#113 In this episode, Guy spoke with Dennis McKenna, a respected ethnopharmacologist, discussed the nature of reality and consciousness, and how they are shaped by our brain’s neurochemistry. He elaborated on the role of psychedelics in expanding consciousness and their therapeutic applications in mental health. McKenna also reflected on his career, significant influences, and the development of ethnopharmacology as a field. He touched on his brother Terence McKenna’s impact, shared personal anecdotes, and shedded light on the McKenna Academy’s mission. The conversation delved into the importance of safe and informed use of psychedelics and emphasizes curiosity, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of understanding in exploring the mind and consciousness.
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About Dennis: Dennis McKenna has conducted research in ethnopharmacology for over 40 years. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, and was a key investigator on the Hoasca Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca. He is the younger brother of Terence McKenna. From 2000 to 2017, he taught courses on Ethnopharmacology and Plants in Human affairs as an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota.
►Audio Version:
Key Points Discussed:
- (00:00) – It’s a SIMULATION! Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Reality You’re Not Seeing
- (00:55) – Podcast Announcement and Engagement
- (01:37) – Guest Introduction: Dennis McKenna
- (03:00) – Defining Ethnopharmacology
- (05:48) – The 2017 Conference and Its Significance
- (10:10) – The Influence of Early Books on Psychedelics
- (13:02) – Understanding Psychedelics and Their Impact
- (18:14) – The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelics
- (21:26) – Personal Experiences with Ayahuasca
- (23:22) – Exploring Consciousness and Reality
- (30:36) – Understanding the Default Mode Network
- (31:07) – Therapeutic Benefits of Psychedelics
- (34:34) – Exploring Different Psychedelics
- (35:50) – Mechanisms of MDMA and SSRIs
- (37:29) – Alternative Psychoactive Substances
- (38:53) – Resources for Learning About Psychedelics
- (44:30) – The McKenna Academy and Its Mission
- (49:34) – Personal Reflections and Insights
- (54:51) – Recommended Resources and Final Thoughts
Learn more about Dennis Mckenna:
mckenna.academy
TRANSCRIPT
Dennis: [00:00:00] We live inside of a hallucination. Everything we experience is a reflection of our neurochemical brain state. What the brain does is take information from the outside through your sensory portals, your eyes, ears, and other receptors. Mix it all together with. Stuff you already know, like memories, associations.
This is like the raw data of reality, and you dump all that into a big blender and then you spin up the blender and everything mixes together, and then you can pour it out and then you extrude it out. Into the movie that you’ve just created. You’re the director, star, producer, and everything else. For this movie, you construct for yourself.
It’s your reality. It’s your reality hallucination.
Guy: The episode you’re about to watch has been republished. My podcast channel reaches a lot more [00:01:00] people now and there’s certain episodes that have slipped under the radar and I wanted to bring them up for your attention ’cause I truly feel they are worth listening to. So please be sure, let me know where you think of this episode in the comments below.
And of course, let’s continue to connect. Let me know where you are in the world and where you’re listening and tuning in from. Uh, I love reading it. It’s amazing, isn’t it? That we can do this. And the other thing I wanna say as well is find out where we are. If you wanna put your spiritual boots on and come and join us at one of our five day retreats or one day events around the world, links are below as well.
If you wanna find out more what we’re up to. Much love from me. Enjoy.
Guy: Dennis, welcome to the podcast.
Dennis: Thank you for asking me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Guy: I love asking everyone on the show when they first come on, and especially, like yourself, that probably travels a lot. If you sat next to a stranger on an aeroplane and they asked you what you did for a living these days, what would you say?
Dennis: [00:02:00] I’d say it’s an awkward moment.I would assess the person in a, in a flash and figure out,get a feeling for what I could say.chances are I might just say, oh, I’m a retired professor.
Guy: Okay.
Dennis: other people I might say,I’m an ethnopharmacologist, and then that might open the conversation to a real conversation, and then I’d have to explain what that is, and yeah, interesting encounters on airplanes, for sure.
it’s an interesting environment, because the,the usual practice, and I’m, As guilty as anyone, is to just ignore the other person beside you, as though they were not even real, like they were a puppet or something. but depending on the vibe, I might try to initiate a conversation, or if They talk to me, I decide on the fly what I can share and, Yeah,
Guy: fair enough. [00:03:00] I got, and I got to ask you, because it was only yesterday I saw an ethnopharmacologist and I was like, Oh, what is that? So I’m going to ask you that anyway, if that’s all right.
Dennis: Sure. Sure.if I have a, if I have a title or a specialty that I could name, I’m All over the place, but an ethno pharmacologist is what I say I am.
And I guess I legitimately come by that name because that’s the word I, that’s the word that describes what I’ve done for 45 years. I can give you a formal definition if you’d like. That’d be perfect, yeah. it’s Awkward, but it all hangs together. So ethno pharmacology is the interdisciplinary study of biologically active substances used or observed by humans in traditional societies.
Guy: Wow.
