095 - Energy Drinks . . . and other stuff

Program Notes

Guest speaker: Jon Hanna

(Minutes : Seconds into program)
06:19 Jon tells about starting the publication of The Psychedelic Resource List.

08:32 Lorenzo and Jon discuss articles in the current issue of Entheogen Review, including “DMT for the Masses” and “Security Issues in the Underground”.

13:14 Jon talks about the problem of mis-labeling of botanicals that are sold on the Internet.

18:29 The discussion turns to security issues in the psychedelic community.

23:33 Halperngate and John Halpern as a DEA snitch discussed at Burning
Man.

28:08 Jon Hanna: “Kind of the Golden Rule in our community is ‘Thou shallt not snitch.’ That’s the glue, the trust, that holds us all together as a community.”

31:54 Jon talks about his current research into energy drinks.

46:11 The horrors of a $6.57 a day energy drink habit?!?

50:06 Jon reads the warning label on an energy drink can

1:04:46 Jon raves about the apocalyptic visionary painter,Joe Coleman.

Mind States Conferences (click)

Psychedelic
Resource List

by Jon Hanna

Essays Discussed in this Podcast

“Halperngate” “Halperngate II”

“The Bad Shaman Meets the Wayward Doc”

“Bogus Kratom Market Exposed”

Psychedelic Shamanism

by Jim DeKorne

Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:21 ►

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

00:00:21 ►

from Cyberdelic Space.

00:00:23 ►

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:26 ►

And if you’ve been listening to my complaining lately

00:00:29 ►

about not feeling very good,

00:00:30 ►

well, I’m happy to report that I’m getting back up to speed

00:00:33 ►

and starting to feel like my old self again.

00:00:36 ►

I think the turning point was a conversation

00:00:39 ►

that I had over the weekend with Sobe,

00:00:41 ►

who has been one of the key people involved

00:00:44 ►

in the Plinque Norte lectures at Burning Man.

00:00:47 ►

Actually, without Sobe and Rafael, the talks might not still be taking place.

00:00:51 ►

So it was really energizing to brainstorm with Sobe about some community-enriching events that we hope to pull off at this year’s burn.

00:00:59 ►

So thank you, Sobe, for getting me back into gear, and a huge thank you to all of you who sent me Get Well emails.

00:01:05 ►

I want you all to know how much that meant to me.

00:01:08 ►

Years ago, a man I was working for said, fatigue can make cowards out of us all.

00:01:14 ►

And I think it was fatigue more than anything that had me thinking about dropping back to only one podcast a month.

00:01:29 ►

I’m going to be doing a podcast a month, but then your emails start arriving, and I have to tell you that your messages made me realize how much I would miss being with you each week here in the salon.

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And so I determined that no matter how I felt, I’d keep up the once-a-week pace.

00:01:45 ►

An interesting side note to all of this is that earlier this year, my wife and I were talking about the fact that in all the email I’ve received from fellow salonners, there have been practically none that came from women.

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There have been a few, but not too many.

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So I’ve been assuming that we’re top-heavy on guys here in the psychedelic salon.

00:01:55 ►

Well, guess what?

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It turns out that there are actually quite a few ladies here, and that became very evident

00:02:03 ►

from the fact that the get-well emails I received came from ten times more women than from men.

00:02:09 ►

So, thanks again for writing, and thanks again for the positive energy from all of you.

00:02:13 ►

It really makes me glad to be alive and kicking once again.

00:02:18 ►

Well, I’d better quit talking for now and introduce today’s program, which actually includes more of my talking now that I think of it.

00:02:24 ►

and introduce today’s program, which actually includes more of my talking now that I think of it.

00:02:31 ►

What I’m going to play right now is a recording of a conversation that John Hanna and I had last week.

00:02:34 ►

I think you’ll find some interesting tidbits here and there,

00:02:39 ►

but you’ll probably notice that a couple of times I kind of forgot that I was doing an interview for this podcast and just kind of started having another conversation with John and not stick to the topic at hand.

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Now, if you’ve been around the tribe for a while, you already know about John,

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mainly because it’s almost impossible to be involved with the psychedelic community

00:02:53 ►

and not have benefited from his work.

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John Hanna is one of less than a half a dozen individuals under the age of 40

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who is profiled in the Arrowwood character vaults.

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His first book in the field of altered states is profiled in the Arrowwood character vaults.

00:03:10 ►

His first book in the field of altered states, The Psychedelic Resource List, was published over a decade ago and is currently in its fourth and I think last edition.

00:03:16 ►

We’ll talk about that in our conversation here in a minute.

00:03:20 ►

John’s writing has been featured in Heads, High Times, Morbid Curiosity, and The Resonance Project, among other places,

00:03:27 ►

and he’s a regular and frequent contributor to the Entheogen Review.

00:03:32 ►

As an editor, John’s worked on quite a few books covering the topic of entheogens,

00:03:38 ►

including Back from the Void by Zoe Seven, Higher Wisdom compiled by Charlie Grobe and Roger Walsh, The Secret Chief by

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Myron Stolaroff, Ketamine Dreams and Realities by Carl Jansen, and, of course, my own book,

00:03:52 ►

Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness, the short title being The Spirit of the Internet.

00:03:59 ►

His current book editing project is Tryptamine Palace by Orak, a travelogue and philosophical examination inspired by a 5-MeO DMT trip.

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Among his other accomplishments, John also co-created three special theme issues of the MAPS Bulletin,

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polished the zero issue of Evolver magazine, works as an associate editor of Arrowhead Extracts,

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works as an associate editor of Arrowwood Extracts,

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and in his spare time, he’s a contributing editor at DoseNation.com,

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which, by the way, is one of the best sites on the web.

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If you’ve been to the PsychedelicSalon.org blog, you’ve probably seen DoseNation’s latest headlines in the right-hand column.

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It’s a great site, one that you really don’t want to miss.

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And on top of everything else, John also produces the Mind States conferences,

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which you’ll hear us talking about in just a minute,

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if I can quit talking and just play the interview.

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So let’s listen now to a conversation with John Hanna.

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Did I ever tell you how I first heard your name and found out who you were?

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No, I don’t know.

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I don’t think you did.

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Because, you know, the first time we met was over in Hawaii at Terrence McKenna’s conference.

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But now I’d been to a conference that Terrence gave, and a bunch of us were asking all kinds of questions.

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And finally, he kind of got frustrated and says, you know, what you guys need to do is just go get a copy of John Hanna’s psychedelic resource list.

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And that’s the first time I’d heard your name.

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And of course, afterwards, I got all the details from Terrence.

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And I think it was Loom Panics is where I first found your book.

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But I was really just blown away.

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I have to tell you this, because back then I was still in corporate America.

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And nowadays, you know, I’ve got the Psychedelic Salon podcast,

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and I get emails from people who are a little cautious and leery about even having an email come to me

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for fear I might out them on a program or something, which, of course, I wouldn’t do.

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But I was actually sort of apprehensive about even buying the psychedelic resource list

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and having it in my possession.

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And I thought, God, you’ve got a lot of guts to be out there doing that.

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So I don’t know if you talk about that much anymore, but I’m just kind of curious,

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how did you ever start that, or how did you have the courage to even do it?

00:06:17 ►

Yeah, okay, well, so, you know, I guess basically it was sort of motivated by selfish interest in that I was interested in this area.

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And this was kind of in the Reagan-Bush dark ages, right?

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What Jonathan Ott refers to.

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There wasn’t a lot of publishing.

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And it was kind of before the web had taken off in a big way, like 1993 or so.

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And so I was just, you know, I’d read High Times and other magazines,

00:06:50 ►

and I’d just write away to people and find out what it was that they were doing.

00:06:53 ►

And after a while of writing off to various businesses that sold, you know,

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sort of quietly sold botanicals that had some type of psychoactive effect,

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I started compiling them.

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Eventually, that turned into a newsletter.

00:07:09 ►

Then after nine issues or so, the newsletter was updated and produced as a book.

00:07:16 ►

Since that time, every couple of years or so, I’ve been putting out new editions of it.

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I think I’m probably going to stop now. I think that the current edition,

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it’s in like a 4.5 edition right now.

00:07:31 ►

The thing about it is that the Internet

00:07:33 ►

is so easy to get information on these days,

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and there’s so much going on these days

00:07:40 ►

that I don’t know that a print resource of that sort can be kept up to date.

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It can’t really be kept as current as it needs to be.

00:07:52 ►

But back then, there was, you know, there just wasn’t anything like it.

00:07:57 ►

Oh, I tell you, I’ve got, actually, I’m going to buy a copy of this last edition then, because

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I’ve got a copy of the second edition.

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I’ll stick one in the mail for you.

00:08:05 ►

Oh, okay, I appreciate it.

00:08:06 ►

I think I’ve got about three left.

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I’m really almost out of print on it.

00:08:10 ►

Oh, great, because I’ve got a copy of the second edition

00:08:13 ►

actually in my hands right now,

00:08:14 ►

and I can remember when I first got this,

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I was living out in the boondocks in Florida

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and had no connection to anybody in the tribe,

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and so it was just a real gem to find it.

00:08:26 ►

And you’re right, a lot of this stuff is on the net now,

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but it was a great service when it was there,

00:08:30 ►

as is another publication where I see you,

00:08:34 ►

almost every issue of it I see an article or two by you in it,

00:08:38 ►

and that’s one that I’ve pushed here, or not pushed,

00:08:42 ►

but talked about several times in podcasts podcasts is the Entheogen Review.

00:08:46 ►

And again, I heard about that one through Terence McKenna down in Palenque.

00:08:50 ►

He was talking about it.

00:08:53 ►

And just, I know you know what’s in it, but let me just say something here for our listeners,

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because I was planning to do this a couple weeks ago about the, actually the one that came out last winter,

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the winter solstice issue,

00:09:05 ►

has the cover picture and a couple other pictures

00:09:07 ►

of Sasha Shulgin’s laboratory.

00:09:10 ►

And I really appreciate you putting those out there.

