Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's show is
Speaker 1: about i ahuasca and needed to do this one for
Speaker 1: quite a while. And there's a whole wide world of
Speaker 1: experts to call on in this area these days because
Speaker 1: iahuanska has become such a thing. You know, a psycholic
Speaker 1: plan medicine from South America prim early Amazon area. But
Speaker 1: today I have one of the world's great experts on
Speaker 1: this who has been a scholar and an activist for
Speaker 1: twenty years. Her name is Billibate. She's Brazilian. She's an
Speaker 1: anthropologist PhD. Anthropology. Grew up in Brazil, but she's also
Speaker 1: taught in Mexico and currently lives in the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: she's worked with Rick Dobbin's organization MAPS as the public
Speaker 1: Education and Culture specialist. She's been affiliated with other academic institutions,
Speaker 1: but her main gig for US four or five years
Speaker 1: is she founded and directs an organization called Chakruna, which
Speaker 1: is really one of the outstanding organizations working on ayahuasca
Speaker 1: and other plant medicines in the world. So be a
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining me on Psychoactive. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me Ethan, who have been following your work
Speaker 1: for a long time. It's an honor to be here
Speaker 1: with you today. I trying to think back. I think
Speaker 1: we first met. Maybe it was in Sal Paulo, Brazil,
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. I think I was given a talk
Speaker 1: at the law school down there and you end up
Speaker 1: coming to lunch with me and the professors or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then since that time, I've seen you a Drug
Speaker 1: Policy Alliance events, I've seen you all over the place,
Speaker 1: and really just recently earlier this summer, we crossed past
Speaker 1: in Mexico City at the conference of the Alcohol and
Speaker 1: Drug Historian Society, which is fascinating, and you were one
Speaker 1: of the keynote speakers there. So you know, your reputation
Speaker 1: just keeps growing, and I have tremendous admiration for the
Speaker 1: work that you're doing. So let's dive into this. I mean,
Speaker 1: the first question I gotta ask you is why have
Speaker 1: you How did you land up on devoting really, I
Speaker 1: guess all of your adult life so far to ayahuasca
Speaker 1: and plan medicine. Thank you for the common Actually I
Speaker 1: met you in the United States. I remember well distinctively
Speaker 1: because you were the first person that I came up
Speaker 1: with a little brochure and caught your attention when you
Speaker 1: were super busy running the dp A conference in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, and I wrote a little project and
Speaker 1: I said that I had a dream to have a
Speaker 1: nonprofit in the United States. And you sat down and
Speaker 1: you looked at it with like cybor guys, and three
Speaker 1: seconds read everything and gave me like five words of advice,
Speaker 1: tapped my shoulder, said good luck, and said some positive
Speaker 1: things and ran off to the next business meeting with
Speaker 1: all the in your glory in your times in the
Speaker 1: dp A running the whole show. And so it's so
Speaker 1: great for me. This is two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 1: then cut to two thousand and twenty two, and I
Speaker 1: do have a nonprofit in the United States, and I
Speaker 1: did receive your encouragement, and it does feel like a
Speaker 1: dream come true for me. So that means I get
Speaker 1: to feel a little bit proud of what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize that part of it, but that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So yes, so tell it gold back. You should.
Speaker 1: You should definitely feel proud. And you know, I've been
Speaker 1: realizing that how influential those conferences were for me. And
Speaker 1: it was at that conference that I also met Rick
Speaker 1: Doblin and started to volunteer for MAPS, which I did
Speaker 1: for ten years. And the d p A definitely helped
Speaker 1: a lot of young scholars and activists in Latin America
Speaker 1: do this bridge with the United States because we're kind
Speaker 1: of isolated, you know, in Mexico, Brazil, it's hard to
Speaker 1: come to the English speaking world, and that conference really
Speaker 1: played a role for a lot of us to get
Speaker 1: to know contexts and explore connections. I started this work
Speaker 1: really out of personal interest, basically because I took sacred
Speaker 1: plants and you you said hallucinogens were not antie that term,
Speaker 1: but we kind of preferred to use sacred plants or
Speaker 1: plant medicines or psychedelic plant medicines or sacred medicines medicines.
Speaker 1: The idea of hallucinogen gives a bit the impression that
Speaker 1: it's some kind of fake. Yeah, I'm sorry, I really
Speaker 1: said I see as it working out of mouth. I
Speaker 1: really got that popped out from an old part of
Speaker 1: my brain. Like hallucinogens, there's not really the term of
Speaker 1: art now. It is psychedelics or plant medicines or those
Speaker 1: two in combinations. Sorry about that, no problem, I mean
Speaker 1: they are just words after all. But we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of respect for these plants that
Speaker 1: are very influential, so we use other terms. But I
Speaker 1: had personal experiences that were pretty influential in my early twenties.
Speaker 1: I tried mushrooms in Mexico and peyote, and also tried
Speaker 1: L S D. And when I was twenty five or
Speaker 1: twenty six, tried aahuaska in Brazil and it was I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us have this feeling that it's
Speaker 1: like arriving home somehow, that you just get in touch
Speaker 1: with this reality that feels so incredibly familiar and so
Speaker 1: sacred and so profound and so inspiring, and that gives
Speaker 1: you a kind of sense of comfort of belonging to
Speaker 1: something bigger than yourself, and to kind of fitting into
Speaker 1: this magic and mystery that is being alive and the
Speaker 1: gratitude of having a body, having a spirit, having a soul,
Speaker 1: and being here in this journey of so much uncertainty
Speaker 1: towards what there is after us and just somehow gives
Speaker 1: this profound feeling of some kind of existential belonging. And
Speaker 1: so for me it has been really a personal journey
Speaker 1: that then inspired my intellectual curiosity as a kind of
Speaker 1: organic move that departs from this personal interests. Well, so
Speaker 1: let me ask you this, and let's just go backward
Speaker 1: for those in our audience who really don't know much
Speaker 1: about Ayahuaska. I mean I introduced it by saying it
Speaker 1: is this plant medicine, the psychedelic that comes from the
Speaker 1: Amazonian region, which presumably means parts of Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia,
Speaker 1: and I guess it maybe borders a little bit. It
Speaker 1: must be little parts of Venezuela or Bolivia where you
Speaker 1: can also probably find it. But just say a little
Speaker 1: more about you know, what do we know about its history?
Speaker 1: I mean, do we know if the use goes back
Speaker 1: hundreds of years or thousands of years. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think Westerners only became aware of it in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. But what's known from historians and others and
Speaker 1: anthropologists when they look back at the history of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So ayahuasca is a combination normally of two plants, although
Speaker 1: there is a variation of different admixtures plants that you
Speaker 1: can add to ayahuasca. Normally, it's the combination what a
Speaker 1: lot of people know of bunny steadiopsiska coppy, so that's
Speaker 1: the vine and Cicotira viddis that is the leaf or
Speaker 1: a shrub that you use the leaf. So traditionally for
Speaker 1: Amazonian indigenous people, the vine is kind of the base
Speaker 1: of ayahuaska. And then you can add different admixture plants.
Speaker 1: So Cicotia is chakurna. That's why we named our nonprofit
Speaker 1: after Ayawuaska. It's a tribute to Ayahuaska, which is our
Speaker 1: plant teacher. And it's used across different countries of the Amazon,
Speaker 1: and I think you have named all of them correctly
Speaker 1: by different indigenous people. It's not very clear when it's
Speaker 1: used started, and there is a lot of controversy around that.
Speaker 1: I mean traditionally people were saying that this was used
Speaker 1: for thousands of years, of five thousand years, and then
Speaker 1: this information has been disputed. Then there is some more
Speaker 1: recent archaeological evidence. But anyhow, it's not exactly known, and
Speaker 1: there isn't a day that people across the border identify.
Speaker 1: So one way to name let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: You know, when I think about like you can see
Speaker 1: you know, there's a little statuette of people with the
Speaker 1: bulge of the coca leaf in their cheek going back
Speaker 1: thousands of years, right, or you have archaeologists who find
Speaker 1: cannabis in people's bodies or their pouches that are dug up.
Speaker 1: You know, there are thousands of years old. There was
Speaker 1: a news article not long ago about evidence of ayahuasca
Speaker 1: and also I think coca being found in the bodies
Speaker 1: of children who have been sacrificed in inca ceremonies. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, five hundred years or so something like that.
Speaker 1: But so far as we know, is that the oldest
Speaker 1: archaeological evidence that we have of the use. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: I said, it's kind of disputed. We have published an
Speaker 1: article in our site by Georgio Sammarini talking about the
Speaker 1: fake news of the antiquity of ayahuasca. It's not as clear.
