Program Notes
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Guest speaker: Daniel McQueen
Daniel McQueen
Date this lecture was recorded: July 15, 2019.
Today’s podcast features a conversation from our live salon last week with Daniel McQueen. Several weeks ago we heard from Dr. Andrew Gallimore, who co-authored a paper with Dr. Rick Strassman regarding ways in which to extend an NN-DMT experience through an IV drip. Today we hear from Daniel McQueen, who is the founder of Medicinal Mindfulness and is a leader of the extended DMT research project that is based on the paper by Gallimore and Strassman. During our conversation, Daniel described the preparation and training that is now underway as a small group of psychonaughts prepare for a systematic exploration of the state of mind we experience while under the influence of DMT.
DMTx Medical Mindfulness
Psychotherapy & Psychedelic Consultation
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:27 ►
is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon. And today’s podcast features a conversation from our live salon last week with Daniel McQueen. Now several weeks ago in podcast
00:00:33 ►
611 we heard from Dr. Andrew Gallimore who co-authored a paper with Dr. Rick Strassman
00:00:39 ►
regarding ways in which to extend an NMDMT experience through an IV drip.
00:00:45 ►
Now, today we’re going to hear from Daniel McQueen,
00:00:48 ►
who is the founder of Medicinal Mindfulness
00:00:51 ►
and is a leader of the Extended DMT Research Project
00:00:55 ►
that is based on the paper by Gallimore and Strassman.
00:00:58 ►
Now, during our conversation, Daniel described the preparation and training
00:01:03 ►
that is now underway as a small group of psychonauts prepare for a systematic exploration
00:01:08 ►
of the state of mind that we experience while under the influence of DMT.
00:01:13 ►
And to close this little circle of discussions about better controlling the DMT experience,
00:01:19 ►
on next Monday evening, July 29th,
00:01:22 ►
our guest in the live salon will be Dr. Rick Strassman himself,
00:01:26 ►
whose work is detailed in his book, DMT the Spirit Molecule, and he has a new book out.
00:01:32 ►
So if all goes well, I also hope to have Andrew Gallimore and Daniel McQueen join us for that salon as well.
00:01:39 ►
Now tonight, as you know, my guest in the salon will be author and longtime friend of the salon, Eric
00:01:45 ►
Davis. Hopefully, you’ll be able to join us. But now, why don’t you join me and listen
00:01:51 ►
in on this intriguing conversation that I had with Daniel McQueen, who is proposing
00:01:56 ►
some psychedelic experiments that are, well, they’re most certainly on the leading edge
00:02:01 ►
of consciousness research.
00:02:02 ►
on the leading edge of consciousness research.
00:02:11 ►
Tonight we have two guests, one who is a guest here every night for over a year, and that’s Kevin, who’s calling in from the road like he does.
00:02:14 ►
And Kevin is also the one that brought us Andrew and tonight Daniel McQueen to talk
00:02:21 ►
about some of the work that’s being proposed and considered and investigated
00:02:27 ►
about ways to extend both the intensity and length of a DMT experience, if I understand it right. So
00:02:36 ►
rather than me talk anymore, Kevin and Daniel, let me turn it over to the two of you and you guys can kind of guide this conversation for us. So Daniel,
00:02:46 ►
DMTX as I have a patch here that Kevin,
00:02:53 ►
Kevin sent me and he sent one to Bruce Dahmer,
00:02:56 ►
who’s been wearing it on his flight suit when he gives talks all around the
00:03:01 ►
country now. So the,
00:03:03 ►
the message is getting out without people really knowing too much about it.
00:03:07 ►
So why don’t you kind of take it from there
00:03:09 ►
and tell us how you launched into where you’re going.
00:03:14 ►
Yeah, I sure will.
00:03:15 ►
I would say it was just following a thread guided by an intuition and an inspiration.
00:03:26 ►
following a thread guided by an intuition and an inspiration. I had become friends with Rick Strassman after we invited him to speak at a event that we host called Psychedelic Shine.
00:03:34 ►
And that’s in Boulder? That’s in Boulder, Colorado. It’s a speaker series and a psychedelic
00:03:39 ►
community gathering. And so Rick was one of our first big name speakers that we had. And he had sent me
00:03:47 ►
the article that he co-authored with Andrew Gallimore on the extended state DMT proposal.
00:03:56 ►
And I thought about it and was curious about it, but then didn’t really think much of it
00:04:02 ►
for a little while. And then we invited Dennis McKenna to come speak at
00:04:08 ►
a Psychedelic Shine event. And I knew I was going to be speaking that day as well. So I wanted to
00:04:13 ►
think about and speak to the growth edges of the psychedelic community. There’s a lot of emphasis
00:04:21 ►
on psychedelics being used to treat trauma and other mental health
00:04:25 ►
concerns and i think that’s really important my whole program is based off of a lot of these
00:04:31 ►
models but for me as a someone who identify as a community member of the psychedelic
00:04:37 ►
society i guess i wanted to speak to and talk about like the, the extreme growth edges of our community,
00:04:47 ►
what we’re capable of if we’re no longer just trying to justify using these
00:04:52 ►
medicines for, you know, therapeutic purposes. And like, what’s this,
00:04:57 ►
like, what’s the highest idea that I could think about, you know?
00:05:02 ►
Let me interrupt for a minute. How did you get from wherever you started to all of a sudden being inspired
00:05:10 ►
to give back to the community somehow?
00:05:12 ►
What is it that’s really prompted this?
00:05:15 ►
Okay.
00:05:15 ►
Yeah, so let’s take a step back.
00:05:18 ►
So I am a psychedelic therapist by profession,
00:05:21 ►
and I went to get my master’s in Naropa at Naropa University in transpersonal
00:05:28 ►
psychology and I had every intention of trying to figure out how to be a psychedelic therapist
00:05:33 ►
and started this was 2008-2009 when the MAPS conferences just started psychedelic sciences
00:05:42 ►
conferences and was really inspired by that work and MDMA
00:05:46 ►
assisted psychotherapy. But none of that is legal, of course, yet, right? And so how do you
00:05:54 ►
have a profession? How do you have a public identity? How do you raise young children,
00:06:00 ►
right, without these added stressors of being an underground guide and then in 2014
00:06:07 ►
cannabis became legal recreationally in Colorado it was one of the first two states
00:06:13 ►
to be legalized recreationally and a friend of mine suggested I try working with cannabis as
00:06:20 ►
a psychedelic throughout for therapeutic purposes. And so long story short,
00:06:25 ►
I’ve developed this whole program and teach people how to use cannabis as a
00:06:30 ►
psychedelic. And I, and that’s my private practice.
00:06:32 ►
I don’t work with anything other than cannabis. And,
00:06:37 ►
and I do this pretty regularly, you know,
00:06:39 ►
you have clients who come see me for a few day retreat,
00:06:44 ►
I do a couple of psychedelic cannabis or psychedelic cannabis and breathwork sessions with them.
00:06:49 ►
And it turns out to be a really powerful modality for healing trauma and can be used as other psychedelics can be.
00:06:58 ►
And so working with psychedelics in a sense is my day job.
00:07:05 ►
working with psychedelics in a sense is my day job. And, um, and as inspiring as working with cannabis was, um, I want, again, I wanted to explore more than the healing potential of these
00:07:11 ►
medicines and, and, uh, I needed something. I wanted to think in terms of something that was
00:07:17 ►
inspiring, like to play with big ideas. And, uh, uh, I was watching a documentary on the Mars mission.
00:07:30 ►
You know, at that time it was really, and I’ve always been inspired by space travel.
