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Oct. 12, 2015 - Art Bell

02:23:33

Art Bell MITD - Dr Dennis Mckenna Psychedelic Research

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39:48

dr dennis mckenna

01:20:55

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the High Desert and American Southwest.
		How did you all good evening?
		Good morning, good afternoon, whatever the case may be, in whatever time zone you reside in, each and every one of them.
		Covered like a blanket by this program, Midnight in the Desert.
		I'm Mark Bell.
unidentified		It is grand to be here tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dennis McKenna is going to be my guest, and it's going to be a kick-butt show.
		We have rules here, only two of them during the week.
		No bad language, and only one call per show.
		That's it.
		All right.
		A little bragging, I guess.
		This is kind of interesting.
		Actually, a lot of bragging.
		Two stories.
		Talkstream Live, they monitor all the talk shows on the net, released its third quarter 2015 ratings and ranks for the most streamed national radio talk shows.
		Michael Savage continues to dominate digital space, reaching new heights with a 27 share, his highest ever.
		Savage takes the top spot once again, further extending his number one streak.
		Congratulations, Mr. Savage, with high margins over all other competitors, followed by Rush, Laura Ingram, Mark Levin, and Glenn Beck.
		Then it goes on.
		Art Bell returned to talk radio with Midnight in the Desert, as predicted for his first rating period, lands right among the top 25.
		Talkstream's third quarter 2015 sampling size report exceeds 1.6 million, a 14% increase in total listening over the last quarter.
		So we didn't slaughter the top 25, but that we are on there at all is absolutely amazing considering we just began.
		That's one item.
		And the other is the headline story on the Huffington Post science page.
		Go to the Huffington Post, and the headline you're going to see is scenario that opens, quote, the day after tomorrow, end quote, actually not that far-fetched, according to research.
		The 2004 blockbuster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is all about the disastrous effect of the collapse of a massive temperature-driven ocean circulation system.
		Although the system known as the Atlantic circulation system is real, researchers said at the time that the movie wasn't based in facts, right?
		Actually, NBC clobbered Whitley and myself and other many other media clobbered us as well.
		But according to research I'm going on now published last week by the journal Nature Scientific Reports, the effects dreamed up in the movie may actually be more possible than initially thought.
		Now, I could go on, and I will a little.
		The AMOC helps warm Europe and the East Coast by bringing Caribbean waters northward and shifting cooler waters south.
		Should the AMOC collapse, especially in light of the broader impacts of global climate change, this report finds that parts of the Earth would actually cool for a period of 15 to 20 years, very much like in the movie.
		The basic scenario of AMOC as a result of global warming is not completely out of the blue or unthinkable, they go on to say, and so on and so on.
		So if you want to read about it, once again, when Whitley and I wrote the book, The Coming Global Superstorm, that became the day after tomorrow, we went on NBC and they made fun of us, and I got a couple of jabs back, as I recall, and then later a really good one.
		But, I mean, we got clobbered.
		Absolutely got clobbered.
		So there you have it.
		It seems as though, well, frankly, nah nah nah nah nah nah.
		Sorry.
		I shouldn't have done that.
		Now, next item, The Martian.
		Our family went into Las Vegas this weekend, in fact yesterday, and saw The Martian.
		Now, in my opinion, The Martian rates as the best movie of the year, though the year is clearly not done, at least the best movie thus far.
		And I mean in every category.
		The CGI was flawless, but that's not the reason to go see The Martian.
		The reason to go see it is the story.
		Oh my God, the story.
		The acting, the scientific realism.
		It was gripping.
		It was amazing.
		And I might also like to add they used my bumper music throughout.
		I almost fell off the seat when ABBA came on.
		Amazing.
		So if you don't do anything else and you don't go to any other movie this year, go to the Martian.
		It is, it's simply out of this world in more ways than one.
		Sorry about that.
		Also at artbell.com, if Keith got it up, and I trust he did, somebody sent me a ghost photograph of Macknach Island up in the northern part of the world.
		Actually, that island is kind of special to me.
		I know you know it is because of the movie Somewhere in Time, which I Absolutely have always loved.
		In fact, I went up to the island in a private jet.
		It was pretty cool.
		Matter of fact, I'm a ham operator, and I was talking to hams all the way from the private jet, something you cannot do in commercial aircraft yet.
		They'll finally figure out hams are not going to bring down planes.
unidentified		It's bad guys.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, just a couple of other items and then onward.
		Evidence is mounting that the El Niño ocean warming phenomenon in the Pacific is going to spawn a very, very rainy winter in California.
		Now, scientists are saying they are 95% certain it's going to happen.
		They say this is as close as you can get to a sure thing.
		Now, they're calling it too big to fail.
		So there you have science for you, too big to fail.
		Now, it wouldn't all be good, of course, because of the deforestation, because of the extended drought, there will be mudslides.
		I jokingly said the mudslides will put out the fires.
		Europe's climate chief has acknowledged now for the first time that climate pledges made by national governments ahead of a major UN conference fall far short of meeting the 3.6 degree Fahrenheit limit.
		In fact, what they're saying is we're going to go up by 5.4 degrees, and that's enough.
		So ocean levels, they say, will climb.
		We could have, well, as the book said, we could have a big freeze.
		This climate change is clearly real.
		Coming up in a moment, Dr. Dennis McKenna's research.
		You know, before I even say this, I want to say when I put up the fact that Dr. McKenna was going to be on tonight, there are a number of people who said, oh, a drug show.
		Well, I'm not going to watch.
		I'm not going to listen to that.
		It's a drug show.
		A couple people anyway.
		And yes, in a sense, it certainly is going to be about drugs.
		But I want to say something.
		It's not a go-do drug show.
		That's not what we're doing here.
		Drugs are part of the human experience.
		How strongly can I put this?
		What do we do on this program?
		We explore questions, some of them the biggest in the world, like what comes next.
		And if there's anything out there beyond our physical, material existence, what greater questions can there be in the world?
		Everybody does drugs, virtually everybody, right?
		Coffee is a drug, and I'm hooked.
		Cigarettes are a drug, and I was hooked.
		I'm still hooked on nicotine.
		So alcohol, oh, that's a big drug.
		Drugs are part of human life.
		But the drugs we're going to talk about here are drugs that affect the human psyche, the human existence.
		And so they go to the very questions that we ask on this program.
		They are central to the questions, or may be, let me qualify that, may be central to the questions that we ask and study on this program.
		Anyway, Dr. Dennis McKenna, Terence's brother, the late Terence McKenna, Dr. Dennis McKenna's research has focused on the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinations.
		He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical field work in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon.
		His doctoral research at the University of British Columbia in 1984 focused on the ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca and Ukiha.
		We'll find out about that.
		Two tryptamine-based hallucogens used by indigenous peoples in the northwest Amazon.
		He is a founding board member of the Hefter Research Institute, was a key organizer and participant in the Ayahuasca project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca used in the UDV, a Brazilian religious group.
		He is currently assistant professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota.
		He has written a book called Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, My Life with Terrence McKenna, his brother.
unidentified		Welcome to the program, Dennis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Dennis.
		Well, that's, uh...
		Oh, there you are.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I have it muted.
unidentified		Sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You had it muted, okay.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I have it muted.
		Good to be here, Art.
		Thank you for having me back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm glad to have you back.
		I'm very thankful to have you back.
		And let us begin with your book.
		I absolutely love the title, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, My Life with Terrence.
		Terrence McKenna.
		Tell me about your book and why you decided to write it.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a complex question.
		I felt that the time had come in my life to write this book.
		I had a side of the story, our story, that I wanted to tell, and I just thought the time was right, especially since it was written in 2012, toward the end of 2012, is when it appeared.
		And as you know, that was a very important date for my brother and his time wave theory.
		And so it was just, it was partly a personal thing.
		It was the Desire to tell my story.
		I mean, that's what it boiled down to.
		And I was able to do a successful Kickstarter campaign so I could create the time and the resources to write the book.
		And so it appeared 18 months later.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I did not do the break that I had promised I was going to do, which probably accounts for your not coming back in a timely way.
		So let me do that break.
		And by the way, they used this song, folks, in my movie, The Martian.
		I about fell out of my seat.
		They used a lot of the other music I use.
		And then toward the end of the movie, they used this song by Abba.
unidentified		Abba.
		Thank you for listening.
		Take a walk on the wild side of midnight from the Kingdom of Nye.
		This is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
		Please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952.
		Call Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, here is Dennis McKenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back, Dennis.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so the title, though, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How'd you come up with that?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Where did that come from?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
		It says book.
		Well, it says here at the bottom, book, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, My Life with Terrence McKenna.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's right.
		Well, the title is kind of tongue-in-cheek.
		In some ways, when we were very young, when we were about 20, we got into some pretty interesting delusional, maybe, or conceptual places that led us to traipse off to the Amazon in 1971 in search of this legendary drug, Ukuhe.
		And the reasons behind that are more complex, but to the question, our band of explorers, it wasn't just Terence and myself, there were other people involved, but our band of people that went down there, we called ourselves the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss.
		Kind of tongue-in-cheek in some ways, you know, because we knew we were looking for a secret.
		We had this idea that somehow the tryptamine hallucinogens held a great secret, but we didn't really know what we were getting into.
		And as it turned out, subsequent events proved that we really didn't know what we were getting into.
		But anyway, sort of, you know, it's good to keep a sense of humor as you get into these things.
		And being Irish, we had this, you know, this moniker, the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss.
		We were sort of mocking ourselves, I guess, a bit.
		So that's where it came from.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think it could not be more fitting, actually.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I thought so.
		Yeah, yeah.
		I mean, as it turned out, we were approaching an abyss of sorts, and we really had no idea what was in store for us down there in Columbia in 1971.
		And I should mention, you know, I mean, I don't know how deep you want to get into that, but generally I usually avoid it because the story is so convoluted.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't mind getting into it at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I would like to do this.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't tell people, read the book.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's all in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Terrence, as you know, had been interviewed by myself many times.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we were quite close, Dennis, and nowhere near as close as you were with your brother.
		But I'm kind of curious.
		You have followed, to some degree, parallel courses and to some degree not parallel courses.
		And I wonder if you can enlarge on that thought.
		In other words, in what ways are you different than your brother was?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		Well, again, if you read the book, it goes into sort of how this alliance started really from our earliest childhood.
		I mean, we were both kind of weird kids and kind of nerdy.
		We were interested in science fiction and space travel and paranormal events and, you know, just anything that was outlandish that was fascinating to us, you know, and not unlike, I suspect, a lot of listeners to Art Bell.
		They can often, you know, think back to their own childhood and interest in what you might call the obscure and the esoteric.
		And, you know, that's really the thread that, you know, that was the thread of common interest between Terence and myself.
		We both, and he, being the older, you know, kind of led in some ways.
		He was four years older, so he would get interested in things.
		And then, you know, it's kind of the little brother syndrome.
		Whatever your big brother's doing, that's interesting.
		You know, you want to be in on that.
		Even though half the time he says, go away, you know, you're just a pest.
		But we sort of grew out of that.
		And then we realized that, you know, we both had mutual interests and both had something to contribute.
