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Podcast 695 – The Legendary D.M. Turner

Feb 26, 2024, 65 min read

Program Notes

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Guest speakers: Elizabeth Gips and D.M. Turner

Today’s podcast features what may be the only recorded interview of the legendary D.M. Turner. It was conducted by Elizabeth Gips.

FROM EROWID.ORG

Elizabeth Gips, was the beloved “psychedelic grandmother” and host of the radio show Changes where she interviewed hundreds of visionaries over a 30-year span.

D.M. Turner (born Joseph Vivian; 5 October 1962 – 31 December 1996) was an author, psychedelic researcher, and psychonaut who wrote two books on psychoactive drugs and entheogens. His first book, The Essential Psychedelic Guide, showcased his views on the subjective effects of various psychoactive and hallucinogenic substances. His second book, Salvinorin, addressed the effects of Salvia divinorum. Turner died after injecting an unknown quantity of ketamine while in a bathtub, drowning while presumably incapacitated by the effects of the drug.

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Transcript

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Three-dimensional, transforming, musical, linguistic objects.

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Alpha Shades.

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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

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And today we’re going to listen to what I

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think of as a real treat. Ever since I became actively engaged in the psychedelic community,

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I’ve been hearing about the legendary D.M. Turner, DMT, who wrote what was one of the first

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underground psychedelic books. And for what it’s worth, this is the only recording of D.M. Turner that I know of.

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After searching for several years, well quite a few years actually,

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I recently found this recording buried in the middle of a longer MP3 file on archive.org.

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I think it was posted by James Kent, who I knew briefly back when I was still doing MindState seminars,

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and what I remember best about him is his seriousness about psychedelics,

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and the fact that I never saw him when he wasn’t wearing a suit and tie.

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He is our generation’s version of William S. Burroughs in that regard.

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Turner’s book, The Essential Psychedelic Guide, was published in 1994. At the time,

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there was very little literature about psychedelics that was available to the

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average person, like me. So Turner’s book became an instant classic. One of my friends has a copy,

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and while I can see that it was an invaluable resource back in the day, well, today the only

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reason I can see to spend $150 for a copy is, well, if you’re a book collector. But that doesn’t take away from its value at the

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time it was published. As we listen to this conversation, please keep in mind that it took

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place in the last century when it was still difficult to find much written material about

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the topic. So we shouldn’t hold him to our current level of awareness about psychedelics.

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A lot of new information has made its way into our community over the quarter of a century or Thank you. on the internet. I guess one could say that D.M. Turner was the go-to guy before the internet

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blossomed. Now, let’s enjoy the conversation between Elizabeth Gipps and D.M. Turner.

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The Living Room at 328B Union. I’m doing an interview that I arranged some time ago

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because I’m so impressed with the little book that you put out, D.M.

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This is D.M. Turner, who wrote a book called The Essential Psychedelic Guide. time ago because I’m so impressed with the little book that you put out, DM. Thank you.

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This is DM Turner who wrote a book called The Essential Psychedelic Guide.

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And it’s quite different from any other psychedelic book that’s around actually because it’s personalized.

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That’s right.

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It’s personalized and it gives a lot of direct information on what actually happens when

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you take psychedelics.

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And it’s written based on my own experience as well as experiences of many people that I’ve talked to over the years.

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You must have started young.

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Oh, probably about 13 years old.

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You’re very lucky. I was in my late middle age before it happened to me. Imagine that.

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Let’s talk a little bit about what’s essential about psychedelics to begin with,

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and then go on into some of what you’ve got in your book about the various combinations and so forth.

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Well, what’s essential about psychedelics? In which way?

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Well, why bother writing a book even about it?

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For those who don’t know.

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Sure, there are a few different reasons that I wrote the book.

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I think the main reason is for the people that have not

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already read 20 other books on psychedelics. I’ve been involved a little bit in the rave scene,

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a lot of younger kids going to the all-night dance parties, a lot of people being introduced

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to drugs like ecstasy and LSD at these events, and a lot of them taking it without very much preparation,

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without really knowing very much about the substances,

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without having much of an idea about the potential benefits

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or the potential dangers of using these substances.

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And so I thought that those were the most important people

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that could benefit from a book like this.

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So that was one of my objectives in writing the book.

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The other one is that being a long-term user of psychedelics,

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I’ve tended to develop an interest in some of the more exotic psychedelics,

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DMT, ketamine 2C-B, ayahuasca and the harmela alkaloids.

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And with substances of this type, there’s a precious small amount of literature out there and very little to

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know, first-hand information from people who have experimented with, done these things,

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and are able to talk about dosage levels, methods of using the drugs, and what they

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will experience.

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Before we get into that, what shall I call you, DM?

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Yes.

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Good.

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DM. Before we get into that, what shall I call you, DM? Yes. Good. DM, I’d like to get back yet once again to,

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is there an essence to the psychedelic experience?

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What is it that is not accessible to us going to the bank or the post office or the beach?

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I think the psychedelic experience is a very different experience than what most all people

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experience during their lives.

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Few people try to attain similar experiences through various spiritual practices, meditations,

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yogas, things of that nature.

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Essentially, what happens when someone takes psychedelics is their consciousness, their

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perspective is enlarged. what happens when someone takes psychedelics is their consciousness, their perspective,

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is enlarged. It goes outside of the boundary that they normally consider to be themselves,

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the individual perspective. That is more or less obliterated, and one finds himself

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viewing and experiencing things in life from a vaster perspective from something which is

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Further upstream and consciousness before you sort of narrow down your perspective to that of a human being

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With a particular personality with a particular life that you live lived through which sort of colors everything that you then experience

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So it’s something like like an electron jumping to another

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ring like an electron jumping to another ring, moving around, or is it some kind of quantum

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leap that’s just not ordinarily accessible to us?

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That’s a good analogy. It’s like a quantum leap in consciousness.

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And what’s the importance of that quantum leap for you? Because it’s going to be different

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for various folks, I’m sure. I think the most important thing for me is it gives me a

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vaster and it seems more accurate perspective on everything. You could use the analogy of,

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say, if you were some type of animal that lived only on the ground, you only walked on the surface

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of the ground. So you had one particular perspective of what things looked like

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walking on the surface of the ground.

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Now say you were all of a sudden to be able to become a bird and fly up high in the sky,

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and you were able to see large areas, you were able to see continents and oceans,

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and you were able to take in a much larger picture from this different perspective.

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So then in talking about the experience itself

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and all the different drugs and combinations that you have in here,

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would you like to discuss perhaps some of the differences

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between a DMT experience perhaps or an ayahuasca experience?

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Is there a quantitative or qualitative difference?

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Between those two?

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Well, between any, and if so, what?

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Okay, yes, there are differences.

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I think the most important thing with psychedelics is what I will call

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the basic psychedelic experience, the process of dissolution of the identity

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and moving to a place where you have a larger space of consciousness,

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this happens with all psychedelics to a greater or lesser degree.

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With ecstasy, it’s the only one which does not really quite produce that experience,

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ecstasy not being quite a true psychedelic.

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However, as you experiment with some of the different psychedelics, you

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do find that each one has some own significant things, which it does that none of the other

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ones do.

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Okay, then let’s, for instance, let’s do some for instances, because now we’re getting into

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the nitty-gritty of what your book’s about.

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That’s right.

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Which is detailed, experiential information about what the experiences are.