00:07:32 ►
You know, I’m a kid of the 80s.
00:07:36 ►
Let me just interrupt for one second because I’ll forget otherwise.
00:07:48 ►
You mentioned the Mars mission, and Bruce Dahmer, who’s wearing your patch on his suit that he gives these talks to was on the team that worked on the previous Mars mission and the one that just designed, or yes, that’s on his jumpsuit. And he was on the team that actually
00:07:55 ►
picked out the landing site for the one that’s about to take place now. So you actually have a
00:08:00 ►
direct connection to the Mars mission. Yeah, right. Well, I mean, psychedelics can be as inspiring as space travel.
00:08:07 ►
You know, there’s something about them that really moves people and inspires people to change their whole lives and devote their lives to.
00:08:15 ►
You know, some people would say it is space travel.
00:08:18 ►
Right.
00:08:18 ►
Well, that’s one of the questions we wish to explore, right?
00:08:21 ►
Right, right. It’ll be a lot less boring of a trip and probable guarantee of some sort of alien encounter
00:08:30 ►
with the way we’re working this out.
00:08:34 ►
So, you know, so it was just,
00:08:37 ►
at first this just started to be an inquiry.
00:08:42 ►
What inspires me
00:08:43 ►
and what could inspire the psychedelic community? Like what was
00:08:46 ►
just ours to do? Again, not having to prove our worth by focusing on healing trauma and things.
00:08:54 ►
It was just, it was just a idea. And, and so I started talking about it. And this is the,
00:09:01 ►
and started talking to Andrew Gallimore and started talking to Rick Strassman and started talking to Dennis McKenna.
00:09:07 ►
And they all have very strong opinions about this.
00:09:09 ►
And so I knew I was on the right track, right?
00:09:11 ►
Like when it stirs people up.
00:09:14 ►
And so we invited Andrew Gallimore to Colorado to speak.
00:09:23 ►
He just was happening to be visiting CU at the time. And
00:09:26 ►
we were able to set up a call. And again, I just kept putting myself in the situation of like,
00:09:32 ►
if we were to do this, actually implement it, how would we do it? And from there, it just kind
00:09:40 ►
of has taken on a life of its own, so to speak. You know, it’s gotten bigger than me. And,
00:09:45 ►
you know, we have a whole team devoted to the program now. And, you know, all these psychonauts
00:09:51 ►
like Kevin, who are coming and doing training work with us and getting ready for these events.
00:09:58 ►
Let’s hear about the program then. What the process is, the protocol?
00:10:05 ►
The DMTX protocol?
00:10:07 ►
Yes.
00:10:08 ►
So right now we’re in a training phase.
00:10:12 ►
We’re doing some training retreats in Boulder, Colorado.
00:10:18 ►
We did one September 2018, and then we’re doing another one in 2019.
00:10:24 ►
And we’re creating a training protocol.
00:10:27 ►
So we’re not just putting what we would call research and research like healthy volunteers,
00:10:32 ►
that they’re actually trained, they have experience, and they have some idea of how to
00:10:38 ►
handle, you know, these big states. And this year, we’re excited to be able to incorporate a group ketamine experience into the training protocol.
00:10:49 ►
So I have a team of medical professionals and other sitters coming to facilitate these experiences for the psychonauts.
00:10:57 ►
And then next year is our first training retreat in Costa Rica.
00:11:04 ►
And right now we’re speaking with a couple of different
00:11:09 ►
retreat centers to host us. And those would be ongoing further training with DMT and Jerema,
00:11:17 ►
or, you know, some sort of ayahuasca analog with DMT and Syrian Roux. Again, giving our psychonauts opportunities to experience a
00:11:27 ►
real DMT experience before we put them in what we would call an extended state experience.
00:11:33 ►
You know, Daniel, something that I probably have mentioned this to Kevin that you may want to
00:11:39 ►
look into personally before you think much about it, but it’s called Carbogen. I don’t
00:11:46 ►
know if you looked into that, but Myron Stoleroff used that at his Menlo Park Psychedelic Research
00:11:52 ►
Center where 350 people went through it. And Duncan Blewett and Humphrey Osmond used it up
00:11:57 ►
in Canada. And I spoke to both of them about it. They had a lot of kind of funny stories about it too, but it’s 75% oxygen
00:12:06 ►
and 25% carbon dioxide. So it’s a totally legal thing. And the way Duncan and Myron both described
00:12:14 ►
it to me is they would inhale it and for something less than five minutes, they would have like a
00:12:21 ►
full blown 500 mic LSD experience. And they would use this to give people a look into it before they actually had their first experience.
00:12:30 ►
I haven’t, I’ve never tried it.
00:12:32 ►
I have no idea whether it would be any close to a DMT experience,
00:12:35 ►
but it may be a legal way to, you know, put training wheels on for people.
00:12:41 ►
Yeah. Yeah. You know, the great thing, I’ll have to check that out.
00:12:44 ►
I feel like I’ve heard that of that before.
00:12:46 ►
I didn’t realize it was that potent.
00:12:48 ►
Arrowhead has some.
00:12:49 ►
Okay.
00:12:50 ►
I’ll check that out.
00:12:51 ►
Yeah.
00:12:52 ►
Well,
00:12:53 ►
the thing,
00:12:53 ►
the way we’re doing the training and preparing people now is through using
00:12:57 ►
psychedelic cannabis.
00:12:58 ►
And,
00:12:58 ►
and again,
00:12:59 ►
this is like my day job and I just finished a book about it.
00:13:04 ►
It’s coming out in another couple of
00:13:05 ►
weeks and um oh be sure to send us the link i can add it to the program notes yeah for sure
00:13:10 ►
yeah thank you um and so what we’re able to in the title while we’re here the title of the book
00:13:15 ►
it’s called uh psychedelic cannabis breaking the gate i like that yeah yeah so i teach people in
00:13:22 ►
the book how to make cannabis a psychedelic and then how to use it for trauma resolution and in just general psychedelic journey work purposes.
00:13:31 ►
And so we already have these built in training mechanisms and you’d be surprised how strong it can be.
00:13:38 ►
But some people describe it as it can be as strong as like pure NNDMT.
00:13:43 ►
But the interesting thing about cannabis is that you retain a much stronger sense of agency.
00:13:50 ►
Whereas with a DMT experience, you can’t really stop it.
00:13:53 ►
You can’t pause it.
00:13:54 ►
If you open your eyes, it’s going to still be going on and such.
00:13:58 ►
And so, and the wild thing about this agency is this,
00:14:02 ►
it’s a skill set that can be translated to other psychedelic medicines.
00:14:07 ►
And whether or not it fully translates to, you know,
00:14:10 ►
an extended state DMT experience might be another question, right?
00:14:13 ►
But it’s helpful. But with ketamine too, you know, that’s a, you know,
00:14:19 ►
an hour to two hour experience. So again, a longer journey,
00:14:24 ►
which is often described as like DMT-like in an
00:14:27 ►
experience, you know, less colorful, but still really evocative. So, and the trainees, the
00:14:35 ►
psychonaut trainees are required to do their own meditation, mindfulness practices, and to continue
00:14:43 ►
developing a healthy and sustainable lifestyle so they can
00:14:47 ►
really show up for the extended state DMT experiences. And so we’re in year two of the
00:14:54 ►
training protocol, and we have one more year to go with that. And by that time, we should have all of the logistical and operational things figured out around how to
00:15:08 ►
actually facilitate an extended state DMT experience and I’m still speaking with Andrew
00:15:15 ►
and getting ideas from him and then there’s also the Imperial College of London group that’s
00:15:20 ►
doing research on the pharmacokinetic model so that they can do these extended state
00:15:27 ►
sessions in these brain scanning machines, you know, longer sessions, they get more information
00:15:34 ►
and such. So there’s a lot of development happening right now. We decided to go outside of the straight research paradigm, you know, like FDA approved research, because we wanted to incorporate a larger protocol than a reductionist protocol.
