Episode Transcript
[Intro] Welcome to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna.
[00:00:21] Dennis McKenna: It's my pleasure today to invite Stephen King to the Brainforest café and I'm going to read a brief biographical sketch. We've known each other a long time and he's an ethnobotanist of the first water and a very good friend.
So I'll give you a brief biographical sketch and then we'll ask him to come on. Steve began learning about tropical ecosystems, indigenous and local people in 1974 at the age of 15, when he went to the real Polochic river area in Alta Verpaz, Guatemala, as a volunteer paramedic with the NGO Amigos de los Americas, where he supported volunteer MD´s/ dentist and provided vaccines to youth in the nearby spall mountainous villages. A few years later, he visited the village of Angotere Secoya, indigenous people in Peru who lived near the Colombian and Ecuadorian border with the Spanish Jesuit missionary Luis Uriarte. That initial visit led Steven to living with the Angotere Secoya community on the Santa Maria river for 9 months in 1978, where he lived with a family and studied the diet and medicinal plant use in this community of 35 people. Shortly after that field work, he met Tim Plowman at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Tim sent him to visit doctor Schultes at Harvard on his way back to the College of the Atlantic, where he was earning his BA in human ecology. After earning his degree, he spent a year traveling in Peru and Bolivia, working with friends and colleagues as an ethnobotanist for hire looking at Andean Tuber Crops, returning to visit the Secoya people and other wanderings.
He was then accepted as the first Fellowship student at the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, studying with Ian Prance, Mike Balick and colleagues in the Institute of Economic Botany. He conducted fieldwork in the Andean and Amazon regions. He did his PhD research on Andean Tuber Crops complex. He then was hired by the National Academy of Sciences as part of the Board of Agriculture Committee on Managing Global Genetic Resources. He was then hired as the Chief Botanist for Latin America at the Nature Conservancy, but met Lisa Conte, who invited him to help start Shaman Pharmaceuticals along with Dennis, Mike, Tempesta, and others.
35 years later he is the Chief of Sustainable Supply, Ethnobotanical Research and intellectual property at Jaguar Health, where he is focusing on the integration of traditional ethnomedical knowledge and the development of novel therapeutics. He is focused on reciprocity with local collaborating communities and the conservation of biocultural diversity. Over 3.5 decades, he has dedicated himself to the sustainable harvest and management of the miraculous Croton lechleri tree, also known as the Dragon's Blood tree, found in the Amazonian rainforest. Steven's efforts have been crucial in developing Crofelemer from the tree into an innovative plant based prescription medicine, which is the first FDA-approved oral botanical drug. He has also focused his research and collaborations with local and indigenous communities in various regions, including Africa and Southeast Asia, with a focus on the conservation of biocultural diversity. Most recently, he and many ethnobotanical colleagues who are where scientific strategy team advisors to Shaman, formed the Entheogen Therapeutics Initiative (ETI) that has led to the formation of Magdalena Biosciences, a joint venture between Jaguar/ETI and the Entheogen Therapeutics Initiative and Filament Health in Vancouver, Canada. And I imagine we will be discussing that during the podcast.
It's my great pleasure to welcome Steven to the Brainforest Café. Welcome, Steven.
[00:05:03] Steven King: Thank you. Thank you for reading all that.
[00:05:06] Dennis McKenna: That's a long bio.
You know, you have a track record. I mean, I don't know if you qualify for the term elder yet, but you and I have been around a while.
[00:05:20] Steven King: True. But also you're gracious enough to read such a long bio, so I figured, oh, you'll read something like this.
[00:05:25] Dennis McKenna: Absolutely. I didn't get it all perfect.
[00:05:29] Steven King: Yes you did. So I have a disclosure, I have to make. At the beginning, I said the first thing I want to do, so I don't forget, is I want to explicitly thank you, Dennis, for helping start Shaman pharmaceuticals, because you helped it get started, you helped it get funded, you helped create it and drive it. And I know you were doing, doing some more amazing things. Alaska project in little increments, but I want to really officially, formally thank you, because we've come a long, long way and you were a catalyst to make that happen. And you've helped us with the scientific strategy team from Magdalena. So I want to thank you for that. On the record, I also want us to score one more thing. I love the McKenna Academy. I love the mystery school. I think it's fantastic. Obviously I'm biased. I think there's not enough mystery schools. There was one in the United States called the 9th Gate mystery school, and there probably are other ones, but I know it sounds funny, but to me it's a mystery why there aren't more mystery schools. So we need more. I also love the film diagnosis. I love that project in Iquitos. I just. I can't tell you enough how much I think that's a fantastic program that you're trying to put together.
And Juan Ruiz and the people in that film, the women, it was just wonderful. So that's my disclosure. I'm heavily biased.
[00:06:44] Dennis McKenna: Well, you're a pretty good promoter of the academy, Steven.