Speaker 1: For example, some pedro or peyote have more clear archaeological evidence.
Speaker 1: A lot of these materials in the Amazon are not
Speaker 1: really easy to track personally. I have chosen to use
Speaker 1: the expression it has been used since immemorial times, and
Speaker 1: I guess it's not really you know, relevant, exactly how
Speaker 1: long it has been used. The fact is that it's
Speaker 1: spread throughout the America's and it's considered a sacred plant
Speaker 1: for different indigenous groups. I think in the mid eighties
Speaker 1: there was an author that calculated that over seventy indigenous
Speaker 1: groups used diahuasca. More recently, we published in our article
Speaker 1: that an indigenous activist of Brazil mentioned there's a hundred
Speaker 1: sixty groups, although that's also hard to classify exactly how many,
Speaker 1: because the way that colonizers identified indigenous people and divided
Speaker 1: them into different ethnic groups does not really match necessarily
Speaker 1: the way these groups classify themselves, and they have also
Speaker 1: changed names through history. So it's such a huge universe,
Speaker 1: which plants, which groups for how long. All of this
Speaker 1: is part of the incredible richness of the Ayahuasca culture.
Speaker 1: What makes I think also the Aouaska a little different
Speaker 1: from say peyote or philosophic mushrooms and things like that,
Speaker 1: is that it requires putting together two distinct plants, right,
Speaker 1: and there is now you just take the one or
Speaker 1: take the other. If somebody had to figure out one
Speaker 1: way or another, you had to combine these things in
Speaker 1: order to unleash it's kind of special property. Is that right? Yes? Correct?
Speaker 1: And that's also part of the fascination of Ayahuaska. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine the millions of plants that exist on the
Speaker 1: Amazon forest, and if this was done by error and trial,
Speaker 1: how many attempts would there be to actually find this combination?
Speaker 1: And considering one of the plants is not really active
Speaker 1: orally by itself. When you ask indigenous people, how do
Speaker 1: you know this? And how did you find this out?
Speaker 1: And you know the answer they give, Right, do you
Speaker 1: even know what is it? The plants taught me? I
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna say that, right, that the plan spoke
Speaker 1: to them. It raises the question whether or not, I mean,
Speaker 1: we there's no way to know. I guess whether it
Speaker 1: is the properties of the merger of these two plants
Speaker 1: was first discovered by one tribe and then spread from there,
Speaker 1: or whether it was sort of coincidentally discovered in different
Speaker 1: parts of the Amazon over years by groups having nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the other. Do we have any idea
Speaker 1: which was true? Yeah, there's also controversies about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have published several books on Ihuaska, and we have
Speaker 1: done that as well, like published or an article and
Speaker 1: then later on some other person say something else, and
Speaker 1: you also published that article. So it looks like it
Speaker 1: came from the Columbian Amazon. But there's also a kind
Speaker 1: of lack of clarity exactly where did it originate from.
Speaker 1: And there's also some people trying to do some DNA
Speaker 1: work to sort of pursue different vines. Also, something interesting
Speaker 1: to consider, if you consider there's this whole boom and
Speaker 1: this whole trendness around Ahuaska, is that there's actually not
Speaker 1: a lot of botanical work done around the plant species itself.
Speaker 1: They were identified, as you said, and I think it
Speaker 1: was eighteen fifty nine or something. I look at eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty one the Victorian naturalist Richard Spruce. That's by Spruce,
Speaker 1: the first of the Westerners to uh come across this. Yes,
Speaker 1: he identified the vine. More recently, some researchers in Brazil
Speaker 1: have suggested that we need to reclassify the plant, that
Speaker 1: there are also other species and variations. So there's also
Speaker 1: that kind of depth to it, like if you go
Speaker 1: to indigenous people and you're try to ask them, you know,
Speaker 1: what is this vine or how many vines do you recognize?
Speaker 1: And they'll tell you they'll recognize six or eight or
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen or sixteen types. You know, this is
Speaker 1: the red monkey one, this is the parrot one, this
Speaker 1: is different names. And then you bring a botanist and
Speaker 1: show it to them. They don't recognize necessarily the different fronts.
Speaker 1: And so there is a challenge of like ethno medicine,
Speaker 1: to identify exactly which types of vine. And there has
Speaker 1: been a lot of exploration around different users and the
Speaker 1: practice expanding a lot, but not so much on the
Speaker 1: plants itself. So there's a lot of rich areas for
Speaker 1: study and for inquiry, and there's it's a vibrant field
Speaker 1: of study. And actually people are starting to do these
Speaker 1: kinds of studies more and more. Now. When you say
Speaker 1: the vine, I mean first I looked at photographs it
Speaker 1: is it almost looks like a snake winding itself around
Speaker 1: a tree from some of the photos I saw. But
Speaker 1: when you say the vine, that's one of the two ingredients.
Speaker 1: And is that the part that contains the drug d MT,
Speaker 1: which I guess is the key psychoactive ingredient, or is
Speaker 1: that the other one. No, that's the other one, that's
Speaker 1: the sequatria or another admixture plants. Also, our western explanation
Speaker 1: puts a kind of centrality into the d m T,
Speaker 1: which is the visionary element, and it's only active orally
Speaker 1: with the combination of the vine, the better carbulence. But
Speaker 1: this doesn't also match indigenous explanations smoothly because traditionally the
Speaker 1: base of ayahuasca is the vine. The vine is also
Speaker 1: called ayahuasca, and so the preparation of ayahuaska and other
Speaker 1: admixture plants is called ahuasca, and just the vine is
Speaker 1: also called ayahuasca, and you add different admixtures, and for
Speaker 1: us there has been a lot of emphasis on the
Speaker 1: d MT, but the tradition is normally the base, the
Speaker 1: central element is the vine. And there's also people that
Speaker 1: have cooked just the vine itself and reported psychoactive effects,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make a lot of sense. According to our theories.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of, you know, interesting and fascinating things. It's,
Speaker 1: as they say, a science, the science of indigenous people,
Speaker 1: a diahuasca diaouaska science. It's a study, it's a universe.
Speaker 1: So basically, when I mean, I've done this a few times.
Speaker 1: But when we drink that tea, the ayahuasca tea, which
Speaker 1: I guess is the way it's typically consumed, Nobody's going
Speaker 1: to drink that just for the taste. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: oftentimes quite unappealing, at least I find it that way.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people grow to like it. But it contains
Speaker 1: these two basic ingredients. But obviously every concoction varies depending
Speaker 1: upon the particular recipe, depending upon where it comes from.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna have the core elements there, but it's
Speaker 1: gonna vary quite a lot depending upon which reason of
Speaker 1: the amazon is coming from. About how people are putting
Speaker 1: it in. I imagine that different people who cook this
Speaker 1: up put in different other little additional ingredients for one
Speaker 1: reason or another. I mean, is that right. It's just
Speaker 1: there's like no limit to the types of ayahuasca flavors
Speaker 1: and taste, all sort of embellishing around that core mixture
Speaker 1: of the two ingredients. Yes, true, as it seems to
Speaker 1: have also been drinking some ayahuasca for a while, so
Speaker 1: as you know, that taste can be pretty challenging and
Speaker 1: it's part of like the personality, so to speak of ayahuaska.
Speaker 1: It's part of the ayahuasca experience. And to feel that
Speaker 1: taste that is this like kind of feels like visceral,
Speaker 1: deep penetration of odors and textures that is part of
Speaker 1: the kingdom of nature that we are normally not aware of.
Speaker 1: It's hard to describe, but I have a lot of
Speaker 1: respect for the taste of ahuaska. In Brazil, there's one
Speaker 1: of the Ahuaska religions that they drink awaska then they
Speaker 1: eat like a gum on top or some kind of
Speaker 1: maybe orange or something to take off the taste. Different
Speaker 1: people do that mint or whatever. I think it's part
Speaker 1: of the experience and we should feel it and just
Speaker 1: taste it and sit with it. And what you said
Speaker 1: is correct depending on the soil, depending on the edge
Speaker 1: of the ahuaska plant. And also there are rituals to
Speaker 1: cook it, and there's different beliefs around it. The time
Speaker 1: the proper time of harvesting, the proper time of cooking,
Speaker 1: the proper time of planting, and different regions have different flavors.
Speaker 1: One thing that is interesting is that it grows very
Speaker 1: fast in Hawaii. In Hawaii, there's a whole culture of
Speaker 1: growing ayahuasca. In the United States, of course, it's not
Speaker 1: entirely above board, let's say. And then the ahuaska from
Speaker 1: Hawaii is known to have kind of a sweeter taste.
