The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #477 - Dennis McKenna & Josh Wickerham

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 28, 2014 - The Joe Rogan Experience

02:51:39

Joe Rogan Experience #477 - Dennis McKenna & Josh Wickerham

Participants

Main voices

dennis mckenna

01:34:23

joe rogan

59:59

josh wickerham

15:21

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just press the music.
		Let's just go right with music.
		We have no commercials today.
		I like it.
unidentified		Oh, that's great.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We're commercial free, ladies and gentlemen.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We're brought to you by the universe.
unidentified		Experience.
unidentified		Join my day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ladies and gentlemen, a very special episode.
		Podcast sponsorship free.
		Dennis McKenna and Josh Wickerham.
		Josh is from the Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council.
		You were one of the founders of this.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what exactly does that mean for folks who have no idea what ethno-botanical or stewardship means?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A lot of people struggle with counsel.
unidentified		Or counsel, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like you're counseling people on ethnobotanical stewardship.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Imagine bringing that up at a party.
unidentified		Yeah.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Well, the ESC is dedicated to transforming lives through assuring the safety and sustainability of traditional plants.
		So that means transforming people's lives through experiences with plants, but it also means the sustainability of plants and the safety in their use.
		So we're starting with ayahuasca and iboga.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you shouldn't start with like ferns.
		People don't get excited about it's hard to get eucalyptus.
		You know, people really want to get fired up about that.
		But ayahuasca, anything involving tryptamines, for folks who've experienced it, it's something worth saving.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you guys find it odd that in this day and age in 2014, the average person who you would go up to to try to discuss these issues with would have no idea what you were talking about?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Actually, I think over the last few years, that's kind of changed.
		Ayahuasca is emerging into mass consciousness, and I think that's a good thing.
		I would say 10 years ago, 15 years ago, if you approached the average person on the street and you said, ayahuasca, they'd look at you like you had a speech impediment or something.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Ayah, what?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But chances are people would recognize it now and not necessarily know what it's about, not necessarily have a negative or a positive view of it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But the meme is out there, and I think that's a good thing, ultimately.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's most certainly a good thing.
		I agree with you.
		It's certainly out there with young folks.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But with folks, I'm 46, with folks my age and older, it gets a little sketch.
		It's like, wait a minute, what?
		What are you doing?
		Folks who already have mortgages and families, those are the ones it's very difficult to get them to even consider what you're talking about.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		You'd be surprised.
		The ESC has sent out a call for experts, and we've been infiltrated by the mainstream people that do evaluation work for the World Bank and USAID.
		They're interested in ayahuasca.
		People are going down to South America to have these transformative experiences, to sit in ceremony.
		There's a lot of underground activity in the U.S. as well and Europe where it's not legal.
		But in South America and Peru, ayahuasca is protected as national patrimony.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's awesome.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's beautiful.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you ever worry that you're being infiltrated by government agents who are...
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		We want that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Exactly, right?
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		I'm not doing anything illegal.
		We're working in countries where ayahuasca has been used for hundreds of years traditionally.
		And we're looking at increasing the safety of it so that we're creating a kind of self-regulatory model so that we can take that model to places where it's illegal and say, this is a totally safe medicine if you do it right.
		People with certain medical conditions shouldn't take ayahuasca.
		But done with a skilled curangero or shaman in the right setting, it can be helpful for all sorts of psychological issues or PTSD or depression and just give people a new perspective on their lives.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Most certainly.
		I mean, I'm completely joking around, but what I was saying when I was, it's like, you know, that hasn't happened with marijuana.
		Marijuana is they're still fighting it tooth and nail despite all the evidence that it's not just beneficial, but probably prevents a lot of cancers and does a lot of fantastic work with PTSD and with anxiety and, you know, all sorts of issues, medical issues, you know, interocular pressure for people with glaucoma and, you know, on and on and on.
		People with AIDS that are having a hard time keeping their appetite up.
		Cancer patients.
		I mean, it's still, they fight it tooth and claw.
		And ayahuasca is a completely different barrel of monkeys.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Ayahuasca is coming at this through the back door.
		I mean, it's interesting that it has gained recognition over time to the extent that it does.
		And to a certain extent, I would say it's, you know, Josh, people like Josh and me, we say we work for the plants, right?
		And ayahuasca's got its own agenda, interestingly.
		And people go down to South America and they have these experiences that are revelatory and self-transforming.
		But often they come back with an enhanced ecological consciousness, an enhanced awareness of the connection between humanity and nature, the idea that nature is threatened.
		And I think of ayahuasca as sort of a messenger from the community of species that's trying to tell these monkeys to wake up, you clowns.
		We're coming down to the wire.
		We're in a crisis here.
		You've got to reunderstand where you fit into nature and do what can be done in the ever-shrinking time that's left.
		So people come back with this renewed sort of awareness of the interconnectedness of life and that we have a role in this, we primates, and we have to re-understand what our role is as stewards of nature rather than exploiters of nature.
		And ayahuasca, you know, that's the message it delivers to many people.
		And unexpectedly, they may not be going there to experience that, but that's what they come away with.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		From your work and from your brother's work, Terence McKenna, what I got that I never had considered before was that psychedelics in various forms may very well be responsible for why we are human beings in the first place.
		And our separation from them might be the whole reason why we're so haywire, why we're missing a crucial ingredient involved in the creation of cognitive thought in the first place.
		The creation of this ability to look at ourselves and communicate our ideas and really become a human being.
		And then we're separated from the mother and left to our own devices.
		And all of our wild animal instincts sort of take over.
		And our animal instincts sort of don't coexist peacefully in this weird world that we have created as human beings.
		And then we create chaos because of it because we can't see what we're doing.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ayahuasca allows you to see what you're doing.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Ayahuasca, yes.
		Ayahuasca refocuses the whole understanding, I think, of the relationship that we have to nature.
		And I think that's what, you know, if you believe in plant intelligence, I mean, there are different ways of looking at plant intelligence, but it's interesting how often people, you know, they come out with this renewed understanding.
		And I think that's, you know, a desperate call on the part of the community of species.
		And ayahuasca has been delegated to be, to kind of lead that conversation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's fascinating that ayahuasca is the one that's been, you know, in the forefront.
		When mushrooms are so damn easy to grow, you could, I mean, anyone could essentially get a hold of some spores and start cooking them in your basement like really quickly.
		Whereas ayahuasca is probably the most complex combinatory beverage that we know of as far as like psychedelic brews.
		It's the one that requires the most knowledge.
		It's the one that requires the most care and creating.
		And it's easier to extract DMT than it is to create ayahuasca.
		I mean, get all the plants and brew it together and know someone who really knows what they're doing, how to cook up a good batch.
		It's weird that that's the one.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it has its, I think it's because it is so intrinsic.
		You know, it's escaped from its home in the Amazon, and that's the area on the planet with the greatest biodiversity and all that.
		But it's got all those associations.
		You know, people regard it, I mean, mushrooms are also important, but they just don't seem to carry that same, I don't know what it is, emotional kick.
		Ayahuasca is the one right now that's getting all the attention, you know, and it's quintessentially a plant, right?
		Mushrooms aren't plants, so maybe that's part of the disconnect.
		I'm not sure.
		But, you know, all of these things in indigenous cultures are regarded as plant teachers.
		And as you mentioned, a lot of it comes down to tryptamine chemistry.
		And, you know, our brains, for some reason, are evolutionarily primed to react to tryptamines.
		I mean, we have these tryptamine detectors for some reason.
		And I think it's partly that we can, so that we can receive and interpret what they're trying to tell us.
		And what they're trying to tell us is there's not much time left.
		And we have to really reunderstand our relationship to nature.
		We have to realize that we're not separate from nature.
		Well, you're trying to overcome at least 2,000 years of Judeo-Christian history.
		And those traditions, their whole agenda in a certain sense is to devalue nature.
		Nature is something that we own.
		It's there for us to exploit.
		It's up there for us to rape.
		And we're busy doing that because my problem with those religions is the focus is always on the afterlife.
		So it tends to make you devalue this life.
		It makes you, it teaches people to devalue nature, to devalue their bodies, to devalue personal experience, all of these things.
		And it leads to the very out-of-balance situation that we have going.
		And, you know, what's disturbing to me is that we're all part of this circle of the converted.
		I mean, we got the memo, you know, and the meme is spreading, the memo is spreading, but I'm not sure it's fast enough.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that it's possible that the human race is essentially cramming?
		You know how when you're about to do a test and you put it off to the last minute and then the day before you're like, holy shit, I got to deal with this.
		And then you go bananas, you take an adderall, you file through books until your head wants to explode.
		That is a characteristic that's very, very common for people that want to attack a project, especially an important project.
		It's almost like we have this thing where it has to be completely overwhelming, where it can't be ignored, and then we go into it full throttle.
		Is it possible that the human race is cramming and that maybe part of our self-destructive tendencies are actually us recognizing that we're fucking up and going into it more chaotically, more materialistically, more shallow, more nonsense, more Kim Kardashian, more American idol, more horseshit, just to get you to the point where you get so sick of it.
		You puke it up and then move on.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Yeah, and we're in the middle of an ecological crisis and time is running out.
		We certainly are cramming.
		We're destroying the Amazon.
		We're destroying the climate.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We're destroying the ocean.
		We're destroying the air.
		We're destroying everything we get our greasy little hands on.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		And this is the first time in the 500 years of European colonization of the Americas that there's a kind of reverse sort of message coming from the Amazon.
		People are going there not to convert, but to be converted, to learn, to learn the traditions.
		And the indigenous people, 95% of their population was wiped out by viruses or wars or plagues.
		And now we have this opportunity to come back from the brink and work with ayahuasca that grows in the canopy of the rainforest.
		You can't have ayahuasca without the trees.
		And so it's an alternative to mining and oil exploitation.
		And there's money to be made in it.
		And I think coming back to cannabis, the reason the dialogue is starting to change is because governments are realizing there's a lot of money to be made.
		Taxation.
		It's a solution to budget crises.
		And the same with ayahuasca tourism.
		I don't like to say tourism because people are legitimately seeking a spiritual experience.
		Some people just want to go have an experience.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't think there's anything wrong with the word tourism, but I know what you're saying, like the frivolous idea.
		I don't think it does.
		I think ayahuasca tourism is a beautiful way.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Or a pilgrimage, perhaps.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I think that tourism is a phase in our relationship to ayahuasca.
		I think that potentially if we can, you know, what I view is going on now is kind of a rough period, but what is really being played out here is the coevolutionary relationship with these plants that have gone on, as you say, ever since we became cognitive beings.
		In fact, it was the plants that triggered that.
		And now, and that conversation is going on, but now the conversation has gone to a new level where ayahuasca before was kind of, you know, it was under the stewardship of indigenous people confined to the Amazon.
		Now it's encircling the globe.
		And I think this is partly, this is what plants do.
		They like to spread and they're spreading out into different cultures and the plant itself is now, you know, even if the Amazon is destroyed, which it may well be, ayahuasca is not going to be destroyed.
		It's too late.
		It's already escaped.
		But I think, you know, hopefully we can arrest this process.
		But what you're seeing is has always been a co-evolutionary relationship where, you know, some points it's more quieter, it's underground, but at some points as the crisis deepens, it's becoming more and more public in a sense.
		And I think that's what you see going on, you know.
		And potentially, I think that ayahuasca, you know, we're now discovering that it's good for so many things, you know, therapeutically, for addictions, for depression, for PTSD, and that sort of thing.
		And that's all to the good.
		But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking ayahuasca is only for sick people.
		You know, we're all wounded, and we all need to understand something about our relationship to nature.
		Potentially, the paradigms that are emerging in ayahuasca tourism or these more, you know, these ayahuasca-centered spiritual communities in the States, potentially this has the, this may transform mental health care in this country.
		It may transform psychiatry.
		And from that, it might transform medicine and it might actually transform all these other institutions that we have to deal with whose values have become twisted over 2,000 years of bullshit and indoctrination.
		You know, these institutions are not going away and they're fine.
		They just need to rediscover a moral dimension to the consequences of their action, if that makes any sense.
		You know, our cleverness far exceeds our wisdom.
		And that's a problem.
		That's the problem.
		We've got to become wise.
		And when we couple that with our ingenuity and our cleverness, then we'll be on the way toward saving the planet, saving ourselves.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think there's also this growing understanding of all the factors that encompass a healthy person and how many of them have to do with your conception of reality.
		How many of them have to do with the way you think?
		How many of them have to do with how you view your environment?
		If you view your environment as this hostile, stressful, antagonizing, angry, negative place, you'll get sicker.
		And your body doesn't know what to do.
		It's fighting it constantly and you're in a battle and you're all stressed out and you're susceptible to all sorts of things.
		And in that sense, there's a direct physical connection between psychedelic experiences and improved health.
		And that's something that people really need to understand.
		And I think once that catches root, once people grasp that concept and understand the incredible pressure alleviating properties, like I can remember one of the first times I ever did DMT, the day afterwards,
		like I had this completely different view of the world that I had to sort of apply now all these other, and like figure out like, do all these factors that I've considered as being important, how many of them am I going to throw out?
		Like the way I described it is like my computer rebooted and now only has one folder on the desktop and that folder is labeled my old bullshit.
		And so now I have to open this folder and go, okay, how much of this is valid?
		Like, Jesus, this is my whole thought process.
		This is my whole mind.
		This is how I interface with reality.
		Unfortunately, some of it made its way back in, you know, and then, you know, I had to do another trip, you know, a few months later, and then I threw out more of it.
		And it was a sort of a deliberate process of reevaluation.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You can't reject it all.
		There's some good stuff in that folder.
		But I think what the DMT experience, the psychedelic experience does, you know, that's partly what it does.
		I like your analogy of the folder because now you're looking at the folder from the desktop.
		You're outside the folder.
		So it's liberated you.
		You were imprisoned in the folder before.
		Now you can look at it from the outside and you can go through and say, oh, you know, delete, delete, delete.
		Oh, this is good.
		Let's keep this.
		You know, let's integrate it.
		So, you know, ultimately, this is a process of, you know, personal cleansing, both physically and emotionally and, you know, psychologically in your encounters with these things, but also cultural cleansing.
		You know, I mean, there are good memes out there and there are good things going on, but there's so much noise.
		There's so much bullshit.
		It's hard to sort out what's worth preserving and what needs to be dispensed with.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think we're also kind of trapped in this weird world of our creations as far as technology as well.
		I think that technology, just like corporations, just like anything that sort of becomes a force that's constantly growing, it has a certain self-preservation aspect to it.
		And I think that we're completely connected to the idea of constant innovation and constantly improving technology.
		And that also has completely connected us to materialism because materialism is the real driving force behind constant innovation.
		If we all just looked at our laptops and said, I'm good, are you good?
		There's no need to, we call Apple right now.
		Hey, these are fucking great.
		Stop right there.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, you don't, you literally don't need to improve internet speed.
		You don't need to improve the laptop.
		Everything's wonderful.
		Let's stop all this and let's move on to something else.
		Well, that's not what everybody wants.
		Everybody wants the newest, latest, greatest, fastest dual video processor.
