The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #946 - Dennis McKenna

00:00:00.000 It just seems the problem with the marijuana is five four three two one Dennis McKenna, ladies and gentlemen.

00:00:08.000 Before we were just discussing how I was saying that marijuana can be your friend and it can enhance your life.

00:00:14.000 But if you take too much, it's such a seductive little creature because a little bit of it is like, ah, this is nice.

00:00:22.000 This feels good.

00:00:23.000 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 it'll lock you up.

00:00:36.000 Some people just need to take a couple weeks off.

00:00:38.000 Just relax.

00:00:39.000 That's always a good idea.

00:00:40.000 It is a good idea, right?

00:00:41.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:00:42.000 I think people underestimate cannabis.

00:00:44.000 I think it can be, like you say, it can really sort of knock you off your center, especially if it's edible.

00:00:51.000 And like all these things, you've got to learn how to use it.

00:00:54.000 I mean, it's basically, that's what you've got to do.

00:00:57.000 You'll have to learn how to use it.

00:01:00.000 But, you know, you know, that's my rap.

00:01:02.000 Yeah, it is your rap, but it's a great rap.

00:01:04.000 It really is.

00:01:05.000 It's so important.

00:01:06.000 I think it's so important for people to realize that.

00:01:09.000 You've got to let, like, regular you, like you, like natural, sober you, it's important to be in touch with that.

00:01:18.000 Like, you don't want to always be high or always be caffeinated or always be anything.

00:01:24.000 Well, exactly.

00:01:25.000 I mean, we're, you know, people get...

00:01:28.000 You know, to these places, and they fail to do a reality check on themselves.

00:01:33.000 You know, I mean, I get emails from people all the time that say, well, I'm, you know, life's been pretty weird lately.

00:01:39.000 I took mushrooms five times last week.

00:01:42.000 And, you know, I was, and it's like, dude, how about you lay off for a while and do it?

00:01:48.000 Give yourself a chance because, you know, they tell these stories and it's like the idea of, okay, let's find your center, go back to baseline, lay off the sauce, whatever it is you're taking, and just chill out and try and rediscover your center.

00:02:03.000 It seems like common sense advice, but people don't do that.

00:02:07.000 It does seem like common sense advice, but common sense is not common.

00:02:10.000 I think everybody knows that.

00:02:12.000 Yes, all you have to do is look around to realize that.

00:02:15.000 What is it about people, though, that once they indulge in any sort of...

00:02:19.000 I mean, it doesn't even have to be a substance.

00:02:21.000 It could be an activity, like gambling, for instance.

00:02:24.000 Like, once it gets in your bones, it just seems like you're so compelled to just continue that behavior.

00:02:32.000 And the idea of stopping is almost more painful than the idea of wrecking your life.

00:02:39.000 This is addiction.

00:02:42.000 Basically, these things are reinforcing.

00:02:45.000 They activate those pleasure circuits, you know, in the brain, mediated mainly through dopamine and all of these, I mean, the so-called drugs of abuse, which I think is a terrible word, terrible word.

00:02:59.000 But the reinforcing drugs, the pleasure drugs, work directly or indirectly through the dopamine circuits, and the dopamine is like your button for pleasure.

00:03:10.000 In the same way that serotonin is kind of on the opposite side.

00:03:14.000 It's your button for more like euphoria, feeling good, but it doesn't have the punch, I guess, that the...

00:03:23.000 Which is why people can get addicted to gambling.

00:03:26.000 They can get addicted to sex.

00:03:28.000 They can get addicted to television.

00:03:30.000 All of these things.

00:03:31.000 It doesn't have to be substances.

00:03:33.000 Because they all hit those same circuits.

00:03:37.000 Except the psychedelics, which don't work on that reward circuitry.

00:03:41.000 They work on a different set of circuits.

00:03:43.000 But yet, even with those, your behavior patterns can become addictive.

00:03:48.000 And then you can start just doing psychedelics too much.

00:03:51.000 And it's not even the psychedelics that are doing it.

00:03:53.000 It's just this compulsive need to constantly change your state of mind.

00:03:58.000 Yeah, that's quite true.

00:04:00.000 And if people...

00:04:01.000 You know, the way to use psychedelics is...

00:04:03.000 There are many ways to use it, but basically use it thoughtfully.

00:04:08.000 You know, I mean, you can...

00:04:11.000 All the question about recreational use versus spiritual use versus therapeutic use.

00:04:16.000 I mean, these are all ways to approach it.

00:04:19.000 And I am not a person who says, you must do it this way, you must do it that way.

00:04:23.000 What I do say is, do it from an informed place and approach it thoughtfully.

00:04:29.000 Because, I mean, in other words, don't...

00:04:33.000 Plan for it.

00:04:34.000 Respect the medicine in a certain way.

00:04:36.000 Use it in a circumstance where you can learn from the medicine rather than have the medicine be sort of an overlay over whatever else you're doing.

00:04:47.000 This is something that demands attention, and I think that's the best way to use psychedelics for whatever The spin you put on it.

00:04:57.000 Is it spiritual?

00:04:59.000 Is it therapeutic?

00:05:00.000 Is it recreational?

00:05:01.000 Is it shamanic?

00:05:02.000 These are all labels.

00:05:03.000 The important thing is that you approach the medicine itself.

00:05:10.000 The medicine is the teacher, right?

00:05:13.000 Not the sitter, not the shaman, not the psychotherapist.

00:05:16.000 If they're doing the right thing, Their job correctly, in my opinion, their job is to let you have your encounter with the medicine.

00:05:26.000 And the medicine is what you learn from.

00:05:29.000 They're there to facilitate that.

00:05:31.000 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.

00:05:39.000 But basically it's to facilitate a learning opportunity where you and your teacher, which is the medicine, be it ayahuasca or mushrooms or whatever, can have this intense one-on-one interaction, you know?

00:05:54.000 Feel like with psychedelics as well as with all these other things we're talking about any kind of drug I mean even coffee Alcohol whatever and behavior patterns all these different things I think one of the things that happens with human beings is you get so far along in your life in these behavior patterns become so like tight grooves that are carved into your psyche and then as you become an adult you Then you start to learn,

00:06:23.000 like, oh, there's got to be a better way to handle this.

00:06:25.000 Let me figure out how to do this.

00:06:26.000 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.

00:06:33.000 Right.

00:06:33.000 And so you're just driving this thing and smashing into trees and grinding the gears.

00:06:38.000 And then somewhere along the line, you're like, oh, my God, I'm fucking myself up.

00:06:41.000 I have to figure out a way to do this correctly. 0.84

00:06:44.000 And there's two different approaches.

00:06:46.000 There's one, the abstinence approach, which is very popular.

00:06:49.000 People say, well, I'm straight edge now.

00:06:51.000 I don't do anything and that's it.

00:06:52.000 And I just, you know, I just do wheatgrass and I run hills and stuff.

00:06:56.000 I'm like, okay, you could do that too.

00:06:58.000 Right.

00:06:59.000 You can do it.

00:07:00.000 You definitely can do that too.

00:07:01.000 But it's...

00:07:02.000 I just don't think that there's anything wrong with any of these things.

00:07:06.000 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.

00:07:14.000 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, medicines, whatever you want to call them, these compounds, and get something out of them that can really be beneficial.

00:07:29.000 Right.

00:07:30.000 That's exactly right.

00:07:31.000 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.

00:07:42.000 That's absurd.

00:07:43.000 That's like telling, you know, an 18-year-old guy full of testosterone, don't have sex. 0.99

00:07:50.000 You know, come on.

00:07:51.000 It's built into the genetics.

00:07:53.000 They're going to go for that.

00:07:55.000 What you have to do...

00:07:57.000 What they can't bring themselves to acknowledge in the drug education field is it's not about telling people not to use drugs.

00:08:05.000 It's about teaching people how to use drugs if they choose to, right?

00:08:11.000 I mean, like any other skill, people have to learn to drive.

00:08:15.000 They have to learn to do yoga.

00:08:17.000 They have to learn to do whatever they do.

00:08:19.000 There's an educational process.

00:08:21.000 I tell people many times, you know, my shtick is...

00:08:26.000 There is no such thing as a bad drug.

00:08:28.000 That's another problem with the dialogue.

00:08:30.000 The badness is projected onto the drugs.

00:08:33.000 Drugs are simply compounds with a certain pharmacology.

00:08:36.000 There's no moral aspect to them.

00:08:38.000 The moral dimension comes in how do people use them.

00:08:42.000 That's where, you know, it's human behavior that's moral or immoral.

00:08:46.000 I say, you know, there's no such thing as a bad drug.

00:08:50.000 Plenty of bad ways to use drugs, you know, but that comes from the person, not the compound.

00:08:56.000 Yeah.

00:08:56.000 I've been really disturbed lately by these new super potent painkillers.

00:09:02.000 Like fentanyl, the stuff that killed Prince and...

00:09:06.000 Carfentanil now is the big menace.

00:09:09.000 Fentanyl is bad enough.

00:09:11.000 Carfentanil is...

00:09:13.000 Something like a hundred to a thousand times more potent than fentanyl.

00:09:18.000 What?

00:09:19.000 Yeah.

00:09:19.000 So a spec, literally a pinhead or less of the carfentanil is a lethal dose.

00:09:28.000 Oh my God.

00:09:29.000 Yeah.

00:09:29.000 So this is really not good, you know, because...

00:09:35.000 I'm 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.

00:09:45.000 But people are dying left and right, you know, because of carfentanil is far more toxic than heroin or even fentanyl.

00:09:59.000 So, you know, we're so, you know, there is so much...

00:10:05.000 I don't know, so much confusing and fuzzy thinking about the whole drug issue.

00:10:10.000 You know, for example, as long as we're talking about opiates for the moment, which is not really what I came here to talk about, but, you know, you've heard of Kratom, right?

00:10:22.000 Now the DEA and the FDA, it's a plant.

00:10:25.000 It's used in Thailand.

00:10:26.000 It is an opiate.

00:10:28.000 There's no doubt about it.

00:10:29.000 It hits the opiate receptors.

00:10:31.000 And they want to schedule it.

00:10:33.000 But the problem is that in Thailand, traditional areas, it's often used to get off of heroin.

00:10:41.000 So it's potentially part of the solution, not part of the problem.

00:10:45.000 It's relatively easy to quit.

00:10:49.000 And the big thing about Kratom, it doesn't cause respiratory depression.

00:10:54.000 And respiratory depression is what kills people from heroin overdoses.

00:10:59.000 The alkaloids in Mitragyna do not do that.

00:11:03.000 And Kratom is currently in those weird semi-legal states, right?

00:11:07.000 It's in a semi-legal state, but the DEA would love to schedule it.

00:11:11.000 But again, They had plans to and there was some pushback about this.

00:11:16.000 And people were saying things like I'm saying, wait a minute, let's take a second look at this.

00:11:21.000 This may be part of the solution because it could be a kind of, in a sense, an herbal methadone.

00:11:29.000 I mean, methadone is not the best way, but something that people could substitute.

00:11:33.000 And then gradually taper off.

00:11:35.000 Cronum has some weird sort of property where at low doses is a stimulant.

00:11:40.000 Yes.

00:11:40.000 I've tried it before, but only at low doses.

00:11:43.000 I've had...

00:11:43.000 There's a company that sells it.

00:11:45.000 We have it right here.

00:11:46.000 Oh, there are lots of companies that sell it.

00:11:49.000 Yeah, it's easy.

00:11:53.000 Urban Ice Organics.

00:11:55.000 That's the name of the company.

00:11:56.000 But I take two or three of those and it's like a cup of coffee.

00:12:01.000 And it's like no weirdness, no...

00:12:05.000 I don't feel high.

00:12:06.000 At a low dose, it is that.

00:12:09.000 Why is that?

00:12:10.000 It's kind of a stimulant.

00:12:10.000 Who knows?

00:12:11.000 Just unique pharmacology.

00:12:13.000 How strange, though.

00:12:14.000 At higher doses, it's definitely an opiate.

00:12:18.000 And is it something that impairs motor skills?

00:12:21.000 Well, not so much.

00:12:23.000 I mean, just in the sense that it's like being high on morphine or heroin, so it does.

00:12:31.000 So it really can give you that kind of a feeling?

00:12:33.000 Absolutely.

00:12:34.000 Wow, that's interesting.

00:12:36.000 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.

00:12:45.000 But, you know, why the pharmaceutical companies are not all over this plan, I don't understand.

00:12:51.000 Because for a long time, the holy grail in drug discovery when it comes to analgesics is find the narcotic that is not toxic...

00:13:02.000 You know, the analgesic that is not toxic, hopefully not addicting, but that's not going to happen.

00:13:09.000 And is there an LD50 for this stuff?

00:13:11.000 Oh, sure.

00:13:12.000 I mean, there's an LD50 for most things.

00:13:15.000 Which is, for people who don't know, lethal dose at 50%?

00:13:18.000 Yeah, it would be hard, yeah, the lethal dose for 50% of the sample.

00:13:23.000 But in the herbal form, it would be hard to get anywhere near a lethal dose.

00:13:28.000 You'd have to eat a giant brick of it.

00:13:30.000 Yeah, probably.

00:13:32.000 Probably you'd throw up before you ever got to the lethal.

00:13:34.000 I mean, if you isolated one of the alkaloids, 7-hydroxymitraginine is the strongest one.

00:13:41.000 That's about 100 times stronger than morphine.

00:13:43.000 Whoa.

00:13:44.000 You know, so definitely effective.

00:13:46.000 So is there any issue with that stuff, though, with people who have had problems with pain pills in the past?

00:13:52.000 Maybe they start indulging this a little bit too much and...

00:13:55.000 Well, it's a better alternative than the pain pills. 1.00

00:13:58.000 It's very good for people who want to get off that shit. 0.99

00:14:01.000 I'm sorry, can I say that? 1.00

00:14:03.000 Sure.

00:14:03.000 This is the internet.

00:14:06.000 People who want to get off those kind of things, they can't quit cold turkey, but they could go on Kratom and gradually cut down because the withdrawal symptoms for Kratom are much less apparently than for heroin and these things.

00:14:23.000 They just don't grab you.

00:14:25.000 So this is a gateway out of the addiction.

00:14:28.000 Or they could even just maintain because it's not particularly dangerous or impairs function or so on.

00:14:37.000 They could maintain.

00:14:38.000 As you know, lots of people take heroin and manage to maintain.

00:14:42.000 Well, I know a lot of people...

00:14:43.000 It's a trick, you know.

00:14:44.000 Not everyone can do that.

00:14:45.000 They find some really good anti-inflammation properties in this stuff, like people who exercise a lot, like Kratom.

00:14:51.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:14:52.000 Wouldn't surprise me at all if that's there.

00:14:55.000 You know, most plants have multiple effects.

00:14:58.000 That's one of the differences between plants and pharmaceuticals. 0.88

00:15:02.000 Plants have families of molecules and they often have You know, complementary kinds of activities, you know.

00:15:10.000 So kratom is one of these.

00:15:12.000 We've known about it for a while.

00:15:14.000 It needs a lot more work, but potentially it's very, very interesting, you know.

00:15:20.000 And of course, the other one in this sort of universe of opiate treatment is ibogaine, which is not...

00:15:28.000 Completely different kind of thing.

00:15:30.000 Ibogaine is not itself an opiate, but people use it to get off opiates because the experience is profound, but then it does something that a lot of psychedelics don't do, which is it interrupts that craving for opiates.

00:15:50.000 Depending on how it's structured, anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

00:15:55.000 And the thing I think that determines the effectiveness of Ibogaine as a treatment for opiates is if the person has prepared for what happens afterwards, right?

00:16:06.000 You've got to prepare for what happens after.

00:16:08.000 If you go back to your old neighborhood, your old buddies, your old habits, it's not going to work.

00:16:14.000 You're not making a serious commitment to make it work.

00:16:18.000 But if you have a plan, going to go to this clinic, get this treatment, get cleaned up, then what?

00:16:25.000 And that's true.

00:16:26.000 I mean, really, I think that's the main factor that determines whether ibogaine is effective or not.

00:16:33.000 And it is for a lot of people.

00:16:36.000 It works.

00:16:37.000 It's a problematic substance.

00:16:38.000 It's not It's a controlled substance in the States, but only in about six countries is it actually prohibited.

00:16:48.000 Most countries, it's either in a gray area.

00:16:51.000 I guess it's a gray area.

00:16:53.000 It's unregulated is the term.

00:16:56.000 A couple countries have put it on prescription drug status, Brazil and New Zealand.

00:17:03.000 But the framework is there.

00:17:05.000 That doesn't mean there's a rush of people to go to Ibogaine clinics in those countries.

00:17:10.000 It really hasn't created a rush.

00:17:13.000 But the framework is there of people who want to do that.

00:17:18.000 So Ibogaine is another one of these that needs more investigation and is potentially part of the problem to the opiate epidemic.

00:17:29.000 There is rumors.

00:17:31.000 Well, there are more than rumors, but...

00:17:35.000 Some ibogaine activists are trying to get certain states to provisionally approve the use of ibogaine.

00:17:44.000 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.

00:17:53.000 It's like basically they're saying to the government, Here's something that may work.

00:17:59.000 Just grant permission on a statewide basis to have this medicine.

00:18:05.000 We'll see where that goes, you know, as I'm sure you...

00:18:10.000 I think we're all in this community acutely aware of now the government is again rumbling about how they're gonna revive the war on drugs. 1.00

00:18:20.000 I mean, it was a stupid idea then and it's even more stupid now. 1.00

00:18:23.000 But hey, this government, you know, stupidity are us! 1.00

00:18:28.000 It's kind of their angle on things. 1.00

00:18:31.000 This Jeff Sessions character is real.

00:18:33.000 We'll see how it goes.

00:18:34.000 I'm not too worried because I think there's going to be so much pushback on this.

00:18:38.000 Yeah, and that's the other thing about Trump.

00:18:40.000 He seems to be a populist.

00:18:42.000 And if there is too much pushback from that direction, I think he's going to try to avoid that as much as possible.

00:18:47.000 When they did a recent survey of the United States of how many people think that marijuana should be legal, like recreationally legal, it's in the 60% now, which is for the first time ever.

00:19:00.000 Yeah.

00:19:00.000 And states have done it.

00:19:02.000 And I just don't think you can, you know, you can't go back to the war on drugs.

00:19:08.000 I mean, it was a miserable failure when it happened. 0.75

00:19:10.000 There's, you know, over 40 years, they pounded over a trillion dollars down this rat hole. 0.63

00:19:18.000 There are more drugs, more kinds of drugs, easier to get, cheaper than ever.

00:19:22.000 So where's the success?

00:19:24.000 And more people in prison as a result of this.

00:19:26.000 So where's the success of the war on drugs?

00:19:29.000 There's nothing.

00:19:30.000 There's nothing they can point to.

00:19:31.000 It's not like anyone was saved.

00:19:33.000 The problem is that these people, you know, facts don't carry much weight with them.

