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638 - Replanting Ayahuasca

Dec 31, 2019, 65 min read

Program Notes

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speaker: Sophia Rokhlin

Date this lecture was recorded: December 16, 2019.

Today’s podcast features a conversation that took place in the Live Salon a few weeks ago with Sohpia Rokhlin. Sophia is an author, speaker and nonprofit organizer from New York City. Through engaged botany and ecology, she bridges the worlds of indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science.

She holds a BA in anthropology and religious studies from The New School and a M.Sc. in Ecological Economics from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). She is a Program Coordinator at the Chaikuni Institute and currently directs the sustainable ayahuasca cultivation program at the Temple of the Way of Light, a traditional plant medicine retreat center in the Peruvian Amazon. Sophia is also a co-author of When Plants Dream: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Shamanism and the Global Psychedelic Renaissance (Watkins, 2019) on the global spread of ayahuasca.

She has worked with several psychedelic harm-reduction programs such as KosmiCare, and serves as an advisor on the Ayahuasca Community Committee for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. She is currently based in Peru.
Sophia Rokhlin Website
Temple of the Way of Light
Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines
Dates for upcoming Head Talks with Shane Mauss
A Comedian + Psychedelics + A Scientist = Head Talks
Shane Mauss Website

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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.

00:00:23 ►

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

00:00:30 ►

And I’m going to have to begin by saying that the title of today’s podcast is Intentionally Misleading.

00:00:37 ►

But it is a reminder to myself that I want to have today’s guest back in the salon again really soon.

00:00:41 ►

You see, when fellow salonner Kevin first told me about Sophia Rocklin,

00:00:45 ►

well, one of the things that I most wanted to talk with her about was her work in the Amazon helping to replant the forest with new ayahuasca vines. And the reason

00:00:51 ►

that I need to remind myself is, well, that’s the one question I completely forgot to ask her.

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You see, Sophia Rocklin, as young as she is, has already had an amazing life. As you’ll hear,

00:01:03 ►

she’s just 27 years old, and yet she has

00:01:06 ►

already adventured far and wide. So if you’re still in your 20s, I’m sure that you’ll find

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her stories quite fascinating. But if you’re a parent of a world-roving 20-year-old, well,

00:01:18 ►

maybe this conversation then can help you better understand what’s rocking your world right now.

00:01:24 ►

And for what it’s worth, my younger brother and I did similar things

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and rocked our parents’ world as well.

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But later they did tell me that they secretly were very excited about our travels.

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At least that’s what they told me.

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Anyway, I’m about to play a recording of a conversation

00:01:41 ►

that we had in the live salon just two weeks ago.

00:01:44 ►

And it was our last

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live salon for the year but I will be getting together on Monday nights with my supporters

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on Patreon once again beginning in January and on evenings when we have a guest join us like we did

00:01:56 ►

two weeks ago I’ll be podcasting them here in what I guess we’ll call the classic salon

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and that’s where I also will post the links to Sophia’s personal website,

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along with some of the other links that we talked about.

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And you can find those at psychedelicsalon.com.

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Now, had you been with us two weeks ago, this is what you would have heard.

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Somehow Kevin found out about you.

00:02:21 ►

And then once he told me about you, I was completely fascinated.

00:02:25 ►

You know, you’re obviously very young.

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Here in the salon, you know, we’ve taken a lot of hits because it’s a bunch of old white men.

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We’ve done over 50 podcasts with Shauna Holm and she’s interviewed a whole lot of different women.

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And we’ve had quite a few women on here and, and particularly now young women.

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And the big project we have going right now is being led by,

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by Kat Lakey, who is, Kat’s still in her twenties.

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She’s also living in Peru.

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She’s in Cusco right now. And our,

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our mutual friend of the salon, Leonard Pic picard who is the the man you may have

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heard of a long time ago 20 years ago got busted for uh allegedly making lsd in a missile silo

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and he’s written this this marvelous book that’s being you know getting uh rave reviews by scholars

00:03:20 ►

around the world and so she’s putting together a podcast that’s going to last a couple of years.

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We’ve done two of them already on here where we’re doing an audio recording of a book that he has

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written that’s literally, it’s a masterpiece being taught in Oxford and Cambridge and places like

00:03:37 ►

that. And what I find fascinating, there’s a whole big lead up to the fact that the stars of the salon lately are young women they’re not old

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white men so hey you know you you have you started in in new york you’ve got a several degrees uh

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what i you know we can get into the the book you’ve written with daniel pinchbeck who’s been

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you know he was featured in podcast number four here in 2005.

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So we’ve done a lot about ayahuasca, about Daniel’s been with us.

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But what fascinates me is how a young woman like you can travel,

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can move from New York City to where now you’re doing what I consider the epitome of saving the environment by replanting ayahuasca you know it doesn’t get

00:04:27 ►

better than that so what my first question is is how did you get from where you started to where

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you are and the reason I’m asking this is we have a lot of people that hear these podcasts who are

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in their their 30s and 40s who are raising children who are becoming teenagers, young adults moving into college.

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How did you get from wherever you started to where you are now?

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Because you’re an inspiration to a lot of us.

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So, it’s all yours now, Sophia.

00:04:58 ►

Well, thanks for having me.

00:05:01 ►

This is cool.

00:05:02 ►

I haven’t been in a psychedelic salon before quite like this one. So hi, everybody.

00:05:10 ►

Well, yeah, I mean, I am actually sitting in my childhood bedroom right now. So not much has changed.

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But I guess, yeah, I mean, I’m born and raised in New York City. You know, my parents are immigrants from Russia and from France.

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And I guess I was always in a, I grew up in what I think of like the mecca of secularism.

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You know, like all of my friends were on the track to do the magazine thing or the finance thing or the politics thing or whatever.

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Everything was kind of preset New Yorker life.

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And I found myself like always gravitating towards ritual and community, things that I didn’t have

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growing up, you know, and I never… Did you have a religious background that you…

00:05:59 ►

No, none, none at all. I mean, no, no, nothing at all. I mean…

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Ritual comes in from the outside then to you

00:06:06 ►

outside of your your normal it did you know it didn’t it didn’t like i actually found myself

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sitting in the corner of this room here you know when you’re like a little kid and you can steal

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candles you’re not allowed to light fires yet or something like that so i’d i’d steal those little

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yankee scented candles and set up and i and I guess I kind of intuitively set up altars or something where I would

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just sort of sit down and hang out and listen to music and draw things.

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But I really liked this containers, you know,

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that you would create that were extraordinary. You know, they’re like, you,

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you, you stop time and you hang out in those little spaces.

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And at the same time, I was also acting.

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Like I went to, I won’t give you the whole story,

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but I went to theater camp, I got discovered.

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And then I got sort of funneled

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into the New York City acting industry,

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which, you know, it is what it is.

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I did like a couple of commercials and tv and voiceover but as a as a

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young girl it’s it’s not a good you don’t want to put a kid in that thing it’s very painful lots of

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rejection lots of validation based off of how you look or not validation you know but ultimately it

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was like I was interested in in being other people you, I always loved that idea of like putting on a new mask

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and seeing something new

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and seeing things from a new perspective.

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And there were moments where you really do enter in trance

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when you’re acting.

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So I always had like an affinity for trance and ritual.

