Dennis McKenna: Nature, AI, and the Collapse of Separation

Dennis McKenna joins 3L1T3 and Valerie Beltran to discuss the future of psychedelics, indigenous knowledge, and whether we are ready to bring these tools into mainstream culture without repeating the extractive patterns of the past. We explore the gap between good intentions and real reciprocity, what Western psychedelic enthusiasm is missing, and how community-based practice may matter more than clinical models alone.

We also dive into the first biomedical study of ayahuasca with the UDV, how long-term members showed surprising changes in behavior and biology, and why the community structure may have played a larger role than the compound itself. Dennis talks about the work happening at the McKenna Academy, preserving Amazonian herbarium collections, digitizing ancestral plant knowledge, and the ESPD Symposia.

This conversation calls out the cultural side of psychedelics, not just the science. If psychedelics are going to help, they must be integrated with wisdom, not just technology.

Join our Patreon for the exclusive extended interview!

Key Points

• Psychedelics entered global awareness through indigenous stewardship, not Western invention
• Reciprocity requires more than money and acknowledgment
• The ESPD Symposia preserve ethnobotanical knowledge and make it public
• Efforts to digitize herbarium collections in Peru before they are lost

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to the season finale with Valerie
01:10 Who Dennis McKenna is and why he still matters
04:50 What still feels unresolved after 50 years
06:15 Co-optation, capitalism, and indigenous knowledge
09:00 The ESPD symposia and preserving ancestral knowledge
12:40 Biognosis and digitizing Amazonian herbarium archives
17:00 Why preserving knowledge matters more than artifacts
18:35 The first biomedical study of ayahuasca with the UDV
22:45 Behavioral change, alcoholism, and community support
24:40 Serotonin transporter findings and biological mechanisms
27:30 Neuroplasticity and long-term structural change
31:00 Microdosing vs macro experiences
33:20 Default mode network and stepping outside the self
36:20 Separation from nature and cultural disconnection
38:30 Technology, AI, and cultural fragmentation
42:20 What real reciprocity might look like
46:50 Avoiding cultural appropriation and extraction
50:00 Psychedelics entering clinical models
52:45 Mushrooms as ideal symbiotic partners
56:00 Future of psychedelics in 10 years
01:00:20 Ibogaine as global brain reset
01:04:00 Evolution, partnership, and species symbiosis
01:06:00 Closing thoughts

 Thanks to Dyl👽Alien for the music! 

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:16.046)
Welcome back to Divergent States. I'm Elite, your host, founder of Our Psychonaut, the largest forum in the world dedicated to the safe use of psychedelics. And today is a special one. We're wrapping up with season one, and I've got Valerie Beltran back with me. She's been helping shape some of the most beautiful conversations we've had this year. So it just kind of felt right to close things out together.

And I'll be honest, when I texted her earlier this week, the message probably sounded a little weird. It was just, hey, do you want to help me interview Dennis McKenna? And I figured that's not really something you get every day. So Valerie, what ran through your head when that popped up on your phone?

Yeah, that was definitely one of those texts that was like immediate double take. like, am I reading this correctly? Am I on my chance right now? Like, hell yes. I think I responded probably within two seconds. It like,

Yeah, exactly. I think we both kind of had that same just like, what? Really? So yeah, anyone who's new to the scene, Dennis has been one of the most influential figures in psychedelic science. He's been at this for over 40 years, pioneering work on ayahuasca and the UDV with the UDV co-founding the Hefter Research Institute.

field work throughout the Amazon and lately he's been building the McKenna Academy to bridge science with ancestral plant knowledge. He's seen his field go from fringe to forbidden to cautiously respectable and whatever this current psychedelic renaissance is becoming. And while most people know the early stories, the Amazon trip with his brother Terrence, the mushroom cultivation guide, Dennis has continued to evolve. He's still asking the hard questions. He's still challenging assumptions.

Speaker 2 (01:58.476)
And that's kind of what I want to explore today. Not nostalgia or hero worship, but what still feels unresolved after a lifetime of research? What are we still getting wrong about the psychedelic movement? And what does meaningful repers- And what would meaningful reciprocity mean with indigenous communities? What does that actually look like beyond the buzzwords?

We're gonna start with his early scientific arc and his Ahaya Waska work, move through cultural tensions and the psychedelic gold rush, and then spin the back half to get into his current projects like the McKenna Academy and other things. And where he thinks the field needs course correction.

As always, we'll save a chunk of the conversation for Patreon at the end. So some more personal stories, a few conversations he's never asked before, and maybe a couple of fun curveballs. So settle in for the season finale with Dennis McKenna. Let's jump in.

Speaker 2 (04:52.078)
So Dennis, you've been in this field for half a century. Before we get anywhere else, is there anything that still feels unresolved to you?

Well...

practically everything, you know, in a certain sense. mean, if you mean the field of psychedelics, I think the question is, you know, that we're facing now is how are we going to integrate psychedelics into modern society? And that's something that we faced for a long time. But attitudes and understandings of change since back in the day when I was

When I was a youngster, know, these substances were illegal. So the, I mean, the strategy was easy. Stay invisible and stay underground and pursue your pursuits, know, pursue your interests. Well, now they're almost respectable, you know, they're being accepted and so on. And I think society is much more open to the idea of psychedelics than have.

has been before and what is that gonna mean in terms of how it's gonna affect society, how it will affect medicine and mental health practices and all of these complex issues which you're quite aware of. So it's not a simple answer. The questions are complicated.