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I think the two that would be easier to compare would be LSD, which a lot of people know about.

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The experience of LSD tends to be something which is very personal.

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Most of what people experience on LSD either is based on their own set,

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their own personality and makeup of their mind,

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the way that that operates, and what happens when that dissolves

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and that sort of breaks apart and they start seeing things from a free perspective.

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And even with very large amounts of LSD, you tend to stay within the same type of realm,

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even though with the larger amounts, you start experiencing things which you think of the beginnings of life in the universe,

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the whole process of creation.

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Phylogeny and all of that stuff.

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When you start using, and particularly a lot of the natural psychedelics,

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actually what my experience is, is that I come in contact with very old entities.

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We’ll say these entities have been around at least since the first humans started experimenting with these plants.

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Excuse me, is that on any psychedelic? Are we talking about DMT?

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We’re talking natural psychedelics.

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Natural, plant psychedelics.

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Yes, DMT in particular.

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Okay.

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Plant psychedelics.

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And so most of these plant psychedelic entities are at least 4,000 years old.

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Now, when you work with these plant psychedelic entities are at least 4,000 years old.

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Now, when you work with these plant psychedelics,

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what I find is that these entities are actually there.

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They are aware of you.

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They’re aware of you as a person, and they’re able to communicate with you.

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They’re able to tailor the experience in such ways that it moves you along in a particular direction at a particular rate.

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So in a sense you surrender

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to entities who may be wiser

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or have a great deal more

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knowledge of what the universe is all

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about than you can as an individual?

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Whether you surrender

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to these entities is of course

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each person’s decision on whether or not

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they want to do that. My feeling

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is that yes, you do come in contact with entities

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that are much more intelligent than any human.

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So Terence McKenna’s little green men are sort of some of those entities.

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Those are ones which most people encounter when they’re doing something like the entity.

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How do you encounter?

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I’ve encountered those entities.

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Those entities actually seem to be part of a larger entity, which, for lack of a better word, I simply call the DMT entity.

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One of the things I find with my DMT experiences is that regardless of the particular manifestation, which I might be seeing at a given time, it seems that they all partake of the same wisdom and intelligence

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and consciousness. So that I can have an elf, you know, a little green tiny elf, six inches tall,

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come up and communicate with me and tell me something. Or I can have a godlike being,

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some great giant luminous being come down and manifest in, you know, most spectacular,

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shamanistic cross between, you know, say, a bird and a person, or something like that,

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and communicate something to me, which may be much more profound, but both of these seem to

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be partaking of the same wisdom. They’re part of the same communication. I always think that

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I’m dying. That’s what dying is going to be.

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And that’s what the Tibetan Book of the Dead is about in its way.

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So we’re talking about smoking DMT?

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Well, smoking DMT and ingesting DMT do produce different experiences.

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I’ve talked a little bit about this in my book.

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I’ve actually had a lot

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more experience of smoking DMT. It’s relatively quick to do, the whole experience lasting 20

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minutes to 30 minutes at the longest. Ingesting DMT, I feel, though, is the preferable way to do it.

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And how do you ingest it? What substances?

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For DMT to be ingested, you have to take an MAO inhibitor

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at the same time. Traditionally, an MAO inhibitor, MAO, monoamine oxidase, is an enzyme which exists,

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it’s in your stomach, it’s in your blood, it’s in your brain, and it breaks down all sorts of

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different chemicals that are in the metabolic processes. And one of the things that it breaks down all sorts of different chemicals that are in the metabolic processes.

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And one of the things that it breaks down is DMT.

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If someone were to consume DMT without taking an MAO inhibitor,

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it would be destroyed in the stomach.

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They would never feel any effects from it.

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Maybe if they ate enough, they would, but it would have to be a very large amount. It’s interesting.

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What do you suppose the innate function of MAO inhibitors are?

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Is it to keep us from the psychedelic experience?

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Somehow or other, we’re wandering through the jungles of old.

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That is quite possible, actually,

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because a lot of these chemicals, such as DMT,

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is present in our brain all the time.

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Possibly the MAO is something which is like a regulator for this,

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as well as many other things.

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It regulates how many of these chemicals are present in the brain at any given moment,

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which allows us to function on this particular plane as human beings.

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If we had, say, 10 times the amount of DMT in our system than we always do,

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we may not be able to function in this particular realm.

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Is there any evidence, or do you know any, DM,

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to show that there’s a possibility that the more you are high,

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whatever that means to you, but the more you’re high, expanded,

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the less MAO inhibitors there are in the bloodstream?

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That is, there’s something in the physical itself

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that allows different states of consciousness to happen?

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I couldn’t say that based on my…

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So yogis in India we were at,

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what remarkable things they do.

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You want to talk about it?

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Are we on?

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We’re on.

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Okay.

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Yes, the yogis in India,

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even without taking any drugs,

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apparently there is some change in the mixture of the brain chemicals.

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I guess before we go any further, DM,

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I should really give people a little more information about your book,

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and then we’ll announce it again afterward.

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DM Turner is the author of a book put out by Panther Press

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called The Essential Psychedelic Guide.

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I was very impressed by his courage, your courage, not only in experiencing what you’ve experienced,

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a real pioneer in psychedelic consciousness, but in publishing it and exposing yourself

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because I assume the reason that you published this book is in order to pass on the importance of the experience

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and the set and setting to optimize it.

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That’s correct. It’s so that people can learn about these things.

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And so if people are doing them, they can do them in the most appropriate manner

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with the most necessary background information.

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What is happening at the race you talked in the beginning about wanting to reach the younger generation

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to me yes you know I have not really been going to them that much lately so I

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couldn’t really give you enough to date they are still happening they’re still

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going on have they been a venue for higher consciousness or simple or just

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fun or do the two go together I? I think that the two go together. And really I think with any event, one of the things

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that I found when I was attending more of them is that the event is really made up of

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the people that go to it, even more so than the people that are performing at it, the

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DJs are the people that are putting it on so what the state of consciousness is like this

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the uh state of shared consciousness which you may get in events like that it’s very dependent

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on who’s attending it and the state of mind that they’re in okay then to get back to the

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psychedelics themselves uh let’s speak a little bit more about for instance there’s a very large

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There’s a very large ongoing debate about the benefits or disadvantages of, quote, chemical as against, quote, plant substances.

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Would you express how you feel about that?

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Sure. Well, I’ll start off by saying that the first psychedelic that I ever took was LSD, and the effect that it had on me was absolutely profound.

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I was transported to the most magnificent, spiritual, joyous place that I could ever be,

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which was filled with light and knowledge.

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The psychedelic provided everything which is needed of a psychedelic.

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The psychedelic provided everything which is needed of a psychedelic. And I’ve had many other wonderful experiences with this and other chemical substances since then.

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So I don’t have anything against the chemical substances in that they’re not able to do the job.

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There are some problems with chemical substances in that they are usually not pure.

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Why is that? You think they’d be pure?

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The reason for that is that they are being manufactured in underground laboratories.

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That’s the main reason. So the quality of the equipment being used, maybe the starting

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substances, the skill of the chemists involved, all of these things would be different

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if this was something which was legal in society and was able to be done completely above the ground.

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One of the things that I found is that the purity or the quality of these substances

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very much affects the experience.

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In what ways?

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Well, LSD is probably the best example.

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In what ways?

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Well, LSD is probably the best example.