		I want a screen that rolls and folds.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But that's part of the trap.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This idea that we have to keep upgrading to the iPhone X or whatever.
		I mean, these tools work and used in the proper way.
		They can be tremendously important for consciousness evolution and transformation.
		That's what the psychedelics are.
		They're just tools.
		They're a kind of technology.
		And like I say often to my classes and elsewhere, technology in itself is neither good nor bad.
		Drugs are neither good nor bad.
		These technologies, it's all about how you apply them.
		That's where the moral dimension comes in.
		That's why you can misuse technology, internet technology to propagate whatever the Kardashians are doing lately over the internet.
		But you can also change hearts and minds with those tools.
		Like, for example, this live streaming symposium that we're involved with, that our mandate is to plug this thing, but it's important.
		You know, this conference coming up in Amherst is just one example.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Amherst, Massachusetts?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Amherst, Massachusetts.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I know it well.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's the socialist capital of Massachusetts.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Perfect place to do this.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This symposium that's coming that's going to be live stream.
		People should go to, it's a cute name, symposium, P-S-Y-M-P-O-S-I-U-M.
		And it's going to be live streamed.
		And if you go to the website, you can, you know, sign up for tickets for live streaming.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Give that out one more time for people that were struggling.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Symposium, P-S-Y-M-P-O-S-I-U-M.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Cute, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's hard to do.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Symposium.com.
		And if you go to their website, what you're going to see right now, which I had nothing to do with, you're going to see a little trailer for live streaming and it's streaming.
		And it's actually, it looks like a stealth advertisement for my new product coming out, which is the Dennis McKenna bobblehead.
		I'm in this trailer and I look like I have a movement disorder or something.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But why does it look like you have a movement disorder?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's play it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You want me to play it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, we're playing it right now.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Go to full speed.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You'll see what I mean.
		Okay.
		I just looked at it this morning and I thought, actually, this bobblehead idea is not bad.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is going on here?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you see, I'm just bouncing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You and Hamilton, Morris?
unidentified		You're jamming.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How high was the person who made this?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Pretty high.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Pretty high.
		He just made it last night.
		I looked at it this morning and I said, seriously?
unidentified		Do you really want this to be on your homepage?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		There it is.
		The important thing is get past the trailer and you can sign up for this symposium, which is these guys, these young fellows out in Amherst are really enthusiastic and good people.
		They want this conference to have an impact, and I think it will.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Amherst is one of the few places in Massachusetts I'd consider living.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Not familiar with it, but I've heard it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I had an ex-girlfriend who moved out there when I was in high school, and I used to go out there and visit her.
		And I remember thinking, whoa, this is like a totally different world out here.
		It's all like Birkenstock wearing strange, hippie, open-minded, right?
		It's just a weird sort of strange place in the middle of western Massachusetts.
		Western Massachusetts is a strange place in and of itself because you have Boston, which is a very, it's a big city, very educated, more colleges per capita than anywhere else.
		But then as you get out of Massachusetts, you might as well be in Kentucky for about an hour and 20 minutes.
		And then you get to this weird oasis where the woods part, and then you have this strange place.
		And Amherst was really highly educated and open-minded, liberal community.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure I've ever been there, but I'm looking forward to this conference.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You'd enjoy it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's going to be a lot of fun.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It really is the perfect place.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's very much like a very small Austin in the middle of Massachusetts, but with no music, not as much music.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		The guys organizing the conference really are working with the plants and for the plants.
		And you don't have to go there to participate.
		The beauty is this live sign up for $10.
		You get a screening of Neurons to Nirvana, a great film, and access to all the presenters.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Have you interviewed or shown Neurons to Nirvana on your site?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, from a technical point of view, I'm not a filmmaker.
		You could criticize it from that point of view, but as an educational tool for psychedelics, I think this is really an interesting movie.
		And it's the kind of thing you can sit down with your parents and watch, and they will come away.
		Maybe some of their assumptions will be shaken, you know.
		I mean, it's a very good educational tool for the subtitle is Understanding Psychedelic Medicines.
		And it's entertainingly done, and it's a kind of a review of the cutting-edge research on about four or five psychedelics, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, ayahuasca, and where the state-of-the-art research is on that.
		And these chemicals, you know, what we need to do, as we were talking about before, we need to change hearts and minds.
		I know it's a cliche, but these chemicals under the right circumstances are actually a way to do that.
		And coupled with that is education.
		Education is so important, and that's kind of the vision of these gentlemen, Brett Green and his colleagues, that, you know, symposia like this are an important component of this because it's a way of getting the information out.
		And the more people it can be gotten out to, the faster the change can be implemented.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the change hearts and minds is an interesting cliche because we've heard it so many times that it's almost like we've heard wolf, wolf, wolf, there's wolves, there's wolves.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Holy shit, there's a wolf.
unidentified		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like the first time I did any psychedelics, the first major one besides MDMA was mushrooms.
		And then that was my first experience.
		Like, oh my God, there's a wolf.
		Like, this is a totally different thing.
		This isn't something that you have to believe in.
		This is something that's unavoidable.
		It doesn't matter if you believe in it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		People should be prepared for it, too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you can't be.
		I really don't think you can be.
		I think you can be the best you can be prepared for is to give up.
		Just let it go.
		Don't fight it.
		Be prepared for that.
		Take a few yoga classes.
		Know what it's like to be uncomfortable and keep breathing.
		Right.
		And then just then do it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And then listen.
		Listen to it.
		Surrender to it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		The message is there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You said earlier, which is a very controversial but oddly fascinating thing, that plants are the reason why we are human beings today, why these plant medicines and these psychedelic compounds.
		Why is that so controversial?
		I find that to be incredibly amazing when I talk to really intelligent people and I bring that idea up and they dismiss it like almost instantaneously.
		And I don't understand why.
		Because I get it that they're connecting the idea of a drug to a bad thing.
		I get that.
		But when you want to talk about powerful influences on cognitive thought, is there any more powerful influences on cognitive thought than a psychedelic drug?
		I don't think there is.
		I think, I don't understand why that wouldn't be immediately considered at the top of the list, top of the short list, but it's not.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's heresy.
		That's the thing.
		It's an unconventional idea.
		I mean, if you look at, you know, we, as a species, we evolved in the rainforest initially, and, you know, we evolved in an environment of incredible chemical diversity.
		You know, and it's absurd to assume, you know, and the reason there's such chemical diversity in the plant kingdom is that they're great chemists, you know, and they make all these chemicals for whatever purposes.
		That's how plants mediate their relationship with their environment, right?
		They substitute biosynthesis for behavior.
		This is what I say.
		This is a cliché.
		They can't react to their environment through behavior.
		They can't run away.
		They can't fight.
		They fight through chemistry.
		And the other side of that coin is we are chemical systems.
		I mean, I hate to break it to you folks, but we're made of drugs, right?
		That's why drugs work.
		We're biochemical engines.
		Our brains are biochemical engines that run on neurotransmitters.
		These plant compounds are neurotransmitters, essentially.
		I mean, you know, they were in plants a long time before they were in our brains, before there was even complex brains enough to utilize these things.
		And in the course of evolution, we internalized these things and adapted them to our own internal signaling processes.
		So now we have the, you know, the neurological tools, if you will, to talk to the plants.
		You know, they've always been talking to us.
		Now we can actually have a conversation.
		And you get into the conversation and the conversation is, you know, you monkeys need to move to the next level.
		You need to get more conscious of your place in nature, our place in nature as a species.
		Realize that we're not separate from it.
		We're part of it.
		And if nature goes down, we go down.
		I mean, there is no escape.
		There's no ticket out of here.
		Not yet, anyway.
		And the plants are the tools to understand this.
		I mean, there's good scientific studies now that show that psilocybin, which is the one that's been studied, can reliably induce a state that you might call a mystical experience.
		I prefer to call it a transcendent experience, but the nugget of the experience that it can elicit under the right experiences is an understanding of we are all one.
		We're not separate.
		That's the core of the, I think, the mystical insight that psychedelics bring about.
		Why should our brains even have evolved to have that kind of experience if it's not a way of kind of, well, I don't know, being able to initiate that conversation with the rest of species.
		I mean, they're counting on us, you know, because never before, you know, civilization and humanity has impacted nature in adverse ways as long as we've been around, as long as we've had fire, you know.
		I mean, fire back in the Paleolithic and even earlier was a tremendously, not necessarily destructive force, but it was a transformative force on ecosystems.
		We didn't particularly use it in a conscious way.
		We used it in a way that served our purposes.
		But now, with 7 billion people on the earth and counting and technologies that no one ever imagined that we'd have at our fingertips, what we do now really matters, you know, because before that,
		nature, the homeostatic mechanisms that tended to take nature, keep nature in balance, you know, we could cause tremendous ecological destruction and nature would eventually, you know, that would fade away and nature would come back into balance.
		Now we're actually in danger of permanently screwing up those mechanisms.
		So we actually have to kind of consciously intervene or be conscious of what we're doing because the consequences of what we do are just so much greater.
		Does that make any sense?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, it absolutely does.
		It absolutely does.
		I think there's another thing that we need to put into perspective, the relatively short amount of time that human beings have had access to the information that we have today and the terrible effects of propaganda and how long propaganda can stick.
		You know, when we're talking about just the just say no era of the 80s, the Nancy Reagan nonsense.
		I had Dr. Carl Hart on recently, who's a brilliant guy, if you're aware of his work.
		Amazing work on addiction and sort of educating people about the actual real reactions that the human body has to drugs.
		But what he's talking about that was really interesting is like, there has never been a drug-free society, nor would you want one.
		It doesn't exist.
		So this idea is so stupid that it's been hammered into us this impossible ideal.
		And it's because of the ability to communicate.
		It's ironic that the ability to communicate to mass amounts of people is so recent within the last few hundred years, 1,000 years, whatever it's been, that the impact of these things, although in our incredibly small, finite lives, seems like forever, is a comparatively just a little tiny blip on the radar or where we've had this sort of cultural hiccup where we lost the script.
		And the internet seems to be what's resetting the information.
		And I think that's one of the reasons why marijuana, besides the financial reason, why marijuana has gained so much steam.
		Just the sheer overwhelming avalanche of facts, the lack of deaths, the LD50 rate of 1,500 pounds in 15 minutes, like just the sheer absurdity of what it takes to kill you.
		And then the stats that come in.
		I mean, how many times can you see someone posted with the numbers people die by cigarettes, the numbers people die by prescription drugs, the numbers people die by alcohol, the numbers people, and you just start looking at that, and then marijuana gets to the bottom, zero.
		Well, what the fuck?
		You know, it's over and over and over and over again.
		It's resetting this strange propaganda.
		But to people that have been alive through it, it's indoctrination.
		It's how we've come to understand the world.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But the message is penetrating now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Even with all that cultural baggage that marijuana is loaded down with, finally, the real message is coming through and people are exactly, like you say, beginning to wake up to it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And compared to all the other recreational drugs that we accept, this one is benign and beneficial.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've said that I think that in the future when people look back on this age where people are being arrested and imprisoned for marijuana, they're going to look back at it the same way they used to look at killing witches.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's really that ridiculous.
		It's such a black mark on our silly society.
		And just an indication of how disconnected we are.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This concept of a drug-free society, as you say, is totally absurd because we're made of drugs.
		In fact, we are drugs.
		And our brains run on neurotransmitters and whether they're endogenously produced.
		And we know, for example, that DMT is an endogenous neurotransmitter.
		And that's a whole fascinating area of neuroscience now.
		Potential functions for DMT are being found.
		We know it's been there for a long time.
		We've known it's endogenous, but it's not been so clear what the hell it's doing in there.
		Now we're beginning to get some indications that it really does have a function.
		For example, in places that you wouldn't expect, modulating the immune system, for example, all this stuff is emerging.
		So, you know, I mean, by any measure, these internal chemicals are drugs.
		They just happen to be drugs that we make ourselves.
		We don't buy them from the local pot dealer or whatever.
		So, you know, so the perceptions are changing, I think.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I agree.
		I think, again, I attribute the internet.
		And some of the work that Rick Strassman has done has been pretty fascinating as well.
		And the most recent work showing that DMT is actually produced in the pineal gland of live rats, which was always, for whatever reason, even though everyone knew DMT was an endogenous neurotransmitter and that human beings absolutely produced it in the liver and the lungs and different parts of the body, the pineal gland has always been ultimately incredibly fascinating because it literally is that third eye, the seat of the soul.
		And there was so much resistance to that idea that this mystical chemical is actually produced by the third eye.
		And I saw online all this battling back and forth of, you know, well, it's only anecdotal evidence that it's produced by, now there's actual physical evidence.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Now there's actual evidence.
		We know it's there.
		We knew it had to be there.
		All the enzymes to make it, all the precursors to make it were there, but nobody had actually nailed it down.
		Now they've nailed it down.
		So that's progress.
		That's a step.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But the resistance to the idea was very fascinating to me.
		Why would anybody care whether or not it was produced?
		I mean, the body makes it for sure.
		Like, why is it such an issue that the pineal gland makes it?
		But it is.
		It is.
		Because that sort of opens up the door to Eastern mysticism, to all that traditional religious art that showed the glowing third eye and all these peaceful enlightened beings with lit third eyes.
		Like all of that is like, oh, well, they probably knew something.
		Like, oh, there's something to it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They did know a thing or two.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, they knew quite a bit, right?
		The other thing is the Egyptian artwork that so clearly resembles the pineal gland and the actual cross-section of the human brain.
		And there's so much of that in ancient civilizations and ancient cultures.
		It just makes you really try to piece together, like, when did we lose all this?
		Like, what, have we figured that out?
		When did all that sort of slip away?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't think it's lost.
		I mean, obviously it's not lost.
		We're now rediscovering it.
		It was just, it was esoteric.
		You know, it was esoteric knowledge for a long time.
		Now it's becoming less esoteric.
		More people are becoming aware of what the ancients knew, what the visionaries and the mystics always knew.
		This is no longer hidden knowledge.
		You know, it's becoming more accessible.
		And that's partly the effect of the internet and partly the effect of a lot of very smart people obsessing over this and sharing what they're finding out.
		So again, this is, I think, part of the general raising of consciousness in this area that's going on now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Amber Lyon, who's a she was a reporter for CNN and sort of lost her faith in mainstream news when she did a piece on Bahrain and it got redacted and edited and turned into like a tourist piece and she, you know, she left CNN.
		It was this huge thing.
		She was really like trying to figure out what to do with her life.
		And I suggested psychedelic drugs.
		So she goes down to Peru, takes, like, just jumps on a plane, like literally grabs what clothes she had in her car, jumps on a plane, goes to Peru, takes seven long ayahuasca trips, completely changes her life, goes on a year-round journey, year-long journey to discover various psychedelic medicines in different indigenous cultures, goes to Thailand and does mushrooms, goes to Mexico, just does all that.
		Now she's writing or making this website called Reset.me.
		She's dedicated her life to psychedelics within one year.
		One crazy transformative trip.
		And it's people like her and people like you and people like you that are putting this information out that's starting this sort of like undeniable tide, this shifting, this undeniable shifting.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Psychedelics and neurotransmitters aside, because people expect something big when they take these things and people are rightly a little apprehensive.