00:09:12 ►

I’ve seen the pictures before and seen the laboratory,

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and that’s something I think everybody ought to see

00:09:17 ►

just from whence it came.

00:09:20 ►

Yeah, it’s definitely inspiring,

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this little tiny sort of spiderweb-filled mad scientist kind of lab that he’s got going. Yeah, it’s definitely inspiring, this little tiny sort of spider web filled mad scientist kind of lab that he’s got going.

00:09:28 ►

Yeah, it’s cool.

00:09:29 ►

Yeah, it’s right out of the movies.

00:09:31 ►

And, you know, the current issue, I was going to tell people, a lot of our regulars here in the salon,

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there’s a great article by Rick Strassman about getting involved in psychedelic research,

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and I get a lot of questions about that, plus all of the other articles,

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your security issues that you bring out.

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I like the mention of conferences, and then the DMT for the masses was quite an interesting article.

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I was desperately looking for one like that,

00:10:05 ►

an article like that about 10 years ago.

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So this is quite a resource.

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Why don’t you just say a little bit about it, if you will?

00:10:12 ►

Sure.

00:10:13 ►

I think, you know, the article you mentioned, the DMT for the masses,

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and another article that just came out in the most recent issue was mescaline for the masses. And the neat thing about those articles is that they’re presenting kind of tried and

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true kitchen extraction processes that people don’t need to be chemists in order to perform

00:10:39 ►

them.

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And particularly the DMT for the masses article, after that came out, what I noticed,

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and somebody actually commented on this in the most recent ER,

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is that there was a much larger noticeable difference

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in the quantity and quality of DMT that became available in the underground.

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So I don’t have any idea whether that really had any sort of an effect,

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but certainly it’s possible.

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It would be nice to think that these things have some kind of a real-world effect,

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that it’s not just intellectual curiosity.

00:11:20 ►

That’s one of the things about ER is that it’s such a broad-based sort of a critique of information.

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Every issue, there’s some things that are way over my head as far as the chemistry or botany, quite frankly.

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But, you know, sometimes Kate Trout will have one in there that will be way over my head,

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but I read it because I like Trout so well.

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And then you come into one like I could really groove with.

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This one is in theogens in video games, which is really fascinating.

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Right.

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So, you know, it’s got something for everybody in there.

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And I’ve got all my back copies just because I’m figuring one day one of my grandkids is going to be a botanist or a chemist and can use this information.

00:12:04 ►

Yeah. going to be a botanist or a chemist and can use this information.

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Yeah.

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So, you know, I think for me, I love helping out with the art.

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And it was in the early days.

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It started in 1992.

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And Jim DeCorn, who published, he’s the author, rather, of Psychedelic Shamanism, was the editor of it.

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And it was always, I remember every time it came in the mail,

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it was always like getting this little present that I would immediately stop

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whatever I was doing and read it cover to cover.

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And it was much shorter back then.

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So for me, in writing for it, one of the things that kind of inspires me

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is to try to act as a consumer advocate,

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to try to point out problem areas in this scene

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because a lot of it’s kind of gray market.

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It’s kind of an underground market,

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and there’s no legal recourse that people will turn to

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if somebody is selling something that’s misidentified.

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For example, a good example is the mislabeling of botanicals,

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which is something that’s been going on for the last decade,

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these various antigen that are sold.

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Sometimes people just get it wrong.

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And I don’t think that it’s,

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most of the time I don’t think that it’s purposefully wrong.

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I don’t think that people are trying to rip people off.

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I think that they’ve just purchased something from some source and it’s not correctly identified

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and they don’t know that.

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And these days with that happening in one wholesaler,

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the whole enteobotanical market can be flooded with product that’s incorrect.

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A good example a while ago that happened is with botanical cryptom,

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which is Mitrogina speciosa.

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This is a leaf that grows in Thailand.

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It’s actually illegal in Thailand, but it produces kind of an opiate-like effect.

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And it’s interesting that it produces that effect

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because the purported active chemical in it

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is a tryptamine, actually.

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But it’s similar, sort of structurally similar

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to psilocybin, so it’s one of these…

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And yet it acts like an opiate of some kind? it produces a kind of a blank of allium sort of effect um but

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so it wasn’t that available on the commercial market and then all of a sudden the commercial

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market was flooded with it and uh daniel siebert uh contacted me and he pointed out that the stuff

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that was available on the market um’t look like Kratom.

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Like, it morphologically wasn’t right.

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When you looked at the leaves, they had characteristics that weren’t similar to what Kratom should look like.

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So with that, you know, sort of as my starting point, I contacted Sasha Shulgin

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and I asked him if he happened to know any

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source for a reference standard for mitragynin, which is the target alkaloid in Krypton. He

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pointed me to a company called Appen Chemicals in England. I ordered some from them. At the

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same time, I heard that Dennis McKenna might have some mitraginine from years ago and I contacted

00:15:26 ►

him maybe a little bit earlier than that or something and he passed some along to me. So

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ultimately I got a couple of reference standards to use and then had assorted folks who were able

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to perform thin layer chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography on a number of different samples of this Kratom that had flooded the market,

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or I should say purported Kratom that had flooded the market.

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And what we were able to show was that not only was the leaf morphologically incorrect,

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but it was also chemically incorrect.

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It didn’t contain any metragynin.

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So this is a perfect example of kind of this situation where something is misidentified and then

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it’s being sold in a lot of different venues. So I wrote about our findings

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in an article for the Entheogen Reviews called

00:16:15 ►

Bogus Gritom Market Exposed.

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That article can be downloaded from the

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ER website, which is www.entheogenreview.com.

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But in any case, Daniel’s really the person to thank for catching that scam or for drawing it to my attention.

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And a couple of years later, he similarly discovered that there were some bogus Laguchilins and Ebrions being sold online.

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that there were some bogus Laguchilans and Ebrions being sold online.

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But unfortunately, at that time, I didn’t really have enough time to write about the situation myself,

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and I don’t think that Daniel really ever had the time to write it up either. But it just goes to show these situations where people are selling some herb or some seed or some cactus that’s misidentified.

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There isn’t really any government system to catch this. The government doesn’t give a rat’s ass that people weren’t purchasing

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these things in the first place, right? So that’s really probably, as far as my work

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with the antigen review goes, that’s probably what compels me the most in my writing is

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this goal of being able to help people out and to be as truthful as possible.

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I don’t know if you know this, but from time to time people have called you, sir, the Ralph

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Nader of the drug scenes.

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I don’t know if you’re Ralph Nader on drugs or not.

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Ralph Nader on drugs.

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That sounds actually kind of scary.

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I think if Ralph Nader was on drugs, I’d rather have him on some sort of depressants and stimulants.

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I agree.

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But I don’t want to trash Ralph Nader.

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I think he’s great.

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He’s definitely a hero of mine, so that’s good to hear.

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What’s amazing is you’re a hero of mine.

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Look at all the work that you go to.

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I might point out that you don’t get paid a living to write these articles.

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This is all community service.

00:18:11 ►

Sure.

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It’s definitely a labor of love or a felt duty.

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If there’s some situation that I feel like people really need to know about,

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then I feel that I have to write about it.

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Well, like in the latest issue,

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you’ve written about something that’s near and dear to both our hearts,

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and that’s security issues in the underground.

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And we talked about this a lot at Burning Man.

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In fact, your Halperngate article, a series of them,

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was really, I think, something very important

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that I’ve never really talked about here on these programs so far,

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but I think it’s something that is important in particular

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because a lot of people now are connecting with each other on the net,

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not really knowing each other or knowing one another well.

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You’ve got to be still careful about all this stuff

00:19:01 ►

because free speech is fortunately still somewhat

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legal in this country but

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some of the other activities here

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certainly

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would be considered an outlaw

00:19:14 ►

and so

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when you get someone in the crowd

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who’s a snitch

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I’ve been involved in a similar situation

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myself back in my years in Dallas

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and it’s very serious.

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And so I do appreciate what you did about Halpern Gate,

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but we might want to say a word or two about it here

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because I don’t know if particularly our people outside the country,

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our listeners, know much about it.

00:19:38 ►

Sure.

00:19:39 ►

I just wanted to, before touching on that situation,

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you brought up something that made me think of a recent situation,

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which is the idea of free speech in this country and that we still have free speech.

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That may be the case for Americans.

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I don’t know if you recently heard about this Canadian who was trying to cross the border.

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Many years ago, 20 years ago or something, he had written about his illegal

00:20:07 ►

use of LSD.

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Many years ago, he had illegally taken LSD and then fairly recently, he wrote an article

00:20:17 ►

for a psychology magazine.

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He’s a psychologist, a psychotherapist of some type.

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So when he’s trying to cross the border into the United States

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to visit his kids who live in the United States,

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they stopped him at the border and Googled his name.

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They found this article, the customs officials found this article

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that he had written which mentioned his illegal use of LSD a couple decades ago,

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and now they won’t let him into the country.

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They basically said, no, you’re an undesirable, you’ve admitted to doing something illegal,

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we’re not going to.

00:20:49 ►

So if you’re Canadian and you want to come to the United States, you might not want to

00:20:53 ►

write about your drug experiences.

00:20:54 ►

Well, yeah, and on top of that, he’s got two children living in this country.

00:20:59 ►

One, I think, is a university professor, another is a medical doctor, and he’s a very respectable

00:21:03 ►

guy. university professor and now there’s a medical doctor and he’s a very respectable guy and then what’s so frightening

00:21:06 ►

is this bureaucrat,

00:21:08 ►

little border guard

00:21:09 ►

that just takes it on his or her own

00:21:12 ►

to Google him

00:21:13 ►

and makes that decision just unilaterally.

00:21:17 ►

And then more disturbing than that,

00:21:20 ►

perhaps,

00:21:21 ►

is where does the future lie?