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And I didn’t really write about this in my book, but most of the LSD on the street is not very pure.

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There’s a few reasons for this.

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The most pure LSD that I’ve come across is what people, it goes under the name QuadSep.

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And I don’t really know too much about the chemical process of making this,

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but apparently in the manufacturing they go through a final crystallization and purification stage. So the quad-CEP LSD,

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they go through its final crystallization and repurification process four times,

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and each time they do this, it gets out more of the impurities in the substance.

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Are those impurities, do they tend to make you nauseous, like some of the alkaloids in peyote,

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let’s say? No, I wouldn’t say that they do that.

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When I first had the QuadSep LSD, I actually probably had it a long time ago,

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probably in my high school days.

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However, I did not have any of it for a very long period of time,

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probably for over 10 years, until somebody gave me some,

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maybe about three or four years ago, and I tried it.

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At that point, I had thought that all the LSD I had taken over the previous ten years was completely pure.

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It was all the same, even from the different batches.

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And I took this QuadSep, and I realized at that point that none of what I had taken during the previous ten years had been pure.

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I did recognize that the experience produced by this is something which I had had before,

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but a long time in the past.

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produced by this is something which I had had before, but a long time in the past.

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And the difference is phenomenal.

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With a very pure LSD, there is almost no bodily sensation.

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The feelings which are absent compared to most of the LSD on the street is a very slight amphetamine quality, a very slight edginess that most LSD produces, a slight metallic taste in the

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mouth, a very slight agitation of the nerves. That comes and goes? Well, this is not there.

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I see. It’s not there at all. That’s correct. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that as

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you become more familiar with the experience of LSD,

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actually the feeling of the experience seems to become subtler and subtler.

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When you first take it, it’s sort of like a big barrage of all sorts of new sensations.

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After you’ve been taking it a while and you take some of the LSD which is not pure,

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one of the main things which you experience is actually the impurities. Since LSD itself, pure LSD, is so transparent, it’s almost a completely mental experience. There’s virtually no bodily type of sensation.

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Is this translated into a, quote, bum trip, end quote?

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Not necessarily.

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Something that’s painful?

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Not necessarily, but I think that if all of LSD which had ever been distributed in the underground,

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beginning from the mid-60s onward, had actually been completely pure LSD,

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there would be a much different perception of it.

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The fact that there has basically been almost none of this type of LSD distributed

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does account for why a lot of people do not like certain things about substances of this type of LSD distributed does account for why a lot of people do not like certain

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things about substances of this type.

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Now, when we talk about chemical psychedelics, we also do get into some other families, however,

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such as the phenethylamine substances like MDMA, ecstasy, and 2C-B.

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Is 2C-B and MDMA related?

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Yes, they’re both phenethylamines,

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which is they’re related in chemical structure to mescaline.

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Okay.

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Now, these psychedelics, MDMA in particular,

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is quite hard on the body.

00:21:56 ►

And if you talk to 50 users of it,

00:21:59 ►

they will tell you that they usually feel a little bit wiped out,

00:22:02 ►

drained the following day.

00:22:04 ►

It’s very common.

00:22:05 ►

Besides there’s a clenched jaw effect and shifting eyes.

00:22:08 ►

There are definitely amphetamine side effects.

00:22:12 ►

A lot of the psychedelics, you know, synthetic ones in that family,

00:22:16 ►

they certainly do not have the perceived purity that either the natural psychedelics or LSD have.

00:22:21 ►

So that we’re back at the purity.

00:22:24 ►

So, did I interrupt you in the middle of a sentence?

00:22:28 ►

No.

00:22:30 ►

However, on the other hand,

00:22:32 ►

if you have some, let’s say,

00:22:34 ►

dried psilocybin mushrooms,

00:22:36 ►

you have no way of knowing

00:22:37 ►

what the content of that is.

00:22:41 ►

You are hinting to us

00:22:44 ►

that you may not know what the content of certainly street

00:22:47 ►

psychedelics is, but on the other hand, how do you know what the content of a dried mushroom is?

00:22:52 ►

If you have a dried psilocybe mushroom or dried peyote buttons or something of that nature,

00:22:58 ►

assuming that you are dealing with a psilocybe mushroom, the most common one being psilocybe

00:23:03 ►

cubensis, it’s also called stropharia cubensis,

00:23:06 ►

basically what you have in there is going to be the natural psychedelic in its natural form.

00:23:11 ►

Psilocybin does degrade with age, exposure to heat and oxygen and so on,

00:23:15 ►

so the potency may not be as strong.

00:23:18 ►

However, you don’t have some of the impurities that you would have in a chemical manufacturing process.

00:23:25 ►

Occasionally people do get things on the street which are actually not psychedelic

00:23:29 ►

mushrooms, but they’re some type of, say, a store-bought mushroom which has been dried

00:23:33 ►

and then altered by, like, injecting LSD into it and sold as a psilocybe mushroom.

00:23:37 ►

I don’t know how often that happens.

00:23:40 ►

But if you’re actually dealing with, it seems, you know, what’s mostly available, which are the true psychedelic mushrooms, then you’re dealing basically with a pure substance.

00:23:49 ►

Now, one of the other things that I’ve noticed is that it seems that when people are using the natural psychedelics,

00:23:58 ►

that they very rarely have negative experiences, much less so than something like LSD.

00:24:04 ►

And I think that one of the reasons

00:24:06 ►

for that is that LSD is so transparent that there is…

00:24:10 ►

Well, you better explain transparent.

00:24:12 ►

The transparent, I would say, is that it has very few qualities of its own in terms of

00:24:18 ►

directing the experience. Mushrooms have a very strong flavor to the experience when you take mushrooms you are

00:24:29 ►

if you take a large dose of mushrooms you will definitely feel like you are high on a psychedelic

00:24:33 ►

drug so are you saying that if there is innate intelligence in the substances themselves

00:24:38 ►

one of them tends to control you and in the other case it’s, it’s aiding and abetting you in raising your consciousness or attention or whatever you want to call it.

00:24:51 ►

Yes, I wouldn’t necessarily say that it controls you, but I would say that it is present and that it affects the experience.

00:24:58 ►

And that it is something which someone can learn to listen to and actually learn to work with.

00:25:05 ►

These are, I call them allies is the term I like to use for them.

00:25:10 ►

And these entities exist and they can be communicated with.

00:25:14 ►

They would like to communicate with people.

00:25:15 ►

Is it possible for those people who might be listening who don’t take psychedelics,

00:25:20 ►

do you think it’s possible for them to communicate without the aid of some sacramental substance?

00:25:28 ►

Well, it’s quite possible.

00:25:29 ►

There are a lot of branches of shamanism, which is different routes of essentially altering your consciousness.

00:25:36 ►

Drumming or something like that.

00:25:37 ►

That’s right.

00:25:37 ►

Drumming or chanting or painting, making masks, all sorts of things.

00:25:41 ►

But back to psychedelics, I really want to discuss in some detail,

00:25:47 ►

because I think it’s one of the most valuable parts of your book,

00:25:50 ►

the combinations and the various experiences that you can have on them.

00:25:56 ►

That’s been something that has had very little publicity before.

00:26:01 ►

That’s correct, and that’s one of the reasons I wrote about it,

00:26:03 ►

is because when I had an interest in doing

00:26:05 ►

these things myself, there was not any place that I could find information on it.

00:26:10 ►

You had to experiment.

00:26:12 ►

That’s right.

