‘You can’t be drug-free because you’re made of drugs.’ Dennis McKenna 
In this episode of ReWild Yourself! podcast, Dennis McKenna — an ethnopharmacologist who has studied plant hallucinogens for over forty years — explains what happens when psychedelics are in our systems and recounts some of his fascinating adventures with his brother Terence McKenna in South America hunting psilocybin mushrooms and DMT.
EPISODE BREAKDOWN:
• What is ethnopharmacology?
• Merging science and the spiritual
• The spectrum of food and medicine in tribal cultures
• What happens when psychedelics are in our system
• Serotonin upgrades
• Psychedelics bring the background to the foreground
• Plant vs synthetic drugs
• Adventures with his brother Terence McKenna in South America hunting mushrooms and DMT
• A nutrient deficiency causing reductionist and materialistic world view
Dennis McKenna points out that our natural diet is psychoactive. We bred the alkaloids out of plant foods because they taste bitter.
All true psychedelics are serotonin 2A agonists. They act like the native neurotransmitters but have a different effect. They change our relationship to nature. The idea of separation from nature and the devaluation of nature is really the legacy of 2000 years of Judeo-Christian influence on our culture where the message is ‘don’t value existence in this world your reward is in the next world.’