00:15:56 ►
You know, so, you know, again, like what are ideals or concepts or beliefs that are important to the psychedelic community, you know, and so there would be like, in this, in the sessions themselves, I want you to imagine like, what I imagine is like a domed room, like a Buckminster Fuller dome or something like that. And one of the retreat centers actually has structures like these on, on their campus. And so imagine a adjustable bed in the middle, like a twin size bed with two sitters
00:16:28 ►
on each side of the bed to hold space for the person. So direct, you know, personal contact
00:16:34 ►
there. And then behind the person, though, would be the what’s called a targeted infusion pump
00:16:41 ►
and all of the medical equipment. So there would be, you know, health monitoring, EEG monitoring,
00:16:49 ►
heart and blood pressure monitoring, all of that.
00:16:52 ►
And then a lot of like psychotherapy support before and after these experiences.
00:16:59 ►
And the protocol that I’m leaning to now,
00:17:01 ►
so imagine you would facilitate a regular
00:17:07 ►
injected DMT experience, which would be a reproduction of Strassman’s original research.
00:17:15 ►
And the reason the person would then gain experience, right, more than dip their feet
00:17:20 ►
into the experience, right, they’d have a full DMT experience.
00:17:28 ►
How long would that first one be?
00:17:35 ►
So, you know, the peak, the breakthrough peak has been measured by Andrew Gallimore and Dr. Strassman is about five to seven minutes.
00:17:39 ►
And that’s when the blood levels reach, I think, over 80 or 100 nanograms a milliliter or something like that.
00:17:47 ►
And so anything above that is considered a breakthrough space. And then there’s other
00:17:53 ►
research. I don’t know the citation offhand, but I bet I can find it, where the brain scanning is
00:18:01 ►
actually showing the default mode network going offline at that point and then coming back online at the five to seven minute mark.
00:18:10 ►
And so there’s this peak period. Right. And so but what we would gather, we would also gather, how does the person respond to the dosage?
00:18:19 ►
You know, and then what is the duration of the peak? What is the duration of the full experience?
00:18:23 ►
And then what is the duration of the peak?
00:18:25 ►
What is the duration of the full experience?
00:18:33 ►
And I think we’d be able to discern a trajectory of how the medicine affects individual human being.
00:18:39 ►
Right now, they’re at age, that sort of thing, of how it would affect it.
00:18:56 ►
And so how do you stabilize it?
00:18:57 ►
And there’s a lot of research around that.
00:19:00 ►
And we’ll be reviewing all of that as we go along with this.
00:19:04 ►
And we’ll be reviewing all of that as we go along with this.
00:19:10 ►
So after the first session, there would be a day off, rest and recovery.
00:19:15 ►
The team would probably be going through other psychonauts during that time.
00:19:26 ►
And then the second session for the person would be an extended state DMT experience. And so using, again, using the pharmacokinetic model, the information we gained from the first trip that the person went on, what if we extended the experience, the peak part of
00:19:34 ►
the experience, 15 minutes, you know, that’s still two to three times as long as you’re talking about
00:19:41 ►
the peak part of the experience, the peak part of the experience the peak part of the experience
00:19:45 ►
yeah so one of the wonderful things about this medicine is that it’s programmable um using this
00:19:52 ►
uh targeted infusion pump the equation and other things the infusion pump technology is
00:19:58 ►
really actually very simple um it’s the equation that gallimore is putting onto the DMT experience that really makes it
00:20:05 ►
revolutionary but the idea is
00:20:08 ►
you can adjust eventually
00:20:10 ►
we should be able to adjust
00:20:12 ►
the takeoff
00:20:14 ►
the intensity of the takeoff
00:20:16 ►
whether it’s like straight into DMT space
00:20:18 ►
within 20 seconds like
00:20:20 ►
an injection is or what if you
00:20:22 ►
titrated it and
00:20:24 ►
shot them up at a slower trajectory to
00:20:27 ►
support the transition being smoother or something um the other way it can be programmed is um
00:20:34 ►
intensity so you can be at these above breakthrough uh experiences right and and And the idea with this model is that, and it can level off.
00:20:46 ►
So you don’t have to do like a straight up and down curve, right?
00:20:52 ►
You go up and it levels off.
00:20:54 ►
And then at different levels, you can program it at different levels
00:20:59 ►
for possible different purposes.
00:21:03 ►
Would the participant be able to have some input as to moving a level?
00:21:08 ►
Yeah, so that would be the third experience. So imagine another day break and you come back into
00:21:14 ►
the experience. So imagine a person being put into the breakthrough experience for however long,
00:21:22 ►
you know, again, like, again, we’re, we’re talking like even 20
00:21:25 ►
minutes is right. Four times as long as a regular DMT experience. Right. So, so what does it look
00:21:32 ►
like to step into that safely? And so, and then you would dial it down. They could then come back
00:21:40 ►
out of the breakthrough space, but still be in a DMT state? And can they then communicate,
00:21:47 ►
share what’s going on, offer some feedback on the intensity of the experience, so that then you
00:21:54 ►
could readjust the dial back up and send them back into the DMT state to, you know, complete
00:22:02 ►
whatever process they were working on.
00:22:05 ►
Again, there’s a lot of different functions that we can do with this.
00:22:08 ►
And then the other piece around the programmability is that you,
00:22:14 ►
because of the way the, how quickly DMT metabolizes,
00:22:19 ►
you can turn the machine off at any time.
00:22:22 ►
Like say there’s a, the psychonaut is overwhelmed by the experience and it doesn’t feel
00:22:28 ►
emotionally safe anymore.
00:22:30 ►
You can just turn the machine off and within theoretically,
00:22:35 ►
let’s just go to the big questions is theoretically within a few minutes,
00:22:39 ►
the person would then come out of the DMT experience.
00:22:44 ►
So that would be very unlike ayahuasca and other medicines
00:22:47 ►
where you can’t just turn the experience off.
00:22:52 ►
You know, you got my wheels turning like crazy here
00:22:55 ►
because first of all, you know, I’m a novelist too.
00:22:59 ►
My friend Matt Pellimer wrote this really fascinating novel
00:23:02 ►
called Nothing.
00:23:03 ►
And it’s about this intense VR gaming where the gamers wound up getting in each other’s games.
00:23:11 ►
And all of a sudden I’m thinking about a group of people having this DMT extended experience and all trying to get into the same space.
00:23:19 ►
And I’m hoping that somebody that hears this podcast, some young kids, will start writing some stories about this.
00:23:24 ►
I’d like to read some short stories.
00:23:26 ►
This is straight out of sci-fi.
00:23:29 ►
You know, it really is.
00:23:30 ►
Well, it’s true exploration of DMT space.
00:23:33 ►
You know, they’re really explorations.
00:23:35 ►
If it works.
00:23:36 ►
If it works.
00:23:37 ►
Yeah.
00:23:37 ►
You know, yeah, it should work.
