Tim FerrissAn Ethnopharmacologist on Hallucinogens, Sex-Crazed Cicadas, and More | Dennis McKenna
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
85 min read · 17,001 words- 0:00 – 2:34
Intro
- TFTim Ferriss
Howdy, howdy. A quick disclaimer before we get into the interview. The plants and compounds mentioned in this episode are illegal in many countries, and even possession can carry severe criminal penalties. This episode does not constitute medical advice, nor legal advice, and should not be construed as a recommendation to use psychedelics. There are serious legal, psychological, and physical risks. Fatalities have been recorded. So psychedelics are not for everyone. They can exacerbate certain emotional problems, certain diagnoses, and there have been, as mentioned, in very rare cases, fatalities. So thanks for being safe, everybody. [upbeat music] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is a fan favorite, Dennis McKenna. You can find him on Twitter @dennismckenna4. Dennis has spent more than 40 years researching the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical field work in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon. His doctoral research at the University of British Columbia focused on the ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca and ukuye, two tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the northwest Amazon. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, which has helped fund and directly funded a lot of very good science, and was a key organizer and participant in the Huasca Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca used by the UDV, a Brazilian religious group. He is the younger brother of Terence McKenna. From 2000 to 2017, he taught courses on ethnopharmacology, as well as plants and human affairs, at the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. In 2019, in collaboration with colleagues, he incorporated a nonprofit, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. Currently, the academy has several projects underway, with the most immediate being preparations for an upcoming conference in the UK, May 23rd to 26th, that's 2022, ESPD 55, we're gonna talk a lot about this, which will cover a wide range of topics related to psychoethopharmacology. Dennis emigrated to Canada in the spring of 2019 with his wife, Sheila, and now resides in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The website for the event that I just mentioned, it's espd55.com.
- 2:34 – 9:15
How Dennis and his brother Terence tuned in to “vegetable television” with the addition of an ayahuasca ingredient to their regular consumption of mushrooms and cannabis, and why even the components of tried-and-true ayahuasca are in constant flux depending on who’s making it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Dennis, welcome back to the show. It's so nice to see you again.
- DMDennis McKenna
Thanks, Tim. It's really great to be here. Thank you for welcoming me back.
- TFTim Ferriss
Absolutely. And I want to mention to folks right up front that the first episode covered a lot of ground. I'm gonna try not to duplicate too much. The, the title of the last episode, for people who wanna check it out, is Dennis McKenna: The Depths of Ayahuasca: 500+ Sessions, Fundamentals, Advanced Topics, Science, Churches, Learnings, Warnings and Beyond. So you get the idea. If you wanna do a deep dive on not just ayahuasca, but certainly a lot of your biographical details and more, listen to the first episode. I'm going to try to deliver on the promise that I made at the end of the first episode, which was a teaser to a second conversation, which now we are in the very beginning of, during which I said we might get into, quote, "the really strange and weird stuff," end quote. So I'm gonna make an attempt to incorporate some strange and weird stuff. I don't think it'll be very hard.
- DMDennis McKenna
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
I thought we could start with a number of excerpts, highlights that I grabbed from The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, which chronicles many of your life experiences, adventures and misadventures, alongside your brother and the many other people in your life. And I'm just gonna pull out a section here, and you can feel free to revise or update, or now refute anything that I bring up. But here, here's the line. "They were an excellent complement to the cannabis," we don't have to get into all the context before this, "which we smoke constantly, along with the occasional hit derived from the shavings taken from our fresh supply of Banisteriopsis caapi, the vine added to ayahuasca as a source of the MAO-inhibiting compounds." That's monoamine oxidase inhibiting compounds. Here's the part I wanted to hear you expand on a bit. "We found that smoking the bark while on mushrooms synergized the closed-eye hallucinations in a most pleasant and intriguing way. We dubbed this serendipitous discovery vegetable television." So could you speak a bit more, please, about the effect of adding the smoking of the bark to mushrooms, and what that experience was or is like?
- DMDennis McKenna
It was pretty much an accidental discovery, as so many of these things are. But we were... You know, this is a good example of what happens, I guess, basically, when you start mucking around with plants, [laughs] you know, and doing stuff that may be not be, may be not entirely safe, but you had to experiment.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- DMDennis McKenna
It was just, we stumbled on it. We were taking a lot of mushrooms, and, you know, that's a whole nother story that we may or may not get into, but we were in a situation in the Amazon when we were doing mushrooms pretty much constantly. And when you're doing them constantly, you get a certain tolerance built up, and then you have to do larger doses to get any effect. And we were, as, as it says there, we were smoking cannabis pretty much constantly through this, too. So we decided to just, well, what would happen if we smoked some Banisteriopsis shavings w- on the mushrooms? And it had this amazing effect, you know, which anybody can replicate. And I don't think it's particularly dangerous. But we found that we could take a hit And then we would get this efflorescence of visions that would, that would just gently rise and last, you know, two or three minutes and then just kind of fade away. And then you could take another hit and you could repeat that. It was kind of like going up and down in a balloon. You could, you could lose some ballast and go a little higher, or you could come down. It was very pleasant, actually. It was very nice. If you look at the whole, uh, history of ethnopharmacology, for example, the ayahuasca, we think of ayahuasca as being essentially a mixture of two plants. But that's very much a simplification of what ayahuasca is. You know, there's a whole pharmacopoeia of ay- of plants that sort of, this galaxy of plants that, that is associated with ayahuasca. Not always taken with it, sometimes taken as admixture, sometimes taken as components of this dieta, which is very important in the, in the sort of ayahuasca tradition, the training of the curanderos and so on. And a lot of these plants are not very well investigated from a scientific point of view. But the, i- it's, it's an empirical science. And, and I, I guess the, I guess the point is, you know, in some ways, these practitioners, shamans, curanderos, they're really scientists in a certain sense. They're experimental about it. And they don't hesitate to say, "Well, what if I take this and mix it with that? What's gonna happen? How is that gonna change the effect?" Sometimes they really regret. Those that survive this process [laughs] you know, make discoveries, but there is the potential to take the wrong things. People may, may think that ayahuasca's been pretty much figured out in terms of its botany, chemistry, pharmacology and so on, but that's not the case. There's a lot more to be learned about ayahuasca. There's numerous PhDs left to be done, and particularly these admixture plants are, are interesting. Because some of them are, uh, you know, are psychedelic by themselves or regarded to be, but they may be used with ayahuasca. So this accumulated knowledge that exists in this sort of folk traditions, if you will, is not explored or not, certainly not codified, and it's ever-changing, right? Like, that's why there is no such thing as a standardized mixture of ayahuasca. Because there is different... Each preparation is as different as the practitioners that prepare it. It has their sort of idiosyncratic stamp on it.
- 9:15 – 18:06
Why is it that psychoactive drugs don’t always work — even in people who usually feel their effects — and what keeps us from finding out through controlled studies?