00:26:13 ►

I had to experiment.

00:26:14 ►

I had to work with each of the individual substances and try to get an idea of how they

00:26:18 ►

would work if they were combined.

00:26:20 ►

Try to get a feeling if it would be appropriate.

00:26:21 ►

Isn’t it scary sometimes?

00:26:22 ►

When Shogun and his group take something,

00:26:25 ►

they take such tiny little bits

00:26:27 ►

and then add a little bit and a little bit and a little bit,

00:26:30 ►

but you just plunge in.

00:26:32 ►

That’s true.

00:26:32 ►

Well, with all the experiences I’ve had,

00:26:35 ►

I would say the most disappointing ones

00:26:36 ►

are the ones when I have not taken enough.

00:26:38 ►

Uh-huh.

00:26:39 ►

When you didn’t die.

00:26:41 ►

Certainly there have been experiences that were unpleasant

00:26:44 ►

when I wished I hadn’t taken as much.

00:26:46 ►

Experiences which were intensely frightening or intensely unpleasant or uncomfortable in different ways.

00:26:54 ►

One of the things I found, though, is that after those experiences are passed,

00:26:57 ►

that I find that I learn a lot from them.

00:27:00 ►

So those experiences will happen once in a while if you’re doing large doses of most any of these substances.

00:27:07 ►

But I think it’s something which should be taken as a part of the process.

00:27:13 ►

Let’s get back to negative experiences a little later.

00:27:16 ►

What substances, what combinations,

00:27:18 ►

we haven’t even mentioned ketamine yet,

00:27:20 ►

but what combinations of sacraments, I like to call them, substances, have you

00:27:26 ►

found were most optimized?

00:27:31 ►

I would say the most optimized, well, certainly there is taking DMT in combination with an

00:27:37 ►

MAO inhibitor, which could be their banisteriopsis, which is how they make the ayahuasca brew

00:27:42 ►

in South America, or with Syrian brew, which is a much more potent MAO inhibitor

00:27:47 ►

and much more readily available.

00:27:49 ►

And this can be done either when DMT is smoked or when DMT is ingested.

00:27:55 ►

Could I give just a little plug for the basement shaman

00:27:58 ►

and tell people that they can get a lot of these Syrian Roo seeds and so forth from them?

00:28:04 ►

Anyway, I just like those folks.

00:28:07 ►

That same substance, I think, combines, the MAO inhibitor is actually combined quite well

00:28:12 ►

with psilocybin as well. Psilocybin is actually very closely related to DMT. As a matter of

00:28:19 ►

fact, it’s almost identical. Psilocybin is basically a long-lasting tryptamine.

00:28:23 ►

So you highly recommend taking an MAO inhibitor if you’re going to do psilocybin is basically a long-lasting tryptamine. So you highly recommend taking an MAO inhibitor if you’re going to do psilocybin mushrooms?

00:28:29 ►

Yes, it will potentiate the mushrooms and it will enhance the experience.

00:28:35 ►

There are some drawbacks, however.

00:28:37 ►

The main one being that these MAO inhibitors are both emetics. They tend to produce nausea. And mushrooms also tend to produce nausea or often give people borderline nausea.

00:28:50 ►

At the beginning.

00:28:50 ►

So, yes, taking the two of them in combination increases the chances that somebody is going to be nauseous during the trip.

00:28:57 ►

That’s not necessarily the worst thing that can happen to somebody.

00:29:00 ►

Yes, sometimes it’s a real pleasure.

00:29:02 ►

That’s correct.

00:29:07 ►

However, to be aware that that’s a possibility.

00:29:07 ►

That’s right.

00:29:11 ►

So we’re talking about an MAO inhibitor, Syrian Roux,

00:29:14 ►

especially because it’s so potent, and psilocybin.

00:29:16 ►

What other combinations, Dan?

00:29:21 ►

The other combinations which I found to be particularly useful are,

00:29:27 ►

this gets back into the synthetic drugs again, is combining 2C-B with ketamine.

00:29:29 ►

And why is that?

00:29:30 ►

Ketamine, I’ve only experienced it once.

00:29:33 ►

I’m really glad because I’m sure I’d get addicted.

00:29:36 ►

It’s such a beautiful experience.

00:29:38 ►

But you’re out like that.

00:29:40 ►

I mean, there’s no time between ingesting or having it shot into you and being gone.

00:29:47 ►

Well, yes, ketamine is extremely different than any of the other psychedelics.

00:29:51 ►

You don’t have time to get scared.

00:29:53 ►

It seems that the mechanism by which it works is almost the opposite of the regular psychedelics

00:29:58 ►

and that you become unconscious. It’s an anesthetic where the other psychedelics make you super

00:30:03 ►

conscious. Ketamine, in that sense, seems to actually open you up to a realm of the subconscious which you’re not normally

00:30:08 ►

aware of what i like about the combination of 2cb and ketamine is that when doing ketamine alone

00:30:16 ►

just by itself i find that during much of the experience i’m not really aware of what’s

00:30:22 ►

happening i may be aware on some level of

00:30:25 ►

consciousness at the time. However, when I come out of the experience and I go back through all

00:30:30 ►

the various gates of consciousness, which make up a human consciousness, I find that I lose quite a

00:30:35 ►

bit of the experience. Okay, we’re talking about ketamine and that you actually don’t bring back

00:30:41 ►

consciousness of the whatever you is. And I do want to discuss that in a minute. You don’t bring back consciousness of the whatever you is and i do want to discuss that

00:30:46 ►

in a minute you don’t bring back consciousness of the of the entire experience now 2cb the

00:30:51 ►

perceived effect of 2cb is in many ways almost opposite that of ketamine uh 2cb in some ways

00:30:59 ►

tends to make you uh it sort of like makes the ego like a superstructure it it’s a very body or

00:31:07 ►

experience it puts you very much in your body very much into your sense of self

00:31:13 ►

identity and when this is done you know the to CV has to be done before taking

00:31:19 ►

the ketamine what happens is that you still go through a ketamine experience

00:31:23 ►

however you are much more aware.

00:31:30 ►

It’s sort of like you bring a little bit of human awareness into the ketamine realm,

00:31:35 ►

and you bring more of the experience out of the ketamine realm as well.

00:31:41 ►

In a second or two or three, I’d like to discuss the ketamine experience per se.

00:31:44 ►

You do at some length in the book, i think it’s important but i am really

00:31:46 ►

curious when people talk about the you that experiences it always seemed to me that one of

00:31:55 ►

the beauties of psychedelics is is actually dying to that you and i’m not sure that I’d want to take a substance which increased the you-ness

00:32:08 ►

of the experience or that Elizabeth was going to be cognizant.

00:32:15 ►

This is one of the things I would say is that if you do that with ketamine, you still find

00:32:20 ►

that the personality is gone. I think that you could break down the you into several different levels.

00:32:26 ►

You could take you to the physical level.

00:32:28 ►

You could take a personality level.

00:32:31 ►

You could take a mental level.

00:32:32 ►

You could sort of like start stripping these layers off of the you.