Speaker 2 (06:25.782)
Right. So what would you say would be like the motivating question that still keeps you motivated?

Well, I think, I guess if I had to identify one single thing, I'm concerned about the sort of co-optation of psychedelics which come out of indigenous traditions, you know, and they're based on a foundation of indigenous knowledge and, you know, capitalist societies have always co-opted indigenous knowledge.

and rarely given anything back. And so that's an issue. How do we equitably acknowledge our debt to not only Indigenous societies that have been the stewards of this knowledge for millennia, tens of thousands of years or 10,000 years anyway, how do we equitably acknowledge our debt to them?

and not only acknowledge, but in some ways reciprocate. So that's one of the biggest challenges I think we face is how do we, because our track record in this area, the developed world or the capitalist world isn't good. We only have to think about the Colombian exchange 500 years ago.

where basically the predator capitalists of the day came to the new world and collected all these foods, medicinal plants, very little has been given back, you know? And so we have multiple issues on this. One is the preservation of the knowledge itself. We don't want to steal the knowledge, yet it's invaluable because if anyone has...

Speaker 1 (08:28.066)
knows how to use psychedelics. It's people that have been using them for 10,000 years. So we need to acknowledge that. The other thing is that given the modern, the current fascination with psychedelics, the global world, the global economies are having an impact on these fairly fragile

societies and ecosystems, you know, so there's pressure on these medicines, you know, many of them are at danger, at risk of over harvesting and the knowledge that these communities are the stewards of is also at risk. It is at risk of being lost and also changing.

in ways, and I suppose that change is inevitable, but you see these traditions trying to accommodate themselves more and more to Western expectations. So that's not traditional knowledge, that's contemporary knowledge. And I'm not one of these people who say that these societies must never change.

You know, I think that these substances are gifts to the whole world. And in some respects, we are all indigenous to Earth, I like to say. You know, but given that, some of these more traditional societies face a lot of challenges and we should take steps to ethically bring these substances into

you know, into mainstream use. And I think, well, this is what we have to explore, you know.

Speaker 3 (10:29.038)
Yeah, I really appreciate you diving into that so passionately, Dennis, and yeah, a little bit about my background. I'm a therapist. I've been in psychedelic space for quite a few years, and I see a lot of people who will make similar comments and will talk about the importance of what you're talking about. I think people just don't really know how to or we don't see a lot of action. Kind of right now feels like a lot of lip service, like people are just saying it's something that needs to be done, but not a whole lot is actually being done. So do you have examples of like

things that you see in projects, initiatives that are actually working or doing it well.

Well, know, the McKenna Academy has a number of things going on. And this is kind of central to our mission and our passions and our objectives is this preservation of indigenous knowledge and reciprocity. And we've done several things in that respect. One of the...

projects that we've had for several years has been a symposium series, which you may know about called the ESPD Symposia. We started actually the first one was presented in 2017 and that was before the Academy existed. But then in 2022, we presented

ESPD 55, and that was the 55th anniversary of this original symposium in 1967. And we basically invited, we raised the money to invite people to come and talk about different areas of investigation they were looking at, and then preserved and made available that information on our website. So.

Speaker 1 (12:28.342)
If you go to our website, which is called McKenna.academy, you can look at ESPD or the other things that, that's basically the main page for these symposia. So that information is very valuable and that is freely available to the world. And there also, we published, written, we published books related to each symposium.

The ES, for ESPD 50, we published the proceedings of the original ESPD conference in 1967 together with the nine, with the 2017 conference as a match set as a box set. And these are published by Synergetic Press and people can go to synergeticpress.com and see those, see those things.

And then the proceedings from ESPD 55, which we held in May of 2022, didn't get published until this year because we were not able to raise the funds to print it. But now it is available. So people can buy the proceedings if they want to buy the paperback. It's actually a big format paperback.

But all the lectures and everything are on the web as well. So people can watch those. But if you want to add it to your book collection, you can get the proceedings there. So that's one of the things that we're working on to try to address this problem. The other big project that we're working on and has been frustrating to raise funds for it, but has to do with

biognosis. If you go to the website, look up biognosis, bi-i-o-g-n-o-s-i-s. This has to do with the preservation of this herbarium in the Kitos, Peru. I've worked with the curator of the herbarium for almost 50 years, and the collection down there is invaluable.

Speaker 1 (14:52.78)
the plants collected there, but it's also under a lot of stress. There's really no funding to keep your barium operational. And we've had an objective to digitize those specimens and put them online and also to preserve or record some way the knowledge of the curator who is rather an amazing person.

and who has just incredible knowledge of plants, but it's all in his head. He hasn't written, he doesn't write things down. That's not his mindset, you know? So we've been trying to find the funds to create a video archive of his knowledge, just extensive in-depth interviews about his knowledge of plants and what to use them for. And then either

published that as a book or published that as a collection of video interviews. So we've been working on that and we have produced the first, what I hope will be just the first documentary in a series of documentaries. The first one is called, Bionosis Bridges to Ancestral Wisdom.