[00:06:48] Steven King: And I'm serious.
[00:06:50] Dennis McKenna: I understand that, and it's all the more meaningful for that. You know, we do go back a long way. You know, Shaman Pharmaceuticals was my first real job, actually, after, you know, after I finished my postdocs at Stanford. And I don't know if you remember the history of it, but it was Mark Plotkin who introduced me to Lisa Conte.
At that time, I was finishing up my postdoc at Stanford, and Steven Peruka, who was my supervisor there, said, I'm going to go work for Jenintech. He was offered a big job at Jennintech, the head of neurology. And he said, you've been here two years. You've got two more two year postdocs behind you. Don't you think it's about time you got a real job?
And I said, well, but I'm liking what I do.
Okay. So then at that time, you know, serendipitously, Lisa showed up and said, you know, we're looking for somebody to be whatever the title was, director of ethnopharmacology. And so when I ended up at the time, because of my postdocs, I'd had all this molecular pharmacology under my belt, all this receptor technology. I was pretty good at that. So we set up the receptor screening lab. That was basically my job. And, you know, that it was kind of a sideshow for Shaman. They weren't really focused on CN's, it focused on the antiviral. And at that time, Sangue de Grado, or Sangue de Drago, I always called it Sango de Grado because it.
[00:08:37] Steven King: Me, too.
[00:08:39] Dennis McKenna: But that was. That was the.
At that time, SP 303. And that was being touted as an antiviral drug, which turned out it wasn't so good, but it turned out it was very good for diarrheal, you know, disorders. And so that's what it ended up getting approved for.
[00:09:01] Steven King: Yeah. Not being so good at antiviral is probably because the large structure of the 35 chiral center didn't get into the bloodstream.
How can you treat something in the lungs if it doesn't get there. So, yeah, try something else, they said.
[00:09:16] Dennis McKenna: And as it turned out, in the development of the anti diarrheal core, frelimore, that was a plus. The fact that it was not absorbed.
[00:09:26] Steven King: Right. And of course, the traditional knowledge, the indigenous knowledge, was they were using it also for diarrhea as well as flues and coughs and stuff. So that directed us to look at assays that might be related to diarrhea and dysenteric diseases. So there you go. Indigenous knowledge directed us both ways.
[00:09:44] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, yeah. So what I, you know, the whole Shaman pharmaceutical odyssey, the idea of an ethnobotanical driven drug discovery company was novel. I mean, it's something that was discussed. Shaman Pharmaceuticals was the first company that actually tried to do it, and they managed to develop one drug profile. I mean, I think you've since licensed other drugs, but you didn't actually go through the full process of identifying these things and bringing in the ethnobotanical work and so on. It was a tremendous challenge. And Shaman pharmaceuticals was an example of how you do this. It is possible to do this. And as you know from Schultes on, people have paid lip service to the immense discoveries to be made from biodiverse ecosystems for new medicines. I remember a paper that stuck in my mind for many years was Mike Balick's 1995 paper, the value of undiscovered pharmaceuticals in the rainforest, in economic botany. Very interesting paper.
Basically trying to quantify an unknown, to say, well, based on what we know, how many blockbuster billion dollar drugs are left to be discovered. And he came up with a figure of about 328.
Those are 995$. So each one of those would be a trillion dollars now. But the thing is, Steven, and I think the thing that is dismaying to me, and it may be to you, is that Shaman pharmaceuticals set the example. They showed that they could do this, they showed that they could do it ethically, that they could give back to these communities. They were very committed to reciprocity and mutual benefits and all that. As far as I can tell, the pharmaceutical industry was indifferent then and they're pretty much indifferent now. Do you think that's an accurate perception?
[00:12:17] Steven King: You know, I think big pharma, absolutely.
There's the smaller biotechs. There's been more for people at the periphery, both sometimes in Europe, sometimes in Australia.
And there's a couple now that are focusing on indigenous knowledge and combining it with AI, as I think you're familiar. So there's a little bit of a rebirth, in my view, going on but in terms of the large pharma grabbing onto it and saying, hey, let's follow this approach, let's try and do this, I think you're correct. And as you know, about the time we started Shaman work and all these guys were sort of winding down their natural products program. So they really haven't, there hasn't been a big pharma resurgence. That's absolutely true. And if you came up with something, they might license it. But as you know, they were worried about intellectual property, that kind of stuff. But I do want to mention just one thing, because what's amazing about this, and it makes me think about the project in Iquitos, Biognosis program. So this is one plant, Sangue de Drago. Well, at the moment, there's five products that are, two of them approved, one for chemotherapy induced diarrhea in dogs by the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the same molecule. The one for HIV AIDS, chronic diarrhea in humans, same molecule. Right now we're waiting for the final results, hopefully the next one from a prophylactic, phase three, chemotherapy induced prevention diarrhea study to another indication. Same molecule. Also looking at SBS and MVID, those are short bowel syndrome and microvillus inclusion disease. Those are more orphan, smaller diseases, but very big problems for the people, the children that have them. And then we also have two products that are not pharma that are one for dogs, called neonorm, for calves, neuron calf, and one for horses, neuron foal, that's also from crotal necrose, slightly different extract. And lastly, we got an ind open for treating cholera with that same extract. It's not the same as crypto, but also from protonecthorite.