Speaker 1: And in the beginning, some people, at least in Brazil
Speaker 1: and the Santa Dami religion, they were kind of a
Speaker 1: little bit prejudiced against the Daimi or Ahuaska from Hawaii.
Speaker 1: But with time it grew popularity and people learned to
Speaker 1: appreciate more. And that's also this is interesting. So that's
Speaker 1: more like the topics that I understand more is the
Speaker 1: culture around it, and you know, people's beliefs, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of thing that caught my attention for years. Uh huh.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this. We've done a lot
Speaker 1: of episodes in Psycholo had Paul Stamit's talking about mushrooms
Speaker 1: and all cyber mushrooms, and Mike Ja talking about peyote
Speaker 1: and san pedro mescaline, and Michael Pollen was on and
Speaker 1: you know, can't we tell the whole range. This is
Speaker 1: the first one Aowaska. But I remember years ago one
Speaker 1: of the other early researchers, going back to the eighties
Speaker 1: or nineties in this field, I think it was it
Speaker 1: was Charlie Grove, professor at U c l A. And
Speaker 1: I think it was him who said that many people
Speaker 1: regard ayahuasca as the queen of all the psychedelic plant medicines.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you would agree or use
Speaker 1: that terminology, but there's a sense of ayahuaska having a
Speaker 1: certain specialness that maybe from people outside I mean obviously
Speaker 1: people Native American Church, you know, for them, peyote is
Speaker 1: their sacrament, and we have that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: there's a kind of something special about ayahuaska that some
Speaker 1: people sometimes see as transcending even the other plant medicines.
Speaker 1: What do you think, Well, I'm kind of biased because,
Speaker 1: as you said, you know, dedicated years of my life
Speaker 1: to this subject. I drank ourawatska, and long story short,
Speaker 1: I got completely fascinated and I thought that was it,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of obsessed for twenty years. And
Speaker 1: you had already done other substances, but tried other psychedelics. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was it, you know, I thought that was it,
Speaker 1: and I got really dedicated and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: drink it and talk about it and think about it
Speaker 1: and talk to people. And naturally I became an anthropologist
Speaker 1: study in Ahuaska because I was so interested and I
Speaker 1: just decided that I wanted to go to the Amazon
Speaker 1: and visit the sources and go directly to the fields.
Speaker 1: And for me it has been like my main ally
Speaker 1: and friend. But I think that's you know, we have
Speaker 1: to be careful with those kinds of things because there
Speaker 1: isn't such a thing. You know, this is the one
Speaker 1: or the best. I mean, this is the one for me,
Speaker 1: or this is the one that now serves me better.
Speaker 1: And this is a friend, this is an ally, this
Speaker 1: is a teacher, this is a kindred spirit that I
Speaker 1: am aligned with. And for different people, they have different tastes.
Speaker 1: I'd like to think, and this is also your influence
Speaker 1: that there is some analogy between drugs and foods, and
Speaker 1: so different people have different needs and different tastes and
Speaker 1: different body complexions and they are kind of from different groups.
Speaker 1: So some people you go on a restaurant together and
Speaker 1: each person who is going to have a certain combination
Speaker 1: of foods on their plate, and that is the expression
Speaker 1: of their being through the food. The same happens with drugs.
Speaker 1: Each person is going to have some kind of better
Speaker 1: familiarity or friendship with certain kind of substances. So there's
Speaker 1: people that just don't want I was and don't like
Speaker 1: I was, or drink awaska once and feel that was
Speaker 1: it and they never want to go again. There's other
Speaker 1: people that don't want to drink at all, and then
Speaker 1: there's some of us that drink it and you know,
Speaker 1: never get tired of drinking it and start to walk
Speaker 1: this path of following the teachings of ayahuasca. And so
Speaker 1: I do think it's a very powerful and magnificent and
Speaker 1: impressive substance. And I like to think that it has
Speaker 1: some spiritual power, but I would be reluctant to say
Speaker 1: that it's the queen of all substances. For one thing,
Speaker 1: Tobacco in Amazonian shamanism is a very pervasive and strong substance.
Speaker 1: Tobacco is used across the Americas in different countries and
Speaker 1: accompanies Ahuaska or just by itself, So tobacco in many
Speaker 1: ways it is predominant, but used in a way I
Speaker 1: should be clear for audience that is essentially psychedelic taking
Speaker 1: in a very potent form. That's not like people smoking
Speaker 1: cigarettes arts. No, it's not cigarettes. It's the the plant itself.
Speaker 1: And it's been used on multiple ways as well. You
Speaker 1: can have paste, or you can have enemas, or you
Speaker 1: can smoke it inhale it through different combinations with different plants.
Speaker 1: So tobacco is very varied and also has different meanings.
Speaker 1: It can be used in rituals but also kind of
Speaker 1: as a social lubricant. So there's many different plants. And
Speaker 1: also I don't use the word psychedelic exactly, but psychoactive
Speaker 1: for sure. This is also part of the challenge, like
Speaker 1: the very catagor gtories that we have to describe the
Speaker 1: substances don't necessarily mirror traditional indigenous ways of describing them
Speaker 1: because we kind of tend to separate them into these
Speaker 1: boxes like is this medical or is this recreational? Is
Speaker 1: this sacred? Is this profane? Is this nutrition? Is this identity?
Speaker 1: We separate the uses of substances in two different categories
Speaker 1: and different schedules of drugs, and that's not how traditionally
Speaker 1: shamanism operates, and there's a lot of blurrening of categories
Speaker 1: between what is healing or sociality, or identity or medicine,
Speaker 1: and these things get mixed together, and so it's hard
Speaker 1: to express and talk about those things in our terms.
Speaker 1: And I have been interested in trying to find out
Speaker 1: there's other classifications of substances, which I think teach us
Speaker 1: also about how to think reality. They teach us how
Speaker 1: to think our own categories and our own paradigms. And
Speaker 1: through the study of these plants and these cultures, we
Speaker 1: can revisit our own values and our own ways of
Speaker 1: understanding the world. That's what I find it so interesting
Speaker 1: and endless in terms of knowledge. A few things. One
Speaker 1: is I know that interst I mean both of what
Speaker 1: I've read and then also my own personal experience. But
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I did ayahuasca there was
Speaker 1: a telepathic element to it, and that's something I've read
Speaker 1: a fair bit about about people under the influence of
Speaker 1: ayahuasca envisioning feeling themselves present at a place very physically
Speaker 1: distant from where they actually are, having a conversation or
Speaker 1: being a witness to something. And I wonder, is that
Speaker 1: you think that's somewhat of a unique element for ayahuasca
Speaker 1: for many people, or you think it goes across all
Speaker 1: the psychedelics. Well, I know that one of the first
Speaker 1: terms that was used to describe aahuaska by the earlier
Speaker 1: researchers was calling it telepatine. So this idea that it
Speaker 1: does have telepathic elements to it has been described in
Speaker 1: the literature. A lot of things have been reported, like,
Speaker 1: for example, people finding lost objects or even having access
Speaker 1: to information that they were looking for and they didn't know.
Speaker 1: There's also this other phenomenon that is common on shamanism
Speaker 1: that would be like this kind of confession. Let's say
Speaker 1: somebody has been cheating on their partner and then they
Speaker 1: drink ayahuaska and you know, they just confess or something
Speaker 1: like this ability to show the truth, or somebody that
Speaker 1: stole something and other people drink ayawaska and see who
Speaker 1: was the thief, or narrate that they visit cities they
Speaker 1: have never been to and describe in detail roots to
Speaker 1: get from one place to another that is the root.
Speaker 1: And why do you know that? Because I saw it
Speaker 1: in ayahuasca, So I know that this is something that
Speaker 1: there is a large amount of reports. I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly the equivalent for peyote or psilocybin, but I have
Speaker 1: the impression from my readings and publications that this kind
Speaker 1: of phenomena is common to this sort of substance that
Speaker 1: comes with this idea of the general principle is that
Speaker 1: this reality that we see is apparent. It's the surface,
Speaker 1: let's say, it's the material world that we have hold off.
Speaker 1: And when you take the substances, you're able to do
Speaker 1: a transit and somehow get access to this invisible world,
Speaker 1: this world of the ancestors, or of the spirits of
Speaker 1: the dead people, the world beyond the spiritual world, the
Speaker 1: invisible world, and somehow have a chance to do a
Speaker 1: trance that get you in touch, and then you get
Speaker 1: in touch with this other reality that in fact guides
Speaker 1: the material and apparent reality. And then you're gett in
Speaker 1: touch with the essence of this reality that is the
Speaker 1: material one, and this other world, this invistible world. There's
Speaker 1: also a world that has agency and that is alive,
Speaker 1: and that has the plant spirits. They are plant spirits.
