Plants & Herbs

031: Dr. Julie Holland by Joe

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

Today is June 6, 2016, and we are talking with Dr. Julie Holland, psychopharmacologist, psychiatrist, and best-selling author of several books.

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:

  • Julie’s origin story: how did she get interested in this area of research

  • Julie took MDMA with Rick Doblin on the last day it was legal: June 30th, 1985

  • “Cancer of Yang” – Jeremy Wolff’s phrase (Julie’s husband)

  • Vaginal administration of cannabis to avoid the liver from edible ingestion, 11-OH-THC

  • Edibles: Julie emphasizes the need to wait two hours before re-evaluating dosage

  • Overmedication of society

    • “Do you ever overeat and then feel bad about it?” Big pharma’s answer: strong, long-lasting amphetamine daily.

  • Medical and Recreational Entheogens

    • “Recreation is therapeutic”

  • THC, CBD and Terpenes

  • Some people don’t want to get high from their medicine.

  • Munchies mitigation tip: don’t start eating.

  • Punishment doesn’t work with addiction

  • Pornography and the “new normal”: no pubic hair vs. “very bushy” 70’s

Julie’s Books:

029: Build Entheon with Alex and Allyson Grey by Joe

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

Today is May 24 2016, and we are discussing Building Entheon with Alex and Allyson Grey.

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:

  • Entheon is a place to discover the divine within
  • Why build a psychedelic temple?
  • BuildEntheon.com – Almost to the stretch goal of $200K
  • Entheon is a 12,000 sq ft building, three floors including a gallery of international visionary art
  • Prehistoric artifacts document early cultures who made art and had a relationship with entheogens
  • “It’s important for our psychedelic sacramental culture to have evidence that in our generation there were people who valued love, unity, spirituality, and peace over commerce and war.” - Allyson Grey
  • LSD is derived from ergot fungus, which shares similar characteristics with psilocybin mushrooms.
  • Allyson recommends Robert Barnhart’s movie, A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin. (We have interviewed the producer and discussed the film on Entheogen.)
  • Visit BuildEntheon.com to support the campaign! Check out the amazing original works of art and other rewards.

027: Sacred Plant Retreats with Maxwell Wieland of Munay Medicine in Peru, Part 2 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:

  • Munay Medicine – what’s the vision, how does a retreat work, what do they offer?
  • The 10-day Retreat
  • “La Dieta” – lifestyle more than diet.
  • Yoga as adjunct therapy to plant medicine.
  • Yoga class as track meet? Yoga more as philosophy than merely athleticism.
  • Reconsidering “traditional” use of ayahuasca in a long historical context.
  • Alchemist? E.g., extraction of alkaloids.
  • The duality of the ego. “I just sleighed my ego.”
  • “Avoid the dreaded underdose. Dose high. Dose healthy.”

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."

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!