00:21:23 ►

When is it going to be that

00:21:25 ►

as an American citizen who’s

00:21:27 ►

traveling and then trying to get back into the country

00:21:29 ►

that they decide, well,

00:21:32 ►

you know, look, if we won’t let

00:21:33 ►

in the foreign undesirables, you know,

00:21:36 ►

I mean, they wouldn’t let a foreign

00:21:37 ►

terrorist in, right? And they wouldn’t let a domestic

00:21:40 ►

terrorist in, right? If you were a known

00:21:41 ►

domestic terrorist, they’re not going to let you back in. They’re going to

00:21:43 ►

arrest you or do whatever. So when is it going to be a situation

00:21:46 ►

where they just don’t let American citizens back into the country anymore? That’s an excellent

00:21:50 ►

question and one that I’m somewhat concerned about. Sure. I mean, I travel a lot, so I don’t,

00:21:57 ►

you know, and I’ve got writings on the web. Of course, I’d never do anything illegal.

00:22:02 ►

Wouldn’t do that, you know, but… That’s why we got out of the country is to do things in another jurisdiction.

00:22:09 ►

Right.

00:22:10 ►

Yeah, it’s just amazing.

00:22:13 ►

And, you know, I think that’s one of the reasons that keeps compelling me to do these programs is that we have to continue to stand up and be counted.

00:22:21 ►

You know, we just can’t be quiet and we have to keep talking about it.

00:22:26 ►

Actually, that story about that psychiatrist

00:22:29 ►

is on our blog at psychedelicsalon.org

00:22:33 ►

where I blog the program notes here for this program,

00:22:36 ►

but I also put up stories like that.

00:22:38 ►

And then also over on the left-hand column

00:22:42 ►

is all of the latest headlines from Dose Nation,

00:22:46 ►

where I think you also write over there at Dose Nation, don’t you?

00:22:50 ►

Yeah, I do.

00:22:51 ►

They’ve got me on as sort of a guest editor,

00:22:54 ►

and I wish that I was able to get to that more often.

00:22:57 ►

But they’re doing an amazing job there.

00:22:59 ►

I mean, it’s just updated constantly.

00:23:01 ►

There’s all, essentially, with a focus on psychoactive drugs,

00:23:06 ►

just all the news that happens is posted

00:23:08 ►

to that website. It’s an incredible resource

00:23:10 ►

for people. So yeah, definitely

00:23:12 ►

check out the website.

00:23:14 ►

It’s a great site and

00:23:16 ►

that’s why we’re

00:23:18 ►

listing, I think, the top 15 headlines

00:23:20 ►

from it and they’re constantly updated

00:23:22 ►

in automatic feed. So I go there

00:23:24 ►

for my information actually

00:23:25 ►

a lot of it is so easy to find there

00:23:27 ►

I wanted to get back to

00:23:29 ►

you had mentioned the Halperngate article

00:23:31 ►

so I wanted to just briefly

00:23:33 ►

I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this

00:23:34 ►

because I feel like I’ve spent enough time

00:23:37 ►

in my life on this

00:23:39 ►

subject and

00:23:40 ►

writing the article was sort of

00:23:43 ►

really troubling for me on very many levels.

00:23:47 ►

But not writing it would have been more troubling, right?

00:23:50 ►

So I sincerely believe that it’s really crucially important for anyone who’s interested in psychedelics in any way to read my article.

00:24:00 ►

It’s titled Halperngate, and it’s posted to the Entheogen Review website.

00:24:04 ►

And then there’s another article from John Beardsford.

00:24:08 ►

It’s titled Halperngate 2.

00:24:11 ►

I don’t think that’s online yet anywhere, but it’s in the Antigen Review.

00:24:16 ►

And then Eric Davis wrote an article which was titled

00:24:18 ►

The Bad Shaman Meets the Wayward Doc, and that’s posted up at trypsine.com.

00:24:24 ►

meets the wayward doc, and that’s posted up at tripzine.com.

00:24:28 ►

And the basic story… John, what I’ll do, John, just so our listeners will know,

00:24:30 ►

is I’ll put links to all of those articles with the program notes to this program.

00:24:37 ►

Oh, great. Good. Thanks.

00:24:37 ►

So they can look through.

00:24:38 ►

And then we’ll have to contact ER to see if we can get permission to put the HalpernGate 2 article up,

00:24:46 ►

and I could even put that on my site and link to it.

00:24:48 ►

So they should all be up there.

00:24:50 ►

I mean, it’s something that should be read, really should be read.

00:24:53 ►

So the basic story is that this doctor, John Halpern, who works at McLean Hospital in Harvard,

00:25:03 ►

and he’s been doing research into psychedelics,

00:25:06 ►

and he was funded for many years by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

00:25:15 ►

So the trouble is that he acted as a DEA snitch in the LSD missile silo bust that happened in the year 2000, right?

00:25:25 ►

And a lot of people didn’t know that this was the case.

00:25:31 ►

And, you know, because Rick Doblin was friends with him,

00:25:35 ►

and Rick is the founder of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,

00:25:42 ►

because he was friends with John, because he believed in the research

00:25:46 ►

that John was doing, and he was

00:25:48 ►

funding that research, he

00:25:50 ►

sort of kept it quiet.

00:25:52 ►

He didn’t go out of his way to make it known

00:25:53 ►

that Halpern had been a snitch.

00:25:56 ►

Well, you know, the

00:25:58 ►

trouble is that Halpern is frequently

00:25:59 ►

involved in underground

00:26:02 ►

activities. He worked at the

00:26:04 ►

crisis tent at Burning Man.

00:26:07 ►

He goes to conferences geared towards underground enthusiasts.

00:26:11 ►

And there is, I think, reasonable concern that some people have

00:26:17 ►

that if he’s not still working for the DEA in some capacity,

00:26:23 ►

that since he snitched once in the past,

00:26:26 ►

if he was pressured to, he would snitch again in the future.

00:26:29 ►

So I think it’s important for people to know about this situation.

00:26:33 ►

And it brings, even if you’re just looking at it and projecting, what is it that I would do?

00:26:40 ►

What would I do if I was put between a rock and a hard place?

00:26:42 ►

Would I roll over on my friends?

00:26:45 ►

And so people need to consider that sort of thing,

00:26:47 ►

and they need to consider how to stay safe

00:26:49 ►

and the kinds of things that they want to say and not say in public.

00:26:53 ►

And I think that probably it’s prudent to avoid people who are known DEA snitches.

00:27:02 ►

You know, I’m in 100% agreement with you,

00:27:04 ►

and as I say, I’ve had some experience

00:27:06 ►

with this in the past. And let’s just say, let’s impute nothing but the best of future intentions

00:27:13 ►

and motives to anybody that rolls over. No matter how good their intentions, it’s one area in my

00:27:19 ►

life where I refuse to give anyone a second chance, just period. Because like you, I’ve had to sit down in my heart of hearts and say,

00:27:27 ►

okay, am I willing to just pay for all this without rolling over?

00:27:32 ►

And unless you’re willing to take those kind of a stands,

00:27:37 ►

then you need to consider where you are and what you’re doing.

00:27:40 ►

Because this is no laughing matter when a man gets two consecutive life sentences.

00:27:47 ►

How can you even look yourself in the mirror when you’ve contributed to something like that?

00:27:53 ►

I think it’s the, what was it, Beretta?

00:27:56 ►

If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

00:27:59 ►

Yeah, yeah.

00:27:59 ►

I mean, I think that people need to consider that.

00:28:03 ►

And kind of the golden rule in our community is thou shalt not snitch, right?

00:28:08 ►

I mean, that’s the glue, the trust that holds us all together as a community.

00:28:14 ►

So it’s a pretty serious thing, and I think that people need to look at that.

00:28:20 ►

They need to see what’s going on with that situation.

00:28:23 ►

look at that. They need to see what’s going on with that situation.

00:28:32 ►

I want to say I was happy to see that Rick Doblin actually spoke about this at Burning Man and at Entheon Village, the Planque Norte lectures that you organized,

00:28:36 ►

that you allowed for this topic to be discussed.

00:28:39 ►

I sort of felt as though the manner in which the opinions about the situation were presented

00:28:44 ►

was still largely sculpted in advance by Rick to his benefit.

00:28:49 ►

And I also kind of feel that the gravity of the situation probably went over many of the listeners’ heads

00:28:53 ►

who were a little bit spun out there on the playa.

00:28:56 ►

But I was still glad to see that Rick finally addressed the topic in public.

00:28:59 ►

And so that’s good and admirable.

00:29:04 ►

Rick’s doing a lot of good work.

00:29:06 ►

I don’t think that this situation should in any way define him

00:29:11 ►

or that people should hold this against him forever.

00:29:15 ►

And, you know, folks need to look at the big picture

00:29:17 ►

and see that Rick is doing a lot of good work,

00:29:21 ►

although I think he made a mistake in this situation of supporting John Halpern.

00:29:25 ►

Yeah, and Rick and I go back to early 1986,

00:29:29 ►

and we’ve been off and on together for a long time.

00:29:34 ►

And so I’m very disappointed that he has taken this stand myself.

00:29:41 ►

And it wasn’t easy to get him to commit to do this, quite frankly, frankly last summer and it didn’t come out the way i wanted it to either uh i i thought it was kind

00:29:49 ►

of interesting the way he sort of finessed the uh people coming up there with him but uh in any

00:29:54 ►

the best example of that to me was uh nick sand right i know i know nick is a good friend of mine

00:30:00 ►

and uh and nick really had some very strong feelings about the topic of snitching, right, because he was put away.

00:30:09 ►

Twice.

00:30:09 ►

Twice.

00:30:10 ►

Two different snitches.

00:30:11 ►

Right.

00:30:11 ►

It was really unfortunate to see how tame Nick was when he was up there talking about this in public.

00:30:25 ►

public, I felt like, you know, I know the way Rick, the way that Nick really feels.

00:30:31 ►

And so it kind of felt a little bit like, you know, Rick had finessed what Nick said.

00:30:36 ►

Well, yeah, it was just, it was very unfortunate the way it was done.

00:30:38 ►

But I have to take my hat off to Nick.

00:30:39 ►

He was just a gentleman.

00:30:40 ►

Oh, yeah.

00:30:45 ►

Just, you know, he could have done a lot of things there, but he was really the man of the hour.