Speaker 1: They have intention, they have agency, they have personalities, they
Speaker 1: have intentionality, they have subjectivity, and you're able to communicate
Speaker 1: with those plants and learn about this intelligence. And then
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other things that go together with
Speaker 1: all of this that it's kind of complicated and dance
Speaker 1: this Different classifications of nature and culture are common to
Speaker 1: different Marindan modalities, so I don't think that's just exclusive
Speaker 1: to ayahuasca, but there's similar reports variations. There's also the
Speaker 1: association with seeing the jaguar. Right, you read all these
Speaker 1: reports that people taking Iowa's can seeing the jaguar. What
Speaker 1: do you make of that whole phenomenon. Is it just
Speaker 1: purely about drug setting setting and that the idea was
Speaker 1: planted there before? Although you hear of reports, people have
Speaker 1: never heard of any association between ayahuaska and seeing the
Speaker 1: jaguar during the visions, but who see it? Nonetheless, what's
Speaker 1: your view? Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I've been studying
Speaker 1: this for twenty five years, and frankly there's times that
Speaker 1: I still think that I didn't leave the first grade.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of it. It's very complicated.
Speaker 1: I try not to answer all things, and I study
Speaker 1: cultural things. It's okay if everybody sees jaguars, it's fine,
Speaker 1: or everybody sees palaces, it's interesting, it's mind blowing, But
Speaker 1: what does that mean? It's the palace that I'm seeing
Speaker 1: the same palace that an indigenous person is seeing or
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know a singer that is like
Speaker 1: a person in the Middle East saw a palace. Is
Speaker 1: that the same palace that I'm seeing in What does
Speaker 1: that palace mean to that person? A lot of punel groups,
Speaker 1: they will say, when you drink aiawuaska and then you
Speaker 1: see at the beginning maybe this geometrical patterns, and then
Speaker 1: like neuroscientists and researchers will of a certain explanation and say,
Speaker 1: well that's your no, your eye and this and that
Speaker 1: and your brain, and they have those explanations. But if
Speaker 1: you ask the s wheny queen person, he will say, well,
Speaker 1: that is the color the design of the skin of
Speaker 1: this original snake that inhabited the world. That was ultimately
Speaker 1: how we got to be humans. This primordial snake I
Speaker 1: was it was a gift from the snakes to men.
Speaker 1: And you're seeing the skin of the snakes. So if
Speaker 1: you say, you know, you see a snake and a
Speaker 1: hunny queensy a snake, it's not the same meaning so
Speaker 1: I'm less interested in why is everybody seeing snakes, but
Speaker 1: what the snakes mean on different cultural settings, and that
Speaker 1: I really believe in anthropology for this, because it's not
Speaker 1: the same for everybody, and so what one person sees
Speaker 1: is interpreted differently in different cultures and has different meanings,
Speaker 1: and there's a great amount of variation to all of that,
Speaker 1: and there isn't just one Ayawaska culture. We'll be talking
Speaker 1: more after we hear this. Add One other thing I
Speaker 1: think that's true ayahuasca is that it seems that when
Speaker 1: comes across there is some of this, but relatively little
Speaker 1: of the sort of casual use. You think about kids, teenagers,
Speaker 1: people in twenties, you know, doing mushrooms, doing LSD, even
Speaker 1: sometimes doing mescal in or things like this, or kenemine
Speaker 1: for that matter, doing it by himself with some friends.
Speaker 1: It can be done casually, can also be done in
Speaker 1: a very traditional setting, in a very spiritual setting, but
Speaker 1: with ayahuasca, and I've read that there are some cases
Speaker 1: where people will use ayahuasca casually in some parts of
Speaker 1: Latin America, but by and large, it seems that it's
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly done in groups settings where oftentimes with some type
Speaker 1: of shame and shaman or a leader of some sort,
Speaker 1: and with the idea that you need to treat this one,
Speaker 1: this plant medicine, with particular respect, and that there is
Speaker 1: a kind of quasi spiritual religious, communal element to it
Speaker 1: that is true of the others, but that seems to
Speaker 1: be much more so in the case of ayahuasca. Yes,
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I find this super interesting and
Speaker 1: I have also used this argument to law enforcement. And
Speaker 1: if if you think, like let's say, in Brazil carnival,
Speaker 1: what happens a number of people that get drunk or
Speaker 1: do something idiotic during carnival, It's thousands of people and
Speaker 1: it's absolutely legal. And if you just think about parties
Speaker 1: in the city a city I'm from, Saint Paulo, the
Speaker 1: number of parties are bars that people go, and how
Speaker 1: many people drink or get killed or have get into
Speaker 1: a car accidents or ayahuasca you have people are using
Speaker 1: it across the city in some follow today. I think
Speaker 1: there must be at least like sixty or more rituals
Speaker 1: every weekend, and people are using it in sacred ways,
Speaker 1: in respectful ways, with certain kinds of controls, with certain
Speaker 1: kind of parameters, and there's a whole protocol and etiquette
Speaker 1: and culture around it. And it has spread through the
Speaker 1: globe in this kind of way. So there has been
Speaker 1: a diversification of number of rituals. The Ahuaska culture or
Speaker 1: different lineages traditions adapt to different parts of the globe,
Speaker 1: and in different parts of the globe there's different kinds
Speaker 1: of rituals. So you go in the United States, you
Speaker 1: can see a group of like American veterans, you know,
Speaker 1: all men drinking Aahuaska together, and they hear certain kind
Speaker 1: of music and do a certain kind of integration and
Speaker 1: develop a certain kind of protocol that makes sense to them.
Speaker 1: But it's very ritualistic. It's ceremonial. It has preparation, it
Speaker 1: has integration, it has some kind of screening, it has
Speaker 1: some kind of culture around it, and people talk about it.
Speaker 1: And then you go, you know, in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: you have other kinds of Ahuaska rituals, and you have
Speaker 1: had a Krishner communities using Ayahuaska, and you have millionaires
Speaker 1: in l A hiring private Ahuaska facilitators to help them
Speaker 1: think about their career and their investments and their creativity
Speaker 1: and all kinds of things. And it always spread with
Speaker 1: some kind of music, some kind of integration, some kind
Speaker 1: of doctrine or spiritual belief. This common idea that ayahuaska
Speaker 1: is a plant, a teacher, a spirit plant, that it's
Speaker 1: it can teach you, it can guide you, and that
Speaker 1: you have to obey aahuaska's requests, that you have to
Speaker 1: do certain kinds of diets, that you have to have
Speaker 1: a certain kind of behavior before you drink it and
Speaker 1: after you drink it, that you can't mix it with
Speaker 1: other substances, that you need to have a sort of
Speaker 1: reverence and respect. Yes, I completely agree to that this
Speaker 1: is something interesting about aahuaska. That is, as an anthropologist
Speaker 1: that I have seen the ability of aahuasca culture to
Speaker 1: mold and adapt and transform and combine to different settings.
Speaker 1: And so different communities that have different kinds of beliefs
Speaker 1: have been able to use ayahuasca and develop rituals that
Speaker 1: make sense and help them study their religious traditions better
Speaker 1: and also help people connect more to their own roots
Speaker 1: and to their own identities. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: people that have some kind of indigenous heritage or come
Speaker 1: from Puerto Rico and is a brown person in Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico that was brought up to think poorly of himself
Speaker 1: because he's brown and because he's kind of indigenous, but
Speaker 1: the family is trying to like clean it up and
Speaker 1: make that person feel like white. And this person goes
Speaker 1: to an ayahuasca ritual and sees the connections that they
Speaker 1: have to the land and to their ancestors and to
Speaker 1: their own sources and traditions and have try to rescue
Speaker 1: those and get in touch with this. And this happens
Speaker 1: with the indigenous people too, because it's very hard to
Speaker 1: be indigenous in this contemporary world. And so, for example,
Speaker 1: there is an organization in acting in one of the
Speaker 1: capitals of Brazil that has like a nonprofit space, educational
Speaker 1: space that different indigenous people come to learn Portuguese or
Speaker 1: math or accountability and studying the city and they do
Speaker 1: like intercultural rituals where they drink ayahuasca together and helps
Speaker 1: them strengthen their cultural identity and become indigenous and be
Speaker 1: indigenous and maintained that indigenity and develop it more So,
Speaker 1: this is also part of the beauty and the power
Speaker 1: of ayahuasca. You know, sometimes when people ask me and
Speaker 1: you so, what's ayahuasca? And I'll ask him so have
Speaker 1: you ever heard of peyote? And I'll say, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know how it is used by the Native American church. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard about that, right, And I say, well, this
Speaker 1: is kind of an Amazonian version of payote. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a kind of analogy. I used to explain it
Speaker 1: to some Americans who haven't heard of it. But one
Speaker 1: of the things is in Brazil. Ill, right, you do
Speaker 1: have these three what are they called synchronous churches, But
Speaker 1: just explain a little bit about how that came about
Speaker 1: it these I guess CLAUSEI Catholic. It's kind of integrating
Speaker 1: ayahuasca as a sacrament into sort of a Catholic church ceremony. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These are we call them Brazilian Ayahuaska religions or Brazilian
Speaker 1: Ahuaska churches. The main ones are the Santo Daimi or
Speaker 1: UDV and Barkinia and they are a combination of of
Speaker 1: course indigenous Shamanism and Christian elements, and also European is
Speaker 1: a tericism that came to Brazil through the colonizers, and
Speaker 1: some also offer Brazilian influences. And so each one has
Speaker 1: a specific ritual and sets of beliefs, but on a
Speaker 1: larger scale. You could understand all of them as kind
Speaker 1: of a similar phenomena that has a strong Christian influence.
