I mean they really present themselves as
intelligent entities. They were talking
to us in a certain way, communicating
telepathically. They had a lot to teach
us. If you make this sound, you can
affect effectively molecular changes in
your physiology at the at the level of
DNA induce a resonance with your DNA
that will cause it to turn
superconducting.
You will actually be able to exteriorize
your consciousness. Psychotic break,
shamanic initiation or alien encounter.
Right. And it
it had all of those elements, you know.
It had all of those elements. Dennis
McKenna has one of the most remarkable
stories I have ever heard. Imagine
yourself at 20 years old in the
Colombian Amazon basin, living for
months almost entirely on a diet of
psychedelic mushrooms in a 24/7
sleepdeprived cosmic dance with the
universe. Together with his brother
Terrence, they ran an experiment on
their own minds that should have
destroyed them both. One walked away a
mystic and became the most famous and
impactful psychedelic philosopher of all
time. The other walked away a scientist
and spent the next 50 years becoming the
ethnopharmacologist who first proved how
Iaska works. Welcome to the story of the
McKenna brothers. We went to South
America because we thought if we could
find a orally active form of DMT. DMT
was the the mystery for us. It was the
holy grail. What happened was that we
became dissociated from reality for a
prolonged period. I've expanded my mind
to be contiguous with the boundaries of
spaceime
and I was the universe over about 2
weeks each 24 hours. I I was one with
the cosmos and I began to collapse in on
myself. I began to reconstitute. Then I
was contiguous with the boundaries of
the galactic supercluster and then the
galaxy and then the solar system and
then while all this was going on
Terrence was in a hyper vigilant state
looking after me and he he didn't sleep
for 14 days. You're middle of the
[ __ ] Amazon, right? So you can't just
go to the clinic down the street. And of
course
>> for a 20-year-old
>> it was a lot. It's a lot for 60 year
old. It's a lot for 70 year olds. It's a
lot for anyone
>> 20 years older than the Amazon having
these experiences. I mean, I can only
imagine.
>> Well, yeah.
Can you detail maybe some resonant
moments or resonant experiences in your
life that led you on the particular
scientific journey that you ended up
embarking on?
>> Well, no doubt it was psychedelics. I
mean, psychedelics has been, you know, a
major preoccupation of mine
uh for,
you know, 60 years almost. you know, uh
I was heavily influenced uh by my
brother. No surprises there. Uh I mean,
he was four years older than me and in
this dynamic that older and younger
brothers have, you know, the younger
brother wants to be in your older
brother's parade basically. And I was
very much like that. if your older
brother was interesting and Terrence was
certainly interesting. He always had
lots of things going on and he was a
mentor. You know, I I've in my book I've
called him a tormentor and a mentor, you
know. I mean, he was a tormentor. He was
mean to me as a younger brother. That's
what older brothers do. Younger brothers
suffer from it. But but when that wasn't
happening, especially as we got older,
uh
you know, we he got more respect for me.
I mean, I was no longer just the nerdy
little pesky brother. He realized that I
had stuff going on, too. And that
actually I had some things that were
interesting uh that he was also
interested in and interest that I, you
know, I had interest that he didn't have
and vice versa. But so we gradually grew
I think from being uh I mean we've
always been older and younger brother
but we've always we we grew into being
really colleagues
in some ways fellow explorers
of this phenomenon of psychedelics you
know and uh and that was in our world
back in the 60s and really it has
continued to this day. It was simply not
simply the most interesting drugs we
found, but the most interesting
phenomenon, the most interesting
experience that we had with
psychedelics. So, it's it's been an
endless fascination for for many
decades. And uh uh and it continues, you
know, I mean, I'm not
I'm not as obsessed with psychedelics as
I as I used to be. I'm basically I'm I'm
most of my contributions of science have
been in the past but uh I'm still
interested in it still very much think
that it's worth understanding and uh how
these things and my brother and I we
went we kind of diverged at a certain
point he was more of a philosopher
and he was uh ready to reject science
you know and and he said science
will never explain the phenomenon that
we're that we're interested in exploring
and and you know the the psychedelic
experience and the things that happen to
you. He claimed that science is never
going to be up to the task and so in
some ways he rejected science and he
became like a philosopher and
that was convenient because he was a
very good one. It also freed him of
having to actually study science, you
know, and that's and that's that's
that's the price you pay if you want to
practice science. If you want to do
science, you have to study it. And he
didn't have the patience for that. I on
the other hand was saying, well, science
is a powerful tool for understanding
nature and we need to do science before
we can reject science. So I went that
route and I I became, you know, less
preoccupied with metaphysics and more
preoccupied
or interested in what you might call
nuts and bolts, you know. So I was
interested in the chemistry. I was
interested in the pharmarmacology. How
do these things work? What's going on in
the brain? What are what about the
plants and the fungi that makes them?
That's where most of my experience, my
you know investigations have been based
on looking into the chemistry and
pharmacology of these plant medicines,
these psychedelic plant medicines. Uh so
I was very much in that mode and very
handson and and practicing science as
best I could and Terrence was you know
through his attitude he was able to free
himself of that and he was free to
speculate
and if you're familiar with his work
you know which I assume you are to some
degree you know yeah a lot of
speculation
and uh a lot of it is
uh nonsense to put too not to put too
fine a point on it. You know, he was a
lot of his theories is his ideas, they
don't stand up in the light of science.
They're not really scientific theories.
They're more like interesting
suppositions. And and that's how
hypotheses,
that's how they all start out, a
supposition about something. But he uh
he was interested in proving his
suppositions. And uh that's not how
science works. You know, science, if you
really practice science honestly,
uh you come up with a supposition, you
come up with a hypothesis,
and then you try to demolish it. You
know, you try to find out where are the
gaps, what does it not answer, what
where what is it? And it's always
positioned in a the context of based on
the data that we have, based on what we
know now, does this hypothesis
uh answer the question? Does it cover
what we know now? So you never prove a a
theory or a hypothesis. It's always
provisional. You have to re recognize
that you may have to some, you know,
something may come up may come along
that completely uh dis dismantles the
hypothesis. But so all of these models
are working models, you know, and but
they're good enough. They help expand
the the investigation of knowledge, the
expansion of knowledge. And what's the
why you come upon
uh a major discovery
and then you look at it you have you can
say well um this is going to change
everything right like the transition
from say Newtonian physics to to
relativity. I mean relativity was you
know
relativity was the end of Newtonian
physics as a
tool for understanding the nature of the
universe but that said Newtonian physics
remains quite useful but everybody
understands that the universe is
relativistic I mean there you know the
Einsteinian universe is not the same but
in everyday world
day-to-day world, Newtonian physics
works just fine, you know, and
relativity is there, but you it doesn't
really affect most of what happens to
us, you know, unless we're in
special circumstances, you know, such as
traveling
a big percentage of the speed of light
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Back to the episode. I'd love to hear
about what brought you and your brother
to the Colombian Amazon in the 1970s. I
read about this experience and and I
think it it sort of sets up a lot of the
diverging introjectories between you.