00:32:36 ►

And it seems that when you get in,

00:32:38 ►

the furthest that I’ve ever gotten in with ketamine and most psychedelics,

00:32:43 ►

it leaves, I think you could best describe it as just a pure

00:32:47 ►

witnessing consciousness

00:32:48 ►

it’s just a pure awareness

00:32:50 ►

it’s something which

00:32:52 ►

everything that’s happening in the universe is like making impressions

00:32:55 ►

on it

00:32:56 ►

it’s sort of like the great tape recorder

00:32:59 ►

in the sky

00:33:00 ►

the Akashic Records

00:33:03 ►

of metaphysics

00:33:04 ►

the hard disk ok that’s a way of putting it. The Akashic Records of metaphysics. It’s a hard disk.

00:33:07 ►

Okay, that’s good.

00:33:09 ►

So the you becomes that which is the observer

00:33:13 ►

and can actually watch DM or Elizabeth or whoever’s listening

00:33:18 ►

maneuver through the melodramas

00:33:22 ►

and then out of them into something that’s more expanded.

00:33:26 ►

That’s true.

00:33:26 ►

That’s right.

00:33:27 ►

Well, that’s nice.

00:33:29 ►

Let’s talk about ketamine and what that experience is.

00:33:32 ►

I’m back at it.

00:33:32 ►

Sure.

00:33:33 ►

What’s the difference to you in the ketamine experience and other psychedelic experiences?

00:33:43 ►

There was a vast difference.

00:33:44 ►

There is a vast difference. There is a vast difference.

00:33:46 ►

The substance is very different.

00:33:49 ►

When the ketamine experience comes on,

00:33:53 ►

you don’t feel the dissolution like you normally do with most psychedelics.

00:33:58 ►

Ketamine is used clinically as an anesthetic.

00:34:01 ►

It’s given mostly to children and to elderly people when they’re being operated on.

00:34:06 ►

I begged for it.

00:34:06 ►

I had my gallbladder out a few months ago.

00:34:08 ►

It wouldn’t give it to me.

00:34:10 ►

And it comes on very quickly when it’s injected,

00:34:15 ►

which is a way that’s usually taken for psychedelic use.

00:34:18 ►

And there’s almost no transition period.

00:34:21 ►

You feel a very slight dimming of consciousness,

00:34:24 ►

and then the next thing that you’re aware of, you are in a completely different realm. What

00:34:30 ►

happens during this time is that it so effectively wipes out your perspective of being an individual

00:34:37 ►

that when you’re in this realm, the ketamine realm, you’ve actually forgotten that you are a person.

00:34:45 ►

You’ve forgotten that you’re a human being.

00:34:48 ►

Even the concept of a human being may not be anywhere in your consciousness.

00:34:52 ►

And you certainly have forgotten that you are a human being that has taken a drug and

00:34:56 ►

is now having a psychedelic experience.

00:35:01 ►

It seems like the boundaries between self and what is perceived are dissolved,

00:35:09 ►

much more so than with any other psychedelic.

00:35:12 ►

It feels very much like the place which I go into when I take ketamine

00:35:17 ►

is a space of infinity.

00:35:21 ►

This is sometimes represented visually.

00:35:23 ►

That is, the consciousness has become infinite.

00:35:26 ►

You’ve identified with infinite consciousness.

00:35:28 ►

That’s correct.

00:35:29 ►

Some people call God.

00:35:31 ►

That’s right.

00:35:32 ►

Instead of existing in this state of separation or semi-separation

00:35:37 ►

that we seem to be in most of the time.

00:35:39 ►

Yes.

00:35:40 ►

The experience of this is always blissful very profound

00:35:46 ►

the visual component for myself at least

00:35:50 ►

is extraordinary

00:35:52 ►

I can see complete detailed universes

00:35:58 ►

blending into each other

00:36:00 ►

like somebody shuffling a deck of cards

00:36:02 ►

or something of that nature

00:36:03 ►

it seems like out of every recess that infinity is exploding

00:36:09 ►

and more and more things are coming out.

00:36:10 ►

Oh, holy.

00:36:11 ►

It seems there is an endless amount of variety here.

00:36:17 ►

Infinite.

00:36:18 ►

It’s infinite.

00:36:19 ►

Yeah.

00:36:20 ►

And it is fascinating.

00:36:22 ►

And the type of things which I perceive and experience in this realm,

00:36:27 ►

it completely boggles the human concept of existence and the universe and what that’s all about.

00:36:36 ►

It is from a different realm.

00:36:38 ►

It is altogether alien to how we normally perceive things.

00:36:41 ►

And is that different from the DMT experience or the LSD experience?

00:36:49 ►

Well, what I will say about DMT…

00:36:51 ►

Why is it so addictive?

00:36:52 ►

What I will say about DMT and LSD is that you can certainly get a glimpse of the same experience with those.

00:37:01 ►

I’ve even had impressions from DMT is that if you work with it enough, and this

00:37:05 ►

actually would happen through a state of very deep trance, you can actually experience in as

00:37:10 ►

much detail as you do with ketamine, you know, as vast, as cosmic a space. It seems to be much

00:37:17 ►

more difficult, however, to do this with these other psychedelics. The main reason for this,

00:37:22 ►

or my theory of this, is that with ketamine, for a

00:37:27 ►

period of maybe a half hour or 45 minutes, the ego is completely obliterated. It makes no effort to

00:37:33 ►

try to come back into the picture to get a handle, to get a foothold, to try to get a perspective

00:37:39 ►

and understand things. With ketamine, the ego takes a rest for half an hour, and you experience this

00:37:46 ►

uninterrupted. When I’ve had these moments where I’ve experienced something very similar with LSD

00:37:53 ►

or DMT or some other psychedelic, it tends to be very brief. If it lasts for two full minutes,

00:37:59 ►

that would be a very long period of time. Yeah, wait a minute, though. But you’re saying

00:38:02 ►

if it lasts for two full minutes, but then when you’re experiencing it, you’re out of time. Yeah, wait a minute, though. But you’re saying it’ll last for two full minutes, but then when you’re experiencing

00:38:06 ►

it, you’re out of

00:38:08 ►

time. That’s correct. It doesn’t matter if it’s

00:38:10 ►

two minutes or eternity, because it’s supposed to say.

00:38:12 ►

It feels like eternity while you’re experiencing it.

00:38:14 ►

Right, okay, just to make that clear.

00:38:16 ►

Sure. So if you were dying,

00:38:18 ►

this is something I’ve been thinking about as

00:38:19 ►

I advance in age. I’ve had

00:38:21 ►

people offer to do the Aldous Huxley

00:38:24 ►

trip and shoot LSD into me or this

00:38:26 ►

or that, but it seems to me I’d rather have ketamine, that that exit into this land of such

00:38:32 ►

beauty, peace, harmony, and color and everything would be exactly where I’d like to die.

00:38:40 ►

Yes, well, certainly I think that using any of these substances, of course, can help

00:38:44 ►

prepare someone for the afterlife or whatever is going to happen the next stage.

00:38:51 ►

I also have some problems with ketamine in that it does obliterate some aspects of awareness

00:38:57 ►

which you don’t necessarily want to have obliterated.

00:39:00 ►

Uh-huh. What about those? Which ones are those?

00:39:04 ►

A whole lot of human perspectives, a whole lot of your personality.

00:39:08 ►

Things which are not necessarily present in your mind when you’re on something like LSD, but they are available to you.

00:39:14 ►

When you’re on ketamine, these things are not available, even if you wanted to go and get them or need to make references to them for some reason.

00:39:21 ►

I see. I see. to them for some reason. So, whereas with a psychedelic like LSD,

00:39:26 ►

the focus of your consciousness

00:39:27 ►

may not be on your personality

00:39:30 ►

or your physical body.

