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Will not at any domestic handling brain hemispheres at entertaining and mentally invented telling psychodynamic and I believe I tell you things differently is an excellent frontotemporal occipital I at the things that is the authentic take you to be is placed in an

human experiences joining the brotherhood of the screaming this as we welcome my guest Mr. Dennis McKenna cannot it’s an honor to have your server welcome to reach XP is a real pleasure to be here so you are in holy Trinity of psychedelic researchers need to interview so you really appreciate it I people that don’t know what you do or who you are just give us a brief introduction well and no pharmacologists and that’s a person studies basically the use of medicinal plants sewer you know the in indigenous cultures not necessarily restricted to about but that’s kind of thumbnail definition and you as you probably already know in your list is already know my own specialty letter is spin psychedelic plants and fungi especially ayahuasca to work I did my PhD thesis on Conway chemistry you bought me and pharmacology of ayahuasca so that makes me a flood and Dr. about care you can call me Mr. does matter informal but so that’s that’s it what I’d been studying them down been passion about really for well over 30 years because you know if if your listeners are familiar with my story of my the story of my brother and me then you know that we first went to South America in search of exotic hallucinogens soon 1971 so I been out this a long time we went down there not you know thinking that we knew what we were looking for thinking that we knew a lot more than we actually did and you know and really we had not a clue what we were getting into but I guess that’s how you know real adventures happen time and if you if if if what you expect happens that it’s not really an adventure yeah yeah I definitely to get into your trip down there a bit more later in the conversation but should start things off how did you become first become interested in the properties of psychedelic compounds were is there a single event that turn you on to them or was it more of a

gradual think well and was it was it was not a single of them exactly but you know I I grew up in the 60s center you know my my teenage years coincided exactly with the 60s artist understand that 19 and in 1960 and I was 20 and in night in the in 1970 so you know and that was the era of the counterculture so were both the quite immersed in the counterculture in some ways we were certainly fascinated by by psychedelics and tariffs was four years older than me living in Berkeley at the time and going to school so I diagnose still stuck in this small town in Colorado kind of waiting for you know postcards from the edge of Assam sunbeam I felt quite hard done by the tariffs got to be at the center of the cultural formats and I was you don’t still isolated but he would come home Christmas time in the summers and so on them and bring stories of what was going on out in the wider world and break room products actually started started with cannabis I got my first introduction to canvassing 1966 and then went now and then in 1967 which was, banner year it back in the counterculture movement the summer flow in San Francisco I went to Berkeley with a friend of mine and we stayed at terraces placed

various places around the bay area for some weeks and that’s when we had our first encounter with LSD for my first encounter and I guess the the thing that really got us interested in this to the point where we dedicated our lives to it was was our early encounters with DMT DMT was not around much it was actually quite rare in those days but you could get it tariffs was able to get it by working the matrix different connections are remember when TFT got on our radar we were just astounded both of us and we decided that you know this is too big to ignore we’d have LSD we Mescalero we had things like that there were no mushrooms around in those days but we had those two and they were interesting but DMT was some seemed the whole other magnitude to a whole other order of strangeness and you know inside I told people many times it was simply that the most interesting drive that we’ve never encountered it was the most interesting thing that we never encountered you know in our entire lives of and so we we found well you know week we’ve got to go after this this is true mystery so we and I guess we imputed with a bit of Romanticism we were both young and those days we work in a restless and we wanted to push the envelope in whatever ways we could so when we encounter DMT and then later when we learned that it’s a component of many of these indigenous psychedelics use in South America we found well you know we’ve got a go go go after a so that’s what led us to go there in 1970 1 AM