00:23:41 ►
And, you know, so longer term goals uh one real possibility the technology already exists
00:23:47 ►
would be group extended state dmt experiences and uh and so imagine that could be set up like a
00:23:54 ►
ceremonial experience or a personal development personal growth experience or it could be to
00:24:00 ►
explore that question of can um multiple psychonauts in the same space have the same
00:24:08 ►
experience? Can they communicate with each other in that space and retrieve that communication
00:24:14 ►
without speaking verbally? There’s a lot of experiments that could be done in a space like
00:24:20 ►
that. You know, and those are some really interesting questions. You know, I’m appreciative
00:24:27 ►
of the fact that you’re, you know, taking the time and energy and going out sort of on a limb to
00:24:32 ►
push this forward, because I’ve just finished reading a book called A Terrible Mistake. And
00:24:37 ►
it’s about the murder of Ken Olson, the CIA guy in 1953, was thrown out of a 13th story window.
00:24:45 ►
And he was going to expose the fact that the CIA had had done, had dosed the whole city in France to with LSD and people died.
00:24:55 ►
And anyhow, what I’m getting to is if you read this book, that was just the tip of the iceberg.
00:25:01 ►
The CIA and the military intelligence did so many things.
00:25:06 ►
We’re talking about thousands of experiments in military hospitals and prisons. And this group
00:25:13 ►
DMT exploration is not out of the realm of believability that they could be experimenting
00:25:20 ►
with this. And so I think it’s really important to have us civilians looking at things like this,
00:25:26 ►
too. Because, you know, when you think about what could be done, you were just describing a
00:25:31 ►
possible group experience. But that could also be used in a negative way, you know, to precondition
00:25:38 ►
people, because that’s what the CIA was trying to do with LSD. And it failed miserably, because
00:25:43 ►
people started thinking for themselves.
00:25:45 ►
But, you know.
00:25:46 ►
Yeah.
00:25:46 ►
Yeah.
00:25:47 ►
You know, and that’s, again, one of the other things of like, you know, not being just a
00:25:53 ►
research experiment or program, but what can we do around conducting an expedition?
00:26:02 ►
We’re calling it more of an expedition than a research program but that’s
00:26:07 ►
congruent with the ethics of our psychedelic community and you know and psychedelics are
00:26:13 ►
are meant to help wake people up right they’re meant to be liberating factors and and so like
00:26:19 ►
we would like so who we let into this program you know, like we are paying attention to that and how it could be used.
00:26:27 ►
But I think you’re right.
00:26:28 ►
Like any powerful technology, you know, it is a double edged sword.
00:26:34 ►
And we don’t want to develop technologies that can be used to not, you know, not be for the betterment of humanity.
00:26:43 ►
And that’s why it’s important that you know how to use it and you can open source it, you know, not be for the betterment of humanity. And that’s why it’s important that you know how to use it and you can open
00:26:46 ►
source it, you know?
00:26:47 ►
Yeah, no, you know, we’re, we’re a signatory on the,
00:26:50 ►
I think the council of spiritual practices did that open sciences and open,
00:26:55 ►
open praxis statement. And, you know, we’re signatories on that. And,
00:27:00 ►
you know, we’re, we’re share every step of the way with the public, you know,
00:27:03 ►
we’re not hiding anything. I think that’s important.
00:27:05 ►
You know, it’s like, I think it’s important for people in our community to have something
00:27:10 ►
to be inspired by, you know, and because we get so much shame in our, in directed at us
00:27:17 ►
or shaming directed at us for our interest in, you know, these psychedelic medicines,
00:27:23 ►
you know, they are degraded as drugs or get woo
00:27:26 ►
and stuff. But, you know, like, I’m curious about the government piece around this, too. And it’s
00:27:33 ►
hard not to believe that they didn’t work with DMT when they were doing these other experiments
00:27:38 ►
with LSD and other things, you know, so we’re actually in the process of filing a FOIA request to ask for any
00:27:46 ►
and all research that the government’s done on NN DMT, and we’ll see what comes of that. I don’t
00:27:52 ►
really expect anything to come of that, really, but I’m kind of curious to see what arises in
00:27:58 ►
that process. I’ve got that terrible mistake on my Kindle, and I’ll look so far, I don’t remember reading anything about DMT.
00:28:08 ►
And this is one of the best research books that came out in 2009.
00:28:12 ►
And I’ll take a look at that.
00:28:13 ►
But I think DMT might have passed kind of under.
00:28:17 ►
It really might have, which is surprising, you know, in some ways, because it’s been known for a while now, you know.
00:28:23 ►
You know, the early Naropa founders, the beat poets, you know, Ginsburg and Burroughs and all of those guys,
00:28:29 ►
they were looking for the medicine, you know, they were looking for Yage and Ayahuasca and stuff in
00:28:35 ►
the 50s. And exploring, you know, this, this tradition. So it’s real interesting. I didn’t
00:28:41 ►
realize that, that, you know, Naropa at the beginning had this direct
00:28:46 ►
relationship with DMT users, you know, so there’s like this interesting lineage there, you know,
00:28:52 ►
that I ended up being a part of accidentally. You know, I think a lot of us that are here because
00:28:59 ►
of a little accidents that happened along the way. Yeah, right. And you’re talking about how the interest
00:29:05 ►
in DMT, but you know, as we all know here, we’ve heard Dennis McKenna a lot of times talk about how
00:29:11 ►
it’s probably the most prevalent psychedelic molecule on the planet. Not only is it
00:29:16 ►
endogenous with us, but in so many plants. So this is really important. And I know that
00:29:30 ►
This is really important. And I know that his brother Terrence often talked about the way that perhaps artists could map DMT space for us.
00:29:47 ►
And I’m thinking that, and this was thinking way ahead, if a group experience does work where you could have a graphic artist, a musician, a writer, a philosopher, all in it, just sharing an experience, and then putting a presentation together of some kind, virtual reality. Yeah, I think it would be utterly inspiring.
00:29:49 ►
I think people like that would really thrive in a program like this.
00:29:56 ►
And that’s part of what we’re interested in doing, very explicitly.
00:30:01 ►
So after Kevin and the other crew members go through this program and we get
00:30:05 ►
the kinks out of it,
00:30:06 ►
we get real confident in our capacity to facilitate it safely.
00:30:11 ►
We’ll start inviting,
00:30:13 ►
you know,
00:30:13 ►
we’re already looking at inviting scientists and technologists like all the,
00:30:19 ►
you know,
00:30:19 ►
artists,
00:30:20 ►
different kinds of artists,
00:30:21 ►
musicians,
00:30:22 ►
you know,
00:30:23 ►
think of anthropologists trying to understand and
00:30:26 ►
communicate right like again this is um this is right out of science fiction people make books
00:30:31 ►
about things like this and i always wanted to be part of something that felt science fiction like
00:30:36 ►
and so it just really like people we always talk about the ancient roots of psychedelics right and
00:30:42 ►
the indigenous roots of psychedelics and uh and And the indigenous roots of psychedelics. And then there’s this whole thread of inspiring sci-fi movies and novels and the futuristic
00:30:52 ►
aspects of psychedelics. You know, I just was curious about what would that look like if we
00:30:57 ►
played with those ideas and images and were inspired by a space program and make psychonaut patches and things what would that look
00:31:06 ►
like and um and uh and so we’ve just taken it a step at a time and figured it out as we’ve gone
00:31:11 ►
and uh the interesting thing is for better or worse every time we take big steps into developing
00:31:18 ►
um parts of the program we’re always met by new allies and new support and new,
00:31:25 ►
uh, interest. And it, you know, it feels very energetically in tune,
00:31:30 ►
you know, uh, uh, to go at this rate, it feels very, you know,
00:31:34 ►
psychedelic inspired. Um, and, uh, you know, so again,
00:31:38 ►
like what does it look like? What are,
00:31:40 ►
what are our potentials of a psychedelic community really? And I’m really personally curious.