		And so, you know, we were good partners in this exploration of the bizarre.
		And when it came to psychedelics, you know, psychedelics came up into the culture and we clearly thought, you know, this is big news.
		This is worth looking into, you know, something that can, you know, allegedly open these other dimensions.
		This was right up our alley being fed on science fiction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's what I'm trying to tell my audience.
		You know, that's what I'm trying to tell the audience.
		This is not a do drug show.
		This is a show that goes to the very center of the questions that we deal with on this program.
		And there are many paths to finding out what comes next or what is beyond, if anything, beyond the material.
		And if there are bigger questions in life, I don't know what they are.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, exactly.
		I don't either.
		And, you know, back in the 60s when we discovered these substances, these medicines, I thought it was, you know, the most significant discovery I've ever made.
		And what are we into?
		That was the 60s.
		So 50 years on, my opinion hasn't really changed.
		I think that psychedelics are damned interesting and darned interesting, I guess I should say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that's fine.
		No, that's fine.
		Did you find that you and Terence had a different road or different approach to basically the same thing, or were you always sort of in lockstep?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No, no, not at all.
		I mean, we did have a different approach, and he was more of a philosopher and a cultural commentator and a brilliant mind.
		Oh, yes.
		But his approach was not really the science route.
		And I was more in the science route.
		I took a scientific interest in studying these things.
		But always I was cognizant of how limited science is in terms of really understanding what these materials are and also, by extension, understanding what consciousness is, what mind is, because that's really what these things are.
		They're tools for exploring consciousness and possibly trying to understand the relationship between the brain and the mind.
		So in some ways, I think of psychedelics, they're really tools for neuroscience in a certain way.
		But they're also tools for, I guess you could say, phenomenology, people that are trying to understand what it is, what is it to be conscious.
		These are tremendously useful tools in that respect.
		Now, you can say, well, drugs, these are drugs, right?
		So therefore, they're completely illegitimate.
		And what I would say to that is, there are drugs and there are drugs, right?
		For one thing.
		There are all kinds of drugs.
		As you pointed out earlier, coffee is a drug, tea is a drug, all these things.
		So the term, blanket term drugs is utterly meaningless.
		We have to say what kind of drugs.
		And it so happens that the psychedelics are in a special class of drugs.
		They don't cause addiction.
		They're not particularly toxic, but they do really interesting things phenomenologically.
		And they don't really, I mean, although they're classified as drugs of abuse, again, another meaningless term, but they don't necessarily invite abuse because to use them, you have to do a lot of processing to deal with what they bring up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To use them, they have no relationship to the kind of hook that heroin or any other addictive substance like that puts on you.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Those are totally different neural circuits.
		Psychedelics don't work on those circuits.
		They work on serotonin, which is another important neurotransmitter, but they don't have this, the pharmacologists call it reinforcing effect, meaning the more you take it, the more you want to take it.
		With psychedelics, it's quite the opposite.
		The more you take it, the more you wonder if am I going to be able to face it the next time?
		I mean, it doesn't invite you to leap off the cliff every other night or anything like that because you get into some fairly strange realms.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, you went on to get a doctorate to study this, so clearly you did take the scientific approach.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How does one go about doing research on drugs that the government says you should be arrested for?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, surprisingly, there is a way to do that.
		It involves a lot of bureaucracy.
		It involves usually working through major academic institutions.
		It involves, it helps if the scientists doing the work and applying for the grants and so on have excellent credentials in their field.
		All of those things.
		And as it turns out, this has all happened within the last decade, more or less since the last time we talked.
		I've talked about the Hefter Research Institute, which I'm affiliated with.
		And then there's MAPS, which is a much more larger and well-known institution.
		But basically, most of the scientists that are working in this field today are affiliated with institutions like New York University, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Harvard.
		So these are not podunk institutions.
		These are some pretty well-credentialed institutions.
		And within that framework, these investigators have got a number of research programs going.
		Right now, clinical trials, that's the holy grail, really, when it comes to clinical research with psychedelics.
		You have to do an FDA-approved clinical trial, and it takes a lot of doing to get the permission to do that, but you can get it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would imagine a lot.
		A lot of paperwork.
		All right.
		Hold tight, Dennis.
		We are at a break point, so stay right where you are.
		This is the longer break I spoke of, so relax.
		We'll be back in about seven minutes or so.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		I'm Art Bell.
		Now I stand here to helpless be you get into me.
		I am so into you.
		In that darkest time, between dusk and dawn, from the high desert, it's Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert.
		Now, here's Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here I am.
		My guest is Dr. Dennis McKenna.
		And we are exploring the world of psychedelic drugs.
		And I think the first question I would like to ask is, when one does the hellish amount of paperwork, no doubt, required to get permission from the government to study these drugs, I'm certain that one has to project the possibility of positive benefit or knowledge coming out of it.
		And I wonder, Dennis, how you or what you put down as a possible positive benefit coming from this study.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, there are a number of them.
		You're right.
		When you get one of these FDA-approved studies going, you want to have a you want to project a therapeutic outcome, right?
		Why are you doing this?
		And it turns out there are a number of kind of intractable conditions that the psychedelics can address that no other class of psychopharmaceuticals, psychopharmaceutical medications can really address.
		They can kind of scab things over like antidepressants, SSRIs, for example, do not really resolve the underlying causes that make people depressed, right?
		Psychedelics can address that sort of thing.
		They can help people get to the root of many of their problems.
		And so, you know, they're useful for things like PTSD.
		The medication MDMA is showing great promise to treat PTSD.
		And that's kind of MAPS focus right now.
		They're trying to get this medicine approved to treat vets, right?
		As you know, we have lots of vets who have problems with PTSD, and there really is no adequate treatment.
		The Hefter Research Institute, my group, which I'd like to say it's heftor.org if you want to see what we're up to, H-E-F-F-T-E-R.org, we've kind of staked out psilocybin as our main medicine, our main drug of interest right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, doctor, I'm hearing you move around something there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure what it is.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm probably waving my hand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Waving your hand should be fine.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		What can I say?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's this kind of connection.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's perfect audio, so we tend to hear every little thing.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, sorry about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So anyway.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But anyway, psilocybin, as you probably know, is the active principle of the magic mushrooms.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		Right.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		The psilocybin mushrooms.
		And psilocybin turns out to be a very good psychedelic to use in a clinical setting because it's fairly short-acting.
		It's not toxic.
		It can be given to people in advanced states of cancer, for example.
		People not in the best of health can tolerate it if that's necessary.
		And it reliably produces a profound psychedelic experience that is not unlike a mystical experience.
		In fact, it is a mystical experience.
		So this is one of the breakthroughs of this study of this pharmacology.
		You know, we've come to understand we can simulate a mystical experience, and that is very meaningful and profound for many people.
		So if you're dying, for example, if you're in a terminal cancer patient, you're anxious about dying, right?
		You're anxious about death and how do you face it and what's going to happen to your loved ones and all this.
		Some people are so distressed by this that they really need some kind of help.
		And we found that psilocybin in the right circumstances can help these people with anxiety, what we're calling existential anxiety, anxiety about their fate as dying.
		And it's been tremendously helpful for a lot of people.
		And there have been numerous studies now done at Johns Hopkins and NYU.
		If you go to the Heftor research site and click on our research, you can get a summary of all these studies, what's going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you say it relieves or may relieve somebody's hello?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		It may relieve somebody's fear or change their fear of dying.
		And I wanted to ask if it's because this experience, doctor, I guess, introduces somebody to the concept of something beyond the physical, and that is where the relief comes for them?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think so.
		I mean, it introduces them to the idea that, you know, not necessarily that death is not the end, but the psychedelics sometimes resemble the near-death experience, you know, and whatever goes on in the near-death experience, whether it's a transient, you know, neurochemical event or whether it's really an entry to some other place, I don't think science can really say.
		But the psilocybin experience, when, you know, in these folks that are facing death, it helps reduce their anxiety.
		And maybe that's because they Experience a profoundly altered state.
unidentified		And maybe they say, well, hey, this isn't so bad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, but could it be, I'm sorry, Doctor, could it be that the wire connecting to your headphones or something is moving around?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of constant.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Oh, gosh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Something is rattling around.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Could be the USB connection.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, now I'm hearing a lot of rattling.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm touching the headphones now.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I could try a different headphone.
unidentified		I don't have the mic on it, but I could try that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that's probably not a good idea.
		It's something rubbing or something.
		I can't quite put my finger on it, Don.
		I'm sorry to even be having to mention this to you, but it's going on constantly.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not touching the headphones, and the USB port is pretty well seated, so I'll just...
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Not move.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so anyway, are we talking about a near-death experience or something just similar to it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you come that far in research to say, look, what?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, certain, depends on the drug in a certain sense.
		I mean, DMT, which is a close relative of psilocybin, but much more short-acting and much more reality-altering, I guess you could say.
		DMT at high doses does actually resemble the near-death experience in remarkable ways.
		Psilocybin doesn't get you quite that far, but it does put you into a profound state.
		And the outcome that we're observing with the patients, the terminal patients that take this, is not so much that they've experienced death and that they are prepared for it.
		It's more that it's more like a realization that they're no longer obsessed with their death.
		They come away with the realization, well, okay, I'm alive now.
		I'm alive in this moment.
		Why not focus on that and not be preoccupied with death?
		And I think that's the meaningful outcome for these people.
		They stop worrying.
		Yeah, death is there, but I'm here now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you extend that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you extend that say, yeah, death is there, but there may well be, or I may have had a glimpse of something beyond?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, exactly.
		That too.
		That may be, but I'm reassured that death is there.
		That's not necessarily the end.
		It's a transition.
		And whether that's true or not doesn't really matter.
		The important thing is it matters to them.
		It helps them cope with what's happening to them.
		Sure.
		The scope of therapeutic applications for psilocybin is way beyond this.
		It can be used to treat addictions.
		We've got protocols going for alcoholism and cocaine addiction.
		It can be used as a, as I mentioned before, a tool in neuroscience if you want to understand what's going on in your brain.
		We now have very fancy toys for this, neuroimaging devices like fMRI and this sort of thing.
		So you can take a person in a mystical state induced by psilocybin and put them into fMRI and see what parts of their brain are activated or suppressed or whatever.
		And you can compare that to, say, a person who's never taken psilocybin, like a Tibetan monk or somebody who's meditated all their lives.
		You see remarkable similarities.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, if you wouldn't mind, let's go back to the possibility of helping people who are addicted to other substances.
		I wonder in what way you feel, in other words, is it a pharmaceutical change that occurs in their brain or is it some revelation they have while taking the drug?
		In other words, how does it help?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I think it's both.
		I don't think you can separate these things.
		For example, with psilocybin, there's a young investigator at Johns Hopkins who's part of the psilocybin research team named Matt Johnson.
		He's been doing studies with psilocybin and smoking cessation.
		And you wouldn't think that a psychedelic would assist with that, but he is getting some remarkable results.
		He's working with people who are lifetime smokers, you know, three packs a day, serious, serious addicts who have not been able to give up smoking despite many attempts.