if you’ve read the invisible if you’ve read true hallucinations which is my brother wrote about our trip down there or the brotherhood of the screaming abyss which I wrote recently is memoir of our whole life but the expeditions a lot to rarer plays a big part of it you know and then and then also the other book that deals with it is the invisible landscape which was our attempt to him and came out first actually a Makassar attempt to in some ways rationalize or explain not very well what had happened to us down there and what what ideas and concepts we came back with which work you know a number of a peculiar notions about time and in the nature of reality of and many other things the only do you still use can psychedelic compounds are yes yes I do I take ayahuasca pretty regular basis usually I go to South America to do that so yeah I was good and you know at the time it wasn’t really in our purview at all that later when I return to South America 10 years later in 1981 that I was go was the was the focus of my thesis research and so I got to know about my watch get know within a traditional cultural context of the time and it’s been an important teacher and medicine for me & since it’s it’s a it’s an ally for sure that in mushrooms which which I still do take not as much as ayahuasca but enough to check to you until I haven’t I don’t really left these things behind so I’d I guess that means I’m hardheaded them haven’t got the message yet or you know what the dialogue is ongoing I mean I still learn from these experiences you know yelps with there was there a pivotal moment in which you decided to make a sort of scientific career out of this and move beyond a casual spiritual interest are you know you I would say so well again it with the experiment lunch where was really pivotal in that you know when we went to lunch rarer in search of this this orally active form of DMT called a which was preparation used by the with Toto Indians primarily we went we had experienced DMT in in in the Bay Area in Berkeley in the 60s but I don’t know if you know how it’s taken that it’s smoked the freebase is smoked and when you do it that way it’s astonishing it’s overwhelming but it’s also very short it only lasts maybe 20 minutes of the outside and it’s very hard to bring anything back from it other than the fact that Jan was astonishing and amazing a movie but you can’t say much more about it than so we we had this idea that if we could spend a longer time in that dimension we might be able alert more about it and bring more information back that was useful so when we had learned about when we stumbled on this paper by Ari shorties was the famous Harvard ethical botanist well-known been in those circles is kind of the father of ethnobotany and the world’s expert at the time on hallucinogenic plants we stumbled on this paper that he wrote called for roller is morally acting prowess of it you and

Corolla is a genus of trees in the not make family but that that matters but in a genus of trees that they extract the the the sap conceptually based extract the sap from these trees which are loaded with DMT and five methoxy DMT and in some tribes like the yellow Momo tried to prepare the most laps so they you know they gripe they how they dry the the reticent down the drive the sap down with ashes powder it and they taken this is not this other preparation was not that it was it was it was made from for roller resin but instead of powder event into a fine powder they actually made up paste out of it which was which was them orally ingested in the form of little pills little boluses of this sticky reticent that the reason that’s important is the DMT is not orally active you have to eat it which is why you have to take a snap or in the case of synthetic DMT it’s usually smoked in the freebase form because if you take it orally is destroyed by enzymes in the got cold monoamine oxidase inhibitors and these are there in order to protect from exactly this kind of thing you know toxic amines in the diet is probably of evolutionary reflection of that that that has grown up but if you go around the got if you take this is not for you taken the by smoking that it doesn’t go through that celebs acting but it’s still very short acting so that will activity prolongs it because you’ve got you change what they call the pharmacokinetics of of the case instead of 10 or 15 minutes it takes for five hours to two you don’t to metabolize so it’s a very different experience some and much more in a much more learning experiences some way of and that’s the basis of I was scared that’s the basic formulation of ayahuasca is a combination of two plants one of which contains DMT the other contains the group of alkaloids: David Carr believes that are very strong inhibitors of this enzyme monoamine oxidase so if you boil these two things up together and take it becomes a it becomes a strong hallucinogenic brew with you if you took the DMT plant by itself and drank it nothing would happen because it would be destroyed by MAL so you have your question your sanity at all through this and in know that these experiences are pretty intense all the time some time I’d what now that I mean I guess if you mean during the experiences in your yard definitely there are moments when you begin to wonder if you’re losing it for sure if there if they’re extremely intense I have at times but you know that as you do it you sort of get a little more accustomed to it even though you know the experiences are astonishing