		I mean, it will change your life if you take these plants.
		But if you want to have a transformative experience with plants and you're leery of psychedelics, try going on an all-plant-based diet for a little while.
		Change your intestinal bacteria in a way.
		You'll have this sense of levity, lightness.
		It will change the way you think about yourself, not as quickly as a psychedelic plant experience.
		And it takes discipline or try a fast.
		I mean, there are ways to have these transformative experiences without drugs, without plants, but it's just a faster way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The only transformative experience that I've ever experienced from dealing with people that have gone on a completely transforming their life in a completely plant-based diet is they can never shut the fuck up about the fact they're on a plant-based diet.
		Well, you have to go out to eat you over the head with it.
		Right, right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's sufferable.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		It's a hard lifestyle to maintain.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And in light of the new information that's been discovered over the past decade or so about the intelligence of plants, about plants' ability to calculate, their ability to recognize perhaps even a memory, their ability to recognize dangers, their ability to adapt.
		There's a consciousness in plants that is undeniable and I think very misunderstood or non-understood.
		That's not a word.
		But we're ignorant to it.
		And that's one of the problems that I have with people that push the plant-based diet.
		Like, I don't think, I think life eats life.
		And I think it always has.
		And I think you can get to the very bottom of the karma chain where you're, you know, you're fungi and you're living off of poop and basically things that things have thrown away.
		Or you can be a tiger, you know, and they're all beautiful.
		The whole system is crazy and beautiful.
		And the only reason why we exist at all is that a fucking star had to die.
		I mean, the whole thing is death.
		But we're so obsessed with this idea of eating only plants or being on a plant-based diet connects you more to nature.
		I've become a hunter over the last year and a half, and I couldn't disagree more.
		One of the reasons being is that hunting is a very psychedelic experience in a weird way that I never would have believed.
		The first time I ever went deer hunting and shot a deer and then wound up eating it, there's a weird connection that you have with nature and with that animal when you do that, especially if you do it in what's termed a fair chase environment.
		You go out into the actual woods, you deal with an animal.
		Most likely that animal right there had never even seen a human being before I shot it.
		And then, you know, we're eating it, that deer head right there.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Not the alien.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, not the alien.
		That motherfucker.
		He's hunting you.
		But I think that there's life in everything.
		And there's most likely some form of a consciousness in all life.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And I think brains are overrated.
		Nervous systems are overrated in a certain sense.
		You can say, well, how can a plant be intelligent?
		It doesn't have a nervous system.
		It doesn't have a brain.
		But it clearly displays intelligence.
		And in fact, speaking of that, and speaking of your hunting experience, you know the author Michael Pollan, right?
		He had a great essay in, I think, The New Yorker recently about plant intelligence that if you haven't read it, it's worth reading.
		But I also love his chapter in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is subtitled The Natural History of Four Meals.
		And one of the meals is a meat meal where he wants to create a meal, but he wants to do it.
		He wants to put himself in the shoes of a hunter-gatherer.
		So he wants to gather all wild foods, plant foods, obviously mushrooms, pine nuts, and this sort of thing.
		But he also wants to hunt down a boar, I think it was, and kill it and strip it, you know, skin it, cut it up and eat it and have that experience.
		And I think that what you say is totally legitimate.
		If you're going to eat meat, it's important that people realize where that animal died so that you could have that meal.
		And Native Americans, Indigenous people have always recognized this because they are up against it.
		So, you know, they'll always thank the animal for what they're getting.
		And that's really important.
		And that's something that we should try to integrate into everything.
		Why not thank the plants too?
unidentified		Yes.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		Thank everything.
		We wouldn't be here if we weren't sustained by this web of life.
		So why are we being so disrespectful to it?
		I mean, I guess that's the crux of the question.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, we can't really feel what we're doing to this earth.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And we have this diffusion of responsibility thing going on.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You buy your meat in the grocery store wrapped in plastic.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You have no notion where it actually came from.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've made a commitment this year to live entirely off of game meat, of wild game.
		All wild, too.
		Nothing that no penned in animals.
		You just wind up shooting.
		The ham that I was telling you guys about before the show, smoking ham, that's a pig I killed on this ranch to hone ranch.
		And they actually have to have hunters come in because these are invasive species, these wild pigs, and they will destroy everything.
		They eat deer fawns, they eat grounding, ground nesting birds, they eat their eggs.
		I mean, they're unbelievably devastating to the environments that they aren't naturally a part of.
unidentified		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So there's a role for us as stewards of the environment.
		These wild boars are, as you say, they're devastating ecosystems.
		I don't know in California, but Hawaii, this is their biggest problem.
		And it's destroying ecosystems in Hawaii.
		So there is a role for us to step in and say, well, you know, we're going to kind of exert some control here and control that population because they didn't originate in Hawaii.
		They're invasive species, as you said, from Eurasia.
		There's a need for some regulation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's an issue right now in San Jose, San Jose.
		They've started to make their way into suburbs, and they're destroying people's lawns.
		And, you know, they'll get children.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They're doomed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The lawns.
unidentified		I tore out my lawn, you fucking piece of shit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it is a weird connection, the connection that we have to life itself.
		And our thoughts, when we talk about Native Americans, like almost immediately we think of the spiritual connection that Native Americans had to the land, the deep respect that they had for the animals that they killed in the fact that they would use every single piece of that animal.
		They'd use the hide to make a roof or clothes.
		They would use sinew for strings for their bows and arrows.
		They literally used every part, tooth, bone, nail, flesh.
		They ate them.
		And they worship these animals.
		And it was a deep respect.
		It was an inexorable part of the relationship to nature itself.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I really hear you on this.
		I grew up in the woods of Michigan, a mile outside of a town of 150 people, and my uncle is a hunter and a taxidermist.
		But hunting for him is a spiritual quest and experience.
		And you feel the pain of the animal you kill and utilizing all aspects of it.
		I'm not opposed to eating meat by any means.
		I'm just saying that an all-plant diet, when you do it properly, can transform consciousness.
		It's a strange thing.
		But going on an all-meat diet and eating that conscious, conscious eating can change consciousness.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Conscious eating is a good idea.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Conscious everything, right?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Conscious everything.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Everything's redesign of institutions, of the internet, of our experiences.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		What you were talking about earlier about brains being overrated, one of the things that I've really been inescapable for me over the last few years or so is this idea that we are the caterpillars that are giving birth to the moth and that our whole screwy system and our whole issues with ego problems and materialism might be because we're just sort of a transitionary stage to this symbiotic relationship
		that we have with technology and that we're going to give birth to some artificial thing that doesn't carry the burdens of natural selection, that doesn't carry the burdens of primitive instincts, the need to survive, all these animal reward systems that were built into us from the time that we were monkeys.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Perhaps that doesn't sound like a very nice existence.
unidentified		It doesn't sound like a nice existence to us.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But I'm not sure about that.
		This is why I bounce it around because I don't know.
		I don't know if it's better.
		I mean, the idea is that, well, if I'm not a person, well, I'm fucked.
		But is that the ego hanging on to that?
		I mean, is I mean, is some sort of hyper-intelligent, artificial life that's capable of living completely, a completely self-sustaining existence where you're totally solar powered, all garbage or any waste product whatsoever, it's factored immediately into the equation instead of put off like nuclear waste where they just dig a fucking hole and, oh, we'll figure that out later.
		I mean, that's madness to me.
		The nuclear waste issue is one of the most maddening and insane issues ever, where they take these things, they build holes, and then they put it in there, and then they seal it up.
		Like, what are you, a little kid?
		Like, are you fucking crazy?
		That's like what a little kid would do when they have to clean their room.
		They lift up the carpet, they sweep it under, they put the carpet down.
		It's a childish way of approaching an issue instead of having a completely holistic approach to this thing, like, okay, are we going to build this stuff?
		If we are going to build this stuff, what are we going to do about the toxic waste?
		Okay, well, let's factor that in before we move forward and then spend an extra few decades trying to figure out what to do with that shit and then maybe come up with a solution before you ever move forward.
		But we don't do that.
		We have this weird thing that we just sort of put it off and it's childish.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		All companies have quarterly reporting requirements.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		If we just change the financial reporting structure, I wonder if just one year or a five-year instead of this short-term thinking solar panels are at least what has to be factored into corporate planning, as you say, because corporations have gotten a free ride for too long because they never pay the environmental consequences of what they do.
		And we have to change that where they have to be held accountable and responsible for the environmental impact.
		It's not just that you pay $200 for an iPhone.
		You pay $200 for an iPhone, but it costs $2,000 to deal with the environmental impact of the people that are getting cancer from the toxic waste.
		That economic equation has got to change.
		And that's one of the biggest challenges because it's a huge, it's a huge challenge to capitalism.
		It's laying down the gauntlet and saying, look, guys, okay, you can make money, but let's look at the bottom line in the realistic way.
		You're making all this profit, but what are you costing the taxpayers and the rest of society for your profit-making activities?
		How about a little payback here?
		How about some way to compensate for the damage that corporations do?
		And that's the biggest threat that I can see right now.
		The corporations want to own everything.
		They want to corporatize everything.
		And nature is just another commodity as they see it to be owned and exploited.
		And that's the perception that's got to change.
		And maybe one way to do it is to, you know, I think, speaking of hearts and minds, I think if you can get, you know, there are ethical capitalists out there.
		You know, and chances are they're partly ethical because they took psychedelics at some point.
		I mean, Steve Jobs and people like that, you know, and we could name others.
		So, you know, psychedelics are teaching tools to help people kind of understand their place, their responsibilities.
		And, you know, we have to, again, that's part of this.
		It's not that we can't innovate.
		We just have to be realistic about the impact that our actions are having.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We also have this issue with corporations having survival instincts and corporations, this unlimited growth paradigm that is impossible.
		Like what we're talking about with laptops, can we just stop right here?
		No, we can't.
		It's impossible.
		And we also can't stop as far as profit.
		Well, we made this much this quarter, and this quarter we showed a 25% growth.
		Excellent.
		Let's keep moving on.
		By 2075, we should have all the money in the world.
		I mean, that's really what every corporation.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And isn't this what's happening?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		In a sense.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's madness, right?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You've got, what is it, 95% of the wealth concentrated in the 1%, and the rest of us are, you know, the rest of us is quickly devolving into a third world situation.
		And that is economic slavery in a sense.
		I mean, people do what they have to do because they don't have a choice.
		Their economic activity, their priorities are dictated by corporations.
		So this idea that profit is the only thing that a corporation should be concerned with.
		We've got to evolve beyond that.
		Sustainability is more important.
		Helping people's lives be better is more important than profits.
		I mean, sure, profits, but that should be down several notches, I think, on the totem pole in terms of what they identify as important.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it should be like food.
		I think profit should be like food in that you can't eat poison.
		And that if you're eating something and look, we have all these calories.
		Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's fucking killing you.
		Do you understand that you can't eat this?
		This is bad for you.
		Like, don't eat this, but it's got a thousand calories.
		You know, I need calories to wear.
		No, no, no, you don't need those calories.
		That's poison.
		And essentially, the idea of profit is profit overall.
		And profit over humanity, you know, the idea of financial gain over human suffering, like that somehow or another it balances out, is just like eating poison.
		I mean, it really is.
		There should be no profit at all when there's human suffering.
		It should be one of those things where it's factored in, oh, we can't eat this.
		It's poison for humanity.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		And yet a corporation in the U.S., if it does not maximize profit, can be sued by its shareholders.
		That's the law.
		They have a legal responsibility to maximize profit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so crazy.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And so we have to change the laws that are until the shareholders start demanding that they actually act responsibly.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So that's, I don't know how that works, but if the shareholders achieve a higher level of consciousness, maybe they can influence the way the corporations are.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		There was a NASA-funded study looking at collapse of civilizations.
		And one of the major factors is the discrepancy in wealth, that the wealthy people are using up the resources and they're insulated from the effects.
		And then it gets to a point where the people making decisions haven't been thinking about the consequences and the alternatives.
		And something's got to change.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was a fascinating and very terrifying report because this is not someone with any financial interest in relaying this message.
		This is not someone that's selling a solution.
		They're just looking at all the data and going, look, if you just follow these trends, this is where it goes.
		And there's no indication whatsoever that it's going to slow down.
		This is where we're going.
		We have to figure this out before we hit this wall.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		When I was an undergrad, I was in business school until I took five grams of psilocybin mushrooms that I grew in my dormitory closet at the urging of Terrence McKenna's books.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		The older.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		The generic method, how to undermine civilization one jar at a time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or how to lose it.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		I became a radical.
		But I realized that I was fighting a losing battle if I wasn't speaking the same language of making some profit, of appealing to people's business interests.
		It was a long process.
		I wanted to get out of this culture and ended up in China teaching English.
		And I've spent most of the last 10 years in China.
		I'm like a third Chinese now.
unidentified		Really?
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		And I became comfortable analyzing the situation I was in, meeting people on their level.
		One thing being in China teaches you is to be constructive with people, to come at an issue from how they're thinking about it.
		Why is that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why is that?
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		People don't want to lose face.
		So it's a top-down culture.
		So you understand the priorities of a leader, and they have some enlightened interests.
		They have their self-interests as well.
		And you appeal to their better image of themselves.
		What's possible, a win-win situation?
		So I think of myself now as a kind of economic therapist.
		I talk to corporations.
		I talk to NGOs, the campaigning organizations, and I try to help people find a balance.
		What are the win-win situations?
		So the last six years, I've been working with the global sustainability standards, like the Forest Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council.
		And the ESC is modeled on these organizations, that you talk with enough stakeholders and you build consensus through dialogue.
		And you have a transparent process that appeals to companies, it appeals to regulators.
		So take McDonald's, for example.
		They realized that they were catching too much fish from the ocean and it wasn't sustainable.
		So now all McDonald's fish sandwiches are Marine Stewardship Council certified, which means they can sell McFish sandwiches into eternity as long as the oceans are viable for life.
		Or Kimberly Clark was cutting down the rainforests and cutting down the arboreal forests in Canada.
		Now all of their paper products are going to be FSC certified.
		And FSC certifies 15% of the standing forests of the world, which means the people have a fair share.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This reserve stewardship, I think, is really important.
		It's an important word.
		It's got to be reintroduced into corporate thinking and corporate planning as opposed to profits.
		I mean, we all have a stake in survival.
		Not everybody has a stake in profits.
		The shareholders have a stake in profits.
		But there's no profits if we don't survive if this whole shooting match collapses.
		So the concept of stewardship, and I think that is really important to get that message out.
		And that's what people like Josh are trying to do.
		And I think psychedelics have a role to play, absolutely, in educating.
		I mean, it's interesting.
		It's going to be a while, I think, before ayahuasca gets integrated in this country in a way, for example, in therapy and in biomedicine.
		It's not going to happen.
		But what you do see happening are these centers that are growing up.
		And right now, it's in South America and Josh and Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council are trying to develop standards for these organizations so that they're committed to a certain ethical set of standards, safety and quality of their brew and so on.
		But I can envision a time not too far in the future where if a person, you know, you can go to South America and if you have issues, if you have sickness, addiction or whatever, you can get treatment.
		But even more importantly, you can just get an education.