- TFTim Ferriss
I want to underscore a few things that you said and then raise some additional questions. S- so first, I just want to reinforce how trial and error over hundreds or thousands of years can produce some very refined approaches to, uh, solving different problems. And I think that this is well represented in areas that are perhaps a little more objectively accessible by most markers than, say, psychedelics. If you look at poisons used-
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... in the Amazon, and I've certainly learned a lot about this from our mutual friend, Mark Plotkin, who is an impressive fellow in his own right and has spent a lot of time in Suriname and other places.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
But if you look at curare, for a very long time, for instance, Western scientists, who later would take that and use it as the basis for a lot of modern anesthesia, saw that various species of pepper, wild pepper, were being added as admixtures to this poison, and they, after failing to do any type of assay that w- that produced meaningful results, concluded that it was just primitive superstition. And that was the conclusion for a long time until it was identified that, I believe it's bioperine, in these constituent sort of molecules found in pepper can actually increase the bioavailability of these poisons such that they're faster acting. And if you're shooting a monkey in the canopy, the last thing you want is for that tail to wrap around a branch when it dies [laughs] so that it doesn't fall to the floor.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And, uh, so lo and behold, it turned out that, yes, there is, there is a, uh, very practical purpose for the inclusion of this admixture. And I'm sure there are some false leads and there are things that kind of remain that won't be proven out in that same way. But I d- I do th- I think there's an argument to be made that, as you said, a lot of PhDs are yet to be earned looking at these admixtures. And just to provide a bit of context on the dieta, and please feel free to, to jump in and add or refute anything that I say. The dieta, i- in many different tribes, in many different contexts, is the ingestion, in some ti- in some cases the application, of plants that an individual is attempting to better understand or, uh, adopt and integrate as an ally.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And the ayahuasca is v- is viewed as a master plant or a teacher plant, ef- you know, effectively, in some capacity, a vehicle for getting to understand and know these plants. So over a period of time, and sometimes it's done in a fasting context, other times it's a, a very bland diet. These, these plants may be not ingested at the same time as ayahuasca, but alternated, say, one day on, one day off-
- DMDennis McKenna
Right
- TFTim Ferriss
... um, or, or otherwise. And then in certain cases, as you were mentioning, there are these psychedelics like, uh, like toe that are brewed with ayahuasca, uh, which can be pretty dicey in s- in some cases. W- I wanna ask you about another paragraph, and that- that'll lead into my question. So, so here's, here's the paragraph. "In the next two or three sessions at Don Fidel's, I experienced the same sub-threshold effects. It couldn't have been poor quality brew. Others in the group, including Don, were clearly affected. It was something wrong with me. For some reason, I wasn't getting it," in quotation marks. "Reflecting on those first experiences, I think that ayahuasca is, in ways, a learned experience. If you don't know what to expect, nothing may happen. Also, my uptight hypervigilance may have prevented me from relaxing enough to allow the experience to manifest." Okay, so this paragraph highlights one, one brand of sort of a null experience that I find most mystifying about psychedelics, because I have also had experiences and, and many others have, where they will, one out of 10, one out of 15, one out of every 20 sessions, have absolutely no effect. Even from-
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... mega doses of ayahuasca, and presumably your, you know, serotonin type 2A receptors aren't just out to lunch for that period of time. And so it, it begets all sorts of questions. So could, could you speak to ayahuasca as a learned experience, and also comment on, if you have any thoughts, these zero effect experiences? Because i- in each case, I can come up with a plausible explanation for why, if it were possible for my psyche to negate an experience, it would have negated those experiences in those settings. Uh, but it's hard for me to make heads or tails out of.
- DMDennis McKenna
It's very hard to do any kind of controlled study on this.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Right.
- DMDennis McKenna
You can't do that. I think what this speaks to is that ayahuasca or any psychoactive drug, not just psychedelics, but it happens in psychedelics, the experience is a combination of pharmacology, pharmacogenetics, the way that your unique body, we're all u- biochemically unique in the way your body handles the absorption and the elimination of, of the substance and the circumstances, set and setting. This, this dynamic of the environment that we harp on constantly as, as the importance of set and setting. I, I forget who it was, but some... I think maybe it was Andy Weil who once made the observation, psychedelics are a kind of placebo in a certain way, and if you take them under the wrong circumstances or inappropriate circumstances, you're not gonna get any effect because it doesn't sync with the expectations that you may have or other things, and it just won't happen. You have to surrender to it. You literally have to surrender to it to let it happen. But I think that this whole area of how the pharmacology and the expectations interact, it's a dynamic process that involves the medicine, your expectations, the dose, and your biochemical individuality and all that. I mean, it's interesting, for example, there are some people who... Most of us, for example, smoke DMT and we're blown away, right? I mean, DMT is hard to ignore if you smoke it. It's profound, very quick, but very intense experience. There are people who experience nothing, which is rather strange. And, and-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- DMDennis McKenna
... so what's that about? And without looking into, well, okay, so what's unique about their serotonin pharmacology? Maybe these people are like genetic knockouts, natural genetic knockouts. Maybe they don't have high levels of 5-HT2A receptors, or maybe there's something, maybe their MAO is super, super active or super high. But, you know, the problem, Tim, with, with, with studying this stuff is it, it all comes down to these are case studies, right? So you can't do a controlled experiment, really. You can't do a group and really study this effectively. It's all about, well, there's this one individual that no matter how much he takes, he or she takes DMT, m- is insensitive to it. And we never did figure it out. It never, it never-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
... actually worked. And I've heard other cases like that. I've heard cases, uh... These are all anecdotal stories, but I heard a case of someone who, for example, was insensitive to DMT, but very sensitive to 5-methoxy-DMT.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
Why would this be? It's just a mystery.
- 18:06 – 25:20
As much as Dennis has experimented with adding and subtracting ingredients to various psychoactive admixtures, he’s come to believe it’s best to avoid combinations if possible. There are often alternative ways to dial the effects of these substances up or down as desired.
- TFTim Ferriss
What also Just it produces more questions than answers certainly for me is when you look longitudinally at the experience of a single person. So-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... like, their pharmacogenetics should be reasonably stable, you would think.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And let's just say in my case, where I'm extremely sensitive to ayahuasca, generally speaking, and then in a handful of cases have t- you know, two or three cups and absolutely zero discernible effect.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I, I have my own subjective explanation for why that plausibly could have happened, but biochemically, I don't know how that is possible, right? And now because my expectation was that I would feel the effect, and similarly, there are cases where even if we remove the, the, the expectancy effect, there are certainly cases of people being dosed, let's just say, with LSD and any number of incarnations, and they end up tripping their faces off even though they hadn't planned on spending the rest of their evening, uh, in the 17th dimension, right?
- DMDennis McKenna
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So, so [laughs] I should also add just a quick note related to the, the s- the smoking of the Banisteriopsis caapi bark with mushrooms. I've never experienced that. I find that actually incredibly... I'm not recommending it. For all of the drug disclaimers and everything else, please revisit episode one, but I will say everything we're discussing, or a lot of what we're discussing, can go terribly sideways [laughs] .
- DMDennis McKenna
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, even if you are highly experienced. So we're not recommending you do any of these things. Talk to your medical professional, et cetera, et cetera.
- DMDennis McKenna
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
However, all of that having been said, I find what you did more interesting than, say, what someone did who I may or may not know, which is ingesting harmine or harmaline or tetrahydroharmine orally in combination with ground psilocybe mushrooms, where you, you hit the tennis ball, or you hit the golf ball more accurately, and you can't un-hit it.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And in that case, just for people wondering, the multiplier effect on the subjective experience of mushrooms is about a, a 3 to 4X. So if you were to take 1.5 grams of mushrooms and combine it with the MAO inhibitors in this way, the sort of subjective feeling is the intensity of 4.5, let's just say, grams. So you wanna be aware of that. But the smoking is super interesting because you can titrate that additive effect up or down.