and very intense you do you know you learn you learn to navigate in the territory and you kind of know what tool to expect and also your the focus rarely becomes on you know the to the two major concerns one of my going to my ever coming back into my going to die and I’ll and and well so far so good I I am neither diet nor lost it completely and you know there there in the there are things you can do to kind of keep your center I guess keep your balance in these altered states and experience helps you know that I I don’t know exactly if your audiences is sophisticated about psychedelics are knowledgeable about it or or or not so I would say are okay that’s good so and so so they will will go about the will know about the importance so satin sapphic right and the M dose there are basically three key variables psychedelics sent Sandy” in the second aim is is th

e sentiments it’s where you do it the circumstances that you that you do it under and you don’t to assure a good outcome of the trip you have to pay a lot of attention to the right setting what you have the setting appropriate you know independent what you wanted to be various things but you know the important thing is that there be a structure to it and I think that’s that’s really an important aspect of of the role of ritual in in these experiences it helps guide it helps it provides a you know context in which it can happen and you you can take psychedelics outside of a group setting YouTube taken without a shaman all these think you can just let yourself in a room and do it by yourself and that’s fine but that’s given be a different kind of experience that if it’s a if it takes place in the ritual context with music and with the shaman sort of guiding the situation so satin is important and then the sap this the other important variable and that’s that’s basically what you bring to it cool you are everything you’ve learned up to that point what you expect to get out of this your intention for taking it you know it calls for some some introspection and some thinking about why my doing this in and what what what benefit do I hope to you don’t realize from having this experience and of course the more you know about virtually everything the more you will get out of you know what kind of just like any other experience you know that the more you know the richer the richer life is so you know might my brother told me for example before I had taken LSD said wait until you have read psychology of alchemic by CG own before you take LSD you know you’ll learn a lot more you’ll appreciate a lot more if you’ve read them below will of course I ignored him and I took LSD felt that write I read psychology about me of a could see what he was saying and opening the take a certain amount of sense if you haven’t read that look it’s it’s well worth looking into

its it’s it’s really a very psychedelic book yeah yeah of you there is there is can interesting relationship between you and your brother the rivalry we would you say that said there is it seem like at the beginning be tormented you a lot mean you wrote about this in your book yes well I don’t think any more than other siblings do I mean siblings you know we were just far enough apart actually it’s probably good we were four years imparted age you know so we were so close that we were constantly together are constantly in competition but it did happen I don’t think that our sibling rivalries were any worse than anybody else’s site I think it’s a totally normal thing his creativity and imagination you know in terms of thinking up exotic and novel ways to make my life miserable that may have been a little different than most normal people he was very

creating that what you know but but I got I got my my hips into you know I mean I don’t know if you have if you have sinned siblings if you have a younger brother you probably know how this goes on you know so Jan Douglas was early on but then later you know we we shall revolt out of old that and we became friends and and colleagues really and sort of fellow explorers on this path you know Terrence introduce me up to a lot of these things but I wasn’t only a follower you know I brought my own sort of shops to it to and that that was really a big factor in terms of I think are you know are evolving beyond this this simple sibling rivalry you know was the fact that he found he found that I was it doesn’t cool stop to it was just him and he could appreciate it and I can certainly appreciate what he was doing so we we discovered mutual interests in this all happen you know around the time that I was you know in our you know may be the. From the time that I was about 8 to 12 or so and then when I was 12 Terrence F to know he was to finish high school in California so you know much of my life I was essentially an only child with no my brother on the West Coast and on the enough when he was on the West Coast know we got along a lot it it it worked out that way was there with her every something that you felt like Terrence just couldn’t understand breaking the challenge got c