		You can just get, you can go there for purposes of spiritual discovery and self-discovery and all that.
		Once you have that infrastructure, which is growing, then it partly becomes, you know, we need to get people in positions of power, corporate CEOs, other government leaders and so on, to go and have these experiences.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the big one, right?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, you can't hold them in a headlock and force them to drink ayahuasca, although I'd like to a lot of the time.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		They're catalysts for creativity.
		Take your marketing team to South America and have a ceremony together.
		Exactly.
		Rebrand your company.
		Exactly.
		Increase your profits in the process and the benefits to people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's people have.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's where the economic, that's where the business model comes in.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People have a negative reaction to that.
		And I know this personally firsthand because I have a business on it.
		Onit.com is a company we sell exercise equipment and supplements and healthy foods.
		And one of the ways that Onit was created was my partner Aubrey and I talking about it and Aubrey going to South America, doing ayahuasca, and then having these visions about his business.
		And when he talked about that, he was met with so much criticism.
		So many people were like, oh, you're down there doing ayahuasca, thinking about your business.
		Oh, that's so gross.
		Oh, that's so base.
		That's so egocentric.
		That's so anti, you know, the message of the plant.
		But it's creativity.
		And creativity, it manifests itself in a million different ways.
		And the idea of business equals evil really has to get, we have to get past that.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		We have to get past that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We all exchange.
		It's not evil if some guy could fix your car.
		It's not evil if someone can fix your refrigerator so you can store food.
		All those things are businesses.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		It's not evil if you buy fair trade coffee that promotes biodiversity and farmers can send their kids to school.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So it is.
		It's win-win.
		It's possible to develop these economic models.
		And I totally disagree with your partner's critics.
		Your partner is exactly right on.
		And it's okay.
		He, with his background, I assume it's a he, goes to South America, and he already has the mindset, right?
		But then ayahuasca is a way to sort of flesh out the vision, if you were.
		I mean, he went there to learn something, and boy, did he learn something.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, he clearly, he went through a bunch of other things about his life.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you've got to get the personal shit clear first in your family history.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Open up that my old bullshit folder.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Get hit over the head.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Not that any one of us here has done that completely.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's enough.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's the process.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		No, no doubt about it.
		I got a tank session scheduled for tonight.
		We've got some stuff to work out.
		The word ethical company or the expression ethical company, I think, is a big one.
		And I think that this idea of the psychedelic experience for those who haven't experienced it or for those who, oh, I dropped acid in college, but I'm past that now.
		I've got a 401k and a mortgage and college bills for my kids.
		And I have a lot of things to cover.
		I've never passed it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's an excuse for not wanting to confront it.
		That's just self-delusion, really.
		Nobody's ever passed it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, no one ever's ever.
		If you're a human being and you have, I mean, you're a constant sort of soup of chemicals, neurotransmitters, adrenaline, hormones, all these different things are going on.
		You're trying to maintain balances and keep everything aligned and then keep the pattern of thought in a good place so that it maintains everything as well.
		I think that to these people that are perpetrating a lot of the issues that we have, whether it's the head of BP or, you know, to take some guy who wants to frack, you know, and say, before you do that, do this first, you know, and then let's talk.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Confronted with your own mortality.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It should almost be mandatory.
		I mean, you should show that you, but when before you start fracking, you should show that you have a degree, that you understand the actual physical process of removing these chemicals.
		You should understand, you know, whatever energy extraction degrees you have to have and whatever sciences that pertain to that.
		But you should also have psychedelic trips under your belt.
		Like you could say, well, you know, here, I've seen your documentation.
		You've gone through your five grams, and what did you get out of that?
		You know what I mean?
		Like, it should be one of those things where it's reviewed.
		Like, okay, you haven't?
		Hmm.
		And, okay, you've gotten that off your list before you proceed.
		Yeah, there should be like a presidential council for psychological fitness.
		And they sit you down, they go, you don't have any psychedelic experiences on your reason.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		You have to study the brain.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what are you doing opening up a fucking company that digs holes in the ground?
		You don't have any psychedelic experiences.
		That's a recipe for disaster.
		So you're missing a key component.
		You're missing this connection to the Mother Earth via some unfathomable experience that literally is impossible to describe.
		So you're missing that part.
		So go get that and then come back and then we'll talk about your business.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Or people in the Department of Defense or the Veterans Affairs that are dealing with all these soldiers with PTSD.
		Another important aspect of the symposia conference is a new organization called VET.
		It's Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's great.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		The founders participated in the MAPS PTSD study with MDMA, and they came away feeling so much better.
		And they want to open this up to other veterans and others suffering from PTSD.
		So a portion of the proceeds from the Amherst conference and the live, the online live participation will go to this organization and to the ESC.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's spectacular.
		I'm a huge, huge fan of MAPS.
		I've had Rick Doblin on the podcast before, who's just a fantastic guy.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		He's an amazing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they just tweeted me something and I retweeted it about they did a new study on autism, adult autism, MDMA assisted therapy for social anxiety in autistic adults and some amazing, amazing.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Dinner with Charlie Grove working.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Was he working on that?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		He's Charlie Grobe, who's at UCLA.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		He's one of our Hefter superstars, if you will.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ham, so we can get him on the podcast.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		R-O-B, Charles Grove.
		He's at Harbor UCLA.
		He's done a psilocybin end-of-life study.
		He's a member of the Hefter board.
		I may as well plug Hefter here.
		We're the sort of small organization that nobody knows about, Hefter.org.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like Heifer, like a cow?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No, no, H-E-F-F-T-E-R, not Heftner, but Hefter.
		And it's a nonprofit.
		And basically, we're committed to clinical developing clinical protocols with psychedelics and have kind of staked out psilocybin in some ways in the same way that MDMA is MAPS's thing, psilocybin is our thing.
		And we've got several really interesting protocols.
		FDA approved clinical studies right now for end-of-life existential anxiety at the end of life for exploring actually what you might call experimental mysticism because psilocybin can reliably induce mystical states.
		Roland Griffith's work at Johns Hopkins has shown this.
		So it's an actual tool for the first time.
		We're actually able to approach transcendent states of mind in a controlled clinical setting.
		We can reliably induce these states and then study what's the brain doing when you're in a state of psilocybin-induced mysticism.
		Well, it's doing a lot of things similar to the state of a mystical experience when it's on the Natchez or whatever.
		I'm not sure that even, but anyway, Hefter.org, most of the leading researchers in psychedelic science right now are either on our board or being funded by Hefter.
		And so we have funding and we're focusing on psilocybin.
		And we work closely with MAPS, but MAPS gets all the attention, which is fine.
		They're doing beautiful work, but we're also doing effective, important things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, Will, we'll certainly get some people to you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Hefter, H-E-F-F-T-E-R.org.org.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Named after Arthur Hefter, actually, who's the 19th century scientist, the first person to isolate mescaline in a pure form from peyote and demonstrate that it was the main ingredient of peyote based on self-experiments.
		And he kind of exemplifies what we like to identify with, you know, good science driven by curiosity and ethics.
		And yeah, it's a good organization.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The psilocybin connection to dimethyltryptamine, dimethyltryptamine being an endogenous chemical and neurotransmitter, and psilocybin being very close.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Very close.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is the exact – like what's the chemical?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Very simple.
		Dimethyltryptamine is simply dimethyltryptamine.
		Psilicin, which is the active principle of psilocybin, psilocybin is converted to psilocy in the body.
		So it's what pharmacologists call a prodrug.
		It's converted by a very simple chemical reaction to psilicin.
		That's the one that actually interacts with the receptors.
		So psilicin is chemically 4-hydroxy dimethyltryptamine.
		So it differs with one trivial substitution on the indole ring.
		That oxygen, that alcohol group at the top of the indole ring is what makes it psilicin and not DMT.
		But it makes all the difference pharmacologically because psilicin is orally active and it doesn't require an MAO inhibitor and DMT does if you need, that's the ayahuasca secret.
		You know, DMT plus MAO inhibitor makes the orally active preparation.
		By itself, DMT is not orally active.
		So you have to take it parentally by smoking it or indigenous people make snuff out of it and so on.
		They get around that whole detoxification mechanism.
		Your gut is full of MAO, monoamine oxidase.
		And the reason it's full of monoamine oxidase, it's a consequence of our evolution as omnivores, because plants are full of amines.
		Most of them are toxic and you don't want those.
		So you have the detoxification mechanism, but that also works for DMT.
		And for that matter, we can't be dining on DMT-containing plants all the time and wandering around.
		I mean, you do need to be able to function in the world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Your brother had a fascinating idea about the idea of panspermia in relationship to psilocybin.
		That psilocybin being the...
		How did you...
		What is the exact nomenclature again?
		Four hydroxy...
		4-hydroxy-dimethylotryptamine.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Psilocybin, I don't want to get bogged down in chemistry, but psilocybin, for the chemists among you, it's got a phosphoryl group, and that phosphoryl group is cleaved off, and that yields psilocy.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Psilicin is 4-hydroxy-dimethyltryptamine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what is psilocybin?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And psilocybin is 4-phosphoral dimethyltryptamine.
		So it's got that phosphoral group.
		That makes it stable, right?
		So that's the form it's stored in in the mushroom, and it can be quite stable for a long time.
		As soon as you convert it to psilicin, it's very unstable and it's ephemeral, which is one reason why it's so easily metabolized by human metabolism.
		It's very compatible with human metabolism, which is a reason why it's so, you know, it's appropriate.
		You can give it to people who are quite ill, you know, in terminal states and so on.
		can tolerate.
		It's not a...
		It goes through human organism like ice water.
		It's very easily handled.
		But we don't want to get too down the road.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, it's absolutely fascinating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The idea that your brother was promoting was that this may have come from another planet and that what you might be eating when you're eating mushrooms is you're eating some sort of an intelligence, which is the weirdest thing about mushrooms is that it feels like they're talking to you.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You certainly do have that impression.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This I, thou dynamic that's set up.
		And the content, which I guess not everybody has this, you know, this feeling of this science fiction-ish cast to the experience, but many people do, and they're not all Terence McKenna fans.
		I mean, if you follow the Terrence McKenna recipe and eat five grams in the absolute darkness, you'll be utterly convinced that they've landed.
		I mean, they're here.
		And whether that's just an impression or whether it's, you know, again, I think this is possibly something, you know, built into the structure of our nervous system.
		And it may be, I mean, we've always had this fascination with space, with, you know, with the external, you know, with this sort of longing to maybe return to space.
		Maybe that's where we came from.
		I don't know.
		But certainly in this evolutionary process of cognition, you know, which we credit the plants for, if we want to buy into that idea, we credit the plants for bringing about cognition, the ability to wonder, the ability to speculate.
		Well, you can't wonder very much if you're looking down at the ground all the time.
		You got to look up.
		And when you look up, oh, you know, there's this whole universe out here.
		And what's our connection to that?
		We've always had this intuition that there is a connection.
		I mean, I don't go so far as to say, people ridicule the idea that mushrooms might have come from outer space and so on.
		And on the surface, it seems like a ridiculous idea, but you look a little deeper and maybe not so much.
		It's certainly possible.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		That spores are one of the hardest substances in nature and they can survive for vacuum and radiation-dense environments, and they're not affected by it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The other thing that your brother had mentioned was that it was so different than other life forms on Earth because of its chemical makeup, that he thought that the four hydroxy or four phosphorolic hydrogen.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the four-hydroxy, four-phosphoral biosynthetic pathway is really only found in this group of mushrooms, you know, actually, and related species.
		He wasn't a biochemist.
		I don't know if I agree with that.
		I mean, mushrooms are so clearly a part of, you know, earthly evolution that you can't really say that they stand outside of it.
		I mean, we know that's true.
		I think if you want to make that hypothesis, you have to go further back and you have to say, well, you know, maybe a super civilization seeded our ecology at some point, not with the genes to make silicon, but the genes to make tryptophan.
		And now tryptophan, all these silicon and serotonin and all these tryptamines come from tryptophan.
		And tryptophan is one of those 20 amino acids that make up proteins.
		So tryptophan is universally found in all organisms.
		It's an essential molecule of life, right?
		It's found in everything.
		But two trivial steps away from tryptophan, two trivial enzymatic modifications away from tryptophan, you've got DMT.
		You remove the carboxyl group, you stick a couple methyl groups on tryptophan, and there you are.
		You've got DMT.
		And I've often thought, wow, maybe this is a sort of sub-text, sub-message of nature saying just around the corner, just around the corner from tryptophan is this compound that opens the door to other dimensions.
		Pay attention, monkeys.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's also fascinating that tryptophan converts to, it eventually converts to serotonin.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Serotonin is just another tryptamine.
		In fact, chemically, serotonin is 5-hydroxy-tryptamine.
		Silicon is 4-hydroxy-dimethyltryptamine.
		Bufotinine, another one of these hallucinogens, is 5-hydroxy-dimethyltryptamine.
		So they're all very close to each other.
		You see the diagrams.
		Oh, hell, there you are.
		There you go.
		Right.
		So you can see how it works.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The idea that mushrooms come from outer space seems ridiculous to some folks, but the reality is we're made out of stars.
		We are made out of stars.
		Everything comes from outer space.
		And I think that as we get further along in our understanding of the universe, I think we're going to realize that everything is kind of fractal.
		And there really is no separation between this planet and other planets.
		The whole thing is just one big soup.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Right, exactly.
		And, you know, any prebiotic environment, I mean, we don't know that much about exactly how life evolved, but we know that in certain situations, you've got a buildup of organic compounds.
		And under the right circumstances, it just seems to be a property of matter.
		You know, atoms, molecules fall together in such a way that before you know it, you've got living systems.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You've brought this up twice, and I can't ignore it because you brought it up in the last podcast as well.
		You are fascinated by the idea of life being seeded here by some intelligent force.
		Amber Lyon, who I just discussed earlier, she had a vision of that actually happening on ayahuasca.
		And many other people have as well.
		Do you think that that's something that is a real possibility?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		That's a heavy one.
		When you bring that one up, you get thrown into that certain category right away.
		Oh, Dennis McKenna's fucking.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you've got to read my book.
		I mean, we actually, in my book, I mean, my book.
		Oh, the latest one, the only latest one I wrote, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's the one you promoted last time you were on here, which is excellent.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for that.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That was really good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If you haven't bought it, please, folks, go buy it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's fantastic.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You really gave it a boost.
		But I actually talk about that, talk about this at some length about this idea.
		Could this really be?
		And I'm trying to discuss it from the standpoint of a critic of the idea, say, well, that's totally ridiculous.
		How could that be?
		And they just dismiss it.
		I try to go a little deeper into it and say, well, wait a minute, let's step back from this a little bit.
		And if you think about our existential situation, how unlikely it is that we are even here, that consciousness exists, that this civilization exists.
		I mean, from the standpoint of the improbables, we're living in a very improbable situation.
		I don't think this is going on.
		I think that life is probably widespread in the universe, but I think intelligence is rare.
		And the fact that we find ourselves in that existential situation, maybe we need to take another look at this and say, well, maybe this is not such a crazy idea.
		I do think that intelligence are not the only ones.
		And I think, you know, I don't know if I'm degenerating into incoherence here, but I think that intelligence can have an influence on the evolution of even the universe.