00:39:32 ►

However, that is accessible

00:39:33 ►

should you need to go there.

00:39:35 ►

So you would prefer,

00:39:37 ►

or there’s some point to be made

00:39:40 ►

for psychedelics that expand consciousness

00:39:44 ►

but at the same time allow some kind of control

00:39:49 ►

or consciousness if you need it to shift attention or or whatever that’s what we’re talking about

00:39:57 ►

yes what i would say with ketamine is that you probably have less control of the experience

00:40:03 ►

with ketamine than you do with any other psychedelic.

00:40:05 ►

I guess that’s why I like it, because you’re not,

00:40:08 ►

with all the other psychedelics, I’m nowhere near as experienced as you are,

00:40:13 ►

I don’t think, but that with all the other psychedelics,

00:40:17 ►

often there’s a period, at least, of some kind of struggle for control,

00:40:21 ►

where the ego says, oh, you’re not going to kick me out of here,

00:40:24 ►

and the higher intelligence says, oh, yeah, I am.

00:40:28 ►

And that’s discomfort at some point in time, just like Buddha described.

00:40:34 ►

Yes. Well, I think that there are certainly advantages to ketamine.

00:40:38 ►

I certainly have had experiences with it that I do not think I could have had without it.

00:40:43 ►

At the same time, I went through a period of probably about two years where I was using

00:40:47 ►

it quite frequently.

00:40:49 ►

And I found that I got addicted with a once-a-week habit.

00:40:53 ►

That’s very common among friends of mine.

00:40:56 ►

And one of the things I found happened during this time is I started losing some of my abilities

00:41:03 ►

to direct a trip with my own willpower, with my own mind.

00:41:08 ►

I got so used to just letting the flow guide me along with ketamine

00:41:13 ►

that I sort of put to rest some of the other things which I should be working on.

00:41:18 ►

I think that one of the important things with psychedelics is that you have this experience

00:41:24 ►

which lasts for anywhere between 20 minutes and 12 hours, depending on what it was that you took, but then you still have a whole life that you come back to.

00:41:34 ►

And I think that it’s very important that you bring something from these experiences back and try to develop your life to further yourself along your own personal evolution.

00:41:44 ►

develop your life to further yourself along your own personal evolution.

00:41:50 ►

And I think that ketamine is not particularly effective at that.

00:41:51 ►

I wouldn’t say it’s completely ineffective,

00:41:56 ►

but it tends to be a little bit more like an escape. It’s sort of like, I need to take a break from this life as a human for 45 minutes

00:42:01 ►

and go experience a little bit of immortality.

00:42:04 ►

And it feels very good.

00:42:06 ►

And you start doing it, and you do it again and again, and you keep going back to it.

00:42:11 ►

And what I found about the other psychedelics is that they are much more challenging, DMT

00:42:19 ►

in particular.

00:42:21 ►

And it’s one of the things which sort of alert, sort of alerted me to this, you know,

00:42:25 ►

habit that I had developed with ketamine is the fact that it was not a challenge anymore.

00:42:29 ►

The only challenge with the ketamine experience started to become what will I be able to bring

00:42:34 ►

back from it. And, you know, I would, you know, have my notepad next to me and so on, try to write

00:42:40 ►

things down when I first came back. But the experience itself was not really a challenge.

00:42:42 ►

I tried to write things down when I first came back,

00:42:44 ►

but the experience itself was not really a challenge.

00:42:50 ►

Whereas DMT seems to always be a challenge.

00:42:53 ►

It’s a very difficult experience to control.

00:42:54 ►

It’s overwhelmingly powerful.

00:42:57 ►

It can be overwhelmingly frightening.

00:43:01 ►

And it takes a lot of effort to work with it. But it seems that the results from working with it can be very beneficial.

00:43:06 ►

I want to tell people before we go further that I’m speaking with D.M.

00:43:11 ►

Turner, author of The Essential Psychedelic Guide, put out by Panther Press.

00:43:16 ►

And it is a remarkable diary, really, of various experiences on substances that are sacramental and that tend to enlarge

00:43:30 ►

consciousness so um let’s we haven’t talked at all about the negative aspects or the frightening

00:43:37 ►

you talked about frightening yeah i hear some rave beat across the way. I don’t think it’ll be on this, but it’s interesting that it’s there.

00:43:47 ►

Okay.

00:43:48 ►

Okay, well, frightening experiences are bound to be encountered

00:43:52 ►

by people that are using psychedelics.

00:43:54 ►

I would say maybe with the exception of ecstasy,

00:43:56 ►

which tends to not produce the full spectrum of psychedelic effects.

00:44:00 ►

And these experiences happen for many reasons.

00:44:03 ►

I would say the main reason people have these experiences happen for many reasons. I would say the main reason people have these experiences

00:44:06 ►

is because they are afraid of losing control of some aspect of their personality,

00:44:11 ►

some aspect of their life.

00:44:14 ►

Taking psychedelics is like opening the floodgates in a way

00:44:18 ►

to all sorts of experience.

00:44:20 ►

It’s sort of like opening up the door to the subconscious and the superconscious.

00:44:26 ►

So when somebody takes psychedelics, they can have very positive cosmic loving experiences,

00:44:34 ►

maybe during their first ten times that they do it.

00:44:37 ►

And maybe on the eleventh time, they run into all sorts of feelings and visions which really frighten them.

00:44:44 ►

Sort of hell. Sort them. Sort of hell.

00:44:45 ►

Sort of a version of hell.

00:44:47 ►

And it can be very disturbing.

00:44:50 ►

A lot of people that are not prepared for something like this

00:44:54 ►

will become very frightened.

00:44:56 ►

Some people seem to develop a long-term types of neuroses

00:45:00 ►

from having these experiences.

00:45:03 ►

And it’s a very powerful experience.

00:45:07 ►

I think that the most important thing that somebody can do who’s going to be using these

00:45:10 ►

substances is to be prepared for them.

00:45:13 ►

And how would you suggest being prepared for them, Dan?

00:45:16 ►

I think the best way of being prepared is to read about the experience.

00:45:20 ►

Especially in the Essential Psychedelic Guide, right?

00:45:23 ►

Read about it in the Essential Psychedelic Guide, right? Read about it in the Essential Psychedelic Guide,

00:45:26 ►

read about it in other books,

00:45:30 ►

which look at it from a little bit more of a psychiatric or psychological perspective,

00:45:32 ►

such as Stan Grof’s Holotropic Mind,

00:45:35 ►

guidebooks such as The Psychedelic Experience,

00:45:40 ►

which was written by Tim Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Messer.

00:45:43 ►

I was amazed to see that mentioned in your book,

00:45:45 ►

because those of us who were born in the Haight-Ashbury days, as it were, on psychedelics,

00:45:52 ►

that was the textbook without which you never tripped.

00:45:57 ►

First, you read that, or read pieces of it, and then went out.

00:46:01 ►

And I didn’t know that anyone even realized it was around.

00:46:06 ►

Well, fortunately, it’s actually still in print. Well, that’s wonderful.

00:46:07 ►

Still in print and available at many bookstores.

00:46:09 ►

Ram Dass and Leary, one of the great classics of this age, probably, to how to use psychedelics

00:46:16 ►

spiritually. I’m not quite sure what spiritually means, but most people have an idea of something,

00:46:24 ►

or anyhow. So you can have this frightening experience as though you don’t know what area you’re

00:46:30 ►

going to enter into.