		He has found that with two fairly high-dose psilocybin treatments and a lot of counseling, obviously, leading up to this and following on, but about 60% of his larger sample and in some other studies almost 80% of the subjects were able to kick cigarettes and basically were six months down the road, a year down the road, they were tobacco-free.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What percentage again, please?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		60 to 80%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God, that's incredible.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, this totally wipes out the result of any other kind of treatment.
		I mean, it is completely, you know, it's remarkable.
		It absolutely is remarkable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Again, I've got to ask.
		You say it's a combination of pharmaceutical effect and counseling.
		Well, other methods use lots of counseling along with whatever pill or gum or patch or whatever it is they offer, and they don't get anywhere near those rates of cancer.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of the counseling has to do with the preparation for the experience, right?
		And thinking about your problem, and you wish to quit smoking, and when you have this experience, you're going to be in a state of deep introspection where you're going to have to confront this.
		And so a lot of it is to prepare people in terms of how they think of these problems.
		And when you have addiction particularly, and when you say, well, is this pharmaceutical or is this psychological?
		It really is a combination.
		But I think that psychedelics in themselves do not cure addiction.
		What they do is they let you step out of the box a little bit and look at your behavior and look at your relationship to the other drug, the one you're abusing, alcohol, heroin, whatever, make it look at that relationship in a different light and essentially see it as something that, you know, that's not you, that's not part of you.
		And you actually can make a conscious decision to change your behavior, you know, while you're out of the box, right?
		The question becomes, what happens when you come down and you re-enter your normal life?
		A lot of people can slip back into their old habits.
		And so it takes some planning, but the temporary ability to step out of your own reference frame, essentially, for a while and look at it from that perspective, that is a tremendous opportunity.
		And then whatever the ultimate success depends on whatever follow-up there is to that.
		So it's complicated.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true of all cessation methods for smoking, for example, but again, they don't get anywhere near a 60% hormonal.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right, because they don't provide, and I think this is important in psychedelic therapy of all kinds.
		This comes up particularly when we're talking about ayahuasca.
		I think that catharsis, catharsis is something that psychedelics can reliably induce.
		And catharsis is a defined various ways, but it's a kind of, it's a spiritual, it's a crisis.
		It's a personal, spiritual, psychological crisis that leads to renewal, essentially.
		So it's a sort of reworking of this whole thing, some of which I think does take place on the neurochemical level.
		Some of it just takes place on the attitudinal level, you know, the way you understand your relationship to your drug or your medicine or, you know, really your whole environment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you go so far as to say it kind of rewires the brain?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I would, actually.
		I think it probably does.
		And in fact, in the case of ayahuasca, you know, we have evidence for that as a result of this study that we did in 1993 with the UDV, the Brazilian church in Brazil, in Manaus, Brazil, that uses ayahuasca as a sacrament.
		They invited us, myself and a bunch of other scientists of various disciplines, to come in and do a biomedical study of their practices, right?
		And they were trying to, they wanted to be sure it was safe, and they also wanted to persuade the Brazilian government that it was safe and it was okay and not a drug abuse problem and all that.
		So they asked us to do this investigation.
		One of the interesting things we found from that was that in long-term users of ayahuasca, there was an elevation in the brain, a long-term elevation of a very important key protein in the neurotransmitters.
		I mentioned that psychedelics work on serotonin.
		Well, another important serotonin thing is so-called the serotonin transporters.
		Those are the molecules that, or the proteins that SSRIs work on, right?
		And they block the re-uptake, the SSRIs, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, right?
		That tells us what they do.
		They suck the serotonin back up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so that's getting a little technical for me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would it be fair to say that it's like the train that takes the good stuff to its destination?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Or a vacuum cleaner is a better analogy in the presynaptic membrane that sucks everything back up and reuses it.
		But that's not what ayahuasca did.
		What we found was that the ayahuasca actually caused these transporters to multiply to increase their density in the membrane.
		That's called upregulation in pharmacology.
		And we didn't know what that meant when we detected this event, with this affect.
		We thought, what does this mean?
		Why does it upregulate these transporters?
		Then we got looking into the literature, and it turns out there were all sorts of syndromes related to abnormally low levels of these transporters.
		Abnormal deficits in the transporters were linked to things like alcoholism, intractable depression, suicidal behavior, even homicidal behavior.
		So we thought, wow, this is really a pretty clear relationship.
		There are all of these pathologies related to abnormal deficits in serotonin transporters, and ayahuasca reverses this until then.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe the average person could think of it as more trains to take more trains.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Better vacuum training.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To get more of the good stuff where it needs to go more frequently.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		So that's evidence that these psychedelics can, in some ways, rewire your neurochemistry.
		And MDMA is another one.
		For a long time, it was thought that MDMA was neurotoxic to serotonin receptors, serotonin neurons, and it is at high doses, but they're usually quite a bit more than any human would take.
		It turns out at the lower level, they actually, they're not neurotoxic, but what they probably do is increase neuroplasticity.
		Neuroplasticity is just the ability of the brain to change, to adapt to new conditions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Hold it up.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It used to be thought that neurons never changed.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You've got a certain complement, and that was it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, hold it there.
		We've got a break, and I've got a break here, so we'll be right back.
		Two minutes, and we will continue with Dr. Dennis McKenna.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Midnight in the Desert doesn't screen calls.
		We trust you, but remember, the NSA, well, you know.
		To call the show, please dial 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-CALL-ART.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Dennis McKenna is my guest, and we are discussing psychedelic drugs, the possible benefits of them, why they're being studied, and what they might help and why.
		So back to it.
		I did get one quick computer message that I want to pass on.
		It's Rice from Dunsmere, who says, you know, I cannot think of a worse idea than putting somebody in an MRI machine while they're tripping.
		Got point.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, these are intrepid pioneers of science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I bet they are.
unidentified		But I mean, clunk, clunk, clunk.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, anything for science, right?
		Yeah, most of these people, yeah, I mean, I agree.
		That wouldn't be the optimal setting, but what are you going to do?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what are you going to do?
		Well, what do they see?
		I mean, what lights up in the brain?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's interesting, you know, again, I don't want to get too technical, but there's some interesting findings.
		In some places, some parts of the brain, we find that psilocybin really activates neural networks, activates interconnectivity.
		So that's basically crosstalk, right?
		Other groups have found that some parts of the brain, that it actually suppresses, believe it or not, communication between certain parts of the brain that normally are in tight communication.
		So these are two different findings that are kind of puzzling.
		A lot of it has to do with dose and circumstances, but in both cases, you can, at certain doses, psilocybin will activate these networks, but not necessarily across the whole brain, maybe only in certain regions.
		At the same time, these regions, like the cortex and the limbic system, mostly the amygdala, these areas are involved, you know, the communication between them is suppressed.
		And so the thinking is that maybe these feedback loops that always exist between these different groups, they sometimes have a, they put the brakes on, right?
		They help maintain homeostasis, so they have an inhibitory function.
		And if you break those connections temporarily, then each part is just free to, you know, free associate, if it will, just go off on its own without any inhibitions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have the experiments that you all have been doing yet led to any FDA-approved use of them.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, we're not at that stage yet.
		I mean, the clinical trials are FDA-approved, right?
		To do the trials, that's a long way from doing a trial to getting a drug into the clinic, right?
		That's the long road that we have to travel is from phase one to phase two to phase three clinical trials, each one involving more people and each one involving a lot more money.
		I mean, almost exponentially more money as you go up.
		Phase three trial might be hundreds of people at three or four different universities.
		So that's millions.
		And once a drug crosses that threshold, and we're a long way from that, then it will be, can be approved for clinical use.
		And there are people that are working on that, that are ready to do that.
		I want to mention something that might be of interest to your listeners.
		There's a wonderful website called clinicaltrials.gov.
		And your tax dollars pay for this.
		And it is a place you can go and find out any FDA-approved clinical study that's gone on, that's recently over or in progress or about to start for really anything.
		I mean, if you want to research cancer treatments, that's a good place to look.
		But if you search on things like psilocybin or MDMA or even LSD, you know, the studies that have been done will come up.
		So you can get a pretty good look at what's been done and what's in progress and what's planned.
		That's just a great resource.
		Money well spent by your government, which rarely spends money well.
		So take a look.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you look at the current state of affairs with the war on drugs in America, actually in the world, but certainly in America anyway, what are your comments?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think the, you know, the last, I mean, the war on drugs was really initiated at the end of the 60s.
		So we're coming on, what, you know, 45 years.
		It's a miserable and total failure.
		You know, I mean, over a trillion dollars has been spent on it.
		There are more drugs than ever.
		There are more people in jail for drugs than ever, especially in this country.
		And it's just not the solution.
		You know, It's not working, prohibiting people from altering their consciousness is not the right approach because it's a fundamental instinct of behavior, and this is just something that we do.
		So the right approach, in my opinion, is you have to educate people about how to use drugs.
		That's the bottom line.
		You have to educate people how to avoid the really harmful ones and use the ones that aren't so harmful in a way that's intelligent and maximizes their bad side effects or minimizes their bad side effect, maximizes their benefits.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, you mentioned that there are a lot of people in jail, and there are.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gee, millions.
		And so what would you do?
		Would you legalize drugs and which ones would you consider legalizing or would you do it across the board and then just do education?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a tough call, but I would pretty much legalize them across the board, but I would regulate them.
		So if you're addicted to, say, meth or something, one of the really destructive drugs, I wouldn't just dispense that out of vending machines, right?
		I would say, okay, you're a meth addict, so you like meth, so here's a prescription.
		Go to the drugstore and get your meth.
		But every time you go to get your prescription, you basically have a teachable moment.
		You have a chance for a drug counselor, the pharmacist, doctor, whoever, to say, hey, you know, do you really want to take meth?
		You know, this is not good for you.
		Have you thought about other choices?
		Have you thought about, you know, and just basically encourage people to, you know, to intelligent behavior.
		It's all about education.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Besides that, doctor, try and imagine this.
		People will kick a Coke machine because they don't get their Coke.
		Imagine the meth guy who puts 20 bucks in, doesn't get his meth.
		He's going to turn that thing into twisted metal.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, that's why you get it from a pharmacist, right?
		Because we can't.
unidentified		Yeah, but, you know, but ideally, that's the thing.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You cannot, you know, you can't prevent people from altering their consciousness.
		It's built into human behavior.
		What you can do is encourage them to, if they're going to do that with artificial chemistry or plant chemistry or whatever, then teach them how to make good choices, you know, or teach them ways to get there without drugs.
		There are plenty of those ways, too.
		So in meditation, all this stuff should be encouraged.
		But people are going to take drugs.
		This is a fact of life.
		Partly it's because people are made of drugs.
		This is what I have started saying in my lectures.
		People take drugs because they're made of drugs.
		The reason drugs work is because we are essentially bags of neurotransmitters and hormones and all these biochemical processes on some levels that drugs work on.
unidentified		So, you know, it's just a fact of life.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		We have to acknowledge that we're bad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, a lot of people have to take drugs because their bodies don't make enough of that drug, right?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, in some cases, yeah.
		I mean, not as a rule, but a lot of cases, like thyroxen, for example, the thyroid hormone.