Speaker 1: And the Brazilian state has recognized these groups as legitimate
Speaker 1: religions and regulated the use of iohuaska in Brazil. There
Speaker 1: has been a strong process of like twenty five years,
Speaker 1: and the first regulations were in the early eighties and
Speaker 1: the last official resolution was in two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: And it was a really strong and interesting process where
Speaker 1: representatives of the religions and scholars and academics and government
Speaker 1: officials sat together and came to certain agreements on what
Speaker 1: would be the most basic rules that are necessary to
Speaker 1: follow and sort of made a civil pact that those
Speaker 1: groups would keep those users under control. And it was
Speaker 1: interesting because the government officials that were studying this phenomena,
Speaker 1: they also some of them partaked in the rituals. That's
Speaker 1: the Brazilian magic. I would love it to happen in
Speaker 1: the United States. It's happening though. We were talking about
Speaker 1: that later. But yeah, so that's a specific phenomenon. And
Speaker 1: the you UDV and the Santo Diami have expanded to
Speaker 1: the United States and they have gained the religious recognition
Speaker 1: here in the United States. I think the UTV right,
Speaker 1: there was a Supreme Court decision. I think it is
Speaker 1: nothing that recognized the First Amendment right of religion applied
Speaker 1: to the practice of UDV and I think opened up
Speaker 1: the doors in the US at that time. Yes, the
Speaker 1: UDV had that, and also the Santo Diamy in the
Speaker 1: state of Oregon, and then yes, some other branches throughout
Speaker 1: the United States also got that recognition. And it's a
Speaker 1: bit of an interesting paradox because this religions in a
Speaker 1: way fit more the Western sort of stereotype of a
Speaker 1: religion and understanding that checked the boxes of you know,
Speaker 1: both court expectations or i r. Rest ones of what
Speaker 1: a religion has to have, and as such it's easier
Speaker 1: to classify them as churches than other uses that would
Speaker 1: be historically more old traditional, such as shamanism, that don't
Speaker 1: have things like, you know, a main religious leader or
Speaker 1: a main doctrine, or a main religious book or a
Speaker 1: religious calendar or catoch case. Well, I mean you also
Speaker 1: had a feeling when the Supreme Court justices were writing
Speaker 1: that decision they wanted to make sure they wanted opening
Speaker 1: up a Pandora's box because lots of people have tried
Speaker 1: to claim that they were part of a marijuana church,
Speaker 1: and I think they were worried that if the arguments
Speaker 1: that they made to allow the UDV were to open ended,
Speaker 1: it could lead to tens of millions of Americans claiming
Speaker 1: the right to use psychedelic drugs for religious purposes. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, there's another thing. We oftentimes think about psycholic
Speaker 1: drugs as being things that kind of open up our
Speaker 1: better side, right that that that are that makes us
Speaker 1: more empathic, that makes us more generous, that you know,
Speaker 1: more insightful, all this sort of stuff. But I know,
Speaker 1: I want to make two counterpoints to what I just said.
Speaker 1: I remember there's two British Brazilian experts that I think
Speaker 1: you probably know both of them. One Anthony Henman, who's
Speaker 1: an ethnography anthropologist, and then there's Edward McGray, another British
Speaker 1: Brazilian who's been a professor in Salvador in Brazil. But
Speaker 1: when dom I think it said to me, you know, Ethan,
Speaker 1: be careful about assuming these drugs always lead to good.
Speaker 1: One of these guys made the point that under the
Speaker 1: military dictatorship in Brazil in the nineties sixties, I think
Speaker 1: that you also had security officials, right, people who were
Speaker 1: engaged in torturing and killing suspected communists and radicals and
Speaker 1: all this sort of stuff, who participated in their own
Speaker 1: Ayahuascar ceremonies, and for them it became a way of
Speaker 1: reinforcing them and doing these horrific jobs where they were
Speaker 1: torturing and killing people and then going home to their
Speaker 1: wives and kids that night. And the second thing I
Speaker 1: think about is with the UDV more recently, which is
Speaker 1: the most orthodox of the Aohuascar based churches, and it's
Speaker 1: anti homosexual, and it's highly sexist and women are supposed
Speaker 1: to have only a limited role. And so what's your
Speaker 1: thoughts about how this plays out in the church ceremonies.
Speaker 1: Would you see the Santo Daimy things sort of a
Speaker 1: net positive in the world. Would you be much more
Speaker 1: skeptical about the d V because of their values. What's
Speaker 1: your sense? Oh, my God, Ethan go for it? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I have been bummed out myself. I guess
Speaker 1: I was born and raised in Brazil that is very
Speaker 1: patriarchal and very Catholic and very conservative, and you sort
Speaker 1: of like go with the flow, right, because that's the
Speaker 1: way things are, and as I moved to the United
Speaker 1: States and became an immigrant in California, I was felt
Speaker 1: really empowered to come out as queer and kind of
Speaker 1: openly talk about the fact that I have a wife
Speaker 1: and speak my truth, and that has been really an
Speaker 1: intense process. I sort of did a conference to celebrate
Speaker 1: coming out as queer because I met my partner in
Speaker 1: a conference. So in two thousand and nineteen we did
Speaker 1: a big conference called Queering Psychedelics where I came out
Speaker 1: as queer, and you know, it was a tribute to
Speaker 1: her because we had been together many years without me
Speaker 1: saying anythink in public, and in this conference. We also
Speaker 1: publish this article the next day after the conference because
Speaker 1: I wanted the conference to go well. We exposed the
Speaker 1: UDV has this document that is super anti gay and
Speaker 1: saying all kinds of absurd claims like oh, this will
Speaker 1: endanger the future of humanity and we have to be
Speaker 1: careful as if the human race is almost about to
Speaker 1: get extinct. I have been denouncing. Also, there is one
Speaker 1: French leader that is based in the Proving Amazon, Jacques Mabie,
Speaker 1: that has expressed very strong homophobic views and has all
Speaker 1: kinds of strange things like exorcis rituals for the souls
Speaker 1: of ambarted babies, and you know, has expressed support to Trump,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of you know, complicated stuff in
Speaker 1: the Aahuasca world. There's also some conspiracy theories that in
Speaker 1: the planet medicine community can get pretty ugly with the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. So yes, it's very complicated and there is
Speaker 1: a lot of division. And what we have to say
Speaker 1: about that is that Iwaska as part of the world
Speaker 1: is not because you drink Aiauaska that you're gonna be
Speaker 1: all different. To put it like in a more shamanic
Speaker 1: or spiritual lenses, there's everything in Ayahuaska. There's good and bad,
Speaker 1: and you can take it into different directions. It can
Speaker 1: be kind of neutral. You can take aiahuaska and on
Speaker 1: different angles, and you can have people drinking Ayahuaska to
Speaker 1: have more power to seduce women, to gain more money,
Speaker 1: to have more domination over others. So it's really not
Speaker 1: a magical pill that you just drink it and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we're all the same and we're
Speaker 1: all nice. And also people have different values about what
Speaker 1: is good or bad, what is right or wrong, So
Speaker 1: maybe they don't think they're doing anything wrong. This basic
Speaker 1: exercise of trying to have more empathy and seeing the
Speaker 1: world through the lenses of others, right, this ability to
Speaker 1: try to think how these things look on the other end.