00:46:32 ►

At the end of the frightening experience, has there been progress or whatever that means?

00:46:38 ►

Well, this is a very important question, and I think a whole lot of this depends on a couple

00:46:44 ►

of things, one of them being how a person is prepared for this and how they

00:46:47 ►

interpret the experience as it’s happening and another one is I think

00:46:52 ►

they’re in a willingness to deal with a situation and to try to understand what

00:46:59 ►

happened on their own I know for myself when I first started experimenting with

00:47:04 ►

these things I had not read anything like Timothy Leary’s books.

00:47:07 ►

You were very young.

00:47:08 ►

That’s right. When I had my first frightening experiences I certainly had to deal with them

00:47:14 ►

and sort them out for myself.

00:47:15 ►

They did discourage you obviously from going ahead.

00:47:19 ►

They didn’t discourage me. I would say they may have made me a little bit cautious, but they didn’t discourage me.

00:47:27 ►

One of the important things that I found is that when I have had experiences of this type,

00:47:32 ►

especially as I’ve done this more over the years and I started to know a little bit about

00:47:37 ►

what causes these experiences, is that these experiences tend to be very beneficial. Even

00:47:44 ►

if you’re using these substances frequently,

00:47:46 ►

a whole lot of the personality does not change on a regular basis.

00:47:51 ►

It’s like I’ve gotten to the point where I can take psychedelics,

00:47:53 ►

I can take them once a week or twice a week or whatever,

00:47:57 ►

and large amounts of them even,

00:47:58 ►

but certain aspects of my personality seem to be fairly stagnant.

00:48:02 ►

That’s not necessarily good.

00:48:04 ►

I’ve decided that I want it to be like that way.

00:48:07 ►

I’ve learned to work with these psychedelics enough that I can

00:48:10 ►

keep it like this to a certain extent.

00:48:13 ►

But often I’m in for a surprise.

00:48:16 ►

Maybe it’s a group trip and you can’t get out that far ahead of us

00:48:19 ►

no matter how many substances you ingest.

00:48:23 ►

Maybe. I’ve often wondered about it.

00:48:27 ►

Possibly, although I would have to say that when I first started working with ketamine,

00:48:30 ►

I certainly felt like I was in a place where there were not too many other people.

00:48:35 ►

So did John Lilly.

00:48:36 ►

What happened to him?

00:48:37 ►

Yes, well, he certainly is quite a bit of it.

00:48:40 ►

Yeah.

00:48:41 ►

And he liked it, and he certainly is.

00:48:44 ►

I think he’s probably gone further out there than anybody else has.

00:48:46 ►

I think so, yes.

00:48:47 ►

I agree with that.

00:48:49 ►

Well, DM, ultimately, what is the advantage of taking psychedelics as a spiritual practice?

00:48:58 ►

Do you feel as though you personally have changed?

00:49:10 ►

You personally have changed, and you talked some about the necessity for operating on what I call a 3D level of existence.

00:49:18 ►

I always assumed that the optimum ascension, as it were, was to,

00:49:29 ►

and you said that’s why you didn’t think ketamine was one of the best of the psychedelics for this, was bringing the high to every action that we take,

00:49:33 ►

to bringing that awareness and to learning to operate little by little by little.

00:49:38 ►

Peter Stafford said in an interview I did with him a long time ago,

00:49:40 ►

something about if you take these substances long enough,

00:49:42 ►

you’re going to be hit by compassion.

00:49:44 ►

I like that. I think that’s a very important aspect of the experience.

00:49:47 ►

When I first started taking psychedelics, 13 years old,

00:49:51 ►

I had been brought up in a fairly strict Roman Christian family.

00:49:58 ►

The only things I had to look forward to in life was a job and a career

00:50:02 ►

and a family and just going through the whole cycle.

00:50:05 ►

It just seemed like what everybody else was doing.

00:50:07 ►

And I looked at people around me.

00:50:09 ►

I looked at the people that taught in schools and around the government,

00:50:12 ►

and I looked at the type of work that my father did,

00:50:15 ►

and none of it really interested me that much.

00:50:18 ►

And when I first took psychedelics,

00:50:20 ►

I felt like I was admitted into a world of compassion and beauty and creativity.

00:50:27 ►

And it was like nothing that I had experienced in my regular life.

00:50:33 ►

And almost instantly that became a goal of where I wanted to be,

00:50:38 ►

of a direction that I wanted to move in.

00:50:40 ►

I think that what’s very important with psychedelics

00:50:43 ►

is that they tend to show people what the right direction is.

00:50:46 ►

They show people these places of love, these places of beauty.

00:50:50 ►

And then people can make a decision, okay, do I want to be there?

00:50:54 ►

Do I want to work towards that? Do I want to move towards that?

00:50:57 ►

And as far as your own life, you spoke of taking one or two psychedelics a week and i just wondered whether

00:51:07 ►

you’re able to surround those experiences with uh gardening or working or whatever it is yes i am

00:51:15 ►

i’ve uh i’m one of these people that uh john willie describes it as a uh I forget his term, sort of a multifunctional.

00:51:25 ►

Superman.

00:51:26 ►

I’ve tended to, throughout most of my life,

00:51:29 ►

I’ve had fairly demanding corporate type of jobs.

00:51:33 ►

I actually worked as a senior manager with a lot of responsibility.

00:51:38 ►

And at the same time as I was doing this,

00:51:40 ►

I usually would have businesses that I was running on the side,

00:51:44 ►

and these would tend to be more artistic and creative businesses.

00:51:48 ►

And that’s the place where I felt like I could really apply this.

00:51:52 ►

And presently, all the work that I do is in the creative field.

00:51:56 ►

I have two businesses which I operate.

00:51:58 ►

Really?

00:51:59 ►

Amazing.

00:52:00 ►

And you wrote a book.

00:52:02 ►

That’s correct.

00:52:02 ►

Are you working on another?

00:52:04 ►

Not presently, no.

00:52:05 ►

Not yet.

00:52:07 ►

One of the things that I enjoyed very much about this book

00:52:11 ►

is that you actually put in some of your philosophy

00:52:16 ►

that you’ve gotten from psychedelic space, as you say,

00:52:21 ►

and that you know that you’re a transmutational being,

00:52:24 ►

somebody, and of course

00:52:26 ►

we all are, but that you’re wanting to share that knowledge with everybody else seems to

00:52:33 ►

me one of the large points and purposes of having had the experiences that there’s more

00:52:39 ►

than this stuff.

00:52:41 ►

Yes, well, I think that, and this is a philosophical point that i think that the

00:52:46 ►

whole of everybody everybody that exists on this planet and all other place in the universe

00:52:52 ►

is in this process of evolution where we are moving in a direction where we are becoming

00:52:58 ►

fuller more knowledgeable i think that we’re however slowly moving all in that direction

00:53:03 ►

I think that we’re, however slowly, moving all in that direction.

00:53:08 ►

And if I look at everything that I’ve been exposed to in life,

00:53:13 ►

the things which seem to have benefited me the most and which seem the most worthwhile is when other people have gone and had experiences of some type,

00:53:20 ►

where they experienced some type of beauty or love or something really spectacular,

00:53:26 ►

and it inspires them to go on and share it with other people.