- DMDennis McKenna
Exactly.
- TFTim Ferriss
Which is the same reason why I found my experiences, some of my experiences with intravenous ketamine very interesting versus intramuscular, for instance. Because in real time, you can dial up or down the intensity, assuming you haven't pushed yourself through the looking glass with a huge bolus in the very beginning. In that case, forget about it. All bets are off. But if you're starting at a dose and a drip, like, on a per, like, a, this kind of milligrams per kilogram basis over 60 minutes that you can manage a conversation with, then you can, you can kind of dial it up and down, which is extremely, extremely interesting because you're able to better observe the effects at least.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah. Uh, I mean, like you say, all the caveats, you know, about being careful with, with anything like this, anything you're doing. I, I think that one should be careful. One thing about the mushroom smoked Banisteriopsis, you know, thing is that it does seem very gentle, very easy to control. Again, your results may vary. Your mileage may vary. Everybody's different if you're super sensitive. I've always been a little puzzled why people would want to combine beta-carbolines with mushrooms, because they don't require it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
They're orally active. That's what sets psilocybin aside, you know, apart from DMT. It does not require activation by a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. And I'm a person that tends to think, avoid combinations if possible, because every drug you add into the mix complicates the pharmacokinetic picture and, and everything else, potentially makes it a little more hazardous. So I, to the people that say, "Well, I can take a gram and a half of mushrooms and potentiate it with Peganum harmala and get a much higher effect," my question is, well, why not take four grams of mushrooms and let it go at that, you know? [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
No, that is a much more straightforward approach. Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah, you'll get to the same place. But this idea about titrating dose is interesting. That's another approach to DMT that you can take that's, that's interesting, which I haven't worked with it that much. But vaping DMT in, in a Volcano vaporizer, I've had some of the most profound experiences with DMT that way, uh, because you can... You, you don't have to mess around with a pipe. You just get the bag full of smoke, and then you can deal with it. If you put under your tongue sublingually a little bit of Banisteriopsis tincture, like, 10 minutes before you do this, then you can smoke the vapor in DMT. And again, you get this ability to just gently rise up into the place, and you can kind of maintain that for a while. And then you can sort of drift back down, and then you can take another hit, and you can go back up there. But you feel this sense of... It, it's very much less threatening. I, I... You feel, you don't feel this sense of being out of control. And you just take three huge hits of DMT. It's, it's kind of like, "Okay, we're jumping off a cliff here. Open the umbrella, hope for the best."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
But this is a much more controllable way to approach it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
And if it gets scary, well, you just let yourself down gently and come in for a gentle landing. And, and if not, you can go to 28,000 feet or 50,000 feet or all the way into orbit if you want [laughs] if you-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
So I guess if there's a point to this rap, route and dosage and the way that you approach that is gonna, i- that's part of the dynamic, you know, of the set-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- DMDennis McKenna
... setting. Drug, individual setting, and dose. And that includes route of administration.
- 25:20 – 32:54
Why would we have cannabinoid, opiate, and other molecular receptors in our brains unless we’re designed to consume these substances from external sources?
- TFTim Ferriss
I have, not surprisingly, a whole, a whole slew of questions that I'd like to ask. And I'm trying to, I'm trying to sequence them so we can g- [laughs] in some rational way, because I think some could engender just a whole new branch of the conversation. Let me s- let me start with one that I've, I've heard you discuss on some capacity before, but I can't remember the answer, and I'd just love your help. We're probably gonna get into, like, phylogenetic trees and all sorts of stuff. But I heard someone talking not too long ago, and they said something along the lines of, "Well, if you look at the fact that we have cannabinoid receptors in our brain, why else would we have those if it weren't for the fact that we'd, were designed to consume cannabis?" You know, something along those lines. I think the logic was, was something like that. How, how would you explain the, uh, the prevalence or existence of receptors for these various types of, of, of molecules? I mean, we could use... Is it cannabinoids? Is that how you say that correctly?
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... it correctly. What would your response to that be? Or if you're sitting at a dinner table and someone brought that up, where would you take it?
- DMDennis McKenna
I think it's not that complicated, actually. The fact is, so we have cannabinoid receptors in our brains, and, uh, we have, we actually have cannabinoids in our brains. We have these-
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm
- DMDennis McKenna
... these peptides called, or these, these prostaglandin-like compounds called anandamides-
- TFTim Ferriss
Ah
- DMDennis McKenna
... and other types of things. These are effectively, they're our brain's own cannabinoids.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
Similarly, you see this with opiates. Opiate receptors in our brain bind to these opiate peptides, like endorphin and dynorphin and-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right
- DMDennis McKenna
... and those sorts of things. And they just happen to bind to the alkaloids from opium and have that effect. Similarly with serotonin receptors or dopamine receptors, all of these have their own endogenous, the term is en- endogenous ligands. And obviously for serotonin receptors, their serotonin is the endogenous ligand. But interesting new findings, Tim, show there's, formerly there was a lot of, there was excitement, there still is excitement about endogenous DMT. You know, and it's all related to the pineal gland and that sort of thing. Not so much. The current-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
... understanding is that the pineal is not so important. But DMT occurs in the brain, in certain parts of the brain, in rather high amounts in the frontal cortex, and this hasn't really been discussed or studied-
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm
- DMDennis McKenna
... as much as it should. My friend John Chavez has gotten into this, and rather deeply. So DMT is an endogenous ligand, and DMT is a very simple molecule. It's only two steps from tryptophan, which is in everything. Which is one reason why you find DMT in plants, animals, fungi. You know, I sometimes in my lectures say, "Nature is drenched in DMT." It's not uncommon at all. Oh, how did this come about? Well, it came about because these neurotransmitter-like compounds found in the brain are also found in plants and fungi, and they have similar evolutionary origins, basically. At some point, the fungi, the animals, and the plants, uh, split off from each other. There's this concept of the LUCA, you know, the last universal common ancestor, which was, nobody knows what it was, but we know that it had to have existed. And probably, probably it already had the, the genetic machinery to make these neurotransmitter-like compounds. And, and just like neurotransmitters in the brain, what they do is they facilitate signaling. They're signal transduction molecules, right? But plants and fungi and everything else use very similar molecules, sometimes the same molecules, for signal transduction processes in the ecosystem. Plants modulate their relationship with other organisms in the environment through signal transduction. And these messenger molecules, the, the plants make the, uh, these sort of- They're called secondary compounds, and that implies that they're not important. They're absolutely important. But what they do... Plants substitute biosynthesis for behavior, right? Plants modulate, uh, optimize their relationship with everything in the environment, 'cause they can't respond, they can't run away, right? They're stuck in one place. So they do it through chemistry. And sometimes, you know, this is like my usual rap, but sometimes the message is very simple. Stay away. Get away from me. I'm poisonous. You don't want to muck with me, you know? Other times-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
... the message is, come closer. Let's symbiose. Let's form relationships. All of this is mediated by these signal transduction processes, which is a, which is a special kind of, of signal, signaling process in organisms that involves a receptor and a molecule that comes from somewhere outside or some other part of the brain and actually binds into that receptor. So it's a-
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm
- DMDennis McKenna
... physical molecular interaction. That's what I mean by signal transduction, as opposed to, say, nervous, electrical nervous transmission. Which also takes place.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
That's the myst- It's not really a mystery. It's, uh, we evolved from the same origins. Not surprising that our brains have neurotransmitter-like compounds that resemble those we find in nature. And the interesting-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
... thing is something like psilocybin is a good example. Psilocybin has, you know, phylogenetically, we're pretty sure that psilocybin's been around for at least 75 million years.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
The higher mushrooms, the Basidiomycetes, are very old. Long before there were animal nervous systems for them to interact with.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
But then animals did evolve, and they, turns out they have interesting effects with psilocybin. What was psilocybin doing in nature before then? Well, probably insects. It had to do with insects. It was either an attractant or a repellent. More likely-
- 32:54 – 38:56
Tales of terror from the world of psilocybin cicadas, cordyceps zombies, and toxoplasmic rodents.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
I mean, you've heard of the psilocybin, uh, cicadas, uh, story, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
No, I have not. [laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
Oh, well-
- TFTim Ferriss
How did I miss the psilocybin cicadas story? Sounds like a punk band. [laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
Uh, it does, really. Well, I don't know. Do you wanna go into it? [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] I do. Yeah, of course I do.
