0: Psychedelic Confessions with Dennis McKenna

Dennis McKenna
Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs
The Brotherhood of The Screaming Abyss

Ayahuasca
Oo-koo-he
Hefter Research Institute
Terence McKenna
2012: Time for Change
Daniel Pinchbeck
Neurons To Nirvana
Tim Ferris
Joe Rogan
Psilocybin Cubensis
DMT
5-MeO DMT
Salvia Divinorum
Datura
Psilocybin Cubensis
I-ching
Default Mode Network
Toé
Angel’s Trumpet
brujo
Jimson weed
Morning glory
World’s Scariest Drug
Scopolomine
Atropine
Navajo witchcraft
Cannabis
Graham Hancock
Charas
Erowid
Stoned Ape Theory
House of Frequency

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello, hi, welcome to this episode of the Mango TV podcast. Today we have the legendary Dennis McKenna. Dennis has conducted research in ethnopharmacology for over 45 years. His research has been focused on the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology, primarily in the Peruvian Amazon. His doctoral research in British Columbia in 1984 investigated the comparative ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca and Okohe, [00:01:00] two tryptamine based hallucinogens used by indigenous people in the Northwest Amazon.

He’s a founding member of the EFTHER Research Institute and was a key investigator on the WASCA project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca. He was part of the original scientific strategy team at Shaman Pharmaceuticals in the early 90s. is the younger brother of Terence McKenna. From 2000 to 2017, he taught courses on ethno pharmacology and plants in human affairs as an adjunct assistant professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota.

In the spring of 2019, in collaboration with colleagues in Canada and the U. S., he incorporated a new non profit, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. In collaboration with colleagues, we organized two landmark conferences in 2017 and 2022. The ETH nonpharmacological search for Psycho psychoactive drugs ESPD 50 and ESPD 55.

We will put the [00:02:00] link in the show note. He immigrated to Canada in the spring of 2019 with his wife Sheila, and now resides in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Welcome Dan. Dennis. 

Dennis: Thank you. Thank you again, Carlo. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Giancarlo: Yes, Deni De and I go back a long way. We did, um, he was part of my documentary and pinchback documentary based on the book, 2012, the movie was called 2012 time for change.

And then he was on neurons to Nirvana. It’s such a pleasure to see him here in Ibiza. Um, so we could go in many different way. As you guys know, our listeners are familiar with psychedelics. We can have like, you know, two, three podcasts on, on the history of psychedelic, on the science, on the legality, on the medicalization, on the investment opportunity, on the impact of overuse of the tourism peyote, on even [00:03:00] some curiosity, like you mentioned, the mushroom that turned cicada into zombies.

I mean, there is, there is a lot we can talk about, but all this stuff you can find already online. Danny, um, Dennis has done. Two Tim Ferriss podcasts, three Joe Rogan podcasts, and many, many others. He wrote the book, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss. He was in, I don’t know, tens and tens of documentaries.

So you can research him and find all these things I mentioned. But what I don’t think you can find is a real experiential recollection of those, of those medicine. Um, as you guys know, I’m a doctor. We started, um, a sub, a sub podcast called, um, the psychedelic confessions where we have expert, um, intellectual, academician, um, that, that, that just share their personal experience with some of this medicine.

And I think that’s very beneficial for people that are curious. You know, I think the. [00:04:00] The, the direct interpretation, the direct feeling can be, can be, you know, very enlightening for people that are interested in this, in this medicine. So, uh, I asked Dennis to be, um, so kind to, to, to open up is, is, is, you know, to confess using this, uh, religious term.

And so we’re going to speak about six medicine, ayahuasca, mushroom, DMT, favemio, salvia, and datura. And, um, yeah, and then we go with the flow. So let’s start with ayahuasca, which is your primary lover, as you call it. 

Dennis: Okay. Again, Carlo, it’s a lot to cover in an hour, but, uh, we’ll do our best here. So I am, uh, people shouldn’t think that I’m some kind of crazy psycho, not, I’m really quite, careful, uh, at least, uh, most of the time in, in the way I use these medicines.

But, but for me, ayahuasca has been, as you say, kind of the primary medicine. It was the, [00:05:00] the, uh, subject of my doctoral research. And so as a result of that, You know, I’ve had occasion to take it on many times, um, in retreats and, and different kinds of situations. And people say, uh, people ask me, how often, how many times have you taken ayahuasca?

I, I don’t keep count, but probably well over 500, maybe closer to 1, 000. over the last 40 years. And of course, not all those experiences stand out, you know, in fact, most don’t, they sort of, you know, fade into memory and so on. I think one of my most profound, uh, and memorable ayahuasca experiences, which I have written about before was, uh, when I took it with me.

With the UDV in, in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1991, I believe it was following a conference that they’d organized, and uh, I took it in [00:06:00] a hall of about 500 people following this conference. But unlike everyone else or most of the people there, I didn’t speak Portuguese, so I was free to go inside, uh, and just pay attention to the experience.

And what I was given on that occasion was a profound journey through The molecular, uh, mechanisms of so of photosynthesis, which you wouldn’t think would be impactful except that to see photosynthesis, which is, of course, the process that sustains life on Earth, it’s the way, you know, By which plants harvest sunlight and sequester carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn, turn that carbon dioxide into complex organic molecules and incidentally, and importantly for [00:07:00] us, they excrete oxygen as a byproduct.

So this, this planetary symbiosis that is driven by photosynthesis, what E. E. Cummings called photosynthesis. Once I think the green fuse that drives the flower, I got a front row seat at what was going on in that process. A water molecules, I view, if you will, water is one of the reactants the source of the hydrogens that are, that are used in the reduction process.

This is what photosynthesis does. It splits water. It actually ionizes water and uses the byproducts, the energy of the sun. And I got to take this ride through photosynthesis to the point where I went through, I mean, it’s the kind of trip where you kind of have to understand plant biology. biochemistry to really appreciate it, and that’s what I am, and to a certain degree, I [00:08:00] understood these processes, and I got, uh, uh, born on this, on this conveyor belt where the energy of the sun was being used to smash apart these water molecules, right, and then they, you know, the byproducts go off and are used, and I was one of those molecules, right, so.

I had this whole kind of rollercoaster ride through the steps of photosynthesis and, uh, you would think that, you know, that that would be not so interesting, but what was interesting to me about that was I was being, I was, the experience was being narrated. I, like a voice or something over my left shoulder saying this is what you’re going through and why is this important, you know, and and [00:09:00] it’s important because of this importance of photosynthesis for sustaining life.

So I found myself Uh, initially in the bowels of the earth, you know, that’s where I found myself experientially being born up in the inside of a, an enormous Banisteriopsis vine. In fact, the Banisteriopsis, uh, uh, the Yahweh Ayahuasca vine as a world tree, you know, this was the mythology of it. Born through the soil, through the, the, the pipes, osmotic pressure bringing me.

Into the leaf, and into the chloroplast where all the action is, and then going through that process. And, and, uh, it wasn’t just that I was observing it, I was participating in it, and it was very emotional. 

Giancarlo: How long ago was that? Which year was that? 

Dennis: That was 1991. 1991. Yeah, and I still remember it vividly.

I’ve [00:10:00] actually written in detail about it in the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss because it was so memorable. 

Giancarlo: That was your first ayahuasca experience? 

Dennis: No, no. It was one of the early ones, but not my first one. Perhaps my most, uh, my most meaningful one to date at that time. 

Giancarlo: But you were, uh, fully aware of what, how the photosynthesis, 

Dennis: I was fully aware of how, how it worked.

Yeah. But so, but 

Giancarlo: so the voice give you some new information, 

Dennis: the voice, uh, you know, you wouldn’t think a, a, a tour through biochemistry would be so emotional. But what I was, the subtext of the, of the message was, this is what’s sustaining life on earth. And it was about the Amazon, you know, and what we’re doing to the Amazon.

And I was very sad. I was quite, uh, upset at the fact that we were destroying the Amazon so rapidly. Even then, of course, now it’s gone even much further. [00:11:00] And, you know, I thought I was being given the message that I mean, the chief message that came out, which I I have often repeated is you monkeys only think you’re running the show, you know, and the message from the plants is we’re running the show, the plants are running the show, and we’re not going to let this happen.

We will not let the Amazon be destroyed, and To me, that was a very redemptive message because I was so sad at the idea that it was being so devastated and the plants gave me that very affirmative message that, uh, you know, and something that I’ve integrated into my own thinking for, ever since is that, you know, we monkeys really aren’t in charge.

