the body and then the the effects of it are reproducible when you

49:43take it. I mean taking DMT I there's a very few people there's a very small percentage that don't have an experience when they take it right very small percentage yeah you know do we know what that number is it uh probably something like I mean I would say a wild guess but a 2% or something that's actually anomalous why should should there be people who don't right have any effect I mean that's a whole other question about what's strange about their metabolism But it's interesting that you raise this because uh a lot of these yogic techniques especially condundalini is probably about inducing DMT synthesis in the pineal or wherever it occurs. There's also a very interesting technology that has come to light. I just found out about it last summer called the ANA light. Have you heard of this? No. A a ja. So write down a.com. This guy who's developed this is very

50:45interesting fellow. He's named uh Guy Harrowman and uh he used to work for Apple. He actually worked very closely with Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs had Next Computing. So he's basically a computer programmer and engineer. Worked with Steve Jobs, but then he for some reason he decided he had to move to Thailand and become a Zen monk, which he did. But he continued to work with technology and he developed this thing called the Agina light which he claims induces DMT synthesis in the pineal and uh I was at a conference last summer actually at Tearingham at this place where this one is going to be and he was there. I tried it a couple of times and by golly it's a lot like DMT. Really? Yeah. So explain it. What is it? Well, it's it's just it it looks like a floor lamp. It's, you know, nothing. It's got a it's got this array of LED LEDs on a on a holder. You lie under it

51:50and they're just white LEDs and he programs it from his iPad, I guess, in different sequences, but you lie under this thing for a few minutes and pretty soon you get into the zone. you know, these visuals begin to manifest and and it looks a great deal like DMT. So then and he claims, you know, it's synthesizing DMT and the pineal and it is very much like DMT would be if it's released at the sight of action because you know DMT when you smoke it, it brings a big body load with Do you have to wear that goofy outfit? What's with the orange outfit? Seriously, what is this? Can Well, they're they're in Thailand. I I understand, but the expression of monkness, the the pious outfit, let it go, folks. Just wear wear a t-shirt, you know. Wear whatever. I just think I didn't have to get into a, you know, into any costume to do it. But I did do it a couple times. How many times did

52:53you do it? Well, I was not there long enough to do it. I did it a couple times. And this woman's sitting. Is it is it just effective sitting as it is lying down? Uh I couldn't tell you but I expect so you you lie down. I lay down. Yeah. And you close your eyes and No. Well, yeah, you close your eyes. Doesn't matter cuz it's you don't have eye shades on, right? Uh and usually he's playing some music. But then, you know, in me like the reductionist, you know, kicks in and says, "Well, guy, this is interesting. How do you know it's really DMT that you're that you're stimulating? And we've been going back and forth on that and how can you test that? And there there are ways to do it, but most of them involve some fairly uh drastic procedures like you can do uh you that you wouldn't want to do on people because they wouldn't give you permission if they had any sense, but

53:50you could do them to rats. You could do something called microdialysis. You can put a essentially a microscopic uh um tube that's absorptive next to the pineal and you can collect samples that you can detect. This is not something that people would volunteer for unless how much just take take your word for it. Well, I just want to know does it really induce it or not? I I'm not saying it does, but it's a lot like DMT. What about hovering something like that over a sensory deprivation tank? like being inside of it and having it hover over your head. So you have the added experience of out of body with that. I mean, I would think that would be pretty intense and not hard to re recreate. Probably not. You'd probably what you'd probably want to do with that is to have some kind of goggles essentially that could be connected to his to his program by Bluetooth or

54:45something. So then you're wearing the goggles, you're in the isolation tank. But if you just hover it over your head, if you have just have an arm like a computer monitor arm and just swing it over the head and so you turn it on, close the door of the tank, close your eyes, lay back, and maybe it has like a 30-se secondond window where it lets you settle in and then begins the program. Lots of ways you could approach it. I mean, that just seems to me to really ramp it up. Now, here's the question. It's interesting, though. This is just one of an array of, you know, what you might call neurochnologies, you know, or even spiritual technologies. Maybe this will make psychedelics obsolete. Well, this is a great way that you could do it without actually having to hold on to an illegal drug. Exactly. Because you're carrying your illegal drug with you, right? So far, they can't arrest you for

55:37that. Although, I'm sure they're trying to figure out a way. That was your brother's classic line. Everyone's holding. everyone's holding. That's right. Now, with this stuff, um, did you experience the communication that you get with DMT? Because that to me has always been the most profound aspect of it is this feeling that I'm in the presence of something and and then this sort of um telekinetic understanding the words but not hearing the words. Honestly, I didn't get that because I think I was not under long enough. I didn't have much time. So I was only under each time I was under maybe 20 minutes which isn't I think if id stayed in that place if I could settle into it for an hour I think that probably would manifest you know and uh do you think this why why do you think this why do you think would change? I think it takes a while for the for the thing to

56:34fully you know uh what whatever the term is for if it is DMT for the DMT to reach a critical level where you're seeing that kind of stuff you know do you feel this because it was ramping up during your experience I felt like it was but if I had stuck around I thought uh it would uh you know I thought it would develop and and we've talked about two, we've talked about uh, you know, thinking about how to establish that this really is DMT. Another approach that we've tried is to take a or the guy's tried. I don't have access to the light. I can't afford it, but guys tried uh it cost uh about 3,300 bucks, you know, which is not bad, but beyond my pay grade right now. I'm going to buy it for you for a present. How about that? You should buy it and keep it yourself. I'm going to buy two of them. I'll buy one for you and one for me. We'll correspond. All right. All right. Well,

57:34as long as you're going to do that, I might mention that the that guy is offering a conference special here if you Do I have to wear the outfit? Yeah. No, you don't. You don't. If you buy it, you'll get a discount on it if you go through their Facebook site, which I'm about to put his stuff on. Beautiful. We can talk about this offline, but if you go through say Facebook, some portion of it will go toward supporting this conference. Well, I would love that. I'm I'm very curious about this because um I I know that I I have a good buddy of mine, my friend Denny, who's done uh Kundalini for quite a long time and he can reproduce DMT states. He's actually had DMT experiences independently of the Kundalini and he says it's the same thing. He says he can get there and I believe him. I'm just too lazy or something. I don't know what it is. I just I'm not inclined. Well, I think

58:22there's a genetic component, you I mean, like this gentleman, although he has a tumor, I'm not sure why. I mean, he doesn't want medical people poking and proddding him, but he would be a perfect subject to settle a lot of issues if he was willing to, you know, cooperate. I mean, just having a look at his cerebral spinal fluid, which would be the obvious, you know, fluid to sample for this would be very interesting. Yeah. But I can understand his reluctance if he has reluctance. Yeah. People drilling into your dome trying to suck out brain juice doesn't sound fun. But it is interesting though that these compounds are in in some way a part of normal human neurochemistry. Mhm. And why? Right. And Dave Nichols, what does he believe? Well, I don't know if he believes anything. He just, you know, he just, you know, he just is skeptical that that in normal physiological

59:23processes, DMT has much of a function. What about dreams? Dreams are a possibility. Yeah, that's always been the big one, right? That's always been the big one. And it's totally plausible. You'll have to get him on here and let him explain himself. I would love to. Yeah. I mean, uh, you know, I'm not sure. He just has this idea that uh I think for one thing I think you know he's kind of a reductionist guy. I think the all the the new age stuff the new excitement about DMT the pineal and all that it kind of puts him off. But on the other hand don't assume that we know everything because in fact we know nothing you know and if it's there I think it probably does have a function. You know, it's not surprising that it's there. It's everywhere. I mean, it's it's DMT is interesting molecule because it's two steps from tryptophan, right? Tryptophan is an amino acid, an

60:22essential amino acid, one of the 20 that goes into proteins. So, tryptophan is in every living thing on this planet. And there are two enzymes that are also pretty much universal in cells that can convert DMT or tryptophan to DMT in two simple steps. You know, I don't want to get too into the chemistry, but basically you remove the ami the acid portion of the amino acid, you get tryptoamine, and from there you add the methyl groups and there you are, you know, which is why DMT is, you know, very very common in plants for example and and animals. It I mean I I tell people nature is drenched in DMT. Drenched is a great word. Drenched in DMT. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of species of plants that contain DMT for sure. You know, I mean, they haven't there hasn't been any survey or anything like that, but if you look at the the genera that have a lot

61:25of DMT like acacia is a good example, the Australian acacas are some of the strongest uh sources of DMT. There are 1,700 species of acacia. Probably 75% of them contain DMT. And I'm sure you're aware of the Israeli uh scientists that believe that the story of Noah, it's not Moses rather, and the burning bush was the acacia tree. And they think that that was the the confusion of all the translations and of course the oral history passed down over many many years then finally written down. But this idea of the burning bush delivering the word of God was most likely in some way a psychedelic trip induced by DMT and most likely because of the acacia tree. Most likely the acacia tree cuz that was in the area the you know I mean it's an interesting idea and and it's interesting that the uh you know sort of the the way that the burning bush presented itself was like

62:28DMT presents itself. You cannot take your eyes away from it but at the same time you cannot look at it. Right. Right. Right. Right. But pharmarmacology was this was this something he smoked was it in incense? How was he exposed to this? And uh you know because that will make a difference because you can't eat DMT because it's destroyed by monoaminoxidase right that's the whole basis of iawasa. In terms of these acacas, you know, the question comes up also, well, okay, most of them are native to Australia. So, did the Aborigines know about this? And if you look at their art, it's like looks like DMT. It's very psychedelic art. I haven't really w looked at very much all of these pointalist kind of designs in Aboriginal art. I mean, they're extremely psychedelic. See if we can find some of that. But they the uh the aborigines I think they had to know about it. They're just not talking about