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And needless to say, you know,

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I got swept up into the New York City burner scene,

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Burning Man scene.

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Did you find Burning Man through friends?

00:07:50 ►

Is that how you connected with it?

00:07:51 ►

Let me tell you how I found Burning Man.

00:07:53 ►

I was in Bloomingdale’s, the department store Bloomingdale’s,

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procuring a fake ID behind a coat rack.

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And this guy’s like, you know,

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I met this girl there and she was very cool.

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And then from there she was like, yeah, you’re a burning man.

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And so her and I, we were like 16, 17 years old.

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And we started, you know,

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illegally entering into these parties with our new cool IDs.

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I think I was from Maryland.

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What was your name?

00:08:28 ►

Do you remember?

00:08:30 ►

Same name.

00:08:31 ►

Oh, okay, cool.

00:08:32 ►

Good ID.

00:08:33 ►

They weren’t stolen IDs.

00:08:36 ►

They were refurbished.

00:08:38 ►

It was a fancy thing.

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Just as a little aside, a friend of mine in college was an art major,

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and he made the fake IDs for us.

00:08:45 ►

Oh, sweet.

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By making a great big copy of our ID and then a cutout for the picture.

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And you’d sit behind it, and he’d take your picture.

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So everybody had the same name.

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But he took one of himself, leaning out and pointing at his age.

00:09:00 ►

And he inadvertently showed that one night in a bar.

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And a whole bunch of us got called in on that

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one yeah I’m sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt you go ahead no it’s fine I am very happy to dip into

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nostalgia I kind of I just turned 27 and I I still get a little nervous when I go into bars sometimes

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like I’m drinking I lost on tap in the Amazon and yet I feel like an imposter when I go try to get a beer somewhere

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that that will never go away I promise you I’m sorry is that true all right let’s

00:09:31 ►

so uh yes I mean so that so yeah again like ritual altered states um burning man and then I found I

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ran into like the psychedelic trance scene. So, you know, 180 to 240 beats per minute, just loved it all. And then I heard about ayahuasca and different

00:09:56 ►

plant medicines, kind of like in, in whispers. Like I always thought about it like, you know,

00:10:03 ►

in Harry Potter, you don’t say Voldemort out

00:10:05 ►

loud like people kind of always under the breath kind of thing and I found it very interesting

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because it wasn’t it wasn’t spoken of like any other thing you know there was like a reverential

00:10:17 ►

air to it and the more I learned about it I learned that it actually came from cultures and from people who are still, you know, practicing lifestyles in a way that are, you know, in ritual and in harmony with their environment.

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So obviously I was like, should we go there?

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Went to my first ceremony in a yoga studio almost nine years ago now.

00:10:49 ►

studio almost nine years ago now and um and then from there I just went full gonzo anthropologist you know I was like working as a waitress during the evenings and then save up all my money to go

00:10:56 ►

to ceremonies and it was it was probably not a very wise thing I didn’t have like a discerning

00:11:01 ►

eye for it at the time but I just went super deep into the ayahuasca underground as it were in New York and uh let me interrupt you let me interrupt you for

00:11:13 ►

just a second Sophia you shouldn’t feel bad about not having an eye for it in the beginning

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first of all you were still a teenager or in your early 20s and none of us had an eye for it I was in my 40s when I found ayahuasca

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and I behaved very much like you did so don’t don’t feel bad about that we all had to learn

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as we go and that’s what you’re doing is helping people learn so I didn’t mean to interrupt you

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but I want you to feel good about where you’re coming from I appreciate no I mean yeah it’s

00:11:40 ►

you know I guess we don’t we don’t have, there’s no manual and there’s no framework for these things. And that’s, that is both the beauty and the peril of working with psychedelics. And, you know, in all of this, it’s that it’s, it is ambiguous and weird. And, and there are things happen, you know, tell me that there was a lot of gunk in my energy because of all of the different people I was drinking ayahuasca with.

00:12:11 ►

So it is, you can interpret that different ways.

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But yeah, so yeah, I was going to these ceremonies.

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I was like gonzo anthropologist.

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And then I said, you know, when you’re in college, you’re like 19 and you’re like, what am I going to study?

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And then I said, well, I’m just going to study ayahuasca.

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So then I became an anthropologist.

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I was like, not going to be math, not going to be this.

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I kind of looked around and I liked anthropology.

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And my parents hated anthropology.

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Okay.

00:12:44 ►

Yep. and my parents hated anthropology okay uh yep and from there I just I and then I and then I

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hooked up with a community called the Sequoia in the Ecuadorian Amazon um and I think that’s like

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kind of the that’s the that’s the story I tell every time but that’s really the kind of pivotal

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moment in my life where um now how how did you get there to connect with them how did how did this all

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what led to it there’s like a there’s like a meta story to i mean i won’t bore you it’s your it’s

00:13:12 ►

your night so let’s let’s hear your story i’m really i’m really fascinated because you you can

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you can inspire and so many people can relate to you not just young people but parents you know we

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have a lot of people listening who are the age of your parents who are

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wondering what’s going on with their children too, you know,

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and I’ve got grandchildren who are not much younger than you.

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So, you know, you’re, you’re,

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you have a lot more going for you than you realize.

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And I want you to just, you know, let us know how you,

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how you made these connections. How do you,

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how did you have the courage to step out from what

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a lot of your peers must have been doing how did i have the courage i wish i could give myself that

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much credit you know but it was it was more like a magnetism it was it wasn’t like uh i’m gonna go

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do this thing it was like there’s no other thing to do kind of um interestingly I guess I learned about the Sequoia were a

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small indigenous community in Ecuador and Amazon dwindling population around

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500 people right now through Daniel and through Jonathan Miller Weisberger who

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you may have spoken with before.

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You know, he was here just like two or three weeks ago.

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Oh, he was?

00:14:30 ►

Yes.

00:14:30 ►

Great.

00:14:33 ►

Yeah, I had a feeling we might be in the same orbit.

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I’m a big fan of Jonathan.

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Great guy.

00:14:38 ►

He is a wonderful man.

00:14:39 ►

Very special man, yeah. So actually, Jonathan was like a kind of role model of mine for a while,

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you know, because he had such a,

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such a profound relationship with,

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you know,

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with the plants and ethnobotany and this Taoist outlook.

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He was kind of surfer chill.

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He’s just amazing.

00:14:55 ►

So through Jonathan and through Daniel Pinchbeck,

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who I had met when I was working at Evolver,

00:15:02 ►

which was a company that Daniel started.

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I learned about the Sequoia

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and then one thing led to another.

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I received a small piece of paper

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with a hotmail.com kind of email address.

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And then I booked a flight to Quito, to Ecuador.

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I was told to, you know, be at the airport at this time.

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And I remember going into Barnes and Noble and looking at like a lonely planet or like a trip guide book to make a fake location to give to my parents.

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And I said, I was, I was, was I was like I’m going to this butterfly

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sanctuary you know and really so I don’t know I don’t know that I really shaved a couple of years

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off of their life with that trip and you’re and you say you have no courage

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again I wouldn’t give myself that much credit. I think it was, yeah, maybe it was a little courage or blind stupidity, but it went well.

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You know, it went well.