- DMDennis McKenna
Oh, okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
You kidding? Yeah. [laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
So very interesting study came out a few years ago. So cicadas are those things that spend, like, 17 years underground, and then they come out every 17 years. Or different species come out at different times, and so on. Well, it turns out... I mean, I, I should be able to quote more detail. But if you Google this, it'll all come up.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
So cicada, there's a fungus which is not a psilocybe. It's called Massospora, is the fungus, but it makes psilocybin. And it makes cathinone, which is a stimulant compound that's found-
- TFTim Ferriss
Huh
- DMDennis McKenna
... in khat. It's found, it's the stimulant-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
... uh, found in khat. Well, Massospora infects these cicadas-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
... while they're in the ground. And it, they take it over, and when they emerge out of the ground, essentially their abdomen has been replaced by fungal sporangia, right? [laughs] This is kind of a-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
... grisly tale. They emerge out of the ground, and instead of having a butt, basically-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
... their tail is, is replaced by these massive spore masses. And they're hypersexual. They try to mate with anything that moves or even that doesn't move.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
And they're waving around their butts and spreading spores everywhere-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
... infecting more cicadas. And, and this is how the fungus... Effectively, the fungus has taken over the cicada and enslaved it into a, turned them into sex-crazed zombies, if you want to put it that way.
- TFTim Ferriss
Wow.
- DMDennis McKenna
And facilitates-
- TFTim Ferriss
Also a good punk rock band. [laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
A sex-crazed zombie. [laughs] Yes.
- 38:56 – 46:49
Dennis shares his thoughts on psychedelics as a potential treatment for dyslexia and other language-based disorders.
- DMDennis McKenna
Anyway.
- TFTim Ferriss
So let me ask you a question about a comment that you made in, uh, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss about LSD as a potential treatment for dyslexia. Now, I don't have all the context, but I pulled this out, and this is, uh, is, is gonna lead to a broader question about perhaps unusual or unexpected applications-
- DMDennis McKenna
Hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... or indications for psychedelics. But this, this section here reads, "It did lead me to speculate about the use of LSD as a potential treatment for dyslexia. We have a limited understanding of neuroplasticity, to say nothing of how psychedelics might affect it. That man's anecdote," so of course I've omitted an anecdote, "hints at the curious link between psychedelics and language, as do the more prevalent accounts of synesthesia I've discussed earlier." And then I'll actually read one more sentence. "Psychedelics have some fundamental relationship to the way our brains create meaning and understanding out of sounds and images. I'm convinced that further investigations into this phenomenon would yield new insights." Could you, could you expand on that? Because I would agree, certainly, with the, uh, the assertion of this fundamental relationship. Any thoughts on LSD specifically as perhaps a, a tool for addressing dyslexia or, or psychedelics for any other indications that people might not guess?
- DMDennis McKenna
The connection to LSD and language, and I think even more so with mushrooms, because you're probably familiar with an essay, I think by, uh, Henry Munn, that was published in a book called, uh, I think it was by Peter First, called Hallucinogens and Culture. This was around 1970. There's a wonderful chapter in there called The Mushrooms of Language. It's by Henry Munn.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
And it makes the point, and again, like I talk about this in The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, you, it makes the point that in this be mushroom state, the poetry, the language becomes much more fluid. It just sort of flows out of you, and that's why these people can chant for hours and, and they're actually instantiating, you know, their, the mushroom is speaking through them. This gnosis, literally this, the logos is the word. The true, the pure logos actually flows through them. And then there's the phenomenon of synesthesia, which psychedelics, especially mushrooms, can reliably do. And you know, I've, the association with meaningful images with sound. Some people are naturally, genetically synesthetic. And it's very often, it's very interesting how their synesthetic experiences often have to do with words and numbers and things like that. And they'll say things like, "Well, the number 13 is chrome-shaped and spiky. You know, shiny and spiky." What? But for them, that's a reality. And I think, you know, I've argued that, uh, mushrooms, well, I have, Terence have, lots of people have, that mushrooms were important in the origin of consciousness. And I think that it is this, this connection to language that consciousness depends [clears throat] what we understand as true consciousness depends on this- Construction of this worldview, essentially. And that's built on language, this artificial reality that we construct for ours- for ourselves that's a combination of sensory input that is filtered and processed in a certain way and, uh, linked to associations, memories, all of that kind of thing. So we build this, you know, what the neuroscientists now call the default mode network, which is kind of ordinary state of consciousness. Long before I heard of the default mode network, I was calling it the reality hallucination. Effectively, we live in a hallucination. We live in an artificial world, reality that our brains construct. And it must reflect whatever is out there, 'cause we're not wandering around stepping in front of buses and things like that. So it does map to reality in some ways, but it's a, it's actually an impoverished version of reality. What the, a lot of what the brain does is filter things out, you know. And Huxley had this insight. He talked about the reducing valve, that to make the world comprehensible, you have to selectively filter what gets in. And, uh, you're, you inhabit this filtered, you could almost use the word curated version of reality. Otherwise, it would just be a blooming, buzzing confusion, and you wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to navigate. And then you can take a psychedelic. You can disable those mechanisms. You can, you can disable this default mode mechanism, open the gates of the reducing valve, and that can be very beneficial in terms of helping you get outside of your reference frame. Uh, and that's very useful. I think that that's what psychedelics, I think that's where the therapeutic effect really, for many of the things it's indicated for, it's this ability to step outside your reference frame temporarily and look at your situation from a different perspective. And, uh, but you wouldn't wanna be there all the time, right? Because you wouldn't be functional. That's again why you have to be very selective about your set and setting, when do you do these things. It's a complex topic, because I think it does relate to the way that we link images, essentially internal images, to sounds and meaning, effectively meaning. Because I'm here rapping to you, right? And I'm making effectively small mouth noises which are inherently meaningless, except that we happen to share a language. And so when I make these small mouth noises, chances are your brain is reflecting it in terms of images. I say chair, you see a chair. I say star, you see a star. So I mean, it's more complex than that, but I think that's the basis of cognition, really. And if you look at culture, if you look at, if, if you look at consciousness, it's all based on this, this relationship between sound, image, and, and meaning, or what they sometimes call portentousness.