00:19:39.000 I mean, they're kind of off in their own private ideological fantasies.

00:19:43.000 And the fact that the war on drugs doesn't work...

00:19:47.000 It doesn't matter to them.

00:19:49.000 It's like, these are bad people who need to be punished.

00:19:52.000 That's their stance on it.

00:19:55.000 It's not about anything other than that.

00:19:58.000 Yeah, I think that's really important.

00:19:59.000 What you just said, these are bad people.

00:20:01.000 I mean, they're really talking in these simplistic terms.

00:20:03.000 That's one thing that Session said, that marijuana is not something that good people use.

00:20:08.000 That's what he said.

00:20:10.000 Which is just preposterous. 1.00

00:20:11.000 How many grandmas are out there that are listening to this going, what the fuck is this guy talking about? 1.00

00:20:15.000 This is crazy. 1.00

00:20:16.000 Yeah, it is.

00:20:18.000 And it's clear that, you know, not a jot of reflection or, you know, careful thought goes into these kinds of statements.

00:20:29.000 This is what bothers me.

00:20:31.000 I mean, many, many things bother me about Trump.

00:20:33.000 But one of the chief things, one of the major, I guess you could say, flaws in his character among many...

00:20:42.000 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.

00:20:49.000 You know, there is no there there.

00:20:52.000 There is no inner self.

00:20:54.000 You know, people say, just give that man some ayahuasca and that will straighten him out.

00:20:59.000 I don't think so.

00:21:00.000 I think there's, you know...

00:21:03.000 There has to be something inside to straighten out.

00:21:06.000 Don't you think that maybe...

00:21:07.000 I would like to speak to him alone and find out who he really is.

00:21:11.000 I mean, you think when someone's speaking in front of You know, a big group of press or, you know, any time there's a camera on them, it's really hard to figure out who that person is.

00:21:21.000 Yes, that's true.

00:21:22.000 I think being alone with someone would be very illuminating.

00:21:25.000 I agree.

00:21:26.000 Maybe alone he's different, but he is such a creature of media and television.

00:21:32.000 This is his whole thing.

00:21:33.000 It's inexorable, right?

00:21:33.000 Yeah.

00:21:34.000 So maybe there is a thoughtful person there, but you sure don't see any evidence of that.

00:21:40.000 And that's unfortunate.

00:21:42.000 I mean, because that's...

00:21:44.000 Whatever you can say about Obama, and there's many bad things that he was not a perfect president.

00:21:50.000 He was very thoughtful and smart.

00:21:56.000 I'm not so sure Trump is smart.

00:21:59.000 I mean, he's smart in a certain way, but not the way...

00:22:03.000 That we need our leaders to be smart, you know, in this age.

00:22:08.000 We need to, you know, anyway, we could go on all day about this, and that's not really what we want to talk about.

00:22:14.000 Yeah, we could go on about this all day, and let's definitely not.

00:22:17.000 Let's instead, let's shift gears and talk about this celebration of 50 years of psychedelic research and what you're doing now.

00:22:24.000 And it's in Birmingham, is that where it is?

00:22:26.000 It's in Buckinghamshire.

00:22:29.000 It's in England.

00:22:31.000 I knew it was a bee.

00:22:32.000 Yeah.

00:22:33.000 One of those places.

00:22:35.000 This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time.

00:22:40.000 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,

00:22:56.000 U.S. government paid for this symposium held in San Francisco in 1967 called the Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs.

00:23:07.000 And all the biggies were there.

00:23:10.000 Shulgin was there.

00:23:12.000 Andrew Weil was there.

00:23:15.000 Schultes, of course, he was probably the one that, you know, more or less around whom it coalesced.

00:23:21.000 But this was a chance for interdisciplinary people to come together in a private conference and share knowledge.

00:23:28.000 And that was done.

00:23:29.000 And they published this symposium volume called Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs.

00:23:36.000 Which was U.S. Public Health Service publication.

00:23:39.000 You could get it from the U.S. government printing office for a long time.

00:23:45.000 But originally the idea was that about every 10 years or so they'd have follow-up conferences, right?

00:23:52.000 Well, in 1967, the war on drugs came along.

00:23:56.000 The government became embarrassed that they had anything to do with this.

00:24:01.000 And there was never any follow-up conference, right?

00:24:04.000 So I... That book that came out was very influential to me.

00:24:10.000 It was one of the big influences of my life as a 16-year-old when I was just getting interested in psychedelics.

00:24:20.000 I've wanted to do a follow-up conference.

00:24:22.000 I wanted to do it on the 30th anniversary back in 97, but it never came together to do that.

00:24:29.000 So this is the 50th anniversary.

00:24:31.000 It's now or never.

00:24:34.000 And so it's now, apparently, we are going to do this thing.

00:24:39.000 And it's going to be...

00:24:42.000 It's kind of much in the spirit of the original conference.

00:24:46.000 We're not going to keep it completely closed, you know, because we're not that kind of people.

00:24:52.000 There's not a lot of room for people to actually come to the place it's going to be, which is this place called Tiringham Hall.

00:25:01.000 It's like, it looks exactly like Downton Abbey.

00:25:05.000 I mean, it's an English country house, beautiful place, but not a place set up for a huge conference.

00:25:12.000 There'll be maybe 10 guests staying there and a bunch of people staying close by.

00:25:17.000 But the point is not so much the people attending.

00:25:20.000 It's going to be live streamed on Facebook, which anyone can tune into that.

00:25:26.000 And then we're going to publish the symposium volume for 2017 that everyone who presents is going to submit a full paper.

00:25:36.000 We're going to publish that as volume two.

00:25:38.000 We'll bring them out together as a deluxe edition.

00:25:41.000 The first one, which is available for free, it's in the public domain, and then the one from this conference and we'll package them together as a collector's edition and we're pre-selling that now.

00:25:56.000 As part of the strategy for getting the money to pay for this thing.

00:26:04.000 And we're doing okay, you know.

00:26:06.000 So I give you the website.

00:26:07.000 It's ESPD50.com.

00:26:10.000 What does it stand for?

00:26:12.000 Ethnopharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs, 50thanniversary.com.

00:26:18.000 And then there's also a Facebook page, which is where the live streaming is going to be.

00:26:23.000 So if you go there, you can order the book.

00:26:26.000 You can get the whole backstory.

00:26:28.000 You can sign up for the Facebook live stream and so on.

00:26:32.000 And that's what we're going to do.

00:26:35.000 And I've been very lucky.

00:26:38.000 You know, some people...

00:26:40.000 You know how these conferences are.

00:26:43.000 You don't do it on your own.

00:26:45.000 When I sort of floated this idea, a lot of people stepped up and said, yeah, I want to be involved.

00:26:51.000 I'll be involved.

00:26:53.000 Not only people that are helping organizing it, but also people that are providing some funding.

00:26:57.000 So now we have the money to pay people, bring them from all over the world.

00:27:02.000 There'll be about There's 18 presenters and some really good people, some very high-profile people.

00:27:13.000 David Nichols will be there.

00:27:14.000 Mark Plotkin, who runs the Amazon conservation team.

00:27:22.000 A number of, you know, those are maybe the two highest profile, but people that are known in the field.

00:27:28.000 And there's, you know, you can look at the website, ESPD.com, you can look at the program, and if it appeals to you, get on the, you know, get on the live stream.

00:27:41.000 So that, you know, those technologies did not exist in 1967, right?

00:27:46.000 So...

00:27:47.000 They do now, so why not let the world in?

00:27:51.000 You know, we can't have everybody come to Buckinghamshire, but we can have them all over the world, so that's the idea.

00:27:58.000 Well, I'm sure the response to this is going to be tremendous if you can livestream it, and livestreaming on Facebook is going to be huge.

00:28:06.000 I mean, that's a great idea.

00:28:07.000 Well...

00:28:08.000 I hope so.

00:28:09.000 Oh, it is, for sure.

00:28:10.000 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.

00:28:18.000 And of course, it'll all be documented, right?

00:28:21.000 So it'll be archived.

00:28:22.000 We'll generate a DVD out of it.

00:28:25.000 But mainly, it's the books.

00:28:28.000 I mean, the idea of actually collecting real physical books might seem like a quite...

00:28:34.000 20th century idea to people, and it is.

00:28:37.000 We have to do it while we still can.

00:28:38.000 Yeah, I like the idea of having a nice box set, you know, but people don't have to get that.

00:28:46.000 They can get the single one.

00:28:47.000 They don't have to do anything that I tell them, but if they're interested, they can do it.

00:28:52.000 And so, you know, thanks for letting me come on and let people know about this and tweeting it and so on.

00:29:01.000 This is all...

00:29:02.000 This is all very helpful.

00:29:04.000 It looks like there's going to be a lot of response.

00:29:06.000 And then, of course, the Psychedelic Science Conference is coming up.

00:29:11.000 And we have, you know, the Symposium guys, PSY. They're running the stage at the MAPS conference, the stage in the marketplace.

00:29:23.000 So I'm going to be on there.

00:29:25.000 And they're collaborating with us on this project.

00:29:28.000 So I'm pretty excited about it.

00:29:31.000 Now, how do you organize the 18 different people that are talking and the subjects so there's no overlap and so that, you know, the message stays vibrant?

00:29:41.000 Well, it hasn't really been a problem.

00:29:43.000 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.

00:29:54.000 So, not really too much duplication.

00:29:57.000 Everyone brings something Unique their own perspective, you know, so it's pretty easy, really.

00:30:07.000 I mean, the idea of the ethno-pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs is that...

00:30:15.000 You know, we wanted to focus on the frontier of this.

00:30:18.000 This is still a very active area.

00:30:20.000 And we don't want, you know, not another conference about ayahuasca.

00:30:24.000 And that's all wonderful, and I'm totally behind it.

00:30:28.000 And in fact, truth in advertising, we got four talks on ayahuasca.

00:30:34.000 But...

00:30:35.000 Different aspects of ayahuasca that haven't really been discussed so much at conferences.

00:30:40.000 And then we do have one gentleman talking about Kratom and, you know, a specialist of ethnopharmacologists talking about that.

00:30:52.000 We have Ken Alper, who is maybe the world's recognized authority on iboga and ibogaine and from the pharmacology chemical clinical side.

00:31:05.000 We've got him.

00:31:06.000 We've got Dave Nichols.

00:31:08.000 We have another person, another phytochemist talking about salvia divinorum.

00:31:19.000 So these are things that were not even on the radar, you know, in 1967. And that's kind of the idea.

00:31:27.000 That there's been 50 years more work and a lot of work and never any follow-up conferences.

00:31:32.000 So that's the excuse for doing this.

00:31:34.000 This will be the follow-up conference.

00:31:37.000 And if it gets momentum, then maybe we'll be able to do number three and number four.

00:31:43.000 Well, probably by the time number four comes around, I'll be...

00:31:46.000 Drooling in my oatmeal, so I may not have much to do with that one.

00:31:50.000 Oh, I think there's going to be some new science that's going to kick you right back into gear.

00:31:54.000 Let's hope so.

00:31:55.000 There's a lot going on right now.

00:31:56.000 I'm holding on for it.

00:31:57.000 I think you're catching the wave right at the right time, Dennis.

00:32:01.000 Right.

00:32:02.000 Sometimes I wonder, but yeah.

00:32:06.000 I'm super positive for you.

00:32:09.000 What is the status of salvia?

00:32:10.000 Salvia divinorum.

00:32:11.000 What is the legal status?

00:32:13.000 Salvia divinorum is more or less legal on the federal level.

00:32:17.000 It's still sold.

00:32:18.000 I think a few states have banned it.

00:32:21.000 I'm not sure which states.

00:32:23.000 How funny that it's the opposite way.

00:32:26.000 You know, most things are federally illegal, and then the states legalize them, like marijuana at least.

00:32:30.000 But salvia is, for people who don't know, super potent psychedelic.

00:32:34.000 Super potent and super bizarre.

00:32:38.000 Yeah, very weird.

00:32:39.000 And I think maybe that's kind of the built-in protection against abuse.

00:32:48.000 Because a lot of people don't care for it.

00:32:50.000 It's like once is enough, never again.

00:32:54.000 This is not something that you're likely to get addicted to, unless you're just a very peculiar kind of person.

00:33:04.000 Because it's dysphoric. 0.92

00:33:06.000 You know, it's not pleasant.

00:33:08.000 Most people find it quite unpleasant, even terrifying.

00:33:14.000 Well, years back.

00:33:15.000 But I think one of the things that protects against it, people smoke it, which is not the traditional way at all.

00:33:23.000 But again, it's like it only lasts a few minutes.

00:33:26.000 The traditional way is you chew the fresh leaves.

00:33:29.000 Yeah.

00:33:29.000 And it's some variation of the sage plant, correct?

00:33:33.000 It is a sage or a mint.

00:33:36.000 It's in the mint family.

00:33:38.000 Yeah, it's called a sage, but it's really a mint.

00:33:40.000 I always wondered if there was some sort of correlation between the name sage, meaning wisdom, you know, and then this stuff.

00:33:46.000 No.

00:33:46.000 Just total bum luck.

00:33:48.000 Some would like you to think so.

00:33:49.000 I think Daniel Siebert is one of the specialists.

00:33:54.000 He has a website called sagewisdom.org or.com and good stuff.

00:34:00.000 He's into Kratom.

00:34:01.000 He provides, I mean, Salvia.

00:34:04.000 He provides good information on it there.

00:34:06.000 Most people, at least my own experience and many people, it's like, well, it's interesting.

00:34:13.000 It's profoundly strange.

00:34:17.000 And what do you bring back from it?

00:34:19.000 You know, that's the question.

00:34:21.000 What do you bring back from it?

00:34:22.000 I think that's partly why, you know, most people are, they don't seek it out particularly.

00:34:32.000 Right.

00:34:32.000 But then I know people that do like it.

00:34:35.000 I know a lot of people that do.

00:34:37.000 I only did it once and I had this very bizarre out-of-body experience, but I don't think I took enough.

00:34:43.000 I had a friend, Ari, who took a lot, who over the course of ten minutes lived, maybe, he believes, in the neighborhood of five to six months.

00:34:53.000 In this dimension where he had a life and he had friends and he had a job and relationships and He went through this and came back and you know ten minutes later.

00:35:06.000 He's like This is gonna be impossible to describe but I lived a life I had like this alternative reality that I went through for multiple months Those kinds of experiences, believe it or not,

00:35:21.000 are not that uncommon out in Salvia.

00:35:23.000 Somebody told me once they had an experience where, you know, they were in a place.

00:35:29.000 They were like seven or eight years old.

00:35:32.000 It was Christmas morning.

00:35:34.000 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.

00:35:44.000 Yeah.

00:35:45.000 And what do you make of that?

00:35:47.000 I mean, I think Salvia's interesting in that regard, in that, you know, some of these ones that...

00:35:55.000 You know, they're worth exploring, right?

00:35:57.000 I mean, if you can distort time or actually go into, you know, parallel dimensions or whatever, that's looking into.

00:36:05.000 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.

00:36:14.000 Years ago, when I first explored DMT, you could get five MEO DMT online.

00:36:20.000 There was a chemical company, you could buy it, and I bought 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.

00:36:35.000 I mean, you can do DMT once a month for the rest, and that's all you want to do, by the way, especially 5-MeO.

00:36:42.000 5-MeO brings you to some place that feels like the ultimate center of the universe, and there's nothing, and you're a part of the whole...

00:36:53.000 It's also no visuals, which is really weird, or if it is visuals, it's like these opaque geometric patterns that exist in this bizarre white...

00:37:03.000 And you just cease to exist.

00:37:05.000 And it feels terrifying and strange.

00:37:08.000 You know, again, there's no one counting for taste.

00:37:11.000 I mean, I agree.

00:37:13.000 It is like that.

00:37:14.000 There are no visuals.

00:37:15.000 So that's something strange about it.

00:37:20.000 But many people feel like it puts you in this void place or the zero energy point.

00:37:25.000 I don't know if you've had James Oroch on here.

00:37:28.000 No.

00:37:28.000 He wrote the book Tryptamine Palace.

00:37:31.000 No.

00:37:31.000 Which is all about 5-methoxy-DMT. How do you spell his last name?

00:37:37.000 Oroch. 0.63

00:37:37.000 O-R-O-C-K, I think. 0.63

00:37:41.000 The name of his book is Tryptamine Palace.

00:37:45.000 And, you know, his thing is 5-methoxy.

00:37:49.000 That's his thing, huh?

00:37:51.000 Yeah.

00:37:53.000 And it's an interesting book.

00:37:55.000 And now, you know, I mean, the Sonoran Toad, right?

00:37:58.000 You've heard that that's 5-methoxy, basically.

00:38:02.000 And so that toad, you excrete something on, like, glass?

00:38:05.000 You excrete the venom.

00:38:07.000 You actually have to torture the toad a little bit.

00:38:11.000 Or squeeze the venom, which is in the parotid glands.

00:38:14.000 You squeeze it out on a slide, dry it out, and then you can smoke it.

00:38:20.000 And it's about 11 to 15% 5-MeO. 0.55

00:38:25.000 But it's a heavy...

00:38:28.000 Do they know why this toad produces this in venom?

00:38:31.000 Is it psychoactive when you eat it?

00:38:33.000 Well, who knows?

00:38:35.000 Most toads produce bufotinine, which is very close to 5-methoxy.

00:38:44.000 In fact, it's named after the toads.

00:38:47.000 The genus of toads is Bufo.

00:38:49.000 Bufotinine is found in most of these toads.

00:38:52.000 But Bufo alvarius is the only species known that contains 5-methoxy-DMT. So it's got this, you know, there's probably a single gene mutation that lets it produce this methoxylated compound,

00:39:08.000 which is much stronger than bufotanine.

00:39:13.000 And by the way, just to caution people, sometimes in the media you hear about people are licking toads.

00:39:20.000 That's not going to do it.

00:39:21.000 No, they're not licking toads.

00:39:23.000 They're smoking toads.

00:39:25.000 Yeah, isn't that weird that it just gets distorted?

00:39:27.000 And don't lick them because there are nasty things in there that will be...

00:39:31.000 That will kill you if you lick it. 0.63

00:39:33.000 Really?

00:39:34.000 Yeah, these cardiac glycosides.

00:39:37.000 Oh, God.

00:39:37.000 But pyrolizing it, burning it, destroys all those things.

00:39:41.000 So it's okay to smoke it, but it's definitely dangerous to lick it.

00:39:48.000 Most people don't like licking toads anyway.

00:39:51.000 It's probably, yeah.

00:39:52.000 Who came up with that?

00:39:54.000 Right.

00:39:54.000 I think various fairy tales, right?

00:39:57.000 Isn't that the...

00:39:58.000 Does the human body produce 5-MeO DMT as well?

00:40:02.000 Oh, yes.

00:40:03.000 Yeah.

00:40:03.000 And is it produced in the same areas like the liver and the lungs and presumably the pineal gland?