		People have hot thyroid surgery.
		They have to take artificial thyroid hormone forever, and that's just a replacement of what their body doesn't make.
		Or, you know, Parkinson, we don't make enough dopamine, so you get Parkinson's disease, take precursors to Parkinson's.
		Yeah, so sometimes that's what drugs do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, or the other way around.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, as you point out, we are made up of drugs and a body that creates drugs for its own safety.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And essentially, our brain chemistry is a soup of drugs.
		You know, that's what neurotransmitters are, essentially.
		They're drugs.
		They just happen to be drugs that our bodies make and, you know, which are essential for the functioning of our brain.
		And then, you know, drugs that we might introduce into that system from outside, plant chemicals or whatever, they usually work on neurotransmitters in some way.
		You know, that's kind of where the rubber meets the road when it comes to psychoactive drugs.
		They work on different neurotransmitters.
		There are many neurotransmitters, about 50 different types in the body, and each has their own population of receptors that they work on and many, many subtypes of these receptors.
		So, you know, it's a complex story, but it's basically about neurons talking to each other, you know, largely via neurotransmitters.
		I mean, there are other kinds of communication like voltage-gated neurotransmission and that sort of thing.
		But basically, it's chemical neurotransmitters that, you know, that run consciousness, if you want us to put, that consciousness runs on, and largely the serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are the three biggies, glutamate, all these things.
		You can't.
unidentified		It's a complex picture art, which we probably don't have time to get into.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Would you say, I don't know who puts these questions together, whether these came from you or from my producer, but one of them is, are our souls somehow naturally entangled with DMT?
		Is that you?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That was probably one of the questions that your creative producer came up with.
unidentified		I see a great producer, by the way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, she's a wonderful person.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		She's great.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Heather.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Very smart young woman.
		She is.
		She gave me a list of questions.
		I added two.
		The question if DMT is tangled up With the soul.
		Well, it certainly occurs naturally in the human body, right?
		So it is a naturally occurring psychedelic that's found in the body.
		And we're not sure what it's doing there, and it's kind of controversial because we don't really understand.
		A lot of people say it has to do with pineal function and the whole third eye thing, and we know that DMT occurs in the pineal, at least sometimes, and all the precursors for it are there, and all the enzymes needed to make it are there, so it's probably pretty sure that it occurs there.
		Whether it does anything, whether it actually has a psychedelic effect when that happens, is a matter of controversy.
		My dear friend, Dave Nichols, who's the president of the Hefter Research Institute, there's no better pharmacologist when it comes to psychedelics.
		He's the world's expert, and he says DMT probably never reaches levels in the tissues or at the neurons where it can actually act as a psychedelic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let me back up just a little bit and ask this question.
		Most doctors, and I interview many doctors, many scientists, I would say by far, would say they don't believe in God.
		Typical of what a doctor would say, that they don't believe in God.
		I think in medical school, beginning or perhaps even before that, they were sort of trained out of that.
		And, you know, when you begin talking about souls, then inevitably you're talking about, well, are we more than our material and mental selves?
		Whether there is something else.
		And where do you come down in this range?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, you know, this is a complex question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You bet it is.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
		Yeah, most scientists in their scientific training and physicians and so on, they are trained into reductionism.
		You know, reductionism being the idea that it's all matter.
		There really is no spirit in life.
		There really is no supernatural.
		This is all just atoms, you know, ultimately crashing about and doing things in random ways.
		But then you have this knotty problem of subjective experience, right?
		We all have subjective experience.
		And although scientists might be atheists, they might deny the existence of God.
		It's very hard for them to deny the existence of mind, of their own mind, of their own consciousness.
		And that's a reality.
		You know, thoughts are real.
		Consciousness is real.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So what is it?
unidentified		Right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, let us try this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me pin you down in a different way.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This is what neuroscience can't quite explain yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When the brain waves go flat and there's no heartbeat and there's no respiration and the body grows cold, is there, in your estimation, the possibility of anything continuing in terms of what we would think of as consciousness?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You know, honestly, I can't answer that question.
		And I don't think any honest, anybody who assesses it honestly can say, you know, I mean, you're talking about, you know, consciousness in some form is an energy state, right?
		It's a stable energy state.
		It's associated with the brain.
		It's associated with neuroactivity.
		And you would think that it's dependent on that physical substrate to keep going.
		But just maybe there's a way that it doesn't depend on those things.
		This is what we don't know, you know, because nobody, we've had people who have had near-death experiences and they've come back and reported on what happened.
		We don't have anybody who's actually died and come back and reported what happens.
		And I think that we have to keep an open mind because I think that we don't know a lot.
		And I think this is something that science is quick to be dismissive.
		And I think that science needs to remind itself every day, every moment, that what we don't know is much greater than what we do know.
		What science thinks it knows.
		There is no place in this equation for arrogance.
		Science can be proud of what it knows, but it should always remind itself most of the universe we don't yet understand.
		And that's great.
		I don't find that depressing.
		I found that challenging and kind of joyful because it means there's a whole lot left to be learned.
		The important thing is we have to keep an open mind.
		You know, we cannot abandon our analytical capabilities.
		But when science says a case is open and shut, we thoroughly understand this phenomenon.
		We can put that on the shelf and forget about it.
		This is a settled matter.
		The history of science has shown again and again that about the time science reaches that point, the whole thing blows up, and it turns out, you know, new information comes in and it's not at all the way they think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you are so correct.
		Examples would be recent news from science on the benefits of coffee.
		And even more controversial, recent news from science on the benefits of fatty foods.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		That one really cracked me up.
		I just don't know how they can keep it.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's accepted as established dogma.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Turns out a few years later, the opposite is completely wrong about all that.
unidentified		That's right.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You'd think that they would get it and that this would be a cause for humility and a cause for Keeping our minds open.
		This is the thing.
		Just keep your mind open.
		You can accept what's known, but you have to remember it may all be turned over next week or overturned.
		This is the way discovery works, ideally.
		Our picture of cosmology due to relativity and quantum mechanics is quite a bit different than somebody 1,000 years ago, or even 200 years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Quite a bit different.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, quite different.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So science is powerful, but it's also limited, and scientists should keep that in mind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay.
		Well, not bad at all, actually.
		So DMT, there are people who are claiming that a DMT experience is the same as an NDE.
		I guess you've looked into DMT and you've looked perhaps into NDEs, have you, by the way?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I have.
		And also abduction experiences.
		People claim that high doses of DMT are not unlike abduction experiences.
		I mean, I'm not sure, you know, I haven't had that kind of experience on DMT, although I will say, you know, the ones I've had are often quite, you know, science fiction-ish in a way.
		I mean, you see machines, you see entities that appear to be aliens or something not human.
		You often encounter these entities, I guess, the term.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you have encountered these entities.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, I have.
		I think anyone who takes a high dose of DMT is probably going to run into these critters, you know.
		I mean, they're out there.
		What are they?
		That's what's harder to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So how do you subjectively, I don't know, describe what you have encountered?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, everybody has a different kind of encounter with them, although there are similarities.
		You know, Terrence used to talk about the elf machines, you know, the self-transforming elf machines or the, you know, the hyperdimensional Faberge eggs or these things, which do often appear to be, you know, machine-like and sometimes intelligent, sometimes intelligent machine.
		It's very hard to say because we only have our categories to, you know, describe things.
		And in DMT, it goes way beyond categories.
		So essentially, the experience is really hard to stuff into a box of description, a linguistic box, even though it's a natural impulse to start to do that.
		Even before it's over, you're babbling.
		You're trying to explain what, what, what was that?
		You know, it's what we try to do is make sense out of things.
		It doesn't necessarily make sense, but it's overwhelming and it's quite alien.
		It's very hard to relate to anything else.
		And is it real?
		Well, you know.
unidentified		Well, doctor, what do we mean by real?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you have come back and you have experienced these entities, is it for at least a short time until your doctor's rational mind begins to crank away again and you're away from the drug, is it for a short time unquestionably legal?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Legal, real?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, it certainly is legal.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Not in that context.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, not legal.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But it leads to the interesting question of, you know, what is all this drug prohibition of drug prohibition of consciousness?
		But we won't go right there right now.
		But is it unquestionably real?
		Well, here's the thing.
		I experience it as real, you know, so it's real in that sense.
		And if you think about it, everything that we experience is, you know, a hallucination in a certain way.
		Everything that we experience, you know, this is what our brains do.
		They construct a model of reality.
		And that's the reality that we live in.
		You know, we're in the hallucination.
		We're part of the movie that our brains are creating.
		So that's our reality.
		Is it real?
		Well, we experience it as real.
		Does it map onto the real world, the world that physics and everything else tells us is out there, which I call the unknowable real world.
		And the physicists tell it the real world, as our instruments measure it, doesn't look anything like your subjective experience.
		But everybody is walking around with a subjective experience.
		That's a model that they're living in.
		That's a hallucination.
		And then when you bring drugs into the picture, I mean, basically what you're doing is changing the frequency a little bit.
		You're tweaking the neurochemistry just enough that you're getting different, you know, a different, you're looking at it through a different lens.
unidentified		Well, okay, let's approach it from this direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If a researcher like yourself came back from a trip and wrote in some peer-reviewed journal that he met aliens, they definitely were aliens, or entities, he'd probably not be a credentialed researcher very much longer unless he had really good tenure.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This is true.
		Yes.
		This would not be a welcome message in peer-reviewed journals, you know, but you have to be honest about what you experience.
		I mean, you know, my friend and a person known to many people in the psychedelic community, you know, Dr. Rick Strassman, who was really a pioneer in DMT research.
		I mean, in the early 90s, he was the first physician, psychiatrist in 20 years to actually get an FDA-approved protocol to study a psychedelic drug.
		And the drug he chose was DMT.
		And he gave DMT by injection over a range of doses to more than 60 people over a period of time.
		many of those people reported these near-death experiences alien abduction experiences all this crazy stuff, right?
unidentified		So poor Rick Well, maybe crazy.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This is what they were reporting.
		To them, this was real.
		But poor Rick, he's got to write a report to NIH.
		He's got to write his grant.
		And finally, he just, being an honest scientist, finally he threw up his hands and he said, I can't make sense of this.
		I cannot discount it.
		But how do I report this to a peer-reviewed journal?
		I mean, he did report it, but always with the caveat that this is what people were reporting.
		He doesn't say it's real or not.
		He just says this is the observation.
		So that's honest science, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, doesn't this, in a way, describe some difference between Terrence and yourself in that you are reporting things as a scientist?
		Terrence came back and said, man, here's what happens.
		And here's who you meet.
		And here's what you're going to see.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, he was a narrator of his experiences there.
		So he was reporting phenomenologically what he saw.
		And that's perfectly legitimate.
		Those experiences were real as far as he was concerned.
		And I experience them too, and they're real when I'm having them.
		I just look at, I just wonder, like a lot of people, what is the, you know, what is the machinery, the neurochemistry, whatever it is that gives rise to these experiences?
		Or is there really another dimension somewhere out there in hyperspace, whatever, that these materials give you access to?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what I'm the issue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's really, Doctor, what I want to know.
unidentified		Yeah, well, take a number.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		We'd all like to know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And the question is, how do you answer that question?