Speaker 1: And so I do think that it had as immense
Speaker 1: tremendous healing. And the reason why I dedicated my whole
Speaker 1: life to study ahuaska and that I have been on
Speaker 1: this field for twenty five years and published twenty five
Speaker 1: books is not because I think that aahuaska is something
Speaker 1: that is helping lunatics become more lunatic or greedy people
Speaker 1: become more rich, but rather because I think it does
Speaker 1: help a lot of people, and it does have incredible
Speaker 1: healing potentials, and I personally think I am a much
Speaker 1: better person. I actually think myself as a human because
Speaker 1: of ayahuasca. It really helped me become more human and
Speaker 1: have more sense of respect for being alive. And that's
Speaker 1: why it's popular because it's helping a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But look when it comes to the stuff, I mean,
Speaker 1: now you have, right, we know all the reports about
Speaker 1: the spiritual benefits and this and people's life transformations, but
Speaker 1: there's now more and more studies including some that you know,
Speaker 1: give some people a Alaska, some people some form of placebo,
Speaker 1: which are finding all sorts of mental health benefits and
Speaker 1: possibly even physical health benefits. So I came across a
Speaker 1: few of them, one saying that Ayahuaska could be help
Speaker 1: on alleviating hard to treat depression, another one finding some
Speaker 1: success in reducing suicidality. Another one that may help deal
Speaker 1: with modern anxieties or especially in neuroticism negative emotionality. So
Speaker 1: what can you tell us about the studies that are
Speaker 1: coming out now? They're being done by research scientists in
Speaker 1: the same way that they're working with psilocybin and m
Speaker 1: D M A. Well, I want to recommend people to
Speaker 1: buy our books, and I can share PDFs. They are
Speaker 1: sometimes expensive or inaccessible, but I'm always happy to share
Speaker 1: materials for research and for non commercial use. So we
Speaker 1: published two different books on Iwaska, well actually three. One
Speaker 1: is called Ahuaska Healing and Science, the other is called
Speaker 1: The Therapiltic Use of Ayahuasca, and another one is in
Speaker 1: Spanish Iouaska Salutes i wask In Health. And we have
Speaker 1: published different studies that study all these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So depression is one of the things that ahuaska has
Speaker 1: been more you to anxiety, of course, and also to
Speaker 1: treat different drug related problems and alcohol related problems. That's
Speaker 1: another of the big uses of ahuasca. There's been research
Speaker 1: for different ailments like eating disorders. There's also different kinds
Speaker 1: of uses for grief or just in general as well being.
Speaker 1: That's also the betterment of people, let's say, not any
Speaker 1: specific disease, but identity and psychological well being. My partner
Speaker 1: has done her PhD about how ahuaska has helped gay
Speaker 1: and lesbian people cope with issues of you know, struggling
Speaker 1: issues of identity and self esteem and self love. So
Speaker 1: there has been a lot of research on the potential
Speaker 1: benefits of ayahuaska for multiple things, for cessation to smoke tobacco.
Speaker 1: A little bit like ahuaska can adapt to different cultures
Speaker 1: and and niches. It also has different utilities for different
Speaker 1: kinds of diseases. When I wanted to publish our book
Speaker 1: with Springer, the first one I wanted to call it
Speaker 1: the Therapeutic Uses of Ayahuaska, and Springer said, well, you
Speaker 1: know that's not very good because it's it's less strong.
Speaker 1: You should say the therapeutic use. It's more you know,
Speaker 1: it gives a stronger message, but I said, well, that's
Speaker 1: really not accurate because there's multiple uses. And again it's
Speaker 1: part of this challenge of systems that I was talking before,
Speaker 1: because the traditional concepts of disease involves the relationship of
Speaker 1: one with oneself, with keen, with family, with the community,
Speaker 1: with society at large, and with the world of the
Speaker 1: non humans, this invisible world. So disease is some kind
Speaker 1: of imbalance on all of those factors, and the way
Speaker 1: to correct that, to bring health again, is to work
Speaker 1: on all of those dimensions. And there's different kinds of
Speaker 1: plants and different kinds of combinations, so it's a much
Speaker 1: more holistic affair. And sometimes on Western thinking that is
Speaker 1: just like one pill for one specific disease, when traditionally,
Speaker 1: among indigenous people traditional communities, the idea of disease involves
Speaker 1: all of these other dimensions, and these plans are allies
Speaker 1: on rebuilding all of these relationships. So Auaska has multiple
Speaker 1: uses as well, and it can't be pinned to one
Speaker 1: single use. I do want to say, and I just
Speaker 1: want to say this because I am an anthropologist and
Speaker 1: we are kind of the underdog of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I respect all those researches and I support all of them,
Speaker 1: and I have published the results of biomedical and health studies.
Speaker 1: But I really do think that this kind of phenomena
Speaker 1: it's important to study from a social science perspective as well,
Speaker 1: because a lot of things are not going to grasp
Speaker 1: with those methodologists, and a lot of these research is
Speaker 1: based on like applying formulas, you know, to measure the
Speaker 1: from variables and have different questionnaires, and the whole way
Speaker 1: the research is done doesn't favor these other systems of knowledge,
Speaker 1: this traditional ways of knowledge and of knowing. So I
Speaker 1: think it's really important to have a role for the
Speaker 1: social scientists in the psychedelic renaissance. Well, it's also about
Speaker 1: as these things as these drug psilocybin and d m
Speaker 1: A and maybe others get quasi legalized but through the
Speaker 1: FDA process and the European equivalent. It also speaks to
Speaker 1: the importance of US continuing to allow access or at
Speaker 1: least not to clamp down any further on access outside
Speaker 1: quasi medical channels, right but still apart from the research
Speaker 1: channels that may ultimately lead to some forms of authorized
Speaker 1: prescribing of ayahuasca. Apart from the religious ones. What's your
Speaker 1: sense about the policy legal issue. Where do you go
Speaker 1: on the whole debate over regulation and legal regulation of
Speaker 1: this in this area, especially with ayahuasca. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to go a little bit back on something we were
Speaker 1: talking about the scientific research. I mean, in many ways,
Speaker 1: all this scientific use or scientific experiments, it's really the
Speaker 1: outlier because people have been using this for thousands of
Speaker 1: you know, as we said, we don't know how long,
Speaker 1: but for generations and generations and generations. So I think
Speaker 1: there is this incredible paradox that is this incredible Western
Speaker 1: arrogance that has to say you know. I was on
Speaker 1: a TV with like a psychiatrist and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have enough evidence of safety for Ouryauaska And
Speaker 1: I'm like, maybe you don't, and you probably will not
Speaker 1: recognize an Ahuaska vine if you see one in the forest,
Speaker 1: but that's not the parameter of reality for you to
Speaker 1: be saying that. I was also on this other with
Speaker 1: Jeff Sabbat. I think this this debate and it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: we should be very wary, you know, because these things
Speaker 1: are incredibly dangerous. Maybe it's okay for some AMAZONI and people,
Speaker 1: but that's not okay here in the United States, And
Speaker 1: I said, well, actually, maybe are not hanging out on
Speaker 1: the right crowd, because I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the United States that do use these things, and
Speaker 1: the sky is not following and reality goes on. And
Speaker 1: it's important to remember that this criteria of double blind
Speaker 1: research was created, this idea of placebo and double blind
Speaker 1: research in the thirties and forties to experiment and analyze
Speaker 1: new analogs, new substances that were created. And so in
Speaker 1: many ways this doesn't apply for substances like aiawaska or
Speaker 1: payor your psilocybin, where there is a huge evidence of
Speaker 1: us that trump's this kind of research. That's also my
Speaker 1: strong feeling as an anthropologist that there is this incredible
Speaker 1: arrogance even now, you know in Oregon they're saying, well,
Speaker 1: this kind of psilocybermercialm is okay, but not this other
Speaker 1: kind because some people find some research about something. And
Speaker 1: that's the justification Asian when there's generations of views of
Speaker 1: these plants and they are considered not just important but central,
Speaker 1: so the very idea of being human and to why
Speaker 1: we are here and what exists in life beyond and
Speaker 1: they are central part of culture and identity and territory
Speaker 1: and sociality and inter ethnic relationships and hunting, and like
Speaker 1: the cosmological ordering of the world. Why is the sky there,
Speaker 1: Why is the sun there? Why is the moon there?
Speaker 1: Why are we here? What is time? So I think
Speaker 1: we really have to expand our minds. And to me,
Speaker 1: like the scientific research on this plant is like an
Speaker 1: exception and in many regards, you know, an exotic thing.