Can you talk about what brought you
there and then the experience that you
shared?
>> Well, yes, I can. I can within limits
but I also don't want to go down that
rabbit hole because it's such a deep
rabbit hole you know and I've I've
talked about it many many times and uh I
don't want to keep repeating myself but
I can tell you that
you know even so that was 1971 right
nearly over 50 years ago that we were
there
uh we were very young. We were I was 20,
he was 24.
Uh, and we were at that stage of life,
you know, that young people go through
and especially curious nerds like we
were where you think you know a lot, you
know, and chances are you don't know
very much, you know, and I think that's
one of the lessons that science teaches
us is the limitations of of our
understanding. But we went there and we
had certain ideas and we went there in
search of them. And what led us to go
there? Again, this this all centers
around psychedelics. And in our world in
the late60s, the most interesting
psychedelic that crossed our radar was
uh DMT.
And DMT was extremely fascinating
you know because
well you probably experienced DMT so you
know why it fascinated it simply it was
not simply the most experienced it
>> I actually have so many convers I h I
haven't experienced it I it's on my list
I'm I'm currently in a country that all
drugs are extremely illegal so it's
difficult for me but the um eventually
it's on the list but I've had so many
conversations
I know how interesting it is from that
perspective.
>> Yeah. What country do you live in?
>> Well, I'm currently in Malaysia, so I
will be hung in the town square for
something like that.
>> Oh, I guess you would be. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that's You'll have to go to
another country for that. That's too
bad, you know, because
DMT is and all psychedelic experiences.
There there there's something that you
cannot delegate. You can't ask somebody
else to have your experience for you.
You just have to do it yourself. You
know, I mean, you can read about it. You
can observe people taking it. You can do
all these things, but it's kind of like
sex, you know? If you really want to
experience sex, you just have to step up
and do it. You know, you could watch
porn, you could watch other people.
That's not sex. That's observing sex and
drugs are like that. You have to engage
with them and uh and when you engage
with
>> just haven't had the chance of DMT just
yet.
>> Well, you I mean you have to actually
take it, you know, and you won't ever
adequately understand what's it what
it's about until you take it. But I'm
here to tell you once you take it, you
won't understand what it's about either.
But but you'll have a much better idea,
you know, and you'll realize that when
you take it, it's absolutely one of the
strangest experiences that one can have.
And it's fascinating. And it's not
necessarily terrifying. It can be
terrifying, but usually it's just
fascinating. And it's not uh, you know,
in the right doses and in the right
circumstances is it's not a threatening
thing. I mean you're you don't have time
to be threatened for one thing. It's so
short in its mechanism of action. I mean
it's only 15 20 minutes you know in the
smoked form right and so by the time you
begin to wonder things like well am I
ever coming back from this? You know
have I completely blown out and I'll be
here forever. By the time you can even
think that question, you're already on
the way down, you know, and it takes it
it and you come back down and you're
ordinary consciousness reconstitutes and
and it's like rebooting your computer,
you know, you bring your computer back
up and you wake up to ordinary
consciousness.
But DMT was the the mystery for us. It
was the holy grail. We wanted to
understand DMT because in the uh in our
model back in the 60s
uh we we were both we were both science
fiction nuts. You know, we were science
fiction fans and and science fiction is
a dangerous thing to muck with because
it it messes with your head if you know
anything about it. And so with this
background, we thought this place that
you get to on DMT and it's very much
like a place. We thought this is another
dimension, right? We didn't think of it
as a drug trip. We thought of it as a
portal to another dimension. The two do
not have to be different, but that's we
we thought that's what it is. This is
actually a different dimension.
And since then plenty of people have
corroborated that feeling that doesn't
prove that it is another dimension but a
lot of people have you know that
impression
and uh and so based on that we were
frustrated by the fact that DMT
didn't last very long. Uh, and that was
that was a problem because by the time
you actually get to the deepest part of
the experience, it's already dissolving.
It's already collapsing. And so we
went to South America because we thought
if we could find a orally active form of
DMT. DMT, as you probably know, DMT by
itself is not orally active. You have to
take an MAO inhibitor with it in order
to make it orally active. That's the
basis of iawasa. Iawaska is effectively
DMT in one plant combined with another
plant that contains these alkyoids,
betaarbines that are monoaminoxidase
inhibitors. So you have to inhibit MAO
in order to make it orally active. We so
we thought we'd like to go to South
America and find an orally active form
of DMT.
And uh at the time
uh we didn't this this was like 19676869
in that area the uh the pharmacology of
Iawaska was not well understood. It
really wasn't understood that that is an
orally active form of DMT. you know
because it was later that the importance
of the ad mixture plants to iawaska and
all that was discovered. We didn't have
that data when we had this idea to to go
to South America look for the orally
active form. So we another source
another paper actually that Schultties
Ari Schulties the famous Etobotnus
published uh on a different species of
plant member of the of the nutmeg
family. Verola is the genus and Verola.
The sap of Verola
subspecies contains DMT and fibthoxy DMT
in rather high amounts and other
tryptoines, but those are the two main
ones. And uh in lots of parts of the
Amazon, the ferola is made into a snuff.
the sap is extracted
and boiled down and mixed with ashes and
and they use it as a snuff because it's
not orally active otherwise but there
were a couple of tribes that did have an
orally active form and uh Schulties
published this paper uh about this in
the botanical Harvard botanical museum
leaflets and the title was Verola as an
orally active Synergy and it was like
the title may have well have been in
neon lights because you know we we
stumbled across this paper and we we
said this is it. This has got to be it.
You know this is the secret. So we got
to get this this material which which
was called Ukuhi
and it was used by primarily by the Woto
people and a couple of related tribes
and uh they lived north of the Pabio.
Their their ancestral home
was uh Lurera this this this village
north of the Pabayo. That's why we went
to Lerera was looking for Uku completely
naive not knowing what really not
knowing what we're doing which is a good
place to be into in some ways because
when you're in that state you're open to
the unexpected you know and you have to
you you welcome the unexpected well we
went there we went to Lera looking for
ukuh
and this story has been told in my book
and it's been told online and it's been
told lots of places. You probably read
or looked at some of those. And uh when
we got to Lera looking for this what we
had come to think of as the secret.
Uh, talk about being surprised by the
unexpected. When we got to this place,
which was a little tiny mission village
in uh, you know, along this river, the
Gar Parad
pretty much at the end of the navigable
portion. And at this mission, they'd
cleared the pastures. They cleared the
jungle around the bishop, put in
probably a couple hundred acres of
pasture land and they had put seabu
cattle there and uh seabu cattle. The
dong of seabu cattle is the preferred
substrate for silos kubensus which is
the pan tropical psilocybin mushroom.