		It's a force in the universe.
		And I think that mind is probably, you know, as primary a feature of reality as the quantum foam.
		I mean, it may not even be separate from it.
		So it's okay to say we don't know.
		And one of the problems with science is it tends to be arrogant.
		It tends to assume that it knows a lot more than it knows.
		And we actually have a very detailed understanding scientifically of very small pieces of reality.
		And so there's a tendency to say, well, we've got it all figured out.
		No, you haven't got it figured out.
		You haven't got even a tenth of it figured out.
		Which is another useful message that ayahuasca and other entheogens, other psychedelics remind us of.
		I mean, ayahuasca never fails to remind me and a lot of people, remember, you don't know shit.
		You don't know shit.
		So get off your high horse and be a little more humble and be open to learning.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's all right in front of us if we go back and look at what we know about human history and what they knew and how we laugh at what they knew then.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know, if we go back to the time when they thought the world was flat, back to the time where they were killing Bruno because he thought that the universe was infinite.
		I mean, there's all these different things that people had a consensus on that were absolutely incorrect that we go, oh, back then we were foolish.
		That was a blink of an eye ago.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
		And so the message is beware of what everybody knows.
		Beware of cultural consensus because chances are in 100 years, what we thought we knew will just be seen in that light.
		I mean, we were so stupid back then.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's also one of those things, too, when you're discussing aliens and you're discussing the possibility of an alien life form.
		We want to think it's preposterous, but we're preposterous.
		If we didn't exist, oh my God, we would be the most ridiculous thing ever preposterous.
		Behind me, dead people that were locked in a cage, and I honor them.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		We're ridiculous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Look at those photos behind me of Jimi Hendrix.
		And the Elvis actually apparently wasn't really a mugshot.
		He was just a law enforcement nut and wanted to get his picture, which is even more ridiculous.
		He loved the fact that people got locked into cages so much.
		He wanted to get a fake picture of him locked in a cages.
		Most likely was high as fuck on pills.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		And he was Lucy Nixon to be a drug enforcement agent.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then this woman, Rosa Parks, she got arrested because she had too much melanin in her skin to sit in a certain spot on a moving piece of transportation, and then she was celebrated as a hero.
		I mean, we're fucking crazy, right?
		Totally.
		Just the fact that we exist at all, why would we deny the idea that something else far more advanced than us exists somewhere else?
		No different than us looking at, you know, when we find primates using tools, you know, evidence of using tools without any human intervention, like they just figured out how to do it on their own, like to get ants out of anthills and things like that.
		We're fascinated by it.
		Amazing.
		Look what we've discovered.
		Jesus Christ, that's easy shit.
		You know, like compare us to something else.
		They would probably look at us the same way.
		Look at these dummies.
		They're worshiping people that were locked in cages.
		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You're a hero because you're sitting in a different spot.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's the thing.
		We're an experiment of some sort.
		And whether, you know, we're, you know, some civilization, some super civilization has genetically engineered this whole ecosystem and created tryptophan and then seeded it into the ecosystem, knowing that over the course of evolutionary time, it was going to develop things like psilocybin and serotonin.
		It's almost as though the civilization, this hypothetical civilization, wanted somebody to talk to.
		And in order to do that, it had to invent us primates, you know, and it had to get us talking first to our plants.
		And maybe eventually we'll get a chance to talk to them, whoever they are, you know, or maybe they're already here.
		I mean, there are a lot of people who say they're already here, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And I don't.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Who knows?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The other problem is there's so many people that are full of shit.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is an area where flakiness flourishes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, hugely.
		I had this sci-fi show, and we stopped doing it for, and they wanted to keep doing it, but I didn't want to do it anymore because I got tired of talking to liars.
		I couldn't handle it anymore.
		We interviewed Bigfoot people and UFO people, and some of them are well-intentioned folks, but there was a lot of liars.
		There was a lot of people that were just, there was a psychological issue, and I could clearly see it.
		Because when you have a podcast with someone and you sit down with someone for three hours, you can bullshit someone for a seven-minute interview on a news show, but you can't bullshit someone for three hours.
		After three hours, weird things start to show up, like weird patterns.
		You just can't keep the rhythm up, so to speak.
		Especially if you could do multiple podcasts, like I'll crack you after two or three.
		I'll find you.
		You might be very clever, but after two or three, little things get exposed.
unidentified		You're like, hmm, reveal the basis.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's impossible to keep the rhythm going.
		It's just after a while, if you're full of shit, you're full of shit also to yourself.
		And that's something that I've found: is that people that are constantly deceptive, they're also internally deceptive.
		And that manifests itself in weird things that they say that they don't even realize are bizarre.
		Because they're also easier to trick themselves, I think, because I think they lose their ability to really see things objectively.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		I like falsifiable facts, things that you can prove that that's true or not.
		And the scientific method is important.
		And all this theoretical conversation is nice about whether we have the imprints of other civilizations in our ecosystem.
		But the fact is we have an ecosystem and we have maybe we delude ourselves that we have some control over its evolution or stewardship of it, but we certainly have this opportunity to either destroy the planet or preserve it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, we certainly have an effect and we're certainly conscious in some way, shape, or form of that effect.
		And when you extrapolate that to 100,000, a million years from now, if this civilization or something similar survives, well, you got to think that it's going to be something like an alien invasion.
		We really will be like that thing that wants to see the universe.
		If we recognize that.
		Especially if we, I mean, if you're an intelligent being and you recognize that a star is a finite, a star is only good to support life for another billion years.
		That's not a lot of time if you really stop and think about how long time has existed on Earth.
		And if you were an intelligent species that lived 100 million years from now and you're like, hey, you know, we only have nine more of these to go.
		We have nine more of these 100 million cycles and then we're fucked.
		Then the sun burns out and there's no life here.
		We've got to get moving.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		That's an interesting stuck here.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's very interesting.
		I've often thought that these cosmological models, I think we got more than a billion years.
		The cosmological models say 10 to 100 billion years, maybe a trillion years.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think of life with the sun.
		I think that that there.
		Oh, yeah.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		The sun doesn't have to support life.
		It's got maybe four billion years.
		But if we haven't figured out how to get out by that time, we're not paying attention to these cosmologies.
		Or get in.
		Exactly.
		Or get in.
		That's a very important point.
		That, you know, I mean, this, I've been told on psychedelics many times: the only way out is to go in.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You know, but this, you know, these cosmological models, if you look at them, which are kind of dreary and depressing when you think about it, you know, it's just now the current model is just endless expansion and not only expansion, but accelerating expansion.
		You're talking about the heat death of the universe and, you know, not very much interesting is going to happen.
		But the key factor that these models do not integrate into their planning is mind and consciousness.
		You know, that makes all the difference.
		That's, you know, if you look far enough ahead, that's going to affect the way the cosmos evolves.
		And, you know, and they don't take that into account, and it's impossible to really know what the effects of it is.
		But I don't buy the fact that it's all going to just kind of peter out and finally the last flicker is going to go out and it's just darkness and cold.
		I don't buy that.
		I mean, surely there's got to be more to it than that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, the inward trip might be what we're missing.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And the inward trip may be.
		Yeah, exactly.
		I mean, if you look at quantum models and we know there's, you know, three dimensions of space and one of time, but then there's the, what is it, the six or eight other dimensions that are all folded in and you don't see that, but what's in there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		What's in there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the feeling that you get on dimethyltryptamine is that you've entered into a new area, a new space, and that the space is somehow or another inhabited with something that's communicating in some non-verbal form that reaches you as intent.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It reaches you like intent.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that might be where consciousness is headed once we free ourselves from this sort of carbon-based shell that we're clinging to.
		That we might figure that out.
		They're like, oh, we were at a rest stop.
		We didn't realize that we could drive just a couple miles down the road and there's the fucking Yellowstone National Park.
		Like we thought, we thought that the rest stopped.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's where we were going.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we're just eating shitty food and breathing trucker farts.
		And we thought that that's all there was.
		Oh my God, we just had to just figure it out.
		Yeah.
		I don't dismiss that possibility.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this I-thou relationship that we say that again, I-thou?
		I-thou, this thing that mushrooms, other psychedelics, but especially mushrooms, seem to set up this dialogue situation, you know, and you're getting this information, but it's very hard to evaluate whether it's bullshit or whether there's something to it.
		My brother used to play games with the mushrooms, you know, when he would take them at these high doses alone and say, Well, how do I know that what you're telling me is real?
		Tell me something I cannot possibly know, you know.
		And they would never, they would never cough it up because it was like, you know, but it was like, all right, I want the blueprints to the starship now.
		You know, download the blueprints now, and I'll believe that you're, you know, that you are what you say you are.
		And they're very evasive.
		You know, they never give you that kind of thing.
		You know, but they, so, you know, I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I have this thought on, and for people who have heard this podcast, unfortunately, I have to repeat myself.
		I have this idea that, you know, we have this dismissal of psychedelic experience as hallucination and hallucination being frivolous.
		And my thought is that if you absorb some sort of a psychedelic compound and have this intense moment where you do pass into another dimension and you meet with pure love and the very wiring of the universe is exposed to you and you get to see the fractal nature of reality in some incredibly profound form and that is what you're actually experiencing.
		Or if it's just your imagination and you go there and it's all in your mind, but you have the exact same experience, it's still the same.
		Like this idea that everything that's real has to be, you have to be able to take a tape measure and touch it, that you have to be able to put it on a scale, that you have to be able to quantify the ingredients.
		Oh, well, it's made out of aluminum and this is glass and the keyboard is plastic.
		Now I know a laptop's real.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But I'm here to tell you, it's all hallucination.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right?
		I mean, we dwell in a hallucination.
		That's what that's what the brain does.
		It creates a model of reality that is that we live in.
		We never experience reality.
		I mean, we take it on faith, really, that there's an external reality out there, but everything comes to us through the filter and is processed and extruded, if you will, into a more or less comprehensible, most of the time, model of reality.
		And that's where we live.
		Reality is out there somewhere.
		It's unknowable, you know, but we're getting signals through this sensory neural interface.
		And then the brain is basically a processing device that takes that information, combines it with internal associations and everything, and generates the hallucination that you and I and everybody else are living in at this very moment.
		You know, we're all part of this constructed reality.
		So people dismiss it as, you know, psychedelic experience as hallucination.
		I would say, no, it is, but it's just another hallucination.
		And it's all hallucination.
		It's all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or at least interpretation of something, personal interpretation.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, personal interpretation.
		I mean, the world, physics, we know enough through physics about this supposedly external reality to know that it doesn't look anything like what we're experiencing.
		You know, it's all buzzing electrons.
		Most of it's empty space.
		This table is not solid.
		It's mostly empty space.
		It's all energy and energy fluxes.
		We don't experience the world that way most of the time.
		Sometimes on psychedelics we do.
		So maybe we're getting an actual peek into the way it's really constructed.
		We get to look at the circuit board and turn it over temporarily and look at it.
		Oh, this is how it's wired.
		This is the reality generating machine that you get to look at when you strip away when you take the cover off and look at the way the diagram is wired.
		Then you get some insights into it.
		So then that's a useful thing because then you can go back and you can say, well, none of this is real.
		Let's not get carried away that this is any more real than anything else.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that seems to be like the information that's coming from folks that study subatomic particles.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That information is one of the most undeniable pieces of information that the universe is not what you think it is.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's not what you think it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's impossible for it to be what you think it is when you study subatomic particles.
		When you study things that can exist in two places at the same time, like, what are you talking about?
		Like, they blink in and out of existence.
		What does that mean?
		Well, they go away.
		What do you mean they go away?
		They go and they come back.
		What the fuck are you saying?
		They go away and they come back.
		Are they here?
		Are they not here?
		Well, they are and they're not.
		Well, they move, yes, but they also stand still at the same time.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		What?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like superposition.
		Like when someone, I had Dr. Admit Goswami, he's a theoretical physicist.
		He tried to explain superposition to me.
		And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
		It's moving and it's still at the same time.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right, right, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What are you talking about?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, what does that mean?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So here you have physics, you know, the absolute sort of cutting-edge science, the one that we've charged with explaining the fundamental nature of reality.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And you talk to these people, and it sounds like the ravings of schizophrenia.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It sounds like someone who's on drugs.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it does indeed.
		It sounds like someone who they have the mathematics and the measurements and all that to back it up and say, look, I'm sorry.
		This is how it is.
		This is what our math and our instruments tell us.
		If you want to trust that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like we sent a scout and the scout went over the top of the hill and saw the impossible and came back and go, okay.
		Yeah, don't go over there.
		It becomes a rainbow that talks to you.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		That is, it's fascinating because the explanations of reality by these physicists are, in fact, more bizarre than the experiences that are relayed by people who take ayahuasca.
		Absolutely.
		Those are way more believable.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Than particles in superposition or the fact that it's all empty space moving in a vibration.
		And why do you, what the fuck?
		No, it's wood, man.
		What are you talking about?
		This is wood.
		Hear it?
		That's not.
		I hit you over the head.
		That shit's going to hurt.
		This is real.
		There's no empty space there, dude.
		You're crazy.
		But no, that is what it is.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's all real.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You know, anything you experience, you can't dismiss it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You can't say it's not real.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's just not necessarily the absolute reality.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And I don't know if there is an absolute reality.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I agree with you.
		And I think that's also one of the transformative parts of the psychedelic experience, that the experience itself is transformative because you're experiencing it.
		It doesn't matter if it's not real.
		What does that mean?
		It means nothing.
		It means nothing, not real.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		These are dualistic delusions.
		None of it's real.
		It's all real.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So established, established fact that when you get to the lowest measurable portion of reality, when you get to subatomic particles, it's fucking magic.
		So let's go from there.
		And then let's look at, well, it's all in your imagination.
		Well, let's look at what that means because everything you see on this planet that a human being has made has somehow or other popped out of the imagination.
		The imagination is a factory for televisions and the internet and airplanes and condoms and eyeglasses and laptops.
		I mean, the imagination is a motherfucker.
		And we have this idea that the imagination is this frivolous thing.
		Oh, Billy just sits in the field and imagines what the world could be.
		How about you dig a ditch, Billy?
		How about you go to work, Billy?
		Hammer some nails and be a man.
		Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and stop crying because you're freaking out about the fact that everything's air.
		Everything's particles.
		No, the whole thing.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Or you sit in a field and you take LSD and you're Steve Jobs and you have all these fantasies, except then you actually make it happen.
		You create the Apple computer or whatever.
		And that was a psychedelic vision and was at the time and remains so.
		And, you know, this thing here, I mean, this is the little psychedelic toy of the future.
		You know, it's in my hand that it exists.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you ask it questions and it goes online and it gives you the answers to the entire volume of human understanding on that subject, the consensus.
		This is, you know, like you were just explaining what the chemical definition of oscillosin is or the description of it.
		You can find that out like that.
		I had to go to you.
		You're an expert.
		You came to me with your education.
		You explained it to me.
		But anyone can do that with their phone.
		Just tapped into the database.
unidentified		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So that's a threshold we've crossed in the last decade or so, where basically the sum total of human knowledge is right here.
		And that's incredible for transformation, for creative thinking, all of these things.