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And I mean, it’s hard to say, you know, I guess it’s all good until it isn’t good with

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this sorts of things, right?

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So I got lucky, but good people.

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And of course, Jonathan knew them.

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So I knew I was in good hands.

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And yeah, I mean, long story short, I ended up visiting the Sequoia several times going to the Ecuadorian Amazon and really beginning to research. My approach was always like two dimensions, two layers, you know, there was that academic level of inquiry, reading the texts and this and so on and then actually having a personal growth relationship being like a young lady and learn and healing and getting over stuff

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you know and growing up with the medicine so and that’s and that’s been

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my approach since and then I mean really since then being in with the Sequoia

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there they they were hit by one of the worst environmental catastrophes in the region in 1964,

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which was an oil spill, which some people call like the Chernobyl of the Amazon, like unbelievable.

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So I went there kind of bright eyed and bushy tailed, excited about everything.

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And I saw a scale of environmental devastation of unfathomable proportions.

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You know, just like you can’t even, when you see it like that, you just can’t.

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And so a lot of my trips, my working with the medicine was actually becoming those landscapes.

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My brain turned into like a petrol sponge and my body was like cogs of a

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machine. And, and, and I really, really felt that. And then, you know,

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from there,

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my work with psychedelics has always been very much related to like this sort

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of transpersonal relationship to the land, you know?

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So it’s never been just about me, although you, you do have to do the work.

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You do have to clean the house and check up on things you know uh kathleen harrison calls it like mending baskets weaving baskets you

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know but my my work here and i think what i what i what i bring is really the ecological perspective

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which is really that these psychedelics can allow us to feel these environments in a way that we’ve caught ourselves up from. So, and that’s pretty much it.

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And from there, I’ve just been moving closer and closer to the Amazon,

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studying in Spanish, researching environmental devastation,

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and just getting so, you know, the intersection psychedelics and that.

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And finally they’re all starting to come together,

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which is really cool to see you know really awesome so you know your story Sophia brings out two two things that

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I find really fascinating one is having no no childhood enmeshed in in Catholicism like a lot

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of people like a lot of us and still you were drawn to ritual uh which i find really fascinating as a

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human characteristic and the other thing is something that everybody talks about all of us

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that have had any psychedelic experience particularly with ayahuasca is the environmental

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aspect it pulls you deeper into the planet to the to the whole mesh of living life on the planet.

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And we’ll get into how you met Daniel and all in a bit.

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Daniel, you know, he was the fourth speaker here in the salon.

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Daniel and I go way back.

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So I’d like to hear that story too.

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But I want to hear a little bit more about the book that the two of you have written.

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And as I told you in the email, people here in the salon know quite a bit about ayahuasca.

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We’ve covered it quite a bit.

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But the last chapters in your book talk about, as I understand, I haven’t read it yet.

00:19:56 ►

I’ve just read reviews of it.

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You talk about how ayahuasca really is moving in, moving out of the jungle into culture, and how that’s affecting both

00:20:07 ►

culture and the jungle and the people who really have grown up, you know, a thousand years with

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ayahuasca. So you want to, you know, talk about some of that a little bit? Yeah, I mean, I think

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the main thing with the book, you know, is that there, there is no one story about ayahuasca.

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And the only story that myself and Daniel are able to tell is the one of it traveling beyond

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the Amazon, right? So I could never pretend to give an indigenous perspective or this or that.

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But what we really wanted to do is create, well create well actually we didn’t even have that intention so much as it just kind of emerged we just started interviewing people I think I organized

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80-ish interviews with different people and it was just people mostly from the global north or the

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west um who had whose lives had been transformed by ayahuasca. So they were everyone from large real estate developers to physicians

00:21:07 ►

to people battling chronic illness,

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people who I call like first-generation drinkers.

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You know, like their families don’t know.

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There’s no context for it, and yet it’s a part of their lives

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in a pretty, like, serious way.

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And then from there, yeah, I mean, we just, we, we interviewed, interviewed, and then

00:21:25 ►

I guess I started to see, it’s like a, I used a method that we use in social sciences, which is,

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you’re, you’re looking at the, you’re looking at the transcripts of the interviews and you start

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to see what words pop, float up to the top the most, you know? So the main topics we found were issued like religion gender uh economics so like the commodification of ayahuasca

00:21:48 ►

um the healing effects uh the psychopharmacology and those are kind of how the chapters are

00:21:54 ►

arranged in this sort of like quilt formation um and and that’s but that was fun you know so i

00:22:03 ►

think the book reads you know partially like a, but it’s like a part, it’s

00:22:07 ►

like it goes, it dives, it dives into more of these textbook overviews, sort of literature

00:22:11 ►

analysis of the different people who have been writing and thinking about ayahuasca

00:22:15 ►

to those very tender and personal moments and stories that people have with ayahuasca.

00:22:21 ►

Um, and, and that’s really, yeah, there’s yeah the story is is the phenomenon of it traveling so far you

00:22:29 ►

know beyond the amazon rainforest and then putting that into context you know because

00:22:35 ►

there tends to be a bit of like um some i guess a romanticism no around ayahuasca being this feminine entity that’s coming and and enamoring

00:22:48 ►

the world and that’s one perspective which maybe I have a little bit or you look at it in context

00:22:55 ►

and say listen psychoactive plants have been shaping civilizations for thousands of years

00:23:00 ►

and if you look at ayahuasca next to coca or coffee or, I mean, shout it out,

00:23:08 ►

you name it, you know, sugar, we have all of these plants have dramatically shifted the way that we

00:23:14 ►

work as a society. So what I hope, you know, when we’re bringing to the table with it is really

00:23:20 ►

saying, looking at ayahuasca from that historical perspective what is the what legacy

00:23:27 ►

might ayahuasca leave right what are the properties or the personality of ayahuasca and how does that

00:23:35 ►

how does that translate to to our daily lives so it’s it’s an it’s been an interesting trip that

00:23:41 ►

book yeah it was it was hard to write it was you know it’s fascinating as

00:23:46 ►

as you point out how ayahuasca has has all of a sudden sort of blossomed at least in the the

00:23:53 ►

western world in in particular and you know i it’s been a little over 20 years since i had my first

00:23:59 ►

experience but i spent a full close to 10 years before that searching for ayahuasca.

00:24:05 ►

It was almost impossible to find. And, and as I tell people now,

00:24:10 ►

you don’t have to search for it. It’ll find you when you’re ready.

00:24:13 ►

And that’s what happens now. But once it found me, I was fortunate to,

00:24:18 ►

you know, come into a group where Don Jose Campos was our,

00:24:23 ►

our ayahuasquero and he’s performed, you know, uh,

00:24:26 ►

ayahuasca ceremonies on I think every continent except Antarctica now.

00:24:31 ►

And, uh, he, you know,

00:24:32 ►

I’ve talked to him about in broken English Spanish because unfortunately,

00:24:36 ►

like, unlike you, I don’t speak Spanish, but, but, uh, he,

00:24:41 ►

he talked about how he’d received and and many of his Ayahuasquero friends had received sort of a message that it’s time to bring it out to more people, that she wanted to get the message out.

00:24:54 ►

And the two things that I, until just tonight, I thought Ayahuasca was a refuge for us, what my mother called a fallen Catholic, you know, because I’d left the church.