Dennis: So all of [00:04:00] those, it’s a kind of a torture definition. but all of those things hang together in the sense that it’s not confined to plants, fungi, animals, every kind of thing. Many things of nature that are not plants contained, biologically active substances, what’s another word for drugs?
But they can be toxins, they can be many things. And so the biological activities,is the pharmacology part. And, they are not necessarily medicines ingested by humans, so used or observed by humans.is that part of the definition? for example, arrow poisons are good topic for ethnopharmacology.
And,there’s a quite a lot of research on arrow poisons, because some important medicines, cardiac medicines and that sort of thing have been developed, arrow poisons. So these are generally not used by humans, but [00:05:00] they’re, they’re employed by humans.
Guy: Got it.
Dennis: And then the traditional society part narrows the focus because really, if you didn’t have that qualifier, then pharmacology as such would be a subset of ethno pharmacology because ethno pharmacology,is something that humans do, so all of biomedicine, all of, scientific pharmacology and so on, it’s really ethno pharmacology in some ways.
But, we narrow the focus to the use of biologically active substances and,not in the global culture, but in traditional societies or indigenous or however you want to think of that. So that’s the definition, and that’s why there are so many parts to it, because it’s a great question.
and there are, of course, many other definitions, but for example, I don’t know, Steve, might have told you that, I organized a conference in [00:06:00] 2017 in the UK. He did mention it.
Guy: Yes.
Dennis: Ethno pharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs. And Steve was there, Mitch was there. In fact, they were more than there.
They were very much helping with the live streaming and all the technical stuff. So that conference was the 50th commemorative anniversary of the first one, which happened in 1967. In San Francisco, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. And so it was a legitimate, government conference and,but it was just ironic that it happened in San Francisco in 1967.
same year was like the so called summer of love,the hippie countercultural revolution. the conference had nothing to do with that. Nobody even knew it was happening. In fact, it was a few months, it was early in 2017.but that was the coolest thing [00:07:00] going on in San Francisco from my point of view.
And then the only thing that ever, came out of it was, this volume. Know, eth, it was a closed conference. It was not open to the public, but they published this volume called Ethno, pharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, and that volume came into my hands at the age of 18. the next summer, or afterwards,
and
I, and that’s what got me on this path,because I totally, I couldn’t believe in the first place that the U.
- government of all people, or of all institutions, would even publish such a thing,because of the topic, and,there were supposed to be follow up, conferences every 10 years or so. And then the war on drugs came along, and the government was embarrassed that they never had anything to do with this.
So none of those follow up conferences [00:08:00] ever happened. And yet, ethnopharmacology continued to develop as a discipline, discoveries were made, and so on. So it became a, bucket list,milestone for me to do a commemorative conference. And, in 2017, everything came together. I found a venue, beautiful country house in English, English countryside near Buckinghamshire, found enough support to invite some people and so on.
So we pub, we presented that conference and then we came out trying to be true to the spirit of the original one. So even though ours was more public, so we live streamed it on face. So we had You know, 75, 000 people looking at some of these lectures,and overall over four days, we got about half a million clicks [00:09:00] and, and we recorded the videos and the videos are still online and anybody can And, can access them and then we published the symposium proceedings, but we published the 2017 proceedings, but we decided, let’s reprint the 1967 book as well because it was more or less out of print.
It was in the public domain. Taxpayers paid for it, so there was no copyright issue. So he came out with a really beautiful collector’s edition boxed set of these two books. And, it’s been wonderful, actually. It’s been, it’s been well received. I can,
Guy: We’ve come a long way since 1967.
Dennis: It’s come a long way.
Let me see if I can, pull up This, link to send to [00:10:00] you,
we don’t have to, I’ll send it to you later, but Oh, here it is. Okay.
Guy: Yeah. I’ll link it in the show notes for sure. I have to ask you, Dennis, that book you read as 18 year old in 1967, what was it then that sparked you into your journey about that book?
Dennis: the interesting thing was, I was, so I was 16, 17, 18 at that time.
My brother was off in Berkeley,and we were both obsessed with psychedelics, very much part of the cultural conversation at that time. And he was like sending me news from, the West Coast where the action was. Here I am. In this Colorado mining town, essentially, in the mountains, feeling very cut off, so Terrence was there, out where, on the west coast, where I wanted to be more than anything, right in the middle of it, and two, [00:11:00] two important books came to my attention at that, in that period.
One of these was this book, which, and the other one was The Teachings of Don Juan, with, by Carlos Castaneda, which was his first book. And his first book was probably, the closest to the actual truth. he went on to write lots of books, most of which is made up. not that it’s bad stuff, but it’s not really accurate, but when the teachings of Don Juan came along, I realized, I, we, nobody knew it was not accurate at the time.
It seemed really fascinating and that, that was like two pages, two sides of the same coin, by reading that book, I realized there was an ethnographic connection and what the ethnography and that these things were. not new at all had been used for thousands of years. And there was tradition, there was,traditions of use.
So there was that. But then the ethno [00:12:00] pharmacologic search book showed me the science side of it. And, the other side of the coin was, yeah, not only is there ethnography and history and culture, there’s a whole scientific aspect to this, which, I was, I knew it existed, but I didn’t until I discovered that book, I didn’t really know what it was.