And it's basically an overview of this whole project to save the Cerberium. these collections, because of where it is in the middle of the Amazon, it's a reflection of the biodiversity of the Amazon, provides a picture of how the environment has changed over times, because some of these collections go back almost to the...

of the 20th century and how the species distribution and then the knowledge that's the problem is that the herbarium requires minimal funding to just be able to stay open. So we've been trying to find funding to not only allow them to continue operations at the

Speaker 1 (17:14.753)
modest level that they do, but also expand and create this digital library because that is the future of herbaria. Once those collections are digitized and put on the web, then they're available to the world. And if the herbarium burns down, heaven forbid, or something like that, although these things do happen, but the information will be there and preserved for the rest of the world.

Right, it sounds a lot like riprosity and just knowledge sharing. really key to a lot of it. Yeah, sorry, I kind of buried the lead there. Sorry, I'm going to back this up. But it's an honor to have you on here with us today. It's great to have you. Sorry about that. I didn't kind of rush through the beginning a little bit.

Exactly. That's right.

Speaker 1 (18:07.37)
sorry, I kind of got off on a a jag there. I do tend to go off.

Speaker 2 (18:17.553)
I think it was a little lag. It's all good. But yeah, thank you so much. So let me see. All right. So you helped run the first biomedical study of ayahuasca within the UDV, Union de Vegetal.

That's the focus.

Speaker 1 (18:37.534)
That's true.

Yeah, so what surprised you most about the results once you stepped out of the expectation and simply just kind of step back and look at the data?

Well, I mean, it was the first time there was ever any study like this, you know, and so we collected a spectrum of information. We collected, you know, blood samples with the volunteers. We were able to chart the pharmacokinetics of ayahuasca. We applied different, what they call instruments, basically very...

specifically designed questionnaires to assess people's cognitive functions and memory and linguistic skills and all that, comparing those two controls basically to try to see if there was any difference between drinkers and non-drinkers in that respect. And our findings were that

there were differences, you know, it's difficult to measure something like this, especially in a, you know, when the people, you know, it's a different culture, but basically we found no evidence of any cognitive problems or deficits. In fact, the UDV members performed slightly better, I mean, significantly better in terms of statistics than non-drinkers. I think the biggest...

Speaker 1 (20:07.938)
finding, the most significant finding from our study was the, so there are basically a couple of components of it. One was that we collected reports from these, from these subjects about what led them to join the UDV and what was, what led them to and what, what benefits did it have for them. And most people's story was very similar. People had

people joined the UDV when they were in state of life crisis. And often some friend, a member of the UDV or someone would recommend them and they joined and they came and their initial experiences were often quite terrifying, you know, but also quite healing in the sense that they could see their...

life's trajectory and they could get a sense of where they got off track. A lot of these people have problems with alcoholism and drug abuse, domestic violence and the kinds of problems that anyone faces, you know, but people that were looking for solutions and they came and had these sessions and they had these, you know, really sort of lessons in

this is what you gotta do if you wanna change your life. I mean, that was the lesson that they, that was a takeaway lesson for them. And they resolved to change. And the message was very strong that it was not only the ayahuasca, but it was the supportive environment of the UDV. You know, it's a very community oriented organization and they really support the families and it's.

I used to joke with them. I used to say, you guys are like psychedelic Mormons. the sense that Mormons have this whole community orientation, know, and not all religions do. I guess there are some, not to say anything bad. In this case, I was complimenting the Mormons. But the other interesting thing that came out of our biomedical studies here was that we

Speaker 1 (22:26.594)
found that there was an upregulation of the serotonin transporters, which are the proteins in the presynaptic membrane that reuptake neurotransmitters. And it's a target for antidepressants, things like that. So we measured the density of these transporters in people that had taken...

who are long-term members of the UDV taking ayahuasca on average every two weeks, some of them for over 40 years versus a matched control set of people, similar socioeconomic profile, but were not drinkers of ayahuasca. And we found that there was this upregulation in the density of the transporters, right?

We didn't really know what that meant. It was an interesting finding, so what? It was significantly different, but it was a marker that showed that there was something different about these people's brains, right? So then we dug into the literature, which was harder in those days, but we dug into the literature and we found that there was a whole set of publications about deficits.

in these monoamine transporters, pathological or abnormal deficits of the level of these transporters associated with a lot of behavioral dysfunctions, especially alcoholism. And it was like almost too neat a fit. I it was like many of these people in the UDV came because they had problems with alcohol.

These reports that we uncovered in the scientific literature showed that there's a whole cohort of people and various behavioral, you know, alcoholism, particular subtypes of alcoholism, suicidal ideation, certain kinds of depression. All of these things were associated with deficits in these transporters, particularly the serotonin transporter.

Speaker 1 (24:44.948)
So if you put that together with the behavioral response in the subjects of the UDV, it's almost too neat. Here's an example of positive behavioral change, how the medicine really helped them come to terms with their issues. And you have a biochemical mechanism that you can point to, that it effectively reversed.

these deficits in the serotonin transporters. So it's a neat package. It's a neat idea. We haven't tried or, you know, it needs to be further investigated. It's certainly, but it's a fascinating thing to follow up to see if that could be, you know, in a more structured, like clinical approach to it.

could this effect be leveraged in terms of helping people? Because the people, the subjects, you know, a few points need to be made. For one thing, our project was in no way was it a clinical study. It was an observational study, you know, but it needs to be approached in a more structured way to substantiate these reports.