What I'm really marveling at is here's one species that's pretty well known, as you know, from the pharmacopoeia of indigenous knowledge of the Amazon. And there's two approved and two non pharma and three or four coming out, and that's just one.
So when you think about what's there, it's amazing that there hasn't been more focus by large pharma. And also the opportunity is still massive. And obviously, that's not the reason only by any means to conserve and manage tropical forest or traditional indigenous knowledge. But we look at it, one species and look at this.
[00:14:51] Dennis McKenna: And that reflects the fact that there are so many multiple applications, reflects what indigenous people have always known. Sangue de Grado is used for lots of things, like most of these medicines. You know, they are used for many different things and the people that use them traditionally have a different perspective on illness, you know, and so they do come up with these multiple uses and any one of these, depending, of course, on the activity and the mechanism and so on. But any one of these could potentially have multiple uses, like, as you know, we. And I'm now, by the way, thank you for inviting me to be back on the scientific strategy team and the entheogen strategy team. I feel honored to be included in that. But, you know, we're having these conversations about coca, you know, and coca is this very stigmatized drug because of its association with cocaine, which is, as Wade Davis says, a shitty drug in every way with what it's done. But coca is a whole other thing. And Coca is potentially, has multiple uses. I mean, just for ADHD, for example, which I understand, Magdalena, that's one of the therapeutic targets that you're working with, with Filament to see if it's applicable for ADHD and other cognitive deficits.
But chances are it's going to have other uses, too. Maybe even for dementia.
[00:16:44] Steven King: Absolutely. Memory. No, absolutely. Could not agree more. Could not have. And it's so safe. It's been used so long, 8000 years by millions of people.
As Wade says, it's night and day. One is a very bad drug. The other is. What's kind of amazing is that. And I actually love this, probably the DEA recently reclassified coca not the schedule 1, but schedule 2, but the way they describe it, they describe it now as cocaine is the traditional plant based drug, which is fascinating because, you know, I mean, at least they're using traditional implant instead of just saying, you know, a horrible, you know, you know, it's addictive substance or they're acknowledging the fact that it's part of traditional medicine, which I was happy.
[00:17:24] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. So hopefully that means there'll be a shift in the regulatory. Regulatory framework. I don't. I mean, I guess there is still a whole illicit infrastructure of cocaine production and export and illegal sales worldwide. But, I mean, does anybody take cocaine? It seems to be like very 1980s kind of thing.
[00:17:54] Steven King: You know, it's so funny you say that, because I have the same impression. I'm like, I haven't met anybody anywhere talking about it. So it must be. There's this huge demand still. It's going to Europe and all the United States. But I have the same question, like, who's doing this?
I don't get it, actually. It doesn't make sense.
[00:18:10] Dennis McKenna: It has absolutely no appeal.
It's just interesting that somehow that illicit global infrastructure and industry continues. And of course, if they want to really solve the, quote, drug problem with respect to cocaine, you legalize it.
[00:18:38] Steven King: Absolutely.
[00:18:39] Steven King: Or you create products, create coca products that take it out from under the illicit coca producers. There's still going to be cocaine. But you give markets for these things that are helpful and healthy and useful. And all that, as Wade talks about, I mean, it makes total sense. You find a pathway that honors the mama coca, the sacred leaf of the Inca, and you get it into commerce and use. By the way, I asked you one question, though. It seems like Canada is much more open to all this stuff. I mean, they'll give permits for importing these things. Why is that? And thank goodness for Canada.
[00:19:11] Dennis McKenna: Well, good question. I just think that Canadians are more reasonable people in general.
They make decisions based on science more than politics, such a political football, you know.
But maybe this is changing. But I think, you know, the DEA and these regulatory agencies have had as much incentive to make sure cocaine remains prohibited as the drug cartels. They're actually in partnership with the drug cartels in the sense that everybody is profiting illegal. And if they made cocaine legal, it's not the value of the drug. The drug is not worth anything. It's the fact that it's prohibited that elevates the price in the global markets and keeps the DEA's budget going and keeps the. You know.
So it's a shell game.
I mean, it's absurd.
And in Colombia and places like this, they've woken up to this a long time ago, but yet I don't know what the status of plant Columbia is or whether they're still spreading glyphosate over the coca fields as their efforts made to eradicate it. Not so much anymore.