00:25:06 ►

I liked the ritual. I missed the ritual. And Ayahuasca provided that.

00:25:11 ►

But now you provide evidence that it’s a human need for ritual coming, not necessarily from a childhood memory. is the environmental aspects of it. That never, never in human history

00:25:25 ►

have we needed an environmental message,

00:25:30 ►

mission statement from the plants

00:25:34 ►

like we get in the ayahuasca.

00:25:36 ►

Yeah.

00:25:37 ►

We see in the United States

00:25:39 ►

this emerging demographic of people

00:25:42 ►

who are called SBNRs,

00:25:44 ►

which means spiritual but not religious.

00:25:48 ►

So, you know, it was like the big cults of the SBNRs.

00:25:52 ►

But that’s true.

00:25:53 ►

Yeah, I appreciate you saying it that way, I guess.

00:25:57 ►

I always felt like it was a nap.

00:26:00 ►

It really came from a deep, deep internal place, you know,

00:26:03 ►

that I wanted to connect. And,

00:26:05 ►

and, and you could argue, I mean, I’ve, I’ve looked at the different, I was very interested

00:26:09 ►

at looking at the different, um, stories people tell about ayahuasca. So let’s say,

00:26:16 ►

you know, you have this word ayahuasca and next to it, you say drug, then you say medicine, then you say grandmother, you say devil’s

00:26:25 ►

potion, savior, panacea.

00:26:29 ►

And you can create a whole word cloud with dozens of different, you know, describers.

00:26:35 ►

And I find that so interesting.

00:26:37 ►

So really, I mean, we have a bit of a, if you look in the newspaper articles and even just for me, anecdotally, people talk about

00:26:47 ►

ayahuasca like some sort of a healing panacea, you know, like it’s coming and to save us all

00:26:52 ►

and reconnect us. But if you look historically, really, at different communities in the Amazon,

00:26:59 ►

you see that there are different uses for the plants. know it’s been used for both lightness and darkness

00:27:05 ►

it’s yin yang it’s healing and sorcery it’s divining the location of you know animals and

00:27:12 ►

cheating lovers so it’s a tool more than anything so it’s a very interesting thing it’s like a

00:27:17 ►

reflection of our consciousness and and and what we see is so much of this, like you, I mean, I’m sure everyone’s heard like mother ayahuasca or grandmother ayahuasca, but as far as my research and knowledge goes in the

00:27:31 ►

Amazon basin, people don’t refer to ayahuasca as like a feminine entity necessarily.

00:27:36 ►

It’s not as like, you know, gendered.

00:27:39 ►

So does that say something about our desire as like SBNR,

00:27:45 ►

spiritual but not religious, to want some sort of a feminine earth entity?

00:27:52 ►

Do you know what I mean?

00:27:54 ►

Like Gaia herself.

00:27:57 ►

Right, right.

00:27:58 ►

And we create that, you know.

00:28:01 ►

But again, I mean, my perspectives have changed a lot i came to it much

00:28:06 ►

more um less critical and now i find myself adopting more of like a materialist perspective

00:28:15 ►

like i’m i’m i’m like very ambivalent about everything it could be this perspective it

00:28:21 ►

could be that perspective i have no i have no commitment to one view about anything. You remind me of many of us here. And what I’d suggest, I put all of my

00:28:32 ►

podcasts, I archive them up on archive.org. So about 40 years from now, you might want to look

00:28:38 ►

up this interview and see how much you have changed. I won’t be able to be here to ask you

00:28:44 ►

about that.

00:28:45 ►

But I hope Kevin or somebody would look you up and ask them.

00:28:48 ►

Because I think you’ll find it quite fascinating how you change yourself.

00:28:52 ►

Should we put a Google Calendar reminder?

00:28:54 ►

Like, 40.

00:28:57 ►

Let’s hope Google Calendar is gone by then, okay?

00:29:00 ►

I’m glad Jesus finished his tenure.

00:29:04 ►

Yeah.

00:29:09 ►

then okay yeah so let let me uh right now just uh for anybody who who wants to ask some questions let me open it up for some questions here before i i don’t want to hog all of your time myself so

00:29:14 ►

anybody you want to either raise your hand uh in in your video oh go ahead mally uh for someone

00:29:21 ►

who’s done you know in in this New York underground scene,

00:29:26 ►

can you describe the difference between ayahuasca in that scene and then in the native scene?

00:29:34 ►

So, I mean, even within the New York scene, like one ceremony will be radically different from another, you know,

00:29:40 ►

and it’s very much about who’s running it.

00:29:47 ►

you know and it’s very much about who’s running it and you could have a person who went to the jungle for two weeks and as a you know in air quotes a certified shaman or you have masters

00:29:54 ►

who come so for me it’s very much about the actual level of experience that the practitioner brings

00:30:01 ►

and then the place itself is secondary you know um but with that i mean i find

00:30:08 ►

that generally in city contexts the healers are not going to want to bring people as deep

00:30:14 ►

um because you got to go to work the next morning or you got to take the bus or drive home or

00:30:20 ►

whatever and then when you’re in the jungle they you know pour it up and you can just

00:30:26 ►

get tied to a tree if you’re misbehaving and sit there for a couple days and that is what it is

00:30:30 ►

you know so it’s a bit more like freestyle kind of thing over there there aren’t the constraints

00:30:35 ►

of like needing to put your human suit back on the next morning um and then also i mean just

00:30:41 ►

i feel very blessed.

00:30:49 ►

You know, the jungle itself has information, like the sounds of the jungle.

00:30:56 ►

And just, I’m sure you’ve spoken about the Icaros and the actual, the effect that sound has in these spaces. And in the synesthetic kind of weaving of experiences, the colors and the tastes that come with it all.

00:31:03 ►

But the jungle itself, you know, all tastes that come with it all. But the, but the jungle itself,

00:31:05 ►

you know, all of those creatures sometimes come together. I was just thinking of a frog and

00:31:09 ►

there’s a little frog icon here. Yeah, just, they all work together. And I, and I do feel like they,

00:31:17 ►

I don’t know, some, some healers I’ve spoken with, they’ll say, you know, what Lorenzo was saying,

00:31:22 ►

like they, that the, the medicine wants to travel out of the

00:31:26 ►

of the country or whatever um and other ones say that uh it’s too cold everywhere else the medicine

00:31:33 ►

doesn’t want to travel it’s too cold so depends yeah but but i would say the notable difference is

00:31:41 ►

the you know the environment itself and then also the diet right

00:31:47 ►

like when you’re in the jungle you are in a different frequency you’re not munching on cheetos

00:31:54 ►

you’re not texting you’re not distracted with everyday life that we have here so in a way it

00:32:00 ►

is very unique to be able to like pull away from that and have a new environment.

00:32:09 ►

And that deepens, deepens, deepens the work a lot, you know, strips you bare.

00:32:10 ►

Yeah.

00:32:12 ►

Anybody else?

00:32:18 ►

Let me ask you one question while people are thinking of their next question they want to ask.

00:32:23 ►

You said you interviewed people from, you know, a wide range of people. Were they from various cultures?

00:32:26 ►

Like, were they all from, like, North America or Europe?

00:32:30 ►

Or where were the people from you interviewed?

00:32:34 ►

Yeah.