		That's something we've never had before.
		That and the connectivity.
		The other thing is now there's 7 billion people or something like that on the planet.
		you know I don't know what the statistics are but 4 billion of them have cell phones you know so we've created I mean they don't all have smart phones but they got some kind of a cell phone And so they are tapped into this database, and that's making a big difference in the way that, you know, formerly disenfranchised populations interact.
		I mean, you know, you're a fish farmer and you have some fish to sell.
		You can go on your cell phone and say, oh, well, you know, if I go to this village here, I'll get a better price for that.
		A trivial thing, but in fact, that decision affects commerce on a global scale if enough people are tapped into that.
		Anyway.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Your brother was obsessed with December 21st, 2012 being some sort of a transformative moment in our history.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And a lot of people were, me included.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I guess we can put that one to rest.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I guess we can, but can we?
		That's one of the things that I've been thinking of.
		Yeah, yes, as a specific day.
		But if you really look at the tipping point of technology and our connectivity, and that's kind of where whether it's 2008 or 2012, when you're looking at it a thousand years from now, when they talk about the Renaissance, when they talk about whatever great periods of human history, very gigantic periods of change, this is going to be one of the biggest ever.
		And it really will boil down to these decades or at least these few years.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So his error, I thought, is I was kind of a critic of the time wave for exactly this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		For folks who don't know, explain what that means.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, his idea that he created a mathematical model based on the I Ching that he claimed described the structure of time.
		I mean, he postulated that time had a structure and time had an end, or at least history had an end, and that that end was December 21st, 2012.
		And there's linkages to the Mayan calendar, which supposedly said similar things.
		It was a mistake to link it to a particular day, I think.
		That's not the way that novelty, the idea was that this wave described the way that novelty ingressed into the continuum.
		Well, I think that novelty ingresses in the continuum.
		I mean, every day there's something new under the sun.
		There's something that's never happened before in the history of the universe.
		It happens.
		But it doesn't explode into the continuum.
		It's more like it seeps into the continuum.
		But change does happen.
		And we're going through a period of tremendous change, but it's not linked to a particular day.
		So what I say is he was wrong as far as the particulars were concerned.
		It wasn't December 21st, 2012.
		But he was totally right in terms of the idea that novelty does increase and it has increased and it's increased.
		It's increasing and it's accelerating and all you have to do is look around.
		And he was clearly right.
		I mean, if you look at where we are now, even from where we were 10 years ago and even 20 years, can any of us even remember what it was like 20 years ago?
		I mean, the world has completely transformed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So he was correct in that sense, you know, that things are changing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe in just putting a date to it and giving people something to focus on, he made the idea more tangible for some.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It made it more tangible, but I think it wasn't, I think it was not necessarily a good strategy because people were giving into the temptation of focusing on that date.
		And it was either on that date, either everything's going to collapse or we'll cross the threshold and everything will be great.
		And it was kind of a, you know, consciousness will be transformed and we'll be in this golden state.
		And I thought it was kind of a for many people, it was an excuse for not taking responsibility.
		I mean, and just all we have to do is wait and it'll all work out.
		No, you know, that's not taking responsibility.
		We've got to get cracking now.
		We can't wait.
		We can't wait.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So now that it didn't happen.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So the message is the same.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		We've got to get cracking.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And we can relax.
		Yeah.
		Okay.
		The aliens didn't land.
		No wormholes appeared before our eyes.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		None of that happened.
		But it doesn't mean that things aren't happening.
		And, you know, things that make change, I think, happen quietly.
		You know, they're not noticed.
		They're not tremendous.
		You know, with obvious exceptions.
		Like, you know, yeah, global asteroid impact.
		I mean, hey, that's abrupt and it's transforming, no doubt, but that only happens once every few million years.
		Events normally don't explode into history that way.
		I mean, Terrence used to talk about the first explosion of the atomic bomb.
		You know, well, that was an abrupt event, but not really.
		I mean, when did the actual novelty take place?
		Was it when Einstein developed the equations that described nuclear fusion, or was it the fission, rather, or was it the point where we achieved the first sustained nuclear reaction?
		I mean, these were not things that anybody noticed at the time, but those were the transformative events that made it possible to, a couple decades later, drop the atom on the atom bomb on Hiroshima.
		And that's the one that got the headlines, but that wasn't really the roots of the novelty, if you know what I'm saying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, I totally know what you're saying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it seems that they all pile onto each other as well.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They pile onto each other and they're cumulative, exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And we haven't even started.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Most likely.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No, we haven't started.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is why the concept of an alien invasion seems so ridiculous to us based on our current capabilities.
		But so inevitable when you think about the fact that we've got robots wandering around on Mars right now as we speak.
		I mean, what would we think we're going to do?
		I mean, what we do, the most spectacular thing we do, we have two things we do.
		We blow shit up and we explore space.
		Those are the two things that gather the most attention.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know, we can blow up a city or we can send a robot to wander around on Mars and send back videos.
		And you're like, holy shit.
		Those are the two, you know, like very distinctly different, but this almost exemplifies the limits of our power.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we have the power to completely, you know, disrupt the whole shooting match and just it all turns into radioactive slag or we escape some way.
		And I think, you know, I think it's wonderful that we can send robots to Mars and all this, but space is so vast, it's never really going to become accessible to us unless we can figure out this hyper-light thing.
		And I don't know if it's traveling hyper, you know, traveling faster than light or figuring out how to open up a portal.
		I mean, this idea that you know there's Newtonian space separated by this vast distance is, I don't buy it.
		I think there's a way to get from one place to another without going through Newton.
		You know, hyperspace is a real thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it might get down to to learn how to navigate it.
		It might get down to we just have to be stopped being carbon-based life forms.
		That might be real space travel.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right, right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It may end up that way, too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you look at the possibility that dimethyltryptamine and similar psychedelics are a gateway to some other thing, whether it's another dimension, another state of being, another access to a part of the mind that doesn't exist.
		Do you think that that is that is that something that I'm trying to figure out how to say this, but is that something that is like it's going to take a long time before that's something that you could pass off to other folks that haven't experienced that and have them accept it?
		And is there a bridge to sort of getting them to consider these ideas?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I really, I don't know.
		I mean, the bridge, the most convincing thing is, you know, here's the pipe, smoke the pipe.
		You don't need me to tell you.
		As you mentioned before, and it's quite true, one of the beautiful things about psychedelics is you don't have to have faith.
		All you have to have is courage.
		You know, you have to have enough courage to sit down and put that pipe to your lips.
		And, you know, we can get beyond this conversation very quickly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Then we can have the real conversation about what does all that mean?
		What happened?
		And what is the real, what happened?
		Are we, you know, are you tapping into some external, again, these ridiculous words that are dualistic and hence, you know, but are you tapping into some dimension that is not part of you?
		Or is it, or are you looking at, you know, a certain neurochemical brain state that doesn't go beyond that?
		And then it's like we can fall back on what we were saying.
		Everything you experience is a neurochemical brain state, right?
		That's what we are.
		That's what our brain does.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you define it?
		Do you define it yourself?
		Like when you do it, what do you think has happened?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		DMT?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is the most profound one?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I think, well, it's, you know, the problem with psychedelics, one of the problems that we experience with psychedelics is they are essentially unlanguageable.
		They're beyond language.
		And you take DMT or something like it that has such a profound impact.
		I mean, you probably noticed it in yourself.
		You're not even down from the experience before you're trying to box it into some kind of a linguistic box that's, you know, and you're reaching out and you're babbling and you're saying, that's it, that's it, or my God, my God.
		Or, you know, but you're trying to put it into some kind of a linguistic box because it's incomprehensible by nature.
		It's incomprehensible.
		It's like trying to describe what God looks like.
		It is by definition undescribable.
		And so, but our brain wants to conceptualize things.
		So whatever model you create of what it is, that's not it.
		That's not the thing.
		It's not what you experienced.
		It's a memory of what you experienced.
		And I don't know how you get around that.
		You know, I think that, well, I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It seems just like even exploring the concept itself is almost impossible without it's almost impossible.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, so you're asking me to supply a linguistic description.
		So with the caveat that any linguistic description is going to be inadequate, I would say a lot of what my impressions of DMT are the most profound experiences are it strips away, you get to see the raw data, the raw data of experience in the unprocessed form.
		You know how we were talking about how the brain takes experience and puts it all together into some kind of more or less comprehensible model and extrudes it out as your reality, your movie, the movie that you're producer, director, and star of.
		And it does that.
		DMT gives you a chance to kind of arrest that process.
		And again, as I said, step back from it and look at the raw data, look at the circuitry underneath, free of interpretation, and say, oh, okay, this is the machinery.
		This is the machinery that's generating reality.
		But again, by even saying that, I don't do it justice.
		I mean, it's slippery, obviously.
		It's a slippery concept.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Intensely.
		Intensely.
		And I've always wondered, like, what is the best, if there is a way to describe it to someone who hasn't experienced it?
		I don't think there is any.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't think there is.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And even to those of us who have experienced it, you can't describe it.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		After my experience, all you have is a memory.
		I'd been tricked.
		Like, that's not anything like Terrence McKenna or Dennis McKenna described it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was your experience like?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No self-transforming machine elves?
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm thinking of my first mushroom experience.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		No, my first DMT experience was, I mean, it sounds trivial, but it was sort of like some sort of gingerbread or Play-Doh that was alive and talking to me.
		And I just sort of one aspect of the Godhead, just sort of gingerbread or Play-Doh.
		It was sort of alive.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Self-transforming gingerbread people.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		I guess in a way it didn't look like an elf, but it kind of had that aspect.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		It certainly felt alive, like it had been waiting for me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's the weird one.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		It's happy to see me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the weird one is the friendliness of it.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		But I felt dead.
		That was my overwhelming feeling was, oh, no, I've really done it.
		But in the back of my mind, I knew that I was coming back.
		I was still sitting in my chair.
		and before I knew it, it was over.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Doug Stanhope, who's a good friend of mine and is a stand-up comedian, did DMT with me the first time he ever did it.
		I had him over my house.
		And he went into convulsions, which I've never seen before.
		And it was 5MEO.
		And he started moaning and foaming at the mouth.
		Like he was like, like drool was coming out of his mouth, and he was going, oh.
		And I was thinking, can you die from this shit?
		I never heard of anybody die.
		Fuck, did I just kill my friend?
		Damn, how am I going to explain this?
		And I've never seen anybody have that experience before or since.
		And it was weird.
		He was moaning.
		It was a big dose.
		He took a big dose.
		And, you know, when he came back, just filled with descriptions that were inadequate, which we all are.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Phybhoxy is even trickier than DMT.
		I don't know.
		I mean, I've had very limited experience with phybuthoxy because it's too much.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I didn't think I was coming back.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's my.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Maybe that's exactly the one we should be looking into.
		I mean, you know, but it has more issues with toxicity and all that.
		But it's definitely puts you in this place.
		You know, James Orock's book, the Tryptamine Palace?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you should, you might want to get him on this show.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Tryptamine Palace, James Oroch.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do you spell it?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		O-R-O-C, I believe.
		Phy-methoxy DMT.
		This is all about 5-methoxy DMT.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's his whole book?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And he says, you think DMT is something.
		5-methoxy is where it's really at.
		And I can't dispute that because, frankly, it scares the shit out of me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It was different for me because it didn't give me the sort of comfort that DMT did, that it was sort of talking to me and communicating with me.
		It was completely absent of any context.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It was impossible to – That's what it was.
		There were no friendly elfin, no gingerbread people, no elf machines, no nothing like that.
		It was like you were you were my apprehension was that I was part of this Oort cloud of souls.
		I was a part of this somewhere, somewhere, there's a place where all conscious entities arose from and go back to, and I was in the center of this galactic cloud of being, you know.
		And I mean, I sort of had a dim awareness of my existence as a separate entity, but mostly I was part of this soul cloud, and is the best I can describe it.
		You know, and by the time I came back, you know, that was all completely faded as it tended to.
		That was 20 years ago that I had that experience, and it's still resonating with me.
		I haven't done it since.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've only had it a few times, and I didn't want to go back again.
		I was like, I got it.
		I got that.
		Whereas the NN dimethyltryptamine was different every time, and it seemed like it was a communication, like something was talking to me, like there was a lot going on.
		The visual aspect of it was way more compelling.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I had very little visual aspect with phy-methoxy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was just white.
		Yeah.
		It felt like I didn't have a consciousness anymore.
		It's the only thing that I've ever done that seemed to eliminate consciousness.
		It wasn't, it didn't matter.
		Like the vaguely aware, the dully aware of the fact that you exist at all was one of the more terrifying aspects of it.
		It's like, oh, this is probably what happens when you die.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		When you die, you probably go into this thing and become part of this cloud, this community of over souls, which is every conscious being that ever existed anywhere in the universe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It also gave me the most tangible feeling of there not being an up and there not being a down.
		There's no left, there's no right.
		There's the whole thing.
		And then you're part of the whole thing and it just goes everywhere.
		You're not in the middle.
		You're not in the center.
		You're not in the left.
		You're not to the right.
		It's just the whole thing.
		And it's an illusion.
		And that was the weird aspect of the planets were an illusion.
		Everything's an illusion.
		Wind, all of it, nonsense.
		You're just a part of the whole.
		When you get down to the lowest thing, you're a part of the whole soup.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		Yep.
		Fuck that drug.
		He refers to it as the zero energy point field.
		Which, yeah, I mean, that's definitely worth putting on your map.
		And if you're brave enough or foolish enough, it's probably worth exploring.
		But I'm too old for that shit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not that it's, you know, my friend Duncan took it and he took a huge dose because he didn't believe it was any, he had never done any DMT before.
		And he had done acid.
		And I had never done acid before.
		And I was telling him about DMT.
		He's like, you've never even done acid.
		So he takes DMT in a big dose.
		Then he calls me up.
		He's like, dude, what the fuck, man?
		I'm like, I told you.
		Like, no, you didn't tell me.
		You kind of told me, but I didn't listen.
		Holy shit.
		Like, he was convinced that he died.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		He was a believer.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy.
		Was he ever?
		Yeah, it was, you know, it's very disturbing, but again, impossible to ignore transcendent experience.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it is.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		I think Salvia Devonorum can take a person to a similar space.
		Sort of you feel that you're no longer a point of consciousness, except it doesn't feel like a cloud.
		It feels like a Mexican dance party or something.
		It's like geometric things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a weird one.
		Isn't it?
		Because it slipped through.
		Salvia slipped through, and it took a while before people realized it slipped through.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You mean, legally speaking?
		It slipped through because it's its own best insurance against abuse.
		Most people are like, once is enough, never again, dude.
		It's one of these ones, like phytoxy.
		I mean, most some people do seem to be fascinated by it, and they keep going back to it.
		But most people find it very disturbing and not particularly enjoyable and actually just bizarro, you know.
		But again, these are areas of consciousness.
		These pharmacological tools are, you know, they're exploratory probes into these realms of consciousness.
		And just because you're familiar with the psychedelic experience, which is mainly the tryptamine-mediated serotonin, you know, dimension, there are all those other dimensions out there.
		And there are aspects of consciousness too.