We only think we’re in charge and, and we need to get past that. We need to work in harmony with nature rather than, than trying to dominate [00:12:00] and exploit nature, which is the, which is, has been our approach to it. So that was one of the biggest, uh, lessons for me of ayahuasca. 

Giancarlo: But so this voice, what could be some sort of rational explanation?

Is this that You know, this molecule activate some sort of receptivity to a subtle frequency that bring you to this subatomic connectivity with the plant medicine, with, with the plant world, with the, with, with the, the kingdom of, um, of plants. What is the mechanism you think that make you connect so deeply?

Dennis: Uh, I, I, I don’t. I don’t think you can really say about that. I mean, it’s like a dream, right? It’s like being shown a movie. But this was a narrative that the medicine wanted to show, just like showing a movie. This is, I took the medicine, I went into this profound state, I was [00:13:00] unaware of anything else going on.

You know, and I was just taken on this tour through, you know, this molecular miracle in a way, if you think of photosynthesis, it really, I mean, it’s a biochemical process, right? But it really is kind of a miracle that plants have figured out through the course of evolutionary time, how to harvest sunlight.

And turn that sunlight into organic compounds, and of course, organic compounds include medicines, the organic, uh, you know, plants, the language of plants is chemistry, right? Plants have this incredible chemical diversity. Because they use these molecules to communicate with everything in the environment, right, that’s how they work.

We, animals use behavior, right, we react to things through, we can fight or run away, we can move [00:14:00] around. Plants are stuck in one place. So the language of plants is a chemical language. These things are messenger molecules, effectively. And that, that’s what it was showing me. 

Giancarlo: Beautiful. Beautiful. Um, then. You know, lover, primary lover is ayahuasca, and then secondary lover number one is mushroom.

Dennis: Right. I, I don’t necessarily rank these things. Uh, I mean, I, I was involved with mushrooms, uh, long before I was involved with ayahuasca. Because, you know, if people who know our myth, uh, you know, our, our, uh, Myth, Terence and McKenna, myth of the experiment at La Charrera, you know, we went to La Charrera in 1971, uh, looking for, uh, an exotic hallucinogen, this, uh, one you mentioned in your introduction, Ukuje.

The reason we were [00:15:00] looking for that was it’s, it was an orally active DMT based, uh, Hallucinogen, but it’s not, which is what ayahuasca is too, but this was a completely different set of plants. But we were wondering, we were, we were, we were interested in it. We were interested in it because we thought naively at the time that the oral activity might, might give access to an extended state.

Uh, of DMT, kind of like Ayahuasca done. We went to the Amazon looking for this, uh, which turned out to be, later we found it, it was not as interesting as we thought. In some ways I, I did some of my Ph. D. work investigating its chemistry. What, what we got when we came to this legendary place, La Charrera, was a proliferation of mushrooms everywhere because they had cleared the pastures, cleared the [00:16:00] forest around this mission village and put in these Cebu cattle.

So mushrooms were everywhere. And, uh, we were, we knew what they were. I mean, we’d done our homework. We didn’t take them seriously. You know, we thought, These will be fun to play with, fun to take while we’re waiting for the real secret, right? Well, it turned out, the mushrooms quickly revealed they were the real secret, you know, and we started taking them quite a lot.

Giancarlo: What type of mushroom? 

Dennis: Salassomy pan tropical psilocybin mushroom, which are big. They grow out of cow pies, and they can often, you know, they’re not hard to spot, let’s put it this way, and they were all over the place. We happened to hit the rainy season, So we started consuming these things and they started downloading Gnosis, you know, uh, to us about, to me [00:17:00] particularly, about an experiment that we could do using sound to actually create a resonance in our DNA and, uh, and generate a superconducting bond that would create an object that you could both see and be.

It would be a fusion of mind and matter. And, uh, And I’ve written extensively about this, and Terrence wrote True Hallucinations, which is about this trip to the Amazon. And I’ve talked about it so much that I don’t want to talk about it, but if, you know, anymore, because I’ve unpacked it so many times. And people can find, you know, uh, presentations on the experiment at La Terrera.

Uh, you asked me to talk about my most significant mushroom experience. So, I would have to say that was it, you [00:18:00] know. And as it turned out, it was, uh, uh, I mean, it was so powerful that I, Uh, disengaged from reality for about two weeks, you know, as I was cruising through the cosmos after these revelations.

And my brother was in a similar state, although he was hyper engaged with reality. So we had this complementary, what some people would say, psychotic reaction. I call it more like a shamanic initiation. But, uh, it was a It was a profound experience that really marked an inflection point in both of our lives, you 

Giancarlo: know.

What were the revelations? 

Dennis: Well, the revelations were that, you know, we attempted to, uh, to carry out this experiment. Mushroom was transmitting basically the [00:19:00] blueprints, you know, the procedures to transform our body into hyperspatial artifacts in a way. And we had a lot of predictions about what the outcome was going to be, none of which came true, you know, and in the end, it turned out to be really a delusion in, in some ways.

I mean, one of the things that, uh, that emerged out of the experiment at La Charrera was, was the time wave. Terence had, Many insights about the nature of time and eventually, you know, on, on the basis of that he constructed this theoretical representation of time based on the e ching. People know about this that was postulated to be a map of time of, of the, of the ingression, of novelty into the space time continuum.

Interesting idea, but the time wave really didn’t map that, you know, I mean, [00:20:00] as, as it turned out, it was more of a personal understanding for Terrence than any, any kind of thing that could, uh, you know, stand up to scientific analysis or scrutiny, you know, because, uh, among, uh, The elements of that was the prediction that time had an end, and that the end would come at a certain period, and then we’d cross over into a singularity, and much of what Terence thought of Over the next 20, almost 30 years, was when is the end coming?

And finally, he settled on December 21st, 2012, for various reasons. Happens to be, for one thing, the end of the Mayan calendar. or with the end of one of the large cycles in the Mayan calendar. But that was only one factor that made him put a pin down at that point. And of course, he didn’t live to see it.[00:21:00] 

And when the day came and went, it was clear that, you know, the premise behind the time wave had failed. Uh, but it was a profound, uh, experience, you know, that changed our lives. In my case, I mean, Terrence went on to become the philosopher, the metaphysician, the raconteur, the teller of stories. I stepped away from it.

And, uh, Not away from the experience, but I, I determined to return to my studies and focus more on some of the harder sciences. I had been studying anthropology, comparative religions. I went back and studied chemistry, botany, and pharmacology and other related things because I felt Part of the dialogue Terrence and I had had during this experience was his position was science can [00:22:00] never explain this, you know.

And so we should throw it away. We should throw away science because it’s not up to the task. And I was sort of, well, wait a minute. We can’t really say that because we’re not scientists. You know, whatever we think, may have thought, we really weren’t scientists. So what I was saying, it’s we have to learn how to do it.

be scientists. We have learned how to do science before we can reject science, you know? And yeah, the experiment at La Torrera was one of, well, probably my most profound dislocating experience with mushrooms. I’ve taken it many times since, uh, and had other interesting experiences, of course. Some of which were, were life changing, but that was the big one, you know, I mean, I, I think in some ways I have to say my life and Terrence’s life, [00:23:00] you know, have, have, were lived, have been lived in the shadow of La Charrera, you know, that was a huge pivot point for both of us.

Giancarlo: But so if I understand correctly, you sort of downloaded this ability. To transcend time and space. 

Dennis: Yes, yes. And to affect a very specific operation. And by, by listening to a tone that we could hear, that I could hear at least, on high doses of mushrooms. And 

Giancarlo: How many grams, mas o menos? 

Dennis: Uh, it was beyond grams.

We were eating fresh mushrooms, so it was hard to say. But 20, 30 enormous mushrooms at a time. You know, I mean these things are not We’re talking 

Giancarlo: 20 grams. 

Dennis: Easily 20 grams, probably more than that. Wow. But it didn’t really matter because actually at La Charrera we got into a situation where we were eating them [00:24:00] pretty much all the time.

You know, so we were more or less in this state and then we were getting this, uh, preparing for this experiment or whatever. Then we upped the dose to this critical dose to do the experiment. And, you know, I don’t want to You know, I, I don’t want to waste, it’s not wasting our time, but we could spend the whole hour talking about La Charrera because I don’t want to, I can’t go into detail on it, although people can look at the, we did a, we did a, uh, retrospective on the experiment at La Charrera on the, believe it or not, 50th anniversary of the experiment at La Charrera on April 3rd, 2021.