63:30it. But one possible way that they could have used it because the DMT in the acacas is so high. The leaves, some of these acacas, they're 2% DMT. Wow. So if you were to take leaves and throw them on a fire in a like enclosed space, like a sweat lodge type space, you could potentially get quite loaded on DMT. There's no indication that they smoked stuff, but they may have fumigated themselves, you know, with DMT. Oh, that completely makes sense if you're talking about a burning bush. Yeah. Well, exactly. And that's How does that make its way to Israel, though? Well, maybe this Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? or anything makes it way anywhere. these these folk technologies. It's interesting um if you look at the uh if you look at the new world, you know, in in the in the historical sense, people have remarked, why are there so more psych so many more

64:29psychedelic plants in the new world than the old world? Right? It's something about people people's relationship to plants in this very high biodiversity environment. People are mcking around with plants, right? Like a perpetual question that comes up is how did they figure out how to combine banisteropsis and psychotria to get the activity of Iawaska? How out of 80,000 species in the Amazon did they figure out? To the uninitiated wh why that's important with the monoaminox. Yeah. Well, it's important because bananisteropsis contains these alkyoids called betacarmolines that are monoaminoidase inhibitors and monoamine oxidase is the enzyme in the gut that breaks down DMT. So you can drink tea with DMT in it. You can eat it all day. Nothing's going to happen because this enzyme will inactivate it. And that's probably a reflection of an evolutionary process. you know, we've adapted to

65:37toxins in our environment basically. But, uh, if you inhibit that with the alkaloids from the banisteropsis, they're very potent, very selective MAO inhibitors that protects it from degradation in the gut. It can cross into the blood and into the bloodb brain barrier. So, that's the basis of the oral activity. And people make much about how they sort of stumbled on this combination, right? And in fact, one of our presenters at at this conference, Manuel Torres, as an archaeologist, has been looking at this for for quite a while. If you and this is uh you know, this is one of the sort of g whiz things. How did these primitive people figure out how to combine these plants? Right? I agree. It's remarkable. If you talk to the shaman, they'll say, "Well, the plants told us," right? But what does that mean? You know, and but what what is interesting to me in a

66:40way or what I've been thinking about lately, if you look at the archaeology of these things, the snuffs that there are two or three different kinds of snuffs that are used in South America that contain DMT, the anodenthra snuffs and the verola snuffs. The anatan snuffs are ancient. We have archaeological evidence that puts that back to 10, 11,000 years. They are by far the most ancient psychedelics used in the new world are these snuffs that contain DMT. Nobody is asking the question, what possessed these people to take the seeds, grind them up, and shove them up their nose. So I mean this is not something that intuitively you would you would do and yet that seems to me as easily p as puzzling as how did they find the combination for iowaska nobody's really addressed that my first impulse when I meet when I find a new plant is not necessarily to snort it you

67:42know but isn't that the place of the pharmacological daredevil I mean there's always this one person who's out there dude check what I found you know and that that curiosity that need to explore things. Yeah, that's exactly right. Somebody stumbled on this and I think the same was true of Iawaska, you know, because in fact DMT is not that uncommon. Truth to tell, beta carbolines are not that uncommon. So sooner or later people were going to stumble on this combination. Once they did, then you know they share the knowledge. It just took time. Yeah, it takes time. Well, do you think there's it is possible? I mean, obviously, it's possible, but is there any evidence that points to the idea that primitive primates maybe didn't have this monoamine oxidase in their system and that or if they did, they had it in lower amounts and it allowed more dimethylrypamine to enter into the body

68:40from consuming plants? Like, is is there a potential link between consuming various plants? It's like we're talking about thousands of different like you could eat a salad if you didn't have monoamine oxidase in your gut. You could eat a salad and potentially trip. Yes. If you didn't have it. That's right. That's right. And when when you see jaguars that do trip like there's there's all this footage of jaguars in the jungle eating these plants. Mhm. What are they doing? Well, do we know or is it We don't know. And I'm not sure how much I how much credence I put into that footage, but could it be like catnip? like it looks like catnine, you know, but they're eating manisteropsis apparently, which doesn't have DMT. It's got the beta carbolines, right? But harm alone contains some psychoactive compounds. Yeah, absolutely. And there are three main beta carbalines in banisteropsis.

69:33In fact, this is what I'm talking about at the conference. I'm my talk is about beta carmolines. a lot of activi the idea that they're not psychoactive that they're just MAO inhibitors is not really true. It's it's a incomplete picture. There are uh a lot of other activities with betaarbolines and a lot of attention recently refocused on harm which is the main beta carbolene in banisteropsis. Turns out it has all kinds of activities that have been sort of overlooked until now. Not least of all, it stimulates uh neurogenesis. It stimulates uh nerve cell growth. Uh this this is this is big news because uh that's huge. Yeah. Um and potentially it it inhibits uh a a kynise which has to do with uh kynis is a pro a protein that phosphorolates things, right? Very common all kinds of kinases around the body. But it inhibits this one particular kynise called dyrk1 whatever that

70:44means but it is associated with the uh with the stimulation of uh nerve growth from neural stem cells. This is all petri plate test tube stuff but it's uh not unreasonable to think that this is going on in the body. So if that plays a part in neurogenesis, that could potentially have some real benefits to people that have things like Parkinson's or nerve disorders or Exactly. maybe PTSD or uh CTE rather. Mhm. It it could or you know, especially dementias like cognitive cognitive Alzheimer's or other types of dementia that are not not strictly Alzheimer's that are just kind of scenile dementias. Um, well, I hope it's true because this is that's going to kick you right back in. Yeah, this is my main prophylactic against civility. I figure if I take Iawaska regularly, I'm probably going to be okay. Yeah, right back in the game. Imagine if that's the case. What one of

71:48the um talks that I listened to of your brothers from way back in the day, he was talking about uh scientific nomenclature related to harm and that before they uh when one of the recent or one of the early explorers to South America when they found this stuff they were calling it telepathine. Yes. They were calling it telepathine because it induced these group states of telepathy because it was rumored to induce that. Okay. Yeah, I mean if you want to get into the, you know, what you could call the sorted history of the chemistry investigations of Iawaska u because harm and harm and tetrahydroharm these were originally found in pagan harma which is where they got their names which is Syrian rue right and a lot of people use that as an alternative mao when they making iow analoges so that's how those alkaloids got their names and then when chemists came along kind of all through the 19th

72:52century they started looking at banisteropsis and they would isolate things and they didn't know what to call them sometimes they called them telepathine because of the rumors sometimes they were called uh benisterine and uh yaheen and because they didn't really know what the compound was right and then it turned out well it's actually harming and harm was isolated earlier. So then they got their nomenclature right. There was a long period where they never collected voucher specimens. So a lot of this work was in some ways useless because they forgot to collect the actual plants that they did the isolation from. It got a little more rigorous. There was a group a couple of investigators that actually thought to collect the plants that they did the isolation with. So then they could document the source right I mean people think this is not important but in ethnopharmacology it's quite

73:52important you know for example for a long time just just a side thing you know for a long time there was a plant called Ponia Amazonica that was reputed to be one of the sources of these alkaloids and one of the components used in to make Iawasa that got loose in the lit literature and it took years to straighten this out because it's not true and there was no doubt there was no voucher specimen to show that this was you know it was not Presia Amazonica it got so bad that Schulties actually had to publish a paper that said Prestonia Amazonica Amazonian hallucinagen or not turns out not you know so we have to beware of bad documentation. If you're going to collect plants, know what you're collecting so the chemists that might come along and work with that can refer back to it, you know. Um otherwise, you it's it's just good science. And chemists don't think in terms of the

75:01botany. They just have something. They're trying to isolate something from it. But you got to be it helps to know what the identity of it is, you know. So, it seems to me that that part of the world, the Amazon jungle, and our really uh troubling relationship with it currently is is so it's it's it's so analogous to the way human beings are kind of interfacing with the world. Like that's a good way to look at it there because there's so many different powerful things that they're learning about this one area while people are chopping it down left and right and slashing and burning and making room for cattle grazing and all this other crazy that's going on down there while you know there's so much to be learned still. Well, yeah, and there is and this is this is a good illustration of you know our sort of penny penny wiseness and pound foolishness about these

75:53things. There are literally trillions of dollars if you just want to look at it in terms of dollars and cents, which is not the best way to look at it because after all, this ecosystem is, you know, the burning of the rainforest is about 30% of human global greenhouse gas emissions. If you could just stop burning down the damnest. Yeah. 30%. 30% they figure. Wow. But then on the other side of economics and there have been assessments how what is what use do you make of the Amazonian biome to maximize its value right if you do cattle it's worth so much per hectare if you do uh well yeah that's the big issue um but the thing is um in terms of undiscovered potentially undiscovered blockbuster drugs. There's probably at least a trillion dollars worth of undiscovered drugs in the Amazon, which will of course never be discovered because we're going to wreck it. You know, we're already busy

77:05wrecking it. So, insane amounts of species of plants. Well, in the Amazon is 80,000 species. Yeah. Wow. I mean, there's about 250,000 species of plants overall. always revising this number and they always seem to revise it up but between 250 to 300,000 species of so-called higher plants and uh in the Amazon it's one of the most biodiverse region about 80,000 species. Wow. So it's and all of this less than 10% of this not even close to 10% of this this incredible molecular and bio and and biological diversity has been looked at as potential sources of new medicines you know I mean there's whole area of folk medicine and folk knowledge but to systematically look through these species and isolate things of interest hasn't been done, you know, a very I mean, it's been going on for years. There's been a lot of work, but it's not really touching a big proportion of it.