		Salvia Divinorin happens to be the kappa opiate.
		You know, it's a kappa opiate-like end.
		It's very selective for, you know, we don't think of opiates as going to those places, you know, heroin, morphine, those sorts of things.
		They're euphoric, gentle, you know, almost sedated states of mind.
		Kappa opiate, which is, you know, one of the three opiate receptors that happens to be the one that Salvia Divinoran exists.
		It's a whole other ballgame.
		You know, I mean, it's not certainly not anything that anyone would seek out, you know, certainly not addictive.
		But so that realm of consciousness is mediated by that whole network.
		If you look at the deturas, the nightshades, the anticholinergics, that's working on acetylcholine.
		They're acetylcholine blockers.
		So that's a whole other neurotransmitter system.
		And if you look into, you know, they have a long history of use, obviously, and they seem to be, if you look into the use of Toe in South America to weigh brickbansia, or you look at datura and other nightshades in Europe, this is the realm of wraiths and ghosts and that sort of thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Datura is a very interesting one, too, because of the reality-dissolving properties of it, where people think that they're somewhere that they're not, and they have huge issues with memory.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that's the disruption of acetylcholine?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, it does disrupt memory.
		I mean, we know that acetylcholine has a lot to do with the entrainment of memory, and then detura disrupts that.
		So it's hard to remember the state, which is probably a good thing because the states are really bizarre.
		I tell people, detura, you know, nightshade, datura is not a psychedelic, but it's a true hallucinogen.
		In the sense that it's not a psychedelic state, but you have hallucinations.
		The problem is you can't tell if they're real or not.
		Usually a psychedelic hallucination, you know it's not real.
		You may be seeing something that's not there, but there's a part of your mind that's saying, this is a hallucination.
		It's not there.
		You see things on detura.
		You don't know if they're there or not.
		If I could have a hallucination, I'm sitting across from you talking, and you seem as real and solid as you do now, but you're not there.
		I'm having a conversation with you.
		And then you sort of just fade away like kind of a wraith, you know, you sort of, and I'm like, what the fuck?
		Where did you go?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that what has happened to you?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Have you?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's what happens to me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What happened to you when you did it?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's what happened.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like you were talking to someone, they literally didn't exist.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		Well, I took detura.
		I described this in my book, actually.
		I have a whole chapter of it.
		A friend of mine and I took detura when we were 16, not even knowing what it was.
		I mean, this is how clueless we were at the time.
		I actually thought it was a kind of morning glory.
		I had had LSD once in my life, and we took these datura, and I thought it was a different species of morning glory.
		So all this stuff began to happen, and I thought, oh, this is what a bad acid trip is like.
unidentified		Wow.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And no, it's not what a bad acid trip is like.
		It's what a totally typical datura trip is like.
		And it's characteristic that you see entities, you see things that aren't there.
		And I was, and it was quite anxiety-provoking.
		And my friend, I was in my bedroom.
		I managed to, you know, you have to read the chapter, but I finally got to my bedroom.
		I barricaded myself in my bedroom.
		My mother was completely freaked out, you know, as to what was going on.
		I just said, mom, how old are you?
unidentified		I'll be out in 12 hours.
		It's okay.
		Don't worry.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		How old are you?
		16.
		Oh, that's awesome.
		And so I'm in the bedroom.
		And one of the weird things, I guess people who take datura should be forewarned.
		One of the things it does is dilate your eyes, right?
		I mean, it's used medically to dilate your eyes.
		Atropine is what they put in your eyes to do an eye exam.
		What that means is your eyes are dilated so you can't see very well.
		And so any mottled surface, anything with texture, like a tablecloth or wallpaper, anything you look at, starts to swarm.
		And the next thing you know, there are bugs everywhere for me.
		So it was like the bug experience.
		There were insects, all surfaces were like covered with these swarming, you know, things, which were the visual distortions of not being able to focus on anything.
		But I was totally freaked out by this.
		And so my friends, or images of my friends, kept appearing at the edge of my bed at the end of my bed.
		And they would appear and I would say, help me, help me, get me out of here.
		I need, you know, and they would sort of just look at me and like, you know, you poor sap, shake their head and then just fade away.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's awesome.
		It's fascinating that it has something to do with acetylcholine.
		Have you ever experimented with taking acetylcholine before you go to bed?
		I haven't.
		It gives you the most amazing lucid dreams.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Amazing dreams.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm not surprised.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, fascinating, what I call durable lucid dreams.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because I'm not a lucid dream.
		I'm not disciplined in it.
		I've never studied it.
		I don't practice it.
		Apparently, there's techniques that you can learn how to successfully lucid dream on the natch, as it were.
		But if you take acetylcholine before you go to bed, like a couple hours before you go to bed, you have lucid dreams whether you like it or not.
		They're just more, it seems like your dreams are more durable when you're aware, me personally, when I'm aware of my dreams, normally they'd fade away.
		Like, oh, I'm dreaming, and then it's gone.
		I wake up.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So you're just boosting what's a natural process because when you go to sleep, your brain becomes flooded with acetylcholine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And these deturas, these tropane alkaloids, what they do is block acetylcholine.
		They block the receptors.
		So they're acetylcholine.
		They're called, the technical term is anticholinergic.
		They block acetylcholine from binding to its receptor.
		So that's the basis of the altered state of consciousness.
		And interestingly enough, the deturre state of mind resembles it resembles profound sleep deprivation.
		If you keep yourself awake for five days, you will have experiences and hallucinations that are almost indistinguishable from a state of deter intoxication.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's bizarre.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't recommend it, by the way.
		I mean, don't do detura.
		Or if you do detura, have somebody there who's looking after you because you really can't distinguish reality and you do silly things.
		You know, I had a friend who took detural one time and he spent the whole time dismantling his motorcycle engine on the floor, on his kitchen floor, taking it apart and cleaning it and putting it back together.
		He didn't own a motorcycle.
		So what was that about?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
		What if he learned how to do it, though?
		What if he gave a motorcycle engine?
		He's like, oh, I've done this.
		And then he starts doing it all together.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		He's totally able to do it.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the Uber bizarre.
		What is that?
		There's that drug that they use for air sickness.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Same one, scopolamine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's the one.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the same thing as datura.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Same psychoactive alkaloid in detura and belladonna and all.
		And this is the one that does it.
		There are other alkaloids, but it's primarily scopolamine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And they used to use medically, they used to use scopolamine because it's for childbirth back in the days of barbarism when they thought women in order to give childbirth, give birth, had to be put in a had to be drugged.
		They used scopolamine to put them in a twilight state, like a hypnotic state of semi-consciousness, and then they could have the bait.
		And of course, they didn't remember any of that experience, which was sort of the point, I guess.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		How does nicotine fit in?
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Because one of my most intense lucid dreaming experiences was with a nicotine patch.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Nicotine has the opposite effect to the tropanes.
		Nicotine is what's the tropanes are what's called acetylcholine antagonists.
		Nicotine is an agonist, so it has an acetylcholine-like effect, which is why when you smoke, you get this sort of cognitive activation.
		You know, it's great to settle down and focus your attention on a task.
		It activates cognition.
		Wow.
		A lot of the research now on Alzheimer's and other dementias are finding things that either have this cholinergic agonist effect, like nicotine, or they block acetylcholine from being broken down.
		They're acetylcholine esterase inhibitors.
		Acetylcholine esterase is the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't smoke cigarettes, but I found it absolutely fascinating in reading Stephen King's book on writing, where he talked about when he stopped smoking cigarettes, it really affected his writing process.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm not surprised at all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It couldn't really fire up the way it used to.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So now we've, again, got off the track and we're off in the jungles of pharmacology.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's fascinating.
		No, I mean, it's not off track at all.
		I mean, it's all interesting because it's all in relationship to what we understand currently about compounds that affect the human body.
		And what you're doing with the Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council is to try to educate people on these things, try to expand consciousness and awareness of these things, and really just promote it and put energy behind it.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Part of it is education.
		It's developing a model of self-regulation that can improve the safety of people that want to use these traditional plants.
		But one thing I want to be clear about is that we're ourselves not setting a standard per se.
		We're engaging people in dialogue.
		We're kind of setting the table for indigenous groups and people that run retreat centers, people that are selling ayahuasca online, et cetera.
		All the people that are involved in the kind of value chain of ayahuasca to come together and determine, well, what does sustainability at the site level look like?
		Like ecotourism.
		How are you giving back to the community, to the biodiversity of the place where you have your site?
		How are you making sure the people in the ceremony are safe, that they're screened psychologically or for heart conditions?
		They're not taking antidepressants.
		They have people babysitting or watching so people don't wander off into the jungle.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The antidepressants one is an interesting one.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's the issue with that?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, the issue with antidepressants and ayahuasca is because ayahuasca involves MAO inhibitors, right?
		And so it prevents the breakdown of DMT, right?
		And so there's a lot of DMT in your city.
		It's a serotonergic agonist, right?
		And so are the antidepressants.
		So you are essentially piling on one serotonergic agonist on another because you're inhibiting the breakdown process.
		MAO is involved in breaking down both DMT and serotonin.
		So safety-wise, the issue is that it could lead to what's called a serotonin syndrome.
		And the serotonin syndrome is something that happens when you got too much serotonin, too much pushing the serotonin button a little bit too hard.
		And it could lead to hyperthermia and cardiac irregularities and ultimately death if it's really bad.
		You want to avoid the serotonin syndrome if possible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating because that's also an issue that people have if they take SSRIs and they want to consume tryptophan or 5-HCP.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Exactly, exactly.
		That's also one way to do it.
		And in some ways, the psychedelic experience itself is kind of skirting this.
		I mean, you're pushing the serotonin button, right?
		But in most cases with psychedelic, you haven't inactivated the enzymatic breaks that are metabolizing this stuff.
		So it's not an issue.
		With ayahuasca, it's really only an issue if you're taking SSRIs.
		Or if you're taking MAO inhibitors, which most people, they're not used clinically anymore.
		There's a whole older generation of antidepressants that are MAO inhibitors.
		You shouldn't combine those with ayahuasca, and you shouldn't combine SSRIs with ayahuasca.
		I mean, that may be a theoretical hazard.
		I haven't seen a lot of reports of serotonin syndrome happening with ayahuasca.
		So it's a theoretical hazard.
		I'm sure there are people taking serotonin uptake inhibitors that are taking ayahuasca and there's no problem, but they're probably taking lower doses.
		It's just a good idea to get off those things before you take ayahuasca.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it a good idea to get off those things, period?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It is if you can.
		Not for everybody.
		They really help some people.
		But a lot of times, you know, antidepressants are over-prescribed and overused for too many things.
		They don't really help people get to the root of their problems.
		They just kind of band-aid it over and you feel sort of normal, you know, and you can be a productive citizen and you don't really think about things too much.
		They're prescribed for PTSD, you know, but they don't cure PTSD.
		They just kind of dampen it down and bury it.
		They don't give you an opportunity to really, you know, look at issues and work them through.
		This is why, you know, psychedelics are not a good model for big pharma.
		Big pharma wants things like SSRIs, which you take every day for the rest of your life.
		That's the business model.
		Psychedelics are things that you might take a few times and work through your issues, and you don't need antidepressants after that.
		I've talked to many, many people who said, you know, who have been on antidepressants.
		They go to South America.
		They take a few ayahuasca sessions.
		They never have to go back to antidepressants again.
		I mean, they can get off it for good.
		Many people have that experience.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a huge problem financially for pharmaceutical companies.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you don't see them piling on there.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, then you start selling ayahuasca.
		Yeah.
		Yeah.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's not going to work that way because big pharma, they want drugs that people consume.
		I think the way that, I think where the business model, you can't use these drugs in therapy, in a therapeutic session without intense psychotherapy, whether that's actual psychotherapy or shamanism or some combination of those things.
		These are drugs that have to be used in context.
		The take-to and call me in the morning model doesn't work for these.
		These have to be used in a very highly controlled set and setting.
		So I think where the business model comes in is you have places where people can go and get this kind of therapy.
		So it shifts from the drug itself.
		The emphasis is on, you know, our whole biomedical industrial complex is set up to encourage band-aid solutions.
		You know, you have a problem.
		You go see your psychiatrist.
		He has seven minutes, if he's lucky, to talk to you.
		Here's a prescription.
		Get out of here.
		You know, that's the way it works.
		With psychedelics, you actually have to have a therapist who will sit down and talk with you.
		This is a whole novel concept.
		And, you know, so I think where the business potential comes in is that to have centers of therapy where you can go and get psychedelic therapy.
		The emphasis is more on the setting and the services provided than the actual chemicals.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the setting and the the and you this is possible in other countries where it's legal.
		In America, it's already happening.
		Yes.
		In America right now, it's a huge issue.
		But Josh was talking about selling ayahuasca online.
		I mean, how many people do that and what's the legality when it comes to the plants themselves are not necessarily illegal.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		DMT is illegal.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		DMT is illegal, but DMT is found in so many plants that, you know, they can't really make all those plants illegal because, you know, I mean, they can, but they're not going to be able to enforce it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's not going to be able to have salad.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Literally, you're not going to be able to have salad.
		I mean, I'm, you know, hearkening back to what we were saying about how close DMT is to tryptophan, two steps away.
		I'll bet you, I mean, I wish somebody would do this.
		There's no funding for this, but I'll bet you if you had sufficiently sensitive instruments, you could find DMT in all plants.
		You know, you could just start randomly selecting them out of your backyard and run them through the mass spec or whatever.
		You could pick up DMT.
		Not in usable amounts, but it's universally just, you know, nature is drenched in DMT.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think that is?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Because it's so close to tryptophan.
		You know, and it's just the compound tryptophan is universally distributed.
		The enzymes that transform it to DMT have other cellular functions.
		So they're found in all cells.
		They're just part of metabolism.
		And so it's just an accident of nature.
		You know, it's just, it's just the way it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What a fascinating answer.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Or it's actually maybe nature's trying to send us a little message, if you want to interpret it that way.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But it's just the way it is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or it's just a part of the building blocks of the universe itself.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's just part of the building blocks of.
		Exactly.
		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that chemical doorway to another dimension exists in virtually everything that's alive.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What a mind fuck that is.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Selling ayahuasca online.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if I don't know if people are selling ayahuasca-prepared ayahuasca brews online.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		They are.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They are.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		That seems to be the case in the least.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		It's a stay-gray area.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I think that's irresponsible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You sell it online.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, because it's a drug that needs to be taken in an appropriate set and setting.
		It needs guidance.
		So to sell it online is to be guilty of that whole thing.
		Take two and call me in the morning.
		Go off and do this with your friends.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what I'm saying.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's the preparation and any real knowledge.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's not ethical, in my opinion.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's how 5MEO is acquired until fairly recently.
		When I bought 5MEO, I just bought it online.
		It delivered me enough to get the world high.
		I mean, you realize how potent it is and what a small dose you need.
		And if they're sending you some giant supply of it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's an issue with all of these things and the whole, you know, the whole designer drug thing.
		There are, you know, hundreds and hundreds of these things.
		So I sort of say, well, you know, we should stick with the plants.
		At least we know what the identity of.
		But, you know, I mean, I think that, I mean, synthetic drugs are out there.
