Interviews

026: Sacred Plant Retreats with Maxwell Wieland of Munay Medicine in Peru, Part 1 /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is February 21, 2016, and we are discussing Sacred Plant Retreats with our guest, Maxwell Wieland of Munay Medicine in Peru.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

Topics:

  • Max has been in a working relationship with wachuma (san pedro), ayahuasca, changa (dmt), psilocybin mushrooms, iboga, morning glories, salvia, and other plant entheogens for a decade.
  • How did Munay Medicine come to be?
  • What is a typical stay like?
  • Munay is in the Sacred Valley of Peru, a wonderful location with a number of retreat centers, convenient to Machu Picchu and other sacred sites.
  • San Pedro vs. Peyote, the sustainability and eco-friendliness of San Pedro – can grow up to a meter per growing season. Can be propagated easily.
  • The word wachuma translates to “removing the head” (wach- meaning “remove” and -uma meaning “head”) which metaphorically might mean the death of the ego. The word comes from Quechua, the language of the indigenous culture of the same name in the central Andes.
  • As Maxwell told us, “The name San Pedro was an adaptation that came as a result of Catholic contact via Spanish conquistadors.” This is fascinatingly similar to the Bwiti tribe in Gabon who use ibogaine in a syncretic Christian-tribal tradition; it seems that part of the Andean adaptation to missionary influence was to rename this sacred plant after Saint Peter, implying that the entheogenic cactus holds the keys to the gates of heaven just as its new namesake, Saint Peter, is said to do.
  • “Breaking open the Head”, Daniel Pinchbeck’s book about his initiation with the Bwiti (using Ibogaine).
  • Max shares some of his backstory including trouble related to the illegality of plant medicine in the United States, which led to his moving to Peru.
  • San Pedro “Jeff Bridges” variety: Trichocereus bridgesii

 

Also, please check out this link from last show's guest, Kirk Rutter: Psychedelic Science Org UK – "Psychedelics could be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology or the telescope for astronomy."

025: Psychedelic Medicine Trials with Participant Kirk Rutter /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is February 28, 2016, and we are discussing Psychedelic Medicine Trials with a participant in a recent psilocybin study, Kirk Rutter.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

Special thanks to our guest on today’s show, Kirk Rutter, who offers listeners a rare glimpse of what it’s like to participate in a psychedelic medicine trial. Kirk worked with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, David Erritzoe (who sat in on the sessions), Prof. David Nutt (who oversaw the project), and Mark Bolstridge at the Imperial College of London, studying the impact of psilocybin on depression.

Topics:

  • Kirk shares a bit of background about why he sought out this study

  • The screening process

  • Kirk’s prior experience (none) and opinion of psychedelics before the study

  • No interaction with the other participants during the trials, meeting these automatic allies after the conclusion of the trials.

  • The benefit of the “dry run” of set and setting a week ahead of time. Compare this protocol to the DMT studies by Strassman – demonstrates the importance of a comfortable setting.

  • Kirk offers the term “psychedelic turbulence”, and the analogy of taking off in a plane: passing through the clouds, there may be some turbulence, and then once you reach a certain height it becomes calm.

  • Sanskrit text flashing in the darkness, faint geometrics, jewels, golden structures…

  • Describing the session room: niceties like ambient laser lights, aroma machine, candles, fresh flowers.

  • The music in the room. The care given to the playlist. The importance of the playlist as part of the protocol.

  • Psychedelic lacrymation.

  • The “psychedelic yawn”.

  • We all share our deep cries.

  • Using music to help embed the experience.

  • The roles of David, Robin, and Mark and how they factored into the experience.

  • Robin: “one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

  • We all don’t like the zoo. (E.g. “Meerkats basking under sunlamps.”)

  • Kirk’s experience of seeing “an Indian god ‘look in on me’ like a parent looking over a baby's crib”

  • Kevin’s experience seeing the same deity as Kirk: Ganesh, the "remover of obstacles", the "God of wisdom, knowledge and new beginnings". He sounds like a good totem to have through the 25mg experience”

  • Chanting, meditating

Check out Kirk’s blog for a first person description of what it’s like to participate in modern psychedelic research, including videos from your accommodations at the Imperial College campus in London.

021: Psychedelic First Aid with Special Guest, Sara Gael of MAPS and the Zendo Project /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 14th, 2015, and we are discussing the Zendo Project with special guest, Sara Gael, Harm Reduction Coordinator for MAPS.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook.

Our guest, Sara Gael, has been involved with the Zendo Project since its inception in 2012. Since then she has helped coordinate harm reduction services at festivals all over the world including Burning Man, Afrika Burn, Envision Festival, and Lightning in a Bottle. She is also an intern investigator in the Boulder, Colorado Phase II Clinical Trial of the Safety and Efficacy of MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy. Sara works as a psychotherapist in private practice and received her Master’s in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology at Naropa University.

Topics:

  • What is the Zendo Project?