00:32:35 ►

I would say the most diverse, like, section is our chapter on religion,

00:32:40 ►

where we interview people from India who are, you know, traditionally Hindu or, you know, Muslim people from Persia.

00:32:52 ►

Let’s see where else I’m looking at a map right now.

00:32:54 ►

We have people, Native American church, you know, from here.

00:32:58 ►

So, yeah, pretty, pretty wide diversity.

00:33:02 ►

So then let me ask you, did they describe their experiences vastly different or kind of similar?

00:33:08 ►

The reason I ask this, Don Jose said one time he did a ceremony for some native, some Eskimos in the Aleutian Islands,

00:33:19 ►

and that they actually saw anacondas in their vision, which wouldn’t be in their environment at all.

00:33:24 ►

Did you

00:33:25 ►

have any, any comments like that? Well, let’s see. I did, but, and, you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t

00:33:33 ►

interviewing quote unquote, uncontacted people. And the mind is very tricky. It’s very, very

00:33:41 ►

susceptible to suggestions. So even if I just read once

00:33:45 ►

you know that I was this from the Amazon or even if I saw an ayahuasca image it’s

00:33:49 ►

very likely that it could be seeded into my psychedelic adventure with it so it’s

00:33:55 ►

hard to say but I mean you know if you look at like Jeremy Narby’s you know

00:33:59 ►

Rainbow Serpent and if you just look at the motif of kundalini and serpents in general it does seem

00:34:05 ►

like there are some motifs in our subconscious um memory and benny shanan i don’t know if anyone’s

00:34:14 ►

familiar with his work he’s a cognitive psychologist from israel who wrote this his opus is called the

00:34:21 ►

antipodes of the mind and it’s all about the phenomenology of the ayahuasca experience.

00:34:28 ►

So basically what this guy did is he went and interviewed different people

00:34:32 ►

from different communities in the Amazon and in the West who drank ayahuasca.

00:34:36 ►

And he interviewed them right after their ceremonies and said,

00:34:39 ►

what are some of the things that you saw?

00:34:41 ►

And so he created a map of the frequency of the different elements. So castles,

00:34:46 ►

snakes, praying mantis, jewels and pearls and, you know, ornate, you know, lavish settings,

00:34:55 ►

these sorts of things that kind of come up in very frequently in the ayahuasca or just the DMT

00:35:02 ►

realms, which is, it’s a great study. That’s a

00:35:05 ►

really cool one. So yeah, we did, we did see it, but then again, you know, Google ayahuasca and

00:35:10 ►

you already are like infiltrated with a bunch of what you can expect to have, you know? Yeah.

00:35:17 ►

It’s a great question. It’s a great question. Robert, you have a question. Go ahead.

00:35:21 ►

You have a question. Go ahead.

00:35:22 ►

Yes.

00:35:30 ►

Studying the field of psychedelics since about 67 and my own 5-MeO and listening to a lot of Terrence McKenna,

00:35:33 ►

I seem to have settled upon the theory that the first people to take a new substance,

00:35:39 ►

such as the first people to take LSD,

00:35:43 ►

kind of left a bit of an impression on some kind of Akashic field,

00:35:48 ►

which then as more people took it, it became kind of a paradigm,

00:35:52 ►

a standard, you know, the colors, the flashing lights.

00:35:57 ►

And he felt the same might be true with ayahuasca,

00:35:59 ►

that we’re falling into this Amazonian snake,

00:36:04 ►

south of the border motif, but the people who have little experience even up in downtown New York will still tap into that same motif.

00:36:16 ►

And motif itself is evolving as we incorporate more FaceTime and Googling and other things and these mechanical elf machines that Terrence has.

00:36:27 ►

What do you think about that whole idea? Is that understandable?

00:36:31 ►

I mean, would you familiar with the morphogenetic field?

00:36:35 ►

Oh, yes.

00:36:36 ►

Rupert Sheldon. Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of this similar thing. It’s

00:36:41 ►

who can say, you know, but I increasingly sense it you know from a

00:36:47 ►

personal perspective I won’t try to make any like global predictions or

00:36:52 ►

statements about it but the more I work with ayahuasca the more I start to feel

00:36:58 ►

that I’m actually processing things that aren’t mine of this life, you know, like there’s a trans

00:37:06 ►

temporal kind of healing thing happening. So healing, uh, pain from war, uh, from my ancestors,

00:37:17 ►

heal it just sometimes they’re just things. I mean, I’m very clearly like, Oh, that’s not me. So

00:37:22 ►

I do, I do think that we have cellular memory, you know,

00:37:26 ►

we have this memory in our bodies. And it’s true, actually, there are behavioral psychologists who

00:37:30 ►

actually do research on political decision making. And, you know, you can have like,

00:37:34 ►

rational decisions laid out for you, but people won’t make a rational decision, you know, and

00:37:38 ►

that’s because we’re animals, we have these, we have memory in our bodies and we remember scarcity and we remember sexuality or these things that are just encoded in us. And so with that, I mean, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the trans. Am I kind of touching? I know that you’re talking about here and and uh you know it’s it’s uh it gets

00:38:06 ►

kind of i think kind of interesting when you you see the indigenous people who have been

00:38:12 ►

in enmeshed in this culture for millennia you know for it’s it’s part of who they are how how

00:38:19 ►

do they feel about you know not just ayahuasca tourism but about the fact that uh so many people all

00:38:27 ►

around the world not just in the west really are are becoming you know you know brought into this

00:38:33 ►

whole environment yeah i mean i certainly can’t speak for all indigenous people there’s a few that

00:38:39 ►

you know let’s do that the people that i know there’s a variety of responses um and i think

00:38:48 ►

that no matter what everybody says that you know you can take the medicine but it’s with respect

00:38:54 ►

and with acknowledgement of where they come from and with patience and without the hubris of

00:39:00 ►

you know the western uh mind which is very you know it’s the thing we just we take it

00:39:07 ►

and run with it and we think we know what we’re doing i’m speaking for myself you know even me

00:39:11 ►

a feeling like imposter syndrome writing the book yeah you’re speaking for me too so you know go

00:39:16 ►

ahead i know what you mean so yeah i mean there there uh recently there was an ayahuasca conference that was indigenous only,

00:39:25 ►

and it was in Acre, Brazil, which is like a, a jungle state in, in Western Brazil.

00:39:32 ►

And it was very strictly like no press, no Westerners, you know, they really wanted to keep

00:39:38 ►

it, um, within their people. And they were, but it was intercultural indigenous. So there were

00:39:44 ►

people coming from Columbia, there were people coming from

00:39:45 ►

Colombia there were people coming from Peru from and I think that you know what came out of it was

00:39:51 ►

a sense of yeah like we people need to respect our cultures especially with like um there was

00:39:56 ►

something issued about hape or like dape it’s called it’s a tobacco snuff probably familiar

00:40:01 ►

with it um and I see people using it like a club drug sometimes,

00:40:06 ►

you know, you go out and it’s kind of more of like a casual thing. And there are, there are

00:40:10 ►

communities who I think there were Yawanawa people that they make actually like these kinds of

00:40:15 ►

bracelets, who very much disapprove of like the casual use of this sacred medicine. So

00:40:22 ►

I think more than anything, the conflict comes from the lack of

00:40:26 ►

reverence and reciprocity. But if you’re using it with integrity and respect and patience,

00:40:34 ►

I have personally, I haven’t seen people saying, you know, white people inherently cannot work

00:40:42 ►

with this medicine. It’s more just the attitude that, you know,

00:40:47 ►

Westerners tend to bring with them.