hallenged with it in what TNR in regards to her know in regards to have psychedelics or do something that he was maybe working on that he felt that he just didn’t couldn’t get a grasp on well I guess the one thing may be that that would fit that is the you know what when we came back from lecturer at the he and at lunch or artist downloaded there were you don’t channel this whole idea about the time way which know if there was an artifact of any kind or an insider at discovery of it came out of our misadventure a lot rarer the time waiver certainly one of those things and it was a mathematical system based on the each King of the purported to describe the structure of time that he was getting into novelty theory and timely zero there will all of those things you know and later in life when he was working on this I think he you know I I did i.e. in some ways I’m a critic of the time Wi-Fi dying was always very skeptical about it whether really describe those things with you even could describe those things I was willing to accept the premise that it you know the basic premise that time did have a structure and that novelty does exist of it it impresses you know into reality this is this is pure white Indian metaphysics basically I disagreed with him that I think the basic idea was sound but I disagreed with him that the notion that the time way for really describe the structure of time and that you know given that it can be used to predict events and as it turned out it wasn’t you know it was so good for that lovely happen in 2012 nothing really happened in 2012 and and 2012 was just one of several dates that that was the whole conundrum with the timely zero how do you will a those that energy wave across time where do you postulate the beginning and the endpoint it’s hard to know there’s no mathematical way to evaluate novelty and this was an attempt to do that but my criticism of of his approach was that it was always based on Joss subjective interpretation you know

I mean I have to to problems with the time wave one was he was the only person who could do could interpret right because does the interpretation was subjected and he was unable to state what would disapprove you know what would be that the criteria are the piece of evidence that would completely sort of invalidate the theory and he would never go there he would never he was unable to define and the reason if they wanted you know if they want to qualify for that name and a fear he has to stay what disproves it what what will overturn it or at least not in all its science which is kind of the game were playing here you know the you never prove theories you can only disapprove you know there’s no because theories are not settle matters I mean if you look at cosmology for example or physics know Einstein’s theories of relativity are pretty accepted they are they come as close you know as possible to improve in theory and most and the scientific community that thinks about these things is pretty comfortable with Einstein’s general special theory of relativity but you always have to keep the door open that next week or tomorrow or hundred years from now will make a discovery that will completely overturn those theories you know or make it necessary to modify them in a radical way so that they’re not really those theories anymore that sciences it’s best you know science develops theories they develop models of hypotheses about the way the world works about certain phenomena and then if it’s honest with its

elf which you don’t often music because sciences a lot of things it doesn’t stick to it doesn’t happen in a peculiar vacuum is perhaps ideally it should but assuming that it does so science develops models of develops hypotheses and that he and then you try like hell to disapprove the you know that’s the way it works you try to say what does this theory not explaining and that was the problem with the time wave he could not articulate what would invalidate the theater so it’s not a theory it is it’s an idea it’s a model that is the model supported by evidence probably not you know and and eventually you know I’m there were various you know ways that you could examine the theory to try to figure out if there was something there that a lot of it in his case had to do with the endpoint and finally he got around to defining the Sandpoint does December 21, 2012 for various reasons it was only that it happened to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar hoping that was that actually came out a bit later after he of postulate of the van point close to that date but not exactly that day so you don’t have to look to the cycles of multiple billions of years if figured well you know where within a few days of this very important date so let’s you know that’s probably it right the Mayans have this intuition from a completely different perspective you know but as we now know three years later actually not much happened on December 21, 2012 much to everyone’s disappointment you may not I was hoping believe me but I wasn’t really expecting much of what you would you think would happen what we do with all all all the speculations you know I mean if you just space about a time when the idea was that this impression of novelty you know into the continuum of would just accelerate to a point where you ask where the density of novelty was was so high that you were essentially of a singularity you know we we didn’t know what would happen it would be some sort of collapse really of the space-time continuum it’s it’s it’s what happens when when you come to the end of time my mean but who knows it’s that it’s never happened to and in that sense of probably that will happen so you know it was it’s very difficult to predict the end of the world you know it’s almost always you’re going to be disappointed or if you do argue dues don’t give a specific date will open if you exactly MM that sets in the sense I think the theory is valid Dumas circumstanced that I think you don’t be the time wave I think we all share a certain sense t