[00:20:49] Steven King: Be honest, I think not so much anymore is correct. I think that the drug war, that part of it, I think it's been so pernicious, the impact on people's environments and humans or whatever, that they said they couldn't do it. But I will say one of Wade's colleagues, Wade introduced me to one of his colleagues in Colombia and colleague David Restrepo. And there are indigenous peoples companies that are marketing and selling coca products, Mombe and other things in Colombia, which is beautiful. I mean, it's happening. The train is moving. There's no question about it. Obviously, in Colombia, they're trying to come to terms with how to manage it as a dietary supplement or not as a pharmaceutical. And of course, in Peru there's tons of products from cookies to drinks to this and that, as well as a traditional chewing of coca leaves. So these are not just ancient, they're current. They're being uplifted in their countries of origin.
[00:21:45] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. Yeah. And when we do this coca forum later in the year, we definitely want to bring some people from that sector in. They're showing that they're getting all sorts of beneficial products from cocaine. It's like cannabis in some ways. It's like these things, a multi use, multi application drug and medicine. And it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be therapeutic, but it can certainly be that.
But it can also be recreational. The same sense that coffee and tea, that sort of thing are. And I would love to have, I'm not so good at chewing mambe. I was afraid it's gonna get in my nostrils and choke me to death. But I love chewing gum.
[00:22:40] Steven King: You know, one thing that there was a symposium of coca in Bogotá. I wasn't there. Not a symposium, it was, it was like a day long festival. And there's all these chefs in Colombia that make all these different dishes with coca from desserts to, you know, to fish toppings. I mean, it was really cool. I mean, I know their whole application of the sacred plant for foods.
[00:22:58] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. It is as much a food as it is a medicine, even a spice, kind of.
[00:23:05] Steven King: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:23:06] Dennis McKenna: No, it's just one of these marvelous plants. What is it about humans that we have to prohibit the most useful plants?
[00:23:14] Steven King: That's a good question. Um, but it made me think about, I think it was Adrian Forsyth, or maybe it was, who talked about how coffee actually colonized humans, that basically coffee has, you know, and so I'm not starting to think like ayahuasca is doing that in its own way as well. Like humans, they're using as a vehicle to spread the plant and its virtues around the planet. And I kind of think that makes sense. Coca may be the next one that's going to help. It's been colonized in a bad way, the plant, by making that pure compound. But let the plant have its wonders, be part of the human diet and human health.
[00:23:51] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, yeah. And that's essentially true of any plant that is valuable to humans. Like Michael Pollan talks about how corn has created the global international monoculture based cultural situation, which is not necessarily a good thing, but corn is adapted to it. Corn is perfect for industrial monoculture.
And that's kind of unfortunate in some ways, but, yeah, I do think that these plants, we formed a symbiotic relationship. Any plant that we value for food, medicine, textiles, construct material, anything that we value plants for, that is a kind of a symbiosis, you know, and there are mutual benefits for the species. The species just want to spread. They just want to grow. Their agenda is very simple. You know, ours is more complicated, but if we can form these alliances. You know, lately in my writings and talkings, I've been thinking, I've been suggesting the idea that we should try and bring forward the notion that we have a right to symbiosis.
And it goes beyond simply a human right. It's an organismic right. We should be able to form a beneficial relationship with any damn plant or fungus that we want to without interference. So the idea that we can arrogate ourselves and take on the authority to decree that something like coca or opium or some of these plants, which were incredibly useful, benefit, it decreed that they should be eradicated from the face of the earth.
What gives us the right to do that? You know, to say that.
[00:26:00] Steven King: I love it. I mean, I listened to your wonderful podcast with Rebecca where you did talk about she was incredible and her work's amazing and the conversation with them. But you mentioned symbiosis as a core of the McKenna Academy. I think that's a great idea. It goes beyond the rights of nature, sort of the rights of everybody to be symbiotic, including the platelet humans.
[00:26:18] Dennis McKenna: It's the right of living things, of organisms on this planet, and that should supersede any national or international legal structures. I mean, it should just be articulated in the same way. That's human rights, but it goes beyond human rights.
[00:26:39] Steven King: I like it.
[00:26:40] Dennis McKenna: Hopefully people will start to listen, because this is, and I think if you can, if you can frame this idea and sort of propagate this idea, the crisis that we face on the global level, the environmental crisis, the climate crisis, as we know, at the root, this comes to a profound, it comes down to a profound estrangement from nature and a complete misunderstanding of our relationship to nature and the notion that nature exists for us to dominate, to use, to exploit, to extract, and ultimately to destroy.
That's where that perspective leads you to in the end, rather than this understanding that we're just one species in the biosphere, the most problematic species, you know, but we could turn that around if we would wake up, you know, to.