That's one of the things about it. you know, we found evidence that maybe the ayahuasca was able to reverse these conditions over time. And if true, then that could be a explanation for the therapeutic effects of ayahuasca, at least, you know, there's lots of

Discussion lots of talk now about what the psychedelics do in terms of neuroplasticity. psilocybin has gotten a lot of attention in that respect, but ayahuasca also, you know, it stimulates synaptogenesis. It stimulates neurogenesis. It basically reorganizes the wiring of the brain in a way that makes it more functional. And so,

Speaker 1 (27:08.182)
You know, that is now that psychedelics are getting attention in biomedical context where there's the tools and the ability to investigate this, a lot of surprises are coming up.

So, this research and like other research you might have done or other findings, I'm curious about what are the long-term findings about this? Like how sustainable are these results? And especially, you know, of course in the community, there's a lot of talk about integration being really important to help people sustain these long-term results. What have you seen? I mean, this sounds like a very biological underpinning. So if the medicine is addressing these like biological predispositions,

Do they then come back after a period of time? Are there environmental changes that can be made to sustain these or like what's the long term for these?

Well, in the case of the UDV, the long-term situation is that because they're members, and they attend church regularly. And on average, they take ayahuasca once every couple of weeks. So they stay in this state, and they also...

you know, really cannot be separated from the social context. They were very emphatic that it wasn't just the T, it was the community. And most of these people who, in our sample at least, when they joined the UDV, they were in a state of life crisis and they felt that their joining and the T had basically saved them.

Speaker 1 (28:53.62)
So, and they didn't have these problems. Those that had problems with alcohol or drug abuse, they got over those. Or people with different domestic violence issues. I mean, if you spend time with the UDV community, you find that they're a very cohesive and just basically decent bunch of people.

I mean, I'm not a religious guy and I'm certainly not a cult member. I mean, it is a kind of a cult, but it's a very benign cult. It's a cult that really helps people. I didn't... It's different because these folks have joined an organization where taking ayahuasca regularly is part of the protocol. People who don't have that opportunity...

you know, who maybe they go to an ayahuasca retreat or they're able to take ayahuasca once in a while. Do those effects persist? You know, it's hard to set up a regular schedule to take these things unless you're in some kind of organization or community like the UDV. This is one place where a lot of people appointed to micro dosing.

as a possible way to maintain the, you know, you have a big macro psychedelic experience and all of these insights and kind of feel, you know, renewed and that's reflected by the neuroplasticity, the neurological responses to that. How do you sustain that? Well, you either take the psychedelic regularly or you can think about microdosing.

And that can be helpful for things like ayahuasca or psilocybin mushrooms. don't know. mean, people do microdose on ayahuasca, but I think it's much more common to microdose with psilocybin. All that said, I'm not totally convinced that microdosing is, you know, I think maybe it's a little bit overhyped.

Speaker 1 (31:23.21)
I can't see that it would hurt either.

I've noticed a little bit of an effect. They say, know, it's subliminal, think. Subcon... I guess subliminal, not subconscious. Subperceptive? Subperceptive, yeah. But I have noticed on even like a light LSD, you know, microdose. just... It's there, you know? So I can kind of see the appeal of it. But yeah, that...

It's there and or it appears to be there, you know, and you have that experience and you know, there's a lot to be said for placebos, right? mean, placebos are not inactive medicines. They actually have an effect because you have an expectation it will have an effect. And that's really something that clouds this whole response to microdose.

What I say is if you perceive that you have a benefit, then what is the harm? You know, there's really no harm in doing it. I do tell people though, occasionally you should remember that just around the corner, there's a world of wonder that you should step into once in a while, you know? I mean, even if infrequently, just remind yourself where all this is coming from. Because a good

solid dose of psilocybin or ayahuasca, that's not the same as microdose. I mean, that will rattle your cage quite a lot and in a good way, usually in a good way. And it's important to do that because, you know, much of the therapeutic properties of psychedelics, I believe, is having to do with being able to step out of your reference frame, your frame of habit.

Speaker 1 (33:22.446)
and preconceptions and behaviors that you've created, which they now call the default mode network. You know, that's the term in neuroscience, the default mode network. It's useful to disable that temporarily. I mean, it's very functional. You don't want to disable it forever because then you're psychotic, basically. But if you could disable it temporarily and then return to equilibrium, bringing with you the

what you've learned in that temporary state, then you could look at things from a different perspective. know, whatever your issue is, your addictions or your depression or your PTSD or whatever, just being able to step away from that and look at it from a different perspective, through a different lens, so to speak, effectively can help you to come to terms with it. I think that's what a...

I think that's why psychedelics have such a broad spectrum, broad therapeutic spectrum, because, you know, there are specific things like depression or PTSD that people are interested in, but the psychedelics work in a general way. It's like a broad spectrum therapeutic for all of these kinds of conditions.

Right, it's like the process of making subject object, right? It's like psychological terms that we use a lot in therapy. It's like when something is subject to you, it's the water you're swimming in, you can't see it. And you know, the default mode network, of course, is so much of our inner monologue. It's all the voices that we tell ourselves, the beliefs that we have, the stories we have about the world, about ourselves. We're swimming in it, we can't see it. But psychedelics turn that off and allow us to realize that it's separate. We are something more than that.

Right.