00:31:47 ►
I know Andrew is very curious about the, you know,
00:31:50 ►
the objective reality of these experiences or, you know,
00:31:54 ►
are we really going to someplace beyond ourselves?
00:31:57 ►
And I’m curious about that,
00:31:59 ►
but I’m also interested in like using this as a technological problem solving
00:32:04 ►
tool. you know
00:32:06 ►
again bringing in technologists that are working on really complex problems and will the dmt affect
00:32:12 ►
their brain differently will it allow them to see a problem um and ways around it ways to work with
00:32:19 ►
it can we develop new uh technology innovation that um would be important to making it through
00:32:27 ►
the climate crisis that we’re in, you know, you know, psychedelics,
00:32:32 ►
you know, inspire things like the iPhone, right.
00:32:38 ►
DNA, supposedly the structure of DNA supposedly, you know,
00:32:44 ►
recognized and understood using LSD, right?
00:32:46 ►
I think we have a strong track record in the psychedelic community of really inspiring world transforming technology and also like artistic and societal innovation, you know? program, like literal, like the program itself, like the machine and everything is that what if
00:33:07 ►
it’s impossible to dial in the experience at a certain mind state, maybe it’s sub peak, right,
00:33:14 ►
or just above breakthrough or somewhere in there, and they can hold on to that space, be in it
00:33:21 ►
in a stabilized manner, and figure some really important things
00:33:26 ►
out. Um, you know, I’m, I’m really curious to see, uh, what could come out of, uh,
00:33:33 ►
a program like that if we did that over and over again.
00:33:36 ►
But Daniel, tomorrow, if you would send me an email to remind me of what I’m going to ask right
00:33:41 ►
now, or going to mention, uh. I want to put you in contact with
00:33:45 ►
James Fadiman. Jim Fadiman? Sure. He was a psychologist that worked with Myron Stolaroff
00:33:51 ►
at the Menlo Park Clinic. And unfortunately, all those records were destroyed. But they had 350
00:33:58 ►
people go through there. And their whole purpose was to see if it could enhance the creativity of
00:34:03 ►
the people who went through there.
00:34:05 ►
And they had a training program.
00:34:06 ►
They’re the ones that used the Carbogen, too, and they went through a training program.
00:34:10 ►
And so while, you know, I don’t expect Jim will jump in and say, oh, yeah, this is a great thing to do.
00:34:15 ►
I think he would be willing to share with you some of the protocols they used to enhance, to measure the difference and things like that.
00:34:24 ►
I think it would be a good contact for you.
00:34:26 ►
Yeah, that would be great.
00:34:27 ►
If you’d give me a bump tomorrow and remind me,
00:34:30 ►
I’ll connect the two of you.
00:34:31 ►
Yeah, for sure.
00:34:32 ►
Yeah, I’ve read Fadiman’s book
00:34:34 ►
and using microdosing LSD for creative problem solving.
00:34:39 ►
I mean, these are happening all over the place right now.
00:34:43 ►
And they’re being used in,
00:34:54 ►
like unofficially used in corporate structures to engage in complex problem solving when it comes to coding and science.
00:34:56 ►
So it’s already happening.
00:35:02 ►
I was microdosing when I was writing code back in the 90s.
00:35:04 ►
And a lot of people were, and there are major corporations in Silicon Valley now that are have full-time
00:35:09 ►
staff members that are teaching people how to microdose. So, you know,
00:35:12 ►
the internet and computer revolution wouldn’t be here without it.
00:35:15 ►
And now it’s time for an inner revolution too.
00:35:19 ►
And there’s a lot of healing that really needs to be done and can be done.
00:35:23 ►
And then I think some of the things that you’re opening the possibilities for
00:35:29 ►
are some really truly creative possibilities.
00:35:32 ►
You know, there are a lot of us here who listen to these podcasts
00:35:36 ►
that have had a fair amount of experience with smoking and in DMT.
00:35:40 ►
And it’s such an overpowering quick thing, you know, and then afterwards you’re,
00:35:46 ►
you’re coming down and hopefully nobody says anything before you do. And, you know, but if,
00:35:52 ►
if you could control that and step in and out, uh, you know, as I told Kevin, uh, several months ago,
00:35:59 ►
I, I, uh, when I started the salon podcast, I gave my whole stash away and gave a couple of
00:36:04 ►
lifetime supply of DMT. And I figured, well, you know, I’ve done enough of Podcast, I gave my whole stash away and gave a couple of lifetime supply of DMT.
00:36:06 ►
I figured, well, you know, I’ve done enough of that.
00:36:08 ►
But if you guys perfect this extended dose, this is something I would change my ban on not traveling out of the country.
00:36:17 ►
And I’d go somewhere and do this because the possibility is just to really intrigue the heck out of me.
00:36:22 ►
Yeah, it intrigues me, too.
00:36:23 ►
I have to admit.
00:36:24 ►
Yeah, so you’re more than welcome.
00:36:25 ►
We’d love to have you.
00:36:27 ►
How many people are you attempting to train right now?
00:36:32 ►
Right now we have a team of about, I think we’re at 10 or 11 Psychonaut trainees.
00:36:42 ►
And they’ve been in the program for about a year i recruited them
00:36:47 ►
last summer and uh spring um and they’ve gone through the one dmtx we call them dmtx training
00:36:55 ►
retreats so they’ve gone through dmtx1 and we’re about to go through the dmtx2 um and that’s a you
00:37:03 ►
know there’s only so many you can’t only do one person work with one person at a time.
00:37:07 ►
So there’s real time constraints and like bringing in too many people.
00:37:11 ►
So, so they were all assessed based on their age.
00:37:16 ►
We were only working with people over 30. It’s one of our,
00:37:20 ►
at least in this beginning phase, we want to,
00:37:22 ►
we want people to have some life experience behind them
00:37:25 ►
who have done medicine work before. And then they’ve gone through like a regimen of different
00:37:32 ►
mental health and safety assessments, physical safety assessments. And then they’re going to go
00:37:38 ►
and that’s going to step up every step of the way to the point where they’re like preparing for the extended state DMT. You know,
00:37:47 ►
there are real mental health concerns that we want to pay attention to and
00:37:51 ►
physical health concerns.
00:37:54 ►
So we want to make sure that everybody is ready for the experience and we take
00:37:58 ►
safety and psychological safety very seriously.
00:38:04 ►
So, so I get to hang out with these, it’s a really cool group of people.
00:38:09 ►
You know, like imagine people who are stepping up to this idea or it’s like,
00:38:13 ►
you know, the, the typical response is, you know,
00:38:16 ►
I have two feelings happening at the same time.
00:38:19 ►
One, it scares me to death and two, I want to go first.
00:38:27 ►
And so we’ll there’ll probably be a a coin toss or something to see who gets to go first you’re looking for your neil armstrong
00:38:33 ►
yeah right well and so that’s part of what’s part of the assessment is like people who can
00:38:40 ►
articulate the experience who can share the experience who can speak to it in a way that’s,
00:38:45 ►
you know, inspiring, but not ungrounded, you know, and be able to retrieve
00:38:54 ►
relevant information, you know, at the very least to benefit their own lives, right? Like,
00:39:01 ►
that’s a good enough goal for anybody going through the program um well in
00:39:06 ►
in my opinion you have a good one with kevin you know we’ve known him for over a year now and and
00:39:10 ►
kevin he was saying all those good things about you uh how about you speaking up a little bit
00:39:15 ►
here tonight oh man what do i say it’s uh it’s been an adventure so far, I can say that. That’s for sure. We don’t want to press Kevin because he is driving on a three-way,
00:39:29 ►
and we can see the traffic going by.