And so that book inspired me and just both of those books have inspired me to, direct my career toward ethno pharmacology, without really thinking, how am I going to get a job out of this? And so I didn’t. I did it because I was interested and I’m one of those people that,I pursue what I’m interested in.
It’s not necessarily going to get me a job. In fact, coming out of my PhD and stuff like that with a specialty of ethno from not only ethno pharmacology, but ethno pharmacology of psychedelics. who the hell is going to touch me as a, [00:13:00] employment prospect
Guy: for sure. how did a question that springs to mind that I was like psychedelics, how would you, what are they exactly?
Cause I think there’s such a misconception out there. When you say that word, you can put whatever belief system you want to it. I think,
Dennis: the,the nomenclature, the terminology for these drugs is all over the place. And that’s, they’re called hallucinogens, they’re called,entheogens, sometimes they’re called like mystical memetics and psychotomimetics and all these things.
These terms really, are an example of how difficult it is to describe just what exactly they do, And psychedelic is a deliberately vague term. And I like it because it, for one thing, it’s an older term. It was one of the first terms, but it, it means mind manifesting, [00:14:00] right? So it psychedelic means mind manifesting, psyche, mind, and Delos is to delineate or manifest.
It seems appropriate because you’re not putting any spin on it. It manifests different aspects of the mind. And depending on set and setting, the circumstances, which are all important for the kind of experience that you have, you can have almost any kind of experience. it can be a Religious experience, or it can be a, psychotic experience, or it can be many things, but whatever it does, it manifests the mind in some respect, and that’s why I like the term, because it’s deliberately a vague term, and thus more accurate, because other terms like hallucinogen, they don’t really cause hallucinations, this class of, they can, but that’s not Characteristically, or always what they’re about, they don’t really mimic [00:15:00] psychosis.
they, aspects may resemble psychosis. They don’t really even, mystical mimetic is it simulates mystical experiences. but that’s a big word to wrap your tongue around, and even that is not really accurate because it depends on, again, circumstances. the same person can take the same medicine and different experiences, different circumstances, maybe have a profound mystical experience, and the next time, under different circumstances, might have a, experience the hell world,
you know how the term, psychedelic came about, do you?
Guy: I have no idea. No idea.
Dennis: Okay, Humphrey Osmond, who was one of the early, clinicians that was exploring LSD, mostly for the treatment of alcoholism, and Aldous Huxley, you know who he was. And Osmond is the person who [00:16:00] gave Aldous Huxley mescaline for the first time.
And they corresponded, right? They actually used letters at that time, so it was, a slower process, but they were discussing, what do we call these things? And Huxley wrote, something about, I don’t know, but it had something to do with, take a pinch of fan, that, that was the term that he proposed.
and Osmond wrote back and said to sink in hell or sore, angelic, take a pi, take a pinch of psychedelic. And that’s the word that got used, that got adapted. so it came out of that conversation.
Guy: Wow. In terms of psychedelics then. Why, when or why would somebody start exploring this? you’ve obviously seen a lot of studies over the years and the impact it has on people.
Maybe that’s a good place to start. What kind of impact is it having on people long term and [00:17:00] when or why would somebody want to explore them?
Dennis: I think, there are all sorts of reasons, but I think inherently we are a curious species, we’re curious about things. This is,this is what drives discovery, this is what drives a lot of creativity, this impulse to understand how things are.
And psychedelics provide a window into our consciousness, which is perhaps the most interesting game in town in a certain way, because actually everything is filtered through consciousness.so if we can expand consciousness, or use these medicines to explore the limits of conscious experience, then that appeals to people’s, curiosity.
And so I think curiosity is the impulse, and then,as people use them, every Everybody has their own set of problems. many people have, [00:18:00] diagnosed problems like depression or PTSD and so on. Everybody’s got some degree of that, right? Because I don’t think you can live in this world without being traumatized, it’s a territory.
And then people experimented, and they found that, yeah, this can, these things, under the right circumstances, can provide relief from those things, They’re, so they’re tools for exploring consciousness, but they also have a therapeutic,therapeutic application. And I’m very much, in favor of all this research and, all this clinical work with psilocybin and other things.
I think this is great because it, because in some ways mental health care these days is a joke. it’s not very effective for a lot of these chronic conditions and the best, medications that are currently accepted are things like SSRIs, which [00:19:00] don’t really resolve the problem.
They’re like band aids. They paper it over, but they don’t really resolve it. Many people say, and it’s not a cliche, they’ll say that, my ayahuasca session, or my psilocybin session, or whatever, was like ten years of psychotherapy in a single night.so the power of that is recognized.
And,they just work. they need guidance. They need the right setting. They need, hopefully, the help of experienced, therapists, guides, or shamans. Whatever costume they’re wearing doesn’t matter. The point is shamans and, psychotherapists fulfill very similar functions. The cultural context is different.