00:30:49 ►

Well, no, I’ll tell you, the man of the hour was a woman.

00:30:51 ►

The man of the hour was Usha.

00:30:57 ►

She didn’t mince any words, and she got up after Nick spoke,

00:31:01 ►

and she laid it out the way that I thought Nick was going to lay it out. So really, Usha, you know, hats off to her.

00:31:05 ►

Hey, you know, I didn’t get a recording of the thing did your video come out of that at all yeah yeah sure uh

00:31:11 ►

i’ll podcast that that’s that’s something we’ll let the whole community hear and uh

00:31:17 ►

let them yeah we could uh you know we could even get it posted up to youtube probably yeah

00:31:22 ►

so uh so anyhow we need to move on.

00:31:25 ►

Let’s move on to more pleasant things.

00:31:28 ►

Sure, yes.

00:31:30 ►

So, yeah, let’s move on to sunnier climes and talk about what is your current obsession?

00:31:38 ►

I mean, you’ve been in this field for decades now.

00:31:41 ►

And so what’s your focus on all of these different areas of interest these days?

00:31:48 ►

Well, okay. I guess it’s not particularly psychedelic in any way, but I’ve been thinking

00:31:56 ►

about writing a book on it. Certainly, probably I’ll at least get around to writing an article

00:32:00 ►

on it. I’ve been kind of intrigued over the last few years

00:32:05 ►

with the energy drink phenomenon

00:32:07 ►

and how that’s impacted the marketing of soda

00:32:11 ►

and what’s going on with that.

00:32:15 ►

And so, you know, I remember when I first tasted Red Bull.

00:32:19 ►

Now, a lot of people don’t like the flavor of Red Bull.

00:32:21 ►

You know, I’ve never even tried it.

00:32:23 ►

The name kind of put me off.

00:32:25 ►

It sounds like malt liquor or something.

00:32:28 ►

Well, so it’s interesting, the name Red Bull.

00:32:33 ►

When it first came out, it has a taurine in it, right, which is amino acid.

00:32:40 ►

And, you know, I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But the urban legend that was passed around, one of the natural sources for taurine is bull semen or bull testicles.

00:32:53 ►

Right.

00:32:54 ►

And so the name Red Bull, people were thinking, oh, God, this stuff’s got bull testicles in it.

00:32:58 ►

Right.

00:32:59 ►

But it doesn’t.

00:33:00 ►

I mean, the taurine is all completely synthetic.

00:33:02 ►

But, you know.

00:33:03 ►

No bulls were harmed in the process of making it.

00:33:07 ►

Right, right.

00:33:08 ►

Good.

00:33:08 ►

So anyway, it’s kind of, you know, it’s a different taste.

00:33:13 ►

And before energy drinks came along, I really wasn’t a big soda drinker.

00:33:19 ►

It’s kind of like the palate within the realm of soda wars is pretty limited.

00:33:23 ►

For most of my life, it’s like you’ve got cola and lemon-lime, right?

00:33:28 ►

And those are the two biggies.

00:33:29 ►

It’s either Coke or Pepsi or 7-Up or Sprite.

00:33:33 ►

You know, that’s pretty much the dominant market.

00:33:35 ►

And then there’s the also-rans like Dr. Pepper or Mr. Pibb or root beer and orange soda.

00:33:43 ►

But that’s about it, aside from diet versions of those, which do taste a little different,

00:33:47 ►

but that’s not what people are looking for, right?

00:33:49 ►

It’s kind of this really sort of limited palette of sodas.

00:33:53 ►

And the European market isn’t like that.

00:33:55 ►

There’s a number of different flavors and have been for years.

00:33:59 ►

But, well, okay, so let me back up.

00:34:01 ►

I guess probably the first energy drink on the market was Jolt Cola.

00:34:06 ►

Oh, I remember that.

00:34:07 ►

I remember that, yeah.

00:34:08 ►

It came out in 1985, and the slogan was something like,

00:34:14 ►

all the sugar and twice the caffeine, right?

00:34:17 ►

Now, they had to dump that slogan later because they started using high fructose corn syrup

00:34:23 ►

as their sweetener instead of sugar

00:34:25 ►

so it didn’t have any sugar anymore.

00:34:26 ►

But the point was that they gave it a double dose of caffeine

00:34:31 ►

twice as much as a regular cola.

00:34:34 ►

But that wasn’t really an energy drink in the same way that what we think of today

00:34:39 ►

as energy drinks would have.

00:34:40 ►

They have a lot of assorted ingredients in them and a lot of B vitamins in them.

00:34:46 ►

So I should mention that Red Bull actually predated Jolt Cola.

00:34:52 ►

There were a number of versions around.

00:34:56 ►

I think it was created in Thailand.

00:35:00 ►

I’m not sure exactly when it first appeared,

00:35:02 ►

but what happened is a company in Austria saw the product from Thailand

00:35:09 ►

and they kind of reinvented it.

00:35:12 ►

They changed the name to Red Bull and they carbonated it

00:35:16 ►

and they put it in these little tiny cans.

00:35:18 ►

So that hit the world market in, I think, around 1987.

00:35:24 ►

And that’s what sort of was the, to me, what I see as the defining

00:35:28 ►

feature in changing the soda market. So when I first tasted Red Bull, what I was surprised by is

00:35:34 ►

it’s got kind of these several layers of flavor. When you take a sip, it hits you with one flavor,

00:35:39 ►

and then that kind of mellows out into another flavor. And then there’s sort of like this

00:35:43 ►

third flavor that’s an aftertaste. And as you continue to drink it, there’s kind of mellows out into another flavor, and then there’s sort of like this third flavor that’s an aftertaste,

00:35:45 ►

and as you continue to drink it,

00:35:47 ►

there’s kind of like this little weird rollercoaster effect of flavors that you’re having.

00:35:53 ►

Are you a stockholder in this company?

00:35:55 ►

I’m ready to go out and buy one now.

00:35:57 ►

I am not, but I wish I had been, sure.

00:36:03 ►

So it’s interesting you mention that,

00:36:01 ►

I had been, sure.

00:36:04 ►

So it’s interesting you mention that because it was considered from the outset

00:36:08 ►

that this product was like the…

00:36:12 ►

There’s some…

00:36:13 ►

I think there’s an article titled

00:36:15 ►

Speed in a Can,

00:36:16 ►

which you can find online,

00:36:17 ►

and it traces the history

00:36:19 ►

of the marketing of Red Bull.

00:36:21 ►

And it was like they took it to focus groups

00:36:24 ►

and it was considered to be just like the absolute worst product

00:36:29 ►

that you could possibly pitch, right?

00:36:31 ►

People didn’t like the flavor.

00:36:33 ►

It’s in this little tiny can.

00:36:35 ►

They didn’t understand why it was so expensive.

00:36:39 ►

But now it’s huge.

00:36:41 ►

It’s got the market share in energy drinks.

00:36:45 ►

I don’t really remember when I first tried Red Bull,

00:36:48 ►

but in the early 1990s, I used to run a smart bar business at Rave’s

00:36:54 ►

and sell smart drinks.

00:36:57 ►

The business was called Think Again.

00:36:59 ►

I like that.

00:37:01 ►

The catchphrase was, smart drugs for stupid people.

00:37:05 ►

Hopefully, I wasn’t insulting my clients too much, but most people didn’t read anything anyhow.

00:37:11 ►

And I’ve never really been quite sure how much of the effect of any number of the sort of quote-unquote smart drugs is a pharmacological effect and how much of it is a placebo effect. Well, you know, back when that book Smart Drugs and Nutrients first came out,

00:37:27 ►

I bought the book and ordered some of the stuff from overseas and all.

00:37:31 ►

And, you know, I don’t know how much was placebo, but I don’t think any of it hurt me at least.

00:37:38 ►

How’s that?

00:37:39 ►

Yes.

00:37:39 ►

Yeah.

00:37:40 ►

Yeah, that’s true.

00:37:41 ►

They’re pretty benign.

00:37:42 ►

The drugs and nutrients that are sort of being pimped as increasing your brain power,

00:37:48 ►

they’re pretty benign in any case.

00:37:50 ►

So I was running the Smart Bar,

00:37:51 ►

and most of my products were based on these commercially available vitamin nutrient blend powders

00:38:00 ►

that you mix up in the drinks that were being produced or marketed by the Life Extension gurus,

00:38:08 ►

Dirk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, right?

00:38:11 ►

So this is back in the days of Reality Hackers magazine and the early Mondo 2000 magazine.

00:38:17 ►

Well, I’ll tell you what.

00:38:19 ►

If it wasn’t for Mondo 2000, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.

00:38:23 ►

That’s where I first heard about Terrence McKenna.

00:38:26 ►

And I was going to say, interestingly, you put me on a panel sitting next to Are You

00:38:33 ►

Serious at one of the MindStates conferences.

00:38:36 ►

And so I was able to tell him that I was there only because he’d put me there with his magazine.

00:38:41 ►

That was a great publication.

00:38:41 ►

He put me there with his magazine.

00:38:43 ►

That was a great publication.

00:38:48 ►

I think that Are You Serious was the editor of both of those,

00:38:50 ►

RealiHackers and Mondo 2000.

00:38:54 ►

And before that, the incarnation was called High Frontiers for a couple issues. And I need to say that Are You Serious was just totally before his time with these publications.

00:39:02 ►

And if you look through them, even today,

00:39:05 ►

if you read through these back issues

00:39:07 ►

that are like almost two decades old in some cases,

00:39:11 ►

they still hold up.

00:39:13 ►

The information still holds up.

00:39:15 ►

You’ll see the stuff that they were talking about 20 years ago

00:39:17 ►

that’s being talked about today.

00:39:19 ►

And, you know, I mean, really,

00:39:21 ►

he did a great job with those publications.

00:39:23 ►

And I can verify that they hold up, that of the few things that I have in the way of possessions,

00:39:30 ►

because I don’t like carting things around, is I’ve got the complete set of Mondo 2000.

00:39:35 ►

Ah, you dog. I’m missing the first two issues.