[00:27:52] Steven King: Completely agree, this takes it a semi attention on that, but I've been dying to do this. So I'm not, I know you know about plant neurobiology and you've had amazing interface of the plants and plant teachings. So there's, there's, you probably know this guy, Gustav Fechner, who came up with this thought that the plants have souls and plants have sentient, have consciousness, which is a big topic, I realize. And then there's Rachel Peterson, who runs the Thinking with Plants Fungi initiative at the Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard. I'm just thinking, just putting that together. Divinity, Harvard, plants, fungi. And then I heard a podcast just the other day of Gary Nabhan, who I adore, and he mentioned that in South Korea and other parts of the world, some people are so dissociated from nature, sometimes they're committing suicide because they're on computers all the time. Maybe that's come out of the pandemic thing and that they're making gardens for people in urban areas to go into to get relationship to plants, that it has a therapeutic like the forest bathing and stuff like that. But you take it to another level. It's like, we plants can heal us from our own in nature. I mean, we got, not you, maybe not me, but so much of the, of the world other than the people that live in indigenous, I mean, in tropical forest or natural places, they dissociated, like you just said, they're dissociated from plants, they're dissociated from nature. The things that they can sort of open up their senses and help them heal just by being around plants, much less taking them as medicine. So I totally agree with you.
[00:29:21] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, we have come to devalue nature, you know, and view it as, number one, that we are not part of it. Number two, that it's value to us is only economic, you know, so much more than that. And I think, honestly, Steven, I think this is a legacy of Christianity in some ways because, you know, or the Judeo christian tradition, because it's always taught that, you know, dominion over the world is the christian perspective. And that's, you know, there's an inbuilt into that perspective is that, you know, this world has no value because you're going to the next, you know, your going to heaven, there's no way to appreciate, unload this world because, because it's evil. You know, it's the source of evil. And we're, we're headed toward, you know, the kingdom of heaven. This is, well, I mean, we could get off on that track, I said, but this is a good example of the inherent sort of, you know, toxicity of these religions, which pretty much not.
[00:30:37] Steven King: Not to mention what done to human beings, all human beings. But I forgot to finish that first. So that, um. So I guess Zoë Schlanger, she's a journalist writing about plants called the light eaters. And then Carl Safra, a famous ecologist, both of them quoted Tim Plowman when they were talking about the plants have feelings. Are they sentient? And I love this quote from Tim, and I've seen it now several places that Tim said, oh, well, plants eat light. Isn't that enough? Like why do we have to even ascribe sentinels? They're eating light, like that side of the globe. I love that.
[00:31:11] Dennis McKenna: Of course they do. And of course they have consciousness. You know, I'm not pretty much a panpsychist. I think that pan, that consciousness permeates not only in the biosphere, but probably the most fundamental levels of existence. But the idea that in the first place, it's hard to define what consciousness is. I mean, you can bounce that around for a long time. But plants are sentient, plants are conscious.
Pretty much everything in the biosphere is conscious. I would even say that humans are conscious. But humans, humans are a lot less, in some ways less appreciative of their consciousness because they assume we're the only ones that are conscious. But, you know, and then you can take psychedelics and find out, no, actually these plants have a lot to teach and indigenous people have always regarded these things as plant teachers.
Very apt. I think that's exactly what they do.
And to bring that conversation back around, I think that psychedelics are one of the major catalysts available to us to wake up to what we're doing to the planet. So many people come away from these profound psychedelic experiences, particularly if they are taken in nature, realize then the connections between us and all species and the interconnection, interdependence of life. And so plants are a catalyst for waking up the monkeys.
Some talk about waking up the monkeys. My concern is, is it happening faster though?
[00:33:11] Steven King: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love waking up the monkeys. You know, what's sort of encouraging to me is the large interest of all kinds of people, all walks of life, who would like to experience psilocybin. So there's a real draw, widely wounded beyond the sort of the subculture that, you know, in the sixties and seventies. So that, that's very encouraging. But as you said, is it, is there time? Is there time to wake up enough?
[00:33:35] Dennis McKenna: I mean, ayahuasca is a good example. You cannot grow or produce enough ayahuasca for a billion people. You know, I mean, that, that's the problem. There are constraints on, on the production, and then of course you can turn to the, to the synthetics, but it's not the same. You know, and it's very interesting that the so called, I don't know if it's correct to call it a psychedelic renaissance, but certainly within the last few years, the world has become more aware of the potential benefits of psychedelics, and it's often viewed in terms of therapeutics. These are medicines, but that happens within a much larger context.
These are plant teachers, these are plant teachers that we have co evolved with. If you believe the Stoned Ape Theory, which I do, because I'm one of the chief promulgators of it. Probably for millions of years, we've coevolved with these things, and they have a lot to do with the emergence of consciousness.
I mean, maybe that's implausible, but maybe not so much. If you look at the paleo climatic native for North Africa, 2.5 million years ago, there were cattle there. There were, you know, it was a humid, tropical environment. We have fossil evidence for cattle and hominids. Mushrooms had to be there.