hat things are accelerated the American dream stranger straight you know I mean all you have to do is look around you know and if you try and think back how the world is today versus how was he been even 10 or 15 years ago things are much stranger of they do you know of the stew seem to be accelerated whatever that means whether Batson an effect of the Internet than the instantaneous communication we have whether you know the global network is is in some way you know becoming conscious is is waking up to itself that was that was one of these scenarios that we tossed around as to what happened maybe that’s have you know I don’t know I don’t know I I do think in the sense that you don’t in broad conception over all the theory was right in that you know this the novelty of the density of novelty is increasing but to the 02 to tie it to a specific date I think that was an error and it it doesn’t work that way novelty does not ingress into the continuum in that way you know there are of the ends which are certainly not all whole and Terrence was fond of talking about the you know this example was the detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima that was certainly a novel of them but what about all the events that had to happen in order to lead up to the they were much quieter but they were key events ranging from that you know the point when Einstein thinking about the nature of space time on and so on thought of the equations that the postulate that it would be possible to build an atomic bomb or something like that convert matter into energy and then all the research with the Manhattan project the research on on not nuclear fission went on with Oppenheimer fermis group in Chicago the world novelty and stupid nobody noticed consumer happening in the background and then when the bomb finally exploded that was the noble of them but it was ce

rtainly a novel of them but it wasn’t the novel. So his idea was that the novelty kind of explosive to history you know and and my idea is sort of the lived it leaks into history and you know nobody notices tell until you go down the basement was flood that the lack of the topics you have at really does of you your your experiment up lots row was probably the one of the most interesting things ever read the can you get a little bit more into that mean you’re trying to create a fourth dimensional superconductive thing with mushrooms and I lost got another think how does that occur how does that occur well you know your you’re going into an area where it’s difficult to discuss it and not that I don’t want to discuss it but that’s one reason that I wrote my book was so that I wouldn’t have to keep explaining but that’s okay because it’s hard to explain of it’s hard to reconstructed because it was so confusing that the time you know and and so I wrote the book so that I would have an opportunity to sit down without people coming in the expectation and explain to myself what happened or reflect on it and try to unpack it and located to know and so I have like there about three or four chapters in the book is basically about all of that stuff because you know there’s no doubt that our trip to much rarer in our attempt to do this the whatever was was a pivotal occurrence in both of our lives and been arming terrorists in my life in some way can be defined as prelunch rarer and post locked while and we were only 20 artist 20 he was 24 remembrance clutch rarer so most of it is been post lecturer a lot of this been reflecting on you know I’m in our lives to be lived out in the white of Baptist very peculiar adventure the experience that we that we sort of you know we got in way over our head sunbeam and we had no idea really what we were getting into of so I I don’t want to get into it because it’s hard it’s hard to explain people have to read the full oldest was get people to go read the book you tell you why the why why the brotherhood of the screen this were not come from all tha

t I can tell you what the brotherhood of the screaming of this harkens back to our common interest in science fiction when we were teenagers and one of the writers that we were fascinated by was H.P. Lovecraft and I don’t know if you’re familiar with Lovecraft but he was so poor writer and that in the 20s that he was always talking about you know the you you know that the unspeakable’s temporary horrors from beyond the stars and all this stuff you know I mean I’m in of the beauty of than the genius of Lovecraft is that wrote this extremely scary science fiction novels science fictional chloramine I would say he’s probably the the and banter about genre science fiction horror and a lot of us about aliens and other dimensions of mold out but was always you know the gibbering abysses of cosmic space you never actually described very clearly what these things were he left that your imagination you know that so when we were when we were going to South America in quest of it in quest of this secret you know which we thought was this exotic with total hallucinogen but actually there was a secret but that wasn’t do you know as we found out later but we we described ourselves as th