00:39:39 ►

Well, I bought the Xerox copies of the first two issues when they were selling them.

00:39:43 ►

Maybe I have to get a copy of your copy.

00:39:45 ►

Sure.

00:39:45 ►

It’s funny.

00:39:47 ►

The content holds up, but when you look through those early issues and you see the advertisements,

00:39:52 ►

they’re sort of quaintly dated.

00:39:53 ►

There’s like a TimeWave Zero version 2.0 is offered on a five-and-a-half-inch floppy disk set, right?

00:40:02 ►

Anyhow, we’re not here to talk about computers.

00:40:03 ►

Well, anyway, I want to get back to my obsession with energy drinks.

00:40:10 ►

It’s back in the early 1990s, and Dirk Pearson and Sandy Shaw had these products, and they

00:40:15 ►

kind of predicted that the 1990s were going to be the decade of functional beverages,

00:40:19 ►

and they offered products that had a number of different vitamins.

00:40:28 ►

They had three flavors of effect.

00:40:33 ►

There was the stimulant product that they had the amino acid phenylalanine in,

00:40:39 ►

and then they had a relaxant product, which I think was called Serene or something like this,

00:40:44 ►

which contained tryptophan in it, which is like a precursor to serotonin production.

00:40:48 ►

And then they had one for mental stimulation that had choline in it.

00:40:52 ►

I think they might have had another one that was a diet one that had ephedra in it. But it’s unfortunate their prediction of it being kind of like the decade of functional beverages

00:40:58 ►

never really reached its full expression.

00:41:01 ►

And what we’ve got today in the energy drink market is is kind of a less sophisticated a product that’s primarily you know jacked up with

00:41:11 ►

a high dose of caffeine it’s got a bunch of B vitamins in it which I think are

00:41:15 ►

probably pretty good for stress and and then most of them have a healthy dose

00:41:21 ►

dose of taurine which I I mentioned earlier that comes from bull testicles or bull femur.

00:41:27 ►

It doesn’t really.

00:41:29 ►

But it’s interesting that Pearson and Shaw, I don’t think that their early products had taurine in it,

00:41:35 ►

but they pointed out how taurine can actually be beneficial for people who take stimulants

00:41:41 ►

like cocaine or methamphetamine and possibly caffeine also

00:41:45 ►

because it prevents an excessive sensitivity to noradrenaline,

00:41:50 ►

which is something that’s released when you’re taking stimulants.

00:41:52 ►

So it’s kind of an interesting kind of like we’re going to give you caffeine

00:41:57 ►

and then we’re going to give you something that helps you with the caffeine,

00:41:59 ►

all in the same bottle.

00:42:02 ►

So Red Bull had their early approach to marketing,

00:42:06 ►

because some people weren’t so sure about the flavor of their product,

00:42:09 ►

was that they just gave away cases and cases and cases of Red Bull.

00:42:13 ►

They went to big parties, they went to raves,

00:42:15 ►

and they just handed it out for free.

00:42:19 ►

And so, you know, people got kind of interested in it.

00:42:23 ►

And it did provide a little bit of a buzz, because it had, you know, I got kind of interested in it, and it did provide a little bit of a buzz

00:42:25 ►

because it had, you know, I think it had about the,

00:42:27 ►

it had about three times as much caffeine as a normal soda, right?

00:42:30 ►

It was about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, I guess.

00:42:35 ►

But they started in Austria,

00:42:37 ►

and then they tried to market it in Germany,

00:42:39 ►

and because it contained taurine,

00:42:41 ►

and the Germans are like,

00:42:43 ►

what the hell is this stuff that’s in here?

00:42:45 ►

It took like about five years before they could get the sales approved in Germany.

00:42:50 ►

And that was its second big market, was the German market.

00:42:54 ►

But I think it’s interesting to point out that just because of what Red Bull contains,

00:42:59 ►

the caffeine that it contains and the taurine, and there’s something,

00:43:04 ►

I’m going to butch the pronunciation, but I’ve got a can here, so I’ll read it from it.

00:43:09 ►

I think it’s glucoronolactone.

00:43:16 ►

Glucoronolactone, right?

00:43:17 ►

I don’t know what that is or what it does.

00:43:19 ►

But you just got through drinking some, huh?

00:43:23 ►

Right.

00:43:23 ►

Oh, yeah.

00:43:24 ►

I’ve got to keep a can handy. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve got it. some, huh? Right. Oh, yeah. Got to keep a can handy.

00:43:25 ►

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve got it.

00:43:28 ►

It’s good for you.

00:43:29 ►

So, you know, one of the reasons that I started looking into energy drinks

00:43:33 ►

or became interested in them was because so many of them contain so many different ingredients

00:43:36 ►

and what the hell are they and what do they do and why are they in there?

00:43:40 ►

And sometimes I don’t have any answers or I just haven’t looked into it enough yet.

00:43:43 ►

But, you know, places will restrict the sale of Red Bull.

00:43:49 ►

There’s a particular grocery store in England, I forget the name,

00:43:52 ►

but they won’t sell cans of Red Bull to anyone who’s under 13 years old.

00:43:58 ►

And in Finland, if you’re under 18, you can only buy one can at a time.

00:44:04 ►

They’re not going to sell you two cans unless you show them an ID, right?

00:44:08 ►

So it’s kind of, to me, it’s kind of surprising that Red Bull…

00:44:12 ►

But it’s not like even a cup of coffee, right, as far as caffeine?

00:44:16 ►

It’s about the same as caffeine as a cup of coffee, right?

00:44:18 ►

It’s just a little bit less, maybe.

00:44:20 ►

But it’s like three times as much as a normal soda.

00:44:23 ►

And when you think about how much soda kids drink.

00:44:29 ►

You know, kids can go through a six-pack in an afternoon of soda without any problem.

00:44:33 ►

I was just thinking about in Finland, a kid under 18 can no doubt have a cup of coffee.

00:44:40 ►

Well, that’s true. Yeah, yeah.

00:44:41 ►

So this has some freak summaries in it.

00:44:44 ►

The restrictions and rules are absurd on this kind of thing, I think.

00:44:50 ►

It’s just…

00:44:51 ►

But to me, what’s surprising about Red Bull is that it caught on in America

00:44:55 ►

because America is all about more is better.

00:45:00 ►

I mean, this is the land of the big gulp and the bigger gulp

00:45:04 ►

and the mega-abo gulp and

00:45:06 ►

these giant buckets of soda that they sell you at 7-Eleven or assorted stores. And so here with

00:45:14 ►

Red Bull, there’s this tiny, tiny can that’s got like a few swallows in it and it costs as much as

00:45:19 ►

a six-pack of regular soda. But I think that what happened is people bought into the mystique about it. They bought

00:45:26 ►

into the marketing aspect of it. And there’s a whole bunch of young urban professionals that

00:45:31 ►

are ready to drop four bucks on a latte. And so Red Bull’s actually a cheaper alternative to a

00:45:37 ►

latte. And it’s also got vitamins in it. So, you know, that seems like it’s good for you.

00:45:42 ►

Yeah, win-win situation here.

00:45:42 ►

So, you know, that seems like it’s good for you.

00:45:44 ►

Yeah, win-win situation here.

00:45:51 ►

So Red Bull kind of like, you know, it ushered in the new era of these energy drinks. And then, you know, eventually now we’ve got a market that’s been flooded with knockoffs.

00:45:57 ►

I wanted to make a point about my own consumption of these products.

00:46:01 ►

At a certain point, I realized that I had like a $6 and 57 cents a day

00:46:08 ►

habit, you know, and I don’t have a lot of money. And that seemed like more money than I should be

00:46:13 ►

spending on soda. That was two Red Bulls and a rock star from, from my, the grocery store. That’s

00:46:19 ►

just down the street from me that I walked to. And so I decided, okay, I got to cut this out.

00:46:23 ►

I’m going to stop. I’m not going to drink these anymore. And so I stopped drinking them cold turkey. And, you know, I’m

00:46:28 ►

lucky I’m not one of those people that gets headaches when I don’t have caffeine, but I know

00:46:32 ►

a lot of people do. So I quit. And after a couple of weeks, I noticed I had just fallen into this

00:46:39 ►

horrible depression. I just seemed like I was depressed all the time. And there were some

00:46:43 ►

depressing things in my life at that point. So I can’t blame it completely on the fact that I wasn’t

00:46:48 ►

drinking my soda. But then I decided, you know, this just sucks. And so I started drinking the

00:46:56 ►

soda again and the depression immediately lifted. So I don’t know if it’s the B vitamins. I don’t

00:47:01 ►

know if I’m a caffeine junkie. And, you know, it was just one.

00:47:06 ►

You can’t take too much stock in one anecdotal report like that.

00:47:12 ►

But these days I try to sample any new product,

00:47:15 ►

any new energy drink that I come across,

00:47:17 ►

and you frequently find them in truck stops and places like that.

00:47:21 ►

I’m sure that I’ve tried over 50 of them now

00:47:24 ►

because at some point I started

00:47:26 ►

saving the cans. I’m sure I’ve got at least 50 cans out there in a bucket.

00:47:32 ►

Does any of them beat Red Bull or are they all just knockoffs of the original in there?

00:47:40 ►

By beat, it depends what you mean.

00:47:46 ►

I like the flavor of Red Bull.

00:47:47 ►

Some people don’t.

00:47:54 ►

Some of the new products have flavors that are just disgustingly vile, right? They sort of taste like concentrated geriatric sweat that you lick from the wrinkled skin of an old man’s butt crack.

00:48:03 ►

Well, since I’ve never done that, I don’t quite have that taste in mind,

00:48:07 ►

but I don’t want to get it in my computer.

00:48:10 ►

They’re not good.

00:48:11 ►

Trust me, they’re not good.

00:48:13 ►

They taste like vitamins, right?

00:48:16 ►

They basically just taste like if you crushed up a bunch of vitamins

00:48:18 ►

and threw them in water, they just taste bad.

00:48:22 ►

What about a stimulant effect or a buzz?

00:48:24 ►

Do any of them give a better buzz than Red Bull?