		You know, it's very, very difficult.
		I mean, Terrence was always trying to get the entities and whoever, this logos that he could reliably contact on mushrooms to tell him something that he couldn't know, that he couldn't possibly know any other way.
		And he would take that as proof of some kind that at least they're real.
		You know, this information is not coming from within him.
		Very hard.
		They're very tricky, these entities.
		You know, they don't cough this up very easily.
		And I don't think he ever succeeded.
		You know, so it's, you know, it's complex.
		But, you know, so it's sort of that's the thing.
		It's sort of we fabricate our own reality.
		We fabricate our own hallucination and we proceed to live there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
		Hold tight.
		We're at a break.
		And so I have to break.
		It's a long one.
		We'll be right back with Dr. Dennis Pinnam.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		Her hair is hollow gold.
		Her lips are sweet as a cry.
		Her hands are never cold.
		She's got better days by she can midnight fancy someone to share my wildest dreams with me.
		Imaginary love.
		Remember, when calling midnight in the desert, let the phone ring until answered.
		These calls are unscreened for your listening pleasure.
		Call 1-952-CALLARTS.
		That's 1-952-225-5278.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, what we're going to do is open up the lines.
		Let me give you the little lecture that I give.
		Dr. Dennis McKenna is my guest, and he is involved in testing some pretty serious drugs, actually, ayahuasca and much more.
		DMT, just the wildest drugs you can imagine.
		He is doing legitimate tests on these drugs, what they do, what they mean, whether what they mean is real or I guess it is, you know, to most of the people that have taken them, they describe it as absolutely real as his brother did.
		Anyway, I want to open the line.
		So if you want to get in on the discussion and have a question or what have you, our public number is one and then area code 952-225-5278.
		Once again, 1-952-225-5278.
unidentified		Now, if you have a device.
unidentified		Oh, there was something else I've got to tell you guys about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		AT ⁇ T has begun something called Wi-Fi calling.
		And if you're in an area that has a lousy cell signal, let me tell you how you can improve.
		And I don't mean just by a little bit, the quality of your audio.
		If you go to their Wi-Fi calling, and I'll sort of have a clinic some night about how you do it, boy, oh boy, can you sound good?
		And if you're in a bad cell area, it could be your savior, believe me.
		Other companies are doing it, but AT ⁇ T just let loose of a Wi-Fi calling, and boy, does it sound good.
		Boy, does it sound good.
		Anyway, where was I?
		Yes.
		Skype.
		You can put Skype on your device, your iPhone or your whatever your device is.
		There's so many of them out there now, it's hardly worth mentioning, all of them virtually.
		Put Skype on, And then once you get Skype on, simply put us in there.
		Add us.
		And Skype, you've got a little plus sign there on Skype.
		And that's like adding somebody.
		So add us.
		We are in North America, America and Canada, M-I-T-D 5-1.
		As in Midnight in the Desert, M-I-T-D-5-1.
		If you're outside of the country, we are M-I-T-D 5-5.
		It is that simple.
		And rarely do you get the opportunity.
		Opinions vary so much.
		For example, I'm looking now at what we call the wormhole messages that come to me while I'm doing the show.
		This will give you an idea of the range of the way things like this are received.
		Wade, don't know where he is, says, boring, boring, putting me to sleep.
		Not one of your better shows.
		Joy in Santa Cruz says, this is within four sentences of each other.
		Joy says, now this is the good stuff art.
		Absolutely the reason why I'm a time traveler.
		Thank you so much for interviewing him, meaning Dennis, Dr. Dennis McKenna.
		This is absolutely fascinating.
		So, you know, not one thing hits people the same way.
		It's, well, frankly, quite subjective.
		Doctor, welcome back.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		It's great to have you.
		And you are giving out extremely important information, whether in some cases, obviously, it puts people to sleep.
		In other cases, it rivets them to the radio or the device of their choice, whatever.
		I personally think that it is one of the most important shows we've done.
		It is yet one other avenue to that which I explore here constantly.
		And really, I do believe this, Doctor, that it is one legitimate possible avenue to answering the questions that we explore on this program, the really big ones in life.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, I agree.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you can't please everyone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm well aware of that.
unidentified		Don't miss some questions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
		That's right.
		Well, okay.
		Let us, if you don't mind, allow some of the people in the audience to ask questions.
		Would that be okay?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's go to Hawaii.
		I think, Hilo, Hawaii.
		Hello.
		You're squeaking and squealing and making all kinds of noise there.
unidentified		Hey, that's the kokies in the background.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The what in the background?
unidentified		The kokany frogs.
		Oh, the frogs, the kokany frogs.
		Yeah.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Really, are they that loud?
unidentified		Yeah, well, I'm on the big island.
unidentified		I actually went to Terrence's property in South Kona back in, I don't know, must have been around 92, 93.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, can you possibly walk into another room which is frog protected a little bit?
unidentified		No, I'm out here in jungle.
unidentified		I'm in a one-room place, and, you know, this is it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, if you have a question.
		Yeah, if you have a question, go ahead.
unidentified		Well, no, I don't have a question as much as, you know, if this is putting somebody to sleep, they never did DMT.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That would be true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it would be a high percentage of the audience.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
		And I mean, I lived in the Bay Area in the early 70s and, you know, loved doing psilocybin and LSD and that kind of thing.
		But DMT is just a whole different degree of intensity.
		You know, I mean, it's like you don't do it for fun.
		You know, you're an explorer if you do it.
		You may do it for fun the first time, but if that's the situation, you don't ever do it again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you do it around those frogs, I bet you don't ever do it again either.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, DMT is very interesting for a number of reasons.
		You know, like the gentleman says, it's a whole other level of intensity.
		And then there's the fact that, you know, it's part of our neurochemistry, right?
		None of these other things are, as far as we know.
		So it's really built into, you know, the chemistry of our brain.
		And not only that, it's very, very widespread in the plant kingdom.
		It's a very simple molecule.
		It's only two steps from tryptophan.
		And tryptophan is an amino acid that's found in all living things because it's part of the 30 amino acids, or what is it, 20, I guess, that go into proteins.
		Tryptophan is one of those.
		And tryptophan can be converted to DMT in two steps.
		So there are many, many plants that contain it.
		You know, we know of about 100 or 200, but that's only because people have looked.
		It's very likely that hundreds of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of plants contain DMT.
		Not always in levels that would be high or usable, but it's a very common compound.
		It's not an exaggeration to see that nature is drenched in DMT.
		I sometimes say this, nature's drenched in DMT.
		So why is the psychedelic so pervasive in the ecosphere, in the biosphere?
		What is going on with that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, can you explain in, for example, time, how long is a DMT trip?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's quite short, is it not?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are two ways to approach a DMT trip.
		DMT by itself is not orally active, right, because it's chopped up in the gut by these enzymes called monoamine oxidase, monoamine oxidases.
		So if you eat DMT or eat a plant that contains DMT, nothing is going to happen.
		You have to take DMT parenthesally is the term, other than by mouth.
		You can snort it, you know, and there's a whole ethnopharmacology of snuffs in South America, DMT containing snuffs, or you can take it in combination with another plant that contains a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, another set of compounds that will knock out those gut enzymes.
		Then it becomes orally active.
		And that's the secret of ayahuasca.
		Ayahuasca is a combination of two plants, one of which contains DMT and the other contains another group of alkaloids called beta-carbolines that knock out MAO in the gut.
		So they protect the DMT.
		It's absorbed unchanged.
		It makes it to the brain unchanged.
		And then it's instead of 15 minutes or so when you take it parentally, when you snort it or inject it, it's very, very short.
		But instead of that, it's four to six or seven hours.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So it's stretched out.
		It's not as intense as when you take DMT, you know, parentally, say, but you get more out of it.
		It's more relatable because you spend more time there and you can learn more about what this state, this dimension or whatever, what it's all about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you really feel that, that it is possibly another dimension?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, like I say, I don't think we can dismiss it.
		I don't think we can dismiss that possibility that somehow, because we don't really understand what the mind is, right?
		We know that the mind has physical roots in the brain.
		It has a connection to physical substrates.
		But then it also seems to have elements that are not physical, maybe extra-dimensional, hyperdimensional, or so on.
		And maybe they do tap into some extra-dimensional realm.
		I mean, this is where, you know, to approach these questions scientifically is difficult.
		I don't think science can really say at this point one way or the other.
		But I think it's possible.
		You know, I was, yeah, so it's possible.
		And certainly subjectively it seems so.
		And if you talk to indigenous people, you know, people who use ayahuasca as part of their ethnomedicine, you know, for them, this reality is just accepted.
		Well, you know, of course, this is the way it is.
		You see how it is.
		This is how we experience it.
		They don't really get into these debates about whether it's real or whether it's not.
		In some ways, these notions are the product of Cartesian dualism and the whole scientific philosophical tradition of the Western mind to indigenous people.
		These things are not separate.
		There really is no in or out.
		The self is not separate from the nature that they're surrounded in.
		They experience the world quite differently, I think, than we do.
		For one thing, they don't have a point of view, you know, in indigenous cultures.
		And the point of view is what separates us from nature.
		And this is a problem.
		I think that one thing the psychedelics are doing as we see things like ayahuasca suddenly go global in a sense.
		Everybody's excited about ayahuasca.
		It's all over the world.
		People are using it.
		I think it's trying to reconnect us with nature.
unidentified		If you could say that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You can say that.
		You can put it that way.
		Let's go to Skype.
		Michelle, you're on the air.
unidentified		Oh, hi, Art.
		I don't have a microphone, so I hope I'm close enough.
		Can you hear me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, the key is find the little round hole in your laptop, if that's what it is, and get real close.
unidentified		Okay, it's an iMac.
		Can you hear me now?
		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I hear you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Quiet.
unidentified		Clear.
		Okay, clear.
		Okay, I was in Peru, and I did an ayahuasca retreat.
		And actually, I ran into Peter Gorm on the boardwalk down there in Icatos in Peru.
		And I think Art knows Peter Gorm.
		He's had him on his show.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Peter Gorm.
unidentified		Anyways, he told me that before tourists started arriving in Peru, ayahuasca's main use with the natives down there was to get rid and eliminate bacteria and worms that they would have in their systems from living in the jungle, and that the hallucinations were actually a side effect.
		It actually didn't have a spiritual, they didn't have a spiritual purpose for it.
		This didn't start to happen until tourists started to come and they started to make money down there.
		And then the money is what sort of transformed the whole use of ayahuasca into this psychedelic sort of spiritual mind trip because this is what Westerners were into and this is how they could make money for themselves.
		So now in the present, presently in Peru, there's all kinds of so-called, I don't know, what do they call themselves, maestros?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Maestros, ayahuasca, curanderos.
unidentified		Yeah, and a lot of them are self-made, understandably, because they can make an easy dollar and there's big money in it, and they need money down there, eh?
		So anyways, I was pretty modest about it because, you know, I have enough of my own hallucinations, you could say, on earth to deal with it.
		And I didn't need to get all screwed up with a whole bunch of ayahuasca.