Speaker 1: I personally don't feel very comfortable in taking drugs with
Speaker 1: medical doctors on hospitals. That's not my preference setting that
Speaker 1: for me would be much more of an aggression to
Speaker 1: go to hospital to take a substance. I prefer to
Speaker 1: go with shamans and people that have been doing this
Speaker 1: for a long time. And this idea that the traditional
Speaker 1: users hold some knowledge and they have to be heard,
Speaker 1: and they have to be invited, and they have to
Speaker 1: be respected, and they have to have a seat on
Speaker 1: the table. So how do we translate all of this
Speaker 1: into actual policy. It's also a challenge, and it's part
Speaker 1: of a conversation that we have to have a civil
Speaker 1: society inviting all of these groups to sit together and
Speaker 1: create regulations that are meaningful, and it's not a bunch
Speaker 1: of armchair bureaucrats from the d A or from the government,
Speaker 1: or white medical biomedical psychiatrists and some sophisticated university that
Speaker 1: is going to draw the rules for everybody. These conversations
Speaker 1: have to include traditional users of these substances and the
Speaker 1: populations that have been using them for a while. So
Speaker 1: I am an enthusiast of the religious and spiritual path
Speaker 1: and I think that we have a lot of potential
Speaker 1: of using this in ways that are meanful and community
Speaker 1: based and more holistic. And I support medical research. I
Speaker 1: am in favor of medical research. I'm not against it.
Speaker 1: I think there's a space for that, but I am
Speaker 1: against the domination of the medical experts as the sole
Speaker 1: reference of knowledge around the use of drugs. Let's take
Speaker 1: a break here and go to an ad Apart from
Speaker 1: all the spiritual mental health benefits, whether we define that
Speaker 1: in a medical sense or a broader kind of lacense,
Speaker 1: there's also some reports about the benefit of ayahuasca for
Speaker 1: physical health. Some suggestion that it could impact on the
Speaker 1: gut microbiome and gut bacteria, that it may be helpful
Speaker 1: with low grade inflammation, things like that, What can you
Speaker 1: tell us about that side of things with Alaska? I know,
Speaker 1: superficially exactly these things that you say that, there's been
Speaker 1: some research around Ahuaska for these purposes. I don't know
Speaker 1: too much more. I do believe that that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense if you look back at shamanism. There's
Speaker 1: also reports that people use against Ahuaska against parasites. It
Speaker 1: is a form of purging. I don't know much more.
Speaker 1: I know there's research also. This group of veterans, Heroic Hearts,
Speaker 1: was leading one of the research projects. They were doing
Speaker 1: their fieldwork in Costa Rica, the organization that Jesse Gould
Speaker 1: started right yes, which is part this is so interesting
Speaker 1: and it just speaks to the power of this vibrant
Speaker 1: culture because you have different veteran organizations, are different organizations
Speaker 1: of users that are so enthusiastic about it that they
Speaker 1: are also supporting research. Because a lot of this research
Speaker 1: doesn't get grants from NIGHT or other government agencies, but
Speaker 1: rather it is some kind of academic research, self funded,
Speaker 1: much as like MAPS has self funded the research of
Speaker 1: m d m A for PTSD. A lot of this
Speaker 1: research on ahuasca is done through different nonprofits and research
Speaker 1: organizations that do go fund me campaigns and try to
Speaker 1: fundraise to support I think everybody that is a true
Speaker 1: Aauaska follower and enthusiasts has this question that it just
Speaker 1: feels so wrong that this is illegal. I mean, have
Speaker 1: you heard many stories or do you know of any
Speaker 1: research is trying to look into this potential healing, physically
Speaker 1: healing value of aahuasca. Yes, totally. And I can tell
Speaker 1: you and you know this is sad and breaks my heart.
Speaker 1: I have literally for twenty five years I received at
Speaker 1: least one e mail a day of somebody that has
Speaker 1: some serious like health problem and that is looking for
Speaker 1: ayahuasca as a treatment and an option, wanting some tip
Speaker 1: and some hope. And it's very challenging because I don't
Speaker 1: really know how to help all of these people. But
Speaker 1: that also makes me feel more encouraged to keep the
Speaker 1: work of RUNA and you know, our publications and programs
Speaker 1: and conferences and different outreach and community work because there
Speaker 1: is so much need. I believe there is a term.
Speaker 1: This idea to be able to see your own organ
Speaker 1: bodies is something that is also reported in the literature.
Speaker 1: I think I forgot the name. It's I believe it's
Speaker 1: something like autos copy. It's this ability to see your
Speaker 1: own organs, to sort of have this bird eye image
Speaker 1: and look and see or do a scan of your
Speaker 1: own organs. And also just like ahuaska showing two people
Speaker 1: that they have a tumor, are that they have a
Speaker 1: certain pain and they go and they do exams and
Speaker 1: they find that pain and they do find there was
Speaker 1: a problem. So this is something that does happen. I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are trying to find
Speaker 1: a case of remission of cancer or HIV. These are
Speaker 1: that and like the case that's going to prove everything,
Speaker 1: and that's hard as well to have. Theoretically somebody that
Speaker 1: has the diagnoses and go to a medical doctor and
Speaker 1: does all these tests and then drinks ahuaska and then kills.
Speaker 1: I think those are the kinds of hard evidence to find.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly the kind of work that I do.
Speaker 1: But yes, I heard a lot of stories, but there's
Speaker 1: also stories of no success. And there's also irresponsible things
Speaker 1: like a family member that doesn't want the other family
Speaker 1: member to go to the doctor but wants to go
Speaker 1: to drink ayahuaska and then save that person, and that
Speaker 1: person doesn't get saved and dies and this can create
Speaker 1: all kinds of liabilities. So there, you know, there's it's
Speaker 1: a challenge, and some people can become fanatical, and I
Speaker 1: think we have to keep ours and I think there's
Speaker 1: a dangerous to find a panacea or a miracle cure
Speaker 1: and stop forgetting about doctors and just go to drink
Speaker 1: ahuaska and going to solve all your problems. I think
Speaker 1: it's also important to make a distinction between healing the
Speaker 1: disease and coming to an agreement with being sick and
Speaker 1: having a sort of feeling that's okay, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: die and I have this and come into terms with
Speaker 1: that finitude of life and just learning and enjoining the
Speaker 1: end that it's going to come. And there's ways to
Speaker 1: do this transition that are more smooth than others. And
Speaker 1: I think that for this psychedelics can be extremely helpful
Speaker 1: and bring a lot of comfort and a lot of support.
Speaker 1: And I think that particularly for people that are terminally ill,
Speaker 1: there's different, you know, evidence that this could be incredibly helpful. Again,
Speaker 1: it depends on the physical conditions, because if you're completely
Speaker 1: ill and you can't like you're not going to be
Speaker 1: easy to take something that is strong and it's going
Speaker 1: to make you vomit, maybe severely, and so you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of angles. You mentioned that you had
Speaker 1: follow up effects. That's also something that people should pay
Speaker 1: more attention to because after I wask a ceremonies, especially
Speaker 1: if you go like on a retreat or you do
Speaker 1: a diet, you can have these benefits for weeks to come.
Speaker 1: Like people have other kinds of sensibility and perceive things
Speaker 1: in different ways and also sometimes have different kinds of
Speaker 1: dreams or a whole feeling to them that is kind
Speaker 1: of novel. Again, in my personal experience, I have felt
Speaker 1: a lot of benefit and always when I come back
Speaker 1: from a diet or retreat, I can just feel my
Speaker 1: energy is entirely like reorganized, and I have this kind
Speaker 1: of protection, this feeling that I am under this alignment
Speaker 1: and special sense of things being in order in ways
Speaker 1: that they were not before. And it's up to us
Speaker 1: to keep that going. And that's the famous integration or
Speaker 1: the famous homework or follow up. After you have your experiences,
Speaker 1: how are you going to keep that state and those
Speaker 1: learnings and those teachings and those blessings on ongoing terms
Speaker 1: in your life, and how are you going to implement
Speaker 1: the things that you know you have to do that
Speaker 1: you're kind of frequently already new as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: that are important for you to be doing, and they
Speaker 1: are friends to keep us in this path of development
Speaker 1: and growth and spiritual connection. Right So, being and looking
Speaker 1: over your website to Cluna dot net earlier, I saw
Speaker 1: your mission statement and you sort of summarize it before,
Speaker 1: but you say, we promote reciprocity in the psychedelic community
Speaker 1: and support the protection of sacred plants and cultural tradition.