00:40:08.000 Presumably the pineal gland.

00:40:10.000 All of these things, you know.

00:40:12.000 Yes, it does.

00:40:14.000 There's a lot of controversy about...

00:40:18.000 Whether, you know, these endogenous tryptamines, DMT primarily, but 5-MeO is definitely there as well.

00:40:27.000 Do they have a function?

00:40:28.000 You know, there is a lot of speculation and not a lot of facts about whether they actually have a function.

00:40:36.000 I mean, they're made and...

00:40:41.000 You know, there's one school of thought that says, yeah, they're sort of like physiological noise.

00:40:47.000 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.

00:40:59.000 It's so close to human metabolism.

00:41:01.000 It's going to be very ephemeral in the system, even if it is released.

00:41:06.000 Yeah.

00:41:07.000 But other people maintain that under some circumstances the DMT can be stored in vesicles and neural vesicles and released on demand or when some stimulus leads to its release like stress some stress of some sort.

00:41:23.000 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 tryptamine art Yes, I've heard about this guy.

00:41:35.000 This guy sent me one of his pieces, and he has a tumor.

00:41:39.000 Do you know his name, Jamie?

00:41:41.000 We'll find his name.

00:41:42.000 I'll give this guy some love.

00:41:45.000 But you look at his artwork and you go, oh yeah, that's what that is.

00:41:50.000 Almost like Alex Gray's stuff, but Alex Gray's stuff is art.

00:41:56.000 I mean, it's definitely representative of the tryptamine world.

00:41:59.000 It's beautiful and fantastic and amazing, but it's art.

00:42:03.000 This guy's stuff seems like a trip.

00:42:06.000 The chaos of the tryptamine experience is sort of replicated in his artwork.

00:42:11.000 Yeah, that's it.

00:42:13.000 And so this young guy, we'll find out his name, he sent this.

00:42:18.000 I first heard of this gentleman from...

00:42:21.000 Thanks, brother.

00:42:22.000 Thank you.

00:42:22.000 Holy moly.

00:42:23.000 Take a look at this.

00:42:24.000 Yeah.

00:42:25.000 I first heard of this guy from John Ohia, who organizes Alex's events.

00:42:30.000 I don't even know which way is up.

00:42:32.000 I don't think there is an up, Joe.

00:42:35.000 I think this is a zero-gravity environment.

00:42:39.000 Up is any way that you want it to be.

00:42:41.000 This is pretty amazing.

00:42:43.000 Yeah, it's amazing.

00:42:44.000 Wow.

00:42:45.000 Yeah, well, I'm waiting for the...

00:42:47.000 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.

00:42:54.000 Jamie, see if you can find it, who he is, but...

00:42:56.000 He should be...

00:42:57.000 Is he...

00:42:58.000 I hope he's healthy.

00:42:59.000 Letting himself be looked at by medical people?

00:43:03.000 I think he's just happy to be tripping all the time.

00:43:04.000 He's just going to leave it alone.

00:43:06.000 What about science?

00:43:08.000 Sean Thornton is his name.

00:43:09.000 Sean Thornton?

00:43:10.000 Yeah, I got an article here.

00:43:11.000 Shout out to Sean Thornton.

00:43:12.000 Yeah, there's his work.

00:43:13.000 There it is.

00:43:14.000 Artists got cancer of the pineal gland.

00:43:15.000 His paintings will leave you speechless.

00:43:16.000 Yes, they will.

00:43:18.000 Yes, they will.

00:43:19.000 Sean Thornton.

00:43:20.000 Sean Thornton.

00:43:21.000 Amazing.

00:43:22.000 Yeah.

00:43:23.000 His stuff is incredible.

00:43:25.000 And apparently, well, he's, at least in some sort of way, anecdotal evidence that it's produced in the pineal gland.

00:43:33.000 Of course, the Cottonwood Research Foundation that Dr. Rick Strassman is a part of in his amazing work from DMT, the spirit molecule, of course, the documentary that you and I were in.

00:43:42.000 His work has shown that it is produced by the pineal gland in live rats.

00:43:49.000 So we know now for a fact that at least in that mammal, it's produced in the pineal gland.

00:43:54.000 But that's always been for people that...

00:43:57.000 I went to the Vatican last summer, and one of the really cool things was the giant pine cone that they have in the center of one of the...

00:44:07.000 The outer areas.

00:44:09.000 Yeah.

00:44:09.000 And I was really lucky to have a very good guide who was a professor.

00:44:15.000 And he was explaining to me that that was representative of the pineal gland.

00:44:20.000 Really?

00:44:20.000 Yeah.

00:44:21.000 Wow.

00:44:21.000 It was really fascinating because there's this enormous pine cone and it's surrounded by these two peacocks or two peacocks on the side.

00:44:29.000 They're supposed to represent immortality in some sort of strange way.

00:44:32.000 So I don't know what that...

00:44:45.000 Right, right.

00:44:48.000 Well, yeah, pineal itself means because it is shaped like a pine cone.

00:44:53.000 That's why it's named that.

00:44:55.000 But I had no idea.

00:44:57.000 That is very interesting.

00:44:58.000 Yeah, it was pretty fascinating.

00:44:59.000 What was also fascinating was this guy, although he knew that that was representative of the pineal gland, he did not know that the pineal gland produced DMT. He wasn't even aware of what DMT was.

00:45:10.000 Right.

00:45:10.000 So he and I had this really cool conversation about it where he was like, what?

00:45:14.000 You know, this crazy Italian accent? 0.99

00:45:16.000 This is amazing.

00:45:17.000 And he's writing things down and I'm, you know, writing, telling him about Strassman's work and you and your brother and all these different things to look into.

00:45:24.000 Right.

00:45:25.000 You know. 1.00

00:45:26.000 While my wife was rolling her eyes, like, oh Jesus, not this shit again. 1.00

00:45:32.000 You just can't be taken out in public, Joe. 1.00

00:45:35.000 You always embarrass me.

00:45:37.000 Well, she knew as soon as the guy said pineal gland, and my eyes lit up, and I'm like, here we go.

00:45:42.000 Let's talk about drugs.

00:45:45.000 Right.

00:45:48.000 Well, there is a guy, a couple of interesting people to mention in this context.

00:45:54.000 One of them is a researcher, a guy named E.D. Frexka.

00:46:00.000 How do you spell that?

00:46:01.000 Good question.

00:46:03.000 E-D-F-R-E... C-K-S-K-A, I think. 0.98

00:46:12.000 I may have to correct myself on that.

00:46:14.000 He's a pharmacologist and a neurochemist 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...

00:46:31.000 You know, disputed by some.

00:46:33.000 I mean, Dave Nichols is kind of on the other side of it.

00:46:35.000 He's like, ah, DMT doesn't have any internal function.

00:46:38.000 All these people are deluded, you know.

00:46:41.000 That seems to me to be really cocky.

00:46:43.000 Well, I think that it's surprising that Dave, who's a very careful scientist, would have such, you know, such pre-formed ideas.

00:46:54.000 Very rigid ideas, right.

00:46:55.000 Yeah.

00:46:56.000 There's a conference in the UK at the end of June called Breaking Convention, which you may have heard of.

00:47:02.000 It's like a psychedelic conference.

00:47:04.000 Dave and Edie are going to be there.

00:47:07.000 I'm going to be there, hopefully keeping them up.

00:47:09.000 I don't want any fistfights or anything.

00:47:13.000 They're going to be talking about this and doing a debate on it.

00:47:16.000 Breaking convention.

00:47:17.000 You might tell people to Google that.

00:47:19.000 That's a very interesting conference.

00:47:21.000 For sure.

00:47:21.000 What makes Dave so confident?

00:47:23.000 I mean, when you consider the potency of it and the knowledge that's produced in the body and then also the knowledge of the effects of it, which are just astounding.

00:47:32.000 Right.

00:47:33.000 How could anyone say that you know for sure, has he done it?

00:47:36.000 Has Dave done it?

00:47:37.000 Well, of course he's done it.

00:47:38.000 Of course he's done it. 0.99

00:47:39.000 So how the fuck could he do it and not go, okay, what is this? 0.99

00:47:42.000 Well, I think he does, but then there's also this very reductionist side to him. 0.99

00:47:48.000 Basically, just as a pharmacologist, he says, it's never going to reach.

00:47:53.000 You know, sufficient concentration in the plasma to have an effect.

00:47:57.000 However, I think he's wrong.

00:47:59.000 And I told him, I mean, I was teasing him, I was saying, you know, I wrote back, you know, that famous phrase Arthur C. Clarke once said, you know, when a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible,

00:48:16.000 he's very likely correct.

00:48:19.000 When he says it's impossible, he's almost certainly wrong.

00:48:26.000 Well, when you're talking about the just general biodiversity of human beings and how some people...

00:48:32.000 Let's talk about other human neurochemistry, like depression.

00:48:35.000 Like, some people are super happy and have no problem with their dopamine or serotonin levels.

00:48:40.000 And there's other people that have, like, real issues.

00:48:43.000 Yeah.

00:48:43.000 Well, there is that.

00:48:45.000 Right.

00:48:45.000 So if you just look at that, the variability of that, and then also how that can be manipulated with exercise and all these other different things that can raise those levels up.

00:48:54.000 What about the other thing, like, in terms of, like, holotropic breathing or all these different shamanic breathing and yogic exercises, kundalini yoga, which...

00:49:04.000 I haven't experienced it in Kundalini Yonah, but I did have a very bizarre experience fairly recently on yoga where I went into class on a pretty high dose of cannabis, and I started tripping in the middle of one of the more intense poses.

00:49:19.000 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...

00:49:30.000 It didn't go anywhere, but I don't pursue it in terms of, like, attempting to make that happen.

00:49:36.000 Right.

00:49:37.000 But I would imagine that if it's made in the body, and the effects of it are reproducible when you take it, I mean, taking DMT, there's a very few people, there's a very small percentage that don't have an experience when they take it, right?

00:49:52.000 Very small percentage.

00:49:53.000 Do we know what that number is?

00:49:56.000 Probably something like, I mean, I would say a wild guess, but a 2% or something.

00:50:03.000 That's actually pretty high.

00:50:04.000 Which is again, anomalous.

00:50:05.000 Why should there be people who don't have any effect?

00:50:09.000 I mean, that's a whole other question about what's strange about their metabolism.

00:50:14.000 But it's interesting that you raise this because a lot of these yogic techniques, especially kundalini, is probably about inducing DMT synthesis in the pineal or wherever it occurs.

00:50:26.000 There's also a very interesting technology that has come to light, I just found out about it last summer, called the Ajna light.

00:50:35.000 Have you heard of this?

00:50:36.000 No.

00:50:37.000 A-J-N-A, so write down ajnalight.com.

00:50:42.000 This guy who's developed this is a very interesting fellow.

00:50:46.000 He's named Guy Harriman, and he used to work for Apple.

00:50:53.000 He actually worked very closely with Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs had Next Computing, so he's basically a computer programmer and engineer.

00:51:02.000 Worked with Steve Jobs, but then he, for some reason, he decided he had to move to Thailand and become a Zen monk, which he did, but he continued to work with technology, and he developed this thing called the Ajna Light, which he claims induces DMT synthesis in the pineal.

00:51:22.000 And I was at a conference last summer, actually, at Tiringham, at this place where this one is going to be, and he was there.

00:51:31.000 I tried it a couple of times and by golly, it's a lot like DMT. Really?

00:51:37.000 Yeah.

00:51:37.000 Explain that.

00:51:38.000 What is it?

00:51:39.000 It looks like a floor lamp.

00:51:42.000 It's nothing.

00:51:43.000 It's got this array of LEDs on a holder.

00:51:49.000 You lie under it.

00:51:53.000 Yeah.

00:52:12.000 So then, and he claims, you know, it's synthesizing DMT in the pineal, and it is very much like DMT would be if it's released at the site of action, because, you know, DMT, when you smoke it, it brings a big body load with it.

00:52:29.000 Do you have to wear that goofy outfit?

00:52:30.000 What's with the orange outfit, seriously?

00:52:32.000 What is this?

00:52:34.000 Well, they're in Thailand.

00:52:36.000 I understand, but the expression of monkness, the pious outfit.

00:52:41.000 Let it go, folks.

00:52:42.000 Just wear a t-shirt.

00:52:43.000 Wear whatever.

00:52:44.000 I didn't have to get into any costume to do it, but I did do it a couple times.

00:52:52.000 How many times did you do it?

00:52:54.000 Well, I was not there long enough to do it.

00:52:56.000 I did it a couple times.

00:52:58.000 And this woman's sitting. 0.99

00:52:59.000 Is it just effective sitting as it is lying down?

00:53:02.000 I couldn't tell you, but I expect so.

00:53:05.000 You lie down?

00:53:06.000 I lay down, yeah.

00:53:08.000 And you close your eyes?

00:53:09.000 No, well, yeah, you close your eyes, doesn't matter, because it's, you know, you don't have eye shades on.

00:53:16.000 And usually he's playing some music.

00:53:19.000 But then, you know, in me, like, the reductionist, you know, kicks in and says, well, guy, this is interesting.

00:53:27.000 How do you know it's really DMT that you're stimulating?

00:53:33.000 And we've been going back and forth on that, and how can you test that?

00:53:37.000 And there are ways to do it, but most of them involve some fairly drastic procedures that you wouldn't want to do on people because they wouldn't give you permission if they had any sense, but you could do it to rats.

00:53:51.000 You could do something called microdialysis.

00:53:55.000 You can put a Essentially a microscopic tube that's absorptive next to the pineal and you can collect samples that you can detect.

00:54:07.000 This is not something that people would volunteer for.

00:54:11.000 How about just take your word for it?

00:54:13.000 Well, I just want to know, does it really induce it or not?

00:54:17.000 I am 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 outer body with that?

00:54:29.000 I would think that would be pretty intense and not hard to recreate.

00:54:33.000 Probably not.

00:54:34.000 What you'd probably want to do with that is to have some kind of goggles, essentially.

00:54:40.000 That could be connected to his program by Bluetooth or something.

00:54:46.000 So then you're wearing the goggles, you're in the isolation tank.

00:54:49.000 But if you just hover it over your head, if you just have an arm, like a computer monitor arm, and just swing it over the head...

00:54:57.000 And so you turn it on, close the door of the tank, close your eyes, lay back, and maybe it has like a 30-second window where it lets you settle in and then begins the program.

00:55:07.000 Lots of ways you could approach it.

00:55:09.000 That just seems to me to really ramp it up.

00:55:11.000 Now, here's the question.

00:55:13.000 It's interesting, though.

00:55:14.000 This is just one of an array of, you know, what you might call neurotechnologies, you know, or even spiritual technologies.

00:55:23.000 Maybe this will make psychedelics obsolete.

00:55:26.000 Well, this is a great way that you could do it without actually having to hold on to an illegal drug.

00:55:32.000 Exactly.

00:55:32.000 Because you're carrying your illegal drug with you.

00:55:35.000 So far, they can't arrest you for that, although I'm sure they're trying to figure out a way.

00:55:39.000 That was your brother's classic line, everyone's holding.

00:55:42.000 Everyone's holding.

00:55:44.000 That's right.

00:55:46.000 Now, with this stuff, did you experience the communication that you get with DMT? Because that, to me, has always been the most profound aspect of it, is this feeling that I'm in the presence of something, and then this sort of telekinetic,

00:56:03.000 understanding the words but not hearing the words.

00:56:06.000 Honestly, I didn't get that because I think I was not under long enough.

00:56:11.000 I didn't have much time, so I was only under...

00:56:14.000 Each time I was under maybe 20 minutes, which isn't...

00:56:17.000 I think if I'd stayed in that place, if I could settle into it for an hour, I think that probably would manifest, you know?

00:56:26.000 And you think this why?

00:56:28.000 Why do you think this?

00:56:29.000 Why do you think it would change?

00:56:30.000 I think it takes a while for the thing to fully...

00:56:36.000 Whatever the term is.

00:56:39.000 If it is DMT, for the DMT to reach a critical level where you're seeing that kind of stuff.

00:56:47.000 Do you feel this because it was ramping up during your experience?

00:56:50.000 I felt like it was.

00:56:51.000 But if I had stuck around, I thought it would develop.

00:56:58.000 And we've talked about, too, we've talked about thinking about how to...

00:57:04.000 Establish that this really is DMT. Another approach that we've tried is to take a...

00:57:09.000 or the guys tried.

00:57:10.000 I don't have access to the light.

00:57:12.000 I can't afford it, but...

00:57:14.000 How much does it cost?

00:57:15.000 It costs about $3,300, you know, which is not bad.

00:57:22.000 But beyond my pay grade right now.

00:57:24.000 I'm going to buy it for you for a present.

00:57:26.000 How about that?

00:57:26.000 You should buy it and keep it yourself.

00:57:28.000 I'm going to buy two of them.

00:57:29.000 I'll buy one for you and one for me.

00:57:30.000 We'll correspond.

00:57:32.000 All right.

00:57:33.000 All right.

00:57:33.000 Well, as long as you're going to do that, I might mention that that guy is offering a conference special here.

00:57:41.000 Do I have to wear the outfit?

00:57:42.000 Yeah.

00:57:42.000 No, you don't.

00:57:43.000 You don't.

00:57:44.000 I'm not wearing orange.

00:57:45.000 But if you buy it, you'll get a discount on it if you go through the Facebook site, which I'm about to put his stuff up there.

00:57:50.000 Okay.

00:57:50.000 Beautiful.

00:57:50.000 We can talk about this offline, but if you go through Facebook, some portion of it will go toward supporting this conference.

00:57:58.000 Well, I would love that.

00:57:59.000 I'm very curious about this, because I know that I have a good buddy of mine, my friend Danny, who's done Kundalini for quite a long time, and he can reproduce DMT states.

00:58:10.000 He's actually had DMT experiences independently of the Kundalini, and he says it's the same thing.

00:58:15.000 He says he can get there, and I believe him.

00:58:17.000 I'm just too lazy or something.

00:58:19.000 I don't know what it is.

00:58:20.000 I'm not inclined.

00:58:21.000 Well, I think there's a genetic component, you know?

00:58:24.000 I mean, like this gentleman, although he has a tumor, I'm not sure why...

00:58:30.000 I mean, he doesn't want medical people poking and prodding him, but he would be a perfect subject to settle a lot of issues if he was willing to...

00:58:40.000 You know, cooperate.

00:58:42.000 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.

00:58:51.000 Yeah, but I can understand his reluctance if he has reluctance.

00:58:54.000 Yeah, of course.

00:58:55.000 People drilling into your dome, trying to suck out brain juice.

00:58:58.000 Doesn't sound fun.

00:59:00.000 But it is interesting, though, that these compounds are, in some way, a part of normal human neurochemistry.

00:59:08.000 And why?

00:59:09.000 Right?

00:59:10.000 And Dave Nichols, what does he believe?

00:59:12.000 Well, I don't know if he believes anything.