And people could look at that, uh, on the McKinn Academy website and get the fuller story. 

Giancarlo: Yes, great. And we will put on the show notes the, the links. 

Dennis: Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I say, we could spend the whole hour talking about that. We have, we have more substances to [00:25:00] cover here. 

Giancarlo: Yes, yes, yes. Like DMT. 

Dennis: DMT, and of course, all of this is about DMT, right?

I mean, uh, ayahuasca, the, the active, the psychedelic component is DMT. And psilocybin, in a way, the active component is psilocin, which is very close to DMT, chemically, and very similar. in its effects. I, I say, so ayahuasca is one way to orally activate DMT. It’s not orally active by itself. You could eat DMT, nothing will happen.

But if you take a monoamine oxidase inhibitor as you do with ayahuasca, then it’s protected from being broken down and it enters the bloodstream in the active form. So you get it extended. DMT experience, right? Mushrooms are not that different, but mushrooms are, psilocin is 4 hydroxy DMT. [00:26:00] Trivial molecular difference makes it orally active.

You don’t need a monoamine oxidase inhibitor and at high doses It’s very like DMT. You know, I mean, it’s the same dimension. It’s the same space. And I do think there is a kind of tryptamine space that all of these things share. When you take DMT by itself, if you, uh, Well, usually, usually they smoke it, you know, or if you inject it, you can snuff it.

But usually it’s smoked without an MAO inhibitor, like a free base. And, uh, in that context, it’s very, very short. It only lasts about 20 minutes or less even. And it’s a completely alien. Rapid, overwhelming experience. You know, it’s highly visual. It’s like [00:27:00] entering another reality. It was DMT, really, that got Terrence and I so intensely interested in psychedelics as such, because it kind of came on to our radar in the late 60s.

And Terrence, it was very rare. You could, now it’s everywhere, but at that time it was hard to find. But Terrence was, lived in Berkeley, he was able to work the matrix and come up with it. And when we took it, I mean, we’d taken LSD, we’d taken peyote, not much experience at that time. We were both, you know, young, just getting started in this.

But when we took DMT, it was like, whoa, you know, this isn’t the most interesting, just the most interesting drug we’ve ever taken. This is the most interesting thing we’ve ever encountered. And that’s remained true in some ways. That was the, the, the, the thing that fascinated us about DMT is what led [00:28:00] us to go down this path of, you know, there’s nothing more amazing than this.

We have to investigate this. 

Giancarlo: So what happened when you tried, did you see, you know, they say that there is this two level, right? There is the dramatic, the, the sacred geometry or the pattern and the color. They call it the doom. There’s the machine elves. And then if you pierce this dome, then you go to a state where it’s really a dreamlike state, when you can have 360 views, you can interact with this supposedly, some people believe that they’re independent sentient beings.

Can you recall the most memorable DMT experience? And what, what did you see? How did it make you feel? What was your takeaway? 

Dennis: Well, uh, I, I can’t point to any one DMT experience that was the most memorable because they were all memorable. But there, there, you know, there are levels, apparently, that you can go through based on dose, other circumstances.

You [00:29:00] don’t always reach this breakthrough state, you know, but, but you can get there through, we call it going beyond the chrysanthemum, you know. The chrysanthemum is kind of that level where Everything is geometric and, and ch changing. You may see what are apparent intelligences and so on. Terrence calls them self transforming elf machines, or self dribbling jeweled basketballs, or something.

I mean, I sort of don’t get that, you know. I think that everybody’s experience is kind of unique, but I have seen similar Similar things and, uh, apparent independent entities that are transmitting information, you know, and it’s kind of like there is almost a parallel dimension to this one that’s always going on.

You know, and it’s very [00:30:00] circus like, or carnival like. There’s a lot of dancing around, and colors, and it’s really, it’s like being like in a hyper spatial, hyper dimensional amusement park, you know, in some ways. And for a few minutes, for that 10 or 20 minutes, You, it’s like you open a porter and you can stick your head through, you know, and you can see what’s going on and it’s like, wow, this is amazing, you know, and then they, whatever they are, the entities notice you, you know, and they say, Oh, what took you so long?

We’ve been waiting for you. We’re so happy to see you. And, you know, very much benevolent, feeling benevolent. But hilarious at the same time. I mean, they’re like, they’re like clowns, you know, they’re, they’re jumping around. They’re doing these tricks, and they very much have a message. You know, they want to transmit information.

They’re so delighted. You know, that [00:31:00] you managed to reach that point, and there’s definite feeling about that. And then, and then it fades away. 

Giancarlo: But what is the message that you receive from them? 

Dennis: That’s more difficult to say exactly. You know, nothing. I mean, nothing that could really put my finger on other than that.

You know, I, I mean, I guess the overall message is, again, you think you understand the structure of reality, but just, just a quantum leap away is this completely raging other dimension that is unsuspected, populated with intelligences, apparently, that are not us, they certainly don’t seem like us, and they inhabit this place, and it’s like, Really, like the hyperspatial carnival of the mind.

You get to go to the amusement park and see all these things. You can ride on the rides and you [00:32:00] can, uh, you know, go through this thing and then, and then you come back, you know, and it is so overwhelming and so alien and so different from ordinary reality. In some ways, I think this is, uh, this makes it hard to remember everything because you know sooner.

come down or begin to come down when you’re already trying to define it and put a linguistic framework on it, which is inherently impossible, right? So you’re diminishing it because you literally, at least for me, I come back babbling, you know, and like, oh my god. What was this? And, and, and it’s like, you know, that the impulse is, is to put words onto it.

But you really can’t, you know. And, but this is what we do. We try to, in order to, uh, you know, in some way, [00:33:00] make sense of it, diffuse its potency, diffuse its luminosity. We try to put it into words. And then, so then we start talking about, you know, You know, self transforming elf machines and all this terminology, and it’s not that it’s, it’s beyond that.

Giancarlo: Don’t you think that for me, one of the most salient takeaway is the sense of being humbled. 

Dennis: Oh, definitely being humbled. Yes. Being humbled and visiting a place that seems oddly familiar. You know, it really evokes childhood in some ways. It evokes, you know, I didn’t have any. thing like DMT experiences in childhood, or maybe I did, and I don’t remember.

I mean, we know that DMT does occur in the brain, and we know that under certain states, you can activate that. But there is definitely this feeling of visiting something that, although it’s [00:34:00] completely alien, yet seems very familiar, evokes childhood, this state of innocence. And a, a strong reminder of the limitations of our knowledge, you know, which I get from most psychedelics, you know, to me, an overarching message from many of psychedelics is remember how little you know, you know.

Giancarlo: So would you say that, that feeling of, remembrance of childhood innocence is also in a way connected with the feeling of acceptance. Would you say that, you know, in those, the empty state, you feel really accepted? Would you say? Yes, 

Dennis: yes, yes. I mean, you feel, yeah, you do feel welcome in this state that who, whatever these things are, they’re happy to see you, you know, it’s a big threshold to cross.

There’s always. [00:35:00] some trepidation, at least for me, about doing this. And I think some of it has to do with, uh, well, it’s, it’s just so, it’s just so utterly alien, but some of it may have to do with, uh, the dose as well, and, and the way it’s administered. I found that, uh, uh, recently I had the experience taking DMT with, uh, through a, uh, vape, you know, method, uh, in a volcano, and I found that, uh, It was still DMT, but it was much smoother.

It was much less, sort of, threatening in some ways, you know. And it seemed like a very gentle rise into this dimension, and you could, I could maintain. My presence there, and because it was a vape, I could control the dose, go up and down, almost like taking a balloon ride. You know, you could go to a certain level, and then you could hit it again, and you could [00:36:00] go to the next level, and, and look around there.

I mean, for Terrence and me, the whole problem with DMT, if there was a problem, was the fact that it was so short. And we really wanted to spend more time in that. That’s what led us to go to La Charrera in the first place, because we’d heard about this orally active form of DMT. And not really knowing at that time that that’s also what ayahuasca was.

In 1971, that was not so clear. You know, the admixture plants. not been studied, that sort of thing. But our reason was to, uh, access this orally active form so that we can spend more time in this space because that’s, that’s the nature of DMT, you know, once you, I mean, by the time you start articulating it, thinking about it, you’re already on the way down, you know.