78:14Yeah. And pharmaceutical companies are not interested in this. You know, interestingly enough, they want to, you know, they're corporations and despite, you know, they tell you they're finding new medicines that will cure people and help people. To a certain extent, that's true. But remember, the bottom line is profit. They want to own everything, you know. They don't want to share intellectual property with these savages down there that are the stewards of this knowledge. You know, why should we let these people have any part of it? So, they want to make everything synthetically. They want it all to come out of vats, you know, their laboratories. But it's the totally wrong approach because uh the frequency of compounds that make it from discovery to the clinic are very is very low and when they abandon natural products about 25 years ago, the frequency of drug discovery that

79:15pharmaceutical discovery pipeline as they call it dried up and it took a long time for pharmaceutical industry to realize you Essentially, we threw the baby out with the bathwater. We need to go back to natural products because that's where you find the molecular diversity, the scaffolds on which we can build these drugs, right? I mean, you think of the complex molecules that you find in nature. Uh it may that may not be what makes it to the clinic, right? It may may be a derivative of that or an analog of that, but it's still the plants that give you the ideas for the structure. If you can follow me, it's it's not that you're going to grow this rainforest tree in plantations, but you can go and isolate a compound, determine the structure, and then you can probably synthesize an analog. But the idea comes from nature. And isn't part of the problem in that isolating one individual

80:18compound from a plant that might have multiple compounds that work synergistically? Well, that's another difference. Right. Right. Again, the uh the FDA and just the whole drug discovery process, they like single compounds, you know, magic bullets. They like the synthetic compound that is completely defined molecularly and we don't they don't like these all these other related compounds like marinol for instance right synthetic THC which is not nearly as pleasant for people who have cancer or glaucom or any a host of different very good very good example marinol it does what it does but the multicomponent preparations of cannabis are much more effective and that's true of almost all herbal medicines. Now, when they isolate THC, um it's one of how many different canabonoids? There's I think there's about 400 different kinds of canabonoids in cannabis. So,

81:19when you're getting THC, you're getting 400 of it. I mean, a lot of other things in cannabis as well, but I believe I remember reading there were about 400 kinds of canabonoids in cannabis. So good example, incredibly complex plant chemically, you know, and as they all are. But that's that's a good example. I've never taken marinol, but everyone that I know that has has said it's just a pale imitation of what cannabis gives you. Yeah. Well, it it's for one particular for one particular use, which is what the I guess it's pain, right? Is that what it's used for? But even then, the people that take it for that have said that it's not nearly as effective. It's just this is a good example of the of the sort of cognitive dissonance of of the FDA and the whole regulatory thing because for years FDA has been saying, well, cannabis has no medical use. There's no recognized medical use.

82:23Oh, but there is this one drug that the FDA has approved, marinol, which has some small amount of the therapeutic use that cannabis does. But it's just so incredible with so much information available today that they're making such poor choices in that regard that someone can't step up and logically address this thing and say, "Look, we're you're getting a fraction of the benefits of this just because of this bizarre need that human beings have to patent things and to own things, right?" And it's not that plants can't be patented. They can be formulations can. Uh I think uh uh GW Pharmaceuticals which has brought out Sativx, it's a standardized uh cannabis preparation that you take orally as a mouth spray. So it's a natural product. It's patented. It has all the canabonoids are well characterized. It's essentially a standardized extract. So that sort of represents where this is

83:25going. Well, that's a positive that's a positive branch of it, right? So that that's a good thing that more reflects what cannabis should be as a medicine. And so it's essentially all the properties of cannabis and what they've patented is the formulization. Is that what it is? They've patented the formulation. Yeah. And probably the use as well. That's another way you can get patents. How is their formulation unique? Do you know? Uh that I couldn't tell you. It's it's just um it's an oral aerosol spray. So, there's issues that come up with uh Is that it? That's uh a company called Jambo makes a spray. Okay. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, it's similar. It's similar to that. It's uh Yeah, it's an oral um it's an oral aerosol and I'm sure it's well well standardized in terms of what cannab canonoids are in there. I think they brought it out initially for um um multiple sclerosis. That was the

84:26treatment and then for seizures and they're gradually expanding. You know, I mean it's interesting how marijuana has gone from, you know, this sort of reviled drug of abuse to now it's the medicine of the future, you know, right? And that's a good thing. I mean I think I think that uh I think it does have a lot of applications and why it should be illegal there's no reason for this you know but obviously there is it's in someone's interest to keep it illegal. Well, that would be my only concern with um this patented formula formula that they've sort of figured out is that other people can't make a formula as well. It's like in patenting do they own the process like what if it's a very obvious process like you know like the IASA process like it's a very obvious process the monoamian oxidase inhibitor along with the plant that contains the DMT boil it down everybody knows how to do it. If

85:26somebody figures out a way how to patent that, does that does that become a real problem and that they own the rights to something that's been around forever? It does. It does become a problem. And uh um with, as you say, with something like that where, you know, it's pretty obvious how you do it. It's not that complicated. There's no innovative technology there. There's no there's no art, right? There's no art of innovation which is what would make it patentable. There were attempts to patent Iawaska a few years ago and it got uh you know it actually was patented and a delegation of indigenous healers from Ecuador, Colombia and Peru came to the US patent office and petitioned against this and said we've been using this medicine for thousands of years. Who is it that? Oh, it was a guy named Lauren Miller who really didn't know what he was doing. I forget what his company was. This was

86:29when I was still doing my posttock at NIH. So, this was like mid80s. He tried to patent it. And what it turned out was it was a completely specious patent. Uh it was a patent on a particular strain of banisteropsis that he collected that had an anomalous flower color I think and that was the basis of the patent. Well that's absurd because flower color is highly variable. It was it was a useless patent in every respect. So was it rescended? Yeah. the patent of office overturned the patent as they well should have and then I believe it was reinstated for some reason. I haven't really followed this up but I think by that time everyone kind of came to the conclusion that you know it was it was absurd. There was no reason to do it and he didn't really have the resources to develop it. So, and he was not uh you know, he lost a lot of respect because it's not so much

87:35that you can't I mean the intellectual property thing is the real issue you know if you and that's why the pharmaceutical companies want to stay away from traditional medicines by and large because it's like you know the indigenous people are the are the stewards of the knowledge. They know how to use the plant. they maintain the plant. Their habitat, you know, is where the plant is found. Um, so they rightly should have a place at the table. You know, if you're going to commercialize this traditional medicine, they should get something back. Traditionally, we've been ripping things off from indigenous people for a long time. It's called biopiracy, right? And that's how they operate generally. So that's an issue. Uh but there are ways to address that issue. Just basically, you know, come to terms with it and acknowledge that their knowledge does count for something and

88:38and they should have uh they should have a part of the of the proceeds. If you build a um if you make a billion dollar drug out of this, you should be able to give something back to indigenous people, you know. So it's complicated. It does seem complicated. But it also seems like like when you when everything becomes commercial, it becomes like when when you look at the idea that pharmaceutical drug companies at all, when when you look at a corporation and you think of, you know, this idea of, you know, infinite growth and this is what they're subscribing to and they're constantly trying to make more and more money and then you you think about compounds and compounds being legal and them trying to figure out a way to market these things. It seems to become it seems to be a big issue that we're relying on that at all. It's almost like that tale of the scorpion and the frog

89:30where the frog says tells the scorpion, "Hey, I'll give you a ride across the river, but do me a favor and don't sting me cuz if you do, we'll both drown." And then halfway through the scorpion stings him and the frog goes, "What the fuck?" And the scorpion goes, "Hey man, it's my nature." It seems like, right, the nature of these corporations is just to make money. So relying on them to bring these intense psychedelic compounds to the market or to even saying the market, it's terrible word to just bring them to daily use or bring them to the making them free to use. I think that corporations, you know, as you say, their main job as they as they see it, though they don't say so in public, is basically to make money, you know, to patent these compounds and make money and make more money every year. And the best way to do that, there's no there's no revenue model in psychedelics.

90:24There's no way for them to make money according to that model. Here's a way to not make money. Don't give that guy who's got a leaf over his dick a billion dollars, right? that guy, he's been happy shooting arrows at monkeys for 10,000 years. That's kind of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not They're not going to do that if they don't have to. Well, they won't. And uh and you know, these are they want these uh psychedelics if you use them therapeutically, these are things you might take a few times in your life, right? They want drugs you take four times a day for the rest of your life. That's the revenue model. And the revenue model if there is one with psychedelics is not that because they have to be used in a context you know it set and setting right the revenue model if there is one is to have centers to have places you can go and take psychedelics in a controlled setting

91:19they won't look like clinics they'll look like spas right you know I mean you take the family for a weekend and have a nice you know psilocybin vacation ation while you're busy getting your massages and doing yoga and whatever. That's how it's going to work, I think, if it does if it's allowed to go forward. That's that's the model. Uh yeah. Well, we'll see. I mean, I've often said the very idea that you could patent or prohibit a plant is absurd. It is absurd, especially one is non-toxic. What is not patented is prohibited. That's that's that's the way they approach in most circumstances. What's real weird is that we give these caveats to religions. Like that's what's going on now with Iawaska is that there are some companies that have had an exemption through the Supreme Court, right? I shouldn't say companies, but basically that's what they are. They're are churches, right?

92:25They're churches, which is no really just another way of saying a company. You know, they got there. They're institutionalized. They're institutions. Yeah. So, the question is, and and now people are beginning to sort of recognize this or or ask the question. So you've got your you've got the UDV, which is one of these Brazilian churches that's they're the ones that took their case all the way to the Supreme Court and got approved unanimously under it's was actually the first uh case that John Roberts decided after he became chief justice. So very conservative court. They unanimously uh ruled that yes, the UDV is a real religion, which is fascinating. They have the right to use it. Well, it clearly is a real religion. It is a real religion. Just fascinating that a conservative court would have get almost be boxed into doing that because of their views on Christianity. Exactly.