- TFTim Ferriss
An ascribed meaning, right? It's a learned association that is not automatic, right? I think about this a lot with, say, infants and language, and, uh, I'm sure there's someone who could comment on this much more intelligently than I can. But when an infant, let's say before they develop full depth perception and so on, if they were to look at what's in front of me, they wouldn't see laptop, webcam, microphone, wood table, et cetera, pile of papers as discrete objects until they have, likely, at least not to that level of fidelity, until they have labels
- 46:49 – 51:17
What happened to Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell after having his savikalpa samadhi experience — a mystic glimpse beyond the self into the true nature of things? Does Dennis believe current psychedelic pioneers are misguided in downplaying the mystical experiences certain compounds bring out in people?
- TFTim Ferriss
for those things, right?
- DMDennis McKenna
Right. Exactly.
- TFTim Ferriss
It might just be a flattened sort of two-dimensional sheet of colors-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... and shapes and shadows. And I, I think about that quite a bit also as, uh, you know, you, you mentioned in the last episode that you've done who knows how many sessions with ayahuasca, you know, 500 plus, and it, it does seem that people develop, or some people develop an ability to discern and see in those spaces in the same way that an infant sort of develops the ability to, to discern between these kind of dis- discrete things that we have labels for as adults, if that makes any sense at all. [laughs] I'm not sure if that resonates at all. But I do think about that a lot. And I, I wanted to come back to something you said, which was, uh, you know, adopting a new reference point and how that can be applied to many different, say, conditions or issues. And in some ways, you know, a lot of the outcomes that we see, or even the case studies that we might see in the case of this person with dyslexia or Andy Weil with his allergies, right-
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... sort of defy conventional mechanistic explanations for how that could happen, right? Like, as far as I know, LSD is not an antihistamine, [laughs] right?
- DMDennis McKenna
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
So, so it raises all sorts of questions. And I, I wanted to read, this, this is gonna be, uh, the, the last section that I wanted to read to you, and, and I, I realize that The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss was written quite a while ago. So if, if this goes to a dead end, I'll take the blame for it. But-
- DMDennis McKenna
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
I, I pulled this out, which was a segment on Apollo 14 It says, this is another example of reference point changes. So Apollo 14 is mostly remembered for the two golf balls that Alan Shepard hit with a makeshift club he'd brought with him. It was also the mission on which, and this is the part that I bolded, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, I'm guessing that's how that's said-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... had his famous savikalpa samadhi experience, or mystical glimpse beyond the self into the true nature of things. Mitchell subsequently became interested in consciousness research, paranormal phenomena such as ESP, and went on to become a founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, uh, or IONs. What happened to Edgar? I don't actually know this story.
- DMDennis McKenna
Well, I, I think he had a mystical experience, basically.
- TFTim Ferriss
And this was in space, while he was in orbit?
- DMDennis McKenna
In space, yeah, or on the moon, whatever. But I think, you know, we know these things happen spontaneously. I think basically he, he got so far out of his re- reference frame. And who wouldn't be out of their reference frame if they're on the moon-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
... or in space, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Right. [laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
And so he had a spontaneous mystical experience, you know, we are all one with the cosmos, and all that. And now if he'd been on psychedelics at the same time, he might have really [laughs] but I, I think that's what happens. And, and so that, that speaks to the, the idea that, that this ability to step literally outside your box, outside of this default mode network, is probably at the center of the psychedelic experience, at least in terms of its therapeutic effect, and its, its, its profundity, if you will, the, the mystical experience or however you want to describe that. I mean, I mean, Roland Griffiths and his people, even though they're the pioneers in looking at psilocybin and mystical experiences, but they really toned it down because they don't want to alarm people, you know? [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
And they ta- they don't talk about mystical experiences anymore. They talk about personally meaningful experiences. Well-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Right
- DMDennis McKenna
... that's nice, but they're, they're mystical experiences, damn it. I mean, they are, they are experiences of transcendence, and it's important, I think, to, to acknowledge that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, I agree. I mean, they did also develop, you know, the, I'm, I'm probably getting the terminology wrong, but the sort of mystical experience questionnaire, which had-
- DMDennis McKenna
Right. Right
- TFTim Ferriss
... like the parameters and characteristics, which include ineffability and so on,
- 51:17 – 52:31
For anyone curious about Albert Hofmann’s discovery of LSD, Dennis recommends the graphic novel Bicycle Day by Brian Blomerth.
- TFTim Ferriss
right?
- DMDennis McKenna
Right. And some people just get this naturally. I mean, for example, Albert Hofmann. I mean, Albert Hofmann had numerous, uh, what you might call quasi or actual mystical experiences in nature long before he took LSD.
- TFTim Ferriss
I did not know that.
- DMDennis McKenna
He was a person who was able to do this, and it was very meaningful-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- DMDennis McKenna
... for him. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm. And so, so for people who don't have any context, Albert Hofmann, the first to synthesize, I guess, LSD 25. [laughs] Was that the-
- DMDennis McKenna
That was the one that got him off, yes. He's so [laughs] he's-
- TFTim Ferriss
That was the one that he was called to take before he went on his bike ride? [laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
That's right. That's right.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-
- DMDennis McKenna
There's a wonderful book I, I should-
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay
- DMDennis McKenna
... I, I should mention. I like to plug books, I guess, others have written, you've probably read it, called Bicycle Day by Brian Blomerth.
- TFTim Ferriss
I've heard of it. I haven't read it.
- DMDennis McKenna
It's a, uh, graphic novel. It's a graphic comic novel about his discovery of LSD. I, I wrote the forward, and-
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, amazing
- DMDennis McKenna
... it's a great book. People should get
- 52:31 – 54:36
My recommended resources for learning more about the perceptual phenomenon of synesthesia.
- DMDennis McKenna
it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Bicycle Day.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah, Bicycle Day.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right. So Bicycle Day, we'll, we'll link to that in the, in the show notes. I also wanted to mention a book that is related to a word and a concept and an experience, a phenomena or phenomenon I guess, that... It's really a set of phenomena, synesthesia. So there are two resources I want to recommend. The first is a book that I first bought in, I want to say, late high school, called The Mind of a Mnemonist. So the mind of, as in mnemonic device. The Mind of a-
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... Mnemonist, A Little Book About a Vast Memory, and it's written by A.R. Luria. Or maybe it's with a forward by, uh, yeah, Jerome S. Bruner. Written by A.R. Luria, but it's, it's effectively a case study of a Rain Man-like figure who experiences, regularly experiences synesthesia, so this intermingling of the senses. So as you mentioned, kind of s- i- identifying numbers as shapes or smelling colors.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Having tastes associated with musical notes or sounds, things like this. Which can be either, and in some cases both, an, an enormous blessing or the most difficult curse [laughs] uh-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yes. Oh
- TFTim Ferriss
... if it is something that you can't turn off. That's one. There's also a, a, I want to say a documentary or it may have been a TV series called Rain Man about a young Brit, or at least at the, at the time was young, who experiences or claims to experience synesthesia. A- as I understand it, also fairly controversial. Daniel Tammet is the figure in this one. But still makes for a fascinating, a fascinating watch, and I think it's Kim Peek, the actual basis for Rain Man, who's also featured in that book, who, [laughs] believe it or not, can read two pages at the same time, one with each eye. So try to, try that at home and see how far you get.