00:40:48 ►

It seems like it’s really more important for white people to learn how to work

00:40:52 ►

with this medicine because they can learn so much from it.

00:40:56 ►

You know, that, that I think that’s part of what,

00:40:59 ►

what you are involved in you and so many people who are working with you,

00:41:05 ►

both the indigenous people and Westerners,

00:41:07 ►

who are trying to find ways to introduce this medicine to other cultures

00:41:13 ►

because it isn’t, you know, we don’t have the rituals.

00:41:16 ►

We don’t have the training manuals, like you said.

00:41:19 ►

You’re trying to learn how to use this.

00:41:21 ►

Now, the rituals have been, you know, established for generations,

00:41:26 ►

but now we need rituals that we can interact with. And what I found a little disturbing in

00:41:33 ►

the practice I was involved in is that the group I was involved in eventually started

00:41:38 ►

changing the music from traditional Icaros to other music.

00:41:46 ►

And, you know, I just can’t attend a ceremony that has electronic music

00:41:51 ►

or something like that.

00:41:52 ►

It’s just not the same.

00:41:53 ►

It doesn’t feel quite right.

00:41:55 ►

And so that’s why I’m hoping that we can evolve some rituals that are

00:41:59 ►

cross-cultural that are comfortable for all of us.

00:42:03 ►

And that’s the big opportunity.

00:42:05 ►

You know, that’s what’s so cool.

00:42:06 ►

At the end of the day,

00:42:07 ►

that’s what’s been really interesting

00:42:10 ►

is that there’s plenty of people writing

00:42:12 ►

and talking about ayahuasca,

00:42:14 ►

but we tend to talk about ayahuasca

00:42:15 ►

like it’s just ayahuasca, you know,

00:42:18 ►

or when you talk about the commodification of psychedelics

00:42:21 ►

and going mainstreaming with medicine and stuff,

00:42:24 ►

they talk about just mushrooms

00:42:25 ►

but you have to realize as you were saying it’s like there’s indigenous communities who have been

00:42:30 ►

developing this like unbelievably sophisticated technology of ritual and sound and memory and

00:42:37 ►

movement that’s like integral to the entire experience of healing and you know the things

00:42:42 ►

that we’re usually working to heal are anxiety depression post-traumatic stress disorder and eating

00:42:49 ►

disorders like these are the main guys which most of us in the West experience

00:42:54 ►

to a certain degree because it’s I believe it’s cultural actually you know

00:42:58 ►

it’s biomedicine is good it’s a lot of things but like healing those nebulous illnesses are not one of them,

00:43:06 ►

but it is community and song and space holding and container and continuity that does, does

00:43:14 ►

heal those things.

00:43:15 ►

I think so.

00:43:16 ►

We don’t want to throw, is it throwing the baby out with the backwater?

00:43:21 ►

Do you want to say that?

00:43:21 ►

You know what I mean?

00:43:22 ►

Like, you don’t want to.

00:43:23 ►

You know where that comes from. I won’t, I know where that comes from i won’t i know where that comes from i’m just too old

00:43:27 ►

where’s the original baby go ahead go ahead larry okay um i’m switching gears here a little bit

00:43:36 ►

um because you mentioned snuff so there is a huge tradition in the Amazon about tobacco.

00:43:45 ►

That’s origin tobacco.

00:43:48 ►

Origin of tobacco often has something to do with the origin of language.

00:43:52 ►

And I have never once thought about this.

00:43:55 ►

They’re both spiritual beings, for lack of a better word,

00:44:00 ►

in the Amazon that are plant-based.

00:44:03 ►

What do they think of each other?

00:44:04 ►

Do they even pay any attention to each other?

00:44:06 ►

The plants?

00:44:08 ►

Yeah.

00:44:08 ►

Tobacco and ayahuasca.

00:44:11 ►

Again,

00:44:11 ►

personally.

00:44:13 ►

Yeah.

00:44:13 ►

Yeah.

00:44:13 ►

I mean the,

00:44:14 ►

the tobacco activates the ayahuasca.

00:44:17 ►

Okay.

00:44:18 ►

Big time,

00:44:18 ►

you know,

00:44:18 ►

but again,

00:44:19 ►

I’ve also worked with ayahuasca without tobacco,

00:44:21 ►

but now that I am within,

00:44:24 ►

I’m mostly working within the

00:44:25 ►

Shipibo tradition it’s like things are getting rocky light up a mapacho where you begin you

00:44:31 ►

mapacho is the type of tobacco so in in South America we usually have a one type of tobacco

00:44:39 ►

called nicotiana rustica and then the north we have nicotiana tobacco so that’s the one we have in the cigarettes

00:44:45 ►

we smoke the rustica has much higher in nicotine alkaloids psychoactive nicotine alkaloids so

00:44:51 ►

you’re not trying to like you don’t want to inhale that stuff you’re really gonna put yourself you

00:44:55 ►

get high for you feel tobacco high you know it seems like you know um been there. So, yes, I do think that they have relationship.

00:45:07 ►

And I myself am just beginning to get deep in my relationship with tobacco.

00:45:11 ►

Yeah.

00:45:12 ►

Nice.

00:45:13 ►

Yeah.

00:45:13 ►

It’s a mystery.

00:45:16 ►

Lots to learn.

00:45:18 ►

What about other admixtures to ayahuasca?

00:45:21 ►

I know that I’ve had experiences with datura and other things.

00:45:26 ►

Is that common in the groups that you’ve worked with?

00:45:30 ►

It’s not, no.

00:45:31 ►

I mean, yeah, if you go like the sequoia, they do use,

00:45:35 ►

they call it peyi, which is also datura,

00:45:38 ►

but it’s an initiatory admixture.

00:45:44 ►

So you’re not trying to have, I mean, it’s after 10,

00:45:47 ►

20 years of practice and work. And this is,

00:45:51 ►

it’s a plant that can cause cardiac arrest, you know, so it’s not a joke.

00:45:55 ►

It’s very serious.

00:45:57 ►

Our group had been together for quite a while before we did that the first

00:46:00 ►

time. And it, it, it was never repeated.

00:46:06 ►

Let me kind of shift gears just a little bit more, too, because we’ve had a are the most vulnerable to shoddy ayahuasca tourism.