93:19Exactly. They couldn't not do it. And then the Santoy, same thing. They didn't have to go all the way, but essentially they have the same approval. And they're piggybacking on this. And it's they're Christian-based religions as well. Yeah. Well, they're Christian-based religions. So now the question is when you go to Peru there's Iawaska it's used it's not as institutionalized it's kind of idiosyncratic you know you've got these practitioners it the tradition is called vegetitalismo there's no institution there's no there's no doctrine there's no hierarchy there's no there's just freelance practitioners the question is is that a religious activity and should it be protected Ed and this is what some smart lawyers are now addressing with the use of Iawaska in the more traditional way because churches have essentially taken that they've appropriated that tradition and they say

94:20well we want nothing to do with these indigenous people this is our this is our religion you know it's our sacrament they don't even they get upset if you even call it a drug or a medicine to them it's a sacrament well that's fine But elsewhere it is a medicine but it is also uh you know a religious activity. Ventilismo has a spiritual aspect. It should be regarded as a religion. We'll see where that goes. It's almost like with the UDV and these other churches that what they're they've done is they've used this scaffolding of Christianity as a Trojan horse that's allowing this iawaska to get through. Mhm. Um Straman was telling me his experience with it with them where they were all wearing like golf shirts and they they have uniforms and they they're taking these insane doses of super potent iawaska, right? And you know and then they're all singing and singing

95:19songs about Jesus and you know Straman is like a really like very mellow and easygoing guy, really pleasant guy. He was explaining how he sat down with these people in the morning after all this is over. He's like, "What the are you people doing?" And his eyebrows are raised and he's thinking about his trip from the night before. He's like, "These people are taking like super potent doses of Iawasa and they're singing about Jesus with golf shirts on." He's like, "What the?" And they're, you know, they have like plastic folding chairs and and like lawn furniture and it's like, "What the is this?" What it is is it's a religion, you know? It's a religion. That's what it is, you know. Um, but I I mean, I think it's okay. Spread it away. Spread it on. Yeah. Spread it on. I mean, the thing is I I work I haven't had much to do with santomy. Not that I just haven't had the

96:12opportunity, nor am I particularly interested in going to ceremonies where I am told that I have to dance the whole time. That's not my thing. But I know the UDV well, you know, because we did the biomed study with them in the '9s. So they're wonderful people. They're very kind, you know, their families are good. They're very nice people, but I would never join. They asked me to join. I said, "Look, I don't do cults, right? I'd be happy to come drink with you anytime." What is it that the religion? What is it that Groucho Marks once said? I think to paraphrase him, I would never be a member of any group that would have me. Yeah, that's pretty much what I told him. You know, you don't want me. I'm I'm a heretic by nature, but I'm happy to, you know, share your brew. And they do make fine fine brew. No doubt. I'll tweet your organization. Tweet it out for you, but I'm not showing up at the

97:08stockholders meeting. I'm not going to join. But it seems to me with my experience with DMT that uh it's so powerful and so profound that I wonder if that's a way that Christianity works. You know, like this idea of Jesus and the saints and heaven and God and all these different manifested deities. Like people thumb their nose at it and say it's ridiculous and preposterous, but everything on DMT is ridiculous and preposterous. And I wonder if under the guise of the UDV and they're singing and they're dancing, if Jesus is real in a sense that you can actually communicate with a thing that takes the form of Jesus in that sense. I wonder what they're seeing. I mean, I really wonder if if they're going the whole idea of psychedelics for the non-initiated is a big part of it is how you're going into the experience set and setting and also your mindset also. You know, the like

98:02the the state of mind that you approach these things can greatly affect your experience. Hence, bad trips for people that have an unstable psychological state of mind or they try to fight the experience. I really wonder if these people are embracing the the the all the beautiful concepts of Christianity, the love, the the the the the family idea, the brotherhood, the the idea of uh brothers and sisters together and this sense of unity and love of the creator. If this under this idea, if Christianity is actually an effective approach, well, I think I think what you experience, you know, is not confined to Christianity. What you articulated is just basically kind of the the characteristics of a religious experience or spiritual experience, right? Without necessarily tying it to Christianity. I mean, love, compassion, respect for each other, you know, I

99:00mean, these are elements of a a a kind of the uh I don't know what you call a generic religion. These are elements of the religious experience. The interesting thing about the UDV and and these other churches is that they have actually created a structure where this can happen. Whereas most religions, the last thing they want you to do is have an actual religious experience. I mean, it's all made, it's all set up to make sure that doesn't happen because religious experiences are dangerous. That's a very profound thing you just said that most religious the last thing they want is for you to have a real religious experience. No, it's all set up to make sure that doesn't happen. Only the priests get to have it or that was the original thing. And then and of course they don't have it either because they're you know I mean it it's gotten away from that. And um how significant is that that the

100:00original idea of the rules of Christianity might have come from that the Moses and the burning bush. These ideas that are passed on love thy neighbor all that stuff might have been from that very experience. It might have been from that various that experience. But the thing is and this happens it's it's not just Christianity it's like it's like any powerful spiritual technology anything that is numinous right I'm I talk a lot about the mysterium tremendum right the DMT the psychedelic experience is a mysterium tremendum something that is mysterious tremendous terrifying spiritually powerful and must be controlled, right? I mean, I mean, it is all those things. It's too powerful. So, in these in these power structure, there's always someone who says, you know, who wants to sort of put a collar around that, put a lasso around that, to seize the reins, if the if you

101:04will, there's a temptation to grab it and use it for your own purposes, which is, you know, usually a man. usually I don't know if any women not women don't seem to be you know that's not inbuilt to do the dominance thing but there's very often a male figure who can take any spiritual technology co-opt it to their purposes you know which is often sex or money or power or all of those things yeah it's always a man you know of course it's a man god damn it why do we suck we just do, you know? I mean, we just That's why there's 7 billion people cuz we're sneaky and we get you pregnant. Okay. Sorry. That's pretty much it. We're not We don't want to be like this, ladies. It's not our fault. God. Yeah. But it's always a man. It really is always a man. There's no arguing with it, you know. So, you get this all the time, you know, in in any kind of quote unquote

102:09spiritual tradition. It's a It happens in the in the Iawaska thing as we know. You know, it's not uncommon to have sexual abuse and that sort of thing. It's very common lately. Lately, more and more so you hear these stories of these guys. Um my friend Amber Lion had it happen to her like on one of her first experiences. This guy was groping her where she was under and she's realizing what's going on and just realized like this is probably how some of these people sort of like they found this technology and you can call it technology if you want but this this pathway to this incredible experience they provide it to people but they're not really much in into taking that journey themselves. They're really into exploiting this thing for financial gain and for power and influence. that is what it's morphed into now that there's the tourism phenomena and all that

103:00stuff. So yes, they see it as a way to uh to exactly that to power, influence and and money, you know, which just illustrates again it's all about there's nothing inherently good or bad about these technologies. They're you know teawaska can be a wonderful thing if it's used properly and it can be a really terrible thing. It's all about the use you make of it. You know, the moral dimension that comes with uh with how you use it, you know. I mean, there are Iascaros that have, you know, I I say they don't listen to their medicine in a sense. They they do these things. They're not really absorbing the lessons that they should be getting from the medicine. Others do listen to their medicine and they're, you know, and it it's not so easy to sort out who's the good ones and who's the bad ones. Sort of like what you were talking about these people that have the simplistic

103:59idea that all you have to do is get Donald Trump high on DMT and he's going to see the light. That's not necessarily the case. Not necessarily the case. I think it would be wasted on him. I think we would have to do at least at least an inddwelling catheter, maybe two or three hours of continuous DMT. infusion Batman. Why Cath? Sorry, wrong wrong term. Introvenous. But you It's very very Freudian that you decided to go through his dick, right? That is hilarious. Not that. Not that. We We'll We'll go through the vein. I don't know, man. I think he might have nailed it the first time. That might be the way to get it. Maybe the way to get it to him is some perfect Russian robot doll who just locks him up and you know right when he gets inside of her. There you go. She gets him in full guard, locks him in place and in a catheter like delivery. Wow. Yeah. Maybe they can program it like

105:00like DMT like little nanobots that go right through the the right through the penis hole right into the system. They just run out of her right in there and he's he just takes off. But again, there has to be something there. Somebody to have an effect. Please, somebody animate that. I know there's somebody out there that wants to. That's that's do it. That's the way to do it. Just some perfect super hot 10 Russian hooker looking chick. No offense to Russian hookers, right? Or Donald Trump. Or Donald Trump even. Look, Donald Trump was a baby at one point in time, you know, and you and I, we both have children. We know there's it's a delicate process of turning an adult uh making an adult out of a child. And a lot of factors come into play, but almost all babies are born well, they certainly have their own personality. They're in many ways a blank slate. And so they're in a lot of

105:57ways a victim of the environment that they're raised in. That's one of the weird things that I've developed uh in my own self over the last few years is just thinking about people as babies. I think of everyone as a baby now. Like since I've had kids, I don't I mean obviously I think of them as being adults, but I think of them as an adult that used to be a baby. And I never used to do that. Before I had children, I used to think of people as being in a static state. I meet you and I go, "Well, this is Dennis McKenna. This is how Dennis McKenna's always been." And now I go, "Oh, Dennis used to be a little boy." You know, Dennis was a baby. He used to, you know, and then he saw a lot of things. He learned a lot of things, but you know what I mean? Yeah. Like that's Trump. He's almost as much of a victim as he is a a perpetrator in a way he is. And Trump's a good

106:45example of somebody I mean, in some ways, he's still a child. You know, he never really grew up. I mean, that's part of the problem. All everyone because he has so much power and money, everyone cowtows to his impulses. But, you know, I mean, in some ways, like Jared and Ivanka are maybe a stabilizing influence on him, although although, you know, I'm sure their agenda is totally evil as well. Well, confused at very No, they definitely don't deserve the amount of power that they're wielding, nor does anybody. What's what's more fascinating about him than anything is that what he holds up to the golden standard is success, right? I mean, this is the guy that, you know, everything has to have his name on it. It's all Trump this and Trump that. And if you looked at like the great American vision of success, it's to become some sort of super rich ultra-billionaire. But even though

