Ayahuasca 101, Tripping Out On Nutmeg, Magic Mushrooms & More With Dennis McKenna.
Ben Greenfield Life
Ben Greenfield
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2016
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When it comes to plant based medicine, my guest on today's podcast is widely considered to be a groudbreaking pioneer. His name is Dennis McKenna.
Dennis's research - spanning back to the 1970's - has focused on the interdisciplinary study of Amazonian ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. During the early 1970's, he developed a technique for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms with his brother Terence McKenna and they later published what they had learned in a book entitled Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide. Dennis has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brasilian Amazon. His doctoral research (University of British Columbia, 1984) focused on the ethnopharmacology of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, two tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, and was a key organizer and participant in the Hoasca Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca used by the UDV, a Brazilian religious group. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota.
During our discussion, you'll discover: -The strange magazine, still published, that Dennis's father used to read - a magazine that first got Dennis interested in the "paranormal" and psychedelics... -How DMT works, and ways that you can induce the same psychedelic sensation that DMT induces without actually using something like ayahuasca... -Ways that you can induce deep sleep without relying upon compounds such as valium or ambien... -Why one common spice that you can find on the counter at Starbucks can send you on a hallucinogenic trip... -The difference between an ayahuasca experience in rural South America vs. an urban New York loft... -Why Silicone Valley is obsessed with LSD microdosing as a creativity-enhancing "smart drug"... -How psilocybin works to enhance your connection with nature and how you may be able to activate this via other mechanisms... -How one can safely "source" these kind of plant-based medicines in their local community... -And much more...
Resources from this episode: -Fate magazine -Deltasleeper device -10 ways to activate the pineal gland -The ajna light -Passionflower extract -Nutmeg essential oil -Kava kava extract -Syrian rue extract -Hefter.org and MAPS.org -Ayaadvisor.org -LSD Microdosing: The New Job Enhancer In Silicon Valley And Beyond? -Pre-frontal cortex tapping -erowid.org for online drug information -Alexendra Tannous's Sound Meditation video -The WholeTones Sound of Healing CD's -Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide -The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching -The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss -Botanical Medicines: The Desk Reference for Major Herbal Supplements
Do you have questions, comments or feedback for Dennis McKenna or me? Leave your thoughts at BenGreenfieldFitness.com and one of us will reply!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey, what's up you guys it's Ben Greenfield my voice my voice feels dry to me my voice feels dry my my throat |
| 0:07.6 | I guess my mouth feels dry. I just got out of the sauna and despite having a giant glass of water. It was hot this morning |
| 0:14.6 | I usually turn my sauna on to pre-heat |
| 0:18.0 | for a little while about 20 or 30 minutes before I get in and I turned it on extra early this morning and it heated up |
| 0:24.7 | for a long time. I put a wine cork in the sauna to cover up the temperature sensor and it gets up to about |
| 0:31.2 | 155 and I also used a bunch of this pink panther insulation from the from the Home Depot store to |
| 0:39.2 | insulate the sauna so it gets even more hot and despite me running out of the sauna flailing my arms |
| 0:45.7 | and jumping in the cold pool afterwards I still feel as though my throat is dry and I had a giant glass of water |
| 0:52.5 | anyways I digress from today's topic at hand which is an interview with a guy who is relatively well-known in |
| 0:59.8 | the psychedelic drug world a Dennis McKenna but fear not because in today's episode you're going to |
| 1:06.3 | learn about things like a tapping and lucid dreaming and not mag and things that don't necessarily |
| 1:11.5 | involve you needing to say foray to Peru to engage in an ayahuasca trip but we talk a little bit about |
| 1:18.6 | that too. However I want to tell you about a couple of things first of all there's this compound |
| 1:24.0 | called l-thienine and they've actually studied it in combination with caffeine it's very interesting |
| 1:29.8 | for example when you combine caffeine with l-thienine one study showed improved performance in attention |
| 1:35.0 | switching tasks and reduce susceptibility to distracting stimuli. Another study showed that if caffeine |
| 1:41.4 | raises your blood pressure l-thienine actually blunts the effect they've shown that theanine inhibits |
| 1:47.8 | the vasoconstrictive blood pressure increasing effects of coffee they've also shown that when you |
| 1:54.0 | combine coffee with thienine you get better word and sentence recall faster reaction time improved |
| 1:59.9 | rapid visual information processing and less mental fatigue plus it keeps coffee from keeping you awake |
| 2:07.4 | well thienine is just one ingredient in the neutropic infused coffee called camera coffee which you |
| 2:14.8 | actually get a big discount on so here's how you can get this camera coffee with the thienine |
... |
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