		But anyways, I found it very enlightening and it creates sort of an energetic feeling in you that you could get, say, in a 10-day, a pass and a sit.
		Okay, something you actually have to work hard for to bring yourself into the same sort of sensitive mind space that ayahuasca takes you to.
		See?
		But the effects were very short-lived.
		You know, it might last, you get the insights for two or three weeks, but you don't really get that deep, profound physiological sort of transformation you get with long-term meditation sitting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a fair comment or a question, actually.
unidentified		And what do you think, Doctor?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think she's touched on a number of interesting points.
		It's true that with the ayahuasca tourism situation down in Iquitos and other places, they're clearly transforming the tradition.
		You know, the tradition was very different before the tourism started.
		It was not simply used to treat parasites.
		That was a use of these plants for a long time.
		But if you look at indigenous groups that use ayahuasca, they do, in fact, have spiritual traditions around this.
		You know, it's part of their cosmology.
		It's part of their belief system.
		I'm surprised that Peter would say that, you know, that he would dismiss all that, because I know Peter quite well, and he knows better.
		He knows that there are spiritual traditions, indigenous traditions that use ayahuasca.
		Now, you know, they don't necessarily work for Westerners, right?
		Westerners are looking for something else.
		And ayahuasca, you know, as it's used in the tourism circuit, has evolved into this kind of New Age-ish, you know, thing that emphasizes spirituality and self-discovery and all that a little bit more than it does in the indigenous traditions.
		Basically, I don't have a problem with that.
		I think that that's fine.
		What's wrong with self-discovery and that sort of thing?
		I don't see anything wrong with it.
		The fact is that the humans' relationship with ayahuasca is a co-evolutionary process.
		We've been in relationship with it for probably thousands of years.
		This continues, and it's going to change.
		And as it goes global, and as these indigenous cultures encounter other global cultures, it's going to be transformed.
		I don't necessarily feel that this is a bad thing.
		I think it's inevitable, for one thing.
		And I think that ayahuasca is bringing insights and healing to a lot of people on a global scale.
		And I think that, you know, as a people and as a culture, we need a healing.
		We are a deeply wounded culture.
		We're a deeply conflicted culture.
		Much of that has to do with our alienation from nature.
		I think that one of the things ayahuasca's, one of its strongest messages that many people get is we have to rethink this understanding.
		We have to realize we're not separate from nature.
		We're part of it.
		Until we get that global shift in consciousness, which ayahuasca is trying to catalyze, I think that we're not going to be able to deal with the problems that we face.
		And as we just, we have to read the news to realize how quickly this global environmental crisis is accelerating.
		So we're in a heap of trouble.
		Right.
unidentified		Whatever.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Deep doo-doo.
		And we have to change consciousness globally.
		And I think that this is partly what ayahuasca is trying to catalyze.
		Now, I think that somebody who goes to Peru, probably without studying very much about what ayahuasca is about, and that's what I infer from this young woman, that she didn't really do much homework.
		She just kind of went down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got a break here.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We've got about two minutes, and we'll be right back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is Midnight in the Desert.
unidentified		The Midnight in the Desert.
		Yeah.
		Why am I here?
		Why am I here?
		I'm easy like Sunday morning.
		Midnight in the Desert spans the world.
		To call us from outside the U.S. and Canada only.
		Use Skype with a headset mic if on a computer and call MITD55.
		That's MITD55.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, a very rare opportunity to speak with Dennis McKenna, Dr. Dennis McKenna.
		We're talking about psychedelic drugs, EMT, ayahuasca, and more.
		So if you have questions, comments, they are welcome.
unidentified		I've got a question from Zach Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is the first-time caller line good every night or just occasionally?
		Thanks.
		Enjoying the show.
		Actually, every night, anytime you're a first-time caller, let me give you the number.
		All right?
		I know it's hard to get through.
		So area code 775-285-5800.
		If you're a first-time caller only, area code 775-285-5800.
		And we'd be more than happy to accommodate you once again.
		Doctor, welcome back.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		Thank you.
		Could I just kind of say something about what we were just talking about from the previous questioner, caller?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I just want to complete the thought.
		I think that people who think ayahuasca and these sorts of psychedelics, but maybe particularly ayahuasca, people who think that it's a shortcut don't quite understand the way it's used.
		I mean, it is a difficult medicine to learn to use properly.
		There's a lot of training that goes into it.
		If you want to become an ayahuasca, you have to diet with other plants.
		You have to go through a whole process.
		So it's not without discipline.
		And, you know, it's not like it's a replacement for or it's an easier path than these other paths like meditation and so on.
		It is its own path and should be respected and treated that way.
		It's not a substitute for other paths.
		It is its own path, and it requires quite a lot of dedication and discipline to learn to use it.
		I mean, the indigenous people have the idea, this is their model, that these things are plant teachers.
		They call them teachers, plantus teen seignion, plants that teach.
		And I think this is more or less correct.
		You know, when you work with some of these medicines, you're basically forming a relationship with it.
		And, you know, it may present itself as an intelligent entity that is not you, that's fine, or it might, but you're choosing to enter into a dialogue with something that is, you know, that is a teacher in some sense.
		I mean, I've been taking it for 40 years and I'm still learning from it.
		So it has a lot to teach.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		With that in mind, Resta, I believe it is, or Rita?
		Is that correct?
unidentified		Yes, it's Rita.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Rita.
unidentified		Oh, okay.
		It's not about the drug, but it's one of the things that we are hoping to discover through the drug or in various other ways whether in fact we exist or our entity or soul exists on the death of the body.
		And so I thought you might be interested in what happened with my children because of that.
		They absolutely adored my father.
		And when he died, they were just inconsolable.
		My daughter, particularly, was suffering terribly.
		And she was losing a lot of weight.
		I was terribly concerned about her.
		And then one day, this would be about two months after my father died, I had handed her her laundry to put away, and she went into her bedroom.
		And as she walked through, as she walked through the bedroom door, I heard her say, Mom.
		She didn't sound frightened, just stunned.
		So my husband and I raced to her bedroom.
		She didn't have to say a word.
		Her room was flooded with this French aftershave that he had always used, and I never have known anyone else to use it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I understand.
		So in other words, proof of the other side.
		I totally get it.
		And so, Doctor, that's right.
		Whether the relief comes from French aftershave that you recognize and therefore your mind puts together the fact that that's grandad and I am so comforted.
		I feel so much better.
		Whether it comes from something like that or one of these drugs that would suggest to somebody there is something else.
		Either way, the resulting answer is about the same, right?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
		I mean, this is a phenomenon.
		This is something that she experienced, you know, so I don't discount that.
		And I don't say it proves that your grandfather was hanging around, or I say that it was a phenomenon.
		You know, you probably have heard of the UFO researcher, J. Alan Hynek, right?
		I guess he's gone, but he was very famous in his day.
		But he said something very, you know, he was very well known for his UFO investigations, and he said something one day that really struck me.
		He said, I don't know if UFOs are real.
		But what I do know is the UFO experience is real.
		And that's a key difference.
		And so the things that we experience, like on psychedelics, like these paranormal phenomena, these anomalous phenomena, people experience them.
		Whether the mind makes them up or not is open to question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It may be even immaterial.
		It may be immaterial.
		In other words, if it results in the comfort that she described.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		This is part of the reality that we inhabit.
		And we have to remember a good deal of the reality that we inhabit is our brains synthesizing this hallucination that we're living in, this movie that we're inhabiting.
		And that's not to dismiss it.
		That's just to say this is our existential situation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Let's go to Stockton, California on the phone and say you're on the air with the doctor.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, this is Benny from Stockton, California.
unidentified		How's it going, guys?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's going well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Can you hear me well?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear you fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		All right.
		First of all, I want to say it's an honor talking to you, Dennis.
		I am 24, but luckily, I came across your brother's studies when I was 19 and been intrigued ever since.
		And I'm just a little confused still on one thing.
		The singularity.
		I know it's kind of really, I mean, it's probably the most complex thing he actually did, but I mean, looked at him, do I should say?
		But you've been knocking these questions out in a nutshell remarkably.
		So if you can just touch on that.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		The singularity?
unidentified		Yes, yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		as Terrence discussed it around the time wave theory or the idea of singularity as such?
unidentified		I guess the idea of the singularity as such, I guess, yeah, would be...
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And in physics, the singularity, you know, this gets into space-time physics and black holes and this sort of thing.
		But if you have a black hole, it's essentially, you know, there's an event horizon.
		There's a so-called event horizon.
		Within the event horizon is the singularity.
		And the singularity is just a word for saying that physics cannot say anything about what's going on in there.
		You know, it's opaque to observation.
		It's opaque to measurement.
		So it's the singularity.
		They may as well say it's the black box.
		And that's essentially what they're saying.
		We don't know what is going on in that realm.
unidentified		The laws of physics don't apply.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So we can say very little about it.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		On the other hand, the fact that we don't know what's going on in there means that almost anything could be possible, yes.
unidentified		Right.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And that's what's fascinating about it.
		And when it comes to the mind and consciousness and all this, I mean, I don't know.
		I have a model that I like.
		I don't know if it applies or it has scientific validity.
		But, you know, black holes are something that happens, and singularities are something that happens when you get a certain amount, a critical amount of mass compressed into a small enough area, right?
		Then it distorts space-time, and space-time essentially wraps itself around it.
		Even light can't escape.
		Then you get a singularity.
		But maybe an analogy is, I sometimes speculated, you know, the brain is the most complex object in the universe.
		And maybe when you get enough complexity stuffed together into a small enough area like the cranium, maybe you get some kind of a singularity, a biological singularity of some kind.
		I mean, this is totally wild speculation, but, you know, I like the idea.
		So I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a physician, you really have to walk a fine line, don't you?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You do, right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You definitely do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I hear you going right down that line.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, otherwise they'd say I was nuts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, they would.
		They would, and don't rule it out.
		All right.
		Let's go to Upska, is that right, on Skype?
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you're not very loud, so you're going to have to get closer to your microphone or something.
unidentified		Is this better?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you get...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are you on?
unidentified		I'm on Skype on a smartphone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		All right.
		Are you using Bluetooth?
unidentified		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, go ahead.
unidentified		I'll try to be as loud as I can.
unidentified		I'll keep my answer off the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, sure.
unidentified		I wanted to ask you to get a person's opinion.
unidentified		Are people who sniff things like spray paint, would that have the same effect as psychedelic drugs?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm afraid not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's going to be an easy answer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gee.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, you're not going to get the same effect.
		Those things, psychedelic drugs interact specifically with serotonin receptors, sometimes other receptors in the body.
		The solvents, the inhalants, those sorts of things, they're nonspecific.
		They don't interact with any receptors.
		What they essentially do is dissolve nerve membranes.
		They totally disorganize it.
		And, you know, as a result, your neural transmission is screwed up.
		I don't, you know, these things should not be taken.
		These are quite harmful to the liver, among other things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All kinds.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't recommend that.
		That's not the way to go for altered states.
		There are much better ways to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		More ways than one.
		Oh, my.
		Okay.
		First time caller line.
		You're on the air with Dr. McKenna.
		Hello.
		First time caller line.