107:35everybody knows he's a super rich ultra-billionaire, he still is deceptive about his own success. He still has to lie about it. He still has to distort it far past whether it's the numbers that came to the inauguration, whether it's the numbers that he won the electoral college by. He lies about all these different things. And it's in it's inherent. It's a part of him this intense lack of satisfaction with any result. Any any result, even if it's winning by a mile, he must win by a hundred miles, right? You know, and that's childish. That's like a an intense and but it's that same intense dissatisfaction that's inherently very dangerous in a leader because it's leading him to make these these critical judgments that aren't based entirely on reality but rather what he wants people to perceive. Right. That that's quite right. I think that's dangerous. That's what we were saying before. No

108:32thoughtfulness. There's no thoughtfulness in the man. There's no reflection. Right. reflection, a lack of humility. So, this is uh this is not what you want in your leaders because, you know, we see what's happening like the you know um he's going back and forth with the Soviets. He's going back and forth with no North Korea and it's like a schoolyard spat, you know, but these people have nuclear weapons to throw. So, we need to back off from that, Donald. You know, it's just But he can't do that because he has to respond. and he has this impulse to respond. I mean, I think that uh you know, I don't know. I mean, it he's not going to be exposed to Iawaska, I'm pretty sure, unfortunately, cuz it would help him. And uh you know what what is disturbing to me in many things about Donald and this sort of reality distortion he's created is people, you know, they take

109:31it seriously. I mean, they're they're sort of like intimidated by it. Not enough people are standing up and saying, "Well, this is not true. This is not true. You're completely deluded about this. You're, you know, I mean, there's a some sort of impulse to show some respect when no respect is is due, you know, I mean, respect for the office for the office for whatever some." But then when he comes out with these things that are obviously not true, I'm sorry, there are no alternative facts, right? Alternative facts are lies. There's only bizarre candy coating of Alternative facts is the most hilarious candy coating of ever. My my hope is that we get through this without nuclear war and then we realize that we can't have a president. And the idea of having one alpha chimp run the entire group of 300 plus million people is insane. And it doesn't work when you

110:29have technology, when you have this ability to communicate instantaneously globally with everybody constantly. It's just it's an archaic idea that served its time but needs to be revamped. How would you do that? That's a really good question. I'm I'm not the guy to be the architect of the future civilization, but I would think that putting as much power as we put into one individual is insanely problematic. It's just you you you're dealing with all these ego issues, decisionm issues. And also the camps, the two separate camps, the right left camp, that's crazy too. That's crazy, too. Right. Right. No, I mean I think one way to approach it wouldn't have to be such a such a tremendous shift from what we've got would be to go to a a parliamentary system like Canada has for example where you represent your party and if the other party gets enough you know they

111:30can vote vote you out without going through the whole impeachment process there is no impeachment process they parties can form a coalition and vote the prime minister out, you know, and it's much easier to topple a government and in some ways that's a good thing, you know, it's more resilient and Canada's a good, you know, there are many parliamentary democracies, but that's the one that's closest. I think there's also an issue with dealing with the real problems of the world in a in a time where there the the realities of say Syria, what's going on over there are so horrific and they're so far removed from the realities that we deal with here. You you almost need to have someone who has some sort of experience with those people and those lands to understand and put it into perspective. Yeah. And I think we're entirely lacking of that perspective like is in terms of

112:30our culture. Like I don't think we understand what a brutal military dictatorship is like. I think we see it on television and it seems almost too abstract. But the president has to deal with that in a in a very real way and no one person can but that's what advisors are for. Exactly. But if you don't have good advisors or if you choose to ignore them, then you're in deep you know, and that's I mean I mean Donald appoints advisors who already share his delusions, of course. So there's nobody there to say, "Wait a minute, you're wrong, you know, and based on experience and expertise and all this, you're wrong, and you need to rethink it." That's what bothers me about one among many things about the way that he proceeds. I mean, you know, the thing that bothers me most about the change in administrations is that they have basically looked at climate change.

113:30They said, "We we don't believe it. It's not happening. We're not it's not even on the table." And actually, that needs to be the thing on the table. That should be the primary thing we're talking about. All this other stuff is important, but we're talking about the accelerating changes that are that are essentially under under mining the mechanisms that keep uh the earth uh habitable by life. This is a pretty important issue. And to have people that say, "Well, it isn't, you know, we don't believe in climate change." Well, I'm sorry. Climate change is real. I don't care what the you believe. It is real. And for you for this administration to not only ignore it, but then roll back all these other measures that were put into place is uh you know, it's just the stupidest idea I can imagine. Not just roll back, but removing the funding for monitoring it. Yeah. Removing scary, suppressing

114:32the information and all this. So, you know, if you look at the the people in the in the Trump administration, they're either from the energy industry, Rex Tillerson, you know, I think the government has become essentially a subsidiary of Exxon Mobile, you know, and not the other way around. And so, you know, that's uh that's what they're doing. And that's terrifying. You know, it's Goldman Sachs or Exon Mobile. I mean, corporations run the world. We've known this for a long time. governments are just puppets. Does this in in some ways it's just it's just too eerily parallel to what we're talking about with the rainforest like with all these all this potential in the rainforest and almost this race the race to see like can we get to these incredible new plants that we haven't discovered before we it up by cutting down all the hardwoods and burning all the forests. Can we get to this

115:29potential future utopia of people being able to read each other's minds, being able to communicate simultaneously all throughout the world, understanding each other regardless of language? Can we get to that before we blow ourselves up? Before we get into a nuclear war with North Korea or any of this crazy with this insane administration that's existing in this sort of chaotic manner alongside some of the brightest minds and most innovative people that have ever walked the face of the planet that are influencing things in a way today that is really unparalleled in terms of human history. potential that any new invention or innovation can enact whether it's understanding new compounds that we discovered in the rainforest or some new technology that's made in Silicon Valley. I mean this is an amazing amazing parallel. Yeah. No, I agree. It does seem like it does seem

116:22like a race in some ways between idiocy and genius. Yeah. They're incredibly brilliant people and they're developing and I and there are solutions to the problems that face us, right? But then on the other side, you have the no nothings, you know, who are marching into the future, eyes firmly fixed on the rearview mirror. It's like, oh yeah, coal technology, that's the greatest thing. Let's go back to that. I mean, is that stupid or what? You know, cold technology is obsolete. It's definitely even, you know, there are better solutions, you know, or the whole attitude toward drugs. Oh, the war on drugs, the war on drugs was great. Let's go back to that. I mean, these are people who are not living in the present for one thing, not planning for the future, and they don't really want to know. It's like our minds are made up. We know drug abuse has got to be bad, so

117:17let's prohibit it. Let's go back to the old model. they're not capable of entertaining uh new ideas and that's a problem. You know what do you think about the idea and I've I've heard this brought up and I've I've entertained it my own self that maybe we need some sort of enemy or some sort of thing to resist in order to rise to the full potential of innovation of ideas of that we almost need some sort of mountain to conquer. We need some sort of a force to be aware of that really makes people rise up. Like I've I've seen more more people politically active and politically engaged now post election than I ever did before the election cuz I didn't expect Trump to win. Right. And now that he did, it's like it's raised up this resistance to this insane level that I've never experienced before in my life. I mean, it feels to me like Kent State all over again. And it feels no

118:10we're it was a real shock that he won and it's it I agree it's been a wakeup call. So now there is this strong resistance uh movement um and there and and that's a good thing that that's happening. Also journalism has suddenly found itself again. You know some journalists some sectors of it are beginning to you know for so long they were essentially stenographers. is they would repeat whatever the mouthpieces of the government. Now the journalists are questioning everything and asking, you know, tough questions of these clowns and expecting answers, right? And it's kind of like, you know, when I was young, I wanted to be a journalist, right? I thought Walter Kankite was the pat cat's pajamas. I wanted to be like him. I wanted or I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. You know, I just admire journalism. And for a long time, I have not found anything to admire in

119:09it. It's like they're they've all been lobbomized or something, but but they're rediscovering it. You know, the good ones are rediscovering it and the re-emergence of investigative journalism. And right now, I think that's the, you know, that's our best hope cuz I think that uh these guys, they'll just keep digging. There's going to be so much bad stuff come up about Trump and all this collusion with the Russians and you know um potentially enough to impeach him. The question is will the Republicans find enough enough spine to uh you know to do that but they did with Nixon. Yeah. You know and Nixon I mean what he did was not nearly as bad as what Trump is doing. And so we'll see where it goes but you know shameless in a way that Nixon never was. Shameless. And and you know, I I take a certain comfort in the thought that uh you know, they have all these draconian things

120:13they want to do. Roll back all the environmental regulations, the whole immigration thing, uh you know, uh war on drugs, but none of it is going to happen. None of it actually will happen. Well, the immigration stuff is pretty real here in California. I mean they IC showing up at Home Depot. They showed up at Home Depot. I have a friend who's born in America. He's Mexican. And uh they asked him where he was born. They pulled him. He's a veteran. And he knew like how to deal with this. And he knew what's legal and what's not. And he, you know, he's a grown man. He's in his 50s. And they And a citizen, right? And a citizen. Yeah. And a veteran. I mean, he served the country in in Iraq. And so they're coming up to him and and asking, you know, where are you born? And he's like, "You can't ask me that." And he's like, "You don't you're not allowed to ask me where I'm born." And then, you

121:00know, he says, "Who are you?" And like, you know, we're immigration and whatever the IC stands for. And he goes, "Let me see some documentation." The guy shows him his badge and his gun. He goes, "That's not your documentation. Pull out your goddamn documentation." And he pulls out his military ID. He's like, "Look, here's my documentation. This is me. Who the are you? And why are you asking people where they're born? I was born in California." Okay? You're not allowed to just go up to people and ask them where they're born. But people that don't know that they're they're getting arrested, they're getting taken, and they're getting deported. They're taking people that are dropping off their children at school. They're grabbing people. And there's a a bunch of cases of this. And you're just hearing about the cases that get to the press. There's so many of them that