00:39:32 ►
One night, Daniel, right after we got off,
00:39:35 ►
a tornado went right behind him and had a close call.
00:39:39 ►
Yeah, I heard about that.
00:39:40 ►
We don’t want to distract him.
00:39:41 ►
But, Kevin, if you want to say anything, just hold your hand up,
00:39:44 ►
and I’ll click you in.
00:39:47 ►
You know, so, you know, one of the things that all of the psychonauts have had to engage since the last retreat and since this one is coming up is a lot of significant life transformational experiences.
00:40:00 ►
And, you know, psychedelics can elicit these processes.
00:40:03 ►
And it requires engagement, you know, psychedelics can elicit these processes and it requires engagement, you know, like these medicines affect people in life transforming ways. transformational experiences in their personal lives or work lives people have moved and
00:40:26 ►
changed jobs relationships gone on extended spiritual requests and such you know so so
00:40:35 ►
I’ve been I’ve gotten to witness just the idea of going through extended state DMT transform pretty much everybody that encounter it, you know, and,
00:40:48 ►
and so what is that process? Like, what, what is eliciting that, you know, is it just the idea
00:40:53 ►
of, of these big experiences, or is it something energetic or spiritual? Is it just a natural human
00:41:01 ►
process that we are engaging intentionally?
00:41:09 ►
You know, I don’t know, but, you know, it’s happening all around us.
00:41:23 ►
And, you know, I think you’ve got something kind of unique going on, too, because, you know, we can all remember how frightened we were before, say, our first ayahuasca experience or for the first time we smoked that or did this.
00:41:26 ►
And then that really doesn’t go away.
00:41:30 ►
In fact, the more you do some of these things, the more frightening it gets.
00:41:37 ►
And I’m picturing you and your 10 people in your group,
00:41:39 ►
that makes 11 like the original astronaut.
00:41:42 ►
Oh, no, seven, I guess, is Apollo 11.
00:41:46 ►
But there’s something about your group not knowing who’s going to go first and realizing, you know, this is going into new territories
00:41:49 ►
and they’re breaking new ground.
00:41:52 ►
There’s some sort of a repertoire that’s growing in your little community.
00:41:56 ►
And I hope you’re documenting this and taking some videos
00:41:59 ►
and getting people on video and audio because, you know,
00:42:03 ►
this may turn out to be nothing.
00:42:05 ►
Let’s agree with that.
00:42:06 ►
But let’s also say this could turn out to be something really life-changing for many of us.
00:42:12 ►
And I hope you’re documenting because the history of what we’re doing is important, I think.
00:42:16 ►
Yeah.
00:42:17 ►
We’ve done some documentation.
00:42:19 ►
I wish I had done a little more from the first retreat.
00:42:22 ►
So I’m going to fix that and make sure we have a camera there most of the
00:42:27 ►
time and do interviews with the psychonauts and team members and such.
00:42:33 ►
Cause I think it is important. And, you know, again,
00:42:38 ►
acknowledging that, you know,
00:42:41 ►
that there is a significant chance for difficult things to happen.
00:42:45 ►
And that, in some ways, is part of the process.
00:42:48 ►
Like in space travel, this idea of crisis isn’t something,
00:42:54 ►
it’s not an if, but it’s just to extend the time frame out.
00:42:56 ►
It’s a matter of when, right?
00:42:57 ►
Like you have to train for the opportunities that present themselves
00:43:04 ►
that require really showing up. And,
00:43:07 ►
you know, I have to do that in my psychedelic therapy practice. And when they’re held the
00:43:13 ►
right way, they’re the most transformational and healing experience of someone’s life.
00:43:17 ►
And, and so, you know, really, I’m trying to take it a step at a time and not be
00:43:29 ►
I’m trying to take it a step at a time and not be pulled in by the light of inspiration where it sweeps me off my feet, you know.
00:43:34 ►
And that’s, again, why we’re taking it, you know, trying to take it a step at a time.
00:43:41 ►
Before I was going to, I want to shift and talk about your book in a minute.
00:43:45 ►
But before we shift to psychedelic cannabis, let me invite anybody that that would like to uh you know ask a question or something right now you could uh i think you
00:43:50 ►
click the participant button at the bottom and you can raise your hand or if i can see you you
00:43:56 ►
can go like oh okay here let let me uh uh unmute you here go ahead moons oh hi lorenzo hello everybody hello friends in common matthew
00:44:08 ►
palomary i’ve been on kmo’s uh sea realm podcast and i have listened to every single one of your
00:44:13 ►
episodes um i just want to it’s just a total privilege to be here listen you sound like
00:44:18 ►
you’re coming from texas with that accent is that right now born in england and um i had a very conventional life cambridge university
00:44:26 ►
tv radio breakfast tv saw behind the veil saw all the lies being told to everybody and was dealing
00:44:31 ►
with ptsd that went undiagnosed and then um a friend of a friend got slipped uh dmt at a party
00:44:39 ►
without any kind of precursor he had a terrible experience i woke out of it with kind of things
00:44:44 ►
in his body and did a nine stretch in prison that’s a long story and a friend contacted me and said I know
00:44:50 ►
you lucid dream and you have psychic episodes and all this sort of thing anyway have you ever
00:44:53 ►
heard of DMT and I went no I’ve never gone near psychedelics because I have a psychedelic life
00:44:58 ►
anyway really there’s a lot we could say about that psychedelics on the match is how life has
00:45:03 ►
been for me and so I never thought I’d get anywhere near psychedelics and then because my friend needed help in a kind of shamanic way
00:45:10 ►
um not to call myself one but in a kind of shamanic mindset I then researched Terence McKenna and
00:45:15 ►
everything to do with psychedelics extensively which meant listening from very first of your
00:45:20 ►
podcast psychedelic thinking which I love and have shared with many people all the way
00:45:25 ►
through everything and then that led me to the conclusion there was no way that i couldn’t you
00:45:29 ►
know couldn’t experience this for myself so i ended up helping the guy in prison like clear what was
00:45:34 ►
going on with him um and have been very very very very fortunate to have my life saved essentially
00:45:40 ►
from long-term trauma ptsd with microd, psilocybin, DMT, full journeys,
00:45:46 ►
ayahuasca, others. So I am really grateful to be here and it’s such a privilege. I’ve wanted to be
00:45:52 ►
on for a long time, but life has been quite derailed in different ways. I am really interested
00:45:58 ►
to hear about the legalities. I’m here in Australia, born in England, have friends who are
00:46:03 ►
psychedelic sort of therapists in England, despite the fact that it’s not legal. I’m sat here in Australia, born in England, have friends who are psychedelic sort of therapists in England,
00:46:06 ►
despite the fact that it’s not legal. I’m sat here in Australia where there is some movement,
00:46:11 ►
psilocybin research going on in Victoria or other places. From what I gather in the States,
00:46:16 ►
MAPS are doing incredible work. MDMA assisted therapists are kind of getting trained.
00:46:22 ►
Where does things stand now now because I’m a performance
00:46:25 ►
poet and I jam with bands and things and I’m always sharing psychedelic tales and experiences
00:46:31 ►
on stage with for audiences and that’s a kind of safe kind of safe way to do it um because somehow
00:46:38 ►
it’s not I guess maybe maybe even believe that I’m speaking truth when I’m doing it but I’m so
00:46:46 ►
impressed to have somebody like you all of you but you here saying I am a psychedelic therapist
00:46:52 ►
how does that sit legally because I am writing a book I’m about to start some podcasts I want to
00:46:59 ►
get I really want to help this crucial movement speed up because if I’ve been
00:47:05 ►
suffering and I’ve,
00:47:06 ►
you know,
00:47:06 ►
don’t even have the disadvantages of some people in the world,
00:47:09 ►
there’s so much suffering that could just be ended,
00:47:11 ►
let alone,
00:47:11 ►
you know,
00:47:12 ►
let alone just exploring of consciousness,
00:47:14 ►
which I see as a human right and everything else.