The assumptions are different. The point is that You provide a safe and supportive setting for people to directly have their experience with these medicines and learn what they can. [00:20:00] I say the medicine is the teacher, or going to, reiterating that a different way, you’re the teacher, you are your own teacher.
The medicines facilitate. your learning, your insights into your condition, and that could lead to healing and resolution. But psychedelics are a bit of a,they’re a threat to conventional mental health care because they don’t really fit into the capitalist,par the biomedical paradigm where, if you’re lucky, you get to talk to a therapist for maybe ten minutes.
Yeah. and you expect to go out the door with a prescription, probably for some SSRI or other psychopharmaceutical, you still have all the problems. You’ve just numbed them down. psychedelics actually give you the tool, get to the root of these things and actually resolve your question.
But it requires a different [00:21:00] therapeutic paradigm. it resolves, it requires that therapists spend not 10 minutes with a patient, but like hours, and so that, Messes up the revenue model. Yeah. But it is a necessary, way to approach it. So these things potentially are going to revolutionize mental health care.
And it’s about time, because mental health care is not very effective the way it is now.
Guy: Totally. I remember, I, I did, my very first Ayahuasca ceremony back in 2013, 14, I think about six years ago. and I’ve spent months preparing. I was in the right hands, the right environment. I was terrified before I did it.
it was probably the most courageous. decision of my life at that point.and what happened that night changed. Honestly, like it took months to integrate it, but it actually changed the whole direction of my life. Like the wisdom that came from that, I still struggle to even [00:22:00] describe it to this day to people.
Dennis: So there you are. You’re a satisfied customer.
Guy: Exactly. I was a very nervous customer before.
Dennis: Oh, that’s okay. It’s alright to approach these things with a bit of,a bit of butterflies in the stomach kind of thing, because they do deserve respect.and the nervousness is healthy.
It’s a sign of respect. You’re not playing around here. This is a serious,and I often say in my talks, you,often the question of faith comes up and I,you don’t have to have faith, take a psychedelic, Believe anything. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. you, what you need is courage.
You know what you need is the courage to, trust yourself enough, trust the medicine enough, trust the circumstances, enough to take that plunge, to step. the cliff as it [00:23:00] were,and you may find, you may say, Oh God, I’m falling into the abyss. I’m completely lost. But then the next thing that happens, wait a minute, I’m floating.
There’s this not, I’m not going to crash on the rocks below. I’ll be able to spend some time in these dimensions and learn from it.
Guy: Yeah, totally. I am, I got it. You mentioned the word consciousness earlier as well. And with your experience. Experience with all this and your life’s experience. What does consciousness mean to you?
How would you Because it’s certainly You know, I have this inward conversation with myself all the time, because from different experiences through my life, you begin to question things more and more. And, I’d love to, yeah, I’d love to hear your view on it.
Dennis: philosophers and neuroscientists and scientists and everybody have talked about what is consciousness [00:24:00] forever.
It is the topic of conversation. And, consciousness is many things, but I think, consciousness implies self awareness. very much. awareness of your experience. we can,we don’t know entirely what the, structures of the processes in the brain underlie consciousness, but we know very well how to abolish it.
anesthetics abolish it. Sleep is not really, sleep is maybe not a good term because even though you’re asleep, you’re still, you are unconscious, but that doesn’t mean the brain is not. doing its thing, it’s doing lots of things while you’re asleep, but this idea of general awareness of being a Subjective experience, and being in a having an orientation to place and space and timethose are [00:25:00] the,essential qualities of consciousness.
And in fact, in the term, in discussions about consciousness, there’s an interesting, neuroscientist,I think his name is, Ramachandran at the University of New Mexico, San Diego, and he talks about, qualia, and there are many selves, and it’s probably too complicated to talk about this, but there, it’s not that consciousness is necessarily one thing, it’s a constellation of things, and there are certain aspects that are, like looking after, your focus on place and time, your executive judgment, this sort of thing.
But then you’ve got intuition, then you’ve got imagination, and you have all of these things that are,spun together. I like to, talk about how,we, we construct our own reality. we live inside of a [00:26:00] hallucination in a sense. I sometimes call it the serotonin hallucination, but that’s a misnomer because everything we experience is a reflection of our neurochemical brain state, and what the brain does is take information from the outside through your sensory portals, your eyes, ears and other receptors, associate with, take all that, mix it all together with stuff you already know, like memories and associations and other types of things that mixes all this together.
And this is like the raw data of. of experience, the raw data of reality. And it’s you dump all that into a big blender and then you spin up the blender and everything mixes together, and then you can pour it out. And then you, what you do is you extrude it out into the movie that you’ve just created.
[00:27:00] You’re the director, star, and. Every, producer and everything else for this movie you construct for yourself. It’s your reality. It’s your reality hallucination. And everyone has one of those, Some are not so interesting. Some are, but to the person, they’re always interesting. Just that’s what they have.