00:59:14.000 He just, you know, he just is skeptical that in normal physiological processes, DMT has much of a function.

00:59:26.000 What about dreams?

00:59:28.000 Dreams are a possibility.

00:59:29.000 Yeah, that's always been the big one, right?

00:59:31.000 That's always been the big one.

00:59:32.000 And it's totally plausible.

00:59:34.000 You'll have to get him on here and let him explain himself.

00:59:38.000 I would love to.

00:59:38.000 Yeah.

00:59:39.000 I mean, you know, I'm not sure.

00:59:42.000 He just has this idea that I think for one thing, I think, you know, he's kind of a reductionist guy.

00:59:50.000 I think all the new age stuff, the new excitement about DMT, the pineal and all that, it kind of puts him off.

00:59:58.000 But on the other hand, don't assume that we know everything because, in fact, we know nothing.

01:00:05.000 And if it's there, I think it probably does have a function.

01:00:10.000 It's not surprising that it's there.

01:00:12.000 It's everywhere.

01:00:13.000 I mean, DMT is an interesting molecule because it's two steps from tryptophan, right?

01:00:20.000 Tryptophan is an amino acid, an essential amino acid, one of the 20 that goes into proteins.

01:00:26.000 So tryptophan is in every living thing on this planet.

01:00:30.000 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.

01:00:42.000 You know, I don't want to get too into the chemistry, but basically you remove...

01:00:46.000 The acid portion of the amino acid, you get tryptamine, and from there you add the methyl groups, and there you are.

01:00:54.000 Which is why DMT is very, very common in plants, for example, and animals.

01:01:02.000 I tell people nature is drenched in DMT. Drenched is a great way to describe it.

01:01:07.000 Drenched in DMT. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of species of plants that contain DMT, for sure.

01:01:16.000 You know, I mean, there hasn't been any survey or anything like that, but if you look at the genera that have a lot of DMT, like acacia is a good example, the Australian acacias are some of the strongest sources of DMT. There are 1,700 species of acacia.

01:01:37.000 Probably 75% of them contain DMT. And I'm sure you're aware of the Israeli scientists that believe that the story of Moses and the burning bush was the acacia tree.

01:01:52.000 And they think that that was the confusion of all the translations and, of course, the oral history past It's down over many, many years, then finally written down.

01:02:01.000 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.

01:02:12.000 Most likely the acacia tree, because that was in the area.

01:02:17.000 You know, I mean, it's an interesting idea, and it's interesting that the, you know, sort of the way that the burning bush presented itself was like DMT presents itself.

01:02:30.000 You cannot take your eyes away from it, but at the same time, you cannot look at it.

01:02:35.000 Right, right, right.

01:02:36.000 But pharmacologically, was this something he smoked?

01:02:40.000 Was it an incense?

01:02:42.000 How was he exposed to this?

01:02:44.000 And...

01:02:45.000 You know, because that will make a difference because you can't eat DMT because it's destroyed by monoamine oxidase, right?

01:02:52.000 That's the whole basis of ayahuasca.

01:02:55.000 In terms of these acacias...

01:02:59.000 You know, the question comes up also, well, okay, most of them are native to Australia.

01:03:03.000 So did the Aborigines know about this? 0.90

01:03:06.000 And if you look at their art, it's like, looks like DMT. It's very psychedelic art.

01:03:12.000 I haven't really looked at very much Aboriginal.

01:03:14.000 All of these pointillist kind of designs in Aboriginal art. 0.98

01:03:19.000 I mean, they're extremely psychedelic.

01:03:21.000 See if you can find some of that.

01:03:22.000 But they, the Aborigines, I think they had to know about it.

01:03:28.000 They're just not talking about it.

01:03:30.000 But one possible way that they could have used it, because the DMT in the acacias is so high, the leaves, some of these acacias, they're 2% DMT. Wow!

01:03:41.000 So if you were to take leaves and throw them on a fire in an 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 with DMT. Oh,

01:04:00.000 that completely makes sense, if you're talking about a burning bush.

01:04:02.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:04:04.000 How does that make its way to Israel, though?

01:04:07.000 Well, maybe the— Who knows?

01:04:09.000 Who knows?

01:04:10.000 Who knows how anything makes its way anywhere, right?

01:04:11.000 I mean, these folk technologies, it's interesting.

01:04:16.000 If you look at the New World, you know, in the historical sense— People have remarked, why are there so many more psychedelic plants in the new world than the old world,

01:04:31.000 right?

01:04:32.000 It's something about people's relationship to plants in this very high biodiversity environment.

01:04:40.000 People are mucking around with plants, right?

01:04:44.000 Like a perpetual question that comes up.

01:04:48.000 Is how did they figure out how to combine banisteriopsis and psychotria to get the activity of ayahuasca?

01:04:58.000 How out of 80,000 species in the Amazon do they figure out combine these two?

01:05:04.000 To the uninitiated why that's important with the monoamine oxidase?

01:05:07.000 Yeah, well it's important because banisteriopsis contains these alkaloids called beta-carmelines that are monoamine oxidase inhibitors and monoamine oxidase It's the enzyme in the gut that breaks down DMT. So you can drink tea with DMT in it.

01:05:25.000 You can eat it all day.

01:05:26.000 Nothing's going to happen because this enzyme will inactivate it.

01:05:32.000 And that's probably a reflection of an evolutionary process.

01:05:35.000 You know, we've adapted to toxins in our environment, basically.

01:05:40.000 If you inhibit that with the alkaloids from the banisteriopsis, they're very potent, very selective MAO inhibitors that protects it from degradation in the gut.

01:05:51.000 It can cross into the blood and into the blood-brain barrier.

01:05:55.000 So that's the basis of the oral activity.

01:05:59.000 And people make much about how they sort of stumbled on this combination, right?

01:06:07.000 And in fact, one of our presenters at this conference, Manuel Torres, who's an archaeologist, has been looking at this for quite a while.

01:06:16.000 And this is...

01:06:19.000 This is one of the sort of gee whiz things.

01:06:22.000 How did these primitive people figure out how to combine these plants, right? 1.00

01:06:26.000 I agree it's remarkable.

01:06:27.000 If you talk to the shaman, they'll say, well, the plants told us.

01:06:32.000 But what does that mean, you know?

01:06:36.000 But what is interesting to me, in a way, or what I've been thinking about lately, if you look at the archaeology of these things, the snuffs that...

01:06:46.000 There are two or three different kinds of snuffs that are used in South America that contain DMT. The Anadenanthera snuffs and the Varola snuffs.

01:06:55.000 The Anadenanthera snuffs are ancient.

01:06:59.000 We have archaeological evidence that puts that back to 10, 11,000 years.

01:07:05.000 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?

01:07:22.000 I mean, this is not...

01:07:24.000 Something that intuitively you would do.

01:07:28.000 And yet that seems to me as easily as puzzling as how did they find the combination for ayahuasca.

01:07:35.000 Nobody's really addressed that.

01:07:37.000 My first impulse when I find a new plant is not necessarily to snort it.

01:07:42.000 But isn't that the place of the pharmacological daredevil?

01:07:45.000 I mean, there's always this one person who's out there, dude, check what I found.

01:07:49.000 And that curiosity, that need to explore things.

01:07:54.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

01:07:55.000 Somebody stumbled on this.

01:07:58.000 And I think the same is true of ayahuasca, you know, because in fact, DMT is not that uncommon.

01:08:04.000 Truth to tell, beta-carbolines are not that uncommon.

01:08:08.000 So sooner or later, people are going to stumble on this combination.

01:08:12.000 Once they did, then, you know, they share the knowledge.

01:08:16.000 It just took time.

01:08:17.000 Yeah, it takes time.

01:08:19.000 Well, do you think it is possible?

01:08:21.000 I mean, obviously it's possible, but is there any evidence that points to the idea that primitive...

01:08:28.000 Primates maybe didn't have this monoamine oxidase in their system?

01:08:33.000 Or if they did, they had it in lower amounts and it allowed more dimethyltryptamine to enter into the body from consuming plants?

01:08:41.000 Is there a potential link between consuming various plants?

01:08:46.000 We're talking about thousands of different...

01:08:48.000 You could eat a salad.

01:08:49.000 If you didn't have monoamine oxidase in your gut, you could eat a salad and potentially trip.

01:08:53.000 Yes, if you didn't have it.

01:08:54.000 That's right.

01:08:55.000 And when you see jaguars that do trip, there's all this footage of jaguars in the jungle eating these plants.

01:09:04.000 What are they doing?

01:09:06.000 Do we know?

01:09:07.000 We don't know, and I'm not sure how much credence I put into that footage.

01:09:13.000 Could it be like catnip?

01:09:14.000 It looks like catnip, but they're eating Banisteriopsis, apparently, which doesn't have DMT. It's got the beta-carboletes.

01:09:22.000 Right.

01:09:23.000 But carmine alone contains some psychoactive compounds.

01:09:27.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:09:28.000 And there are three main beta-carmelines in banisteriopsis.

01:09:33.000 In fact, this is what I'm talking about at the conference.

01:09:36.000 My talk is about beta-carmelines.

01:09:41.000 The idea that they're not psychoactive, that they're just MAO inhibitors is not really true.

01:09:47.000 It's an incomplete picture.

01:09:49.000 There are a lot of other activities with beta-carbolines and a lot of attention recently refocused on harmine, which is the main beta-carboline in banisteriopsis.

01:10:02.000 Turns out it has all kinds of activities that...

01:10:05.000 Have been sort of overlooked until now.

01:10:08.000 Not least of all, it stimulates neurogenesis.

01:10:12.000 It stimulates nerve cell growth.

01:10:15.000 This is big news because...

01:10:19.000 That's huge.

01:10:19.000 Yeah.

01:10:21.000 And potentially, it inhibits a kinase, which has to do with...

01:10:29.000 Kinase is a protein that phosphorylates things, right?

01:10:33.000 Very common, all kinds of kinases around the body.

01:10:37.000 But it inhibits this one particular kinase called DYRK1, whatever that means.

01:10:44.000 But it is associated with the stimulation of nerve growth from neural stem cells.

01:10:53.000 This is all petri plate test tube stuff.

01:10:56.000 But it's not unreasonable to think that this is going on in the body.

01:11:01.000 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...

01:11:09.000 Exactly.

01:11:10.000 Maybe PTSD or CTE, rather.

01:11:13.000 Mm-hmm.

01:11:14.000 It could.

01:11:15.000 Or, you know, especially dementias like cognitive...

01:11:20.000 Alzheimer's.

01:11:20.000 Alzheimer's or other types of dementia that are not strictly Alzheimer's that are just kind of senile dementias.

01:11:29.000 Well, I hope it's true because this is my...

01:11:32.000 That's going to kick you right back in.

01:11:34.000 Sure.

01:11:36.000 This is my main prophylactic against senility.

01:11:38.000 I figure if I take ayahuasca regularly, I'm probably gonna be okay.

01:11:43.000 Yeah, right back in the game.

01:11:45.000 Imagine if that's the case.

01:11:47.000 One of the talks that I listened to of your brothers from way back in the day, he was talking about Scientific nomenclature related to harming and that before they 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,

01:12:07.000 they were calling it telepathine.

01:12:09.000 Because it induced these group states of telepathy.

01:12:13.000 Because it was rumored to induce them.

01:12:15.000 I mean, if you want to get into what you could call the sordid history of the chemistry investigations of ayahuasca, because harming...

01:12:29.000 And harmoline and tetrahydroharmoline, these were originally found in Paganum harmola, which is where they got their names, which is Syrian rue, right?

01:12:38.000 And a lot of people use that as an alternative MAO when they're making ayahuasca analogs.

01:12:44.000 So that's how those alkaloids got their names.

01:12:48.000 And then when chemists came along, kind of all through the 19th century, they started looking at banisteriopsis, and they would isolate things, and they didn't know what to call them.

01:12:59.000 Sometimes they called them telepathine because of the rumors.

01:13:02.000 Sometimes they were called banisterine and yahaine because they didn't really know what the compound was, right?

01:13:12.000 And then it turned out, well, it's actually harming, and harming was isolated earlier, so then they got their nomenclature right.

01:13:20.000 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.

01:13:34.000 It got a little more rigorous.

01:13:36.000 There was a group, a couple of investigators that actually thought to collect the plants that they did the isolation with.

01:13:44.000 So then they could document the source, right?

01:13:47.000 I mean, people think this is not important, but in ethnopharmacology, it's quite important.

01:13:53.000 You know, for example, for a long time, just a side thing, you know, for a long time, there was a plant called Prestonia Amazonica.

01:14:04.000 That was reputed to be one of the sources of these alkaloids and one of the components used to make ayahuasca.

01:14:12.000 That got loose in the literature and it took years to straighten this out because it's not true.

01:14:19.000 And there was no doubt, there was no voucher specimen to show that this was, you know, it was not Prestonia amazonica.

01:14:28.000 It got so bad...

01:14:29.000 The Schultes actually had to publish a paper that said Prestonia Amazonica, Amazonian hallucinogen or not.

01:14:37.000 Turns out, not.

01:14:39.000 You know?

01:14:41.000 So you have to be aware of bad documentation.

01:14:45.000 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.

01:14:54.000 Otherwise, it's just good science.

01:14:59.000 Chemists don't think in terms of the botany.

01:15:02.000 They just have something.

01:15:03.000 They're trying to isolate something from it.

01:15:05.000 But it helps to know what the identity of it is.

01:15:10.000 It seems to me that that part of the world, the Amazon jungle, and our really troubling relationship with it currently, is so analogous to the way human beings are kind of interfacing with the world.

01:15:25.000 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 shit that's going on down there. 0.97

01:15:40.000 Well, yeah, and there is, and this is a good illustration of, you know, our sort of penny-wiseness and pound-foolishness about these things.

01:15:54.000 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, 0.95

01:16:13.000 if you could just stop burning down the damn forest. 0.94

01:16:17.000 30%? 0.99

01:16:18.000 30%.

01:16:19.000 They figure.

01:16:21.000 But then on the other side of economics, and there have been assessments, what use do you make of the Amazonian biome to maximize its value, right?

01:16:32.000 If you do cattle, it's worth so much per hectare.

01:16:36.000 If you do...

01:16:37.000 Hardwoods?

01:16:38.000 Well, yeah.

01:16:40.000 That's the big issue, right?

01:16:44.000 But the thing is, in terms of undiscovered, potentially undiscovered blockbuster drugs, there's probably at least a trillion dollars worth of undiscovered drugs in the Amazon, which will,

01:17:00.000 of course, never be discovered because we're going to wreck it.

01:17:04.000 We're already busy wrecking it.

01:17:06.000 Insane amounts of species of plants.

01:17:10.000 Well, in the Amazon, it's 80,000 species, yeah.

01:17:13.000 Wow.

01:17:14.000 I mean, there's about 250,000 species of plants overall, always revising this number, and they always seem to revise it up.

01:17:23.000 But between 250,000 to 300,000 species of so-called higher plants.

01:17:29.000 And in the Amazon, it's one of the most biodiverse regions, about 80,000 species.

01:17:35.000 Wow.

01:17:37.000 And all of this, less than 10% of this, not even close to 10% of this incredible molecular and biological diversity has been looked at as potential sources of new medicines.

01:17:54.000 I mean, there's a whole...

01:18:06.000 I mean, it's been going on for years.

01:18:09.000 There's been a lot of work, but it's not really touching a big proportion of it.

01:18:15.000 Pharmaceutical companies are not interested in this, you know, interestingly enough.

01:18:20.000 They want to...

01:18:23.000 They're corporations.

01:18:25.000 They tell you they're finding new medicines that will cure people and help people.

01:18:30.000 To a certain extent, that's true.

01:18:31.000 But remember, the bottom line is profit.

01:18:34.000 They want to own everything.

01:18:36.000 They don't want to share intellectual property with people.

01:18:49.000 Right.

01:18:51.000 Right.

01:18:54.000 Right.

01:19:01.000 Of compounds that make it from discovery to the clinic is very low.

01:19:07.000 And when they abandoned natural products about 25 years ago, the frequency of drug discovery, the pharmaceutical discovery pipeline, as they call it, dried up.

01:19:20.000 And it took a long time for the pharmaceutical industry to realize, you know, essentially we threw the baby out with the bathwater.

01:19:29.000 We need to go back to natural products.

01:19:31.000 Because that's where you find the molecular diversity, the scaffolds on which we can build these drugs.

01:19:38.000 Think of the complex molecules that you find in nature.

01:19:45.000 That may not be what makes it to the clinic.

01:19:48.000 It may be a derivative of that or an analog of that, but it's still the plants that give you the ideas for the structure, if you can follow me.

01:19:59.000 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.

01:20:12.000 But the idea comes from nature.

01:20:14.000 And isn't part of the problem in that isolating one individual compound from a plant that might have multiple compounds that work synergistically?

01:20:23.000 Well, that's another difference.

01:20:24.000 Right, right.

01:20:25.000 Again, the FDA and just the whole drug discovery process, they like single compounds, you know, magic bullets.

01:20:35.000 They like the synthetic compound that is completely defined molecularly, and they don't like all these other compounds.

01:20:44.000 Related compounds like Marinol, for instance, right?

01:20:47.000 Synthetic THC, which is not nearly as pleasant for people who have cancer or glaucoma or any host of different...

01:20:55.000 Very good example.

01:20:57.000 Marinol, it does what it does, but the multi-component preparations of cannabis are much more effective.

01:21:04.000 That's true of almost all herbal medicines.

01:21:07.000 Now when they isolate THC, it's one of how many different cannabinoids?

01:21:13.000 I think there's about 400 different kinds of cannabinoids in cannabis.

01:21:18.000 So when you're getting THC, you're getting...

01:21:21.000 400. A lot of other things in cannabis as well, but I believe I remember reading there were about 400 kinds of cannabinols in cannabis.

01:21:34.000 So good example, incredibly complex plant chemically, you know, and as they all are, but that's a good example.

01:21:43.000 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.

01:21:50.000 Yeah, well, it's for one particular use, which is what?

01:21:58.000 I guess it's pain, right?

01:22:00.000 Is that what it's used for?

01:22:01.000 But even then, the people that take it for that have said that it's not nearly as effective as just...

01:22:08.000 This is a good example of the sort of cognitive dissonance of the FDA and the whole regulatory thing, because for years the FDA has been saying, well, cannabis has no medical use.

01:22:21.000 There's no recognized medical use.

01:22:23.000 Oh, but there is this one drug that the FDA has approved, Marinol, which has some small amount of the therapeutic use that cannabis does.

01:22:33.000 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, 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.

01:22:52.000 Right.

01:22:52.000 And it's not that plants can't be patented.

01:22:55.000 They can be.

01:22:55.000 Formulations can.

01:22:58.000 I think GW Pharmaceuticals, which has brought out Sativex, it's a standardized cannabis preparation that you take orally as a mouth spray.

01:23:12.000 So it's a natural product.

01:23:14.000 It's patented.