- DMDennis McKenna
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
But, uh-
- DMDennis McKenna
Right. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
But those are t- two points on synesthesia.
- 54:36 – 1:07:43
What ESPD 55 entails: its history, its itinerary, and how you can participate even if you can’t physically make it to the conference in the UK from May 23rd to the 26th.
- TFTim Ferriss
What I'd love to ask you about now is ESPD 55. So we should probably also provide some context, maybe you can do this, what ESPD stands for and just a bit of the histories for those who don't have it and didn't hear the first conversation.
- DMDennis McKenna
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
And then, I would love to hear you describe some of what is going to be discussed, the why to do it, et cetera.
- DMDennis McKenna
Sure. Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because as you know, I have a collection of these sort of historical anthologies already.
- DMDennis McKenna
ESPD is, stands for Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. And in 1967, the National Institute of Mental Health sponsored a, a conference in San Francisco by that name, and it was a closed conference. The only thing the taxpayers ever got out of it was this book that they published, the proceedings of the conference. Well, somehow or other, that came onto my radar at the age of 18. And the next year, the year after the conference was done, it was somehow I got it, and it opened up the world for me of ethnopharmacology. Well, the government staged this conference, published this book. They were supposed to have follow-up events every 10 years or so to keep abreast of what was going on in the field. Well, that never happened. The, the war on drugs came along. They, they were embarrassed basically. They never done anything, even though you could order it from the US Government Printing Office for many years. Well, so I always wanted to stage a follow-up, and 50 years went by. Circumstances never allowed that to happen. But in 2017, everything came together. I had funding. I had a place. I had people to help me organize it. And you know, I wanna give a shout-out to them because it wasn't me that did it. I had a lot of help, some of them. And so we did this, this conference in 2017. We did ESPD 50, this commemorating 50th anniversary conference. And we, uh, we published the original '67 volume together with the 2017 volume as a box set. We put the videos on... The videos are still up there. People can watch them. And so now, it's been five years, so we decided to do a five-year follow-up. God knows if I'll be here in 10 years, [laughs] so you know, we decided to do a five-year follow-up, and that's what ESPD 55 is, the five-year from the 2017 conference, or the 55th year of the first conference. And that's the origin. That's the whole idea of it. The 2017 conference was pretty much focused on ethnopharmacology and sort of the unexplored dark corners or, you know, fringes of ethnopharmacology. In other words, the, the idea is the search for psychoactive drugs. It's, it's a quest. We're doing that this year. We have some really interesting topics. We have, for example, one person that's presenting on psychedelics found in sponges and, you know, marine sponges and that sort of thing. But we've also got a couple forums. We have three forums that don't really fit into this pattern. One of them is a forum on coca and the need to de-stigmatize coca. So we've got... Coca's a wonderful medicine, as coca, not as coc- cocaine is horrible. Cocaine is a horrible drug. But coca is beneficial. And coca is just at the center of Andean traditions and medicine and all that, and potentially could be as a nutraceutical. As an herbal medicine, it could be very beneficial. And there are all sorts of aspects, 'cause it would give the people who grow it, who formerly were basically just told by the cartels, "Okay, you work for us now. If you don't produce it, we'll just kill you," but give those families, mostly, economic benefits and bring coca back as a, as a respected medicine. So we've got Wade Davis, uh, participating in this. We've got Andy Weil. They're both of them long time advocates of, of coca as a medicine and a, and a food, actually, which it also is. It's very nutritionally beneficial.
- TFTim Ferriss
Now, I want to take a second just to get into some of the logistics of ESPD 55. As a sidebar, I'll just say the box set of books for ESPD 50 you can find online. You can find them on Amazon. They're beautifully done. I have them on my bookshelf. Absolutely a joy to read. For ESPD 55, people can find that at espd55.com. I'll put that in the show notes. And people can either attend in person in the UK, May 23rd to 26th, this is 2022, or they can attend online. Are those the, the, the two primary options that are available for folks?
- DMDennis McKenna
Yes, that's right. And less, less and less in person, because, because it's rapidly filling up, basically-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
... the in person. But we intend to live stream it. And when we did ESPD 50, we had, at times, we had 75,000 people participating.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
We hope to meet or exceed that benchmark this time. And, uh, th- there will be another book. There'll be another... There'll be a book that comes out of it. Only one this time, but it'll be Also high quality and it will match the, you know, the design and everything to the previous ones. So it'll look good on your shelf. And the person that dis- that provided the art, that amazing, lovely watercolors that were incorporated-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- DMDennis McKenna
... into the design, she is, uh... There's a link to her website. She's selling prints, essentially. Print- prints, uh, uh, print sets of about, I think, uh, about 100 of her illustrations that people can order if they wish.
- TFTim Ferriss
Amazing.
- DMDennis McKenna
And they're beautiful, so.
- TFTim Ferriss
So Dennis, one thing I'd like to do to, to sell this event, if it's okay with you, and we can cut this out if it ends up being more than you'd like to reveal, but I just wanna give some teasers for folks. I'm not gonna give away too much, uh, or I won't give a lot of the specifics, but let me just give some other samples of sessions. Is that okay with you, Dennis?
- DMDennis McKenna
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. So there's a session on kratom. A lot of people have questions about kratom.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mitragyna speciosa, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Mitragynine. Fascinating, fascinating plant.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm gonna put this in a little gingerbread trail, so I'm not gonna fill in all the gaps, but a roadmap for sustainable development of ayahuasca production in the Amazon lowlands. Great interest to me.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Psychedelic fauna, so to be distinguished from flora. I'll just put that... I'll leave that alone. I won't go into that too much. Uh, here's another. A his- uh, his- history of psychoactive plants and fungi in Chinese medicine, something you do not hear in, uh, at least much that I have at all in mainstream conversations.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
You mentioned marine sponges, yield-enhancing lessons from psilocin, which is what psilocybin is m- quickly metabolized into, uh, in the human body. I guess that's probably what maybe first pass metabolism through the liver. We've got hunting medicines among the Matsigenka, the harpy's gift and the jaguar's curse. Great title.
- DMDennis McKenna
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Wachuma, the sort of phytochemical profiling of wachuma. Some people might know that as San Pedro cactus. Also very interesting to me personally from a, from a, uh, conservation and sustainability perspective because it grows so much faster than, say, peyote.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm, which is endangered.
- 1:07:43 – 1:11:12
How does Dennis relate to mortality and the inevitability of death?
- TFTim Ferriss
So let, let me ask you, this, this might seem like a strange turn, but I wanna ask you about life and death for a second, because you, you made a, you cracked a joke earlier. I'm not sure if it was totally in jest or serious, but you said, "I don't know if I'll be around here in 10 years, so we're gonna do the fifth year new edition." If you're open to talking about it, I mean, how do you relate to death and mortality? How do you, how do you think about that, relate to it, in, in any way you'd like to take a stab at that, if there's anything to, to be discussed?