And this is not necessarily a reflection of what, of reality. We don’t know what reality looks like. Because what we, what this is a model of reality that, we construct so that we can make sense out of the world. If we didn’t have this function, the world would be just a blooming, buzzing bunch of inputs and so on.
so the brain is, brain not only constructs reality this way, But it works, a lot of it is what the brain does not let in. the brain is a filtering function as much as anything else. There are [00:28:00] the term in neuroscience, it’s called neural gaiting. And, you have to block most everything.
you have to keep it out so that You can then work with the reduced data set to try and arrange it in a way that you can comprehend.
Guy: Makes sense.
Dennis: And that’s
your experience of consciousness. And it doesn’t,it must reflect reality in some sense, but it’s not reality. it’s this construct that we make, and that’s what the brain does.
Guy: and do you think psychedelics then is, Widening that gating, when you, and rewriting the movie, would that be, that’s playing inside? Yeah,
Dennis: that’s exactly what it does. It widens the gating or it lowers a lot of these gating mechanisms and some, it lowers a lot of these. So it does widen what you can perceive.
One of the things it does is it brings the background [00:29:00] forward. these girl neural gating mechanisms are designed to suppress most everything that’s going on in the background. It’s not immediately relevant to your survival. So it fades into the background and the brain tends to focus on what is really immediately in front of you, the bus coming at you or the saber tooth tiger or whatever that might impinge on your actual survival.
That’s where you want to be focused, right? And that’s why it’s important when you take psychedelics to do it in special circumstances because you’re deliberately lowering your defenses and your, you’re defocusing. So instead of focusing on, a very narrow focus of attention, you’re giving up attention in some ways.
So you’re softening it so that you. And as long as you’re in a,safe environment, no buses coming after you, no saber toothed [00:30:00] tigers, and that sort of thing, then you can trust yourself to let it go and lower these neural, gates that, that the brain constructs, for very practical reasons.
You can lower those and you bring the background forward. and there are now what I used to and still do called the reality hallucination. It’s now been formally defined by, Robin Carhart Harris, who is a very, respected neuroscientist who studied psychedelics. He talks about the default mode network.
You’ve heard of that term. Yeah.
Guy: Yes. I’ve heard of that term.
Dennis: Yeah, essentially it’s the same thing. The default mode network is this constructed reality that we experience. it’s based on, past experience and memories and projections of how we think it’s going to be in the future based on what we’ve already known and then [00:31:00] sensory data.
It’s all the same and psychedelics temporarily disrupt that. And that’s very useful. That’s very useful for exploring consciousness, and it’s very useful therapeutically, because people can essentially step out of the box temporarily, and that’s where a lot of therapy can go on. If you can just distance yourself from your immediate situation, look at it as though it’s not there.
from an outside observer. So if you’re involved in things like addiction or PTSD or these various things, you can step out of that reference frame. Look at it in a different way. And in some ways, you, you can integrate that perspective, so that you can get away from these habitual behaviors of these behavioral loops that are created,out of, [00:32:00] essentially, a dysfunctional Default mode network, where you have these processes going on It’s like it’s literally like rebooting your hard drive
Guy: totally
Dennis: Hard drives anymore, but it’s like rebooting a computer where when it comes back up you’ve gotten rid of a lot of clutch that shows up, in, in computers, it runs faster,it’s more efficient in the way it allocates time.
I think literally that’s what’s going on. I think that you can, I think by hitting your brain with this massive, activation of serotonin, which is pretty much what they are, you can,you can rearrange, during the experience, And they’ve done scanning studies and all that show that all these systems that normally don’t connect with each other are hyper connected during this experience.
And then after the experience, it settles down, [00:33:00] but they’re still communication going on and it’s possibly more efficient. And a lot of the stuff that, tends to slow things down or mess things up, that has been eliminated. And then, of course, we tend to get back into habitual behavior. But you can always go back and drink from the well again.
And I think it’s useful for people to do that periodically.
Guy: Totally. I hear, I think the analogy,we’re look inside a jam jar looking outand Having these experiences allow us to step outside of our own jam jar and look back and maybe even read the label on the front And then you get
Dennis: that is exactly that’s a good analogy Exactly.
Guy: Yeah,
Dennis: we’re all within some set of assumptions and Habits and everything else and we you know, we make the mistake of thinking that this is reality No, it’s a version of [00:34:00] reality that you’ve connected, that you’ve constructed, and it’s very useful. It’s very useful. we want to be in that, in a,functioning default mode network most of the time, but it’s important to be able to step outside of it, and people that never step outside of it, they’re missing a lot, and they’re risking, essentially they’re denying themselves a learning opportunity, to rethink how they are, how they think, how they relate to the world and so on.
yeah, the other question that’s coming to mind as well is with psychedelics is that there is, there are so many different psychedelics as well. And do the other, Do all paths lead to the same place or do you use different psychedelics for different modalities?
you can, getting into the, there are many things, that are [00:35:00] psychoactive, that will produce profoundly altered states of consciousness that are not necessarily psychedelics.
Depends on how narrowly you want to define them. For example. I, just for the sake of. of facilitating the discussion. I tend to, I sometimes say, true psychedelics, something is a true psychedelic. it works on the serotonin 2A receptors. It’s an agonist of the serotonin 2A receptors, which is one of the subtypes, about 14 different subtypes of serotonin.