01:23:15.000 It has all the cannabinoids are well characterized.

01:23:19.000 It's essentially a standardized extract.

01:23:22.000 So that sort of represents where this is going.

01:23:25.000 Well, that's a positive branch of it, right?

01:23:29.000 Yeah, that's a good thing.

01:23:30.000 That more reflects what cannabis should be as a medicine.

01:23:33.000 And so it's essentially all the properties of cannabis and what they've patented is the formulization?

01:23:38.000 Is that what it is?

01:23:39.000 They've patented the formulation.

01:23:40.000 Yeah, and probably the use as well.

01:23:43.000 That's another way you can get patents.

01:23:45.000 How is their formulation unique, you know?

01:23:48.000 That I couldn't tell you.

01:23:49.000 It's an oral aerosol spray, so there's issues that come up with...

01:23:57.000 Is that it?

01:23:59.000 That's a company called Jombo makes a spray.

01:24:02.000 Okay.

01:24:03.000 Yeah, it's awesome.

01:24:05.000 Yeah, it's similar to that.

01:24:07.000 It's...

01:24:09.000 Yeah, it's an oral aerosol and I'm sure it's well standardized in terms of what cannabinoids are in there.

01:24:18.000 I think they brought it out initially for multiple sclerosis.

01:24:25.000 That was the treatment.

01:24:26.000 And then for seizures and they're gradually expanding, you know.

01:24:31.000 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.

01:24:42.000 And that's a good thing.

01:24:44.000 I mean, I think it does have a lot of applications.

01:24:48.000 And why it should be illegal, there's no reason for this.

01:24:53.000 You know, but obviously there is.

01:24:56.000 It's in someone's interest to keep it illegal.

01:24:59.000 Well, that would be my only concern with this patented formula that they've sort of figured out is that other people can't make a formula as well.

01:25:10.000 It's like in patenting, do they own the process?

01:25:13.000 Like, what if it's a very obvious process?

01:25:15.000 Like, you know, like the ayahuasca process.

01:25:18.000 Right.

01:25:18.000 It's a very obvious process.

01:25:20.000 The monoamine oxidase inhibitor along with the Plant that contains a DMT, boil it down, everybody knows how to do it.

01:25:26.000 If somebody figures out a way how to patent that, does that become a real problem in that they own the rights to something that's been around forever?

01:25:35.000 It does become a problem.

01:25:38.000 And with, as you say, with something like that where...

01:25:45.000 It's pretty obvious how you do it.

01:25:47.000 It's not that complicated.

01:25:49.000 There's no innovative technology there.

01:25:51.000 There's no art.

01:25:53.000 There's no art of innovation, which is what would make it patentable.

01:25:57.000 There were attempts to patent ayahuasca a few years ago, and it got...

01:26:03.000 You know, it actually was patented, and a delegation of indigenous healers from Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru came to the U.S. Patent Office and petitioned against this and said, we've been using this medicine for thousands of years.

01:26:20.000 Who patented it?

01:26:21.000 Oh, it was a guy named Loren Miller who really didn't know what he was doing.

01:26:26.000 I forget what his company was.

01:26:28.000 This was when I was still doing my postdoc at NIH, so this was like...

01:26:33.000 Mid-80s, he tried to patent it, and what it turned out was it was a completely specious patent.

01:26:41.000 It was a patent on a particular strain of Banisteriopsis that he collected that had an anomalous flower color, I think, and that was the basis of the patent.

01:26:54.000 Well, that's absurd because flower color is Highly variable.

01:26:59.000 It was a useless patent in every respect.

01:27:04.000 So was it rescinded?

01:27:05.000 Yeah, the patent office overturned the patent, as they well should have.

01:27:10.000 And then I believe it was reinstated for some reason.

01:27:15.000 I haven't really followed this up, but I think by that time everyone kind of came to the conclusion that It was absurd.

01:27:24.000 There was no reason to do it.

01:27:26.000 And he didn't really have the resources to develop it.

01:27:29.000 And he lost a lot of respect.

01:27:33.000 Because it's not so much that you can't...

01:27:36.000 I mean, the intellectual property thing is the real issue.

01:27:41.000 And that's why the pharmaceutical companies want to stay away from traditional medicines, by and large.

01:27:48.000 Because it's like...

01:27:50.000 You know, the indigenous people are the stewards of the knowledge.

01:27:54.000 They know how to use the plant.

01:27:55.000 They maintain the plant.

01:27:57.000 Their habitat, you know, is where the plant is found.

01:28:02.000 So they rightly should have a place at the table.

01:28:07.000 You know, if you're going to commercialize this traditional medicine, they should get something back.

01:28:12.000 Because traditionally, we've been ripping things off from...

01:28:17.000 I think?

01:28:36.000 It does count for something, and they should have a part of the proceeds.

01:28:42.000 If you make a billion-dollar drug out of this, you should be able to give something back to Indigenous people.

01:28:50.000 So it's complicated.

01:28:53.000 It does seem complicated.

01:28:54.000 It also seems like when everything becomes commercial, it becomes...

01:29:00.000 When you look at the idea that pharmaceutical drug companies at all, when you look at a corporation and you think of this idea of infinite growth and this is what they're subscribing to and they're constantly trying to make more and more money, and then you think about compounds and compounds being legal and them trying to figure out a way to market these things,

01:29:21.000 it seems to become...

01:29:23.000 It seems to be a big issue that we're relying on that at all.

01:29:26.000 It's almost like that tale of the scorpion and the frog, where the frog tells the scorpion, hey, I'll give you a ride across the river, but do me a favor and don't sting me, because if you do, we'll both drown. 0.99

01:29:37.000 And then halfway through, the scorpion stings him, and the frog goes, what the fuck? 0.97

01:29:41.000 And the scorpion goes, hey man, it's my nature. 0.96

01:29:43.000 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 markets terrible word to just bring them to daily use or bring them to making them free to use I think that corporations You know,

01:30:07.000 as you say, their main job, 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.

01:30:18.000 And make more money every year.

01:30:20.000 And the best way to do that...

01:30:21.000 There's no revenue model in psychedelics.

01:30:24.000 There's no way for them to make money according to that model. 0.84

01:30:28.000 Here's a way to not make money. 0.99

01:30:29.000 Don't give that guy who's got a leaf over his dick a billion dollars. 0.99

01:30:32.000 Right. 1.00

01:30:33.000 That guy, he's been happy shooting arrows at monkeys for 10,000 years.

01:30:37.000 That's kind of it.

01:30:38.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:40.000 They're not going to do that if they don't have to.

01:30:42.000 Well, they won't.

01:30:43.000 And, you know, they want these psychedelics, if you use them therapeutically, these are things you might take...

01:30:52.000 A few times in your life.

01:30:54.000 They want drugs you take four times a day for the rest of your life.

01:30:58.000 That's the revenue model.

01:30:59.000 And the revenue model, if there is one with psychedelics, is not that, because they have to be used in a context, you know, set and setting, right?

01:31:10.000 The revenue model, if there is one, is to have centers, to have places you can go and take psychedelics in a controlled setting.

01:31:18.000 They won't look like clinics.

01:31:20.000 They'll look like spas. 0.97

01:31:22.000 Take the family for a weekend and have a nice...

01:31:27.000 You know, psilocybin vacation while you're busy getting your massages and doing yoga and whatever.

01:31:33.000 That's how it's going to work, I think, if it's allowed to go forward.

01:31:39.000 That's the model.

01:31:43.000 Yeah, well, we'll see.

01:31:45.000 I mean, I've often said the very idea that you could patent or prohibit A plant is absurd.

01:31:58.000 It is absurd.

01:31:59.000 Especially when it's non-toxic.

01:32:00.000 What is not patented is prohibited.

01:32:04.000 That's the way they approach it.

01:32:07.000 In most circumstances.

01:32:08.000 What's real weird is that we give these caveats to religions.

01:32:13.000 Like, that's what's going on now with ayahuasca, is that there are some companies that have had an exemption through the Supreme Court, right?

01:32:22.000 I shouldn't say companies, but basically that's what they are.

01:32:24.000 They're churches, right?

01:32:25.000 They're churches.

01:32:26.000 Which is really just another way of saying a company.

01:32:30.000 You know, they got there.

01:32:31.000 They're institutionalized.

01:32:32.000 They're institutions.

01:32:34.000 So the question is, and now people are beginning to sort of recognize this or ask the question.

01:32:40.000 So you've got the UDV, which is one of these Brazilian churches that's We're good to go. 0.92

01:33:07.000 Which is fascinating.

01:33:08.000 They have the right to use it.

01:33:09.000 Well, it clearly is a real religion.

01:33:11.000 It is a real religion.

01:33:12.000 It's just fascinating that a conservative court would almost be boxed into doing that because of their views on Christianity.

01:33:18.000 Exactly.

01:33:19.000 Exactly.

01:33:19.000 They couldn't not do it.

01:33:21.000 And then the Santo Daime, same thing.

01:33:23.000 They didn't have to go all the way, but essentially they have the same approval.

01:33:28.000 And they're piggybacking on this, and they're Christian-based religions as well.

01:33:33.000 Yeah.

01:33:33.000 Well, they're Christian-based religions.

01:33:35.000 So now the question is, when you go to Peru, there's ayahuasca.

01:33:39.000 It's not as institutionalized.

01:33:43.000 It's kind of...

01:33:44.000 It's idiosyncratic.

01:33:46.000 You've got these practitioners.

01:33:48.000 The tradition is called vegetalismo.

01:33:51.000 There's no institution.

01:33:52.000 There's no doctrine.

01:33:54.000 There's no hierarchy.

01:33:56.000 There's just freelance practitioners.

01:34:00.000 The question is, is that a religious activity?

01:34:03.000 And should it be protected?

01:34:05.000 And this is what some smart lawyers are now addressing with the use of ayahuasca in the more traditional way.

01:34:14.000 The churches have essentially taken that, they've appropriated that tradition, and they say, well, we want nothing to do with these indigenous people.

01:34:23.000 This is our religion, you know, it's our sacrament.

01:34:26.000 They don't even, they get upset if you even call it a drug or a medicine.

01:34:32.000 To them, it's a sacrament.

01:34:33.000 Well, that's fine.

01:34:34.000 But elsewhere, it is a medicine.

01:34:38.000 But it is also, you know, a religious activity.

01:34:43.000 Vegetalismo has a spiritual aspect.

01:34:46.000 It should be regarded as a religion.

01:34:48.000 We'll see where that goes.

01:34:50.000 It's almost like with the UDV and these other churches that what they've done is they've used this scaffolding of Christianity as a Trojan horse.

01:34:58.000 That's allowing this ayahuasca to get through.

01:35:02.000 Strassman was telling me his experience with them, where they were all wearing golf shirts, and they have uniforms, and they're taking these insane doses of super potent ayahuasca.

01:35:16.000 And then they're all singing and singing songs about Jesus.

01:35:21.000 You know, Strassman is like a really, like, very mellow and easygoing guy, really pleasant guy.

01:35:28.000 He was explaining how he sat down with these people in the morning after all this was over. 0.99

01:35:32.000 He's like, what the fuck are you people doing? 0.98

01:35:35.000 And his eyebrows are raised. 0.99

01:35:37.000 And he's thinking about his trip from the night before.

01:35:39.000 He's like, these people are taking super potent doses of ayahuasca, and they're singing about Jesus with golf shirts on. 0.99

01:35:46.000 And they have plastic folding chairs and shit, and lawn furniture, and it's like, what the fuck is this? 1.00

01:35:54.000 What it is, is it's a religion. 1.00

01:35:56.000 You know, it's a religion.

01:35:57.000 That's what it is, you know.

01:36:00.000 But I think it's okay.

01:36:03.000 Spread it away.

01:36:04.000 Spread it on.

01:36:04.000 Yeah, spread it on.

01:36:05.000 I mean, the thing is, I haven't had much to do with Santa Dime.

01:36:10.000 Not that...

01:36:11.000 I just haven't had the opportunity, nor am I particularly interested in going to ceremonies where I am told that I have to dance the whole time.

01:36:20.000 It's not my thing.

01:36:21.000 But I know the UDV well, you know, because we did the biomedical study with them in the 90s.

01:36:28.000 So they're wonderful people.

01:36:29.000 They're very kind people.

01:36:31.000 You know, their families are good.

01:36:34.000 They're very nice people.

01:36:35.000 But I would never join.

01:36:37.000 They asked me to join.

01:36:38.000 I said, look, I don't do cults.

01:36:40.000 I'd be happy to come drink with you anytime.

01:36:43.000 I'm not joining the religion. 0.96

01:36:45.000 What is it that Groucho Marx once said?

01:36:47.000 I think, to paraphrase him, I would never be a member of any group that would have me.

01:36:51.000 Yeah, that's pretty much what I told them.

01:36:54.000 You know, you don't want me.

01:36:55.000 I'm a heretic by nature, but I'm happy to...

01:36:59.000 You know, share your brew, and they do make fine, fine brew, no doubt about that.

01:37:04.000 I'll tweet your organization.

01:37:06.000 I'll tweet it out for you, but I'm not showing up at the stockholders meeting.

01:37:09.000 I'm not going to join.

01:37:10.000 But it seems to me, with my experience with DMT, that it's so powerful and so profound that I wonder if that's a way that Christianity works.

01:37:19.000 You know, like this idea of Jesus and the saints and heaven and God and all these different manifested deities. 0.98

01:37:26.000 Like, people thumb their nose at it and say it's ridiculous and preposterous, but everything on DMT is ridiculous and preposterous.

01:37:34.000 And I wonder if under the guise of the UDV and their singing and their 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. 0.84

01:37:49.000 I mean, I really wonder if they're going...

01:37:51.000 The whole idea of psychedelics for the non-initiated is...

01:37:55.000 A big part of it is how you're going into the experience.

01:37:58.000 Set and setting and also your mindset.

01:38:00.000 Also, you know, the state of mind that you approach these things can greatly I think we're good to go.

01:38:16.000 I think we're good to go.

01:38:34.000 Is actually an effective approach.

01:38:37.000 Well, I think what you experience You know, is not confined to Christianity.

01:38:42.000 What you articulated is just basically kind of the characteristics of a religious experience or spiritual experience without necessarily tying it to Christianity.

01:38:55.000 I mean, love, compassion, respect for each other.

01:38:59.000 You know, I mean, these are elements of a kind of the...

01:39:04.000 I don't know what you call it.

01:39:06.000 Generic religion.

01:39:07.000 These are elements of the religious experience.

01:39:09.000 The interesting thing about the UDV 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.

01:39:26.000 I mean, it's all set up to make sure that doesn't happen, because religious experiences... 0.89

01:39:35.000 Are dangerous.

01:39:36.000 That's a very profound thing you just said.

01:39:38.000 That most religions, the last thing they want is for you to have a real religious experience. 0.70

01:39:42.000 No, no.

01:39:42.000 It's all set up to make sure that doesn't happen.

01:39:44.000 Only the priests get to have it.

01:39:47.000 Or that was the original thing.

01:39:48.000 And then, and of course, they don't have it either because they're, you know, I mean, it's gotten away from that.

01:39:56.000 Yeah.

01:39:57.000 I mean, how significant is that, that the original idea of the rules of Christianity might have come from that?

01:40:05.000 The Moses and the burning bush.

01:40:06.000 These ideas that are passed on, love thy neighbor, all that stuff, might have been from that very experience.

01:40:12.000 It might have been from that experience.

01:40:15.000 But the thing is, and this happens, it's not just Christianity, it's like It's like any powerful spiritual technology, anything that is numinous, right?

01:40:28.000 I talk a lot about the mysterium tremendum, right?

01:40:31.000 The DMT, the psychedelic experience is a mysterium tremendum.

01:40:37.000 Something that is mysterious, tremendous, terrifying, spiritually powerful, and must be controlled, right?

01:40:47.000 I mean, it is all those things.

01:40:49.000 It's too powerful.

01:40:50.000 So 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 you will.

01:41:05.000 There's a temptation to grab it and use it for your own purposes, which is, you know, usually a man.

01:41:12.000 Usually, I don't know if any women, women don't seem to be, you know, it'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.

01:41:30.000 You know, which is often sex or money or power or all of those things.

01:41:36.000 Yeah, it's always a man. 0.94

01:41:37.000 You know, of course it's a man. 0.99

01:41:38.000 God damn it. 1.00

01:41:38.000 Why do we suck? 1.00

01:41:41.000 We just do, you know? 0.99

01:41:45.000 That's why there's seven billion people.

01:41:47.000 Because we're sneaky and we get you pregnant. 1.00

01:41:49.000 Okay?

01:41:50.000 Right.

01:41:50.000 Sorry.

01:41:52.000 That's pretty much it.

01:41:53.000 We don't want to be like this, ladies.

01:41:56.000 It's not our fault.

01:41:57.000 God.

01:41:59.000 But it's always a man. 0.72

01:42:00.000 It really is always a man. 0.99

01:42:01.000 There's no arguing with it, you know?

01:42:03.000 So you get this all the time, you know, in any kind of quote-unquote spiritual tradition.

01:42:10.000 It happens in the ayahuasca thing, as we know.

01:42:14.000 You know, it's not uncommon to have...

01:42:17.000 Sexual abuse and that sort of very common lately lately more and more so you hear these stories of these guys My friend Amber Lyon had it happen to her like on one of her first experiences I was groping her and 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 provided to people But they're not really much into taking

01:42:47.000 that journey themselves.

01:42:48.000 They're really into exploiting this thing for financial gain and for power and influence.

01:42:54.000 That is what it's morphed into now that there's the tourism phenomenon and all that stuff.

01:43:00.000 So, yes, they see it as a way to exactly that, to power, influence, and money.

01:43:08.000 Which just illustrates, again, it's all about...

01:43:13.000 There's nothing inherently good or bad about these technologies.

01:43:18.000 Ayahuasca can be a wonderful thing if it's used properly, and it can be a really terrible thing.

01:43:23.000 It's all about the use you make of it, the moral dimension that comes with how you use it.

01:43:32.000 I mean, there are ayahuasqueros that have...

01:43:36.000 I say they don't listen to their medicine in a sense.

01:43:40.000 They do these things.

01:43:42.000 They're not really absorbing the lessons that they should be getting from the medicine.

01:43:47.000 Others do listen to their medicine and it's not so easy to sort out who's the good ones and who's the bad ones.

01:43:56.000 Sort of like what you were talking about, these people that have the simplistic idea that all you have to do is get Donald Trump high on DMT and he's going to see the light.

01:44:02.000 That's not necessarily the case.

01:44:04.000 Not necessarily the case.

01:44:05.000 I think it would be wasted on him.

01:44:07.000 I think we would have to do at least an indwelling catheter, maybe two or three hours of continuous DMT infusion methods.

01:44:20.000 Well, sorry, wrong term.

01:44:24.000 Intravenous?