00:53:30 ►

And so that was, of course, one of the things which I wanted to do in writing this book

00:53:34 ►

is to help make this knowledge available for other people that are experimenting in this area.

00:53:39 ►

That seems like a good place to end,

00:53:41 ►

except perhaps is there a passage in the book that you’d like to read we have just a few minutes left i’ll put this well this is an experience which i had when i was

00:53:51 ►

in death valley i frequently take psychedelics out in natural environments which i think is

00:53:55 ►

actually the best place to do them and this experience happened when i was on lsd as i

00:54:00 ►

hiked through the mountains of death valley there were some perceptions which i feel led to my

00:54:04 ►

experience i had been closely observing some small lizards which move at an amazing speed in the As I hiked through the mountains of Death Valley, there were some perceptions which I feel led to my experience.

00:54:06 ►

I had been closely observing some small lizards, which move at an amazing speed in the hot desert sun.

00:54:11 ►

In trying to synchronize with the lizard’s mind, it was quite apparent that its time sense,

00:54:16 ►

as well as the flow of information from its sense organs to its responding muscles, was worlds apart from that of a human.

00:54:23 ►

Then, while hiking in a canyon, I noticed what

00:54:26 ►

appeared as webbing strewn across the canyon walls. Upon looking closer, this turned out to

00:54:30 ►

be a harder material than the rock below, eroding at a slower pace and standing out in ridges of

00:54:35 ►

web-shaped formations. It appeared to have been created during volcanic eruptions of molten

00:54:40 ►

minerals at the time that the mountains were formed. The canyon, cutting ever deeper into

00:54:44 ►

the mountainside, was revealing the history of the terrain. As I sat back to rest and closed my eyes,

00:54:50 ►

my visual sphere became filled with visions of desert animals like snakes and scorpions,

00:54:54 ►

images which are typical of a session in the desert. The next vision that appeared was a

00:54:59 ►

distinct image of a saber-toothed tiger. I thought of early humans who were hunted by such animals,

00:55:04 ►

and the strength of the impression this must have made on the minds of my ancient ancestors. This train of thought

00:55:09 ►

progressed, and I saw large, hairy, bear-like forest animals who probably left similar impressions on

00:55:14 ►

the species’ consciousness. As my mind progressed further back in time, I began to see creatures of

00:55:19 ►

the dinosaur era, which in ancient times had roamed the ground I was now resting on. I was aware that

00:55:25 ►

going back along the evolutionary line, I must have evolved from such creatures. I began to feel

00:55:30 ►

that in times past I had been each of the animals that I saw, the predators who hunted, and the

00:55:35 ►

victims who fled from the predators with fear and were eaten. Then my mind’s eye opened up, and time

00:55:40 ►

spread out to infinity. I saw and experienced all the manifestations that the land around me had been through over millions of years,

00:55:46 ►

and the lives of all the creatures that had lived there.

00:55:49 ►

This myriad of detailed lives and visions

00:55:51 ►

was simultaneously present in my mind

00:55:52 ►

with startling clarity for a timeless moment.

00:55:55 ►

I had become the one mind

00:55:56 ►

onto which all the experiences of time have been etched.

00:55:59 ►

I went past this fulcrum

00:56:00 ►

and saw myself retreating to my individual perspective.

00:56:03 ►

The afterglow of this experience infused the next several hours of the acid high left me awed with the magic of the

00:56:08 ►

desert environment. Thank you, DM Turner. Let’s tell people once again that your book is the

00:56:15 ►

Essential Psychedelic Guide put out by Panther Press. Is it generally available or should people

00:56:21 ►

order it from y’all? It’s available in bookstores. It can be ordered through the mail.

00:56:26 ►

The address to order it from is Panther Press, 1032 Irving, number 514,

00:56:33 ►

and that’s in San Francisco.

00:56:35 ►

The zip code is 94122, and the price, including tax and shipping, is $16.

00:56:42 ►

That’s wonderful. It’s well worth it.

00:56:44 ►

Thank you so much for coming all

00:56:45 ►

the way down and sharing what you are and what you’ve learned with people.

00:56:51 ►

And that 150 today selling it used on Amazon.

00:56:59 ►

I feel that I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t point out something about doing LSD in

00:57:03 ►

Death Valley, as he just mentioned. You’ll remember me talking about Al Hubbard, who was called the Johnny

00:57:10 ►

Appleseed of LSD back in the 50s and 60s. Well, Al was the mentor of my friend Myron Stolaroff,

00:57:17 ►

and it was Al who convinced Myron that the absolute best place on the planet to trip on acid

00:57:22 ►

was in Death Valley. So the two of them

00:57:25 ►

found a few acres of land close to there on which to build a permanent residence.

00:57:30 ►

Unfortunately they couldn’t agree on some of the details of their joint

00:57:33 ►

ownership, so according to Myron he just said, fuck it I’ll buy the damn place

00:57:38 ►

myself. And so it was that the little house in Lone Pine came into the

00:57:44 ►

possession of Myron and Jean Stolaroff,

00:57:46 ►

and it became the location for much of the work that the Shulgens detailed in Peacol and Teacol,

00:57:52 ►

not to mention some epic trips of my own in that magic little house.

00:57:56 ►

So, I’m now wondering how and why D.M. Turner also headed to Death Valley to trip on acid.

00:58:02 ►

I guess we’ll never know.

00:58:04 ►

This is the second Elizabeth

00:58:06 ►

Gipps interview that I posted here in the salon. In a memoriam written by Travis Sims, here’s what

00:58:12 ►

he says about her. In the 60s, she embraced hippie culture while running a jewelry store on Haight

00:58:18 ►

Street in San Francisco. During the 1967 Summer of Love, her life was, and here he quotes her saying,

00:58:27 ►

Other interesting things about Elizabeth include the fact that she opened up her mansion in Ashbury to protesters of the Vietnam War,

00:58:41 ►

and she was friends with Jim Morrison of the Doors, where they used to

00:58:45 ►

come to her house for meditation and just to hang out. And she was also friends with Lenny Bruce.

00:58:50 ►

So, while she may sound like your average middle-aged woman, there was certainly a great

00:58:55 ►

deal more to Elizabeth Gipps than met the eye. Now, D.M. Turner was 34 years old when he died.

00:59:02 ►

It was on New Year’s Eve in 1996.

00:59:10 ►

The story that I’ve been told is that he drowned in a bathtub while under the influence of ketamine,

00:59:14 ►

but I don’t have any first-hand information to know if that’s a fact or a legend.

00:59:21 ►

Our fellow salonners who sometimes join our live salons have heard me, on many occasions, advise against using psychedelics while in water.

00:59:24 ►

I didn’t know Turner, but a close friend of mine drowned in a hot tub

00:59:28 ►

while under the influence of 5-MeO-DMT.

00:59:31 ►

The bottom line is that water and psychedelics just don’t mix.

00:59:35 ►

End of story. No discussion required.

00:59:39 ►

No matter what one’s opinion about Turner’s work, however,

00:59:42 ►

no one can doubt the fact that back in the day

00:59:45 ►

when we were all concerned about even using the word psychedelic in public, D.M. Turner stood up

00:59:51 ►

and was counted by publishing a book with very specific details that were unavailable anywhere

00:59:56 ►

else. Most definitely he is a very important elder in our community. And for now, this is Lorenzo

01:00:03 ►

signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:00:06 ►

Namaste, my friends.

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