e brotherhood of the screaming the business basically him him him him him not to be Lovecraft it was it was tongue-in-cheek) we we didn’t really take it that seriously but we we took it seriously but we also have a certain sense of humor about it and that was that was it you think do you think the 21st century needs people like Terrence McKenna figuring the you’re heading this movement the psychedelic movement will obviously not you know because he’s been gone for 15 years you know which is amazing when I’m stop to reflect on that it was 15 years ago this month that he passed on you know and the psychedelic movement is more active and vibrant today than it ever was in his day you don’t but I would say also that it it does need Terrence and it has you know I mean he’s got this he’s achieved this kind of immortality you know with all of his writings and always talks on the web and so on the role still out there and and there is timely today as they ever were that’s the amazing thing I get so many young people telling me how how much of an

influence on their thinking that he was in on they are say all of you to of course but actually of you to supply to he woke up a lot of young people and still does because because he was you know he was really at the height of his career like in the early 90s and 92 9394 he was really out there a lot of the folks that come up to me your people have signed up for my classes that were you know they were there would indict person Points you know but or you know quite young so as they grew up and became adolescent something young young adults they discovered Terrence is ideas writings and they were influential on on them them and so many people told me you whatever I feel like everything I’ve learned Iota Terrence so so that’s a wonderful thing yeah yeah this is the Kennedy question in and if at all possible in could you put into words what was your belief about the shape or truth of our reality well you know I can always take the scientific copout you know which is which is it always a safe place to retreat to when you don’t know the answer but the answer is we don’t Serve you know I do sciences great because you can always say well you don’t we can suspend judgment and that is the the essence of the scientific stamps you can always say we do not have enough data to really answer this question more data you know more data is needed to resolve this question and of course in the way that sciences practice these days you quickly follow up oh yes we need more data and and by the way we need more funding than we need to know all things that science runs on these days but it’s okay to say that we have an incomplete picture of reality you know which we do if you just look around sciences very very good at dissecting and defining very small segments of reality but it’s not so good at putting everything together into a whole picture a coherent picture of reality and then you have the problem also which is one thing that psychedelic certainly teach you motivate they teach you a lot of things but one thing they clearly teach you is that really we are immersed in the hallucination all the time you know consciousness itself is a reflection of a neurochemical brain state of some kind and you know is it real is is what we see on psychedelics real versus what we see in

cold unquote normal consciousness real I think either one is that review you know both of them are are aspects of this model of reality that we create that are brain creates an it’s it’s necessary for it to do that otherwise we you don’t would be a blooming buzzing confusion a lot of what the brain does this it takes the raw data month experience you know which which physics tells us if we believe are instruments that external reality doesn’t look anything like we experience reality everything is energy in vibrations of you know it’s a quantum it’s a it’s it’s a quantum state will that’s not how we experience reality most of the time you know also taught even on psychedelics reality has a certain coherence to so I think the answer is again the answer is we don’t totally know but I I think that very much the you know the big we we live inside of the hallucination that our brains create or you know weirdest producers directors in the stars of Loral movie you know and we call it the realities and everyone has their own but they’re close enough that you know there’s something called consensus reality you know it’s still a collective hallucination someplace nobody knows what the fundamental nature of reality is because whatever it is whatever comes to us from the outside comes to us through this sensory neural gating system if you will it’s filter and it makes sense and is filtered and and we constructed so that it does make sense this is a lot of what the brain that of my making send you have absolutely and so this is this is the you know this is one reason psychedelics are so interesting and and particularly DMT I think because it in certain cases DMT kind of let’s you step out of that framework and you get to look at reality in in the raw if you will units like you can dislike you can turn the circuit board over you know and see how this thing is why this reality machine you know and then in the a see all okay this is how it works right normally you don’t get to do that you don’t get to look at the nuts and bolts of it so DMT gives you a few minutes where you can actually look at reality unfiltered which is why it’s so you know so overwhelming and so fascinating you can actually see the machinery that’s generating this reality was that you do you think that these moronic type experiences with nations have an objective reality do they come to coincide with what we Midtier I think that this is the $64,000 question I I think that we cannot really answer that question and I’m not even sure it’s the right question you know in other words with you start bandying about these terms like is it realistic not real is it inside a visit outside are there other dimensions that you can access or is this all just the hallucination you know the role charged her and they encourage fuzzy thinking and I’m not sure it’s possible to think clearly about the for me to say well okay you take I want to I see you know these places these entities of old that and people say well it’s just a hallucination or is this just a hallucination and the key word there is Jost right has what’s implied there is well if it’s just a hallucination it has no value and it has no reality right but I submit to you that what we experiencing normal waking consciousness that’s also Jost a hallucination you know it but it is but you don’t we need to get the word