- DMDennis McKenna
Well, I relate to it in the sense that e- everybody has to die sooner or later. Everybody crosses that threshold sooner or later. And a lot of religious traditions and philosophical traditions and everything ha- have to do with the focus on what happens after you die, you know, or when you die. And but from a scientific perspective, I think the, uh, the only answer, the only honest answer is nobody knows what happens when you die, when you really die. There's lots of studies about the near-death experience and then all the changes that happens during the near-death experience. The fact is, that's not death, you know?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Right.
- DMDennis McKenna
So that is maybe a reflection of the, the stuff that happens to your brain while you're in the process of dying, but it is not in fact dying. Is there anything that persists after death? The, the honest answer I, I feel is I just don't know. I'm open to the possibility. I hope there is and, but maybe not. It's a case of be careful what you wish for, right? I mean, like Shakespeare said, "In that sleep of death, what dreams may come?" Hopefully they'll be pleasant if there is something. Or hopefully i- if there is something after death, hopefully there will be something worthwhile experiencing and not just terrible. Or if there's nothing after death, if there's just oblivion, well, I won't be around to worry about it. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
So, so either way, I'm okay with. I don't plan to check out soon. I hope not.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
I wanna be around for ESPD 60 and 65 and 70, but let's face it, I'm, I'm no spring chicken. I'm getting up there.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
So, you know, I'm, I'm 71. I'll be 72 later this year. So not real old, but not real young neither. So-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
I think what I do is I think that I, I, I kinda take a leaf from the people, for example, that get psilocybin for end-of-life therapy, you know? Very often the insight that they get from that is, "Well, yes, I'm dying, but I'm alive now."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
And I'm sort of, that's where I'm at. I mean, we're all dying, Tim. Slowly-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
... fast-
- TFTim Ferriss
For sure
- DMDennis McKenna
... whatever. Important thing is we're alive now.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
Make the most of it. That's what I think.
- TFTim Ferriss
So you certainly seem to be making the most of it. [laughs]
- 1:11:12 – 1:37:45
What is BioGnosis?
- TFTim Ferriss
What are you most excited about right now? While you are alive, which you are, like, what is giving you the most joy and aliveness these days? Could be anything.
- DMDennis McKenna
I think a lot of us are really concerned with things that are happening, and the future looks pretty grim in a lot of ways. But you do what you can. I, I think that giving into despair is not a solution for anything. And it's tempting. I mean, you could just say things are so bad that there is no hope. But then if you come to that point, then there really isn't any hope. So you just keep plugging. And to the degree that I can, I keep plugging. And I've got many people who feel the same way. Does any of it make any difference? I don't know. But, like, the Biognosis Project is a good example. If we can slow down this, this disappearance of knowledge and the, and the disappearance of the habitats and the loss of species and all that just a little bit, I mean, compared to what other groups and organizations are doing, probably Biognosis is a small thing. But it's, it's our thing. It's what we're doing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
And I think maybe it'll make a little difference.
- TFTim Ferriss
So let me spell that for people. So Biognosis, just so we all have the spelling.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's B-I-O-G-N-O-S-I-S.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yes. A made-up word.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- DMDennis McKenna
Biology, bio, life, and gnosis, knowledge.
- TFTim Ferriss
Knowledge.
- DMDennis McKenna
A, a coined word-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right
- DMDennis McKenna
... really.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- DMDennis McKenna
But that, that's the idea.
- TFTim Ferriss
And people can find more about BioGnosis, Bridges to Ancestral Wisdom, at biognosis.mckenna.academy, and we'll link to that in-
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... the, the show notes as well. Let me come back to a second for kind of slowing the degradation and depletion of our natural habitat. This, this [laughs] sort of greenish-blue marble that is spinning through space with a bunch of monkeys on it [laughs] who are making a whole-
- DMDennis McKenna
Busy destroying it [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... whole mess of things.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Busy making a whole mess of it. What is your current perspective on, say, synthetic options for psychedelic compounds? In the sense that I found a, an older interview where you were interviewed by Nailed Magazine and there was a bit of a discussion about, you know, synthetic/freeze-dried ayahuasca. And you mentioned how, [inhales] and feel free to revise this, but how you felt that it's, it may be a psychedelic, but it's not ayahuasca because the ayahuasca experience begins when you taste it and the purging is potentially a feature and not a bug.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I'd, I'd just be curious to know, let's say in the case of ayahuasca, what do you think some of the most viable solutions might be to avoiding over-harvesting and endangering these various plant species? Is the synthetic route, you know, creating pharmahuasca alternatives viable, attractive, unappealing, ill-fated? What's, what's your perspective?
- DMDennis McKenna
I think we have to look at all, all viable solutions. For example, psilocybin. Psilocybin mushrooms don't really have that issue. I mean, they're not endangered.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- DMDennis McKenna
They can be grown by megatons. So, so we're not gonna run out of psilocybin. And maybe if we wanna go with natural psychedelics, maybe we should emphasize those. There is a lot of global interest in psilocybin, and ayahuasca is endangered and, and peyote certainly is endangered, and things like iboga are endangered.
- TFTim Ferriss
On the verge of extinction.
- DMDennis McKenna
It's on the verge of extinction.
- 1:37:45 – 1:44:35
The pros and cons of cannabis consumption and its methods of delivery, and how modern strains can induce experiences akin to psychedelics.
- TFTim Ferriss
What do you find the benefits of cannabis to be for you? Or what are the, the ways in which you use it?
- DMDennis McKenna
I think it just reduces stress. It helps me relax. It helps me sleep and calm down and, and it's good for insight. I think it's good for writing, for example. Just a general balm to the spirit, in a sense. B-A-L-M, that kind of thing.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
A nurturing... My brother used to call cannabis Sister Mary Redemptress.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] That's great.
- DMDennis McKenna
And it's kinda like that, [laughs] you know? It's kinda like that. This benevolent, loving, feminine medicine.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm. And do you, uh, do you typically smoke? Is that, uh, your preferred means of consumption?
- DMDennis McKenna
It has been, yeah, yeah. I have tried vaping. I've tried edibles. Neither one of those works for me. But my cardiologist, I now have heart conditions that I have to worry about.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- DMDennis McKenna
So my cardiologist said, "Don't smoke, whatever you do," you know? And I, I-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- DMDennis McKenna
... no matter how mu- no matter what you're smoking. And I... So I tried that for a while, and finally I deci- I tried vaping, and that was actually harder on my heart than it was smoking. So what I do is I smoke tiny amounts in one of those cigarette-looking things, and-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
... it seems to work. I'm s- I mean, it's sorta like I told my cardiologist, I said, "Well, yeah, I can avoid all these things, but you know I'm a, I have to live," right?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- DMDennis McKenna
I mean, if, if I die smoking cannabis, okay, so be it, you know? [laughs] I'm at peace with that. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Do you have, uh, any preferred, uh... I'm not even ter- I'm, I'm no cannabis expert. Are, you preferred strain, anything along those lines?