00:48:28 ►

Well, so it’s kind of hard.

00:48:34 ►

I haven’t done any kind of across-the-board comparison.

00:48:40 ►

A lot of the products contain different kind of signature ingredients, right? So it’s not

00:48:47 ►

just caffeine, but some of them will contain like horny goat weed. Some of them will contain

00:48:52 ►

milk thistle extract. Some of them contain ginseng. You know, there’s a number of different

00:48:56 ►

products. I wanted to just read a bit of a label here from a product that is called Liquid Speed.

00:49:03 ►

a bit of a label here from a product that is called Liquid Speed.

00:49:07 ►

This is a 9.5 fluid ounce bottle.

00:49:13 ►

And, you know, the taglines on it,

00:49:17 ►

explosive energy, fat burner, mental focus, awesome taste.

00:49:19 ►

Okay, and it’s the tropical ice flavor.

00:49:23 ►

So this is just one of the ones that I tried,

00:49:32 ►

and I pulled it off the shelf, and I drank one sip of it, and it was just so horrible that I couldn’t drink anymore.

00:49:36 ►

And what I found is kind of an interesting thing.

00:49:44 ►

Frequently, the ones that I think taste really, really bad and I can’t stand them, My wife will drink those and she thinks they taste good.

00:49:49 ►

So, and that seems to be kind of a consistent phenomenon,

00:49:51 ►

which is weird to me,

00:49:54 ►

but it shows how much people’s individual taste varies because, you know, a lot of these products, I think,

00:49:57 ►

how could this have possibly passed the R&D department, right?

00:50:00 ►

How could it be on the shelf?

00:50:02 ►

No one’s ever going to want to drink more than one.

00:50:04 ►

So, liquid speed here, it’s under recommended use, it says, as an adult dietary supplement,

00:50:11 ►

initially drink one half bottle of liquid speed to determine tolerance. Do not exceed more than

00:50:18 ►

one bottle in a four-hour period or more than two bottles daily. For best results, use as a part of a reduced fat diet and exercise program.

00:50:28 ►

Do not consume on an empty stomach.

00:50:30 ►

All right, so now I want to, and it’s got a bunch of different vitamins in it, and then

00:50:35 ►

its proprietary blend contains caffeine and glucuronolactone, NAC, taurine, L-tyrosine, L-phenylalanine,

00:50:50 ►

something called googolosterone E and Z, no idea what that is,

00:50:55 ►

green tea, evodamine, and bladder rack.

00:50:59 ►

Some of those are maybe your appetite suppressants.

00:51:02 ►

But what I want to read on this is the warning.

00:51:07 ►

Not all energy drinks have warnings,

00:51:08 ►

although increasingly people are marketing them

00:51:12 ►

with some type of a little warning on it.

00:51:14 ►

So this says,

00:51:15 ►

Warning, not intended for persons under 18 years of age.

00:51:19 ►

Do not use if pregnant or nursing.

00:51:21 ►

Consult a physician or a licensed,

00:51:24 ►

qualified healthcare professional

00:51:25 ►

before using this product if you have been treated for or diagnosed with

00:51:30 ►

or have a family history of any medical condition,

00:51:33 ►

including but not limited to high blood pressure, recurrent headache,

00:51:38 ►

cardiac arrhythmia, heart, liver, kidney, or psychiatric disease,

00:51:43 ►

stroke, angina, diabetes, asthma, nervousness, anxiety, kidney, or psychiatric disease, stroke, angina, diabetes, asthma,

00:51:45 ►

nervousness, anxiety, depression, or other psychiatric condition, glaucoma,

00:51:50 ►

difficulty urinating, prostate enlargement, seizure disorder, peptic ulcers,

00:51:55 ►

or if you’re using any prescription or over-the-counter drugs,

00:51:58 ►

or if you’re sensitive to the effects of caffeine,

00:52:00 ►

do not use if you’re using a monoamine oxidase inhibitor,

00:52:04 ►

selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor

00:52:06 ►

or any other dietary supplement

00:52:07 ►

and or over-the-counter drug

00:52:09 ►

containing ephedrine, caffeine,

00:52:11 ►

pseudoephedrine or phenylpropylalanine.

00:52:14 ►

Ingredients found in

00:52:15 ►

certain decongestant, allergy, asthma,

00:52:18 ►

cold and cough and weight control products

00:52:19 ►

or any other ephedrine

00:52:21 ►

group alkaloid or if

00:52:23 ►

ingredients that have

00:52:24 ►

or other ingredients that have a known stimulant effect.

00:52:30 ►

Do not exceed recommended serving.

00:52:32 ►

Individuals who exceed the recommended serving or consume caffeine with this product

00:52:37 ►

may experience serious adverse health effects.

00:52:41 ►

Stop use and call a physician or licensed qualified healthcare professional immediately

00:52:46 ►

if you experience rapid heartbeat, nausea,

00:52:48 ►

insomnia, diarrhea,

00:52:50 ►

severe headache, shortness of breath,

00:52:52 ►

or other similar symptoms.

00:52:54 ►

Keep out of reach of children.

00:52:56 ►

Have you made this up?

00:52:58 ►

Are you making this up?

00:53:00 ►

Is this a real warning on a can?

00:53:02 ►

It’s all on the side

00:53:04 ►

of this container for this beverage, right?

00:53:06 ►

So, I mean, it’s hilarious.

00:53:11 ►

And so I didn’t drink any more of it.

00:53:15 ►

I didn’t like the way it tasted.

00:53:16 ►

But my wife drank kind of the remaining amount of what would have been half a dose.

00:53:20 ►

And she felt a little bit weird after consuming it.

00:53:24 ►

Like she just felt a little off and kind of. So the next day she drank the other half of the dose. And she felt a little bit weird after consuming it. Like she just felt a little

00:53:25 ►

off and kind of… So the next day she drank the other half of the dose and she just felt

00:53:31 ►

kind of sick, you know. And so, I mean, I can’t necessarily tie that to this beverage,

00:53:36 ►

but I thought it’s hilarious. You can’t even drink half a bottle of this thing without

00:53:41 ►

getting, you know, feeling ill.

00:53:43 ►

And you know what’s really amazing, and I’d kind of like to get into a quick discussion

00:53:48 ►

of this because we’re kind of running out of time, but that huge warning, that’s horrible.

00:53:54 ►

That doesn’t sound like anything you should put in your body, but that’s legal to sell

00:53:58 ►

in a store, and then medical marijuana, the federal government is still against, with

00:54:04 ►

no warnings on the label.

00:54:06 ►

Now, isn’t there, you told me about you can’t call these energy drinks something illegal or how is that?

00:54:16 ►

Oh, right, right.

00:54:18 ►

So that’s a good story.

00:54:22 ►

a good story.

00:54:24 ►

A recent product,

00:54:26 ►

recently there’s this product that’s available on the market

00:54:28 ►

called cocaine, right?

00:54:31 ►

I’ve heard of it.

00:54:33 ►

Right.

00:54:34 ►

No, no, not that.

00:54:35 ►

It’s an energy drink

00:54:36 ►

that they called cocaine.

00:54:38 ►

And, you know,

00:54:39 ►

I think it’s kind of

00:54:40 ►

a little bit of marketing genius

00:54:41 ►

as far as the noise,

00:54:44 ►

the outrage that’s generated

00:54:45 ►

from marketing a product that’s called cocaine.

00:54:49 ►

But a few years back, I think it was, I don’t know, maybe in the year 2000, the FDA published

00:54:58 ►

this notice that any dietary supplement that’s marketed or distributed or manufactured as a legal alternative to an illicit street drug would be considered illegal.

00:55:10 ►

Okay, so think about this for a minute.

00:55:12 ►

Let’s say that I come home at the end of the day and I want to unwind

00:55:16 ►

and I used to pop a Quaalude, right, at the end of the day.

00:55:20 ►

But then the DEA makes Quaaludes illegal.

00:55:22 ►

Okay, so now some company is producing a dietary supplement

00:55:26 ►

that contains completely legal ingredients,

00:55:28 ►

which claims to relax me in the same manner that Quaaludes used to.

00:55:32 ►

And I want to be relaxed, and I don’t want to break any laws.

00:55:35 ►

So I might like to purchase this new product, but I’m not able to,

00:55:39 ►

because the FDA has said that if you make a comparison to an illegal product,

00:55:44 ►

for that reason alone, the product is now illegal.

00:55:49 ►

So if there’s a pill, for example, that contains Kava Kava, right,

00:55:53 ►

and somebody calls it Quasi-Ludes or Interlude or makes up some name that references Ludes,

00:56:01 ►

that product would be illegal.

00:56:03 ►

But the exact same pill sold under the name Kava Bliss, right, or something like that,

00:56:09 ►

is not illegal.

00:56:11 ►

So what the FDA is trying to ban is the idea of the illegal drugs.

00:56:17 ►

It has nothing to do with any actual real-world health concerns about the product or what’s

00:56:22 ►

in it.

00:56:22 ►

The government just doesn’t want people thinking that they can get high.

00:56:25 ►

You know, John, this is just totally amazing.

00:56:28 ►

This is sort of like the marketing analog to the analog drug law that says any drug

00:56:35 ►

that’s similar to it.

00:56:37 ►

This is the marketing end of the thing.

00:56:39 ►

You can market this product as long as you don’t call it something or make a claim that

00:56:44 ►

it could get you high.

00:56:46 ►

It’s just beyond belief.

00:56:48 ►

And it’s not even – well, okay, so anyhow, so how this relates to the energy drink phenomenon is that earlier this year in April,

00:56:59 ►

the FDA issued a warning letter to the company Redux Beverages,

00:57:08 ►

who produced the cocaine soda, right?

00:57:11 ►

And they said that they had to stop selling the energy drink.

00:57:13 ►

They didn’t like some health claims that were made related to one of the product’s ingredients.

00:57:16 ►

And they didn’t like the fact that the beverage was marketed

00:57:19 ►

as a legal alternative to, you know, the illicit drug cocaine, right?

00:57:23 ►

So now the beverage has been removed from the market.