Giancarlo: But so allow [00:37:00] me, I just wanted to come back. Quickly to this, um, to this sensation of, um, you know, feeling humbled, almost sense of deference, this idea that, you know, they might be playful, but there is like, you know, some sort of higher cosmic intelligence or cosmic design. This idea of feeling accepted, you know, all these feelings I think define what is a mystical experience.

And now I feel that, you know, because science is so secular, you know, we scientists, even Roland Griffith, he talks about meaningful experience, but they are mystical experience. Do you agree in some way? And don’t you agree that these feelings of Humbleness and deference and acceptance, they’re actually very useful to, you know, affect the fabric of society to a less individualistic society.

Dennis: Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. Another one of the [00:38:00] lessons is, you know, similar to what the message I got on Ayahuasca, remember you monkeys are not running this show, you know, and, and don’t be so full of yourself. I mean, this is the other. This is the other, uh, thing, this, this idea that, you know, particularly in the sciences, I think science has a, uh, a, a temptation to be arrogant, you know, in a certain sense.

And scientists soften our, it’s like we have this thing figured out. No, we have nothing figured out. And that’s the humility of it. Remember how little, you know, there’s a, you know, science has a certain sphere of knowledge. It’s a small fraction of reality, and we need to remember there’s an infinity of, of reality beyond that, that we do not know and may never know, and probably never will know, and that’s okay.

Giancarlo: And people forget that science is [00:39:00] a process. It’s not a database. 

Dennis: Exactly. It’s a process. 

Giancarlo: So, what about the other DMT from the um, secretion of the Sonoma Desert Toad? Yeah, the 

Dennis: Toad Medicine, Phibethoxy DMT. Yes, it’s interesting how close those things are chemically, and yet how different they are in terms of their effect.

They are both very short acting. You, you smoke them. 5 MeO is not orally active either, so you smoke the toad medicine. And the interesting thing, probably the primary difference between DMT and Fibrotoxy DMT is that, uh, DMT is highly visual. DMT is filled with hallucinations, visions, whatever you want to call these things that you see.

There’s none of that with 5 methoxy DMT. You get this feeling of [00:40:00] transcendence. It’s like it skips all the other steps and it puts you right In the white light. In the white light. And I wouldn’t even say why, like, the, the, uh, Yeah, it puts you in a state where the soul, the ego just is dissolved. If I had to use one word for what phybothoxy produces, it’s dissolution, you know.

Uh, I had, my experience with it has been limited. But I, my most memorable, most recent experience is when I was able to do it in a sound immersion state, you know, with the singing bowls and all of that going, and in that very carefully managed setting with the sound component, right? And, uh, In that state, that was perfect because I, I was able to take the [00:41:00] three or four to five big hits and then just settle back onto the couch with this resonance going and I just completely dissolved.

I became the sound. I became the vibration, sort of radiating across the universe. To the sense I had, to the degree I had any sense of self. I really didn’t. That’s what I was. There was no thought. There was no Dennis McKenna. There was no ego. It was just resonance. It was just sound. And it was 

Giancarlo: pleasant?

How does it make you feel? 

Dennis: Um, those words don’t really apply. It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t unpleasant. It just was what it was. It wasn’t 

Giancarlo: scary or frightening? 

Dennis: Didn’t feel like it. I wasn’t thinking about that. All of that stuff comes in as you come down, as you come later. And I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t frightened.

I thought, you know, [00:42:00] as I came down, I was grateful that that’s the, that’s the feeling I had. And I told, you know, my guide at the time, what a, what a gift, what a gift this has been, you know, to show really that, uh, You know, this, this, this, uh, this thing that we call the self that we spend so much time constructing and protecting and all that really doesn’t exist, you know, so this was boundarylessness, you know, complete union with the cosmos, you know, the class, and I would, I would compare 5meo More to the classic idea of a mystical experience, even than DMT.

When we were taking DMT, Terrence and I, we weren’t really, I mean, we approached it in our own, we weren’t really applying the [00:43:00] metaphors of mysticism or religion to it. We were approaching it more like, uh, like psychonauts, literally. I mean, we thought, rightly or wrongly, but that’s But the, you know, the conceptual framework in which we explored DMT was it really was a portal to another dimension.

So, of course, we were both, you know, steeped in science fiction since early childhood. So all of these metaphors applied, you know. I mean, we really thought it was a penetration of some other dimension. And it certainly seemed to have that effect. That quality to it. DM, uh, 5 methoxy DMT, not so much. It just put you out there in this cosmic field, you know, where you were not you, there was no you, you know, you were not separate from, from the resonance, the vibration, which of course [00:44:00] we understand now vibration and resonance on, you know, is.

It defines reality at the most fundamental level. So it was a fusion with that. 

Giancarlo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I had my biggest 5MU experience with our common friend, Anton, and when he came back he said it was like touching the heart of God. 

Dennis: I would say so. Something like that. 

Giancarlo: And I really resonate with that. For me, it was the closest thing, how I can imagine heaven.

Dennis: Yeah. 

Giancarlo: A sense of unbound acceptance and forgiveness. 

Dennis: Right. It was All of those things. Yeah. It was All of those things. It was beautiful. I, I wouldn’t I mean, for me, 5 Methoxy was, uh, you know, Anton said it was like touching the heart of God. I felt no separation. Like, there was no difference between me and God.

And this other, this [00:45:00] cosmic mystery, I was the mystery, I was completely, uh, dissolved in it. Again, dissolution, you know, was, was the, if I had to boil it down to one word, I’d say a complete dissolution for me. 

Giancarlo: I want to mention to the listener not to be attached to this recollection and, you know, why I didn’t get that, why I didn’t get that, because biologically we’re all so different.

Right. I heard on one of your podcasts that some people don’t feel anything with DMT. That’s true. So how is that possible? 

Dennis: I have no idea. But it’s true, there are some people who are just not sensitive to it, and, and this is, this is kind of a mystery, you know, and, uh, it’d be very interesting to study, but very hard to study, because these people are so rare, so, you know, silent science requires replicability, and And it’s very [00:46:00] hard just to study something like that.

I mean, it may be their, you know, I mean, it’s useless to speculate. Their receptors may be different. Maybe they have such, uh, higher levels of MAO, monoamine oxidase, uh, genetically that the DMT is, never makes it to the receptors. It’s just hard to say and impossible to study. It’s just one of those mysteries, you know.

Giancarlo: Maybe it’s also the current state of mind, the expectation. 

Dennis: That too. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, uh, certainly with the, With most psychedelics, even with DMT, I think, you can probably block yourself, you know, you can, if you, you have to be ready to surrender. I mean, that’s the main thing. You must be ready to let it go.

You can, you could prepare as much as you want. And that’s good, you can think about the experience, but at, [00:47:00] at the critical moment, the, the connection between you and the substance, you and the medicine, whatever that is, you have to let all that go and just say, I trust the universe, I trust the medicine.

And importantly, I trust myself, you know, I can do this, I can get through this and actually come out the other side and be a better person. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: yeah, yeah. My, my modest opinion and speculation is that. We now know from neuropsychopharmacology about the default mode network, which is the closest thing to your egoic system or egoic armor even.

That’s right. And so my idea is that, you know, people that have developed a strong default mode network, you know, like businessmen that by definition don’t trust anybody. 

Dennis: Right. 

Giancarlo: You know, I remember, What’s his name in the Oliver Stone movie? [00:48:00] Michael Douglas was saying in the in this Wall Street, you know, if you want a friend by your dog, that that kind of archetype of the rootless businessman who has developed this ability to not have empathy, not be.

You know, to, to have a strong default mode network, I’ve seen powerful businessmen drinking ayahuasca, five cups, don’t feeling anything. 

Dennis: That’s right. Yeah. And, and I think that’s true, Giancarlo. I think that’s a big factor. You do have to be willing to let go. So people that are obsessed with control, they’re not going to be able to do that.

Or afraid, 

Giancarlo: afraid, you know. 

Dennis: Right. You would think that something as powerful as DMT or 5 methoxy DMT would just. Break through all that, but maybe not, you know. I mean, I had a, uh, a shaman once, I have a shaman that I’ve worked with for, for some years. He said, uh, there are two kinds of people I [00:49:00] will not give ayahuasca to.

One is schizophrenics, the other is sociopaths. Because it won’t do them any good, you know. It may even make it worse. And it may even make it worse. And I think, I think Actually, there are instances of that. That’s right. Yeah. So, no hope, no hope for reduction, redemption for Donald Trump. It would not help.