00:47:17 ►
So how I’d love to just have some,
00:47:20 ►
some,
00:47:21 ►
where the state of play is as far as you know.
00:47:28 ►
Yeah. So as you know and yeah so you know a psychedelic therapist is a person who um uses medicines for healing purposes and um and it’s not medicine
00:47:37 ►
specific and again because it’s illegal to work with mdma and psilocybin in the States, I wanted to explore alternative options.
00:47:47 ►
And so breathwork. And then when cannabis became legal, you know, we again started to integrate it into our program.
00:47:55 ►
And we were surprised by the potency of these experiences.
00:47:59 ►
So I feel very fulfilled professionally as a psychedelic therapist solely working with psychedelic cannabis
00:48:08 ►
which is legal in the state of Colorado and a very large percentage now of the United States
00:48:15 ►
not in the UK or Australia right now I don’t think and but it is becoming more legal and we
00:48:24 ►
teach people how to facilitate these experiences through our
00:48:27 ►
psychedelic sitter school program. Um, but since the beginning, you know,
00:48:31 ►
since Michael Pollan’s book has come out,
00:48:33 ►
there’s been a much stronger interest in psilocybin experiences. Um,
00:48:39 ►
and then there’s also, um, ayahuasca type retreats available. Uh,
00:48:44 ►
but we would, we’re, we’re, uh, to remain legal, we would be taking, um, ayahuasca type retreats available. Uh, but we would, we’re, we’re,
00:48:45 ►
uh, to remain legal, we would be taking, um, hosting retreats in, uh, Holland for psilocybin
00:48:53 ►
and then bringing our community down to Costa Rica for these experiences where all of these
00:48:59 ►
plant medicines are as legal as ayahuasca there. And, uh, and so it’s always a dance and to figure, you know,
00:49:07 ►
what works for you personally. You don’t have to be as out as a psychedelic therapist as I am to
00:49:14 ►
have a really fulfilling practice. But I’ve enjoyed stepping out of the underground
00:49:21 ►
realm. And I knew I would have a hard time not talking and sharing about these
00:49:26 ►
experiences.
00:49:28 ►
You know,
00:49:28 ►
I’ve had my wife and I are raising two small children.
00:49:32 ►
You know,
00:49:32 ►
the oldest will be six in a month.
00:49:35 ►
And so,
00:49:35 ►
you know,
00:49:36 ►
it was important for us to figure out something that we felt comfortable
00:49:38 ►
doing with doing and supporting and acknowledging the risk associated with
00:49:44 ►
it.
00:49:44 ►
So I stepped away from other medicines.
00:49:47 ►
You know, there are people who are very ethical in doing work that’s not sanctioned.
00:49:53 ►
Maybe we can put it that way.
00:49:55 ►
And, you know, it does require a significant amount of professional ethics and discernment,
00:50:02 ►
you know, to stay safe.
00:50:03 ►
And sometimes the people that we want to work with, you know,
00:50:08 ►
we don’t have the institutional support that we could,
00:50:10 ►
that we really need to help them.
00:50:12 ►
And so having a discerning eye and who,
00:50:15 ►
if you’re at your level of skill and your specialty and trainings and all of
00:50:22 ►
that to stay within these, you know,
00:50:27 ►
those boundaries of support and care. And it can be a very fulfilling profession, you know,
00:50:33 ►
like this is really the best job I’ve ever had, you know.
00:50:36 ►
So the DMT specifically with what you’re doing there, that’s a very…
00:50:40 ►
That would be outside.
00:50:41 ►
So the actual DMT would be in Costa Rica.
00:50:45 ►
And so we’ve done some preliminary legal research around that question
00:50:50 ►
and also have interviewed other like ayahuasca retreats and things about the legality of the differences
00:50:57 ►
between ayahuasca and DMT and other plant medicines.
00:51:01 ►
Some places DMT is not legal in ayahuasca is voting yeah our first our first
00:51:09 ►
attempt to find a retreat center we were going to work with a dm like actual dmt church in brazil
00:51:15 ►
and uh when that and so we would have been working under his church that he you so he basically spent
00:51:22 ►
the last five years um using the ayahuasca laws to justify
00:51:27 ►
having a DMT church in Brazil. Was that the Vegetal or the Santa Dime? No, it’s a different,
00:51:33 ►
it’s independent from the Brazilian churches there. But then the current fascist
00:51:40 ►
president got elected and decided that maybe going to Brazil to do these types of experiences wasn’t the safest place for now.
00:51:52 ►
You know, so, so, you know, it’s been and it’s taken us a year to re-explore these questions of where to actually do this.
00:52:12 ►
You know, so even if it’s legal, there’s still questions around like traditional religious communities and ayahuasca communities might not be interested in this because it’s not within an indigenous framework.
00:52:17 ►
Right. And and there’s a lot of questions and debates around these things. I’m personally interested in it because it’s not it doesn’t have to be within a religious framework, you know.
00:52:26 ►
You know, so that felt important to me. And another reason why I work with cannabis, uh, cause like, you
00:52:30 ►
know, there’s no cultural appropriation in the same ways as, uh, with like using ayahuasca and
00:52:35 ►
things for research. So, um, so that’s, you know, so this, we want to be able to speak about all of
00:52:41 ►
what we’re doing. So the legality of it has always been a high priority so that we can remain
00:52:48 ►
open about what we’re doing.
00:52:50 ►
That doesn’t mean it’s not edgy,
00:52:52 ►
but it is legal.
00:52:55 ►
The other way we’re making,
00:52:58 ►
adding extra protections to our legally speaking is we’re starting a religious
00:53:04 ►
nonprofit here.
00:53:05 ►
And even though we’re not going to do work with DMT in the U S being members
00:53:11 ►
of a religious organization also protect us further under Costa Rican law.
00:53:18 ►
And so the religious nonprofit will be about consciousness exploration.
00:53:22 ►
It won’t be a, you know know a belief system organization so so those are
00:53:26 ►
some of the ways that we’re working with the uh legality of it right now may i just say i know
00:53:32 ►
i’ve spoken may i just um add one more thing that may just go ahead go ahead thank you so much
00:53:38 ►
thanks lorenzo um so i’m interested in uh there’s a couple of things as you expand what you’re doing
00:53:43 ►
particularly with artists and musicians and cross-inating different modalities, which is just like a no brainer and wonderful to hear that it’s on the cards, maybe at some point.
00:53:52 ►
I’ve been a longtime lucid dreamer as well.
00:53:55 ►
Quite often have semi lucid dreams, but lots of lucid dreams where I can fully take control in the dream space.
00:54:02 ►
This has led me to seek out other people that do.