121:40you're never going to hear about. And this is just rampant. And this never existed before. Not in the Bush administration, not I mean, not in Bush Senior. I mean, it just didn't happen before in any conservative administration. They didn't treat it like this. This is a weird time. Yeah, it is a very weird time, but I think it's temporary. I mean, well, I hope so. But what you said about journalism, I think it's important to point out that the they're just as they they up just as hard with the left as they did with the right. I mean, they they let the Clintons get away with a lot of horseshit. They got let Obama get away with a lot of horseshit. They they they said talking points. They were given talking points and they ran with those talking points so that they would get access to the president and they would get access to congressmen, the senators and they did it forever. And it wasn't

122:22journalism. And you're right. And they're the reason why this guy got into place in this that's in this situation right now. It's just as much of a fault of them of not holding the left to the fire as it is to, you know, what's going on right now. Yeah. I mean, journalism has a lot to answer for. There's no doubt about it. I just have a you know maybe it's a delusion I would just I would just I I like I would like to think that journalism is finding its voice and finding its function again its function is to you know as somebody said I think it was I have stone you know the function is to uh comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable right and that's essentially the journalistic mandate you express the truth ink the truth seek the truth inform and Don't assume, you know, play the propaganda game, be able to look beyond it. And they have to be in this environment

123:19where people keep calling fake news. They have to be undeniable. And I think there in that sense, they are reinvigorated. You know, I mean, that's one of the things that, you know, you're you're seeing that's one of the things that the Times talked about like after it was over, after the election was over, they're like, we are we're going to reinvigorate, refocus our dedication on journalism. Yeah. I think that's a good sign. Then the other side of it is that we can just, you know, the way the Trump administration proceeds with all these things they want to do, they inevitably just get bogged down in litigation, protest, uh, you know, at some point they do have to answer to Congress. So I think, you know, I the wheels were already coming off before he even took the oath of office. Yeah. they've continued to come off and it's just going to get it's going to just uh

124:11sort of uh degenerate into litigation, acrimony, inability to get anything passed. Uh you know, which is all good. I mean, essentially in in this case, chaos is our friend because they won't be able to advance this uh draconian agenda. Thank God. And you know, hopefully circumstances will enable us to get rid of them quickly. I don't know. You know, I'm I'm not entirely confident in that. I just the whole thing to me when I'm looking at these protests like what was going on yesterday where people are just beating the out of each other in the streets. People with red hats. Like the red hats are the bad people. It's so strange. Like it's so strange seeing people these make America great again hats fighting with people that are wearing masks and motorcycle helmets and there's sticks and people are throwing you know smoke bombs. I'm like this is crazy. I I really never thought we'd see

125:07such a clear right versus left civil war in in fact like these little battles. It's and it seems to be ramping up and becoming more and more common and and and becoming more and more violent. Yeah, it seems that it is, you know, but so what can we do? You know, we're not out on the streets protesting on one side or another. I mean, I I I as you know, and I'm basically I think for me, I continue doing what I'm doing because I think I think these plant medicines are the single most important catalyst for changing consciousness on a global level. And that's what has to happen. So, I'm not saying I have nothing messianic about it. I'm, you know, I tell people I work for the plants, but I think it's valuable to bring people to that experience in a place that is safe. They don't have to worry about those issues. They can have this direct download with the mysterium tremendum,

126:07if you want to call it that, that can change hearts and minds. I think that globally, I think that I is a catalyst for that. you know why has it suddenly gone global in the last 20 years? I think, you know, I think that it's a sign that Gaia, if you believe in that concept, that the earth itself is an intelligent entity, is getting a little bit hysterical and is trying to get our attention, you know, wake up the monkeys and this is the way it's, you know, so I is an ambassador from the community of species to what I call the problematic primates, you know, this out of control species that uh needs uh a good talking to in a certain sense and say wake up you're wrecking this place, you know, and you don't have to. Well, it seems like so systems always try to balance themselves out, you know, whether it's through warfare or disease or some new government usurping the old

127:13power or whether it's through predators and prey. And there's always some weird sort of reaction to something gaining too much power. And whether it's ideas or ideologies or or patterns, they they gain too much power and then something shows up that sort of tends to diminish that and erode the very foundation of it. That's that's what I feel about psychedelics that in many ways what they're doing and even the sneaky door like the people that talk about cannabis being, you know, some sort of a gateway drug. Well, it's not a gateway drug to the bad ones. I think it's if anything it's a gateway drug to the ones that are going to change the world. Yeah. If it doesn't do it on its own, it Yeah. I mean, this concept of a a gateway drug is, you know, it's just stupid in a sense. This is something that the the drug warriors have come up with, you know, I mean, I'm here to tell you

128:10coffee is a gateway drug. Alcohol, probably chocolate ice cream is a gateway drug. We've all taken these things and, you know, look where we are now. We we you know, so gateway drug, it's just the concept is absurd. What's it? If it was not sold in a in a environment where there were a choice to have all sorts of other illegal drugs, it wouldn't be a gateway drug, would it? No. Well, the the alcohol one is the most ridiculous one because it's everywhere and it's the one that inhibits your loosens your inhibitions more than any other drug is responsible for the most foolish behavior. Yeah. It's everywhere. You can get it at every restaurant. You can get it almost everywhere you go. There's like even to the point where it's not even recognized as a drug. Yeah, that's the cognitive dissonance. For years, you know, the FDA could not classify tobacco as a drug

129:03because it was a different regulatory framework. Well, of course it's a drug, you know. And somebody said, "Yeah, it's the only drug you can use when used as instructed will kill you." Is that's hilarious. Isn't it funny that the word drug not funny but it's Isn't it problematic at the very least that the word the word drug is sort of this gigantic blanket that we throw over all these things that perturb consciousness right well good and bad positive and negative no beneficial effects whatsoever and massive ones this is another reason this is another example of why this conversation about drugs is so shallow because we're talking about drugs you know this completely really scary. As you say, good people don't use drugs. What about what about which drugs? Why don't we talk about which drugs? Because there's thousands of drugs. So, which one are we talking about? Or we just ban all drugs,

130:02you know? I feel like just calling them drugs is a problem. I mean, how could you call DMT the same thing that you call alcohol? It seems to me to be so crazy. It's just not a useful term, right? you know, um, and then also, I mean, the problem that they're facing and that we have to acknowledge, which I've been saying a lot lately, is, you know, we're made of drugs, right? That's why drugs work. We are made of drugs, right? We are biochemical engines that run on drugs, which are neurotransmitters and hormones and enzymes and all of these things in biochemical system. They're involved with signal transduction with, you know, organisms are networks of communication. They're mediated by neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters, if you isolated them from the brain, put them into a bottle and sold them, that would be a drug. Well, it is a drug. So, this idea that uh, you know, we are

131:03inherently biochemical systems, you know, and people don't want to acknowledge that, but that's the truth. You know, we're made of drugs. So the people that want to have the drugfree America, I'm sorry. You know, we're made out of drugs. Drugs are built into uh who we are. That's why drugs taken from plants or from the outside have the effects that they have, you know, because they affect these systems that uh you know, our our big brains. This is kind of a consequence of evolution, you know. We have these enormous brains, you know, that evolve very quickly and we like novelty, you know, we have all of these brain receptors. We like to we like to stimulate those receptors because it makes us feel good or it's interesting or for all sorts of reasons, we like to tweak our states of consciousness. It's just built into who we are, you know, and it's not a bad

132:05thing. Well, this is a problem with the way you're thinking. You have too many facts and use too much science and you don't have enough Jesus. Sorry. You don't have enough Jesus in your life. If you had Jesus, you wouldn't need all this nonsense and then that Jeff Sessions would make sense to you, right? That may be true. But unfortunately, I don't. So, yeah, I'll just continue to be deluded and believe in science. Well, it's just so important and things like that. It's so important that you embrace Jesus and you just won't. I can't do it. I mean, I I did it. I you know I'm a recovering Catholic. I've been there. I know I know the drill. I know the territory. But it really in all honesty though it's so important that you are saying these things so people can change their perspective when they realize that oh yeah we are really just water balloons of drugs. We're just filled up

132:56with it. I mean we're that's that's what operates the whole thing. That essentially is what we are. That's what adrenaline is. All these different things are you know. Yeah. I didn't say it first. Do you know who said it? It was Salvador Dolly who said, they said, "So, how do you come up with the your ideas for all this crazy art you do? You must be on drugs, right?" He said, "No, I am drugs." Which I guess that put the conversation to an end. So, if you think about it, it's quite true. Um, speaking of a lot of, you know, without I don't want to get too far down this, but a lot of the problem with organized religion, I think, is that it denies biology, right? I mean, the idea. Yeah. Somehow being in a body, being this chemical system and enjoying what it is to be that is forbidden somehow. And this is partly a reflection of our devaluation of nature, you know,

133:54which is that includes our own nature as well as nature out there. Psychedelics are the antidote to this, right? They make you reappreciate your relationship with nature. So they they can catalyze changes in consciousness. That's why I say the most effective thing that I can do as somebody who's concerned with the planet is bring people to situations where they can encounter the medicine and make of it what they will. I know I'm not there to tell them what to make of it. I'm there to tell them this will be the most intense personal experience that you'll ever have. It's up to you how you evaluate it. And you can't tell them because in all honesty, you're still working it out yourself, right? And I'm certainly I don't want to tell them. I'm a big believer in use your own mind, use your own brain to work this out. And that's why we have it. You know, that's

134:50one of the most important things about recognizing someone who's uh, you know, a quote unquote fake shaman or someone who's using it wrong, someone who's telling you exactly what it is and what you're going to experience. Like, no. One of the most beautiful things that psychedelics drugs, psychedelic drugs do is they dissolve any notion that you might have that anyone has a hold of this thing. Yes, very much so. That is exactly right. If somebody tells me, I'm a great shaman. I'm going to lead you through this. I'll, you know, I'm out of there. Because they obviously have not understood what it is. If somebody says, I'm not a shaman. I just help. I just help. Well, I just want to facilitate you. You know, it's the medicine that is the shaman. A shaman will say, "I'm not a shaman. I just know a few tricks." That guy is the guy I want to drink from. Yeah. I just