  • Zendo is billed as Psychedelic First Aid for Festivals & Events: “The Zendo Project provides a supportive environment and specialized care designed to transform difficult psychedelic experiences into valuable learning opportunities, and even potentially offer healing and growth. In turn, our work reduces the number of drug-related hospitalizations and arrests.”

  • Safe Space

  • Talk through, not down

  • Sitting, not guiding

  • Difficult is not bad

  • What type of training does the “sitter” or “facilitator” receive?

  • Benefits of human contact, touch

  • How to volunteer with Zendo

    • Volunteers are needed for Burning Man, Afrika Burn, other festivals

  • Sara discusses experience in the field at Burning Man, BOOM, Cannabis Cup, etc.

  • How does Zendo work with medical and other support services

    • KosmiCare at BOOM in Portugal, where drugs are decriminalized, provides a glimpse of a post-prohibition future: their efforts are sponsored by the local government and festival, and they include onsite testing of pills.

    • Erowid Center helps bridge the gap with EcstacyData.org which features pill testing results database, in addition to the psychoactive vaults of Erowid.org.

  • What’s the deal with folk remedies (bananas, oranges?)

  • Nice things that smell good, art supplies, beautiful space, pillows, blankets, tea – your Psychedelic Grandma’s house

Resources:

020: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, second half /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 9, 2015 and we are very excited to feature a special interview. This is the second half.

It is our great pleasure and honor to welcome Earth and Fire Erowid!

Topics:

  • Kevin and Earth reminisce about Burning Man 2007, the “Eclipse/Man-Burn-Early Year”

  • What was Burning Man like in 1995?

  • Fire tells the story of a Burning Man purist in 1995 who had stopped going since there were people there she didn’t know

  • “radical self-reliance” and community reliance

  • Earth asks Kevin: “did you carry out your own poop?”

  • When they moved to California in 1994, Earth worked remotely for his dad’s tech company; what was working remotely like in 1994?

  • Earth started New College in Sarasota, FL, the same year Rick Doblin graduated; Fire joined the next year. (Rick’s wild time at New College in the ‘80’s described in Acid Test by Tom Shroder)

  • Earth and Fire discuss their friendship with Sasha and Ann Shulgin and the famous Friday night dinners

  • Erowid becoming an educational nonprofit in 2008

  • Erowid’s Library

Support Erowid!

And be sure to catch the first half of the interview.

019: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, first half /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 9, 2015 and we are very excited to feature a special interview. This is the first half.

It is our great pleasure and honor to welcome Earth and Fire Erowid!

For context, Joe reads a quote from Michael Horowitz, personal archivist for Timothy Leary:

“Powerful descriptive writing about personal drug experiences mimics the effects of the drugs themselves. Reading Aleister Crowley on how hashish aided his meditation, or Mezz Mezzrow on playing in a jazz band on marijuana, or Gordon and Valentina Wasson’s otherworldly mushroom journey in a curandera’s hut in Mexico, or Anais Nin describing how LSD turned her body into liquid gold can be mildly psychoactive in itself. Especially so if you’d had your own prior experiences. We also collected books and studied the rituals of the peyote and mushroom cults, the history of the opium wars and laughing gas parties. We learned that drug literature is endless, and drug-taking was one of the earliest and most common activities of mankind.” - Michael Horowitz, from an interview about the Tim Leary Archives

Topics:

  • What role did the “mildly psychoactive” effect Horowitz attributed to some drug literature play in the founding of Erowid?
  • Feeling it before taking it – hours (or days) before
  • Imagination, memory, DMT, neurotransmitters, hallucinations
  • lucid dreaming
  • Oneirogens (dream generators); list of Oneirogenic substances on Wikipedia
  • dream pillows
  • Calea zacatechichi (the "dream herb")
  • the physical expression of one’s intention, e.g. the taking of a substance, can be just as powerful as the substance itself
  • What is it like having a New Yorker reporter in your home for three days?
  • Reflecting on Emily Witt’s profile of Erowid from inside the mirrored bubble
  • Kevin preaches: “drug education about marijuana was the gateway drug itself”
  • What could responsible drug education in school look like? Abstinence, fear-based approaches are the norm. What could be the alternatives for young people?
  • Earth introduces the concept of electroceuticals
  • Brad is hopeful about the psychedelic research renaissance
  • Special thanks to Earth and Fire Erowid for their tireless efforts for over 20 years, and huge thanks to Erowid’s noble crew
  • Erowid Experience Vaults: edited, curated alternative to “wild west” internet forums like bluelight.org; other contemporaries: lycaeum.org, deoxy.org
  • statistics about trip reports submitted, triaged, reviewed, and posted
  • Earth clarifies something in the New Yorker article: “we are in fact ‘the weirdos among the straights and the straights among the weirdos’.”
  • Fire live-edits the Entheogens page on Erowid to add LSD after our observation
  • corrections@erowid.org

FOLLOWUP FROM PREVIOUS EPISODE OF ENTHEOGEN, HONORING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF EROWID:

  • Earth and Fire helped 17 year-old Brad avoid jail time
  • Earth and Fire helped Kevin get through high school and college
  • Joe got Erowid blocked from the network at his corporate job

SUPPORT EROWID!