00:46:31 ►

What kind of advice can you give not just to young women, but to anybody who is who is, you know, just feeling their way for the first time and would like to become more involved in authentic ayahuasca experiences yeah great question well um there’s a website

00:46:47 ►

called chakruna.com and or.net sorry chakruna.net um and they recently published guidelines for

00:46:54 ►

sexual abuse in ayahuasca circles so it’s a pretty exhaustive list of like different

00:47:01 ►

questions you can be asking different approaches to take but i mean

00:47:05 ►

you know from i i guess looking back now i would say the things to do are one do your research you

00:47:12 ►

know know get if you can be in touch with people who have previously been to the center reach out

00:47:18 ►

um be in touch with your facilitators so people who are not the shamans or the servers necessarily but

00:47:25 ►

you know you can you you develop a rapport relationship with them if you really want to

00:47:30 ►

go big you know bring a friend with you make sure that you’re there’s a buddy system accountability

00:47:36 ►

and then there’s one line i really like in those guidelines which goes he’s a shaman not a saint

00:47:42 ►

which basically means like don’t assume anything

00:47:46 ►

you know like don’t assume i mean people in the jungle are just like us you know and they have

00:47:53 ►

sexual desires and impulses and if you have a young pretty girl that’s hanging around all the

00:47:59 ►

time you know it may not be it may look like you are offering, you know, it’s just, you need to be clear about

00:48:07 ►

these things. So there’s no like law that shamans can’t sleep with the people who come. So it’s

00:48:15 ►

really about being very clear. And I think that’s where facilitators are very important because

00:48:20 ►

they’re translating those intercultural complexities in a way that sometimes, you know,

00:48:26 ►

we don’t get by that first experience, like coming in a tank top and going around or whatever.

00:48:33 ►

You just be confident.

00:48:36 ►

Another thing I think facilitators are good for is depending on what your intention is going to the jungle for an experience.

00:48:44 ►

I know that I’m a Vietnam vet, and there’s a number of Vietnam veterans groups that are going to the jungle for an experience. I know that I’m a Vietnam vet and there’s a number of Vietnam veterans groups

00:48:47 ►

that are going to the jungle now for treatment with PTSD.

00:48:50 ►

And we’re going to have some on here in,

00:48:53 ►

in a few weeks that we’ve had on before and hearing the results are just

00:48:58 ►

astounding. You know, that, that I know that without ayahuasca,

00:49:01 ►

I wouldn’t be here right now. And I know that with a lot of my friends, too.

00:49:06 ►

It’s a very important medicine.

00:49:09 ►

It’s a very important plant.

00:49:11 ►

And yet, like you say, if we’re not careful, it gets too sensationalized, I should say.

00:49:19 ►

We don’t want to go back to the LSD phrase of the 60s.

00:49:23 ►

And ayahuasca is getting so popular so many people

00:49:26 ►

are talking about it that don’t really know much so i want to circle back around to how did you

00:49:31 ►

connect with daniel pinchbeck and work him into writing a book with you and i mean that’s a real

00:49:38 ►

coup let me tell you i know daniel pretty well not real well but we’ve been friends a long time. How did that come about?

00:49:46 ►

So I mentioned earlier, I worked at Evolver,

00:49:49 ►

which is a company that he started.

00:49:52 ►

And at the time I had written my undergraduate thesis on ayahuasca.

00:49:57 ►

So I wrote this like little book called God’s multicolored people.

00:50:02 ►

And it was all about working with the Sequoia in Ecuador

00:50:06 ►

and telling the story from,

00:50:09 ►

we call them like personal ethnography in anthropology.

00:50:13 ►

So, you know, not having this like cool distant approach,

00:50:17 ►

but actually weaving your own,

00:50:19 ►

who you are and what you’re doing.

00:50:20 ►

So I very much wrote about being an awkward white girl

00:50:23 ►

in the forest and not having any idea what I was doing. So I very much wrote about being an awkward white girl in the forest and not having any idea what I was doing and whatever. And I showed it to Daniel and he loved it.

00:50:31 ►

And, you know, we stayed in touch over the years, but I moved to Spain. I lived in Spain for two

00:50:36 ►

and a half years. I did my master’s there. And Daniel had been, you know, offered to write a book about ayahuasca.

00:50:45 ►

He was asked to write a book about it.

00:50:47 ►

And he’s, you know, I guess, frankly, he said, I’m a bit stuck.

00:50:52 ►

And, you know, I remember you wrote this thing.

00:50:54 ►

Do you want to be a research assistant and we can collaborate?

00:50:59 ►

So I moved back to New York.

00:51:01 ►

I was already going.

00:51:03 ►

And, yeah, and then I just set up the interviews and I picked that back up.

00:51:07 ►

And eventually I was with a gentleman named Barnaby Rue, who’s a professor at New York

00:51:12 ►

University.

00:51:12 ►

Maybe you know his work.

00:51:14 ►

And I was doing an interview with him and he said, hey, wait a minute.

00:51:18 ►

Why don’t you write the book too?

00:51:20 ►

And I said, holy cow, why don’t I write the book?

00:51:23 ►

What a crazy idea.

00:51:24 ►

And then I asked Daniel, can I write the book what a crazy idea and then I asked Daniel can I

00:51:26 ►

write the book and he said yeah I was gonna ask you anyway great and and so and it really worked

00:51:34 ►

out very nicely for me so I’m I’m infinitely grateful I got like a big leg up with you know

00:51:40 ►

kind of boost with that but um I think I’ve been wielding this power pretty you know graciously and patiently and it’s been really fun yeah and the I mean the process of

00:51:50 ►

co-authoring is like an adventure you know because you never know I guess it was I mean Daniel and I

00:51:56 ►

are both kind of abstract so like being like okay let’s sit down and write the thing and

00:52:02 ►

but it was fun we actually had a lot of fun interviewing different people.

00:52:06 ►

Him and I had arguments writing the book, you know, like really.

00:52:10 ►

But we should almost do a behind the scenes of the book, like the different.

00:52:15 ►

At some point he was calling me the ayahuasca sheriff

00:52:17 ►

because he thought I was getting too judgmental about people’s use of ayahuasca.

00:52:22 ►

I can hear him saying that.

00:52:21 ►

about people’s use of ayahuasca.

00:52:24 ►

I can hear him saying that.

00:52:28 ►

Yeah, because he’s more of like into life,

00:52:31 ►

remixing and evolving and doing things.

00:52:34 ►

I won’t ask you any of your pet names for him,

00:52:35 ►

but that’s okay.

00:52:39 ►

But Daniel is a brilliant guy,

00:52:41 ►

but he could be difficult to work with.

00:52:43 ►

So I’m very impressed that you two pulled that off.

00:52:44 ►

I’m not too easy to work with either. So I think we were both equally unpleasant and just fine now you’re on a book tour

00:52:51 ►

right now and you you just uh you just finished uh working with uh a a comedian who’s one of my

00:52:58 ►

favorites because since I heard him on Joe Rogan you know him yeah tell us more about that yeah

00:53:03 ►

well it’s actually not only did we finish

00:53:05 ►

we’re actually just beginning which is crazy um so shane moss is a dear friend of mine him and i

00:53:13 ►

met this summer and we were walking around barefoot at a festival that we were both speaking at in in

00:53:19 ►

hungary and we didn’t stop talking for four and a half days. We were just talking about science and psychedelics and evolution and

00:53:27 ►

everything. And so Shane runs us two, two main projects. He does,

00:53:31 ►

he does psychedelic standup science, which is all about, you know,

00:53:35 ►

interviewing scientists and showcasing their research,

00:53:38 ►

but also making jokes about evolution and bizarre reproduction patterns and

00:53:43 ►

just the oddities of life and science

00:53:46 ►

and then he has another show called head talks i’m sorry that’s our show um uh a good trip which

00:53:53 ►

is all about drugs and you know the main mission is to really destigmatize and educate about

00:53:58 ►

psychedelics and so this third sort of initiative is called Head Talks. So it’s about psychedelics and science, psychedelic science.