135:43know a few tricks. I just know a few tricks. If you get in trouble, I can help you. Otherwise, I'll just step back and let you do it, you know. And that's that's the essential thing because the medicine itself is the shaman. And while I have you here, I have to ask you two questions because I keep forgetting to do to do this. First of all, canabonoid receptors. What is the relationship between canabonoid receptors in human beings and the actual uh use of cannabis or the evolutionary use of cannabis like over the course of human development? Is are canabonoid receptors in place because people have consumed cannabis throughout history or they are just a natural function of biology? No, they're they're a natural function of biology like a lot of these things, you know, like opiate receptors, the same thing. Canabonoid receptors, they're many kinds and they're all over the body. They're not

136:37just in the brain. They do all sorts of things. They're involved with immune functions and inflammation. And it's quite complicated, which is why CBD oil works. And it's not psychoactive. It's not psychoactive. It works on different receptors. There's at least three kinds of canabonoid receptors. Uh and evolutionarily the you know they they're not canabonoid receptors there's the endocinabonoid system. They are they are responsive to things that we make in the body like anandmide and there's another one who I always which I always forget but these are indogenous compounds that bind to canabonoid receptors. So just like there are endogenous compounds that bind to opiate receptors these are peptides like endorphins enke and those sorts of things you know but the receptors just happen to bind these plant alkyoids but that's not why they evolved you know they have

137:39functions in the body related to analesia and sleep and that sort of thing same with the canonoid receptors they evolved not because there were cannabis plants out hair but because the body made these endockinabonoids and they mediated all kinds of functions like anandmide these things uh you know canabonoids a little different than something like uh like DMT or psilocybin which work kind of very specifically on the serotonin receptors and uh that's how they mediate their effects the effects of canabonoids are more widespread you could say more multi- multivalent is maybe a good word, but it's it's not because the plants were there that we evolved these things. We had this we were neurologically, you know, modern humans, you might say and curious, right? Sampling everything we could get our hands on in the environment, whether stuffing it up our nose or usually drinking it or

138:45whatever. naturally you're going to stumble over these compounds because uh you know the biome is is these are just abundant in the bio. So it's not really a chicken or the egg sort of situation like what came first the canabonoid receptor or the consumption of cannabis. Yeah the receptors were there first. How do we know that? Uh how do we know that? Because we can actually tra we can trace the phogyny of these things. You know we have molecular methods now where we can actually trace the ancestry of receptors right for example we have ways to measure this. So you know canabonoid receptors you can look at the phogyny and and you know they were present in they're present in mammals long before we were around you know and tryptophan is the same thing. tryptophan which is the amino acid we were talking about precursor to many of these psychedelics right so how old is tryptophan as an

139:50amino acid you can look back at the fogyny turns out damn old right you know possibly 3.8 8 billion years old. The genes for tryptophan have been found in phoggenetic groups that go back that far, the so-called trip operon. So you know so these things have been around for a long time and uh you know in the most primitive organisms you know serotonin is another good example. Serotonin is which most of the psychedelics work on. Serotonin is thought to be the oldest neurotransmitter phoggenetically older than dopamine or norepinephrine some of these other things. Tryptophan u serotonin is receptors are very old uh phoggenetically evolutionarily. So, how does that correlate with uh runner's high? Um, when when people have this runner's high and apparently it has some sort of an effect on canabonoid receptors, what what is going on there? And does it actually mimic the high that

141:01someone gets from consuming cannabis? Yeah, it may I've heard runner's high discussed in terms of the of the opiate receptors, the and endorphin and so on. Maybe cannabis, too. What we do know is that in states of high stress, you can boost the production of these indogenous compounds, which is why high stress is one way to induce altered states of consciousness on the natch, right? Oh, I don't need drugs because I can I can run and get high or I can do meditation and get high. I'm sorry, dude. you're still on drugs cuz we're make we're made of drugs and you just figured out a way to boost your indogenous DMT canabonoid. So when people are getting crazy, they're actually in some way doing some sort of a natural drug trip. Yeah. essentially because we are drugs. Remember, there is no state you can experience, including the state that we're in right now, that is not a reflection of our

142:09neurochemistry. We're in a hallucination right now. This is a, you know, this is a reality that our brains take information in from the environment through our sensory neural interface. They combine it with what we know from memories and associations in the cortex and they essentially create a model of reality and that's the reality we're inhabiting. You know, and a lot of what the brain does, it receives information, but a lot of the brain's function is to filter stuff out. You know, if we received everything from the environment all the time, we'd be nuts. We wouldn't be able to take it. So there are these gating mechanisms. It's called neural gating and we are genetically programmed to and through experience as well to uh you know to have these gating mechanisms that filters a lot of stuff out so that we can function. Otherwise reality would be a blooming buzzing

143:12confusion all the time. We wouldn't be able to focus on anything you know. So a lot so for example gating is you know it's malleable it it it it can change depending on the input. So you're in a crowded restaurant for example and there's it's hard to hear. There's a lot of noise in the background. You adapt to that by filtering out most of what's there. Right? You just you can suppress it to some degree. So you can talk to the person across from you. Right? You're not paying attention. But at the next table you hear somebody say your name. Suddenly your gating mechanism, you know, you get that that gets through the filtering mechanisms. Oh, somebody's talking to me. I wonder what they're saying about me over there. Right? You know, that kind of thing. So, it relates. But a lot of what the brain does when you essentially create this hallucination if you want to call it

144:10that uh of the reality that we inhabit. You can call it a model of reality. It's not reality itself. It's a reasonable faximile of reality that we inhabit. And everybody's is different. Hence different views, different everyone is different but close enough that we can talk to each other and all that. It's, you know, but it's not the pure objective reality, you know, which physics doesn't really exist. Well, it exists out there, but we don't know what it looks like. But it doesn't exist to humans. Doesn't exist to us. We don't perceive it. We perceive our own our, you know, our own u model essentially of reality. And I think you explaining that different experiences create literally drug trips also can explain love affairs where people become incredibly addicted to each other indicted to the experience of being around the person and what what what that does to you and that literally

145:08you are on drugs when you're with someone of course and you know that's been studied right I mean oxytocin and probably opiates you know these dopamine All of these things are part of what mediates that relationship between including sex hormones. Absolutely. All those things. All of those things. Sex hormones too are psychoactive drugs in a certain sense. Which is not to say I mean this is not saying that these experiences aren't genuine or valuable or anything. They are obviously you know personal relationships are important. It is not a to my mind it's not a devaluation to say well it's chemically mediated. Okay, great. It's chemically mediated. That doesn't make it invalid. In fact, it means that wow, these molecules are pretty amazing. Yes, they can do this. Well, the feeling is fantastic. Like, why would that invalidate it? It's still real. It's still awesome. Right. Well,

146:05but people, you know, again, they have these artificial distinctions about, well, you know, my mystical experience is more valuable than yours because you had to have psilocybin and I got there on that, right? But it wasn't on the Natch. You know, you're still a prisoner of your neurochemistry no matter what. It just so happens that psilocybin is a drug taken in the right circumstances in the right amount will reliably induce a mystical experience. Nothing wrong with that. You know, you can even study it. Suddenly science can study mystical experiences because we have a reliable trigger that will nine times out of 10 induce a mystical experience in the right circumstances. So then we can take somebody you know maybe somebody's meditated for 20 years or done yoga done other things hoping that they might have a mystical experience. Good for them. But then, you

147:06know, you can take me, an ordinary schmuck or somebody like me who hasn't particularly not particularly spiritually evolved, but I can take psilocybin and yeah, it works. That reminds me of a a great story that your brother told once about a uh a monk who studied a city of levitation and uh he did it for like 30 years and then met the Buddha and said, "Look, I can walk on water. or I've studied this city of levitation for 30 years and now I can walk across the river. And the Buddha said, "Yeah, but the ferry is only a nickel." Exactly. Right. Why'd you waste 30 years, man? You could have just taken mushrooms. Um, speaking of mushrooms, this is something that I get wrong all the time. This is one of the other things I wanted to ask you. What What is um There's some very close relationship that mushrooms have and the absorption of mushrooms have to DMT. Mhm. What what is the chemical

148:06differentiation? Okay. Very very slight actually. Um the temptation to start drawing structures is almost irresistible. Write some stuff down. Go ahead. Draw it down. Be awesome. Here we do. We have a visual. No, we don't. But I'll save that piece of paper. Okay. Well, uh I don't want to get too far into it, but basically Okay. So you've had organic chemistry. Yeah. No. No. Okay. Well, then this may be I am organic chemistry. Yeah, you are. Well, you are organic chemistry. Well, this may be a useless thing, but it does not use the Here we go. Well, you can see it up on the wall here. We've got it up on the screen. Oh, there you go. Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Yeah, we don't have to draw structure. You can look at it right here. So, you don't have to turn around. Look to your right, Dennis. Turn and look. It's on this one as well. Okay. So right so you can see if you so

149:03there's serotonin psyllicin and dimethylryptamine wow you can see that psilicin and dimethylryptamine are very close in structure the only difference is that hydroxy group that oh group that's the only difference so that psyllicin is exactly the same thing as nn dimethylryptamine that's correct wow but that single trivial difference is what makes silicon orally active and Dimethylryptamine is not. Wow. Wow. Because what's going on with that this this static diagram deletion a different molecular model would show but what's going on is that that nitrogen there in when psilicon's in physiological solution the nitrogen is charged has a positive charge. The oxygen doesn't have the H there it has a negative charge. So the nitrogen curls back and is in close association with the oxygen if this makes any sense. So the the enzyme can't get to it. That's why it's orally active because essentially