Speaker 3 (35:15.15)
and that gives us the power to supersede that.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's very important is to get outside your reference frame and realize, you know, as you do that we are, you know, it sounds like a cliche. All these insights from psychedelics sound like cliches. That doesn't mean they're not true. You know, we are all one. Yeah. Right. This guy. Well, in fact, it's true. We are all one. The separations that we perceive between us.

and not just people, the separations between ourselves and nature. You know, these are illusions that we've created, or more like delusions that we've constructed for ourselves that are convenient, but they are in fact not true, you know. Of course, if you were in a state of, you know, high psychedelic ecstasy all the time, you know, you wouldn't be able to get much done, you know, you've got to be able to...

take out the trash and you know.

Shuffle it if you want.

Speaker 1 (36:21.198)
do all the things, but it's very useful to step away from that once in a while and just remind yourself. And I think that this idea of everything being, I mean, it's not just people, it's also nature. And we, as a culture, we suffer a nature deficit right now. I mean, we are so estranged from nature.

I think that's at the root of many of the problems of our society. We've forgotten that we are immersed in a global biosphere that actually in total is an intelligent organism and we're just a small part of that. the Western culture especially, Eastern culture not so much.

recognize the connection between everything that's sort of built into their understanding. Western culture is very much about how humans are not part of nature. Not only are they not part of nature, but they're entitled to dominate and own and exploit nature. And that's led to the problems that we're seeing, our complete disregard and devaluation of nature.

Yeah, this is getting into a question I had that you often speak about Gaian consciousness and you're kind of speaking to it already, but I wonder if there's more that you have to add about like what that means to you in the current context of like climate collapse and technological acceleration. Like what can we learn? What can we do?

I don't know what we can do. think what we need to do is stop and think, you know, and maybe wake up. know, I'm even though I'm dismayed by this rush into AI and some kind of technological...

Speaker 1 (38:32.396)
world, know, fusion of ourselves with machines, basically, and sacrificing much of our creativity and intelligence and spirit. I mean, I think technology is always a two-edged sword, you know, and you can use it for benefit and you can use it for harm. But, you know, and this has been true forever. I mean, when everyone, when the internet started getting

going everyone said, this is great, but it's also very dangerous. And that was true. And then social media came along and began to see the, you know, sort of a downside of social media, you know, which started out with good intentions. I mean, it was thought of as a way to connect friends, you know, and bring people together. And then oddly enough, or paradoxically, it's made us more separated than ever.

You know, we're all separated into silos of beliefs and perspectives. A lot of that is social media. And that isn't what we thought it would lead to. And now we've got AI coming into the mix, and Lord only knows where that's gonna go. But I'm rather concerned about it. And I think a lot of people are, you know.

Almost sounds like we need integration at a culture level.

We need integration at the cultural level, right. And we need to, think we don't want to, I mean, it doesn't work for us to co-op these indigenous cultures or try to mindlessly imitate their practices. You know, we're not tribalists, we're global beings, we live in a...

Speaker 1 (40:30.302)
cybernetically hyper-connected society that's planetary wide, but we can learn some things from the indigenous people. And I think we can try to begin to construct, try to build our own communities that are, you know, that take the best of the indigenous practices and try to integrate them into our own communities. I would like...

I mean, all of this is made more complicated, of course, by the fact that, you know, everyone's excited about psychedelics, and at the same time, psychedelics remain illegal in most places. So I'm excited and encouraged to see what is going on in places like Colorado and Oregon and places like this.

where psychedelics are being at least made available under some circumstances. We need to build on that and figure out how to bring them into communities in a way that's beneficial, that's respectful of the medicines, but also beneficial to the communities and also acknowledges our debt to.

the indigenous knowledge keepers and how you reciprocate with that, with those people, those folks is one of the challenges that we need to figure out. Because we all know what the road to hell is paved with, right? So it's tricky.

Right, that kind of leads to a question I was kind of thinking. Many Westerners use plant medicine and talk about reciprocity, yet that material reciprocity rarely ever really lands. What would qualify as real reciprocity in your eyes?

Speaker 1 (42:34.149)
reciprocity.

Well, I don't know. think, I mean, reciprocity can be, take many forms. mean, financial compensation is probably the most obvious and the least effective. You know, I am not sure, actually. I think we need to create new social institutions around bringing psychedelics.

into our culture, what I've advocated for a long time. So you've got this whole phenomenon of ayahuasca tourism, for example. People go to South America to have these experiences. And certainly I have been an organizer of such retreats and I have seen many people have quite amazing

experiences and very therapeutic experiences. But in later years, I've begun to think what's the ethical, what are the ethical drawbacks to some kind of psychedelic tourism? Because really you're a Westerner, usually having much more money than the people in the community, and you're coming and you're impacting these communities.

And there may be benefits and there may be downsides. mean, there's nothing is either or in this situation. What I would like to see is the construction of social frameworks that instead of people going to South America or someplace to take the medicine, find a way to bring the medicine up to communities in North America and Europe, Australia.

Speaker 1 (44:30.24)
all these so-called developed countries, find a way to create local communities in which psychedelics are available and are, you know, under the stewardship of people that are experienced and how to use them, and really make it part of the community. Some kind of, effectively, I envision that every

small community might have some kind of a holistic wellness center or something where psychedelics is part of what is offered. And where they work in conjunction with indigenous societies to bring the medicines to these communities as well as the practitioners. So reverse the whole ayahuasca tourism.

equation, invite the curanderos to North America to bring their medicine. And this happens, of course. We know that this happens, and that's a good thing, but there's a risk. Effectively, they're risking. We should set up mechanisms so that this can be done legally and everybody's happy.