It would not help. 

Giancarlo: Okay, great. Thank you so much for being so open. What about Salvia? You mentioned you had an interesting experience with Salvia. 

Dennis: Right. Now, Salvia is, uh, yeah, again, my, a few experiences, uh, Salvia is just a whole other, uh, well, for one thing, pharmacologically, you know, it’s not a psychedelic, it doesn’t have the same molecular mechanisms that what I call classic or true psychedelics do.

It’s not even 

Giancarlo: illegal, 

Dennis: right? [00:50:00] It’s not illegal, no, but it, it’s not, most psychedelics like tryptamines, LSD, DMT, peyote, all of these, they interact with serotonin, neurotransmitter serotonin. Salvia is a very selective and very potent, uh, agonist. meaning, you know, in pharmacology you’ve got agonists and antagonists.

A antagonist is something that blocks a receptor. An agonist is something that is like whatever, you know, neuro, it mimics the neurotransmitter like. And like the, the psychedelics are all serotonin agonists, right? They replace serotonin at this one critical receptor, the 5 HT2A receptor. Salvia is pharmacologically unique.

This Salvinorin A, [00:51:00] which is not an alkaloid, does not contain any nitrogen, which just makes it unusual anyway, because most CNS drugs are alkaloids, or they contain nitrogen. Salvia is a diterpene, and it interacts selectively only with the kappa opiate receptor. So we know we have these internal, uh, opiates, you know, the endorphins, the enkephalins, the endorphins.

The dynorphins, these kinds of things are, are peptides, right? And, and morphine interacts primarily, there are three kinds. The, the, the, uh, delta, mu, and kappa opiate receptors. Morphine interacts mainly with the mu receptor. And it gives you the feelings of analgesia, and euphoria, and, and, uh, eventually, Addiction and all that, that’s all mediated through the mu [00:52:00] receptor primarily.

Salvia doesn’t hit that when it hits the kappa receptor. And only the kappa receptor, this is what’s really remarkable about that molecule. Most drugs are what they call in pharmacology, dirty drugs, in the sense that they don’t have an absolute selectivity. Like LSD, for example, will interact with Serotonin receptors primarily, and the 5 HT2A receptor primarily.

But it also hits dopamine receptors and various receptors. If you look at the kappa, uh, uh, If you look at the, uh, binding profile of salvinorin A, It’s absolutely a hundred percent selective for the kappa opiate receptor. That is remarkable, you know, in any molecule. So what does this mean in terms of its pharmacology?

And 

Giancarlo: how does it feel mostly? 

Dennis: Well, how it feels, yeah, [00:53:00] how it feels is, it is so bizarre that it’s very hard to, Uh, to describe it, you know, it, one, one of the, you know, one of the main features of Salvia dividoran is there’s a feeling of, it affects the proprioception, you know, and there’s a feeling of twisting or, or turning, uh, in some dimension, it’s almost as though There’s a vortex or something or you, you know, it’s like we’re on this plane and all of a sudden the scene shifts and then you’re in this other place and the effects of that are and seem different for different people.

Like sometimes I’ve heard, well, I’ve heard crazy stories. None of this has happened to me. Nothing that crazy, but for example, I witnessed once A person smoking a large [00:54:00] amount of salvia. And he spent the whole experience on the ground trying to literally drill a hole in the ground with his head. Even to the point where he had to be, you know, stopped from doing that because he was gonna, and, and, and afterwards he said, well, What I was trying to do was, uh, was, uh, get out of myself.

And there, there is that element with Salvia. It’s like, you know, you have to literally step out of your body. And he, he described the experience of, you know, holding up his limb and seeing this, you know, reptilian limb as his skin was peeled away. It’s not a particularly pleasant kind of activity. It’s not a particularly pleasant kind of activity.

Uh, other people describe, uh, becoming Uh, uh, like they, they become inanimate objects, you know, like what it is to be a tile of the floor, [00:55:00] you know, or, or something like that. Just, I don’t know what it’s like to be a tile on the floor, those, but that’s the kind of thing it does. Um, my particular, I guess my most memorable experience, and I’ve had very few because I don’t like it.

Particularly, most, most people find it quite dysphoric and quite just so bat shit crazy that it’s very hard to, to, you know, process. But some people apparently like it. I mean, there’s no accounting for taste, as they say. But for me, when I took it, the occasion that’s most memorable for me is I, I was in a, I mean, we were at a camp, we were in a cabin, up in the mountains, and sitting on the floor and smoking this, I was cross legged, and it was like a wind came along, and I was like a pile [00:56:00] of sand, or something, and the wind came along and knocked the pile, Across the floor, you know, so like, like I was, I would literally spilled across the floor and there were cracks in the floor, you know, so the next thing I knew, I was dribbling through the cracks of the floor and looking up at the floor from the other side and, uh, but my head somehow remained above the floor.

None of this was alarming. I mean, it was very strange. It was like. Hmm. I mean, as far as my mentation, this was all like a body effect. I was thinking about it. It was like, hmm, well, um, I seem to be melting. That’s interesting, you know, but I had no emotional involve, involvement with it. It was neither good nor bad.

It was just an observation and uh, I’ve had several Like [00:57:00] that, you know, and, uh, and that’s usually what it is, this, this sense of a rotation that kind of spins you out of this dimension into another, another place. And, and you get crazy narratives. Some people have I remember one person described their experience as, uh, so they spoke the salvia.

The next thing they know, they were in a place, it was Christmas morning, they were celebrating Christmas, you know, opening the presents and all that with a family they’d never seen. They didn’t know these people , you know, but that’s where they found themselves. Wow. I mean, I think that, uh, I think that salvia is, uh.

You know, I think it’s very interesting. Uh, I think that people, you know, it should be explored. But man, you have to, you know, it takes a [00:58:00] lot of courage to do it. You know, it may have uses. It may have therapeutic uses. There are people looking into it for depression, for example, and there are the rare people that actually seek this kind of experience out.

I think one of the reasons. And I think that, that, uh, Salvia is still legal is, for most people, once is enough, you know, they, they don’t wish to go back to it. So it’s kind of got its own built in, uh, protection against abuse, you know. 

Giancarlo: Very good. So, we’re coming to our last, um, compound to discuss.

Specifically on your personal experience, if you can, Datura. 

Dennis: Right, Datura is another one of these things that is not a psychedelic, you know, different molecules. It works on acetylcholine. 

Giancarlo: It’s a flower, right? That you can see. 

Dennis: Yeah, [00:59:00] uh, there are many. Well, Nightshades, the uh, the, you know, there are many kinds of Jaturas.

They’re all members of the Nightshade family, which also has, you know, tobacco, and potatoes, and all of those things. The ones that are used in South America are called Tawae, by the local people. And used to be called tree detours. They’re the beautiful, uh, they’re sometimes called floor upon the O’s. You, they grow around, they’re beautiful ornamentals.

They’re called the angel trumpets, you know, with the hanging flowers, many of them around Ibiza and in each. Any kind of, you know, semi tropical area because they’re so beautiful. They have those alkaloids. They are sometimes added to ayahuasca as an admixture. Uh, the, the roots of the flowers, the roots of the leaves are added as an admixture.

And that will affect the [01:00:00] experience. Uh, uh, Uh, and is probably a bad idea, you know, if, if they’re putting, uh, uh, Toei into your ayahuasca brew, you’ve probably got, you’re probably drinking with a brujo, and you should probably get out of there, because one of the things that, uh, Jatura does that these, that these alkaloids do is they rend you very susceptible, you know, suggestible, rather, You know, bad influences.

Effectively, there are all sorts of, uh, stories about how detour is used in Columbia, for example, is effectively a date rape drug or a, a, uh, I mean, there are, Crazy stories, for example, uh, you know, the people that are using it, they’ll approach some unsuspecting tourist, for example, with a map, and they’ll say, Can you help [01:01:00] me find this place?

Open the map, and then blow the powder into their face, and that’s enough to, you know, make them intoxicated. And then, It really produces a, uh, dissociation from reality to the point where they don’t know what they’re doing. So, there are stories of this happened to one gentleman and the next thing he knew, uh, he didn’t know what happened to him.

He, he woke up on a park bench somewhere in Bogota, went back to his apartment, right? He lived in Bogota, went back to his apartment and, uh, Uh, and, uh, went up there and found that the place had been completely ransacked. Furniture, everything had been taken out. He went down to talk to the guard and he said, What, what the hell happened?