And uh that mushroom was everywhere. We
just hit the season, right? And out of
every cowpie,
you know, there were big clusters of
large specimens of psilocybasis.
So, we thought
>> every 20-year-old,
you must have showed up and
>> Yeah, it was it was absolutely a dream.
>> Yeah. And we had no experience with
these mushrooms that you couldn't really
get them of those days, you know, unless
you went to Mexico. And uh we had no
experience, but we knew what they were.
But we thought, well, these these will
be fun to play with while we wait for
the real mystery to show up, you know,
where we work on it. And then we started
>> Yeah, we started taking them. And we
started taking them regularly. And we
started taking high doses regularly
because they were so
interesting and so non-threatening. And
there was no sense of toxicity or
anything. You could really push the dose
and you could be in this completely gone
psychedelic state for days at a time.
And uh and we did. We threw caution to
the wind and we started eating these
mushrooms a lot and our question
>> nutrition and calories was from was from
>> actually yes to a certain extent because
there wasn't a whole lot else to eat. So
you'd be surprised it it makes a good
suit you know with a little rice some
potatoes and it's not bad you know and
we did we did that. So we were
constantly in this state and uh
>> you know the uh the the quest for Ukuhi
sort of got put on hold
because partly because we'd been warned
when we had gone into Lera. We stopped
at a village on the way in. There was an
anthropologist there uh who worked with
the with the wattoto and when we told
him what we were there for he was
completely appalled you know I mean for
one thing we looked like we'd stepped
right out of eight ashberry we were we
were at least as colorful as any of the
people any of the woto I mean we had
bells and beads and beards and you know
we were a colorful bunch right And uh so
Dr. Cay was completely was completely
appalled. And then when we said we're
here to find a coupe, he completely
freaked out. Uh but he he said well you
know this is their this is the primary
medicine of their shaman shamanic
practices. And if you go in there and
start spouting about ukuh they're going
to kill you basically because this is
the big secret. And we were sort of
cavalier about it. We said, "Yeah, yeah,
whatever, Doc. You know, we'll be we'll
be careful. You know, we'll be discreet.
We won't just ask everybody we meet to
find a coupe." And and so we were we
were we were we were hoping that at
Lerero we'd find an an informant,
somebody that knew about this that could
make ukulele for us. But we thought,
well, in the meantime, we can work with
these mushrooms and and more like play
with these mushrooms. And we got into
uh pretty much taking them all the time.
And uh they promote intense
ideiation and uh what you might call
funny ideas. funny ideas just bubble up,
you know, from the from the unconscious,
I guess. And they and that was what
happened with us. And the mushrooms,
if you have have you had experience with
mushrooms?
>> A a good few. They grow they actually
grow um I'm from Ireland. They grow in
Westme. You can get Liberty caps in a
county just outside. So, we go mushroom
picking uh every year. And yeah, many
experiences on mushrooms many times.
Yeah,
>> many experiences. Okay, so you you could
get those. Well, if you've taken
mushrooms a lot, you you probably know
that
in deep
communion with them in in high doses,
you can get into a state of kind of an I
thou relationship. I mean, they really
present themselves or they do did to be.
Terren as uh intelligent entities, you
know, they were they were talking to us
in a certain way, communicating
telepathically.
And they had a lot to teach us. And uh
what they wanted to teach us was
uh what we could do with sound and what
we could uh you know, because on high
doses of these mushrooms, we could hear
a a sound. It was like a not on low
doses, but on very high doses, we could
hear an interior sound that was like a
buzzing
electrical kind of popping buzzing
sound. And if you
if you you could imitate this sound and
uh you could try to sing it actually and
it would and if you if you kept at it,
it would you could lock onto it and then
you it would just pour out of you, you
know, a very powerful
sound and the what you might call an
olation. you know, a a powerful
um well, like a Hawaiian chant. If
you've heard a Hawaiian chant, these are
not, you know, it's it's like that. It's
a very powerful vocalization. And the
mushroom was telling us that if you if
you make this sound, you can affect
effectively molecular changes
uh in your physiology at the at the
level of DNA that you can actually
resonate
induce a resonance with your DNA that
will cause it to turn superconducting
and uh various interesting things would
happen after that. So it was all about
you know a a uh exercise in self
transformation that you know what what
it was saying was if you do this you
will actually be able to exteriorize
your consciousness and and concress it
in a mushroom in the external world. If
you direct that at a mushroom, you can
concess this energy and effectively
project your mind into it and you become
this visible
uh artifact that is
your mind. You know that you can both
see it and be it right at the same time.
and it responds to your thought and uh
and that's what you can do. And
now you know
50 years later
and from this perspective of not being
stoned on mushrooms right now and and
lots of experience, this was clearly a
delusion, you know. I mean, but we were
we were convinced that this was it and
that if we did this, uh, it would be
it would be a lot of things, but it
would be the first time that the the
human psyche had actually exteriorized
itself in a visible way. And the
consequences arising from that would be
effectively
uh the end of history and everything
else. And so uh and of course
>> for a 20-year-old
>> it was a lot. It's a lot for a 60 year
old a lot for a 71y old.
>> Exactly.
>> It's a lot for anyone
>> 20 years older than the Amazon having
these experiences. I mean I can only
imagine.
Well, yeah. And but we were we were up
for it, you know. We were gung-ho and we
thought that uh you know, we're doing
this thing and we're having all these ex
you know, we were doing these
experiments and all sorts of crazy
things were going on that were that
didn't seem entirely to be delusions or
hallucinations. You know, there were
things going on in the external world
that were very hard to account for like
I think Terrence has talked about his
encounter with a UFO during this period
and all of that stuff and uh you know so
he had this idea if we do this we can
create this artifact which would be the
ultimate artifact a union a fusion of
mind and matter that responded to the
imagination.
And it could do effectively anything you
could imagine,
which is a, you know, a pretty strong
statement to make for for, you know, an
appliance.
>> And, uh,
>> and, you know, so so at this point,
we're far beyond science, you know, I
mean, we're not, we had the, uh, you
know, maybe the delusion that we were
doing science. we weren't doing science.
Uh, one of the folks that have written
about this and written about the McKenna
brothers uh, adventures had said
actually they were doing science
fiction. That's what they were doing.
And I think that's right. We went there
to commit an act of science fiction. We
just thought it was science. But
science, you know, this was this was no
kind of science because uh you know, are
you a scientist?
>> No. Well, I think of myself as a science
communicator. I studied science in
college and have done science, but I I
don't consider myself a scientist.
>> Yeah. But you understand how science
works, right? You understand from that
point of view. And science has to have
controls and it has to have testability
and it has to have a structure right and
this is this has been you know this can
be a criticism of science but this is
also a strength of science but we didn't
have any of that we were at this point
into a ritual place where we were
carrying out these exercises and trying
to get this effect and uh what we
predicted
>> what time frame just like how long are
you doing this for? How long is this
extending?