		People are going to use them.
		It comes back to education.
		You know, teach people how to use drugs.
		Basically, you have to teach people how to use drugs.
		This is what so-called drug education hasn't quite grocked to, hasn't quite admitted, but that is, in fact, that's real drug education.
		Not, you know, all drugs are bad.
		Never take it.
		I mean, that's absurd.
		That's ridiculous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, you've lived through several eras of psychedelic awareness.
		You lived through the 60s.
		You lived through all that craziness.
		You lived through the 70s.
		You lived through the clampdown.
		And now you're here, which is, I think it's safe to call this the psychedelic renaissance.
		I think this is a new time.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, we'd like to think so.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm pretty positive.
		Yeah.
		At least it is in my reality.
		The reality that I experience.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I've never in my time seen psychedelics more referenced than I see them today.
		And part of it's because of the company I keep.
		Part of it is because the message that I put out and the people that I interact with because of that.
		But I think also it's just a matter of the cat got out of the bag.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the stigma is fading away.
		The whole 60s baggage that psychedelics have been marginalized with for so long.
		That's going away and a new, more positive perception is appearing as some of these therapeutic uses are becoming more aware in general consciousness.
		Oh, PTSD can be treated with MDMA.
		We've got veterans out there who need that.
		That's a hugely powerful message.
		And if the Department of Defense is behind it, it can't be bad, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, isn't that kind of ironic that the need for psychedelics has arisen from the war culture that we see?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's totally ironic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So strange.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		There it is.
		And so these positive messages are being heard more and more, and there's less and less sort of, you know, partly because a lot of people from the 60s are dying off or whatever they don't remember.
		But the knee-jerk negative message about psychedelics is not happening as much.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're much harder to distinguish now.
		The folks who use them than the hippies with the beads and the look, which was so stereotypical of what the Goldwater Republicans found reprehensible about that generation.
		They were lazy, shiftless, do-for-nothing people that just wanted to get high and escape reality.
		And that paradigm.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That perception is passing.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's all to the good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What has it been like for you to experience these different waves?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
		I haven't really been personally impacted by this thing.
		I mean, I've been where I've been all the way through and not particularly public.
		I'm much more public now about it than I have been.
		So maybe that's a difference.
		But I don't feel that I have to be careful about talking about it in public.
		I mean, I consider myself an advocate for responsible use, you know, and good science.
		And I'm not even saying people should even take these things.
		What I'm saying is if you decide to take it, go into it with open eyes, do some preparation, pay attention to set and setting.
		Do it in a way that, you know, if there are benefits to be had, maximize the benefits.
		So approach it as a conscious exercise.
		And, you know, and approach them with respect and intention.
		These are serious things.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do you say to someone who has zero experience in these things?
		I guarantee you right now, this podcast is reaching people that have no psychedelic experience whatsoever.
		They don't know anyone who has had any psychedelic experience.
		They don't know where to turn or where to start, but they're very intrigued and the door's been open to them.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, the first thing to do is get yourself educated about it.
		You know, like sign up for this symposium, right?
		I mean, watch the online thing, but there are many other tools.
		Another group that I love to plug, and I think they're doing marvelous work, is Arrowwood.
		Arrowwood.org is online.
		It's the best online source of information about psychoactive drugs of all kinds, not just psychedelics.
		It's the go-to place on the web if you want real, solid information, not bullshit, not put out by the propagandists put out by people whose commitment is to accurate information.
		Start there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's fantastic.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Read about it.
		There are trip reports, there are safety reports, the chemistry, the entheobotany, the part of it, the shamanic traditions, it's all represented there.
		That's the place to start.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And spell it out too for people.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		E-R-O-W-I-D, arrowwood.org.
		Go there and read up about it.
		Educate yourself before you take the substance so that you can make an informed decision.
		What's an appropriate method of use?
		What are the right circumstances?
		What are the hazards?
		What do you not want to do?
		I think that's the first thing.
		And I think, again, I think this symposium conference is going to be great, but it's also exemplary of what needs to happen.
		And I'm really impressed that young people like the folks that are organizing this conference are stepping up to the plate and saying, we want to make this a part of an educational dialogue.
		We want to have this happen on lots of university campuses, lots of places.
		That's the thing.
		We have better tools now than we've ever had for sharing information.
		Take advantage of those tools.
		Before, back in the 60s, 70s, you might have had no experience with psychedelics and no real, no way to know how am I going to find out about these things.
		Now it's a click of a mouse and you're there.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Another very simple thing.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So there's no excuse for not educating yourself.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Another very good site is iSears.org, I-C-E-E-R-S.
		It's the International Center for Ethnobotanical Ethnobotanical Education Research and Service based in Europe.
		They have a ton of information about ayahuasca and Iboga, the plant-based psychedelics.
		They're also a sort of incubation partner for the ESC, helping ESC get started.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ibogaine is another fantastic drug for dealing with addiction.
		I have a good friend who had a back injury and got hooked on pain pills and had a real problem and really couldn't kick it.
		Went to Mexico, did Ibogaine, became completely fascinated, cured and absolutely fascinated by Ibogaine.
		And how is this possible that this has escaped Western medicine?
		Started his own ibogaine center down there.
		And now, you know, regular, I mean, he's just a different human being.
		When I talk to him, he's just like so at peace and just a different guy.
		He knows himself in a different way.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		It breaks that physical addiction to opiates instantly.
		The ESC is signing a memorandum of understanding with the Global Ibogaine Therapist Alliance to work on the safety and the sustainability of that traditional plant.
		It's under extreme pressure from the growing global demand.
		It's traditionally from Africa, and it takes seven years for a mature plant to be grown, and then you have to take the root out and kill the plant.
		So there's a lot of work to be done.
		There's a global Ibogaine Therapist Alliance conference in Durban this May as well.
		We're hoping to have some big announcements come out of that on the sustainability front.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So many things came out.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Ibogaine never, I mean, it was, it never went away.
		It was always there, but it, you know, it was suppressed essentially in Western medicine.
		I mean, they had a perception that it had no place.
		There were almost clinical studies approved by the FDA, and then they stepped back from it because of some supposed neurotoxicity, which I don't think they ever satisfactorily demonstrated.
		But that's a good example.
		You know, the therapeutic community was saying, well, ibogaine is so useful for this addiction therapy that we're just not going to put up with this.
		And so ibogaine is not illegal.
		It's illegal in the States, but it's not illegal in most of the world.
		So these addiction treatment centers have blossomed all over the world.
		There's Mexico, South America, even Canada.
		There are treatment centers that use ibogaine to treat addiction.
		And they've just said, well, you know, fuck the FDA.
		We're going to step outside that framework and do it because it's important to get this therapy to people.
		And that's all to the good, I think.
		That's a model maybe for what's going to happen with ayahuasca.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I would hope so.
		And I would like to see what's going on right now with marijuana in this country slowly start happening with ayahuasca, ibogaine, psilocybin, all these various things.
		Do you have hope for that?
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Totally.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I do.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		History is on our side.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		First thing I'd tell people that are considering psychedelics is put your preconceptions aside and just look at the facts.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What would you say to someone?
		Say, like, we're talking about young people.
		What if a guy's 50 and maybe he's going through a rough divorce and is like, man, it's fucking, I need to reset my brain.
		I need to figure this out.
		But I don't know anybody.
		Nobody at the office knows anything about this stuff.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		Well, smoked a joint in college.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's about it.
unidentified		Right.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		I would say take it in a traditional context that you feel comfortable with.
		Take it in a, if you're looking for psychological help, maybe take it at a center that focuses on that.
		If you want to, if you've always been attracted to shamanic experiences, then suss out which centers might be best for you and read reviews of them.
		And in two to three years, the ESC will have a rating system or a kind of star rating system for sites based on how sustainable they are, how to safe side psychedelics.
		Not so much a Yelp, but I mean, a deeper level than a Yelp.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yelp, because you can't fake it, though.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Right, you can't fake it, but it's hard for somebody going in to see what kind of an impact a center has on the local community or where they're sourcing the ayahuasca come from comes from.
		And that's where the ESC is bringing that professional expertise to supplement what the community is doing.
		And certainly we will rely on feedback from visitors.
		That'll be part of the credibility and the transparency that we're building into the way of assuring the sites are sustainable and safe.
		There'll be grievance mechanisms if you have a bad experience.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Hopefully in five years, five, that's probably optimistic timeframe, but hopefully in 10 years there'll be places you can go and have these experiences where you don't have to leave the country.
		I mean you can already find them outside the country, but it would be nice if there were places in the States where you could get this.
		And it would transform psychiatric medicine if there was, which is, again, threatening to many people with a stake in how it's done now.
		But I talk to so many psychiatrists and other professionals that are involved in the mental health world.
		They're very frustrated.
		They're like, these people are hurting.
		And the way that we're handling them is not.
		solving the problem.
		It's only making it worse.
		So, you know, there needs to be a wholesale, I wouldn't say overturning, but transformation of the model.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think that we're on the right track.
		I really do.
		I mean, there's a lot of people that are cynical today, and they look at today's culture, and they look at the toxification of our environment and the materialism and the nonsense on television.
		They see it as a bad sign.
		But I really feel like civilization's cramming.
		I really do.
		I really think we're just scrambling to try.
		And maybe we need something like all this nonsense that we experience on a daily basis to sort of really motivate this global awakening.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		We have to consume it to the extent that we're sick of it, that it makes us sick, and then we purge.
		And that's the ayahuasca model.
		You consume so much of it that eventually you just regurgitate it all and you feel much better afterwards.
		Yeah.
		I think that's partly what we're doing to ourselves.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think the most exciting thing, too, is that we have a way out or we have a way up.
		Whereas it's not like we're in this pit and there's no ladder.
		There's a fucking ladder.
unidentified		Hey, guys.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we have a ladder.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We have the tools.
		I mean, and they're incredibly profound and real.
		You know, these aren't theoretical things.
		Like, you know, we have a lot of these theoretical concepts about like fixing the plastic in the ocean.
		Well, you know, some 19-year-old kid figured out a way that there's a machine, it scoops it up, and then it converts it into something usable, and then we could use that for energy.
		And the same thing is true with like nuclear waste.
		There's some theories about how to, but those are all, those are theoretical.
		They may or may not be effective.
		They may or may not ever get built.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		The ladder's not be in your life either.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The ladder's right there.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, I mean, in respect to that, we look at this dire existential situation, the environmental crisis and all that.
		And I take heart in the notion of never underestimate human ingenuity.
		You know, there are a lot of really smart people working on all these problems.
		And that's my hope, you know, for our survival.
		I think that the ingenuity will prevail.
		I hope so, because otherwise we're in, I mean, we're already in deep shit.
		The question is, how do we dig out of it?
		And that's why we have these smart brains.
		We're not going to get there by being stupid.
		We've had enough of that.
		And there's still plenty of it to go around.
		But we need to move beyond that and stop listening to a lot of people like our politicians, for example, who seem to make a profession of stupidity.
		I mean, they're actually proud of their stupidity.
		And that's distressing.
		In what way?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In what way do you feel like the problem?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, like Sarah Palin, is that what you mean?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, people like that.
		You know, the science deniers, the people that, you know, I don't, you know, don't bother me with your fucking facts.
		You know, my mind is made up.
		And, you know, and God told me this.
		And, you know, this is horseshit.
		I mean, come on.
		You know, clear thinking, at least, should be a criterion if you want to be a politician, not somebody who's, you know, buying into some, you know, myth from the 14th century.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't necessarily even think most of them are buying into it.
		I think what they've done is realize that there is a market for that.
		Well, there's just a gigantic chunk of the population that's terrified of change, terrified of the possibilities, the unknown, the intangibles.
		And they would like something, Norman Rockwell.
		They would like you to paint some really clear and easy to recognize pattern that they could.
		Jesus!
		Thank you, Jesus.
		You know, and they just the Lord has blessed me in so many ways, and they just fucking lock themselves in this box of perception.
		And then politicians come along and they go, oh, that guy, I know how to fucking play his heartstrings.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right, exactly.
		Well, then you're part of the problem.
		You're not really helping solve the problem.
		You're taking advantage of what these people, what I think even Karl Rove called useful idiots.
		People that want simple answers.
		I call them simple answers for simple people.
		Hey, get over it.
		There are no simple answers.
		And what we need to be doing is looking for the real answers, asking the hard questions, realizing that it's all very complicated.
		There are answers, but we're not going to get there through delusions and fairy tales.
		You know, we've got to actually acknowledge and start thinking about this and start talking about it to other people in a real way.
		So, Sarah Palin, these people, I mean, she needs mushrooms.
		They're idiots.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She needs ayahuasca.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She needs a DMT trip.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		She needs a head transplant.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Christ consciousness.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, fuck yeah, she would.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She would realize that she's right and wrong at the same time.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Mind blown.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so the website for the Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		It's ethnobotanicalcouncil.org.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And the symposium is spelled sim like as in psychedelic, P-S-Y, Symposium 2014.
		It is April 12th and 13th in Amherst, Massachusetts.
		Listen, folks, if you can make it there.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		My website is symposium.org or symposia.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Symposia.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Symposia.org.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And if you can make it there, beautiful.
		Can you pay to go there?
		$30 out the door, $20 in advance tickets, $30 out the door if you actually want to go, but you can also watch it live for $10 online.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		Right deal.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Such a deal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a great deal, and you are contributing to something that is hugely important.
		You are part of this whole movement.
		There's something going on, folks.
		Dennis, you're a huge part of it.
		Josh, you're a huge part of it.
		The people listening to this podcast are a huge part of it.
		It's all out there, and it's moving.
		It's moving in, I think, a good direction.
		I really do.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		One last plug, if I may.
		There's a Congress that I'm going to next weekend in Mexico, Toluca, bringing together Indigenous leaders with Iboga, Peyote, Mushroom, ayahuasca experience.
		And they need funding to attend to bring more of the traditional healers to that conference.
		It's called the Second International Congress on Traditional Medicine and Public Health, Sacred Plants, Culture, and Human Rights.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And is this information all available on ethnobotanicalcouncil.org?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can they find it there?
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		No, but I'll put up some news section.
unidentified		Put it up.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Put it up.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		What the hell?
unidentified		What the fuck?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Come on, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We're all working together on this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can't just say it.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'd like to say, Joe, also, thank you for having us on.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And you, you, my friend, are one of the change makers.
josh wickerham ▲ ● ▼		That's for sure.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Don't underestimate that.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you're a hero of mine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's a huge honor.
		I'm a useful idiot.
		What I am is a idiot.
		I'm a repeater of things that are fascinating.
		But I appreciate that very much.
		And I feel as compelled as all of you to try to broadcast as much of what I've stumbled upon and talk about it as much as possible.
		And it's impossible without guys like you.
		So thank you all.
		Thank you very much.
		Thank you, everybody listening, too.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for having us.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Thank you to the listeners.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We're all in this shit together, people.
		So please go to ethnobotanicalcouncil.org.
		Go to symposia with p-s-y, symposia.org, and that's it.
		We'll be back next week with much more love.
		Big kiss till then.
unidentified		Mwah!
unidentified		Wow.
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Was it three hours again?
dennis mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Three hours?

▲