So if that were to be done, like bringing in these ayahuasqueros, these shamans in, how is that different from cultural appropriation, right? It's like taking some of those practices and trying to inject them into Western typologies. Like, is it because we're still trying to keep the power with those ayahuasqueros, those shamans, and like still keeping like the resources flowing in that direction? Or what makes it different? Or how do people prevent that pitfall of falling into cultural appropriation?

Well, it's less of a cultural appropriation. mean, basically you have to, the approach is to enlist the, you know, you can't force anyone to do this, but you can provide the opportunities for them to come and share their knowledge if they choose to do so. But, you know, I don't have all the answers to this, but it seems like a less,

Speaker 1 (46:51.982)
a more culturally sensitive way to approach it, to be able to say to the Indigenous community, recognize that your knowledge is valuable, your cultural totems are valuable, your medicine is valuable. We don't want to steal it. We're not here to steal it, but we want to share it should you choose to. But they need to dictate the terms.

They need to develop models that work for them. And there's no systematic way that this is happening, I don't think. mean, it happens on an individual basis. if some sort of, it would take a change in international drug policy to enable this to happen. But it's not too...

it's not too far a bridge to cross because basically psychedelics in terms of their safety are among the safest medicines that are available. So the prohibition of psychedelics, which has existed for so long, has very little to do with safety and a lot more to do with politics.

And, you know, I mean, another good example is the way that the, it's not a psychedelic, but the way that coca leaf is regulated in the world as opposed to cocaine. know, and there, McKenna Academy had a whole summit on coca earlier this year, looking for some solutions, trying to, there's a lot of people now trying to decouple coca leaf, chewing of coca.

which is really a very benign and beneficial medicine from cocaine. It's got, you know, it's been vilified because it's the source of cocaine. Well, so cocaine is a terrible drug, you know, it's a shitty drug and it's not even worth anything. The reason it's worth something is because it's illegal, you know, but that's kind of a different issue. But psychedelics do not need to be prohibited.

Speaker 1 (49:19.448)
gets to the root of how you educate people, you know, how to, you educate people to make informed choices about whether they want to use these things at all, if they choose to use them, how to use them, how do you, what are the choices you make in terms of how you elect to interact with these medicines and the, the,

you know, the most obvious way to do that is to do it within a community that supports this kind of these kinds of practices, you know, and it's always tricky, you know, mean, any psych ayahuasca psychedelics in general are kind of spiritual technology, you know, and like any technology, it can be used for good or bad.

You know, and there's plenty of harmful use of psychedelics or at least thoughtless use and people get into trouble around that. There's plenty of beneficial uses of psychedelics and a lot of it is just going on quietly underground. You know, there are people that have the expertise to use these things and...

They are not putting out big flashing neon signs, you know, you pretty much have to work your networks and find them through word of mouth, but they do exist.

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (50:59.138)
So kind of, excuse me, kind of leads me to another question. If psychedelic therapy became standard clinical practice, are we prepared for the cultural and spiritual ramifications of that? Or are we just industrializing the mystery?

Well, that's one of the big questions, trying to bring these things into biomedicine, because it's complicated. For one thing,

I mean, my inclination is in favor of natural psychedelics. mean, I wish people could, I think that people should, if possible, access natural psychedelics and they should do it in as direct a way as they can. I mean, if they can grow it, if they can, you know, access it that way, then they don't have to import it. That works for something like mushrooms, you know, and it's very interesting.

that I was recently at the Telluride Mushroom Conference. it's just one of many organizations like that around the country that are oriented toward mycology, have been for years, but now that Silas Simon is getting a lot of attention, they are good places to learn about these techniques for growing. And there's been a lot of advances.

in growing so that really, and new species that haven't been grown for a long time, was pretty much psilocybe cubensis. Well, now experimentalists, experimental mycologists, I guess you could say, have figured out how to grow many other species. And there's information out there on how to grow these species. ideally, without...

Speaker 1 (52:58.578)
know, mushrooms are practically the ideal psychedelic for this because you're not, they've had a global tradition of use. They've been used all over the world. think the evidence for that is now quite strong. So no one indigenous society can say we own this, you know, it truly is something that humanity owns.

ownership is even the right model. In fact, I don't think it is. I think what we're talking about is symbiotic partnerships. And I go on a lot about symbiotic partnerships. And I think that people should access the information they need in the case of mushrooms just to grow mushrooms.

I mean, any intelligent eighth grader can figure this out now with the techniques that are available. And in that respect, I'd like to mention, you've probably already heard of it, maybe even talked about it. I think Paul Stamets' new book called, psilocybin mushrooms and their natural habitats. Have you seen that?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I saw him signing copies at psychedelic science 25.

it yet but yeah I've seen it.

Speaker 1 (54:23.362)
Yeah, okay, you saw it. Yeah, it's a wonderful book and it's kind of the definitive source book on the subject now. I mean, he's really covered the waterfront and one of the most interesting thing he's done is he's talked about the cultivation of these different mushrooms and it's really possible now for anyone.

you know, with a spare closet to grow enough mushrooms for themselves and their friends or just for themselves or whatever, you know, but they don't have to be involved in, you know, they're not taking anything from anybody and they're just producing. And I think that's a good thing because at the end of the day, that is what we're talking about, you know, these...