>> Well, that we we were in the Amazon
about uh
we went we went in early
uh late January 1971. We were back uh
out of there by the end of May.
We were not at Lera much longer than
about 3 weeks, you know, but it took
weeks to get there and weeks to get out.
So, well, it didn't take weeks to get
out because actually we got out very
quickly because uh after all this
fooling around, what happened was that I
became
what some people would say would what
looked like psychotic on the outside. Uh
I was not I didn't think it was I was
psychotic. I was living out the the
myth. I I was living out what we
predicted would happen. Uh but from the
outside it must have looked like I was
pretty pretty far gone and I was by any
measure but uh I reconstituted I a big
after that we did this big experiment
making the sound. Well we made the sound
and we had predicted certain things
would happen. Well, those things did not
happen because they couldn't have
happened. You know, it would have
completely upset
it would have upended the entire
framework of physics and uh you know, we
we had no problem with that, you know,
but physics physics had a problem with
>> very ambitious goals.
>> Yeah. So, so that's
you know the the predicted result didn't
happen but we we effectively worked
ourselves into a corner where something
had to happen and what happened was that
we became
uh dissociated from reality for a
prolonged period at least I did and
Terrence had the opposite effect he
became hypervigilant
And partly because he had to look after
me. I was not capable of looking after
myself and I was wanting to wander off
from the hut where all this was going
on. He wanted to keep me in the habit,
keep an eye on me. So he became hyper
vigilant. So while I was working through
I had the my own subjective experience
was that uh uh I had uh
effectively become I've expanded my mind
to be contiguous with the boundaries of
spaceime
and I was the universe. You know you you
hear about that you know that's a trope
with psychedelic experiences right?
We're we're all one. We're one with the
cosmos. Well, I was one with the cosmos,
you know, and uh that was my sense. And
over about two weeks,
each 24 hours, I I was one with the
cosmos and I began to collapse in on
myself. I began to reconstitute
over every 24-hour cycle. The first
cycle I was uh you know uh I was
co-ontiguous with the boundaries of
spaceime the next time and then I was
continuous with the boundaries of the
galactic supercluster and then the
galaxy and then the solar system and
then you know the planets and gradually
returning to my body you know and uh and
while all this was going on Terrence was
in a hyper vigilant state looking after
for me and he he didn't sleep for 14
days
and uh I don't know if I slept I was not
uh sleeping was the last thing I was
doing or interested in doing but he uh
he stayed awake so that he could look
after me and while he was doing that he
was wandering around you know at night
our companions were sleeping our
companions by the They at this time were
completely appalled at what was going on
and they thought you know we were both
nuts and you know which was true in a
certain sense. They were really
>> They might have They might
>> Well, yeah. They had a serious point and
they they were pushing they were pushing
to get us flown out of there, you know,
back to a psychiatric facility and all
that. And uh which wasn't really an
option because, you know, you're middle
of the [ __ ] Amazon, right? So, you
can't just go to the clinic down the
street.
And um and Terrace was uh he was uh he
was protective of me.
And he
said I mean his thing was we were still
working within the framework of this
delusion or this theory or whatever it
was. He he he was saying look everything
is fine. It's all it's all going the way
it's supposed to. it it's just the
timing is different than we thought. But
it's all going and we need to let this
process unfold. We need to let it
happen. We should not interrupt it with,
you know, being taken in a straight
jacket to a psychiatric clinic. That
would not be good. And so he he he held
the line and he just said, "Let Dennis
live out this trip." And um to this day
I'm grateful that he did that because I
I I it
uh I think if the if the trip had been
interrupted with some kind of psych
psychiatric intervention, I probably
never would have recovered. But because
we had the opportunity
to just let this thing play out, I put
myself back together. I condensed from
being one with the universe to being a
human body and then, you know, a
consciousness in a brain and all that.
And I condensed back into being Dennis
McKenna, you know, but I was a different
Dennis McKenna than when we started out.
And uh and uh and I'm glad that
Terrence, you know, insisted that we let
that happen because I feel like
ultimately I feel like it was it was a
therapeutic experience. You know, I feel
like I mean I've I've given a couple
talks about this or I have a talk I've
given and and various places and the and
the uh the title of it is the experiment
at Lera
uh
psychotic break shamanic initiation or
alien encounter question mark right and
it
it had all of those elements you know it
had all of those elements. It was
definitely to the outside observer it
looked like a completely psychotic break
and this guy was completely three sheets
to the wind. My own experience was that
it was a kind of shamanic initiation,
you know, because it the themes of what
we were doing were all about
self-transformation. And that's what
shamanism is really about. Learning to
become a shaman is to is to become
uh you know to acquire powers and
abilities that most people don't have.
That's how they can do do their healing.
A lot of which is done with with
obviously using plants and that kind of
stuff but also energy. And so there was
an aspect of that and then there was the
alien encounter aspect too which was we
were convinced that all this was being
orchestrated by that this this we talked
about the mushroom. We called it the
teacher and the mushroom was channeling
these instructions to us and uh uh and
you know we were it was like the
mushroom wants to impart misinformation.
We were convinced that either it was the
mushroom directly that was intelligent
in some ways that was that was
transmitting this information or the
mushroom was a conduit for
extraterrestrial beings. And we had this
notion of, you know, there being a
spaceship in geocynchronous orbit over
the Amazon and they were beaming down
all this information through the
mushrooms and we were absorbing it and
you know this this is crazy [ __ ] right?
I mean, but but that that was what was
going on. And uh uh but eventually I
reconstituted and became you know more
or less past that and more not exactly
in a uh uh
normal state of consciousness but at
least in a functional state of
consciousness. And the same with
Terrence you know Terrence really never
left that in a certain way. He remained
hypervigilant and for a while eventually
our companions decided that they'd had
enough and that uh you know we really
had to get out of there and uh and they
insisted that we arranged to have a
plane come and pick us up. So we did. We
used the radio telephone to call this
bush pilot that was notorious in the
area and he came and flew us out to
Laticia and Bogota and eventually we you
know we recovered in some ways or we got
back to normal. Um,
but you don't go through a an experience
like that and you never become really I
mean it lives with you for the rest of
your life, you know. And I've often
said, you know, we were only 20. I'm 24
at the time, but the, you know, the
shadow of Lera has been overshadowing
over us for most of our lives. But you
know, you can't live your life in uh you
know uh
I mean you have to move on
beyond a psychotic break or a alien
encounter whatever it was that you had
an early life you have to go on with
your life. But as a result of going
through this process this
the issue of what do we do? How do we
process this? And Terrence was saying
science can't approach this. Science
can't touch this. It will never explain
what happened to us, you know, and we
need to reject science because this is
just beyond science. And I was saying
well wait a minute not so fast you know
uh we we are not scientists first of all
because we you know we may have fancied
that we are scientists but we weren't
really scientists we were like like Eric
Davis said we were committing an act of
science fiction not an act of science
you know so my position was
uh we can't reject science until we know
how to do science and so I decided you
know Terrence in a way that's a
significant
juncture at which we sort of diverged
because Terrence went on to become a
philosopher and a metaphysician
and uh you know and a theoretician of
the time wave which was the you know
this mathematical uh construct that
supposedly described the structure
structure of time and that came from his
revelations at Lera and then over many
years of course it was it was refined
and and changed but but the curdle of
the idea came at Lera and he he worked
on it for many decades.