He said, the guard said, You don’t remember? You and five [01:02:00] people came here in the middle of the night and, and cleared out your apartment. You know, and he completely didn’t remember. So that’s one thing that the Datora does. It, it does wipe the memory of the experience. Not completely, but sometimes it does.

Uh, my own experience with Datora, uh, was a, a childhood, uh, a teenage misadventure, if you will. I’ve written about this in the, uh, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss. I have a whole chapter called My Datura Misadventure. And a friend of mine and I, we were 16 at the time, and there was a, not the tree Datura, but there was a bush Datura, uh, the so called Jimson weed.

That’s, that’s the same family, same alkaloids and so on. We ate the seeds of, uh, of Jimson [01:03:00] weed And the funny thing is, well, it’s not funny, it’s actually kind of, kind of, well, it is what it is. We were under the impression that it was a different plant completely. We thought we were eating a kind of morning glory, right?

So morning glories have lysergic acid derivatives. Our experience with LSD had been very limited. So we thought, When we ate these things and had this horrific trip, you know, uh, that this was what a bad LSD trip was like. You know, we’d only ever had one LSD trip in our lives before. And, uh, that this was what a bad LSD trip was like.

But no, it was actually what a textbook detour trip is like. And later we found We found out that this was, that this was Datura, not a Mourning Glory that we’d eaten. For my [01:04:00] own experience, I sometimes tell people that the, the Nightshades, the Datura, are true hallucinogens, but not true psychedelics. In the sense that you have hallucinations.

But you can’t distinguish them from reality. On psychedelics, you can have hallucinations, but you usually know that they’re hallucinations. But detoura doesn’t do that. The hallucinations that you have can’t be distinguished from reality, and you, you have a very very Loose grasp on what they are. For example, people appear to you, figures appear to you.

Giancarlo: They did to you? They appear to you? 

Dennis: Yeah, you can have, like we’re having a conversation, like without the microphones and so on, but I could be on detour. You’re sitting across from me at the table. We’re having a discussion, a [01:05:00] conversation, and then you just kind of evaporate. You, you were never there. You were never there.

And I really believe that in indigenous cultures, the idea of wraiths, the idea of these spirits that inhabit the forest, you know, you, you, I think that has to do a lot with these detourist states. If you go into a wilderness area, if you go into the forest someplace at night and take detour, I guarantee you, place is going to be crawling with the spirits, you know.

These things that are apparently Real apparently solid that you interact with and yet they’re not there, you know 

Giancarlo: Is it a useful experience with it? 

Dennis: It may be it may be I I mean it it is Because of this I think it’s very dangerous in fact, if people want to read more about this, they should look at the [01:06:00] There was an article published a few years ago on vice.

com that talks about, it’s called the most dangerous drug in the world. And it talks about this use of detoura as a means to, to, uh, Control and manipulate. Control and manipulate people. You know, for nefarious purposes, and it certainly does that. There may be uses to it. I mean, scopolamine, which is the main alkaloid, does have medical uses as a, uh, anti nauseant, and as a, uh, atropine is used to dilate the eyes.

And, uh, so it has medical uses, but not at these high doses, you know. In my, in my detour of misadventure that I did with my friend, what happened to me was, uh, after we had taken it, Maybe 45 minutes, an [01:07:00] hour into it, it was clear to me that, uh, things were going off track, you know, in a fairly serious way, and I didn’t know what was going on.

So I went home. 

Giancarlo: In which way they were going off track? 

Dennis: It’s just, all of these strange things were happening that were not, You know, not pleasant. 

Giancarlo: People appearing, people 

Dennis: disappearing. People appearing, well that, that came later, but it was just, uh, just a feeling of, uh, of, of paranoia and being threatened, you know, by what I’m not sure.

But so I, I went home. My friend went to his home. I went to my home and, uh, my, my mother was there. And she was, she could see something was going on with me, you know, and I just said, Mom, I’ll be okay. It’s all right. You know, I went into my room [01:08:00] and I closed the door and I just said, You know, I, I just need to get through this.

And, and what happened then was because it dilates the eyes, you can’t focus on anything, right? And any, Textured surface, at least what happened for me, any textured surface, like the wall or the bedspread, so it begins to squirm, you know, the next thing you know, there’s bugs everywhere, right? That was my experience, all these bugs, which were entirely hallucinatory, but very alarming, right?

So, I lived through that, and, uh, You know, was, was trying to, to deal with that and, and just hang on, basically. Uh, and eventually, it, it did fade. But it took, uh, you know, it took about three days to completely fade. And there was a later, uh, episode when, when, [01:09:00] uh, I mean, my, my friend, Went through his own personal, terrifying journey, but then the next day we got together with our mothers, you know, who were very upset, wondering what the hell had happened, and we were still quite loaded, and at that point, we, there was an episode where, you know, Hashish began to rain out of the air, you know, and, uh, I just don’t know, it’s a very, very, 

Giancarlo: So with Insight now, that experience of you in the bedroom, do you feel that there was any takeaway?

Was that useful in some way? 

Dennis: The takeaway was stay away from Datura. That was the, that was the takeaway. That was the takeaway, you know, uh, and I, I did actually mess with it, uh, a little bit later, but at much lighter doses, you know, [01:10:00] one of the interesting things about detour, uh, is it has this, this association with black magic and, uh, putting spells on people and that sort of thing.

And if you look at, there’s a, there’s a classic, uh, uh, text in anthropology called Navajo Witchcraft. And if you read that book, it’s by Clyde Cluckholn, I believe. A well known anthropologist wrote back in, in I think the 60s, Navajo witchcraft is all about Datura, you know. And if you look at the European, uh, uh, you know, witchcraft, Satanism traditions that witches bruise, Contained Jatura, and, and, or other kinds of nightshades, sometimes Henbane, Mandragora, all these, all these, uh, these nightshades [01:11:00] of the Solanaceae family that are associated with witchcraft and black magic.

The alkaloids are the same. And the effects are the same, and again, it’s not serotonin, it’s acetylcholine, you know, so and, and they can be quite dangerous because these things are toxic because, you know, as well, if you, you could, you could overdose easily enough. 

Giancarlo: Dennis, let me ask you, you know, there’s another compound I’d love to touch on.

It wasn’t on your list, so let me know if This is something you don’t want to do, but I’d love to talk about cannabis, about marijuana, because it’s so well spread and it’s now legal in so many places. So have you been, is it, is it a friend of yours? 

Dennis: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Cannabis was an early friend of mine and still is, you know, uh, I mean, I first turned on to cannabis.

Well, of course, my brother turned me on, like he led me down the [01:12:00] path to many of these things, but I first smoked cannabis when he came back to Paonia, the town I was living in during the summer. He came back from Berkeley. He had some cannabis with him and, uh, some LSD actually, but I didn’t take the LSD, but I tried the cannabis and, uh, we just went across the street.

My, my home. My home was, uh, located across the street from the city park, you know, in this little town. And, and we just went across the street and spread out a blanket and he got out the pipe and we toked up right in the middle. Nobody paid any attention. Nobody would have known what was happening. It was a very innocent time, you know.

It took me two or three tries before I really felt the effects. You have to learn. What it is to be stoned, you know, or at least that was my experience. And then once I was [01:13:00] there, I, I realized what it was. This, this fairly subtle, uh, change in, in consciousness, this altered state. And at that point, or in that early point, I was also experimenting with alcohol.

And, uh, incidentally, or coincidentally, I had had my first, uh, serious encounter with alcohol. Weeks before, a couple weeks before, and I got really shit faced drunk and made a fool of myself at a school dance and you know really was out of control and and so and Didn’t really like being in that state and then so a couple weeks later when I got the chance to smoke cannabis It was such a contrast, you know, and I realized You know, this is my drug, this is my friend, and, uh, didn’t really, I never have really, [01:14:00] I mean, I drink alcohol, but I don’t do it to get drunk.

I really don’t like the effects. Cannabis is, is very different, and it’s been very good to me over the years. Yeah, 

Giancarlo: it’s funny because I read somewhere that your brother, Call it, um, like something related with the Santa Maria being a benevolent, nurturing figure. 

Dennis: Sister Mary Redemptoress, I think he called her.

Exactly. Yes. It’s very much like that. 

Giancarlo: But it’s funny, again, how it’s different for different people. Because, um, For me, for example, I had a very conflictual relationship to the extent that I end up in a rehabilitation center for cannabis. I couldn’t use without the abuse. I was, it was very addictive to me.