01:44:25.000 But it's very Freudian. 1.00

01:44:28.000 You decided to go through his dick. 1.00

01:44:30.000 That is hilarious. 1.00

01:44:31.000 Not that.

01:44:32.000 Not that.

01:44:33.000 We'll go through the vein.

01:44:35.000 I don't know, man.

01:44:36.000 I think you might have nailed it the first time.

01:44:39.000 That might be the way to get it. 1.00

01:44:41.000 Maybe the way to get it to him is some perfect Russian robot fuck doll who just locks him up right when he gets inside of her. 1.00

01:44:50.000 She gets them in full guard, locks them in place, and catheter-like delivery. 1.00

01:44:56.000 Wow. 0.99

01:44:58.000 Yeah, maybe they can program it like DMT, like little nanobots that go right through the penis hole, right into the system. 0.99

01:45:07.000 They just run out of her, right in there, and he just takes off. 0.95

01:45:12.000 But again, there has to be something there for it to have an effect.

01:45:17.000 Please, somebody animate that. 0.99

01:45:19.000 I know there's somebody out there that wants to.

01:45:21.000 Do it.

01:45:23.000 That's the way to do it. 0.99

01:45:25.000 Just some perfect, super hot 10 Russian hooker looking chick. 1.00

01:45:31.000 No offense to Russian hookers. 1.00

01:45:33.000 Right. 0.99

01:45:34.000 Or Donald Trump.

01:45:35.000 Or Donald Trump even.

01:45:36.000 Look, Donald Trump was a baby at one point in time.

01:45:39.000 You know, and you and I, we both have children.

01:45:41.000 We know.

01:45:41.000 It's a delicate process of turning an adult, making an adult out of a child.

01:45:47.000 And a lot of factors come into play.

01:45:48.000 But almost all babies are born, well, they certainly have their own personality.

01:45:54.000 They're in many ways a blank slate.

01:45:56.000 And so they're in a lot of ways a victim of the environment they're raised in.

01:46:00.000 That's one of the weird things that I've developed in my own self over the last few years is just thinking about people as babies.

01:46:08.000 I think of everyone as a baby now.

01:46:11.000 Since I've had kids, I don't...

01:46:14.000 I mean, obviously I think of them as being adults, but I think of them as an adult that used to be a baby.

01:46:18.000 And I never used to do that.

01:46:20.000 Before I had children, I used to think of people as being in a static state.

01:46:23.000 I meet you and I go, well, this is Dennis McKenna.

01:46:25.000 This is how Dennis McKenna has always been.

01:46:27.000 And now I go, oh, Dennis used to be a little boy.

01:46:30.000 You know, Dennis was a baby.

01:46:31.000 He used to, you know, and then he saw a lot of things and he learned a lot of things.

01:46:35.000 But you know what I mean?

01:46:36.000 Yeah, I know.

01:46:37.000 That's Trump.

01:46:38.000 He's almost as much of a victim as he is a perpetrator.

01:46:42.000 In a way, he is.

01:46:44.000 And Trump's a good example of somebody...

01:46:46.000 I mean, in some ways, he's still a child.

01:46:48.000 You know, he never really grew up.

01:46:51.000 I mean, that's part of the problem.

01:46:53.000 And everyone, because he has so much power and money, everyone kowtows to his impulses.

01:46:58.000 But, you know, I mean, in some ways, like Jared and Ivanka are maybe a stabilizing influence on him.

01:47:05.000 Although, you know, I'm sure their agenda is totally evil as well.

01:47:10.000 Well, confused.

01:47:11.000 They definitely don't deserve the amount of power that they're wielding, nor does anybody.

01:47:15.000 What's more fascinating about him than anything is that what he holds up to the golden standard is success, right?

01:47:22.000 I mean, this is the guy that, you know, everything has to have his name on it.

01:47:25.000 It's all Trump this and Trump that.

01:47:26.000 And if you...

01:47:28.000 Looked at, like, the great American vision of success.

01:47:31.000 It's to become some sort of super rich ultra billionaire.

01:47:34.000 But even though everybody knows he's a super rich ultra billionaire, he still is deceptive about his own success.

01:47:42.000 He still has to lie about it.

01:47:44.000 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.

01:47:52.000 He lies about all these different things, and it's inherent.

01:47:55.000 It's a part of him, this intense lack of satisfaction with any result.

01:48:00.000 Any result, even if it's winning by a mile, he must win by a hundred miles.

01:48:07.000 That's childish.

01:48:10.000 But it's that same intense dissatisfaction that's inherently very dangerous in a leader.

01:48:15.000 Because it's leading him to make these critical judgments that aren't based entirely on reality, but rather what he wants people to perceive.

01:48:26.000 Right.

01:48:27.000 That's quite right.

01:48:28.000 I think that's dangerous.

01:48:29.000 That's what we were saying before.

01:48:31.000 No thoughtfulness.

01:48:33.000 There's no thoughtfulness in the man.

01:48:34.000 There's no reflection.

01:48:37.000 Right.

01:48:37.000 Reflection and lack of humility.

01:48:41.000 Not what you want in your leaders because, you know, we see what's happening.

01:48:45.000 Like, you know, he's going back and forth with the Soviets.

01:48:49.000 He's going back and forth with North Korea.

01:48:52.000 And it's like a schoolyard spat, you know.

01:48:55.000 But these people have nuclear weapons to throw. 0.99

01:48:57.000 So we need to back off from that, Donald.

01:49:01.000 You know, it's just...

01:49:02.000 But he can't do that because he has to respond.

01:49:05.000 He has this impulse to respond.

01:49:08.000 I mean, I think that, you know, I don't know.

01:49:12.000 I mean, he's not going to be exposed to ayahuasca, I'm pretty sure.

01:49:17.000 Unfortunately, because it would help him.

01:49:20.000 And, you know, what is disturbing to me in many things about Donald and this sort of reality distortion he's created is people...

01:49:30.000 You know, they take it seriously.

01:49:32.000 I mean, they're sort of like intimidated by it.

01:49:34.000 Not enough people are standing up and saying, well, this is not true.

01:49:38.000 This is not true.

01:49:39.000 You're completely deluded about this.

01:49:42.000 You know, I mean, there's some sort of impulse to show some respect.

01:49:48.000 When no respect is due, you know?

01:49:52.000 Right.

01:49:52.000 Respect for the office, or respect for the position.

01:49:55.000 Yeah, respect for the office, for whatever some...

01:49:57.000 But then when he comes out with these things that are obviously not true, I'm sorry, there are no alternative facts.

01:50:05.000 Right.

01:50:05.000 Alternative facts are lies.

01:50:07.000 Yeah, those are such a bizarre candy coating of bullshit. 1.00

01:50:12.000 Alternative facts is the most hilarious candy coating of bullshit ever. 1.00

01:50:16.000 My hope is that we get through this without nuclear war, and then we realize that we can't have a fucking president. 1.00

01:50:22.000 And the idea of having one alpha chimp run the entire group of 300-plus million people is insane. 1.00

01:50:27.000 And it doesn't work when you have technology, when you have this ability to communicate instantaneously, globally, with everybody, constantly.

01:50:36.000 It's just an archaic idea that served its time, but needs to be revamped.

01:50:43.000 How would you do that?

01:50:44.000 That's a really good question.

01:50:45.000 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.

01:50:56.000 It's just you're dealing with all these ego issues, decision-making issues, and also the camps, the two separate camps, the right-left camp.

01:51:05.000 That's crazy, too.

01:51:06.000 That's crazy, too.

01:51:07.000 Right, right.

01:51:08.000 No, I mean, I think one way to approach it wouldn't have to be such a tremendous shift from what we've got.

01:51:17.000 It would be to go to a parliamentary system, like Canada has, for example, where...

01:51:24.000 You represent your party and if the other party gets enough, you know, they can vote you out without going through the whole impeachment process.

01:51:35.000 There is no impeachment process.

01:51:37.000 The parties can form a coalition and I think there's also an issue with dealing with the real problems of the world in a In a time where the realities of,

01:52:07.000 say, Syria and what's going on over there are so horrific and they're so far removed from the realities that we deal with here, you almost need to have someone who has some sort of experience with those people in those lands to understand and put it into perspective. 0.85

01:52:23.000 And I think we're entirely lacking of that perspective in terms of our culture.

01:52:31.000 I don't think we understand what a brutal military dictatorship is like.

01:52:37.000 I think we see it on television, and it seems almost too abstract.

01:52:41.000 But the president has to deal with that in a very real way.

01:52:46.000 And no one person can – but that's what advisors are for.

01:52:50.000 Exactly. 0.99

01:52:51.000 But if you don't have good advisors or if you choose to ignore them, then you're in deep shit. 0.99

01:52:56.000 I mean, Donald appoints advisors who already share his delusions. 0.99

01:53:03.000 Of course.

01:53:03.000 So there's nobody there to say, wait a minute, you're wrong.

01:53:07.000 And based on experience and expertise and all this, you're wrong.

01:53:11.000 Right.

01:53:11.000 You need to rethink it.

01:53:13.000 That's what bothers me about one among many things about the way that he proceeds.

01:53:20.000 I mean, you know, the thing that bothers me most about the change in administrations is that they have basically looked at climate change.

01:53:30.000 They said, we don't believe it.

01:53:31.000 It's not happening.

01:53:33.000 It's not even on the table.

01:53:35.000 And actually, that needs to be the thing on the table.

01:53:39.000 That should be the primary thing we're talking about.

01:53:42.000 All this other stuff is important, but we're talking about...

01:53:48.000 The accelerating changes that are essentially undermining the mechanisms that keep the earth habitable by life.

01:54:00.000 This is a pretty important issue.

01:54:02.000 And to have people that say, well, we don't believe in climate change.

01:54:08.000 Well, I'm sorry, climate change is real. 0.99

01:54:10.000 I don't care what the fuck you believe. 0.98

01:54:12.000 It is real. 0.99

01:54:13.000 And for this administration to not only ignore it, but then roll back all these other measures that were put into place is... 1.00

01:54:24.000 You know, it's just the stupidest idea I can imagine. 0.98

01:54:27.000 Not just roll back, but removing the funding from monitoring it. 0.99

01:54:30.000 Yeah, removing the funding.

01:54:31.000 Which is really scary.

01:54:32.000 Suppressing the information and all this.

01:54:34.000 So, you know, if you look at the people in the Trump administration, they're either from the energy industry, Rex Tillerson, you know.

01:54:43.000 I think the government has become essentially a subsidiary of ExxonMobil.

01:54:48.000 Right.

01:54:48.000 You know, and not the other way around.

01:54:51.000 And so, you know, that's what they're doing.

01:54:55.000 That's terrifying.

01:54:56.000 You know, it's Goldman Sachs or Exxon Mobil.

01:54:58.000 I mean, corporations run the world.

01:55:01.000 We've known this for a long time.

01:55:03.000 Governments are just puppets.

01:55:05.000 In some ways, it's just too eerily parallel to what we're talking about with the rainforest.

01:55:10.000 Like, with all this potential in the rainforest, and almost this race. 1.00

01:55:16.000 The race to see, like, can we get to these incredible new plants that we haven't discovered before we fuck it up by cutting down all the hardwoods and burning all the forests?

01:55:26.000 Can we get to this potential...

01:55:31.000 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.

01:55:40.000 Can we get to that before we blow ourselves up? 0.88

01:55:43.000 Before we get into a nuclear war with fucking North Korea or any of this crazy shit 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 it's really unparalleled in terms of human history. 0.99

01:56:04.000 The 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. 0.99

01:56:15.000 I mean, this is an amazing, amazing parallel.

01:56:19.000 Yeah, no, I agree. 0.99

01:56:20.000 It does seem like a race, in some ways, between idiocy and genius. 1.00

01:56:26.000 They're incredibly... 0.97

01:56:29.000 Brilliant people, and they're developing, and there are solutions to the problems that face us, right?

01:56:35.000 But then on the other side, you have the know-nothings, you know, who are marching into the future, eyes firmly fixed on the rearview mirror.

01:56:43.000 It's like, oh yeah, coal technology, that's the greatest thing.

01:56:47.000 Let's go back to that. 1.00

01:56:48.000 I mean, is that stupid or what? 1.00

01:56:51.000 You know, coal technology is obsolete. 1.00

01:56:54.000 It's definitely stupid. 1.00

01:56:55.000 You know, there are better solutions, you know, or the whole attitude toward drugs. 1.00

01:57:00.000 Oh, the war on drugs.

01:57:01.000 The war on drugs was great.

01:57:02.000 Let's go back to that.

01:57:04.000 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.

01:57:12.000 It's like our minds are made up.

01:57:14.000 We know drug abuse has got to be bad, so let's prohibit it.

01:57:17.000 Let's go back to the old model.

01:57:19.000 They're not capable of entertaining new ideas, and that's a problem, you know.

01:57:25.000 What do you think about the idea, and I've heard this brought up and 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,

01:57:40.000 that we almost need some sort of mountain to conquer.

01:57:43.000 We need some sort of a force to be aware of that really makes people rise up.

01:57:48.000 I've seen more More people politically active and politically engaged now, post-election, than I ever did before the election, because they didn't expect Trump to win.

01:57:58.000 Right.

01:57:59.000 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.

01:58:06.000 I mean, it feels to me like Kent stayed all over again.

01:58:09.000 Yeah, no, it was a real shock that he won.

01:58:13.000 And I agree, it's been a wake-up call.

01:58:16.000 So now there is this strong resistance movement, and that's a good thing that that's happening.

01:58:26.000 Also, journalism has suddenly found itself again.

01:58:30.000 You know, some journalists, some sectors of it are beginning to...

01:58:35.000 You know, for so long they were essentially stenographers.

01:58:38.000 They would repeat whatever the mouthpieces of the government. 0.97

01:58:42.000 Now the journalists are questioning everything and asking, you know, tough questions of these clowns and expecting answers. 0.77

01:58:50.000 And it's kind of like, you know, when I was young, I wanted to be a journalist, right? 0.95

01:58:54.000 I thought Walter Cronkite was the cat's pajamas.

01:58:58.000 I wanted to be like him.

01:59:00.000 Or I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, you know, I just admire journalism.

01:59:05.000 And for a long time, I have not found anything to admire in it.

01:59:09.000 It's like they've all been lobotomized or something.

01:59:13.000 But they're rediscovering it.

01:59:15.000 You know, the good ones are rediscovering it and the re-emergence of investigative journalism.

01:59:21.000 And right now I think that's our best hope because I think that these guys, they'll just keep digging.

01:59:30.000 There's going to be so much bad stuff come up about Trump and all this collusion with the Russians and, you know, potentially enough to impeach him.

01:59:40.000 The question is, will the Republicans find enough spine to, you know, to do that?

01:59:48.000 But they did with Nixon.

01:59:49.000 Yeah.

01:59:50.000 And Nixon, I mean, what he did was not nearly as bad as what Trump is doing.

01:59:57.000 So we'll see where it goes.

01:59:59.000 But Trump's shameless in a way that Nixon never was. 0.99

02:00:01.000 Shameless. 0.80

02:00:02.000 And, you know, I take a certain comfort In the thought that, you know, they have all these draconian things they want to do.

02:00:13.000 Roll back all the environmental regulations, the whole immigration thing, you know, war on drugs. 0.99

02:00:20.000 But none of it is going to happen.

02:00:23.000 None of it actually will happen.

02:00:25.000 Well, the immigration stuff is pretty real here in California.

02:00:27.000 I mean, ICE is showing up at Home Depot's.

02:00:31.000 They showed up at Home Depot's.

02:00:32.000 I have a friend who was born in America.

02:00:34.000 He's Mexican.

02:00:35.000 And they asked him where he was born.

02:00:38.000 He's a veteran.

02:00:39.000 And he knew how to deal with this.

02:00:41.000 And he knew what's legal and what's not.

02:00:42.000 And he's a grown man.

02:00:43.000 He's in his 50s.

02:00:44.000 And a citizen, right?

02:00:46.000 And a citizen, yeah.

02:00:47.000 And a veteran.

02:00:48.000 I mean, he served the country in Iraq.

02:00:51.000 And so they're coming up to him and asking him, you know, where are you born?

02:00:55.000 And he's like, you can't ask me that.

02:00:57.000 I was like, you're not allowed to ask me where I'm born.

02:00:59.000 And then he says, who are you?

02:01:01.000 And we're immigration and whatever the ICE stands for.

02:01:05.000 And he goes, let me see some documentation.

02:01:06.000 The guy shows him his badge and his gun. 0.99

02:01:08.000 He goes, that's not your fucking documentation. 1.00

02:01:09.000 Pull out your goddamn documentation. 1.00

02:01:11.000 And he pulls out his military ID. He's like, look, here's my documentation. 1.00

02:01:14.000 This is me. 1.00

02:01:15.000 Who the fuck are you? 1.00

02:01:16.000 Why are you asking people where they're born? 1.00

02:01:18.000 I was born in California, okay?

02:01:19.000 You're not allowed to just go up to people and ask them where they're born.

02:01:22.000 But people that don't know that, they're getting arrested, they're getting taken, they're getting deported.

02:01:27.000 They're taking people that are dropping off their children at school.

02:01:31.000 They're grabbing people.

02:01:32.000 And there's a bunch of cases of this.

02:01:34.000 And you're just hearing about the cases that get to the press.

02:01:37.000 Right.

02:01:38.000 There's so many of them that you're never going to hear about.

02:01:41.000 And this is just rampant.

02:01:42.000 And this never existed before.

02:01:44.000 Not in the Bush administration.

02:01:46.000 No.

02:01:46.000 I mean, not in Bush senior.

02:01:48.000 I mean, it just didn't happen before in any conservative administration.

02:01:51.000 They didn't treat it like this.

02:01:52.000 This is a weird time.

02:01:54.000 Yeah, it is a very weird time.

02:01:56.000 But I think it's temporary.

02:01:57.000 Well, I hope so. 0.97

02:01:58.000 But what you said about journalism, I think it's important to point out that they fucked up just as hard with the left as they did with the right. 1.00

02:02:06.000 I mean, they let the Clintons get away with a lot of horse shit. 1.00

02:02:09.000 They let Obama get away with a lot of horse shit. 1.00

02:02:11.000 They said talking points. 1.00

02:02:14.000 They were given talking points.

02:02:15.000 And they ran with those talking points so that they would get access to the president.

02:02:18.000 And they would get access to congressmen, the senators, and they did it forever.

02:02:22.000 And it wasn't journalism.

02:02:23.000 And you're right.

02:02:24.000 And the reason why this guy got into place 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.

02:02:37.000 Yeah.

02:02:38.000 I mean, journalism has a lot to answer for.

02:02:40.000 There's no doubt about it.

02:02:42.000 I just have a...

02:02:45.000 You know, maybe it's a delusion.

02:02:47.000 I would like to think that journalism is finding its voice and finding its function.

02:02:53.000 Again, its function is to, you know, as somebody said, I think it was I have stone, you know, the function is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, right?

02:03:02.000 And that's essentially the journalistic mandate.