My reaction was the first place I was
like, "Okay, I'm I'm done with uh all
this cosmic travel, you know, I just
want to get my feet back on the ground.
I want to be a normal person and you
know, a sane person and u I also wanted
to be a scientist. I mean that's
paradoxically I thought instead of
rejecting science I went back to science
and I I wasn't really taking science in
school at the time. I was taking a
couple a couple courses, but mostly I
was taking anthropology
and things like that. And I went back
and I started studying harder science
like chemistry and pharmarmacology and
uh uh ethnobbotany and and botany and
and that sort of thing. And I became
interested in those things. I wanted to
be in a way it was a way to
reassure myself that
I wasn't completely nuts and that I
could do ordinary scientific stuff, you
know, and I could do things, but I
didn't lose my interest in in
psychedelics. So I ended up making a
career studying psychedelics, you know,
I studied uh mushrooms and and uh I did
my PhD thesis 10 years later. So this
ukuh that we were looking for, I should
come back to that. this uh this orally
active verola preparation.
Uh
we never really found it at that time.
Uh we never really encountered it. We
didn't find anybody who was
knowledgeable about it. And but 10 years
later as a graduate student at the
University of British Columbia, I went
back to South America. I went to Peru
this time and uh my my thesis work my
doctoral work was to do a comparison
between Uku
which was still a mystery. I had never
collected it or experienced it and I in
the interim in that interim 10 years
pretty much IA had been studied but not
that not that much from a chemical
perspective. It was understood that it
was a combination of a DMT containing
plant and a vine containing monoamine
oxidase inhibitors and then Uku was even
studied less. So basically that's what
my thesis became. It became a
comparative study of Ukuhei and Iwasa.
In other words, same compounds, similar
compounds, similar pharmacology,
both orally active DMT preparations, but
completely different botanical sources
and used in a different way. And so uh
as it turned out when I went to Peru
uh I went the the
uh I mean the woto had would their
ancestral home was latcher era but in
the early part of the 20th century the
rubber boom had forced a lot of these
people a lot of those communities up
there out they'd been relocated forcibly
relocated
to south of the Puchayo to an area
called the Rio Aiyaku.
So there was a Woto community, the the
diaspora of the W of the of the from
Lera was at the Rio Aiyaku, which was a
few days down river from uh Akitos,
which was uh this Amazon, this Peruvian
town on the Amazon without any roads
going into it. So I went to we I went to
Aikidos and we went down river and up
the upaku
and then I did find kuhi and uh the
thing is the the informants were people
who basically this was a dying
tradition. This was disappeared
knowledge and many then many of the
people we talked to said well I sort of
remember this. I remember my
grandfather, you know, did things with
it or my father I kind of remember. I
don't really know how to do it, but I'll
try it. I'll try to try to replicate it.
And we found about seven people that
were willing to give it a shot to try to
replicate this ukulele. So, we collected
those.
And then I was then the other thing I
was doing was was uh uh collecting
iawasa. I wanted to you know I was
collecting samples to take back to the
lab and analyze. So I was very much uh
in the role of scientist at that point
and not shamanic explorer. I mean I took
Iawaska
well in in the process of of doing this
work when the UK samples came up uh uh
then you know I I felt like I I have to
prove I have to I have to demonstrate
that they're active or not are they
active is there anything here so I did
test most of the samples and uh most of
the samples were completely inactive as
far as I could tell a couple of them
were rather active. So then when I got
back the samples back to the lab finally
I could look at the alkyoid profiles and
it was pretty much a perfect match. you
know, the ones that had the alkyoids
were active and the ones that because
Verola this the genuses are very
chemically
uh variant kind of species even the
tryptoamine profiles even in the same
species can be quite different you know
from individual to individual region to
region. Uh Iaska is a more consistent
thing and I was collecting Iawaska in
the ad mixture plants and eventually got
all of this stuff back to the lab and
was able to do the analysis and do my
thesis, you know. So it was it was
uh that was my that was my thesis was
this comparative study and uh not nearly
as exciting as lure era but you know
fairly solid work
>> important work
>> and uh
with that
>> important work I mean am I right in
saying that that that thesis was the
first pharmacological proof of why IA
worked exact Exactly. Why? I know there
was maybe some ideas but it was the
actual evidence.
>> Yes. Yeah. It was in that sense it was
because I did um particularly with
Iawasa and and the UK. Yes. I I had a
bioassay. I had an MAO inhibition assay
that I could do in vitro. And so I
tested all these extracts and showed
that you know the the right fractions
were definitely
powerful MAO inhibitors. Not really a
surprise to anyone. I mean we other
people had shown that these beta
carbolines were MAO inhibitors and I
wasn't too surprised that the extracts
of Iawasa were were quite active as MAO
inhibitors. You know what was a little
surprising was actually that the UK
and I had several samples
uh
were not great as MAO inhibitors as it
turned out. They did do they did there
were no um betaarbalines
or only traces of betaarbalines in the
UK samples
and uh so but there were high levels of
tryptoines and they did show activity in
the MAO inhibition assays. Uh but I
could never really explain
why they were orally active except that
I think that
well the thing is the tryptomines
themselves or sub substrates for MAO
right so if you if you saturate MAO it's
possible some of it becomes orally
active you know you overwhelm the system
effectively that's particularly true uh
the the Uh the sample that I that I that
was most impressive
uh of the uku seemed to be
subjectively based on my limited
experience but but subjectively it
seemed to be very much like fibthoxy
DMT rather than DMT. It was fibbethoxy
DMT. That was the phenomenology of it.
And I I said to Teros of the tribe, this
is a lot like DMT.