And the true psychedelics all. hit those receptors. Psilocybin, DMT, LSD, mescaline, the ones we think of as the classic psychedelics, they’re all 5 HT2A receptors. Something like MDMA, it’s not a psychedelic. it works on serotonin, but it works on releasing serotonin from [00:36:00] presynaptic storage vessels.
And so it works on the, what’s called the serotonin transporter. Which is a protein pump in the presynaptic membrane that controls the release and reuptake of the neurotransmitter at the synaptic junction, at the synaptic gap. It’s all under the control of these,these, transporters.
MDMA jams that transporter open. All of the serotonin leaks out. Suddenly your brain is flooded with serotonin.serotonin is the feel good hormone, so you feel really good. You feel euphoric. full of love, open hearted, all that. And that’s all very therapeutic, right? That’s useful. SSRIs work on the same thing.
They work on, they’re called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That’s what SSRI means. And they have the [00:37:00] opposite effect. They actually jam the transporter closed. The serotonin that’s in the synaptic junction cannot be taken back up and recycled. It stays in the synaptic junction. So you have a higher level of serotonin there.
That’s the basis of the therapeutic effect of, of SSRIs. So MDMA and SSRIs have an opposite effect. They have the same, they have the same target, if you will. Something like Salva NA completely outside, from the diterpene from the Mexican vin Salvia Divinorum, who may have had experience with it.
That works on a completely different system, that works on the capa opiate receptors. So nothing to do with serotonin. Absolutely profoundly consciousness altering, in a. in a way that’s,fascinating, but a lot of people, and in some ways [00:38:00] dysphoric, but some people like it.
It’s not my cup of tea. It’s very bizarre. Have you ever experienced it?
Guy: I haven’t. No, I haven’t.
Dennis: it’s worth putting on your map, because it is so strange, and but these things are strictly not, if you cleave to the strict definition of psychedelics, these aren’t psychedelics, but they’re certainly psychoactive and, other things are things like detours, the toways or Brookmansias.
which are in the nightshades, they, again, they produce profoundly altered states, but it’s not serotonin. They actually block, acetylcholine, which is another neurotransmitter in the brain and lead to some very odd states of consciousness. The,
Guy: with all this in mind, I’m just thinking of the listener as well, right?
And Where would one start if they want to start looking into this? Is that it? Cause we were [00:39:00] discussing your McKenna Academy as well, which is launching soon. Is that something what will then allow people to educate and then experience these?
Dennis: Yeah. it’s just a matter of accessing the right.
information if you want to learn about this. There are books and so on that are, not technical. They, there are plenty of books that are highly technical, but if you’re just a, a layman, whatever that means, who wants to understand neuroscience a bit, there are good references, out there.
One of the, best ref online references which you probably know about already is, just specific to drugs is,
arrowid. org, you know that?
Guy: I’ve heard of it, yes.
Dennis: Yeah. So this is a very, a useful website and it has information on every conceivable kind of psychoactive drugs that you can imagine. most of which I’m not [00:40:00] even interested in. Most people aren’t interested, but the information is there. But they have very good information and, You know these different vaults about different psychedelics they call them vaults So if you go to the ayahuasca vault or the mushroom, okay Lots and lots of information to quickly You know get up to speed they include links to scientific papers on how these things work, links to the chemistry of the plants, and also, usefully, a lot of trip reports, which are useful, especially if you’re thinking about taking one of these things and you want to never have done it, or haven’t done that particular one, you want to, get an idea what is it like, you can go to Erwin very quickly, find out what other people’s experiences are.
So that’s a very good resource. The other one that most people [00:41:00] in biomedicine know is called Med. A lot of non medical people, don’t know about it, but this is the National Library of Medicine, biomedical database. So it’s open access. Anybody in the world can access it. And, Anything that comes up in biomedicine, biochemistry, anything in medicine, really.
PubMed is your first go to place to see what the state of the art is. There you’ll find the most recent articles, you’ll find review articles, and so on. For example,there, there’s just, it’s a treasure trove of information. And, For example, David Nichols, who you probably have heard of,he’s published two or three comprehensive reviews on psychedelics, because this has been his [00:42:00] specialty for 50 years.
he, Let’s see, yeah. He,you can look up these references, put a link to PubMed here. this is their main search page.
Guy: Okay. And,
Dennis: if you, they have very sophisticated,search protocols, you can tailor these searches very well, which they have to because they’re massive amounts of data.
But if you just go to PubMed and plug in something like a word like psilocybin or a word like ayahuasca, then the sort of the current scientific picture of those things. You’ll see, you’ll get hundreds of references, right? And nobody can,process all those, but you can select it to say, okay, show me only review articles or you can link things together, So it again is a. an important educational resource for people that want to learn [00:43:00] about these things.
Guy: Which is important, right? Because I think,it’s in today’s day and age, we’re always looking for a quick fix. and if we’re in a situation where we’re not happy or there’s something being eaten us away for many years and, just jumping on a plane and doing something without, preparing yourself, I think, you could be asking for trouble.