02:03:06.000 Or express the truth.

02:03:07.000 And seek the truth.

02:03:09.000 Seek the truth in form.

02:03:10.000 And don't assume, you know, play the propaganda game, be able to look beyond it.

02:03:17.000 And they have to be in this environment where people keep calling fake news.

02:03:21.000 They have to be undeniable.

02:03:22.000 And I think in that sense, they are reinvigorated.

02:03:25.000 Yeah.

02:03:25.000 I mean, that's one of the things that...

02:03:28.000 You know, you're seeing – that's one of the things that The Times talked about, like, after it was over, after the election was over.

02:03:34.000 They're like, we are – we're going to reinvigorate, refocus our dedication on journalism.

02:03:39.000 Yeah.

02:03:40.000 And I think that's a good sign.

02:03:43.000 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, you know, at some point they do have to answer to Congress.

02:04:01.000 So I think, you know, I mean, the wheels were already coming off before he even took the oath of office.

02:04:07.000 They've continued to come off, and it's just going to get, it's going to just sort of degenerate into litigation, acrimony, inability to get anything passed.

02:04:19.000 Yeah.

02:04:20.000 You know, which is all good.

02:04:22.000 I mean, essentially, in this case, chaos is our friend because they won't be able to advance this draconian agenda, thank God.

02:04:30.000 And, you know, hopefully circumstances will enable us to get rid of them quickly.

02:04:37.000 I don't know.

02:04:38.000 You know, I'm not entirely confident in that.

02:04:41.000 The whole thing to me, when I'm looking at these protests, like what was going on yesterday, where people are just beating the shit out of each other in the streets. 0.84

02:04:48.000 People with red hats. 0.98

02:04:50.000 Like, the red hats are the bad people.

02:04:52.000 It's so strange.

02:04:53.000 Like, it's so strange seeing people with these Make America Great Again hats.

02:04:56.000 Fighting with people that are wearing masks and motorcycle helmets and their sticks and people are throwing, you know, smoke bombs.

02:05:03.000 I'm like, this is crazy.

02:05:05.000 I really never thought we'd see such a clear right versus left civil war, in fact, like these little battles.

02:05:13.000 And it seems to be ramping up and becoming more and more common and becoming more and more violent.

02:05:19.000 Yeah, it seems that it is, you know.

02:05:22.000 But so what can we do?

02:05:24.000 You know, we're not out on the streets protesting on one side or another.

02:05:28.000 Right.

02:05:35.000 I continue doing what I'm doing because I think these plant medicines are the single most important catalyst for changing consciousness on a global level.

02:05:46.000 And that's what has to happen.

02:05:48.000 So I'm not saying I have nothing messianic about it.

02:05:52.000 I tell people I work for the plants, but I think it's valuable to bring people...

02:05:58.000 To that experience in a place that is safe.

02:06:01.000 They don't have to worry about those issues.

02:06:03.000 They can have this direct download with the Mysterium Tremendum, if you want to call it that.

02:06:09.000 That can change hearts and minds.

02:06:11.000 I think that globally, I think that ayahuasca is a catalyst for that.

02:06:15.000 You know, why has it suddenly gone global in the last 20 years?

02:06:20.000 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.

02:06:35.000 You know, wake up the monkeys.

02:06:37.000 And this is the way it's, you know, so ayahuasca is an ambassador from the community of species to what I call the problematic primates, you know, this out-of-control species that needs protection.

02:06:54.000 A good talking to, in a certain sense.

02:06:57.000 Wake up!

02:06:58.000 You're wrecking this place, you know, and you don't have to.

02:07:01.000 Well, it seems like systems always try to balance themselves out, you know, whether it's through warfare or disease or some new government usurping the old power, or whether it's through predators and prey, and there's always some weird sort of reaction to something gaining too much power.

02:07:22.000 Whether it's ideas or ideologies or patterns, they gain too much power and then something shows up that sort of tends to diminish that and erode the very foundation of it.

02:07:34.000 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 some sort of a gateway drug.

02:07:47.000 It's not a gateway drug to the bad ones.

02:07:49.000 I think, if anything, it's a gateway drug to the ones that are going to change the world.

02:07:53.000 Yeah.

02:07:54.000 If it doesn't do it on its own.

02:07:56.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:07:57.000 I mean, this concept of a gateway drug is, you know, it's just stupid in a sense. 0.99

02:08:04.000 This is something that the drug warriors have come up with. 0.99

02:08:08.000 Particularly so.

02:08:09.000 I mean, I'm here to tell you coffee is a gateway drug.

02:08:12.000 Alcohol is the biggest one.

02:08:13.000 Probably chocolate ice cream is a gateway drug.

02:08:15.000 We've all taken these things and, you know, look where we are now.

02:08:21.000 So gateway drug, it's just the concept is absurd.

02:08:25.000 If it was not sold in an environment where there were a choice to have all sorts of other illegal drugs, it wouldn't be a gateway drug, would it?

02:08:35.000 No. 0.93

02:08:35.000 Well, the alcohol one is the most ridiculous one because it's everywhere. 0.93

02:08:39.000 And it's the one that inhibits your, or loosens your inhibitions more than any other drug. 0.99

02:08:43.000 It's responsible for the most foolish behavior. 0.98

02:08:46.000 It's everywhere. 0.99

02:08:47.000 You can get it at every restaurant.

02:08:49.000 You can get it almost everywhere you go.

02:08:51.000 Even to the point where it's not even recognized as a drug.

02:08:54.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:08:55.000 That's the cognitive...

02:09:07.000 That's hilarious.

02:09:07.000 Yeah.

02:09:19.000 Isn't it funny that the word drug, I'm not funny, but isn't it problematic, at the very least, that the word drug is sort of this gigantic blanket that we throw over all these things that perturb consciousness?

02:09:30.000 Right.

02:09:31.000 Well, drug, yeah.

02:09:32.000 And that good and bad, positive and negative, no beneficial effects whatsoever, and a massive one.

02:09:38.000 This is another reason, this is another example of why...

02:09:42.000 This conversation about drugs is so shallow because we're talking about drugs, you know, this completely scary, as you say.

02:09:50.000 Good people don't use drugs.

02:09:52.000 What about which drugs?

02:09:56.000 Why don't we talk about which drugs?

02:09:57.000 Because there's thousands of drugs.

02:09:59.000 So which one are we talking about?

02:10:01.000 Or we just ban all drugs, you know?

02:10:03.000 I feel like just calling them drugs is a problem.

02:10:05.000 Yeah.

02:10:06.000 I mean, how could you call DMT the same thing that you call alcohol?

02:10:10.000 That seems to me to be so crazy.

02:10:13.000 It's just not a useful term.

02:10:32.000 We're biochemical engines that run on drugs, which are neurotransmitters and hormones and enzymes and all of these things in the biochemical system.

02:10:43.000 They're involved with signal transduction.

02:10:47.000 Organisms are networks of communication.

02:10:49.000 They're mediated by neurotransmitters.

02:10:52.000 Neurotransmitters, if you isolated them from the brain, Put them into a bottle and sold them, that would be a drug. 1.00

02:10:59.000 Well, it is a drug.

02:11:00.000 So this idea that, you know, we are inherently biochemical systems, you know, and people don't want to acknowledge that, but that's the truth.

02:11:10.000 You know, we're made of drugs.

02:11:12.000 So the people that want to have the drug-free America, I'm sorry, you know.

02:11:19.000 We're made out of drugs.

02:11:21.000 Drugs are built into who we are.

02:11:24.000 That's why drugs taken from plants or from the outside have the effects that they have, you know, because they affect these systems that, you know, are big brains.

02:11:36.000 This is kind of a consequence of evolution.

02:11:39.000 You know, we have these enormous brains, you know, that evolve very quickly.

02:11:44.000 And we like novelty.

02:11:45.000 We have all of these brain receptors.

02:11:47.000 We like to stimulate those receptors because it makes us feel good or it's interesting or for all sorts of reasons.

02:11:57.000 We like to tweak our states of consciousness.

02:12:01.000 It's just built into who we are.

02:12:03.000 And it's not a bad thing.

02:12:05.000 Well, this is a problem with the way you're thinking.

02:12:08.000 You have too many facts and use too much science.

02:12:12.000 And you don't have enough Jesus.

02:12:13.000 Sorry, excuse me.

02:12:15.000 You don't have enough Jesus in your life.

02:12:16.000 If you had Jesus, you wouldn't need all this nonsense.

02:12:19.000 And then Jeff Sessions would make sense to you.

02:12:21.000 Right.

02:12:22.000 That may be true.

02:12:23.000 But unfortunately, I don't.

02:12:24.000 I won't.

02:12:24.000 So, yeah, I'll just continue to be deluded and believe in science and facts and things like that.

02:12:31.000 It's so important that you embrace Jesus and you just won't.

02:12:34.000 I can't do it.

02:12:36.000 I mean, I did it.

02:12:37.000 I'm a recovering Catholic.

02:12:39.000 I've been there.

02:12:40.000 I know the drill.

02:12:41.000 I know the territory.

02:12:45.000 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.

02:12:55.000 We're just filled up with it.

02:12:56.000 I mean, that's what operates the whole thing.

02:12:59.000 That essentially is what we are.

02:13:00.000 That's what adrenaline is.

02:13:02.000 It's what all these different things are.

02:13:04.000 I didn't say it first.

02:13:05.000 Do you know who said it?

02:13:06.000 It was Salvador Dali who said it.

02:13:09.000 So how do you come up with your ideas for all this crazy art you do?

02:13:14.000 You must be on drugs, right? 0.57

02:13:16.000 He said, no, I am drugs.

02:13:19.000 Which I guess that put the conversation to an end.

02:13:22.000 So if you think about it, it's quite true.

02:13:25.000 Speaking of our drugs...

02:13:27.000 And a lot of, you know, without...

02:13:28.000 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?

02:13:37.000 Right. 0.93

02:13:38.000 Abstinence.

02:13:39.000 Yeah.

02:13:45.000 What it is to be that is forbidden somehow.

02:13:49.000 And this is partly a reflection of our devaluation of nature, which includes our own nature as well as nature out there.

02:13:59.000 Psychedelics are the antidote to this, right?

02:14:02.000 They make you re-appreciate your relationship with nature.

02:14:07.000 So they can catalyze changes in consciousness.

02:14:11.000 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.

02:14:25.000 I'm not there to tell them what to make of it.

02:14:27.000 I'm there to tell them this will be the most intense personal experience that you'll ever have.

02:14:33.000 It's up to you how you evaluate it.

02:14:36.000 And you can tell them, because in all honesty, you're still working it out yourself.

02:14:39.000 Right.

02:14:40.000 And certainly I don't want to tell them.

02:14:42.000 I'm a big believer in, use your own mind, use your own brain to work this out.

02:14:48.000 That's why we have it, you know?

02:14:50.000 That's one of the most important things about recognizing someone who's a quote-unquote fake shaman or someone who's using it wrong.

02:14:57.000 Someone who's telling you exactly what it is and what you're going to experience.

02:15:02.000 One of the most beautiful things that psychedelic drugs do is they dissolve any notion that you might have that anyone has a hold of this thing.

02:15:11.000 Yes, very much so.

02:15:13.000 That is exactly right.

02:15:14.000 If somebody tells me, I'm a great shaman, I'm going to lead you through this, I'm out of there.

02:15:21.000 Because they obviously have not understood what it is.

02:15:26.000 If somebody says, I'm not a shaman...

02:15:29.000 I just help.

02:15:30.000 I just help.

02:15:31.000 I just want to facilitate.

02:15:33.000 You know, it's the medicine that is the shaman.

02:15:36.000 A shaman will say, I'm not a shaman.

02:15:38.000 I just know a few tricks.

02:15:40.000 That guy is the guy I want to drink with.

02:15:42.000 Yeah, I just know a few tricks.

02:15:43.000 I just know a few tricks.

02:15:45.000 If you get in trouble, I can help you.

02:15:46.000 Otherwise, I'll just step back and let you do it, you know?

02:15:49.000 And that's...

02:15:51.000 That's the essential thing because the medicine itself is the shaman.

02:15:56.000 While I have you here, I have to ask you two questions because I keep forgetting to do this.

02:16:00.000 First of all, cannabinoid receptors.

02:16:02.000 What is the relationship between cannabinoid receptors in human beings and the actual use of cannabis or the evolutionary use of cannabis?

02:16:11.000 Like, over the course of human development.

02:16:14.000 Are cannabinoid receptors in place because people have consumed cannabis throughout history, or are they just a natural function of biology?

02:16:23.000 No, they're a natural function of biology, like a lot of these things, you know, like opiate receptors, the same thing.

02:16:30.000 Cannabinoid receptors...

02:16:33.000 There are many kinds, and they're all over the body.

02:16:37.000 They're not just in the brain.

02:16:38.000 They do all sorts of things.

02:16:39.000 They're involved with immune functions and inflammation, and it's quite complicated.

02:16:44.000 Which is why CBD oil works, and it's not psychoactive.

02:16:47.000 Exactly.

02:16:47.000 It's not psychoactive.

02:16:48.000 It works on different receptors.

02:16:50.000 There's at least three kinds of cannabinoid receptors.

02:16:55.000 And evolutionarily...

02:16:58.000 You know, they're not cannabinoid receptors.

02:17:02.000 There's the endocannabinoid system.

02:17:04.000 They are responsive to things that we make in the body, like anandamide, and there's another one which I always forget, but these are endogenous compounds that That bind to cannabinoid receptors.

02:17:31.000 But the receptors just happened to bind these plant alkaloids, but that's not why they evolved.

02:17:38.000 You know, they have functions in the body related to analgesia and sleep and that sort of thing.

02:17:43.000 Same with the cannabinoid receptors.

02:17:46.000 They evolved not because there were cannabis plants out there, but because the body made these endocannabinoids and they mediated all kinds of functions, like anandamide.

02:17:57.000 These things...

02:18:00.000 You know, cannabinoids are a little different than something like DMT or psilocybin, which work kind of very specifically on the serotonin receptors.

02:18:11.000 And that's how they mediate their effects.

02:18:14.000 The effects of cannabinoids are more widespread, you could say.

02:18:19.000 More multivalent is maybe a good word.

02:18:22.000 But...

02:18:24.000 It's not because the plants were there that we evolved these things.

02:18:28.000 We had this.

02:18:29.000 We were neurologically modern humans, you might say, and curious, right?

02:18:37.000 Sampling everything we could get our hands on in the environment, whether stuffing it up our nose or usually drinking it or whatever.

02:18:46.000 Naturally, you're going to stumble over these compounds because the biome...

02:18:53.000 These are just abundant in the bile.

02:18:55.000 So it's not really a chicken or the egg sort of situation, like what came first, the cannabinoid receptor or the consumption of cannabis?

02:19:03.000 Yeah, the receptors were there first.

02:19:05.000 How do we know that?

02:19:08.000 How do we know that?

02:19:09.000 Because we can actually trace the phylogeny of these things.

02:19:14.000 We have molecular methods now where we can actually trace the ancestry of receptors.

02:19:22.000 For example, we have ways to measure this.

02:19:26.000 You know, cannabinoid receptors, you can look at the phylogeny and, you know, they were present in mammals long before we were around, you know, and tryptophan is the same thing.

02:19:41.000 Tryptophan, which is the amino acid we were talking about, precursor to many of these psychedelics, right?

02:19:47.000 So how old is tryptophan as an amino acid?

02:19:51.000 You can look back at the phylogeny. 0.98

02:19:53.000 Turns out Damn old. 0.98

02:19:57.000 Possibly 3.8 billion years old. 0.98

02:20:02.000 The genes for tryptophan have been found in phylogenetic groups that go back that far, the so-called trip operon.

02:20:12.000 So...

02:20:14.000 You know, so these things have been around for a long time.

02:20:17.000 And, you know, in the most primitive organisms, you know, serotonin is another good example.

02:20:23.000 Serotonin is, which most of the psychedelics work on, serotonin is thought to be the oldest neurotransmitter, phylogenetically older than dopamine and norepinephrine.

02:20:37.000 Tryptophan, serotonin is, receptors are very old phylogenetically, evolutionarily.

02:20:46.000 So how does that correlate with runner's high?

02:20:50.000 When people have this runner's high and apparently it has some sort of an effect on cannabinoid receptors, what is going on there?

02:20:59.000 And does it actually mimic the high that someone gets from consuming cannabis?

02:21:03.000 Yeah.

02:21:04.000 I've heard runner's high discussed in terms of the opiate receptors, the endorphin and so on.

02:21:12.000 Maybe cannabis too.

02:21:14.000 What we do know is that in states of high stress, you can boost the production of these endogenous compounds, which is why high stress is one way to induce altered states of consciousness on the natch,

02:21:30.000 right?

02:21:30.000 Oh, I don't need drugs because I can run and get high, or I can do meditation and get high.

02:21:37.000 I'm sorry, dude, you're still on drugs.

02:21:40.000 Because we're made of drugs, and you've just figured out a way to boost your endogenous DMT, cannabinoid, opiates, or whatever.

02:21:48.000 So when people are lifting weights and getting crazy, they're actually, in some way, doing some sort of a natural drug trip.

02:21:55.000 Yeah, essentially, because we are drugs, remember.

02:21:59.000 There is no state you can experience, including the state that we're in right now, that is not a reflection of our neurochemistry.

02:22:09.000 Right.

02:22:21.000 We're in a 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.

02:22:35.000 And a lot of what the brain does, it receives information, but a lot of the brain's function is to filter stuff out.

02:22:43.000 If we received everything from the environment all the time, we'd be nuts.

02:22:48.000 We wouldn't be able to take it.

02:22:50.000 So there are these gating mechanisms that's called neural gating.

02:22:54.000 And we are genetically programmed to, and through experience as well, to have these gating mechanisms that filters a lot of stuff out so that we can function.

02:23:09.000 Otherwise, reality would be a blooming, buzzing confusion all the time.

02:23:13.000 We wouldn't be able to focus on anything.

02:23:16.000 So, for example, gating is malleable.

02:23:23.000 It can change depending on the input.

02:23:26.000 So you're in a crowded restaurant, for example, and it's hard to hear.

02:23:30.000 There's a lot of noise in the background.

02:23:33.000 You adapt to that by filtering out most of what's there.

02:23:38.000 You can suppress it to some degree, so you can talk to the person across from you.

02:23:44.000 You're not paying attention.

02:23:45.000 But at the next table, you hear somebody say your name.

02:23:54.000 Right.

02:24:00.000 Right.

02:24:06.000 Essentially create this hallucination, if you want to call it that, of the reality that we inhabit.

02:24:13.000 You can call it a model of reality.

02:24:16.000 It's not reality itself.

02:24:17.000 It's a reasonable facsimile of reality that we inhabit.

02:24:22.000 And everybody's is different, hence different views.

02:24:25.000 Everyone is different, but close enough that we can talk to each other and all that.

02:24:29.000 But it's not the pure objective reality.