Curious hominids who were also hungry, were probably munching all those things.
[00:35:18] Steven King: As humans are, want to do when they're hungry. What is this?
Watch what happens to somebody. No, I agree with you, actually. And you know, in the case of psilocybin, those can be produced in rather large, you know, quantity. There's not a real constraint. Obviously, the whole world's not good, but if people wanted to find their way to that, it's not as hard to do in terms of production. I mean, even these, like Filament trying to make a standardized extract from the plant, I mean, that's. Some people will be afraid to take sort of more. Here, take the mushrooms. But I mean, there's more entry points. They'll be coming, I think, which is good for different levels of people of interest.
[00:35:57] Dennis McKenna: Right. Psilocybin mushrooms are one of those where we don't really have to worry too much about supply, because anybody could grow them with a little bit of persistence. We should be propagating that knowledge. I mean, we are spreading that knowledge, and that is a good thing. Something like ayahuasca or iboga peyote, these are much more challenging to develop sustainable sources for, especially peyote, and even things like the sonoran toad. You mentioned that, uh, in the other podcast, you know, I mean, people have this, you know, they're actually better botanical sources of fibrothoxy than the anadenenthera, the snuffs very high in fibrothoxy DMT. You need to, you know, you don't need to get it from the toad. It's this old romantic macho thing, kind of. I think the same thing applies to combo medicine. You know, just another amphibian that is really endangered due to the over exploitation for combo. It's, you know, I mean, you. You probably in your work and around the ketosis, you've probably seen that. And there's. There's now an international market for it.
[00:37:34] Steven King: Yeah, I mean, what's really theory about the toad, too, is that the cartels in Sonora have gotten involved where the collectors who are collecting it for the market, they know you have to know how to do it and stuff. And they moved in and said, you teach us how to do it and. Or you do it for us. And so just another way to make money sort of perverting that whole thing once again, where you're. I mean, it's not like coke and cocaine, but here you have external forces moving in to control it, other ways to do it, like virola. And that's not big pharma. That's big drug companies. I mean, big drug dealers. I mean, you know, it's. That kind of drives me crazy. Makes me sad.
[00:38:13] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, this is the. This is the thing that's. It's sad that, I guess the profit motive is, you know, always with us, or at least in a capitalistic framework, it's always with us. So, you know, like, good science has led to the sort of rediscovery of the benefits of psychedelics. And then big pharma and the venture capital community and all that has lost no time moving in on it and trying to control it. Now, people, some companies are even working on developing derivatives that are non psychedelic Psychedelics. So the psychedelic experience is being, you know, categorized as an adverse side effect.
Engineer that out of the molecule. Inconvenient.
[00:39:11] Steven King: You know, I don't get that one at all. I mean, except sometimes it's just for patents, right? Because they're not the compound themselves. A, they want to control, so synthesis, and B, they can't file patents if it's a naturally long.
[00:39:24] Dennis McKenna: But, yeah, it's crazy. I think it's a non-starter. I don't think that you can develop a psychedelic. I mean, by definition, you can't separate it from the psychedelic experience.
That is the basis of the therapeutic reaction. And the experience is related and reflected on, In the neurobiological changes that take place in connectivity and that sort of thing. I don't think they happen in the absence of that. I mean, I've been wrong before, but I'm very skeptical.
[00:40:05] Steven King: I am too. But are you actually saying that the same compound in the toad, 5-MeO-DMT that's in the snuffs. The exact same compound, it's the same comp.
[00:40:14] Dennis McKenna: Well, the stuffs. The anadenanthera is a combination of DMT, fibothoxy, DMT, bifontanine, and there's relatively little DMT. It's mostly fibothoxy and bifontinine.
[00:40:31] Steven King: Okay.
[00:40:31] Dennis McKenna: And you could make a concentrate from those seeds because it's extremely high, you know, in concentration that would be smoked like the toad venom. And it would be the same experience, basically.
[00:40:50] Steven King: That might be a way to divert some of the intense pressure on the toads. If people understood that.
[00:40:55] Dennis McKenna: People understood it. People. You have to give the information out. That's right.
[00:41:01] Steven King: I remember I saw Andy's talk at the MAPS meeting in Denver. He was talking. I think it was that one talking. He lived at some little place in a canyon outside Tucson. And the toads would come and cover his pool certain times of year. You'd have to kick them out of the way. They were just everywhere. And it just kind of made me laugh thinking about, you know, somebody's homestead being overrun by it.
[00:41:22] Dennis McKenna: Well, if you have that kind of problem, then I guess you can. I guess you can harvest them, you know, I think they're under a lot of pressure.
[00:41:33] Steven King: Yeah. No, that's not the story today for sure.
[00:41:36] Dennis McKenna: That's not a story for us today for sure.