Dennis: Yeah, very much. these things need to be approached thoughtfully, and you need to inform yourself as much as possible about them before you venture into it, and this is just common sense. you wouldn’t go across the, you wouldn’t cross the ocean on a Spanish galleon to the new world.
you might, but you have no idea what’s going to be there, taking psychedelics is similar. You’re voyaging into an unknown realm, unknown for you. It helps that a lot of other people have preceded you. And so there is this body of knowledge and you can,[00:44:00] you can educate yourself ahead of time as what you’re going to, what you can expect.
at the same time, you have to remember everybody is unique.
Guy: yes,
Dennis: your trip is uniquely your trip. It will resemble other people’s, but it’s not the same. That’s one of the beauties, I think, of psychedelics. it’s an, it’s a unique encounter between an individual and a molecule or, a plant.
Guy: Yeah, for sure. And what can we expect from the McKenna Academy?
Dennis: McKenna Academy is again, emphasizing learning, and we, as the name implies, we hope to have a permanent site for it. Right now we don’t, but we’re doing a lot of things. We’re doing retreats, we organize conferences, we may be offering courses.
So it’s a, it’s [00:45:00] a, I think of it as, it’s a mystery school in the spirit of Eleusis. Eleusis was a mystery, one of the longest lived, longest lasting of the Mediterranean mystery schools. Which used psychedelics. Psychedelics was an important part of the initiation, rituals that people in Greek society went through.
If you were everybody who was, anybody in Greek society, between about 500 AD and maybe three or five, 500 BC to 300 ad or so, made a pilgrimage to Elis at some point and they were. Ushered into a dark chamber and they were given a brew which you know Probably a psychedelic of some sort almost certainly a psychedelic and they had an amazing experience And they were forbidden to talk about it, right?
but of course [00:46:00] some did some late some leaked and the sacrament was stolen from the temple of which is where it was. And, and, by a guy named Alcibiades, who was a heretic, he took it to his house, was basically, throwing acid parties with it,so the thinking is it was probably an ergot.
it was made from ergot, infested barley and ergot contains lysergic acid derivatives. Could have been mushrooms, could have been combinations of these things, but the idea of the academy is that it’s a 21st century elusus. It’s a 20, the first 21st century psychedelic university in 1, 500 years. And,the, focus of, plant medicines, what you might, what I sometimes call plant teachers.
are really a big part of it, but it’s not [00:47:00] exclusively,it’s not exclusively focused on that. we view psychedelics as learning tools and, you might say it’s the first university in which, not all the faculty members are human, and, but they’re there to facilitate learning.
What are we, Trying to learn in the academy. We’re basically trying to learn about the universe, the cosmos, ourselves, our place in nature and in the cosmos andand so that’s why I call it the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy, natural philosophy was what science was before it became quantified and You And, boring.
Not that science is boring. that’s a bad word. But,scientists preoccupied in these days with,what you can measure. And there are many parts of phenomenon that you can’t really measure, but we know they exist. Like [00:48:00] thoughts, for example, we know what a, we know what a thought is, we know a thought exists, try and tell me what is a thought, and how is that reflected in the brain, that’s more difficult, but so natural philosophy is a more holistic way of trying to extend the sphere of our understanding, and recognizing there are other ways of knowing things that are valid,that,it does not always have to be reductionist and quantitative.
That’s powerful, but that’s also limiting. and science is,it’s a powerful tool, but we can’t assume that it has all the answers in the way that it’s practiced these days. reductionism is useful, but it’s, it necessarily requires that you narrow your focus if you’re trying to,investigate phenomena.
so now the, Academy of Natural Philosophy is to,teach people how to think, [00:49:00] basically, how to use their own intuition and everything else to really push forward their understanding, and
Guy: Beautiful.
Dennis: We view psychedelics as a really important part of that, but other things as well.
So yeah,
Guy: awesome I’ll make sure I’ll link in the show notes as well to that so people can sign up and start following it. Yeah, absolutely I’m Dennis. I’m aware of the time and I ask a few people a few questions on the show every week to everyone and just to help get a little To know you a little bit more.
And one question I ask a lot is, what’s been a low point in your life for us later turned out to be a blessing.
Dennis: What’s been a low point in my life.
Guy: Yeah. But later became a blessing.
Dennis: Oh, there have been a few,I would say probably one of the lowest points in my life is when my brother got sick, with terminal [00:50:00] cancer, it completely shattered my life, for years, really.
Not just the period when he was sick, but then afterwards, the aftermath of that, trying to deal with his estate and that sort of thing, it was a very dark time for me, because we were close. We were really close. We had our differences. And being brothers, brothers fight, but I loved him very much and, respected him very much.
Didn’t always agree with him, but I did respect him and it was really hard. And, but it became,I wouldn’t say it’s not exactly a blessing, but, because I would give anything if he could still be here with us. And,I often wonder what he would think of what’s going on, but it became healing in a sense to come to terms with that, and come to terms with that loss.