Jost out but because yes it’s a hallucination it is one of the it it does have value it something you experience so you know this is basically this is phenomenology of which says you don’t we take phenomenon on on their on their face you know there may be nothing behind the phenomenon but we experience so you know Shulman goes into these altered states encounters all of these entities in and gets information from troubles of these worlds and so on and for that person GP interview she interacts with those entities in those places as though they were real and I’ll and so they may as well be right and that that’s the best thing it you know if it looks like a duck walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s it’s probably a duck in and it’s that idea doesn’t really provide unique perspective on it to say well it’s just a hallucination because every moment of waking consciousness is a dream it is a hallucination do you think that culturally we are moving towards a better attitude towards psychedelic compounds only I don’t think there’s any question that we are I mean what’s happened in the last five years for various reasons I think both scientific discoveries and you know the the rising popularity of I want to the whole there was is something the media the fact that you don’t good science is being done on on some of these compounds and mercy and that they do have benefits you know I mean they they have benefits in the medical sense the can satisfied you know the hardest knows Moore’s most reductionist person who may not be sympathetic to know

all this will stuff but it’s hard to argue that okay this person took psilocybin and it all stopped smoking or something like that of there’s evidence accumulating that they have definite benefits for people and so so that’s kind of the admission price if if psychedelics are going to be respectable you got a show that there good for something you know not just to have you know these experiences again that there’s nothing wrong with those experience that’s that’s a reflection of our culture’s tendency to devalue these things to single there’s there’s no legitimacy there’s no value in it in their experiments you know about person Eastern the Eastern mind Eastern philosophy would say there is nothing but you are experience in and don’t that I think in the West I think if you can save these these compounds have uses they have application they can be used to treat PTSD they can be used to interrupt addictions they can be used for it all and help people with existential anxiety at the end up like all these different medical applications that were seen emerge so then it’s like okay while there respectable there wrote it’s okay they’re not so terrible you know and in the meantime with you know a lot of the reason this is coming out as kids we’ve had it old Florida years to get used to the 40 years to learn about the since they you know I mean even longer but but in the sense that you know there was a big backlash against them at the end of the 60s and the believe knew what they were they were complete and they were completely terrifying so the to the governments of the reason they were terrifying to the government’s is that they didn’t understand them and the people would take them and they would have all these unconventional ideas without

which governments don’t like like maybe I don’t want to spend the rest of my life working in a cubicle for example or maybe I don’t want to go over to Vietnam in and kill these people you know why should I so psychedelics were dangerous in that era and they still are for much the same reason you know not to their dangerous drugs they give you dangerous ideas and ideas that don’t conform with the know the accepted norms of what’s what they’re always threatening to governments institutions governments and religions especially I would say and you know it was it was the the impulse to control and tried stuff the genie back in the box in the bottle of that led to this prohibition it was a kind of a diamond was unfortunate because it also shut down all the research that was going on at that time which was quite promising so you know them it took 30 or 40 years to circle all the way back and see this research reactivated and now that’s happening so yeah I think that the attitudes societal attitudes are definitely much more positive these days yeah I know you’re connected with the a Dr. research Institute in the there was the of maps and to which is about making large progress in this realm they were were approaching the end here and so got interesting question is there is there anything that you would kind of go back in time and tell your younger self what my younger self all dog I don’t know it’s hard to know him that’s a tough one I’m not sure know I I don’t really house I don’t really have that’s I guess if I was going to tell myself my