And, um, and I remember Graham Hancock says that, um, you know, every plant has a spirit and every spirit has a personality. Iboga. And the cannabis, Graham Harcourt says that the spirit is a trickster spirit and it tricks you in, in, [01:15:00] in giving the impression that it, um, it, it, it relaxes you and it takes off the edge of the anxiety.

But the reality is that the edge and the anxiety comes from the withdrawal. So it tricks you, you know, it gives you the impression that it increases a state from a negative state that it causes in the first place. It’s possible. 

Dennis: Yeah, it’s possible. There are different personalities too. I mean, I, uh, when I did use cannabis, I used it pretty regularly.

You know, I mean daily, actually, and so maybe I was addicted. I didn’t feel addicted. I didn’t feel that this use was a problem. I did not perceive it as an addiction, you know. Were you 

Giancarlo: able to research and to write? 

Dennis: Sometimes, yeah. I didn’t, so I, I did. I, I did. I didn’t really write on cannabis, but I got ideas from cannabis.

That was [01:16:00] the, that was the main attraction, were the funny ideas that you got, which I could then later write about and so on. I wasn’t so good at writing. in the intoxicated state. But for me, it was a, you know, Sister Mary Redemptorist. It was like something you could do to calm down after a hard day, a way to relax, maybe help you sleep, that kind of thing.

I mean, for me, it was entirely benevolent and I didn’t see I didn’t see my use of it as a, as a problem, really. I mean, I know Graham came to that, that point, you know, where he felt he, uh, was, uh, like possessed by it. And then he backed away from it, and, and then he was able to come back to it in a less addictive, destructive way, yeah, yeah.

So this is, this is a good example of every bit, every drug is different and every person is different, you know. And the way that you’re going to interact with [01:17:00] these things is different. different. I mean, I, I don’t even smoke much cannabis anymore. You know, I reached a point where It doesn’t really do that much, but when I do smoke good cannabis, I enjoy it, you know.

Giancarlo: You’re gonna, you’re gonna like this little story by another common friend of ours, Amanda. You know, she initiated, you know, she gave me LSD for the first time 20 years ago, and then she initiated me to this charas, to this Indian ashish. And so I was doing, I was going to Burning Man, Um, with the big RV and, um, another friend of ours, Joao, who directed 2012 Time for Change had the chara.

So I took some while I was driving and of course I crash three times into a tree to a rug. It was like this 50 meter RV. And so I told Amanda, Amanda, listen, this is very, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s can be dangerous dissociation. And I told her the story and she says, yes, maybe you crashed, but you didn’t get [01:18:00] angry, right?

Dennis: Right, right. Lisa and Dennis. Totally mellow. Totally mellow. 

Giancarlo: We’ve been together already almost an hour and a half. Um, thank you so much for sharing this personal experience. If you don’t mind, let me take another few minutes. Um, you know, I imagine a lot of people contact you maybe on social media or on your website asking for advice on how to start the journey into psychedelic, uh, which compound, you know, for, for an IE, for someone that never did anything, but you know, there is so many documentary now and books and it’s becoming such a mainstream topic, you know, for someone who hasn’t done anything, um, Uh, what would you recommend to try first in what circumstances, what condition?

Uh, yeah. Can you talk a little bit? 

Dennis: Of course. Well, the first thing is come to it from an informed [01:19:00] place, you know, educate yourself about it. There are many resources that you can access. I mean, so many, uh, one that I’d like to recommend. to people is erowid. org. It’s a great source of good solid information about a whole variety of drugs, you know, many of which you’ve never heard of, not even interested in, but they’re psychedelic.

They cover all the psychedelics in a pretty good way. So if you’re looking for a crash course on say LSD or mescaline or DMT, check it out. That can be your, you know, first go to source. And from there, you can branch out. They have references to scientific papers. Also, helpfully, they have trip reports, usually, with all of these things.

So, you can read about other people’s experiences. And I think that’s a very, that’s not something you’re going to find in pub med. So, I think that, uh, you know, or [01:20:00] rarely. So, I think that Erwin is a great resource. And the next thing is just approach it with, uh, respect and, uh, and trust in a certain way. to yourself and pay attention to sentence setting.

This, this is the primary thing. Be careful about where you do it. When you do it, the circumstances, how much your dose is, who you’re doing it with, if anybody. Uh, pay attention to these important variables of set and setting. You know, you want to do it in a setting that’s appropriate. Primarily, you want to do it in a place that’s safe.

You know, that you don’t feel threatened and that you don’t feel like you have Disrupted. Yeah, you don’t have to deal with a lot of real world things. The telephone ringing, there are people, you know, you want to Get away from all that. Sometimes, if you’ve never done a psychedelic, probably it’s good to have [01:21:00] a sitter or a guide who may not even be in the room with you.

You know, you couldn’t do it alone, but someone who is available if you really get into trouble. Maybe someone even that you could call, but that’s why these things are often taken in group situations with a guide, a facilitator, and Shaman, whatever you want to call it. It’s very important to optimize the set in a setting.

Then of course the other variables are the dose and whatever the medicine is. So they’re basically four variables here for you to play with. If you have no experience with psychedelics at all, you don’t have to do heroic dose. Do a small dose. 

Giancarlo: Which one would you recommend? 

Dennis: Well I would say mushrooms are probably the easiest, most accessible.

Friendly, uh, and I’d say start [01:22:00] there, you know, you know and DMT and these sorts of things well You can do that too, but, uh, but, you know, in order to do DMT, uh, you have to manipulate the pipe and do all those things. All you have to do is eat mushrooms. You don’t have to process them. You don’t have to do anything.

I mean, there are different ways to administer them. I like to make them. tea out of the dried mushrooms, like with a little lemon juice, but you can just eat them. Yeah. Would you start with 

Giancarlo: one gram, maybe? 

Dennis: Well, yeah, to start with, I’d say one gram. I mean, the potency of different kinds varies, but let’s talk about Cubensis, you know, which is the most common, commonly cultivated.

So one gram is a, is a pretty light dose. You know, but enough to feel it and just get a feel for it, you know, and that’s, that’s a good place to start and then you can, you can increase, [01:23:00] even in the same session, you can increase, you know, if you feel like, well, okay, this is interesting, but I want to go higher.

Perfectly okay to do that during that first trip to take a booster. As they say, this is commonly done with ayahuasca and often with mushrooms, you know, you take a booster or you maybe just stick with one gram and see how that plays out. Then the next time you do it, do two grams or three grams, depending on you have to feel your way into it.

You know, you’re getting to know this, this medicine, this, this thing as an ally, you want it to be your friend. So you have to make friends with it. Yeah. And like friendships, you have to be careful, you know, and, uh, and so that’s what I would say. Just, just approach it, uh, in a respectful way and, uh, and carefully and thoughtfully [01:24:00] and, uh, uh, and, and yeah.

And, and don’t, don’t, if it’s the first time, don’t do it in a circumstance, do it in circumstances where what you’re doing is about. Don’t 

Giancarlo: do it in a concert, don’t do it in a party. Not necessarily. I mean, later maybe. Later maybe. 

Dennis: Exactly. You can, you can, you can do that, but initially do it in a place where the task is to pay attention to what’s happening and, and your inner, inner state, you know.

Yes. It’s like 

Giancarlo: you climb a volcano of 5, 000 meter, don’t go all the way to the top the first time. Exactly. Go to 2, 000. Exactly. Adjust to the air. Right. Look on your gears. Yeah. And then step by step. 

Dennis: And, and sometimes, uh. You know, it can help. I mean, Terrence liked to say people should take five grams in total darkness.

I’m not sure about that, but darkness has something to say for it, or a state of, you know, [01:25:00] eye shades, earphones, the way they We’ve all seen pictures of these clinical studies, you know, and that’s one way to do it You don’t have to do it that way. I mean you could do it if you can do it in nature That’s even greater but do it in nature where you’re not gonna bother anybody and nobody’s gonna bother you So so it’s just common sense, you know, really 

Giancarlo: Thank You Dennis.

Let me ask you I’m still a bit hungry for a personal experience. So We were, we were talking about First Timer. So, how was your first time? 

Dennis: First time for what? 

Giancarlo: For Psychedelic. 

Dennis: Well 

Giancarlo: You grew up in Colorado? 

Dennis: Yeah, yeah, I mean, my first experience with a, with a true psychedelic was, was LSD. Grateful Deads or something?