00:54:04 ►
And that’s just a
00:54:05 ►
natural thing um it’s really good to meditate in this in dreams uh that’s kind of like the most
00:54:10 ►
amazing thing one of the most amazing things so i’m interested in the natural levels of dmt in an
00:54:15 ►
individual um for that kind of reason um and also because i don’t i’ve tried to remember the name
00:54:21 ►
of this guy caesar moore I think his name is um I
00:54:25 ►
went to a sound journey on a community I was living on which was a kind of medicinal community
00:54:30 ►
here in Australia and we had a guy called uh Cesar Moore I think his name was he came and he had
00:54:35 ►
profound um kind of physical and mental overwhelm for the first sort of 15 years of his life in
00:54:43 ►
Queensland although he was a genius with music but his family saw that as he was possessed instead of it being a talent and they put him on
00:54:50 ►
the waiting list to be put into a mental asylum and when he turned 15 he was about to get put in
00:54:55 ►
a family member gave him a couple hundred thousand just said run there’s nothing wrong with you you’re
00:55:00 ►
just a genius but you need to get out of here or you’ll be put into an institution so that started
00:55:04 ►
his life where he just literally went on the run and started spending time with different indigenous
00:55:09 ►
tribes around the world including a particular tribe and i can’t remember where um where they
00:55:15 ►
would um go about their daily business in the waking life supposedly this waking life so they
00:55:20 ►
chop wood and they’d make fires and they’d do all that and then at night without the aid of hallucinogens they would all sleep together in the same space and lucid dream
00:55:30 ►
together and that was where they sat around and talked and actually communicated that way in the
00:55:36 ►
dream state lucidly without the use of herbs and so this is a very interesting thing because from
00:55:41 ►
that experience caesar moore became kind of a bit adept
00:55:45 ►
in this and when he came back from travels and was safe from being incarcerated having played lots of
00:55:51 ►
musical instruments he would do DMT journeys for people with music but he also encountered ayahuasca
00:55:56 ►
himself for the first time now he sat with a one-on-one practitioner who said this may help
00:56:01 ►
you with the physical kind of anomalies and he drank
00:56:05 ►
the normal dose no response a few times a normal dose no response it wasn’t until they continued
00:56:11 ►
in the end it took it 12 times the normal amount of ayahuasca i.e dmt the active for it to have
00:56:17 ►
any kind of effect on him this is very interesting because his particular abilities and the fact that
00:56:22 ►
he was able to lucid dream with this tribe just from being in their presence, that’s what
00:56:27 ►
they did and then it took 12 times the amount of normal DMT for him to have an
00:56:32 ►
additional kind of experience so that’s just something else I think is quite
00:56:36 ►
interesting because you know we’re all holding in that sense in all of it and I
00:56:42 ►
can’t help but feel especially living in australia and meeting
00:56:45 ►
a few clever men here and indigenous sort of leaders that there is um uh without getting
00:56:51 ►
too conspiracy about it there’s so many kind of toxins in our environment and frequencies that
00:56:56 ►
interfere with what we would naturally maybe be able to do otherwise and i’m definitely grateful
00:57:02 ►
for psychedelic medicines for you know breakthrough experiences
00:57:07 ►
but there’s also been places that i’ve glimpsed naturally on in many different ways sure well i
00:57:12 ►
think this uh you know there are natural capacities uh that humans have and some of us are more
00:57:20 ►
sensitive to these capacities than others and what we play with is that these are skill sets that can be developed.
00:57:25 ►
And, you know, mindfulness skill sets, inner journey work skill,
00:57:30 ►
the ability to navigate an inner space and to do things in that space,
00:57:33 ►
to relax tension in the body.
00:57:36 ►
But, you know, some people neurologically, DMT doesn’t affect them at all.
00:57:41 ►
And, you know, I know people who can smoke DMT and it just doesn’t do
00:57:47 ►
anything to them. And, you know, so we all have these unique neurologies around these things,
00:57:54 ►
but these are natural human capacities that can be reached without these medicines.
00:58:02 ►
And there’s a lot of evidence now that shows that maybe endogenous
00:58:06 ►
DMT-like molecules, including NMDMT, are being released in these experiences. Like, you know,
00:58:14 ►
breathwork might have some sort of DMT, endogenous DMT release associated with the experience.
00:58:22 ►
So these are not unheard of and and so these are
00:58:25 ►
you know this i guess is just the 2019 technological way to explore possibilities of
00:58:31 ►
group states experiences you know um yeah thank you for your question thank you for allowing yeah
00:58:39 ►
uh we’re about out of time here daniel but I am intrigued about the book that you have coming out,
00:58:47 ►
Psychedelic Cannabis.
00:58:48 ►
And I can’t wait to read it myself.
00:58:51 ►
And I’d also like to invite you to come back here on the podcast to talk about
00:58:55 ►
it once it’s published,
00:58:56 ►
because I have had some very psychedelic experiences on cannabis and,
00:59:02 ►
but they’ve never been like organized very well I didn’t
00:59:06 ►
really know what I was doing and I’d love to learn from somebody that’s
00:59:10 ►
really given some thoughts and some has some background so I hope you’d agree to
00:59:15 ►
do that yeah I’d love to come back this has been a lot of fun yeah Kevin again I
00:59:21 ►
want to thank you for putting us in touch with Daniel and Andrew.
00:59:25 ►
And in two weeks when we have Rick Strassman on, maybe we can get you all back.
00:59:30 ►
Yeah, I’d like to get on that one if we can.
00:59:32 ►
Okay, I’m sure that you get the link.
00:59:34 ►
That’d be great.
00:59:35 ►
Then definitely about your book as well.
00:59:37 ►
I’m anxious to read that.
00:59:39 ►
So I think we’ve got some fun times ahead of us.
00:59:42 ►
Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
00:59:43 ►
It should be published any week now.
00:59:44 ►
So I’ll send you the info when I get it. Okay, great, and everybody, I appreciate you
00:59:49 ►
being here tonight. Thank you so much, and until next week, by the way, Eric Davis is going to be
00:59:54 ►
here, so I hope you show up for that. He’s the guy that, he’s not only a friend that helped me start
01:00:00 ►
the Palenque Northley Lectures, but he’s the one that did the last interview of Terence McKenna, a good friend of Terence’s, so we can talk about that. Anyhow, until next week, keep the old
01:00:11 ►
faith and stay high. You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing
01:00:18 ►
their lives one thought at a time. For what it’s worth, I did conduct a search of the book that I mentioned about the CIA’s psychedelic research,
01:00:28 ►
and I searched to see if they did any research on DMT.
01:00:32 ►
The book that I’m referring to is called A Terrible Mistake by H.P. Alvarelli,
01:00:36 ►
and is the most detailed account of MKUltra and other such CIA projects that I’ve ever found.
01:00:46 ►
Ultra and other such CIA projects that I’ve ever found. As I said in the podcast, this book provides an, well, an extremely detailed account of these experiments, and yet there isn’t a single mention
01:00:52 ►
of DMT in it. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the U.S. government isn’t still secretly conducting
01:00:58 ►
ongoing psychedelic experiments on both witting and unwitting persons. You know, at one time we thought COINTELPRO went away, but now we know that the government
01:01:08 ►
is still planting informers in most activist organizations.
01:01:12 ►
Seems like these tired old white men just can’t seem to break their bad habits.
01:01:16 ►
But hopefully the private research project that we just learned about will be able to
01:01:21 ►
stay a few steps ahead of Big Brother’s attempts to find better ways in which to maintain the status quo of the default world.
01:01:29 ►
Personally, I have to admit that I don’t really hold a belief that the machine
01:01:34 ►
elves Terence McKenna talked about are actually real entities. But, on the
01:01:39 ►
outside chance that they are, well then I’m all for reaching out to them for a
01:01:43 ►
little help from our friends. Assuming, of course, that they actually, well, then I’m all for reaching out to them for a little help from our friends.
01:01:50 ►
Assuming, of course, that they actually are friendly. And I’ll leave you to ponder that thought until we meet again. So, for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:01:56 ►
Be well, my friends. Thank you.