58: Psychedelics and Self-Discovery. Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna

If psychedelics are one thing we can all agree on, is that it will make a lot of people happy. There's a lot of people who could use a heavy dose of psychedelics to stop being angry. There's something about stepping outside of yourself and even up the reality that comes with these types of experiences that is getting even more useful in a culture that is becoming even more obsessed with the day to day and itself.

In this episode of Made You Think, Nat and Mansal Denton talk about Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna. This is a fun book episode about Terence McKenna’s take on psychedelics. First of which is that because mushrooms or “shrooms” basically grow faster in Caledon it leads us to see respect and certain religious adoration towards animals and lastly, that psychedelics are originators of religion.

We cover a wide range of topics, including:

• What are psychedelics and its misconceptions
• How the society take these substances into account
• Why animals seem keen into psychedelics
• How psychedelic substances are lowering the floodgates of one’s experience
• Terence McKenna’s TWO ideas on psychedelics
• How religion coincided with psychedelics
• Mansal’s authentic Ayahuasca experience and the hunt for a good Shaman

And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Smoke Signals by Martin A. Lee, a book about the history of marijuana and the war on drugs in the US. Check also The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell that talks about the origin of religions.

Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we’re running, special events, and more.

Links from the Episode

Mentioned in the show

• Nootropedia [1:28]
• Nootropics [1:35]
• Psychedelics [1:39]
• OYASIN [1:46]
• Psilocybin mushroom/Magic Mushrooms “Shrooms” [4:28]
• MDMA for PTSD [4:30]
• DMT [11:43]
• Ayahuasca [11:59]
• Chacruna Leaves [13:37]
• N,N-DMT [13:49]
• 5-MeO-DMT [14:00]
• LSD [15:39]
• Stoned Ape Theory [16:20]
• Dominator culture [31:38]
• Marijuana [32:17]
• Vape [34:30]
• MAOI [36:01]
• Nicotine gum [36:43]
• Juul Vapes [37:00]
• Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia [38:21]
• Soylent [39:07]
• Polio [41:12]
• Opium [41:21]
• Ibogaine [44:29]
• Iboga [44:51]
• Burning Bush [49:40]
• Amanita Muscaria Mushroom [50:21]
• Aztec [54:31]
• Sweat Lodge Ceremony [55:06]
• Kundalini yoga [57:43]
• Ayahuasca Shaman [1:00:00]  

Books mentioned

• Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna
• How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan [4:15]
• The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley [18:23]

People mentioned

• Mansal Denton [0:33]
• Michael Pollan [4:15]
• Trump [8:15]
• Nixon [9:58]
• Timothy Leary [10:07]
• Dennis McKenna [17:07]
• Albert Hoffman [17:46]
• Ram Dass [17:56]
• Aldous Huxley [18:21]
• Hamilton Morris [38:21]
• Dr. Dan Engle [47:30]
• Jesus on Psychedelics [49:45]
• Santa Claus on Psychedelics [50:07]

Show Topics

1:25 - Mansal Denton is the co-host for today’s episode! He has recently left an organization called Nootropedia, where his whole focus was helping people optimize their mental performance using nootropics. He found that some of the best nootropics were psychedelics and from that path he moved into another organization called Oyasin, which is a lifestyle brand reharmonizing people with the natural world. A high-level view of what he's interested right now: he believes that all of the external problems in the world are a manifestation of what's going on in our minds collectively at the society and that psychedelics can be a powerful tool to solve what's going on in our minds. He thinks that transformational or peak experiences are things that we all crave and could help change our perspectives someway.

4:00 - Interesting shift of perspective in society about Psychedelics and plant medicines. “How To Change your Mind” by Michael Pollan is a great influence to this. Some of the kinds of psychedelics are Silicide, Magic Mushrooms, and MDMA for PTSD. It is so compelling and helpful for PTSD.

6:25 - If psychedelics are one thing we can all agree on then it will make a lot of people happy. There's a lot of people who could use a heavy dose of psychedelics to stop being angry. There's something about stepping outside of yourself and even up the reality that comes with this types of experiences that is getting even more useful in a culture that is becoming even more obsessed with the day to day and itself. Imaginary world which is everything in the internet, a reality that doesn’t exist in a physical way. Recreating our relationship with our internal map is something everyone can benefit from, like meditation, like a recognition of something lost.

7:55 - Society's take on psychedelics. Safety and inherent risks with these substances despite its legality in some places. Be smart. In today’s generations, there are negative responses to these plant medicines. War on drugs has done injustice to psychedelics.

10:54 - What kinds of drugs people are comfortable taking and which ones they aren't. Coffee, alcohol, tobacco, and aspirin are drugs all of us use that alter our daily experience.

12:00 - Drugs and hunting. Drugs and animals. Ayahuasca doses given to dogs for more effective hunting today in the jungle. Which plants are mixed with Ayahuasca. There’s an archaeological evidence that people were making ayahuasca thousands of years ago.

14:42 - McKenna’s Hypothesis: hallucinogenic compounds may have actually had influence in developing our own self-reflective abilities. DMT vs LSD trips. Stoned Ape Theory.

18:16 - Brain as primarily a filtering tool. Idea that the brain functions not to understand our environment but to filter out all of the less important noise from The Doors of Perception. Consciousness as a subtractive process, not an additive. Psychedelic substances are lowering the floodgates of one’s experience to open your senses to everything that’s going on in your environment that you’re normally unaware of. Ex