00:54:09 ►

So, yeah, so Shane and I, I’m like the, you know, the guest for now.

00:54:13 ►

And I do a 20-minute to 30-minute kind of lecture on ayahuasca, put it into context.

00:54:20 ►

I do a basic kind of overview for lay audiences.

00:54:27 ►

context I do a basic kind of overview for lay audiences and then Shane goes up and does a set about you know psychedelics and science and then we have a Q&A after and I have to say it’s been

00:54:34 ►

unbelievably fun I was a little bit nervous you know just going up to stage and being

00:54:41 ►

all over cities I don’t know with populations which might be

00:54:45 ►

maybe a bit more conservative or I just don’t know who I’m talking to you know

00:54:48 ►

and it’s we’ve gotten really really great feedback we’ve had all sold out

00:54:53 ►

shows so far so we’re gonna hit up a bunch more cities in February and May

00:55:01 ►

anybody who isn’t familiar with with Moss, I first learned about him, I think

00:55:06 ►

it was like three or four years ago, he was on Joe Rogan. And he’s all over YouTube now. He’s got

00:55:11 ►

some of the funniest stuff. And when I find myself, because I’m a writer and I get myself

00:55:17 ►

uptight sometimes, when I find myself getting so uptight, I can’t get to sleep at night.

00:55:21 ►

I’ll smoke a joint and listen to two or three of his bits on youtube and it just relaxes me he is one of the funniest guys he’s got some great you know takes on things

00:55:31 ►

so so off kilter that you don’t expect and say oh i should have thought of that myself you know he

00:55:38 ►

really so i i envy you traveling around he is a We’re having too much fun. It shouldn’t be allowed.

00:55:45 ►

I’m like, is this my life?

00:55:46 ►

Like we’re driving in the car

00:55:48 ►

or the gas station

00:55:49 ►

or we’re not smoking DMT.

00:55:53 ►

And so if you get to San Diego,

00:55:55 ►

I’ll be there.

00:55:56 ►

Yeah.

00:55:57 ►

No, we’ll come through.

00:55:59 ►

I’ll check your schedule.

00:56:01 ►

But anyhow, it’s something I hope.

00:56:03 ►

And you guys are doing this in conjunction, at least in some with maps is that right yes mops is a is a is a sponsor and

00:56:11 ►

they’re oh i opened something up here uh maps is a sponsor and we’re also working with dance safe

00:56:16 ►

which is a non-profit you know harm reduction education um so and that’s been really great yeah

00:56:23 ►

and then i work also with um you know my

00:56:25 ►

organization that i work with temple of the way of light which is a retreat center in peru ayahuasca

00:56:30 ►

retreat center and their sister non-profit which is called the chaikuni institute so it’s all about

00:56:36 ►

reforestation regenerative ayahuasca production um and those are kind of like the you know the

00:56:43 ►

the different aspects we bring to this show because really at the end like the, you know, the different aspects we bring to the show.

00:56:46 ►

Because really at the end of the day, you know, we’re doing these shows, but the idea is to create culture and community where we do the shows, right?

00:56:53 ►

So it’s not like you do the thing, you say, oh, that was weird.

00:56:56 ►

And you go back to your daily life.

00:56:58 ►

So we’re actually supporting communities making psychedelic societies if they haven’t been started already or book clubs or you know salons

00:57:05 ►

or whatever it is just to create more of a culture where you can have people to integrate with and so

00:57:10 ►

those organizations map stand safe um can support that moving forward really transforming culture

00:57:17 ►

grassroots style yeah well i’ll i’ll cross pollinate you guys with some people that are

00:57:22 ►

going to be on uh next year who have started know, some guys got together about six months ago to try to get more people to come out of the psychedelic closet on social media.

00:57:32 ►

And in just a few months now, they have like 400 people in 40 countries, and their goal is to have 100,000 people by the end of next year.

00:57:39 ►

And so tying them in with some of the things you’re doing.

00:57:43 ►

And so tying them in with some of the things you’re doing, and it’s just time for us to start standing up and talking about this and to

00:57:48 ►

put your mind at ease a little bit in conservative communities. You know,

00:57:52 ►

you, you won’t go to a community where there aren’t a number of people who are

00:57:57 ►

well into psychedelics. And in particular,

00:57:59 ►

there’ll be a lot of young people who will come into your shows because it’s

00:58:03 ►

the first chance they’ve had to in public to kind of acknowledge the fact that they’re interested in these things. So

00:58:08 ►

the service that you guys are doing, particularly in the smaller towns, I think is really valuable.

00:58:13 ►

And I applaud you both for that. Any chance you think I can get the two of you on maybe at the

00:58:18 ►

end of your tour next year sometime? Yeah, definitely. For sure. why don’t we do that when when unless you we can do either

00:58:26 ►

do it to publicize some uh tours to smaller towns or at the end of the year tour but i’d love to get

00:58:31 ►

the two of you on to kind of give us a wrap on how it was and how you uh found people in in uh

00:58:38 ►

across the land that would be fun we could do it in febru February or May or September. Those are some of our dates. We’re going to be releasing some of those dates like actually tomorrow. So yeah, can do, can do.

00:58:54 ►

Well, this will be out in a podcast a week from today and I’ll put those dates in the program notes for the podcast. And then I’ll just stay in touch with the two of you guys and then when you think it’s coming

00:59:05 ►

an auspicious time we’ll just set it up and do it yeah I hope really we see like I see people

00:59:10 ►

from different places there we’re coming to a lot of cities so if we’re nearby please come out it’s

00:59:16 ►

so fun it’s like it’s too fun what what what cities you know you’re going to right now all right so i would pull up my map

00:59:26 ►

here but in february we’re going to be doing savannah atlanta chattanooga we’re mostly hitting

00:59:33 ►

the south um and we’ll finish up in in in austin again um then we’re going to be in we’re going to be doing the Dakotas all the way.

00:59:47 ►

I’m looking at a map in my mind.

00:59:50 ►

We’re going west and then to the west coast.

00:59:53 ►

I just want to tell you, Sophia, I just so admire what you’re doing.

00:59:57 ►

And I truly believe you’re such an inspiration for young people that I hope you keep up the good work for the rest of your life.

01:00:05 ►

Thanks.

01:00:06 ►

Go tell my parents that.

01:00:08 ►

You know, I wasn’t that generous to my own children, but I am to my grandchildren now.

01:00:14 ►

I finally figured it out.

01:00:16 ►

You know, it’s tough being a parent.

01:00:19 ►

Yeah.

01:00:20 ►

Little life is weird.

01:00:21 ►

It’s a funny adventure.

01:00:22 ►

You make it, you know.

01:00:25 ►

You’ll make it. You’ll make it. And my best to your parents.

01:00:30 ►

And listen, we’re out of time tonight now. And so I want to thank everybody for being here.

01:00:35 ►

This is going to be our last live salon until next year. And I’ll be in touch with all of you for after the holidays.

01:00:42 ►

But until next year, everybody, keep the old faith and stay high

01:00:46 ►

thanks everyone

01:00:50 ►

and for now this is lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space namaste my friends Thank you.

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