00:57:26 ►

They pulled it off.

00:57:27 ►

If you go to their website, it says banned by the man or something like this.

00:57:32 ►

Prior to that, the product received a lot of media coverage.

00:57:37 ►

There are all these statements from angry parents.

00:57:40 ►

The guy who invented the drink, his name is James Kirby.

00:57:46 ►

He was quoted in an article that I read.

00:57:51 ►

He said something about how the beverage does not promote or glamorize drugs.

00:58:00 ►

So I thought that was a totally weak response and that he should have replied to the press something along the lines of,

00:58:02 ►

what, are you kidding me?

00:58:07 ►

The archetypal American soda derives its name from the cocaine that it actually contained at one time, and no one’s giving Coca-Cola a hard time.

00:58:10 ►

And look, if you roll up a $20 bill the long way, you can make a straw to sip or drink

00:58:14 ►

with.

00:58:17 ►

He just amped it up and pointed out the absurdity of what they’re doing.

00:58:22 ►

So kind of a funny, somewhat related twist.

00:58:27 ►

The current Bolivian government has demanded that Coca-Cola drop the name Coca from their beverage

00:58:33 ►

because the Coca plant has sort of long been held as a sacred and, you know,

00:58:38 ►

it’s clearly an economic power in Bolivia where it’s grown.

00:58:43 ►

And their current leftist president is Evo Morales.

00:58:47 ►

He came into power on

00:58:48 ►

the promise of legalizing coca

00:58:50 ►

growing in the country. So they’re pissed

00:58:52 ►

off that there’s this corporate soda giant

00:58:55 ►

which can exploit the good name of coca

00:58:57 ►

in a product that doesn’t actually

00:58:58 ►

contain any active coca alkaloids.

00:59:01 ►

But Coca-Cola is not

00:59:02 ►

going to change their name. I know, but I think that’s

00:59:04 ►

terrific because of the false advertising.

00:59:06 ►

You know, I think Wikipedia is really on to something here.

00:59:10 ►

What I thought of with the cocaine, you know, the situation with the cocaine beverage getting banned

00:59:16 ►

is that maybe President Morales should enlist the help of the FDA to get Coca-Cola to change their name.

00:59:25 ►

Right?

00:59:26 ►

It says Coca.

00:59:28 ►

I think we need to get more humor into the discussion, and that would be really a great

00:59:33 ►

way to do it.

00:59:36 ►

So this beverage, this cocaine beverage, there’s three versions of the drink, right?

00:59:39 ►

There’s cocaine, there’s cut cocaine, and there’s free cocaine, which was the last one’s a diet version.

00:59:47 ►

And I have to say that the original drink wins my award

00:59:51 ►

for the worst tasting energy drink ever.

00:59:54 ►

Not only does it taste bad, but they put some kind of a chemical in it

00:59:58 ►

which when you drink it, it burns the back of your throat.

01:00:01 ►

It’s like battery acid on the back of your throat.

01:00:04 ►

So no one was drinking the shit for the flavor,

01:00:08 ►

and no one’s really drinking it for the effects

01:00:10 ►

because it’s just caffeine, right?

01:00:11 ►

The only reason they’re drinking it

01:00:13 ►

is to piss off their parents or to look cool or whatever.

01:00:16 ►

And even if that’s the case,

01:00:18 ►

maybe they’re going to drink one can

01:00:19 ►

and switch to wearing the company’s T-shirts or something.

01:00:24 ►

and switched to wearing the company’s T-shirts or something.

01:00:33 ►

So the response, the people who make cocaine, the beverage, or who were making it,

01:00:36 ►

they came out with a second product called Cut Cocaine,

01:00:42 ►

which they advertised something along the lines of having all the flavor but none of the burn.

01:00:45 ►

So they themselves know.

01:00:46 ►

They couldn’t even sell their own product.

01:00:48 ►

They had to come out with a different version of it.

01:00:51 ►

At least we have it here on record that John Hanna does not like cocaine.

01:00:57 ►

Listen, I tell you what this kind of leads me to thinking of,

01:01:01 ►

and it’s what I really thought we’d be talking about most,

01:01:03 ►

and the time’s almost out, but the fact that the government’s trying to control even people’s

01:01:09 ►

thoughts of what these substances can do brings me back full circle to your MindStates conferences,

01:01:18 ►

which are exactly the opposite about helping people expand the things that they think about.

01:01:24 ►

the opposite about helping people expand the things that they think about.

01:01:30 ►

So I’ve been to, I didn’t get to your first MindStates conference here in the States,

01:01:31 ►

but Mary C. did.

01:01:35 ►

So our family has been to all of your U.S. conferences, and then you also had them out of the country, with one coming up.

01:01:39 ►

So just tell us a little bit about these conferences,

01:01:42 ►

because as I’ve mentioned in several podcasts, that this is how I’ve met everybody in the tribe, is bit about these conferences, because as I’ve mentioned in several podcasts,

01:01:45 ►

this is how I’ve met everybody in the tribe is coming to these conferences.

01:01:48 ►

And that’s, to me, even though the speakers are a big draw, it’s the audience that’s the biggest draw for me.

01:01:54 ►

So let me step out of the way and see what you think about your own conferences here.

01:01:58 ►

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

01:01:59 ►

Well, I mean, you know, I feel totally blessed as far as doing this sort of work,

01:02:06 ►

not particularly from a financial viewpoint in that I’m not getting rich from it,

01:02:10 ►

but I’m lucky because, you know, my criterion for deciding who to book as presenters at these conferences,

01:02:18 ►

which, you know, the conferences deal with kind of all means and manners of altered states of consciousness.

01:02:24 ►

with kind of all means and manners of altered states of consciousness.

01:02:30 ►

It’s not particularly solely focused on taking drugs to alter your consciousness,

01:02:31 ►

but that’s a big part of it.

01:02:33 ►

But there’s other people too.

01:02:38 ►

I had Alan Snyder who does transcranial magnetic stimulation, was one of the speakers.

01:02:39 ►

And I’ve had V.S. Ramachandran who’s a neuroscience pioneer

01:02:44 ►

in the area of synesthesia and phantom limb pain

01:02:48 ►

and the neurological correlates for aesthetics,

01:02:53 ►

like Michael Shermer, who’s the editor of Skeptic magazine.

01:02:57 ►

And so there’s been a number of different people.

01:02:59 ►

Oh, Jaron Lanier is another good example, who’s kind of considered the father of virtual reality.

01:03:04 ►

years, another good example, who’s kind of considered the father of virtual reality.

01:03:13 ►

And I had Deirdre Barrett, who’s from Harvard and does work with people’s dreams.

01:03:18 ►

So there’s a number of areas of altered states of consciousness that the conferences touch on.

01:03:21 ►

But I think what’s, to me, what works so perfectly as such a perfect fit

01:03:28 ►

is that I book speakers because I’m interested in them.

01:03:31 ►

That’s what makes me book them,

01:03:33 ►

and I’m lucky because a lot of other people seem to be interested

01:03:38 ►

in the same sort of thing that I’m interested in.

01:03:40 ►

That’s very convenient.

01:03:41 ►

It makes it very easy to do.

01:03:46 ►

We hold them about once a year,

01:03:50 ►

and they kind of rotate back and forth between somewhere in the Bay Area or some foreign location.

01:03:58 ►

I did one in Jamaica and then one in Oaxaca, Mexico.

01:04:03 ►

This year, we’re going to Costa Rica.

01:04:06 ►

And people who are interested in the conference,

01:04:08 ►

it’s happening June 13th through June 17th of 2007 in Costa Rica.

01:04:17 ►

And more information about it can be found online at mindstates.org.

01:04:22 ►

And some of the speakers this year include

01:04:26 ►

Jonathan Ott and

01:04:27 ►

Mark Pesci and Sasha Nanshulgan

01:04:30 ►

Earth and Fire

01:04:32 ►

Erewid and

01:04:33 ►

Eric Davis and

01:04:35 ►

one of the folks I’m really excited to have this year

01:04:38 ►

is the apocalyptic

01:04:40 ►

artist Joe Coleman

01:04:41 ►

who’s just a total

01:04:44 ►

trip and people are going to be blown away by him as a presenter and his life and his work.

01:04:50 ►

I definitely recommend folks do a Google search or something on Joe Coleman

01:04:55 ►

and check out the kind of thing that he’s doing because it’s incredible.

01:04:58 ►

I first saw his work in real life at the H.R. Giger Museum in Switzerland last year, and it’s just, he’s incredible.

01:05:09 ►

His stuff’s great.

01:05:10 ►

But you mentioned that the speakers are great, but it’s kind of the reason it goes for the community.

01:05:17 ►

And I think that this kind of leads to a complaint and a comment.

01:05:25 ►

And the complaint that I hear frequently is that the conferences are expensive.

01:05:29 ►

And this is particularly true with the foreign events,

01:05:33 ►

although, like I said, it’s not like I’m getting rich

01:05:36 ►

and sometimes they lose money or just break even.

01:05:39 ►

But what I encourage people to do is to ask around.

01:05:43 ►

Ask anyone who’s attended one of the events whether or not they feel like they got their money’s worth.

01:05:49 ►

Well, let me just jump in here, John, and say that, as I said, between my wife and I, we’ve been to all of them in this country,

01:05:55 ►

and no question about what we’ve gotten our money’s worth.

01:05:59 ►

And while I haven’t been to one of the foreign mind-safes conferences,

01:06:03 ►

I’ve, as you know, been to the Planque and several of the other foreign conferences,

01:06:08 ►

and there’s something magical about those.

01:06:11 ►

I know they’re expensive, and that’s why I can’t go all the time myself either,

01:06:16 ►

but I do want to point out to anybody that’s just joining us for the first time here

01:06:20 ►

and hasn’t been in the psychedelic salon with us regularly

01:06:23 ►

that many of the

01:06:25 ►

lectures that we’ve played here are from the Mind States conferences that you’ve so generously

01:06:30 ►

allowed us to podcast and get out, and so thousands of others get to hear these talks

01:06:36 ►

eventually.