And again, psychedelics were [00:51:00] very helpful to me to integrate that. and put that into, into the quiver, if you will, and integrate that experience. So that was one of the big ones. And,there have been others. So a lot of my,more difficult experiences have had to do with, Sicknesses of loved ones, I went through a particular similar kind of thing with my mom when she died Bone cancer when I was 19,
Demystifying Psychedelics & Their Therapeutic Use: so
Dennis: that was pretty rough, But a lot of I’ve been lucky, I’ve been I, many people have had serious,misfortunes that due to not necessarily their fault but a lot of suffering, I haven’t had to suffer that much other than these types of things.
Guy: Yeah. Thank you for sharing.
Dennis: Played a lot, but haven’t really suffered. Yeah,
Guy: we can all do that for sure.
Dennis: Yeah.
Guy: And the last question is, [00:52:00] if you could have dinner with anyone. From any time frame, anywhere in the world, and have a conversation with them tonight, who do you think it would be and why?
Dennis: Anyone at all? I have to name one person.
Guy: You can name as many as you like, and turn it into a banquet.
Dennis: people that would be on my, high on my list would be, probably,
I’d say C. G. Young would be one, maybe Stephen Hawking,Albert Hoffman. I actually have had wonderful conversations with him. and,that’s enough. Yeah. I don’t know.
Guy: Yeah, no, fair enough. beautiful. And, and to wrap it up, everything that we’ve covered today, is there anything you’d like to add for our listeners to ponder on?
Dennis: Yeah, I would just say, you know [00:53:00] what,I guess if you want to condense things down into a few sentences,the message I get from ayahuasca. over many years and usually every time it comes up, every time I take it. But the message is, remember how little and appreciate the universe for being more complex, more marvelous, more wonderful than you can possibly imagine.
And don’t let arrogance get in the way of trying to understand it. if that is important to you to try to understand it. At the same time you recognize that we know a tiny fraction of the way things really are. And, That’s okay. You’re probably never going to fully understand it, but that’s okay.
It’s not that you, the goal is not particularly to,exit this life with a nice tidy package of how it all is. You’re not going to know how it is, [00:54:00] even when you exit, Important thing is to enjoy The process, the journey, the process of trying to understand, recognizing that it will always be imperfect, but you can still enjoy it and have fun, play with.
Ideas. Playing with ideas is fun.
Guy: Yeah.
Yeah, I love it. Yeah.
Dennis: Yeah,
Guy: absolutely.
Dennis: Try not to get involved in these, habitual ways of thinking. A lot of people think that science is a, superior, Thing. And if it’s not scientific, it’s not valid. I don’t go so far. I think science is a beautiful thing.
It could also limit our understanding,So we have to be careful. These are all tools. we have to be careful how we deploy them,
Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. For sure. where’s the best place to send everyone if they want to learn more?
Dennis: they can always go to the website and, they [00:55:00] can sign up for our mailing list and put their names in there.
Any events that we do and so on, we’ll be on that website sooner or later. we’re not as good as we should be keeping everything just up to date, but we do keep it updated. And if they want to know more about the Academy, that’s,and then, so that’s one place. And then the others are,if you’re interested in the medical side of psychedelics and so on, the MAPS.
Guy: MAPS. Yeah.
Dennis: Everybody knows about Hefter, which a lot of people don’t know about, but that’s actually Hefter is, the, nonprofit that I’ve been involved with. I was, I’m a, Founder and it started in 1992 and hefter. org and is,leading the, the research side, the clinical side for
Guy: psilocybin.
Dennis: Nobody’s heard of us, but we’re not good publicists [00:56:00] like maps are, but we’re just as effective in doing research and, and then maps has tied their thing to MDMA. So they focused on that, So those are both good sources. Hefter. org, maps. org, they have lots of information, resources.
Yeah,
Guy: we’ll link to them too. And you have a number of books as well. Would you recommend any one, where’s the best one to start with?
Dennis: I could always recommend my memoir, if you want a personal thing, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss.Which is now effectively out of print. You have to, you, but you can order the e book from, Okay, and then this book, The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs.
If people want to get into the, Nuts and Bolts, if they want to get into ethnopharmacology, it’s published by Synergetic Press. You can order it there. And what else? And then my brother and I, we’ve wrote books back in the [00:57:00] day, Psilocybin Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide. We published it in 1975 and it’s still selling robustly.
very simple methodology for growing mushrooms. A few mushrooms or a lot of mushrooms if you have the time and patience, but that’s a classic and then our other books my brother’s book, True Hallucinations is True Hallucinations and the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss really go together.
People should read True Hallucinations first and then read Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss to find out what the real story is.
Guy: Fantastic. Dennis, thank you so much for coming on the show today, mate. I appreciate everything that you do and all the information you put out there. And, it was just a pleasure to have you on the show and being able to share with my audience.
Dennis: Thank you. Thank you too. it was really fun. So let me know where it’s, where it’s posted so I can tweet it and all that.
Guy: [00:58:00] Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dennis: All right, Guy. Have a wonderful day. You’ve got most of the day ahead of you.
Guy: I do. Okay. sir. Bye bye.