		Going once, going twice, gone like the wind.
		Hello there on the phone line.
		You're on the air.
unidentified		Hi, can you hear me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear you.
unidentified		Great.
unidentified		Thanks for taking my call.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're welcome.
unidentified		Doctor, I have one question for you.
		Throughout the show tonight, you have mentioned several times about basically personification of DMT and ayahuasca and once of psilocybin.
		Now, my question to you, Doctor, is, do you believe that there's a spirit or some sort of intelligence behind these things?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, here we're headed down that line again.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, yeah, and I'm headed down the same line where I'm going to hedge my bets.
		I mean, again, I think people do experience these things, and they experience them as being real.
		I have done that, and most people who have had psychedelic experiences have done that.
		But what do you mean by real?
		That's the problem.
		See, because we live in this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think he was asking whether You're encountering an intelligence which appears not to be you.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
unidentified		Yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But is it real?
		Well, as I say, you experience it as real.
		So, you know, for practical purposes, the rest is just sort of metaphysical nitpicking in some ways.
		I mean, it's for perhaps it's not useful in a certain way to speculate on this.
		But it's always good to keep your mind open to say, well, maybe what I'm experiencing is a piece of myself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, I know it is difficult for you, Doctor, to speculate on this, but it is inevitably the first question somebody back from this experience is asking themselves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And it's remarkable how similar some of these alien or entity encounters are.
unidentified		Yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there is a whole universe, a whole phenomenology, a pantheon of these things, if you like.
		I mean, if people aren't familiar with it, I suggest they click into this interesting website called DMT Nexus.
		I think it's DMTNexis.com.
		It's fairly heavily science.
		There's a lot of ethnobotany, a lot of chemistry, and so on.
		But there are active conversations about this very topic, you know, and ranging from people who say, well, it's not real, to people who say, well, not only is it real, you know, but we need to open an embassy in hyperscience.
		I mean, you know, they're an embassy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Lorain, Ohio, I believe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hi.
unidentified		Hey, this is Matt.
		Thanks for having me on.
		This is another iconic evening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is your first-time caller, right?
unidentified		I am, indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Glad to have you.
		What's up?
unidentified		Big time fan.
		I have a question for Dennis.
		I've been experimenting with a number of these substances that you've been speaking about tonight for a little over 15 years, specifically around live music experiences.
		I'm wondering what kind of insight you can, if you talk to people, what experience you have as to what is going on on some of these stages.
		Because I've seen the machines.
		I've seen all kinds of madness.
		I'm the student of it, and I'm just wondering what your insight is about that scene.
		Thank you.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So he's talking about the live music stages and that sort of thing.
		I mean, there is a, you know, there are, you know, I'm surprised to see this because I didn't really know it.
		But apparently there is a whole genre of music that is related to DMT.
		And there is a subculture around this.
		To be honest, I'm not that involved in this.
		I mean, I'm kind of outside that, too old, you know, but it is active.
		And actually, I'd like to plug somebody else's book here, which is just about to come out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How unusual.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's by a gentleman named Graham St. John.
		And it's called Mystery School in Hyperspace, a Cultural History of DMT.
		And I read it.
		He asked me to write the foreword for it, and I did.
		And it's a very interesting book.
		I suggest he get it.
		It talks about all of these, the kind of movements in art and music and the way that DMT has really influenced our culture.
		And there's more than you might think.
		I mean, that's what surprised me.
		It actually has been around since the 50s and in the culture in some ways.
		And it's having an effect.
		And now, of course, its effect is accelerating because people are more aware of it and there's a lot of interest in it.
		So it's a great book, Mystery School in Hyperspace.
		I think it's just about to come out, if not already out.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, consider it plugged.
unidentified		Hi there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air with Dennis.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hi.
		I was asking a question about methanphetamine.
		In 1983, I kind of went crazy and went, used methamphetamines from April till September, practically daily.
		And this thing about addiction to it, when I decided to quit, I just called Turkey quit, never used it, haven't used it since.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, that is interesting.
		And perhaps the doctor who has studied this sort of thing can explain this.
		Most people get hooked on something like meth.
		They're hooked, and that's all there is to it.
		But there are occasionally people who can just decide to stop something, and without effort and without apparent consequence, they just stop.
		Doctor?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's right.
		I mean, again, here you're looking at the biochemistry of individuality in a certain sense.
		Everybody is a biochemically unique individual, and the way they respond to drugs of all kinds is determined by what's called their pharmacogenetics.
		It's a big word, which basically is, you know, the part of your genome that's involved with metabolizing drugs and toxins.
		That's your pharmacogenetics.
		And everybody, you know, some people can use something like heroin or nicotine or methamphetamine fairly regularly and not really get addicted, you know.
		And other people, one or two exposures and they're quite hooked.
		You know, so there's a big psychological element to this, and there's also a biochemical determinant.
		And it comes down to this.
		She just May be one of these people that is not particularly prone to addiction.
		And she took the drug and had the drug, but never became hooked.
		I mean, this is not unheard of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This goes on.
		I do understand that.
		I'm just amazed.
		I mean, I'm hooked on nicotine.
		I smoked all my adult life.
		I've now quit, and I'm still hooked on nicotine.
		You know, I've got to chew or I've got to patch.
		I've got to have a little lozenge or something.
		I've got to have nicotine.
		So in my wildest imagination, I can't imagine people get hooked and then just walk away sort of without consciousness.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's all about your sensitivity to these things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess so.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Like, I was a long-term smoker for a long time.
		I smoked a pipe, so maybe I wasn't so prone to it.
		But one day, I just basically quit.
		And I never really smoked it regularly.
		But the thing is, for me, when I get into a situation where people are smoking, you know, I'll bum a cigarette.
		I'll smoke cigarettes.
		But when I walk away from that, I don't have any craving.
		So I'm one of these people that I can do it, but I don't get hooked, you know, knock on wood, right?
		I mean, hopefully this will continue.
		But I seem to be not really, I can enjoy it and yet I'm not dependent on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To me, that just describes how different we really are.
		Let's go to our first time caller line.
		You're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hi.
unidentified		Oh, all right.
		Yes.
		Listen, you guess mentioned the ear-brain connection modeling reality for you.
		Absolutely.
		It's a medical science proven fact.
		I mean, it's called psychoacoustics.
		And it was, if you, for example, if you have something, a sound in menaural coming at you, and there's two speakers in stereo separated, and you delay one speaker by like a millisecond, the speaker disappears.
		I mean, it's far acoustically.
		You see the meters movement, nothing's coming out, and what happens is the sound on your other ear is intensified.
		This is so that if somebody's like throwing a rock or something's coming at you, you get some sort of survival protection of some kind in signaling.
		You know, that's what they feel.
		There's a lot of these events.
		So this modeling of reality is scientifically sound.
		Now, the question is, when you take something that creates distortion, is it connecting you to some new receivers or is it just folding with the modulation?
		Yes.
		But it's absolutely sound.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say, but that's absolutely right.
		I mean, you know, it's a rule of thumb in science, you know, that if you have a system and you want to understand how it works, one thing you can do is you can muck with it.
		You can do something that interferes with the way it works.
		You can look at it this way.
		And by making it go off track, like for example, maybe taking a psychedelic is to interfere with normal functions, normal consciousness.
		But by seeing what happens when you perturb that system in ways that you didn't before, you can understand things about how it works.
		And that's a common way to investigate phenomena.
		That's why these drugs are so powerful for really understanding consciousness.
		Essentially, if you look at Franz Vollenweider's work in Zurich, he's one of our Hefter researchers and really a star in the field.
		He really uses psychedelics, especially psilocybin, in his patients, to study basically neuroscience.
		How do we perceive lights and sounds and other types of input?
		And how do we take all that and synthesize it into something coherent which we experience?
		This is what the brain does.
		It takes the raw data of experience, it mixes it with internal processing and associations and all this.
		Somehow it extrudes, you can think of it that way, it extrudes this thing called consciousness.
		And consciousness makes sense.
		Consciousness is something that we're immersed in and it makes sense to us most of the time.
		And this is what the brain does.
		And so we can use psychedelics to study, well, what if we inject that, put this drug into the mix?
		How does that change it?
		And what can we learn from that?
		So it's interesting also that the caller mentioned psychoacoustics because now people are working with like sound meditation and this kind of thing using acoustics in conjunction with psychedelics to cause profoundly altered states that can really give some insights into the limits of consciousness, how the brain works, also used in healing and that sort of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, okay.
		Has there been any scientific evidence that acoustics in combination with psychedelics light up even further or different sections of the brain?
		It's a good question.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and there is scientific evidence.
		If you look at the EEGs of people who are having these types of sound therapy experiences, they're quite remarkable.
		I mean, I'm not qualified to interpret them, but they're pretty amazing.
		These are quite anomalous electrical brain states that these things cause.
		So that's a whole area.
		And it's interesting that it goes back to really pretty ancient technologies.
		I mean, indigenous people, ancient civilization, and all this stuff have often known out, they've known a long time of the power of sound in combination with some of these things or just by themselves.
		They can certainly induce altered states.
		So that's a whole area that is fascinating and is just beginning to emerge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Professor, hold on a moment, and we'll get back to you.
		We're coming up on a break, so let me use the opportunity to say our public number is Area Code 952-225-5278.
		That's 952-225-5278.
		The first time caller line is Area Code 775-285-5800.
		Did you get that?
		I did forget to mention it.
		I brought this up, I think, during an open line show and then forgot to mention it again.
		But we do have it.
		Area code 775-285-5800.
		And with that, my guest is Dr. Dennis McKenna.
unidentified		We're talking about a pretty sensitive subject.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you want to join in, got a comment, got a question.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Here we are.
unidentified		Here we are.
		Music The clock strikes 12, and Midnight in the Desert is pounding Packets Your Way on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
		To call the show, please direct your finger digits to dial 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-CALLART.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's kind of an interesting comment from an ER nurse in Arizona.
		She says, as a nurse, I really thought I was not going to enjoy the show, but I must say, it's very interesting.
		I would say the same.
		Good evening, morning, or afternoon, whatever it is, wherever you are.
		Dr. Dennis McKenna is my guest, and we are discussing those drugs.
		Those drugs.
		Hello there.
		You're on the air with Dr. McKenna.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Art.
		Hi, Dennis.
		I was wondering, my question was concerning nitrous oxide.
		It seems to be making a big comeback lately.
		And some people, some of my friends, consider it a psychedelic in some ways.
		And it can seem to enhance the effects of psychedelics.
		I was wondering why you thought that was, why you think it's so addictive, and what do you think about the current government regulations and controls over it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor?
		Hmm.
		Well, we may or may not get any input from the doctor.
		Are you there, Dennis?
		Dennis McKenna?
		He doesn't seem to be there, or we've lost connection with him, Caller, so I'm not sure what to tell you.
		He's still here.
		I believe he's still here.
		Might just be away from the microphone or something.
		I don't know.
		Dr. McKenna.
		Aging, Dr. McKenna.
		Dr. McKenna, I'm going to disconnect and try calling you back.
		We apparently have some sort of, well, I can't call him back.
		All right.