[00:41:39] Steven King: I am curious to ask you. So your view that the synthetic version of these things will not have the healing and or other benefits is based on the sort of this unique, specific structure of the compound in the plant. I mean, if you made a synthetic psilocybin.
[00:41:58] Dennis McKenna: I don't think that. I think you could. You can use synthetic psilocybin therapeutically, you know, and people do. And those synthetics, I think, are more appropriate for a structured, like, clinical situation, and that's fine. They lack the whole cultural context that the psychedelics do.
That's an important part of using these, if you want to say.
I don't think we want to get to a point where you say, well, these things aren't approved for therapeutic uses. You have to go to a clinic and pay $30,000 for the psilocybin treatment. But if you want to go into the woods and pick mushrooms and take those. That's illegal. You can't do that.
I think we should encourage people to, you know, we should acknowledge that there are specific therapeutic applications where you do need that clinical structure, and that's fine, but for but most people use psychedelics. They, they are not, they don't use them to treat mental disorders. They use them as learning experiences. They use them to become better people.
As Bob Jesse said, these are used for the betterment of the wells.
And people should be encouraged to use psychedelics, natural psychedelics, for those purposes. All this work on drug discovery, developing derivatives of psilocybin and these sorts of things, for therapeutic uses.
Let's face it, Steven, they're not necessarily better than what comes from nature, but they are more patentable, and that's why they're doing this. They're trying to develop these derivatives because they can patent them.
But it's hard to imagine how you can take a molecule like psilocybin and improve on it with all the characteristics you need. You don't need a synthetic derivative.
[00:44:21] Steven King: And I'm a complete, total proponent and advocate of the natural like Filament is doing, growing them and making a standardized extract from the plant, not from a synthetic. I completely agree with you, way, way better. I think a lot of people prefer that. And it's funny, the juxtaposition you mentioned between a clinical therapeutic application and all this furious activity versus human beings everywhere, learning and experimenting and growing outside of that realm is sort of like two currents going different directions, but with a somewhat similar goal. I don't know, it's been fascinating to watch. For me, what really blows my mind when I think back in the nineties, there was this guy, Lord Miller, who filed a patent on a variety of ayahuasca. Everybody went nuts. Fast forward 30 years.
[00:45:08] Dennis McKenna: I remember him well.
[00:45:12] Steven King: You can participate in ayahuasca ceremonies in most major cities in North America and Europe almost any night of the week. I mean, it's so ubiquitous, which is not bad at all. It's good, it's good. But I always marvel at the juxtaposition. People aren't making money. Some people are in Iquitos, Ecuador, Brazil, there's good places to go. There's ones that are not more exploitative. So it's fascinating to me the flow of how it's all gone, because if you talked about, I don't know, setting up access to ayahuasca for profit at clinics or these centers, some people would have been really upset 30 years ago, and now it's much more like, oh, this is, this is acceptable and good and helpful in many cases. So it's just been amazing to watch.
[00:45:55] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, I think. I mean, I've come to have a different perspective on so-called ayahuasca tourism and similar things. I mean, I used to organize ayahuasca retreats. I still do. I haven't exactly stopped, but I've come to think that what we really need to do, you know, ayahuasca tourism is a mini double edged sword in the sense that puts pressure on the source, on this supply.
In some ways, it disrupts these communities. It doesn't benefit them.
One or two superstar curanderos in the community, they make lots of money, everybody else is left behind.
What I have been saying in my talks and so on, we gotta find, rather than people going to South America for the medicine, let's find a legal way to bring the medicine. North America and Europe bring the medicine, work with indigenous people, develop sustainable supply infrastructures, you know, so that they can then produce it and export it, and it can be lightly regulated. It shouldn't be, but lightly regulated for purity and quality. And let them supply it to these retreat centers, community based retreat centers in North America and Europe, you know, so that then they get the benefit, they produce the medicine, their shamans can come up and facilitate sessions or teach people how to do it, but they're not impacting, they're not disrupting the communities. It's more of a mutual benefit.
The Ayahuasca tourism structure is still in some ways very exploitative. Most street centers, they're not run by indigenous people. They're run by gringos who employ indigenous people. And that's great, but the indigenous people should be doing it, the community should be doing it. And if there's a way that could be found, I think if like in a better world 20 years from now, well, 20 years from now, who knows?
There may not be the Amazon left in 20 years, the way things are going, but let's not go there. But 20 years from now, if every, every community had essentially a holistic therapy center in which psychedelics were on the menu, but maybe another range of therapeutic practices were involved, you could go for a weekend, do a little yoga, take psychedelics, bring the kids, hang out.
Can you imagine what that would do for community solidarity, for family dynamics, for, or people's health or people nutritional choices?
It would fit very well into that.