younger self anything I would I would say in terms of my academic and professional interests you know it sounds on for me to say it but I would say be more special arts you know one of my problems is not academic is I’m so interdisciplinary that I don’t fit in anywhere and know I’ve worked in neuroscience and I’ve done postdocs of neuroscience but then the questions were your botanist what are you doing in neuroscience amendment botanists say woe know your pharmacologist what going to botany and so it away my interests of been so diverse that I have never really specialized in some ways I feel like maybe I could of been more effective if I had specialized to fight become more medicinal chemist or a psychiatrist or something like that maybe I didn’t have the discipline to go through that and and and reach those points but I mean it’s a tricky thing that you know I have friends I have colleagues in the after Institute and elsewhere who you know they have gone through that they had but they’ve always kept their interest in psychedelics kind of on the back burner is but they never lose it you know but to go through these professions and acquire the you know the professional status that y

ou have to have you know institutions do their best to brainwashing and you know by the time you get through it you forgotten about why you started you know you forgotten about the motivations that led you to undertake this some and then you know you’re just boring and the past happen to be but a test it hasn’t been good for by professional advancement either particularly so that I will I have no regrets I feel privileged to be part of the after Institute night worked with great colleagues so you know life is what it is appreciate that into of what was so in the future hold for you serving what do there any new project or avenues of research that your company into yell various things I have been doing a lot of for retreats in the South America lately with I want to where I I basically I work with the center there that it’s it’s not and I want to center exactly when they do other things as well it’s kind of touristy launch kind of thing that they do do they allow I want to retreats maybe once or twice a year and I’ve found the shaman that they introduced me to live I really like this guy my like working with them so I didn’t bringing people down there to have these retreats and it’s very interesting and rewardi

ng to see people come down on companies amazing transformative experiences and the impulse being a scientist my impulses will that that would be of no be a scientist my impulses let’s do some science around this letter is some clinical studies of the with I want is you you know for various reasons you are you probably are not give us the clinical studies with Taiwan skimped on in the states because it doesn’t fit into the paradigm you can you can deal with MDMA could do with sulci been you can do these things they the FDA is okay with synthetic substances they’re not so receptive to plant preparations and I was is quintessentially memorable medicine so it hard to do clinical studies of the states for various reasons because of this on for what they missed you know it’s it’s the same conundrum the faces calamus research there is no authorized sou

rce of I want skip you know there is the government licensed eyewash good rower you know so you can get the material you know when it’s coming like cannabis where you know the only legitimate source of cannabis medicine this is national Institute on drug abuse they control the supply for clinical studies and generally the we’d that they have is pretty much garbage out so it’s hard to carry out your good study and what I did say this will why do we need to work within that FDA box when we just go to Peru what do these clinical studies so in that in the future and probably the fairly near future that’s were government do we have a perfect venue to do it we have a very good practitioner we have connections with medical people in Peru and also we’ve got after of all that so I think were going to do some clinical studies down there in the next few years don’t one of the problems is what are we can a screen for one what are we going to look to treat and I’ll the spectrum of possible utile therapeutic targets and the there is no idea what you know it’s hard to decide discover be addiction is economy PTSD is a government be utile hospice end-of-life these are what hectors investigating now but how do you shift that down to Peru and to the different medicine and it isn’t even necessary and else so you will see how it out what the outcome is in a couple of years will can I really appreciate you making the time where can people find your work they can buy the book off Amazon brother you the brotherhood of the screaming of this and then I have a website of the same name without the the soul just brotherhood of the screaming in this.com you can order the book there and and give a sign copies so bots that’s useful I don’t charge for the signature of yet you can just order the book from there or you can get enough Amazon I have to might inventory of Amazon misgiving low I intend to send another bunch of them so there should be there should be plenty on Amazon that those two things are the easiest way to the to get my book and the rest of it is systolic there you know put my name into YouTube at all kinds of stuff comes up well you could hear guys that you so much for listening this the human experience my behavior and the guest Mr. McKenna think your dentist it was a pleasure you next week