- DMDennis McKenna
No, not really. I'm, I'm-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
... from an era where, long before any of that made sense, if it's cannabis, if it's work, if it works, I'm fine with it. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] You know, I, I, I will say that I've only in the last few years really had proper exposure to cannabis, [laughs] which-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... take a while to unpack what the hell I mean by that, but I have a few novice takeaways are, number one, I'm actually really glad I discovered it very, relatively late in life [laughs] because-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... it could've been a real problem for me, I can tell. And number two, the, the two aspects, no, three aspects that have most impressed me are, number one, the effects on sleep.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Although, it seems like you need to be careful so that you're not eliminating your REM cycles entirely. So it seems like you can certainly overdo it. But just in terms of turning down the, the volume and speed of mental chatter-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yes
- TFTim Ferriss
... so that I can sleep, it's, it's quite remarkable. The second is how intensely it impr- seems to improve. Again, [laughs] I mean, who knows? If someone were observing it, they might have a different perspective. But, uh, how intensely it affects and sensitizes my perception of music and production of music, say, with percussion-
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm
- 1:44:35 – 1:55:28
What we can expect from an upcoming second edition of The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, The BioGnosis Project (and its first associated documentary [to be screened at ESPD 55]), virtualizing the Herbarium in Iquitos, and other parting thoughts.
- DMDennis McKenna
Well, a couple of things. I mean, we have pretty well covered the bases, Tim. This has been great. You've, you're very kind to spend so much time on this. But, uh, one thing I'd like to mention, you've quoted a number of times from The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss. People may be interested to know that there'll be a second edition coming out toward the end of the year.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, no kidding. I had no idea.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah, they're gonna reprint it. I've written a new chapter, so it'll be the old one, but I've written a new forward and a new chapter for it, and sort of, in that sense, tried to bring it up to date. Because the book itself, what it actually described ended in, more or less, with my brother's death in 2000. And then the book itself was published in 2012. Well, a lot has happened in the last 22 years. So, uh, so it's coming out. Synergetic is gonna reprint it, and it'll have this, this amended chapter to it. So that's one thing. The other thing that we didn't really get into, and maybe it... When we talked about BioGnosis, I don't know if people understand exactly what we're doing. But in a nutshell, what we're trying to do with this BioGnosis project, which is a long-term project and is actually gonna cost considerable money if we, if we do it right. Basically two aspects to it, in terms of this knowledge recovery, knowledge preservation, and connection into science. One is doing this series of documentaries on Amazonian traditional medicine. The first documentary we're, we have a short, they'll be short documentaries. The first one will be showing at ESPD 55, and making a big pitch, basically, for support to make the, you know, complete the series. We conceive this as five to seven 30 to 40 minute documentaries that kind of is a snapshot of traditional medicine as it exists today in the 21st century in the Amazon. And that's one aspect to it. But then linked to that is this much bigger long-term project, has to do with the herbarium in Iquitos, at the university in Iquitos. And, and digitizing the herbarium. It's got 100,000 specimens. Only half those have actually been mounted. But what we wanna do is make high resolution scans of those specimens, put them online in an accessible database that anyone can access. And we actually have a, an idea for creating a VR, using VR and, and AI technology to build what we're calling the Visionary Rainforest, which would be basically these collections distributed through this, this virtual space. And just as a way of representing. So people, if they can't go to the Amazon, they can immerse themselves in the Visionary Rainforest. But it wouldn't be just a... It would, it would actually have information. Each of the collections from the herbarium would be assigned to a place, 'cause they were collected someplace, right? So you go into this virtual environment, and there'll be nodes that represent each collection. You can click on a node, and that will open up a whole link to many forms of information. Maybe information about traditional uses, about chemistry, about genomics, about all kinds of things. So make this a dynamic, experienceable environment, but make it have scientific validity as well. And so this is a grand vision. And hopefully, again, it will be a resource for anyone, for scientists especially, but really anyone that wants to, uh, you know, experience the... I mean, the herbarium in Iquitos is kind of a rundown, gradually eroding situation. But it's a gem. It's an important resource. All these plants are there.
- TFTim Ferriss
What, 160,000-plus specimens, something?
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah, about 100,000 specimens altogether.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- DMDennis McKenna
And so we want to make that a real thing and turn it into a world-class resource for... And the whole idea of this is, I think it was, uh, Ralph Walt- Waldo Emerson is the one who said, "A, a weed is a plant whose virtues haven't yet been discovered."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- DMDennis McKenna
In that sense, every plant is valuable. And to the extent that we can link information about these collections to, to them, that gives them a value.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- DMDennis McKenna
And I mean, they, they don't need validation. They don't need value from us to be valuable, but it gives them a value that we recognize. So we're gonna talk about this, this project, and it's going to involve working very closely with the university there, and they're all on board for it. It's probably gonna cost several million dollars to do this, but I think we can get the money. I think that people will see the value of it and, and step up and do it. And this is just, in the overall scheme of things, it's just one little thing we can do to try to slow down what's happening in the Amazon, because the Amazon is, the Amazon is on fire, along with the rest of the world, and it's gonna go away. It will be lost forever if we don't do something about it in the next decade or so. And by we, I mean humanity. We're just... Our little academy and our little project is a small part of it, but maybe enough of a part of it to be a, a catalyst in this. I think that pretty much summarizes it, that this BioGnosis thing in terms of the nuts and bolts are these two components. One is using videography to document and preserve this knowledge, and make it compelling for people. We want to do a Netflix series or National Geographic, whoever will take a look at it, and we want it to be something that people wanna watch. And then this other project is, is obviously not separate from it, but, but is a longer term and more ambitious thing of creating this virtual, this visual rainfor- visionary rainforest that will live on the web and be accessible to people, and benefit, you know, the people in the Amazon and people worldwide that are interested in, in these Amazonian plants. So that, that's the basic idea.
- TFTim Ferriss
And people can find more on BioGnosis, and I will include this link along with links to everything else in the show notes for folks. BioGnosis, B-I-O-G-N-O-S-I-S, .mckenna, M-C-K-E-N-N-A, .academy. And I'm sure if you just search BioGnosis McKenna on Google that it'll pop right up.
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I encourage people also to check out espd55.com, another link that I'll include. If the last two volumes are any indication, and if the schedule is any indication, this should be a fantastic event, and cover a lot of ground that I haven't even touched before. And as a devout nerd in the space-
- DMDennis McKenna
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... I'm, I'm both ashamed and excited that that is true. That's happening in the UK, May 23rd to 26th, and you can also attend the live streaming online.
- DMDennis McKenna
What I should mention, Tim, is one thing. We, we will be... We're talking to Synergetic next week, so you'll be able to pre-order the symposium volume for ESPD 55, just, and you can still order the old one as well. They still-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- DMDennis McKenna
... they still have that. So you can pre-order that there. And the videos from ESPD 50 are still online, and in, and they're open access, and I'll send you that link and you can post that as well. So people can go back and watch those videos.
- TFTim Ferriss
Perfect. We'll include those.
- DMDennis McKenna
I think we've pretty well covered just about everything. You've been incredibly generous with your time.
- TFTim Ferriss
Life feels short sometimes, but it's also pretty long, and-
- DMDennis McKenna
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... if I'm not gonna spend time having conversations like this, what am I in [laughs] a rush to do? Go fold my socks?
- DMDennis McKenna
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh, this is much more fun.
- DMDennis McKenna
[laughs] Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
People can find you on Twitter, @dennismckenna4. We will link to that in the show notes as well.
- DMDennis McKenna
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
The website for your academy is mckenna.academy. And the links to everything will be in the show notes, tim.blog/podcast. If you just search my name and Dennis McKenna, no doubt you'll find both of our episodes, and that will be very, very easy to source. So tim.blog/podcast. Dennis, it is so nice to see you again. It's always fun.
Episode duration: 1:55:49
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