And uh when I got the sample back to the
lab
that was confirmed the only alkyoid in
that sample in in any quantity was
fibthoxy DMT. So that was a neat
confirmation of field experience with uh
with you know the chemistry and the
pharmarmacology. So, so, uh,
>> uh, I I just assume, uh, but it wasn't
this,
it was a less defined kind of
interaction than beta carbolines
inhibiting, uh, MAO. It was it was the
tryptomines themselves to a degree were
inhibiting the MAO. That's the only
thing I can figure. Iaska is obviously
different than DMT. DMT
is very intense and it only lasts 20
minutes, 30 minutes at the most and
it's, you know, it's overwhelming. Iaska
can be overwhelming in another way, but
I mean, the DMT element is there, but
it's not as intense as when you smoke
DMT, but it's stretched out over
four, five, six or seven hours. So,
That was the objective really when we
went to Lerera was we wanted to spend
more time in that dimension you know and
we thought of it as a dimension or
another place and and it was frustrating
because we couldn't it was like I said
by the time you began to get your sea
legs get familiar with it it's already
fading so we wanted an extended
uh DMT experience and that's what I prov
provided the ukuhes proved to be
disappointing. I didn't have enough
material to really work extensively with
them. Uh uh so I can't say there may be
that the the few samples I took was were
not impressive, you know, and maybe they
weren't made properly. They were made by
people who were trying to to replicate
what their grandfathers knew. But you
know, you know, with these indigenous
cultures,
plant knowledge is readily lost. So, who
knows? But IA was a different thing. I
was able to collect lots of different
samples of Iawaska, the plants that go
with it and all that. Bring all that
back and uh and take and take a lot of
continued. Iawaska has been one of my
major plant allies. Between that and
mushrooms, you know, that's pretty much
uh those are my plant allies. I I take
other things but more out of curiosity
or to put a put a data point on the map.
But mushrooms and Iawaskkar are my
teachers, you know, and the indigenous
people uh all over the world have this
idea that these are plant teachers and
and they do. They teach you. And so uh
my interest in iawasa and mushrooms has
been personal as well as as scientific
you know and people talk about you know
the experiment of lera and all these
things that we did and you know I mean
it makes for a good story but what
really is the significance of it other
than saying well you know a a couple of
young kids came went to the Amazon took
took too many drugs and got with nuts,
you know. I mean I mean you can look at
it you can look at it that way but but
the one thing that makes a difference
not so much the experiment that we did
the one thing that really has made a
difference is other than that it's
sparked a lot of conversation you know
and it made made a career it made a
career for my brother talking about this
stuff I preferred to stay in the
background and just do my research. But
he was, you know, on the circuit and
talking about the time wave that was,
you know, but uh the one thing that we
did do that had an impact that that made
a difference in society is we had the
presence of mind to collect spore prints
from the mushrooms growing in the
cowpies. We brought the spore prints
back with us and we after a couple years
mcking around, we finally figured out
how to grow these things so that we
could have access to these experiences
again and so that other people could
too. And we were looking for
confirmation. I mean, we were wondering
is did does everybody have these
completely crazy experiences?
And so we had to get it out to people.
So we published this book, you know,
psilocide of magic mushroom growers
guide and a lot of people bought that
book and they grew mushrooms. It was a
simple method
>> and guess what? They confirmed that all
these crazy things happened. And so so
really if you want to
if you want to say what is the legacy,
what was the impact of the McKenna boys?
That was the impact. It's not that we
were the first to grow psilocybin
mushrooms. That had been done, you know,
years before, but there was nobody had
published a book with a simple method
how to do it. There were people
occasionally there were people scattered
around doing it. But our book really had
an impact and many many people bought
that book and pretty much mushrooms
became a thing in our society as a
result of that. And uh we can claim some
>> some amount of credit for that. Yeah.
Some amount of credit for that. And uh I
don't regret it. I'm I'm happy. I'm
happy that it happened because well
because you you know you've followed the
field and you've seen what happens what
has happened with psilocybin and you
know psilocybin
is almost the perfect psychedelic you
know in in a certain sense I mean there
are other psychedelics of course there's
a whole there are hundreds of them
psilocybin
Terry used to says psilocybin is made
for man or made for humans is what he
meant. And it's true. If you think about
it, it's non-toxic.
It's
it's chemistry. It's it's very similar
to our neurotransmitter chemistry, which
is why it works. Uh, and it's a
accessible, profound,
but safe psychedelic,
you know, that that people can use. And,
you know, unless you're completely
stupid about it. I mean, these these
variables that people talk about that
come up, you have to pay attention to
set and setting, right? This is
important. Where you take it, take it in
appropriate setting. And set is a more
complicated thing because set is you.
Set is everything you bring to it. Your
expectations, your you know uh your
intentions, but really everything that
you are and have experienced up to the
moment that you take that trip. That's
the set. So that's by far the most
complex part of this of this triad and
and of this this this diad. And really
it's a it's there there are two other
variables obviously what is the medicine
what is the medicine and what is the
dose. So but but the the parameters that
define set and setting are the
parameters that can define a
you know enjoyable beneficial trip from
a more difficult trip you know or
>> I mean the mushrooms are inherently not
dangerous you know uh uh
like you know if you if you're careful
about where and when you use them it's
very hard to get into trouble. You can't
overdose on them, you know. Uh you'd
have to eat like a a couple It's been
calculated out that you would have to
eat a couple of pounds of dried
mushrooms to get anywhere near a toxic
dose, you know. So, so they're they're a
good psychedelic. They are maybe the
best psychedelic, you know. I mean that
I have great respect for others like
LSD. I've had wonderful experiences on
LSD on D on DMT in the smoked form. Uh
many people
uh talk about themselves as psychonauts.
Um I am sort of not a psychonaut. I am a
not I'm a not I am a psychonaut not or
something. I I uh
Sasha Schulen, I'm sure you're familiar
with his work, right? Yes,
>> there was a psychonaut. I mean, he
>> he systematically, he was a good
chemist. He systematically made all
these compounds, tested them on himself
and his wife. The only honest way to do
it, you know, really give it to a mouse,
it's meaningless. What does it tell you?
You know, you have to take the
psychedelic in order to understand how
it work, how it works. And
he did he very carefully bioassayed all
of these at different dose levels kept
careful notes and produced you know
those two enormous toms tal and pecall
which you may be familiar with. So now
he was a psychedelic he or he was a
psychonaut. He went about it in a very
systematic way. It was like you know
here's measculine is the basic template
for a lot of his work. So then what
happens when you take these this methoxy
and move it down here or that hydroxy
and move it over there and you know and
and you're a chemist right you so you
understand this is structure activity
relationships
and medicinal chemistry this is
something medicinal chemists do they
take an active compound and they make
variations of it to see how does that
affect the pharmacocinetics how does it
affect the the absorption and the and
the receptor specificity and whatever
the targets are and all that and uh and
that's just a standard practice but most
of the compounds that people do SR with
are not psychedelics. So what's really
fascinating about psychedelics and and
doing SR of psychedelics is you can see
this direct relationship between
molecular configuration
and the experience itself. You know, you
can take measculine as as sort of a
baseline for example or DMT in the
tryptoine family as sort of a baseline
and then you can tweak the molecule in
various ways and see what changes, how
is it different. that can give you a lot
of insight into the
processes going on, what brain
structures are being activated and all
of those things that pharmarmacologists
like to do. And now now of course we
have neuroiming technology. You can you
can uh you know you you can give
somebody psilocybin and shove them into
an fMRI
and watch what's happening in the brain.