		You know what?
		If I can't call him back, then we might as well go ahead and do essentially open lines.
		We're in a situation where I guess the kind of thing where the connection between us has dissolved.
		And there is Dr. McKenna.
		Well, you may be in luck.
		Hello, Dr. McKenna.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		What happened?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		We dropped the signal somehow.
		Well, that's Skype for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But here we are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you hear the question, perchance?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Could you repeat it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The caller could.
		Hello, caller.
		Hello, caller.
		Are you still there?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They've given up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I guess they've given up.
		Let's go to the next caller.
		I think that's all right.
		That's quite all right.
		It happens.
		New Haven, Connecticut.
		Hello, you're on here.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, how you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doing great.
unidentified		Hey.
		Hey.
		Listen, kind of, I just broke into your show a minute or two ago, and I hear you talking about the psychedelics.
		I'm 42 years old.
		Back in my early 20s, I used to partake in some psychedelics.
		I used to take a thing called mescaline.
		That makes sense to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mushrooms, yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Peyote.
unidentified		No, it was a little tiny pill.
		Some people called it a microdot, and the other people called it mesculine.
		I don't know what the difference is.
		But I was able to, and quite frankly, some of my friends, the guys that I used to, the friends that I hung out with, when we would take these, they would have, some people, they just laughed and had a good time.
		I found out that by taking this drug, for lack of a better phrase, I could actually hear other people's thoughts.
		Does that make any sense at all?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess it does.
		In other words, you thought you were hearing other people's thoughts.
		My question would be, did you prove that you could hear other people's thoughts?
unidentified		I actually did.
		I actually did.
		I thought I was hearing other people's thoughts, and I thought I was going out of my mind.
		So I went to my, we were, there was a few people around, and I went to my friend, who also was on the same thing.
		And I put my back to his back, and I was able to see what he was seeing and he could see what I was seeing and I confirmed this by asking him verbally what are you looking at right now and he said I'm looking at the streetlights but the streetlights were not facing him he was facing the house and I was looking at the house well these things
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You know, I mean, they do happen on psychedelics.
		That's part of what makes them fascinating.
		Now, what's happened?
		Why do we have an echo here?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I haven't changed a thing here.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I have not either, but I'm hearing an echo.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder if you're still on the, perhaps you changed away from the microphone on your headset.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm checking that now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be my guess.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It looks like it's inputting, outputting the right way.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, as you mentioned, that's Skype for you.
		You know what?
		We might have the caller back.
		That first-time caller, are you there?
unidentified		Hi, yes.
		Okay, good.
		Hi.
		Hi, Dennis.
		I'm glad I had a chance to speak with you.
		I have a question concerning nitrous oxide, and it has been making a big comeback lately, and also some people consider it to be very similar to a psychedelic, and it can be used to enhance the effect of a psychedelic in many cases.
		And I'm wondering, why does it do that, and why is it so addictive as far as people just liking to do it so much?
		And why does it, what do you think about the current government regulations and controls over it?
		Should they do it the way that they are, or lose it?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I remember the question now, and I don't know what I'm going to do about this echo.
		But anyway, it's not really addictive.
		People like to do it, right?
		That's different.
		So people like to do it.
		It's not really addictive.
		And it's not really a psychedelic either.
		It works by a completely different mechanism.
		But it does seem to enhance the effects of psychedelics.
		Some people say it does.
		Probably part of it is it causes hypoxia.
		It causes a lack of oxygen in the brain.
		And if you hold your breath, that will induce an altered state.
		So that's part of it.
		It's the psychedelic plus the hypoxia.
		And people say it enhances it.
		I've never found that it made much difference, but I haven't experimented with it a lot.
		Medically, it's a medically used gas that's important.
		I mean, it's used in dentistry, right?
		It's used as a kind of anesthetic.
		So it's a medically regulated product.
		And in that sense, it's government regulated.
		But, you know, it's freely available.
		I think it's fairly harmless.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He also asked about what you're feeling about the continued illegality of it.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I wasn't aware it was illegal.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Is nitrous oxide illegal?
unidentified		Is it illegal?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller?
unidentified		Hello?
unidentified		Yes, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It is.
unidentified		Yes.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		In some places.
unidentified		It's more than heroin in some places.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		Well, you know, like everything else.
		Like I said before, I don't really think prohibition is a solution.
		I think that, you know, there's millions of substances out there which alter states.
		So, you know, I think that people need to be educated how to use these substances.
		And if you choose to use nitrous oxide, yeah, I can think of a lot worse choices in that sense.
unidentified		I suppose.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's not so bad compared to other things, you know, methamphetamine, heroin, these sorts of things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think the government, just sort of as a question here, took virtually all drugs or most drugs and made them illegal with a couple of notable exceptions, tobacco, coffee, and alcohol?
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, it didn't happen overnight.
		I mean, it happened really sort of from the start of the end of the 19th century.
		You know, it happened because there were all these drugs like cocaine and opiates mostly that were getting used, getting incorporated into what amounted to, you know, nostrums, home remedies.
		Like home remedies, people could buy tincture of opium.
		They could buy remedies for sleep that contained opium.
		They could buy things that contained cocaine, you know, coca wine, all these stuff.
		So these drugs are fairly hard to, you know, they're easy to abuse, right?
		They're easy to get hooked on.
		So there was alarm that people were getting hooked on these.
		So that was really the genesis of the FDA at the beginning of the 19th century was an attempt to, you know, first regulate and eventually prohibit these things.
		So it evolved over time.
		You know, I mean, the worst instance was prohibition, you know, was a good example.
		And if we didn't learn our lesson from that, you know, I mean, we tried to prohibit alcohol, which probably is one of the worst drugs.
		It's very, very dangerous, very bad for you.
		Didn't work, right?
		So they repeal prohibition.
		They didn't repeal the prohibition on some of these other substances.
		that's obviously not working either so I don't know we as a as a culture we have a very you know sort of uncomfortable relationship with you know with these drugs and And in our culture, there's too much effort.
		I mean, I tell my students sometimes, you know, to shock them, I say, you know, there's no such thing as a bad drug.
		Right?
		And that's true because it's not the drugs that are bad, it's the way they're used.
		So that's when that comes down to human behavior.
		That comes bad.
		There's lots of bad ways to use drugs, right?
		But there is no such thing as a bad drug.
		The badness in here is in the way people use them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, you could take that exact argument, transfer it to guns.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, there's no such thing.
		I mean, guns in themselves are not inherently bad, but they certainly use them in bad ways.
		I mean, if you're talking about a moral dimension, I think, with respect to drugs, guns, all these things, moral dimension applies to human behavior, right?
		So this is what we have to look at.
		If we're going to invoke morality, is it moral to take drugs?
		Or is it moral to use firearms?
		Or in what situation?
		Is there a moral way to use firearms, a moral way to use drugs?
		Yes, probably.
		Lots of not so positive ways to use them.
		But it all comes down to human behavior.
		This is what we've got to focus on, not the prohibition of the drug or the gun.
		Ultimately, that's not going to work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, there's a lot of people waiting for.
		Doctor, a lot of people want to talk to you.
		New Haven, Connecticut, very quickly for Dr. McKenna.
unidentified		Hey, I'm back.
		I'm sorry.
		Somehow my phone got cut off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And your question is?
unidentified		It was the question.
		It was the statement I was asking about if it made sense that we were able to see what he was seeing.
		He's able to see what I was seeing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that got answered.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		All I can tell you is that.
unidentified		Now, to go along with that, there was a gentleman, CIA agent, who they were back in the 60s, they were doing experiments.
unidentified		The CIA was doing experiments on their own people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		MKL.
unidentified		True.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		MKL.
unidentified		Right.
		So, okay.
		They say he committed suicide, but they found that he had a bump on the head.
		And you know the story I'm talking about?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think we do.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		There are several stories.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, the CIA, well, as we were talking about a moment ago, talk about the immoral use of psychedelic drugs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There would be one.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They were pretty much immoral.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, they were using it for mind control or whatever, but the immoral part really was that they were giving these drugs to people without their knowledge, which I think is really immoral, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Anchorage, Alaska, you're on the air with Dr. McKinnon.
unidentified		Yeah, Art?
		Yes.
		First of all, thank you very much for your show.
		It's a wonderful show, and I'd like to make a statement, pose a question.
		And my statement is this reminds me of a movement that used to be called Altered States, which was done by deprivation and drugs.
		But when you mention chemical compounds, my mind goes to the structure of atomic structures, the nucleus, and breaking through whole new dimensions.
		So my mind can't wrap around if you walk this out where it goes, because you seem to be implying chemical connections to the wonders of it all.
		So my question to you is this.
		Earlier you mentioned that you've been doing this for four years, and I wonder if it's appropriate.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		40 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		40 years, Colonel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		40 years.
unidentified		Yes, 40 years.
unidentified		Can you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, Colonel.
		40 years.
		40.
unidentified		Oh, 40.
		I'm sorry.
		Well, if it's appropriate, can you explain to us your doses and how often you've taken it and your mission so that we might understand?
		I'm not sure this is the appropriate thing to ask you, but you're such a great communicator.
		Maybe you could share with us your journey to understand what it is and why you're doing it.
		Now, Ganaka, great show, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, thank you.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, thanks.
		I'm not going to go into details, really.
		It would be boring to most people.
		All I'll say is that I have learned from psychedelic drugs a lot.
		I have been involved with them for over 40 years.
		And I've learned, you know, again, in a model that these things are teachers, right, plant teachers.
		I guess my major teachers have been mushrooms and ayahuasca.
		And more lately, it's been ayahuasca.
		But, you know, how a person uses them, how often, I mean, everybody's relationship with these things is different, right?
		Just like everybody's, you know, you have a friendship with a person and it's not the same that I might have with that same person.
		So it's unique, you know.
		And all I can say is I feel like I've learned from them and, you know, I'm grateful for that.
		And, you know, if there's a take-home lesson, people say, well, you've been taking these things for 40 years.
		What have you learned?
		And the truth is, what I've learned is that we don't know much.
		I don't know much.
		Nobody knows much.
		And so that's a kind of, I mean, you'd think you'd have more to say, but that's my take-home lesson.
		Be humble about how little you really know about this world, about this universe.
		And it's a marvelous place.
		And we only understand a very tiny part of it.
		And that's what drugs have taught me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, and that's a great place to end it because we have to end it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The show is ending.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anything you want to plug, plug it now.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, my book.
		It's on Amazon.com or it's from the website of the same name.
		I have a lot of these books, so please buy one if you're interested in my story.
		Thanks, Art, for being such a great host.
		We barely scratched the surface, so I hope you'll have me back one of the days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I will.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, thank you so very much.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		appreciate it so much.
dr dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have a great night.
		Indeed, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, what a great title.
		My life with Terrence McKenna.
		Dennis McKenna, Dr. Dennis McKenna, was our guest.
		And what a great show.
		So, listen, everybody, thank you.
		We'll do it again tomorrow.
		And for those left on the line, I'm sorry we didn't get to you, but there's almost, well, not almost.
		There just is not enough time in a show to get to everybody.
		So I'm sorry you got left in the lurch.

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