I talk a lot about symbiosis. Well, symbiosis is an alliance between our species and some other species for whatever mutual benefits may result. It's not limited to drug plants or medicinal plants, obviously food plants or anything we might use, you know, from nature that provides benefits for both species. That should be our goal.

That is really what drives evolution, much more than competition. You know, it's collaboration and symbiosis that drives evolution forward, that drives the humanities development forward. So that is something I would encourage, you know, you don't have to bend me to anybody, the DEA or the FDA or the biomedical industrial complex or anyone like that.

You could just quietly find the spores. They're easy enough to find. If you look at some of these organizations, grow your own mushrooms. That is a blow for symbiosis and the evolution of humanity.

Speaker 2 (56:36.366)
Mm.

I see.

That's awesome. Had a couple questions just from the subreddit real quick. They had some questions posted up there. Had some really good feedback. One question was a guy, TQBENIS underscore. He wanted to know where you see psychedelics in 10 years.

where I see them in 10 years. Well, I think we kind of touched on it. I mean, I think all of these things are going to happen. The thing is, hopefully this sort of vision for the future of psychedelics as a community-based activity, hopefully that will happen and that will help preserve the indigenous knowledge.

and exemplify some degree of reciprocity. But of course, all the scientific research is going to go forward too. And there's the profit motive, the pharmaceutical companies are starting up, there are startup pharmaceutical companies, they all expect to create the next big psychedelic or discover new compounds.

Speaker 1 (57:57.012)
skeptical frankly that they can find anything better than what we already have. I psilocybin is just about the perfect psychedelic. It's made for humans. I mean it's compatible with our metabolism and all that. But that said, the scientific work is going to go on whether I want it to or not. I have no influence on it and some good things may come out of it, you know.

I don't so much think, well, something like Ibogaine is a good example. know, Ibogaine is a natural compound from an African plant. And it's been known for a long time for the treatment of addiction. But it turns out some of this more recent work that's emerging is it's much more than that. It's some kind of a global cerebral reset for the entire brain. So they're talking about it's

can be applied, it's beneficial for things like traumatic brain injury and even Parkinson's and some of these neurocognitive deficits. Ibogaine can actually reset systems in the brain. A lot of the psychedelics do, psilocybin does this too, but Ibogaine seems to work in some areas that it doesn't. So I think that's a...

if you know that needs to be followed up. Iavagate has some drawbacks. There are issues around its toxicity, but this is nothing that medicinal chemists can't address. So I think that new compounds will come on and new therapeutic modalities will emerge into biomedicine. The question is who's going to pay for it and will insurance companies pay for it?

and all of those complicated questions that have to be resolved. At the same time, you know, and they should be resolved and they should be discussed, but at the same time, you can just quietly have your little mushroom patch in the backyard or in your back closet and you're good. You know, you've got that symbiotic relationship going and stick with that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21.07)
I like it. Another one somebody had, M1X1MA. He said in Merlin Shandrick's book, Tangled Life, he talks about the purpose mushrooms have in giving us trips. Do you think they evolved this trait for the purpose of making this trip or was it some other reason?

Well, it's pretty clear that they didn't evolve to make hippies happy necessarily. mean, that's not why they evolved. They evolved these compounds which have been around for about 65 million years. There's been phylogenetic studies and psilocybin biosynthetic pathways showed up in mushrooms around.

65 million years ago. They could look at molecular clocks and genetic, phylogenetic records and they showed up. It's pretty clear that they evolved to interface with, as a protection against insects. Insects and fungi can compete for the same substrates, is either dung or wood.

Thanks

mushrooms and insects like both of those things. So the mushrooms probably evolved psilocybin initially as either a probably a repellent for insects to claim the territory for their substrates. But then, you know, over millennia and really more than thousands and thousands of years of evolutionary time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06.452)
Like happens a lot in nature, this compound became purposed or turned out to be useful for for making hippies happy, you know, but that was to as an interface with human with human beings. That was recent because we're recent, you know, mushrooms have been around 65 million years ago. We've been around maybe four million years ago.

You know, and we haven't had complex mammalian brains for that long. In fact, well, you know, the whole stoned ape hypothesis and all that, which I believe can be defended that mushrooms were a catalyst in the development of consciousness and the rapid evolution of the human brain over a mere two million years. The brain tripled in size. This does not happen.

without some profound evolutionary events like that just don't take place that often, that quickly usually. So I think that this ancient molecule, which was been around to drive insects crazy initially, or at least keep them away.

has now found a new application. And the mushrooms, to the degree that you can attribute intent to them, and I suppose you could, not in the same way we do, but the degree that you can attribute intent to them, you can say, well, it serves their purpose to form symbiotic relationships with human beings because

that protects them, ensures that they will be cultivated, that they won't go extinct, that they will spread. And in the meantime, we get the benefits of their beautiful chemistry. a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship in which everybody wins.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21.55)
Yeah, it reminds me of a saying I heard once that it's really the trees who are cultivating us.