150:13it can't get to that nitrogen. What that enzyme does is cleave off that nitrogen monoamine oxidase. It takes away that nitrogen and it can't do it with psilicin. So that's why psilicon's orally active. It doesn't require an MAO inhibitor. It's just in some ways it's the perfect psychedelic because it, you know, no preparation needed. You just bend over and pick the mushroom. No preparation is required. Which is probably why very ancient men knew about psilocybin. They couldn't they couldn't not have if they were living in an environment where it was found. That's amazing. You know what's uh really incredible is that uh people are using psilocybin um these days in what they call micro doing very small doses and and seeing these profound benefits and uh one of the things that I'm aware of is kickboxers are using it and kickboxers are using it and a good buddy of mine is

151:15using it says that he can see things happen before they happen like it's almost like he's reading people's minds before they're about to do something even on microtosis. Yeah, that's very interesting. In the intense environment of sparring and in the the intense physical kinetic interaction of kickboxing that he's seeing what people are going to do before they do it in a way that he's never able to do quote unquote on the natch, right? No, I'm not surprised at all. I mean, and why why aren't you surprised? Like, what do you think is happening? Because I think that uh these things let you step out of your box a little bit. They let you step out of your usual reference frame and notice things going on in the environment that again this gating mechanism we were talking about were programmed to filter stuff out. Psychedelics temporarily disrupt that. They let the background come forward and

152:10you notice things about the environment that we're that normally you would suppress because they're not relevant to immediate survival. I don't know if you've read some of the work by Simon Powell. He wrote the psilocybin solution. He writes very intelligently about psilocybin. In his latest book, the mush magic mushroom explorer, he talks about how psilocybin is a lens essentially. You can think of it as a lens through which you can look at the world. You can look at natural phenomena and you will notice things about that those phenomena that you normally would overlook because we're programmed to do it. So in a sense he talks about how psilocybin is a scientific instrument. You know it's a lens through which you can look at the world and see aspects of it that are always there but you never notice them before because we're programmed not to. For example,

153:12um you know, Carrie Mullis is is famous because his discoveries in molecular biology he attributes to his insights about molecular processes that he got from LSD that he could get down with the molecules as he put it and see how all this is working and obviously he invented uh polymerase chain reaction which he got the Nobel prize for. So, it's not like this is a delusion. It's a real thing that he was able to notice that no one else. You know what I'm saying? He was able to put himself in a place where he could notice these phenomena. And I think I think that's really true. If you if you go to take a walk in the forest with an indigenous person, you know, who in some ways is in this less of this sensory gating in a more open place all the time. They will notice things about the environment, you know, that you are completely oblivious to until they point

154:15it out, you know, and then they'll say, "Oh, yes, I never noticed the leaf cutter ants are behaving this way or these different things." their sensory uh sort of uh experience of a environment like the forest is very different than ours, you know, because we're used to we're just not out in nature the same way. And I I dare say I think one of the things that in some ways inserts a a a barrier between us is literacy. You know, we're all literate, right? And we like being literate. It's good that we're literate, but in order to be literate, you have to have this separation between the self and the external environments, you know, you have to pick up a book and read it. I am here. I'm the point of view. Here's the book, you know. So that creates that relationship and you sacrifice you focus on one particular sensory modality and you sacrifice all the other input that is coming

155:22in. I don't know if I'm making sense. No, you absolutely are. You absolutely are. But but that's that's what these substances can do. they can essentially reverse this background foreground relationship that we're so used to. Suddenly, what's right in front of you is not so important. And you can pay attention to the things in the background that you're normally you're programmed to suppress and ignore because, you know, you have to be ready for the saber-tooth tiger to come across, you know, over the the mountain or whatever. You know what I'm saying? But uh it's good in that sense. They teach different ways of perception you know and I think that's a very useful thing to learn. You know indigenous people call these psychedelics plant teachers and they call them teachers for a reason. You know much of the what you experience comes directly from the experience but much of it also

156:25comes from your change perception and suddenly you realize there's a different way to be in the world. There's uh a different way to perceive what you experience that normally you don't uh you know we're programmed to filter out. I don't know if you've ever read or had uh Stephen Buunner on your show. No. He writes very intelligently about this stuff. He's written a book called uh plant intelligence and the imaginal realm and uh it's all about this, you know, uh this uh essentially what his rap is. You can learn this, you know, you can learn this way of perceiving whether you do it with psychedelics or not. you can actually learn it and it's uh it's an interesting it's a better way to relate to nature or more an alternative way to relate to nature in any way. I feel like we have these preassumed definitions of things that we rely upon instead of seeing things for what they

157:30really are. And you you you kind of yeah you box them up and you package them and you go, "Oh, well there's a car. There's a and then one day you look at the car and you go that's a box that has a controlled explosion encased in iron and that rolls on rubber tires. That's exactly what I'm talking about, right? There's a different way to look at things if you step out of the box. And yes, it is all those things and it's also a car and it's but if you did that all the time, you'd never get anything done. That's right. Right. That's right. But I mean it's interesting in that respect you know um with psychedelics uh because we're verbal people and we're you know we're inhabited we inhabit a world of language as much as the physical world and we're almost compelled to try to put some kind of a linguistic wrapper over everything and which is one reason why if you smoke DMT

158:31right you have a complete revelation. It's amazing. It's all of these things, but it's in most cases, you aren't even down yet before you're trying to explain it to yourself. You know, you're trying to stuff this thing in a box because it was so impactful. It's inherently ineffable. You know, you can't really describe it in language, but boy is there a desire to somehow tame this thing which is incomprehensible, totally transcendent, but that doesn't stop you from wrapping about it immediately to try to stuff it into a box because it's too impactful. And so on the individual level, this is what people do. Well, that's what religions do too, right? They try to take something like this and stuff it into a box because in and of itself without that wrapping or that linguistic, you know, filter to somehow tame it and, you know, nullify, neutralize its power. These things are

159:43very dangerous. There there also seems to be some sort of a physiological component to the uh the DMT trip where once it's over you have a very limited amount of time to hang on to those memories. Yes. Well, exactly. And so this is an attempt to entrain that to grab it and I think put a linguistic uh you know tag on it in a certain way so that as a way to not forget it or or try and you know both reduce its power but give you something to hang on because right the memory of what it actually is is going to fade very rapidly. Why is that? What is what's the physiological I don't know what the physiological It's like a lot like dreams in that regard. It's a lot like dreams. It's a lot like dreams. I think that it's just I don't know. It's uh it's something like that. You could probably train yourself to remember it better just like people can train themselves to

160:44remember their dreams. Uh but it it's ephemeral, you know, it does tend to evaporate, you know, which is why it's important to go to the well once in a while and take a drink, right? I am not one of these people that says once you get the message, hang up the phone. That's a model that doesn't work for me. Actually, it might work for some people, but I feel like this is not this is not an answering machine. This is a teacher. This is something that is intelligent that you have a dialogue with, you know, and you don't, you know, teacher teaches a lesson. You don't say, "Thanks very much. We're done now." It's an ongoing process. I've been taking psychedelics for most of my life, a good part of my life. I feel like I've only learned a fraction of what they have to teach me, you know, and maybe I'm just dumb. Maybe I don't get the message as well as other

161:42people, but I don't think so. I think there's a lot. They're full of surprises. You know, I've taken Iawaska lost track a long time ago, but probably 500 times or more. And people say, well, you know, surely you've learned everything there is to learn. Actually, no. You know, I always learn something new and I learn certain basic things too that it always reminds me about. Well, also you're remember that you don't know anything. That's the the chief thing. And you're also acquiring new data constantly in the natural world that needs to be processed and sometimes you process it with the the tools of civilization versus Yeah. versus the psychedelics. It's uh well, you know, it's just interesting. It it keeps me off the streets so far. So, you got to join a gang. A lot of people can be grateful for that. Yeah. No, I'm grateful. I'm grateful. Listen, um I

162:45think I've taken up plenty of your time here and this is an amazing conversation. I I really appreciate it. I appreciate it. Always happy when we can do this. Wish we could do it more often. We should do it. We definitely should. Let's do it. I can I can come. Um, you know, there are many people I can recommend. I'm sure you get hundreds of requests, but certain people you ought to be talking to. Let's do it. Let's do it. So, please, one more time, tell people about this conference and um when they can watch it on Facebook. Okay. Well, it's the espd.com. That's that's the key thing. ESPD50. The conference will be June 6th, 7th, and 8th in the UK. You can go there if you want to attend it. The cost is high to actually go there and and do it. But people can access it on Facebook. And if you go to that website, then there's a link through to the Facebook page. And

163:42we'll be live streaming it, you know, on the 6th, the 6th, 7th, and 8th of June. And it'll be archived. So I don't expect people in the states to get up at 3:00 in the morning, you know, to watch it, although they could if they want to watch it live. But it'll all be, you know, archived so they can look at it anytime. And will you transfer it over to other more accessible like people that don't have Facebook, maybe on YouTube or something along those lines. Vimeo event. We haven't made plans to live stream it on Vimeo. I don't know how you do that. I don't think you can live stream it, but you could definitely take the video recording perhaps if you have a physical recording. It'll it'll all be up there eventually, but just live stream real time. Facebook will be where we do it mostly because everyone has told me this is how you do it. Okay. Well, I will definitely tweet that out

164:31to everybody and I'll let everybody know and I'll I'll put it on all the available social media fantastic pages and order the book. You can go to the website and order the book and the book will come out probably the end of November. It's going to take a few months for everybody to get their, you know, they have to not only make a presentation, they have to submit a paper for this book. And I'm, you know, I'm dangling uh certain rewards out to them to make sure that they do in fact submit a full paper in the spirit of the first conference. But it's going to be an amazing book and it's something I've wanted to do for a long time and uh I can check this off the list now and go on to something else. Beautiful. Beautiful. And hopefully do it more often. Thanks, Joe. Thank you, Dennis. I appreciate you very, very much. All right. Thanks, folks. See you soon. Bye. Byebye.