02:24:35.000 It doesn't really exist.

02:24:36.000 Well, it exists out there, but we don't know what it looks like.

02:24:39.000 But it doesn't exist to humans.

02:24:40.000 It doesn't exist to us.

02:24:41.000 We don't perceive it.

02:24:43.000 We perceive our own model, essentially, of reality.

02:24:52.000 Different experiences create literally drug trips.

02:24:56.000 Also can explain love affairs where people become incredibly addicted to each other and addicted to the experience of being around the person and what that does to you.

02:25:07.000 And that literally you are on drugs when you're with someone.

02:25:09.000 Of course.

02:25:10.000 And, you know, that's been studied, right?

02:25:13.000 Yeah.

02:25:13.000 I mean, oxytocin and probably opiates.

02:25:16.000 Dopamine and serotonin.

02:25:18.000 All of these things are part of what mediates that relationship.

02:25:24.000 Including sex hormones.

02:25:26.000 Absolutely.

02:25:26.000 All of those things.

02:25:27.000 All of those things.

02:25:28.000 Sex hormones, too, are psychoactive drugs in a certain sense.

02:25:31.000 Which is not to say, I mean, this is not saying that these experiences aren't genuine or valuable or anything.

02:25:38.000 They are, obviously, you know.

02:25:41.000 Personal relationships are important.

02:25:44.000 To my mind, it's not a devaluation to say, well, it's chemically mediated.

02:25:51.000 Okay, great, it's chemically mediated.

02:25:53.000 That doesn't make it invalid.

02:25:54.000 In fact, it means that, wow, these molecules are pretty amazing that they can do this.

02:26:00.000 Well, the feeling is fantastic.

02:26:02.000 Like, why would that invalidate it?

02:26:04.000 It's still real.

02:26:04.000 It's still awesome, right?

02:26:05.000 Well, but 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 the natch.

02:26:19.000 Right.

02:26:20.000 But it wasn't on the natch, you know?

02:26:23.000 You're still a prisoner of your neurochemistry, no matter what.

02:26:26.000 It just so happens that psilocybin is a drug.

02:26:30.000 Taken in the right circumstances in the right amount will reliably induce a mystical experience.

02:26:37.000 Nothing wrong with that.

02:26:40.000 You know, you can even study it.

02:26:42.000 Suddenly science can study mystical experiences because we have a reliable trigger that will, nine times out of ten, induce a mystical experience in the right circumstances.

02:26:52.000 So then we can take somebody, you know, maybe somebody's meditated for 20 years or done yoga or done other things, hoping that they might have a mystical experience.

02:27:03.000 Good for them.

02:27:04.000 But then, you know, 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.

02:27:18.000 That reminds me of a great story that your brother told once.

02:27:21.000 About a monk who studied a city of levitation and he did it for like 30 years and then met the Buddha and said, look, I can walk on water.

02:27:34.000 I've studied this city of levitation for 30 years and now I can walk across the river.

02:27:38.000 And the Buddha said, yeah, but the ferry's only a nickel.

02:27:44.000 Right.

02:27:45.000 One choice, 30 years, man.

02:27:47.000 You could have just taken mushrooms.

02:27:49.000 Speaking of mushrooms, this is something that I get wrong all the time.

02:27:52.000 This is one of the other things I wanted to ask you.

02:27:55.000 There's some very close relationship that mushrooms have and the absorption of mushrooms have to DMT. What is the chemical differentiation?

02:28:07.000 Okay.

02:28:07.000 Very slight, actually.

02:28:13.000 The temptation to start drawing structures is almost irresistible.

02:28:18.000 You want to write some stuff down?

02:28:19.000 Go ahead.

02:28:19.000 Draw it down.

02:28:20.000 It would be awesome.

02:28:20.000 Here.

02:28:20.000 Here's a pen.

02:28:21.000 Do we have a visual component?

02:28:22.000 No, we don't, but I'll save that piece of paper.

02:28:24.000 Okay.

02:28:25.000 Well, I don't want to get too far into it, but basically, okay, so you've had organic chemistry, yeah?

02:28:34.000 No.

02:28:35.000 No?

02:28:35.000 Okay.

02:28:36.000 Okay.

02:28:37.000 I am organic chemistry.

02:28:39.000 You are organic chemistry.

02:28:42.000 Well, this may be a useless thing, but it's definitely not useless.

02:28:45.000 We can see it up on the wall here.

02:28:47.000 We've got it up on the screen.

02:28:48.000 Oh, there you go.

02:28:50.000 Okay, well, there you go.

02:28:52.000 Yeah, we don't have to draw a stroke.

02:28:53.000 You can look at it right here so you don't have to turn around.

02:28:55.000 Look to your right.

02:28:56.000 Dennis, turn.

02:28:57.000 It's on this one as well.

02:28:58.000 Okay.

02:28:59.000 So, right.

02:29:00.000 So you can see.

02:29:02.000 So there's serotonin, psilicin, and dimethyltryptamine.

02:29:06.000 Wow.

02:29:06.000 You can see that psilicin and dimethyltryptamine are very close in structure.

02:29:11.000 The only difference is that hydroxy group.

02:29:14.000 That OH group.

02:29:16.000 That's the only difference.

02:29:17.000 So with that removed, silicin is exactly the same thing as NN-dimethyltryptamine.

02:29:21.000 That's correct.

02:29:22.000 Wow.

02:29:22.000 But that single trivial difference is what makes silicin orally active and dimethyltryptamine is not.

02:29:30.000 Wow!

02:29:31.000 Wow.

02:29:32.000 Because what's going on with that, this static diagram, a different molecular model would show, but what's going on is that that nitrogen there, when silicon's in physiological solution,

02:29:49.000 The nitrogen is charged, has a positive charge.

02:29:52.000 The oxygen doesn't have the H there.

02:29:55.000 It has a negative charge.

02:29:57.000 So the nitrogen curls back and is in close association with the oxygen.

02:30:06.000 If this makes any sense.

02:30:07.000 So the enzyme can't get to it.

02:30:10.000 That's why it's orally active, because essentially it can't get to that nitrogen.

02:30:15.000 What that enzyme does is cleave off that nitrogen, monoamine oxidase.

02:30:21.000 It takes away that nitrogen.

02:30:24.000 And it can't do it with psilocin.

02:30:26.000 So that's why psilocin is orally active.

02:30:28.000 It doesn't require an MAO inhibitor.

02:30:30.000 It's just, in some ways, it's the perfect psychedelic because, you know, no preparation needed.

02:30:36.000 You just bend over and pick the mushroom.

02:30:39.000 No preparation is required, which is probably why very ancient man knew about psilocybin.

02:30:47.000 They couldn't not have if they were living in an environment where it was found.

02:30:54.000 That's amazing.

02:30:55.000 You know, what's really incredible is that people are using psilocybin these days in what they call microdosing, taking very small doses and seeing these profound benefits.

02:31:07.000 And one of the things that I'm aware of is kickboxers are using it.

02:31:13.000 And kickboxers are using it and a good buddy of mine is using it.

02:31:16.000 He says that he can see things happen before they happen.

02:31:19.000 It's almost like he's reading people's minds before they're about to do something.

02:31:23.000 Even on microtosis.

02:31:25.000 Yeah.

02:31:25.000 That's very interesting.

02:31:26.000 In the intense environment of sparring and the intense physical kinetic interaction of kickboxing.

02:31:33.000 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.

02:31:39.000 Right.

02:31:40.000 No, I'm not surprised at all.

02:31:42.000 Why aren't you surprised?

02:31:44.000 What do you think is happening?

02:31:46.000 Because I think that these things let you step out of your box a little bit.

02:31:53.000 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, we're programmed to filter stuff out.

02:32:05.000 Psychedelics temporarily disrupt that.

02:32:08.000 They let the background come forward.

02:32:10.000 And you notice things about the environment that normally you would suppress because they're not relevant to immediate survival.

02:32:20.000 I don't know if you've read some of the work by Simon Powell.

02:32:24.000 He wrote The Psilocybin Solution.

02:32:26.000 He writes very intelligently about psilocybin.

02:32:30.000 In his latest book, The Magic Mushroom Explorer, he talks about how psilocybin is a lens, essentially.

02:32:40.000 You can think of it as a lens.

02:32:43.000 Yeah.

02:32:58.000 It's a scientific instrument.

02:33:00.000 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've never noticed them before because we're programmed not to.

02:33:10.000 For example, you know, Carey Mullis is famous because his discoveries in molecular biology, he attributes to his insights about molecular processes that he got from LSD. That he could get down with the molecules,

02:33:28.000 as he put it, and see how all this is working.

02:33:30.000 And obviously he invented polymerase chain reaction, which he got the Nobel Prize for.

02:33:37.000 So it's not like this is a delusion.

02:33:39.000 It's a real thing that he was able to notice that no one else...

02:33:43.000 You know what I'm saying?

02:33:44.000 He was able to put himself in a place where he could notice these phenomena.

02:33:49.000 And I think that's really true.

02:33:51.000 If you go to...

02:33:54.000 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.

02:34:07.000 They will notice things about the environment, you know, that you are completely oblivious to until they point it out, you know, and then they'll say, oh, yes, I never noticed the leafcutter ants are behaving this way or these different things.

02:34:24.000 Their sensory sort of experience of an environment like the forest is very different than ours.

02:34:33.000 You know, because we're used to, we're just not out in nature the same way.

02:34:38.000 And I dare say, I think one of the things that in some ways inserts a barrier between us is literacy.

02:34:47.000 You know, we're all literate, right?

02:34:50.000 And we like being literate.

02:34:52.000 It's good that we're literate.

02:34:54.000 But in order to be literate, you have to have this separation between the self and the external environments.

02:35:01.000 You have to pick up a book and read it.

02:35:04.000 I am here.

02:35:05.000 I'm the point of view.

02:35:06.000 Here's the book.

02:35:08.000 So that creates that relationship.

02:35:11.000 And you sacrifice, you focus on one particular sensory modality, and you sacrifice all the other input that is coming in.

02:35:23.000 I don't know if I'm making sense.

02:35:24.000 You absolutely are.

02:35:44.000 The things in the background that you're normally programmed to suppress and ignore because, you know, you have to be ready for the saber-toothed tiger to come across, you know, over the mountain or whatever, you know what I'm saying.

02:35:58.000 But it's good in that sense.

02:36:03.000 They teach different ways of perception.

02:36:06.000 Right.

02:36:07.000 And I think that's a very useful thing to learn.

02:36:11.000 Indigenous people call these psychedelics plant teachers, and they call them teachers for a reason. 1.00

02:36:18.000 Much of what you experience comes directly from the experience, but much of it also comes from your changed perception, and suddenly you realize there's a different way to be in the world.

02:36:31.000 There's a different way to perceive...

02:36:36.000 What you experience that normally you don't, you know, we're programmed to filter out.

02:36:42.000 I don't know if you've ever read or had Stephen Buhner on your show.

02:36:48.000 He writes very intelligently about this stuff.

02:36:51.000 He's written a book called Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm.

02:36:56.000 And it's all about this, you know, this...

02:37:02.000 Essentially, what his rap is, you can learn this, you know, you can learn this way of perceiving.

02:37:09.000 Whether you do it with psychedelics or not, you can actually learn it.

02:37:13.000 And 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.

02:37:24.000 I feel like we have these pre-assumed definitions of things that we rely upon instead of seeing things for what they really are.

02:37:32.000 That's it.

02:37:33.000 Yeah, you box them up and you package them and you go, oh, well there's a car.

02:37:37.000 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 it rolls on rubber tires.

02:37:47.000 That's exactly what I'm talking about.

02:37:49.000 There's a different way to look at things if you step out of the box.

02:37:54.000 And yes, it is all those things.

02:37:55.000 And it's also a car.

02:37:58.000 But if you did that all the time, you'd never get anything done.

02:38:00.000 That's right.

02:38:02.000 That's right.

02:38:03.000 But, I mean, it's interesting in that respect, you know, with psychedelics, because we're verbal people and, you know, we inhabit a world of language as much as the physical world.

02:38:19.000 And we're almost compelled to try to put some kind of a linguistic wrapper over everything, which is one reason why.

02:38:29.000 If you smoke DMT, right, you have a complete revelation.

02:38:33.000 It's amazing.

02:38:34.000 It's all of these things.

02:38:36.000 But...

02:38:38.000 In most cases, you aren't even down yet before you're trying to explain it to yourself.

02:38:47.000 You're trying to stuff this thing in a box because it was so impactful.

02:38:52.000 It's inherently ineffable.

02:38:55.000 You can't really describe it in language, but boy...

02:39:00.000 Is there a desire to somehow tame this thing, which is incomprehensible, totally transcendent, but that doesn't stop you from rapping about it immediately, to try to stuff it into a box because it's too impactful.

02:39:17.000 And so on the individual level, this is what people do.

02:39:21.000 That's what religions do, too, right?

02:39:24.000 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,

02:39:40.000 nullify, neutralize its power, these things are very dangerous.

02:39:44.000 There also seems to be some sort of a physiological component to the DMT trip, where once it's over, you have a very limited amount of time to hang on to those memories.

02:39:57.000 Yes, well, exactly.

02:39:58.000 And so this is an attempt to entrain that, to grab it, and I think put a linguistic...

02:40:06.000 You know, tag on it in a certain way so that as a way to not forget it or try and, you know, both reduce its power but give you something to hang on because, right, the memory of what it actually is is going to fade very rapidly.

02:40:22.000 Why is that?

02:40:23.000 What's the physiological...

02:40:25.000 I don't know what the physiological...

02:40:27.000 But it's a lot like dreams.

02:40:29.000 It's a lot like dreams.

02:40:30.000 It's a lot like dreams.

02:40:31.000 I think that it's just...

02:40:34.000 I don't know.

02:40:35.000 It's something like that.

02:40:38.000 You could probably train yourself to remember it better, just like people can train themselves to remember their dreams.

02:40:46.000 But it's ephemeral.

02:40:49.000 It does tend to evaporate, which is why it's important to Go to the well once in a while and take a drink, right?

02:40:59.000 I am not one of these people that says, once you get the message, hang up the phone.

02:41:04.000 That's a model that doesn't work for me, actually.

02:41:07.000 It might work for some people, but I feel like this is not an answering machine.

02:41:12.000 This is a teacher.

02:41:13.000 This is something that is intelligent that you have a dialogue with.

02:41:18.000 You know, and you don't, you know, teacher teaches a lesson.

02:41:22.000 You don't say, thanks very much.

02:41:24.000 We're done now.

02:41:25.000 It's an ongoing process.

02:41:28.000 I've been taking psychedelics for most of my life, a good part of my life.

02:41:32.000 I feel like I've only learned a fraction of what they have to teach me. 0.98

02:41:36.000 You know, and maybe I'm just dumb.

02:41:39.000 Maybe I don't get the message as well as other people, but I don't think so.

02:41:43.000 I think there's a lot...

02:41:45.000 They're full of surprises.

02:41:47.000 You know, I've taken ayahuasca lost track a long time ago, but probably 500 times or more.

02:41:56.000 And people say, well, you know, surely you've learned everything there is to learn.

02:42:01.000 Actually, no.

02:42:02.000 You know, I always learn something new.

02:42:06.000 And I learn certain basic things, too, that it always reminds me about.

02:42:12.000 Remember that you don't know anything.

02:42:14.000 That's the chief thing.

02:42:16.000 And you're also acquiring new data constantly in the natural world that needs to be processed.

02:42:21.000 And sometimes you process it with the tools of civilization versus the psychedelics.

02:42:29.000 Well, you know, it's just interesting.

02:42:32.000 It keeps me off the streets so far.

02:42:37.000 Are you going to join a gang, Dennis?

02:42:39.000 A lot of people can be grateful for that.

02:42:42.000 Yeah.

02:42:42.000 No, I'm grateful.

02:42:44.000 I'm grateful.

02:42:44.000 Listen, I think I've taken up plenty of your time here, and this is an amazing conversation.

02:42:48.000 I really appreciate it.

02:42:50.000 I appreciate it.

02:42:50.000 I'm always happy when we can do this.

02:42:52.000 Yeah.

02:42:52.000 Wish we could do it more often.

02:42:54.000 We should do it more often.

02:42:55.000 We definitely should.

02:42:56.000 Let's do it.

02:42:56.000 I can come.

02:42:59.000 There are many people I can recommend.

02:43:01.000 I'm sure you get hundreds of requests, but certain people you ought to be talking to.

02:43:07.000 Let's do it.

02:43:08.000 Let's do it.

02:43:09.000 So please, one more time, tell people about this conference and when they can watch it on Facebook.

02:43:15.000 Okay.

02:43:16.000 Well, it's the ESPD50.com.

02:43:20.000 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.

02:43:31.000 The cost is high to actually go there and do it.

02:43:35.000 But people can access it on Facebook.

02:43:38.000 And if you go to that website, then there's a link through to the Facebook page.

02:43:42.000 And we'll be live streaming it, you know, on the 6th, 7th, and 8th of June.

02:43:48.000 And it'll be archived, so I don't expect people in the States to get up at 3 in the morning, you know, to watch it, although they could if they want to watch it live.

02:43:56.000 But it'll all be, you know...

02:44:00.000 And will you transfer it over to other more accessible, like people who don't have Facebook, maybe on YouTube or something along those lines, Vimeo?

02:44:08.000 We haven't made plans to livestream it on Vimeo.

02:44:12.000 I don't know how you do that.

02:44:13.000 I don't think you can livestream it, but you could definitely take the video recording, perhaps, if you have a physical recording.

02:44:19.000 It'll all be up there eventually, but just livestream, real-time.

02:44:23.000 Facebook will be where we do it, mostly because everyone has told me, this is how you do it.

02:44:29.000 Okay.

02:44:29.000 Well, I will definitely tweet that out to everybody, and I'll let everybody know, and I'll put it on all the available social media.

02:44:36.000 Fantastic.

02:44:37.000 And order the book.

02:44:38.000 You can go to the website and order the book, and the book will come out probably the end of November.

02:44:44.000 It's going to take a few months for everybody to get there.

02:44:48.000 They have to not only make a presentation, they have to submit a paper for this book.

02:44:54.000 And I'm dangling certain rewards out to them to make sure that they do, in fact, submit a full paper in the spirit of the first conference.

02:45:04.000 But...

02:45:04.000 It's going to be an amazing book, and it's something I've wanted to do for a long time.

02:45:10.000 And I can check this off the list now and go on to something else.

02:45:15.000 Beautiful.

02:45:16.000 And hopefully do it more often.

02:45:17.000 Thanks, Joe.

02:45:17.000 Thank you, Dennis.

02:45:18.000 I appreciate you very, very much.

02:45:20.000 All right.

02:45:20.000 Thanks, folks.

02:45:21.000 See you soon.

02:45:22.000 Bye.

02:45:22.000 Bye-bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - April 17, 2017

Joe Rogan Experience #946 - Dennis McKenna

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