01:06:36 ►

And so I think that’s really just another instance of how you do this to help the community,

01:06:43 ►

and this isn’t a big money making

01:06:45 ►

deal for you by any stretch of the imagination.

01:06:49 ►

Yeah, and I think the key word in all of it is this idea of community.

01:06:53 ►

I mean, the way that I like to frame it is like if you would think of whoever the person

01:06:59 ►

is who’s currently your best friend in the world, right?

01:07:02 ►

The person that you think of as like this is the guy or the woman who’s currently your best friend in the world, right? The person that you think of as like, this is the guy or the woman who’s got my back in any situation,

01:07:08 ►

who I love spending time with, and, you know, that person.

01:07:12 ►

And then knowing how great that person is,

01:07:14 ►

to think if you had never met him or her, right,

01:07:17 ►

but I told you that I was going to introduce you to them, right?

01:07:21 ►

And at the same time, you’d be able to hear talks

01:07:23 ►

from a variety of, you know,

01:07:25 ►

interesting individuals and relax for a week’s vacation where, you know, everyone at a resort

01:07:30 ►

kind of shared your most passionate interests, you know. Is it worth two grand, you know, if I

01:07:35 ►

introduce you to your new best friend? I mean, I have met the people who are my current best friends

01:07:42 ►

at these events, and the folks that come to them, they’re the most intelligent, creative,

01:07:49 ►

heart-oriented, fun people that I’ve ever met.

01:07:52 ►

It’s this consistency.

01:07:54 ►

The people who are interested in consciousness studies

01:07:57 ►

and how the mind works are the most vital people that you’re going to come across.

01:08:04 ►

And I like to consider that the MindStates conferences

01:08:07 ►

attract what I call the entheocognoscenti, right,

01:08:11 ►

which are kind of the self-made, cutting-edge folks

01:08:14 ►

that are on the cutting edge of their field.

01:08:17 ►

And like you said, the attendees are as interesting as the presenters.

01:08:20 ►

There’s maybe a raw food enthusiast or computer programmers

01:08:24 ►

or visionary artists, medical doctors working with psychedelics, you can reconnect with all these people.

01:08:47 ►

And it’s just like going on vacation with a bunch of your friends.

01:08:51 ►

So yeah, definitely community is the reason that keeps me.

01:08:58 ►

Hell, like you said at the start of our conversation, we met at a conference in Hawaii.

01:09:01 ►

It wasn’t one of my conferences, but it was an incredible conference. And I met a number of good friends there.

01:09:04 ►

That’s where I first met Robert Venosa.

01:09:06 ►

Well, you know, that’s where I met Robert Venosa, and that’s where I met Bruce Dahmer, who’s one of my closest friends now.

01:09:13 ►

Right, right.

01:09:14 ►

Yeah, that’s where I met Bruce.

01:09:15 ►

And Mark Pesci.

01:09:16 ►

That’s where I met Mark Pesci.

01:09:17 ►

That’s where I met him, too.

01:09:18 ►

And, in fact, I would say of all the close friends I have who I’m in touch with on a regular basis throughout the year,

01:09:26 ►

almost all of them have come from conferences, including my wife.

01:09:33 ►

Right.

01:09:33 ►

Actually, that’s something that a number of people have told me that they met their life partner at my conference

01:09:39 ►

and then later got married or they’ve been together since then.

01:09:44 ►

So that’s always nice to hear as well.

01:09:45 ►

Daniel Sievert met his wife at the conference too.

01:09:48 ►

He and I both met our wives at Palenque.

01:09:50 ►

So if you’re single and looking around, there’s another reason to go to these conferences.

01:09:55 ►

That’s true.

01:09:56 ►

I hate to bring this to an end, and we’ll have to do this again.

01:10:01 ►

In fact, I don’t know if we’ll, we won’t get a chance before Burning Man,

01:10:05 ►

but maybe on the playa we’ll talk about the last conference and do a little interview there.

01:10:09 ►

Yeah, sounds good, man.

01:10:11 ►

But I really appreciate your time here, John.

01:10:15 ►

And I was going to say, on behalf of the whole community and tribe,

01:10:17 ►

I want to thank you for all you’ve been doing throughout the years.

01:10:20 ►

And, you know, just keep on trucking and we’ll do what we can to support you because it’s really important right back at you man i think i think what you’re doing with these podcasts

01:10:28 ►

is just great and and then also you know all the work on the playa which i know is nuts i mean

01:10:33 ►

you’re crazy you’re crazy to produce talks on the playa oh but it’s fabulous that you’re doing it

01:10:38 ►

and and and you’re crazy to have been a presenter to every one of them too

01:10:42 ►

so we will all go together.

01:10:46 ►

Well, listen, my friend, thank you so much for this.

01:10:48 ►

And you be well, and we’ll be in close touch, okay?

01:10:52 ►

Okay.

01:10:53 ►

Take care.

01:10:57 ►

I hope you enjoyed hearing my conversation with John

01:11:00 ►

and that you can begin to appreciate how much he has done for the psychedelic community.

01:11:05 ►

When you think about it, how many people do you know who care so much about this work

01:11:09 ►

that they’ll do mass spectrum chromatography on some material just to check it out for the rest

01:11:14 ►

of us and to do it all on their own? No grants, no ulterior motive other than wanting to help

01:11:20 ►

keep our tribe safe? And that’s just the tip of the John Hanna iceberg.

01:11:26 ►

He’s been a great friend to all of us,

01:11:29 ►

and whether or not you’ve had a chance to meet him yet,

01:11:30 ►

you’ve benefited from his work.

01:11:31 ►

I can promise you that.

01:11:35 ►

When I get the program notes posted for this podcast,

01:11:38 ►

I’ll include links to all of the websites we talked about,

01:11:41 ►

as well as links to those Halpern Gate articles that he mentioned.

01:11:44 ►

Should you want to contact John directly about the upcoming Mind States conference in Costa Rica,

01:11:47 ►

or any other thing for that matter,

01:11:49 ►

just send him an email to mindstates at prodigy.net.

01:11:54 ►

And it’ll find its way to him.

01:11:57 ►

And if you’re wondering whether this tribe or psychedelic community we’ve been talking about,

01:12:02 ►

or whatever you want to call it, really exists,

01:12:05 ►

well, one hint I have is the fact that this podcast is reaching far and wide.

01:12:11 ►

To be specific, this past April, for example,

01:12:14 ►

podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon were downloaded by fellow salonners in 97 countries.

01:12:20 ►

I’m going to post a list of these countries on the psychedelicsalon.org blog

01:12:25 ►

and if any of you out there in cyberdelic space are from a country that isn’t on that list

01:12:30 ►

well, I think we’d all appreciate it if you’d leave a comment

01:12:34 ►

and let us know what part of this beautiful little planet you’re joining us from

01:12:38 ►

it really is an interesting list by the way

01:12:41 ►

what I did was to just gather a list of countries

01:12:45 ►

from which one or more podcasts of the Psychedelic Salon had been downloaded,

01:12:49 ►

and I just listed them alphabetically.

01:12:52 ►

So the next time you think you’re all alone

01:12:54 ►

in the pursuit of more information about expansion of our normal state of awareness

01:12:59 ►

and the conscious evolution of our species,

01:13:02 ►

well, maybe you can take heart by reading out loud the names of all the places where you can find like-minded spirits. Thank you. Asia, virtually all of the former Soviet Union, and even far away places, at least to me,

01:13:26 ►

like Iceland, Bangladesh, and of course my beloved Ireland, just to name a few.

01:13:32 ►

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that there is a worldwide interest in the general

01:13:37 ►

area of psychedelic medicines, and this interest is not a frivolous one, but rather it’s become

01:13:42 ►

a very mature human inquiry into some tools that hold great potential for our species.

01:13:49 ►

To me, it’s a sure sign of the awakening of the noosphere.

01:13:52 ►

And believe me, you are not only not alone, you’re in the company, the cyberdelic company, of literally millions of like-minded humans the world over.

01:14:02 ►

So, please don’t get too upset when the system doesn’t change fast enough for your liking.

01:14:08 ►

Our mission isn’t to change the system.

01:14:10 ►

It’s far more important than that.

01:14:12 ►

What we have to do to survive as a species, at least from my perspective,

01:14:16 ►

is to change our culture.

01:14:18 ►

And by that I’m not suggesting we evolve some form of a global culture.

01:14:23 ►

What I’m trying to say is that perhaps we need to infuse whatever culture we now find ourselves in

01:14:29 ►

with more of the energy we experience while in a psychedelic state.

01:14:33 ►

And as you most likely know, that feeling is one I call Gaian, but it can also be called green.

01:14:41 ►

Well, I’ve really gone on today more than I intended, especially since this program is so long already.

01:14:47 ►

So I guess it’s now confirmed that I’ve got my energy back.

01:14:51 ►

And before I forget, I want to give a plug to the Gizmo Project.

01:14:55 ►

That’s gizmoproject.com.

01:14:57 ►

They’re the ones whose free service I used to record my conversation with John Hanna today.

01:15:03 ►

In my humble opinion, they’ve got some really great features

01:15:05 ►

that you might find worth checking out.

01:15:07 ►

And at least on my machine, the overall quality of the recording

01:15:11 ►

seems a little bit better than what I’ve heard on Skype.

01:15:14 ►

But hey, they’re both great services,

01:15:15 ►

and they sure beat the rates charged by the phone companies.

01:15:19 ►

Before I go, I want to mention that this and all of the podcasts

01:15:22 ►

from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the

01:15:24 ►

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 2.5 License. Thank you. CyberdelicSalon.org. And if you have any questions, comments, complaints, or suggestions about these podcasts,

01:15:46 ►

you can send them to Lorenzo at MatrixMasters.com.

01:15:50 ►

Thanks again to Chetil Hayuk for the use of your music here in the salon.

01:15:55 ►

And thanks again for being here.

01:15:57 ►

It was nice to be with you again.

01:15:59 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:16:04 ►

Be well, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

095 - Energy Drinks . . . and other stuff

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Program Notes

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