You know it can open a window onto the
brain. But the important thing to
remember about that that's great you can
say this part of the brain is activated
this part is suppressed. But it's
important to remember that you're
looking through a window. you know that
you're looking at something happening,
you're not experiencing it. I'm waiting
for the technology where you can uh you
know, you can take one of these things
and you can telepathically transmit the
experience to another person or put it
on the screen or something like that.
It'll probably never happen.
>> I think a lot about subjective
phenomenology. I love this. But it
brings up an interesting question as of
of if my experience even can be mapped
onto your experience, right? We don't we
don't really know if that if there is a
conversion process that that does that.
If a lot of my experience is bodily and
then you don't have much bodily
experience at all, then trying to map
bodily experience from me on to you kind
of might just be like, well, that
doesn't really work. It's sort of there,
but it's like trying to translate, you
know, concepts in other languages into
languages where it's like they just
don't really have that concept. It
doesn't really work. you might get you
might get some of the way there. But so
an area that I wanted to really touch on
to to to to double back on the you know
the contribution of the McKenna brothers
and something I'm super interested in is
I have asked many psychedelic scientists
what they think about DMT entities and
machine elves and the most common sort
of materialist run-of-the-mill
neurochemistry pharmarmacology
explanation is related to kind Terrence
McKenna imprinting the idea of the
machine elf into the collective
subconscious of the universe in a really
sort of dramatic way. Um you know some
people will believe there
>> this is a problem. So yeah this this is
a problem and that that undermines the
objectivity of the thing. Yeah. If
Terrence hadn't seeded this idea of the
machine elves,
>> then would people be having these
experiences?
>> I
I'll share something. I don't think I've
ever seen a machine elf myself, frankly.
I've seen lots of things.
>> Wow.
>> I would not call them machine elves. I
don't know what I'd call them, but they
don't present that way. So, you're
absolutely right. Terren Terrence has
seeded this meme into the collective
unconscious
and it's messed up the experience
because a lot of people are poisoned or
not poisoned but preconditioned with
this expectation.
You probably know the guy on the who's
on the cutting edge of all this and
that's Andrew Gallamar. You know his
work.
>> Yes, we've spoken and Galamar is
amazing. We've spoken. And he's coming
back on again soon for sure.
Okay. Have you read his book?
>> No, I haven't. It's on the list. I have
way too. I really need to. Yeah,
>> he Yeah, you need to. He's written a lot
of several books about this, but it's
all the same thing
>> uh theme pretty much. And the latest one
is called Death by Astonishment.
And the one on my it relates to a
question somebody asked Terrence in one
of his seminars. They asked, "Can you
die from taking DMT?"
And Terrence said, "Only if you can die
from astonishment,"
which I think is pretty apt actually.
And uh yeah, I've had Andy on my
podcast, my Brain Forest Cafe podcast.
You should you should check that out. We
had a great talk, you know, and he's a
brilliant guy and he
more than anybody else has has studied
this thing. And the question becomes,
you know, and he has the tools being a
pharmacologist and a neuroscientist and
all that to ask some pretty interesting
questions and about just what the hell
is going on when people encounter these
entities. Uh, are they real? Well,
that's a loaded question, right? Because
anything you experience is real. So,
it's real. in that sense. But is it out
there somewhere or in here somewhere or
over there somewhere? And you know in in
the psychedelic state these terms are
malleable you know I mean there really
is no out there or in here over there
it's all this is part of the reality
hallucination that we construct
in order to
experience ordinary day-to-day
consciousness and be able to you know
pour ourselves a cup of coffee or drive
a car or do all these mundane things
that that you know we have to that we
have to do to to exist. So So uh uh
Andrew has got has been speculating
about this and thinking about this very
deeply for a long time. And you know
some people say well it's uh you know
these are these are extraterrestrials
you know that are somehow in touch with
it.
But if you think about that,
maybe they're extraterrestrials. They're
more like hyperdimensionals or
something. Because if they're
extraterrestrials, if they're really
like, you know,
embodied entities like you and I are
inhabiting a planet somewhere. I mean, I
this gets into some interesting areas,
but I think that uh you know, I I I and
and like I said, Terry and I grew up, we
were drenched in science fiction when we
were teenagers and and
extraterrestrials, interstellar travel,
and all that. Fact is, I don't think
it's happening. I I think the I think
there are aliens out there. There's got
to be aliens out there in the universe.
>> Yes.
>> But the distances and the times that
separate us are so vast.
That's why we haven't seen them, you
know, or maybe we have. Some people say
we have but Andy's idea is
so then okay they're not
extraterrestrials nor are they
necessarily delusions of our
imagination.
They seem more real than that. And he
his book also uh goes into like people
say well you could say well these are
these are sort of like dreams you know
uh the things you see are sort of like
dreams
but as he points out people don't have
these kinds of dreams you know people
see other people and they see animals
and they see plants and they see
familiar things in dreams not this
completely alien kind of space that you
get into. And he has
finally settled on the idea and you know
and and here here it becomes question is
how do you test some of this stuff?
How do you
talk about science? How do you approach
that phenomenology
with any scientific tool, you know, to
determine, well, where does this come
from and who are these people or these
entities or or whatever just just what
the hell is going on? He postulates that
there is a quantum level of reality
that is uh non-local and that it
basically permeates spacetime. So that
gets
over the uh you know the separation
issue and that this non this quantum
realm of phenomenology is inhabited by
intelligent entities
and that's who what we encounter when we
take DMT and go to these places. you
know there's there's a lot of people not
a lot of people there I should say there
are a few clinicians
who have the permission and the
expertise and the uh access to the tools
to to do it but they're doing these DMT
extended states
uh experiments you know where they'll
give you you you take DMT as a through a
catheter and you could administer it so
you could prolong the experience
uh for theoretically as long as you want
uh way beyond the 20 minutes that it
usually is. You can go for an hour and
people are pushing the time. You know, I
I hear there's a group in Switzerland
that's pushed the DMT extended stay to
like five hours.
uh well simply extending it
you know I mean that's interesting but
by extending it you have time
>> to look around and and explore what's
going on and uh which is really what we
were why we went to Lurera in the first
place we had this very naive idea that
if we could find this orally active form
of DMT we could extend the state well
now the clinicians have taken over and
they're they're actually doing this. I
was concerned when you know u I know
some of the people that are doing this
work and I was concerned that this could
be very dangerous. You know what what
happens when you don't come back? Do you
do you not come back? Does that ever
happen? So far it seems to be safe. Um I
probably won't be doing it but uh but
other people are are doing it. Interest
interesting that you're cautious
cautious enough about the extended
states that you're not sure that there
would be
>> I guess at every increase in time step
you just have never tested if you're
going to hit some threshold of mental
stability and they're going to be able
to get back. There might be a pushing
too far destabilizing our models of our
self and the world too much that they
just aren't able to reroute back to the
self. That's a really weird and
interesting idea, but I I I Andrew is
awesome. I think all of his work is
super interesting. I'm curious if you
think there's something specific about
DMT. Like is DMT special? Is it can
because people report entity encounters
on psilocybin people, you know, is there
something uniquely special about DMT?