[00:49:05] Steven King: I mean, it's kind of happening at a nascent level. Now. Right. And you can go to some of these places in North America that offer some of those kinds of things, but it's, it's very. I mean, it's not even legal in some cases. And it's, it's. It's very expensive, too, which is kind of makes me sad, because like you said, I wouldn't, I don't like to think of access to this ability to evolve and grow be limited to, only to those who contribute a whole bunch of money.
[00:49:30] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. And if they could come out of the shadows, if they did not have to operate, you know, in the underground, it would be much healthier for everyone.
[00:49:41] Steven King: And reminds me, are you going to interview Rachel Harris? Because this book's, Swimming in the Sacred. This is a really wonderful book.
[00:49:52] Dennis McKenna: Okay.
[00:49:53] Steven King: Because she talks about all those underground teachers and how important their knowledge is that they're at risk legally when they help people, and yet they have tremendous experience. There's sort of like a bridge between indigenous, you know, cultures and people that want to experience these things. And I think those people need to be made legal and given the ability to do their thing without the threat of any, you know.
[00:50:19] Dennis McKenna: Right. I mean, it should be knowledge that is recognized and honored and, and allowed in a community. It's kind of like the knowledge of midwives or the knowledge of herbalists. You know, it's always been marginalized and in some ways looked down upon. And yet, you know, if there were highly trained herbalists, were more widespread and so on, that would take tremendous pressures off the medical system because people could turn to, they don't have to go to doctors and pay thousands of dollars for treatment. There's often an herbalist who could recommend some plants that have the therapeutic effect, and it's just much more human, much more beneficial.
[00:51:11] Steven King: I mean, I feel like we're going that way with the legislation that are being, trying to enact in various places around the US and perhaps Europe. I'm not as familiar. I think that's very promising.
[00:51:21] Dennis McKenna: I agree. I think maybe the decrim movement is healthy, but the decrim movement also has to be cautious and thoughtful about how it does, how it works. Because, for example, the decriminal movements, in my opinion, should just as a matter of ethics, say peyote is off limits.
We're not going to exploit, lead to the indigenous people. It's their thing. There's not enough. They're better. There are not better, but alternative psychedelics. So we'll leave it alone. We won't alter it. But mushrooms, there's no problem with supply and they're safe and they should be. And people can be encouraged to grow them. That's the thing. This is the knowledge that can be easily transmitted and it's community wisdom, right?
[00:52:19] Steven King: And I've heard recently about end of life positive experiences. And you think about this culture, at least in America, death, dying, we're not very good at that. We're so suppressed. It's a terrible thing. And yet people have such anxiety and such issues at that phase of their life. And to have something that would provide that sort of reorientation toward that passage and create a sense of awe about the passage, what a beautiful thing that is.
[00:52:51] Dennis McKenna: This is one of those things where these community centers could really shine. And this is happening in Canada. There are actually places that are of TheraPsil and other organizations. A lot of what they do is facilitate dying with psilocybin therapy. So need to propagate that model and.
[00:53:17] Steven King: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:53:18] Dennis McKenna: Well, we could go on and on, Steven, but I guess we better wrap it up here. We've just over an hour, so it's been good.
[00:53:27] Steven King: Well, thank you. I want to just also compliment you on how you are cultivating the younger generation of ethnobotanists. I think it's beautiful. Michael Coe and Rebecca, I mean, you're helping sort of, what's the right word, mentor in a beautiful way. As you said, we're kind of getting old.
[00:53:47] Dennis McKenna: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Michael Coe is a wonderful young man. He just got a real job. He's got a tenure track position at the University of Texas biology. And he's going to start that this fall. And i'm so happy because for a long time I wanted to be able to bring him on to the academy as a paid director of ethnobiology. We never got the money, but he went ahead and founded a position that he can make a career out of, and it's great. And I should mention he developed and taught for us a beautiful long course in Ethnobotany, which we taught a few years ago in collaboration with the Organization for Tropical Studies. And we've repurposed that and we've created an online version of that. And we're just about to offer it. In fact, I'll give you access, credentials to it so you can people to look it over and essentially beta test it. I'd love you to take a glance at it and give us feedback.
[00:55:08] Steven King: Thank you.
[00:55:09] Dennis McKenna: We're going to bring that forward, and there seems to be a lot of interest in that. People can't get this kind of information. And academics are, for inexplicable reasons, shutting down their ethnobotany courses like the University of Hawaii. I mean, I'm just gobsmack of all places in the US, why would they shut down ethnobotany? It seems, just seems, well, very short sighted is what it seems.
[00:55:39] Steven King: Doesn't make sense.
[00:55:40] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. All right. I'll record this all worked out and I'll let you know when we're going to drop it.
[00:55:48] Steven King: Great.
[00:55:49] Dennis McKenna: Thank you so much, Steven, very much appreciate your sharing your wisdom with us on the Brainforest Café.
[00:55:57] Steven King: My pleasure. Thank you.
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