There's a lot to be said about that. That's right. Effectively, a lot of these things like any plant that we value, any plant or fungus or any natural thing, you know, and we cultivate it, that's good for the plant because their agenda is to grow and to spread. Right. Same with the same with mushrooms. I mean, their agenda is pretty simple to spread. Well, to the degree that we facilitate that.

we fulfill our end of the bargain and everybody thrives. And a lot's been said, for example, Michael Pollan has talked about how corn, example, are we cultivating corn or is corn cultivating us? You know, corn is sort of the perfect crop for a global industrialized food production system, you know, as

Hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30.58)
As bad as that is, corn has adapted. And so, you know, it's a winner in this evolutionary symbiosis game, you know, and mushrooms as well. You know, and we're just really beginning to see, I mean, the mushrooms have been in nature for millions of years, thousands of years.

Cultivation hasn't been a big thing until recently. So now we're seeing it and many ingenious people are working with these other species of psilocybin and some of the smaller ones are quite potent, so they're like 2 % psilocybin. So you don't need a lot. It makes no sense to grow mushrooms to sell.

I mean, it used to because they were rare, but now you can't, you know, you couldn't give mushrooms away on the street corner. They're just not worth anything, but it's worth something to cultivate them and share them with your friends in the community. That's how you build goodwill. And I think anybody can do this. You can people and institutions, organizations like the American Mycological Association, you know, you can join these.

these institutions. It used to be something that just naturalists and nature freaks joined, but anybody could join those things. And that's where you could create these nodes of communities.

Nice. Excuse me. I like it. If you don't mind, if you've got a few minutes, we could switch over and do some Patreon questions. OK. For our Patreon members, we're about to get into Sam and Dennis's personal practices, maybe some big regrets, maybe fun hypotheticals, and the questions people would ask him. So join us over there. Everybody else, we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19.925)
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:16:54.264)
What a ride. In this conversation, Dennis grounded five decades of psychedelic work with one uncomfortable but necessary theme, integration at the cultural scale. He emphasized that psychedelics didn't emerge from nowhere. They came from the indigenous lineages that have carried this knowledge for millennia, and modern Western excitement too often borrows without giving back. The big question is how to reciprocate ethically and build systems that don't just extract.

but support those people, their knowledge, and their ecosystems. He talked about work happening through the McKenna Academy, the ESPD Symposia, preserving elder ethnobotanical knowledge in Peru, and digitizing fragile herbarium materials before they're lost. He reflected on the first biomedical study of ayahuasca.

How UDV members, many coming in during life crisis, described Ayahuasca's plus community as a catalyst for change. Their long-term health and psychological stability surprised researchers. Some even showed measurable biological markers associated with recovery from alcoholism and other disorders. He stressed that psychedelics don't work in a vacuum. They depend on community, context, and continuity.

And the UDV case makes that clear. People continue to transform because they have support structures every two weeks, not because of a single moment. Dentists have used natural psychedelics, especially mushrooms, as ideals agents of symbiosis rather than industry. Grow in your own relational act, a collaboration between species rather than an extractive transaction. It thinks Western clinical models risk industrializing the mystery and also intentionally build healthier frameworks.

that takes both worlds. Sees the next decade bringing both outcomes at once, community-based corporate pharmaceutical development and whether we like those two things or not. He encourages to think less about ownership and more about partnership with communities, with ecosystems and even the fungal themselves. Psychonautics for him is less of a hobby than a form of ecological participation. We touched on symbiosis, community, repress,

Speaker 2 (01:19:09.184)
reciprocity, Gaian consciousness, microdosing, AI acceleration, and the possibility that humanity is arriving at evolutionary tipping point. Underneath it all is a simple message. Be wise. Technology isn't the problem. The lack of wisdom is. So Dennis closed by reminding us that we're cultural beings, not isolated minds. And psychedelics revealed the illusion of separation from each other, from nature, from Earth, and from everything around us.

And the challenge now is whether we can integrate that awareness before we drive ourselves to the edge. That's a perfect note for the end of the season. What are your thoughts on this, Valerie?

Yeah, what an incredible talk. was such beautiful. His presence is so grounded and really takes you back to these perennial truths, just this timeless wisdom that is, I think, going to be the saving grace for anything that happens with society if we all just tune in and listen.

Right? Yeah, he did a really good job of just kind of pulling these separate threads a lot of times and threads we don't think about a lot. And just kind of pulled them together and kind of just shine a reflection back on ourselves as a culture. Yeah. Yeah. It was a great conversation. And it's so rare you get to have such a deep conversation with somebody who's been in the industry for so long. It's just amazing.

Yeah, it's beautiful. What an honor to be able to do this with you. So thanks for having me back.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40.206)
Thank you for joining me. It's always a pleasure to have you with me. Yeah, we've got a great season two coming up, working on, hopefully get some really some breakout people for this for, you know, we'll be taking a break probably in December, but January coming back. We've got some big news too with that. I think we're working with talking with Zendo Project.

Maybe working on an affiliate program with them, an ambassador program. Maybe working some sponsorships or something in for the community out there. know there's a lot of people out there who might need some of this or need a scholarship or something to be able to do this. And something I really want to be able to do is help out the community that way and find deserving individuals who would be able to take advantage of this in the community. So with that, guys, Valerie, again, thank you, your great co-host. I'm glad you're here.

Thank you for listening. Yeah, thank you guys for listening. We'll be back for season two and in the meantime, I keep exploring.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46.542)
you