>> I think there's something special about
DMT. Yeah. I mean psilocybin is
converted to psilocin in the body right
so it's so psilocybin is in some ways
the perfect orally active form of DMT in
a certain ways I mean you you can get
extended DMT through these extended
states but really psilocybin or psilicin
the active molecule is pre-engineered
effectively to to give you an extended
DMT uh type experience. Maybe again like
Iawaska, maybe not as intense, but at
higher doses you can get to some very
DMT like places on on mushrooms. And uh
so uh you know I I I I but so I I I
think that DMT
and silos silicon really is the molecule
we should be talking about. I think they
are very similar and I think they are
very special because they seem to open
up this portal
uh or this maybe this quantum this
quantum dimension which is always there
which per which is as Andrew described
it it's some layer of reality that is
just not available to experience but
somehow
you put your brain in this very special
neurochemical state and you can perceive
this thing which is always there you
know it's always there but you can't
perceive it and these are not dreams you
know I mean we understand
physiologically he talks about this
physiologically
we know where dreams come from we know
what generates dreams in the brain you
know it's very much involves the
hippocampus and it involves memories
past memories and and the dreams that
people have can be very bizarre but not
as bizarre as this you know I can be
they can be quite quite bizarre but
they're still rooted in our
understanding of reality you know
they're re yeah related to that reality
hallucination that we build so it's
fascinating stuff you know and uh people
you know there are whole groups now that
talk about these DMT entities. There
have been several symposia and so on.
what I'm and I've been to some of them
and I' there's one going on right now as
a matter of fact in in Aiza some of
these uh major
uh you know investigators and uh I mean
I'm fascinated by it but on one hand
well you know the perpetual question
what are these these apparent
intelligences that you encounter
in this state and what are the
characteristics of this is you get the
sense that they have information. They
want to tell you stuff. They have
they're very eager to show you things
and for you to understand. And you're
looking at these things that are they
machines? Are they objects of art? Are
they just just what are they? You can't
tell. They have this sort of super hyper
technological cast to them, but you
can't really tell what they do or I mean
they're beautiful and they do things,
but what do they do? And uh
you know are these and if there really
is another
dimension of entities that access the
deepest parts of our brains, our mind
through DMT, one question that you need
to ask or at least consider,
do they have our best interests at heart
or not? you know, should we be worried
or, you know, are they out to do us
harm? Are they out to help us? And
and how and and if they're out to help
us, how are they going to help us other
than make us realize that there's
another dimension? I mean in it's like
it's like you can have these experiences
but uh and you can bring back the
memories but you know it's like okay so
where is the blueprint for the starship?
Where is the blueprint for the time
machine? Where is the practical
you know consequence of this if they
have all this information and maybe
that's not their agenda. Maybe they're
not going to tell us about, you know,
uh,
hyper technologies. Maybe it's not that.
But certainly the realm that you visit
at high doses of DMT and in these
extended states, it seems like it's a
very this is this is not the same as
what a shaman the dimension that a
shaman uh visits on say Yakuana snuff or
something like that. Or maybe it is
maybe their their interpretation is just
different. So you know there's lots of
work there's lots left to be done and uh
one thing it'll provide uh you know
hopefully opportunities for you know
employment steady employment for
neuroscientists and pharmarmacologists
beyond that I'm not sure what it's going
it's funding a lot of DMT is funding a
lot of science communicators at the
moment it's the DMT DMT entity are
contributing to, you know, a a sizable
amount of the revenue that keeps my
business my media company up and float.
So that's one part, but I mean another
another contribution really does seem to
be mental health. It does seem like DMT
entity encounters specifically are
related to therapeutic outcomes and not
just arbitrarily mystical experiences,
but there seems to be something about a
DMT encounter that seems related to
mental health outcomes. I think this has
been shown in many studies. David Luke
told me about this who's ran really big
DMT surveys. Matthew Johnson told me
about this who ran some of the earliest
psilocybin John Hopkins studies with
rolling. So there seems to be good data
in this. So like the woowoo skeptic
who's saying well who cares these are
just hallucinations. Well even if they
are just a hallucination if it's having
this mental health outcome that is
impacting people some
then it's worth studying. It's worth and
funding. AB: Absolutely. I don't I don't
dismiss them and and I don't say that
they're just hallucinations. I mean,
these are not like any other
hallucination that you could have on on
pretty much any other psychedelics other
than the tryptophine. So, I don't think
they're just hallucinations. And it's
interesting that David says that that
these entity encounters uh
seem to be linked to therapeutic a
therapeutic outcome. I hadn't really
heard that, but but that's interesting.
So maybe that's you know maybe these are
quantum entities and maybe their
ultimate motive is to heal us and make
us better and uh and you know god knows
we need healing as a species and as an
individual. So perhaps they are benign
and uh uh maybe these are like the
avatars from another dimension of
effectively shamanic
entities that are you know using these
techniques
to uh to heal people which is you know
what shamans do that that's the basis of
shamanism. You could use psychedelics
and and songs and ritual and all of
these things. Um, and you can bring
about healing in in these traditional
context. Well, maybe that's what's going
on with these entities.
>> I have no life. So,
>> it's it's interesting and so incredibly
exciting regardless. I love all the
science being done on this at the
moment.
>> Dennis, you're you're such a legend.
You're such a motivation for I think so
many so much science that's done today.
so much communication that's done today.
I've known about you, you know, for at
least probably a decade and a half and,
you know, I've wanted to talk to you
since then. Your story is incredible. I
know you might have you might be annoyed
repeating it, but I think every time you
you're probably detached from just how
insane and incredible and interesting
that story is because you've told it so
many times and lived it. But my god, to
hear it firsthand, it's just truly
remarkable. I hope we have many more
conversations. I want to dive in a bit
more in like the Iaska pharmarmacology,
your your collaborations with Brian
Roth. We I would love to touch on that a
little bit more next time maybe, but you
know, I thought today was was awesome.
Thank you so much for your time and I
really appreciate it. I thought it was
great.
>> Very much appreciate it. Very much
appreciate it. Yeah. Uh thanks for
inviting me, Evan. We we can circle back
and continue the conversation some other
time. So,
>> let's do that. All all the best. All the
best.
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