Like a lot of people. And, uh, I was in Berkeley. It was 1967. It was the summer of love. [01:26:00] How old were you? I was, uh, 16 at the time. And I had gone from Colorado to Berkeley, where my brother was living. Why my father let me go, I have no idea, because he knew we were going to get into this. You know, into trouble, but he did.

And, uh, and so, among the You know, I mean, part of the agenda of going out there for this couple of weeks was to connect with the hippie culture and, and everything, the counterculture, everything that was going on, uh, I had hopes of getting laid, maybe, uh, that, that didn’t necessarily take place, but, and to, to take a psychedelic, to take LSD specifically and, uh, So, it happened.

How much? How 

Giancarlo: much do you remember? I 

Dennis: have no idea how much, but it was enough. We encountered this guy on the, uh, on the street on Telegraph Avenue. This [01:27:00] wild haired, crazy looking guy selling acid. You know, he, he, he showed me, he sold us these aspirin tablets. With a little purple dot in the center. Right?

He says, oh yeah man, this is great stuff. This is really good stuff, you know. So, okay, what did we know? Alright, so we bought two tabs and uh, we went up to uh, Tilden Park, above Berkeley. Uh, nice place to do it, nice afternoon. And, uh, and we dropped, you know, and it was wonderful. It was great. Not at all what we expected, you know, because of circumstances and so on, I guess.

It wasn’t an inner state at all. We became like apes. We became, we regressed, you know. We were literally swinging from trees and, and feeling very monkey like, you know. And, and, uh, just enjoying being [01:28:00] in our bodies, stretching and, you know. And howling, and, I mean, good thing there weren’t too many people around as far as I know.

They would have wondered. But we just had a wonderful time. And, uh, and felt like, you know, it was a perfect, perfect psychedelic experience, you know. And then we, we started to holler at, uh, Alice, Alice D. You know, was the teacher figure at that point. And that was our first psychedelic experience with LSD.

Of course, I’ve had many since. Uh, but that was, uh, that was very rich. 

Giancarlo: And you know then you wanted to be a psychedelic researcher? Who? During the LSD, did you feel that, I want to spend the rest of my life researching these compounds or not yet? 

Dennis: I hadn’t really come to that conclusion yet, you know, it took DMT to really make me cross the line to say, like I [01:29:00] told you earlier, this is the most interesting thing that’s ever come into my life.

I have to investigate this. LSD, the initial, uh, trip was, You know, casual. I mean, it was a nice afternoon. It was meaningful. I remember it. Well, you know, and I remember the bonding I had with my friend, you know, we were close. We were already close. But to share this adventure, the whole thing of going to California together and yeah, and the fellow, uh, you know, has passed on since and, uh, You know, his life did not end well, but that was many, many years later, you know, that particular time, it was kind of the innocence of teenage boys, you know, 

Giancarlo: the communal experience.

I think people don’t exactly don’t talk too much about it. I feel that what’s happening in the psychedelic circle is the, the, the, the collective [01:30:00] experience of, of, of communing with others. In a more vulnerable, less conditioned way. Right. Therefore more authentic and, and, and memorable and, and sweet. Right.

Dennis: And that’s where things like, uh, ayahuasca have a place because they’re almost always taken in a group situation. Yes. And mushrooms are too, but. You know, lately there, but, but you can certainly get far on mushrooms and, and there’s nothing wrong with taking it by itself, by yourself, uh, if you pay attention to these variables of, uh, set setting, you know, but you could learn a lot from mushrooms just on the natch, you, you don’t need a guide necessarily, especially if you have some, some, uh, experience, you know, and, uh, And same with ayahuasca.

It’s often said, you should only take ayahuasca in a group session. [01:31:00] You know, once, once you know the territory, it’s perfectly fine to take it by yourself. 

Giancarlo: Okay, Dennis, I’m struggling to let you go. Let me ask you. Okay. Okay. Just, just, I promise, last question. So what turns you on these days? What excites you now?

Either professionally or culturally or is there anything that you really wake up in the morning saying, I want to start doing that? 

Dennis: Well, I don’t know. It’s, uh. You know, it’s not really a fair question. I, I, I, I’m excited by the fact that the society has begun to recognize the value of these medicines. But then that, that brings with it its own problems, you know, but better now, better that than the way it used to be where they were suppressed and, and suppressed and feared and prohibited, you know, they’re helping a [01:32:00] tremendous number of people.

Uh, and, and they are a catalyst for this global shift in consciousness that has to take place. If we’re going to save ourselves and the planet. A lot of people feel that, you know, I think psychedelics have the potential to, I’m not convinced they will because I think not enough people are doing them and that maybe there’s, and time is growing short, but I’m encouraged that these, that we’re rediscovering this connection, which we’ve, our species has always law has always had, you know, but we’ve lost as we descended into history.

I am actually, you know, I believe in the stone dape theory. I think that psilocybin particularly has had a symbiotic relationship with our species. [01:33:00] For possibly millions of years, you know, and that’s a whole other conversation, but if you look at the Evidence, it’s a reasonable thing to to think we know that We evolved in in Africa, you know hominids evolved in Africa.

We know that in that environment And there were also cattle and cattle happened to be what mushrooms grow on the cattle shit, the cattle dung, right? So we can reasonably speculate that we did co evolve with these things and, you know, we’ll be here another two hours. So we’ll 

Giancarlo: do, we’ll do, we’ll do another episode on the stone ape theory.

I just want to say one last thing when you say, you know, maybe not enough people are doing it. But. You know, from where I sit, especially here in Ibiza, I don’t know how much you heard this term concert remedy. It’s a new musical genre. [01:34:00] Concert remedy is the merge of the two word concert and ceremony. So a concert remedy is a musical experience accompanied by the taking a substance usually is a medium dose.

Sometimes they do a little MDMA and the mushroom, you know, the inventories, Alexandre Tanu. 

Dennis: Yeah. 

Giancarlo: Who’s who’s now with us here in Ibiza. 

Dennis: Right. 

Giancarlo: And, and, and so now here in Ibiza, there is like three, four places. There are an entire label called the house of frequency. Our friend, music producer, Diego Taranis created a label around Conceremony musician, like Apechimba, like Nick Mulvey, Aguare, Nessie Gomez, in America East Forest is the, and so people that are attracted to the music, which is like billions, and they come [01:35:00] from the communal musical space, you know, the concert goers, and now they added this.

psychedelic. I feel that that that that way to consume psychedelic will accelerate the usage. And, and, and I know, I mean, that’s another podcast. If has the conscious awakening started yet, you know, or not, Well, 

Dennis: I think, yeah, I think that’s an example, I mean, you know, so we’re, we’re rediscovering our alliance, our relationship to these medicines that probably is thousands of years old, if not millions.

But the point is, we’re rediscovering this alliance with these things that have always been there. But have been on the margins. They’ve been the, they’ve been, uh, you know, stewarded by indigenous people and, and so called mainstream society has not accepted them. In fact, it’s tried to actively suppress them.

But we’re getting past [01:36:00] that now. And, and the, the You know, the virtues of these things, the merits of these things are being rediscovered by more and more people. And that’s very encouraging, because they’re catalysts for change, and they’re catalysts for developing new ways of thinking. And that’s what we need, you know, a new perspective on ourselves as a species, on our place in nature.

Our mission, if you will, if we have anything to do with trying to avert the disaster that seems to be overtaking us, what is our role? What can we do? And the, uh, the medicines are teachers. You know, the medicines are, we can learn from them. Maybe we’re the teacher, but the medicines act, open access to that.

So, so that’s encouraging. 

Giancarlo: Thank you very much. Dennis McKenna, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much. Where people can find about your work, we’re going to put in the show notes the link of your conference. 

Dennis: Right. So, this [01:37:00] conference we recently did, ESPD55. com. Yes. People can look at that, and then they can look at the McKenna Academy, which is McKenna.

academy. And they both go the same place. And you can see what we’ve been doing. And ESPD 55 is very happy with it, and it’s open access. People can watch the presentations. You just have to register with your email and get an account, and then you can see everything. And that’s the latest thing we’ve done.

And then we have plans for More things. Fantastic. And then we’ll, 

Giancarlo: we’ll put the link for your book, please. And, um, thank you very much. 

Dennis: Thank you, Giancarlo. A pleasure. Always talking peace. Thank you.[01:38:00] 

Jingle: Coca zonada, it’s zonada and tea. Coca zonada, it’s zonada 

and tea.