Speaker 1: We advanced psychedelic justice through curating critical conversations and uplifting
Speaker 1: the voices of women, queer people, indigenous people's, people of
Speaker 1: color in the Global South in the field of psychedelic
Speaker 1: so aliance. And then I can see that a lot
Speaker 1: of the publications you're putting out in the events are
Speaker 1: really about helping people to do ayahuasca in a way
Speaker 1: that's both responsible for themselves and shows respect for both
Speaker 1: the indigenous communities and sources in the traditions. This one
Speaker 1: it's called the commodification of ayahuasca. How can we do better?
Speaker 1: And you open it up and This is gonna be
Speaker 1: in the form of the question to you, whether you're
Speaker 1: a first timer or a seasoned veteran of these traditions,
Speaker 1: whether you're investing in an expensive Western retreat center in
Speaker 1: South or Central America, opening up a new local circle
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area, thinking of moving abroad to become
Speaker 1: a facilitator in a retreat center, starting a new transnational
Speaker 1: chapter of Brazilian Ayahuaska religion in the global North, visiting
Speaker 1: a local cure and Darrow in their house, Surfing the
Speaker 1: internet to pick a location for your experience, partaking in
Speaker 1: a ceremony with a traveling Brazilian indigenous group where an
Speaker 1: itinerant ceremonial leader trying to make a living. We encourage
Speaker 1: you to explore these fourteen questions with us and help
Speaker 1: ensure the future responsible Ayahuaska you around the world. What
Speaker 1: are some of those key questions for people, whether they're
Speaker 1: in the first time or or thinking in the ways
Speaker 1: that you put out there, What are the pivotal questions
Speaker 1: that you want people to have in mind. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you're asking that, because, as you said, and you
Speaker 1: mentioned the name of the title of our event, the
Speaker 1: genie is coming out of the bottle. The genie is
Speaker 1: out of the bottle, whether we like it or not,
Speaker 1: whether we're cool with it or not. Ayahuaska uses expanding globally.
Speaker 1: I think i'd dare to say that, you know, in
Speaker 1: every single city of America there's an Ayahuaska ritual. I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't know, because it's hard to know these kinds
Speaker 1: of things, but it's so spread and throughout the whole globe,
Speaker 1: China and South Africa and Asia, in South America, it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: So whether we like it or not, it's happening. And
Speaker 1: so we have a kind of pragmatic approach in Chakrina.
Speaker 1: This globalization is happening. It's not a moral judgment. Is
Speaker 1: this right or wrong? Because guess what, you can say
Speaker 1: whatever you want, it's not going to stop people from
Speaker 1: drinking ayahuasca. They are drinking it. So the work we're
Speaker 1: trying to do into Kruna is real. Some kind of
Speaker 1: creating safeguards, community safeguards to soften this impact of globalization,
Speaker 1: some kind of harm reduction towards the globalization of ayahuasca,
Speaker 1: and creating ways that this expansion can be done in
Speaker 1: more mindful ways than one of the initiatives has to
Speaker 1: do with our guide for Sexual Abuse. We're trying to
Speaker 1: raise awareness around the topic of sexual abuse that can
Speaker 1: be quite prevalent in ayahuasca circles. We also published the
Speaker 1: document that is helping Ayahuaska communities in the United States
Speaker 1: to better organize themselves as churches as communities. So, how
Speaker 1: do you keep track of your sacrament? How do you started,
Speaker 1: how do you transport it? What kinds of waivers liabilities?
Speaker 1: Do you have to pay taxes? Do you have to
Speaker 1: keep the information of the people that drink with you?
Speaker 1: Do have to measure how many leaders you're consumed? Do
Speaker 1: you have some sort of registration of the beliefs the
Speaker 1: spiritual doctrine of your group? So that is what we
Speaker 1: call some legal harm reduction in terms of the commodification
Speaker 1: of ayahuasca. We encourage this Ayahuaska contemporary global citizen attending
Speaker 1: hybrid places all over the world to kind of ask
Speaker 1: some questions on the use he's doing. Where is the
Speaker 1: Zayahuaska coming from? Does this group have any project that
Speaker 1: involves the conservation of ayahuasca. Does the group that is
Speaker 1: creating this ziahuasca has any kind of partnership with local
Speaker 1: Indigenous people. Are this local indigenous people recognized? Is their
Speaker 1: name to the ethnic group or to the region they're at?
Speaker 1: Do you know the language of the people that you're
Speaker 1: going to visit? Are you getting informed? Where are these
Speaker 1: people used and tokenized in a website that is geared,
Speaker 1: you know, mainly produced by a Western audience for a
Speaker 1: West their audience. And do these projects do this retreats
Speaker 1: or circles or communities, do they have any ways to
Speaker 1: give back? So we have also created this project called
Speaker 1: the Indigenous Resprose the Initiative of the Americas. That is
Speaker 1: one of our strongest programs that we have been doing
Speaker 1: for two years, which is a poll of twenty organizations
Speaker 1: that we partnered with in seven countries across the Americas.
Speaker 1: And we're suggesting people that engage in plant medicine ceremonies
Speaker 1: to think of the issue of reciprosity. How can we
Speaker 1: give back? And am I honoring the people that came
Speaker 1: before me and that are the true leaders of the
Speaker 1: psychedelic movements, not the scientists that started in the fifties
Speaker 1: or now, but those are the traditional founding leaders. And
Speaker 1: we are also you know, just creating a culture around
Speaker 1: these things. So we do a lot of events and
Speaker 1: publications and we're trying to create some kind of cultural
Speaker 1: legitimacy around the substances. Do you have vocabulary, where do
Speaker 1: you find information and how do you create this cultural
Speaker 1: legitimacy Because this is not just about this integration of
Speaker 1: these plants into the person's life and to their well
Speaker 1: being and their personality and self development, but as the
Speaker 1: integration of this traditions into our culture. So we're calling
Speaker 1: it some kind of cultural therapy, like we need to
Speaker 1: rethink of ways that we talk about these things. And
Speaker 1: the Chachrona Institute is trying to create this cultural conversations,
Speaker 1: so curating cultural conversations as plant medicines grow globally, but
Speaker 1: while doing that, trying to elevate platform and give visibility
Speaker 1: to voices of minorities, so to indigenous people too, people
Speaker 1: of color, to women, to queer people, two people from
Speaker 1: the global South well being, I should say, And looking
Speaker 1: over your website, I really was impressed because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of very nuanced discussion in there. There's a piece
Speaker 1: in there where you talk about the question is ayahuasca
Speaker 1: in danger? And the answer is well yes and no.
Speaker 1: If you go to some places like around i Quits
Speaker 1: and I think Peru, where there's at the center of
Speaker 1: ayahuasca based tourism, there actually is a risk of it
Speaker 1: being less and less available and being overharvested. If you
Speaker 1: go to parts of Colombia, not really an issue the phenomena.
Speaker 1: It's not just grown in the wild, but you know,
Speaker 1: ayahuasca is also being cultivated. So what you describe is
Speaker 1: a fairly nuanced portrait of being sensitive to what's going on.
Speaker 1: And I think the same thing with what's happening with
Speaker 1: indigenous communities there. As you point out, for some of them,
Speaker 1: this is injecting a very destructive element of kind of commodification, commercialization,
Speaker 1: competition for higher quality or for the ayahuasca higher prices,
Speaker 1: destruction of of of long term traditions. You know. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it's also bringing in significant sources of
Speaker 1: revenue for these communities. It's introducing them to new possibilities.
Speaker 1: So it's a complex situation we're talking about. And I
Speaker 1: think Tracuna's voice in terms of representing especially voices of
Speaker 1: the indigenous, of the queer of this favorite pop relations
Speaker 1: is really impressive. And I'll tell you you're doing it
Speaker 1: in a thoughtful and nuanced way. I think your voice
Speaker 1: being out there, you're getting ever better. And I mean
Speaker 1: I've been following you now doing this for fifteen years.
Speaker 1: I've been watching you try to build this organization. You
Speaker 1: know you're really making a major contribution. So my final
Speaker 1: question is when you look forward, I mean, you've been
Speaker 1: working on this stuff for maybe twenty years, jumping forward
Speaker 1: another twenty years b to uh ayahuasca in the year
Speaker 1: twenty forty or twenty fifty. If you had to speculate
Speaker 1: or imagine, what are your predictions. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: thank you for your kind words, and as I told
Speaker 1: you on different occasions, you have been an inspiration and
Speaker 1: of course for a lot of us in the drug
Speaker 1: reform movement. And so I also thank you so much
Speaker 1: for all your years of work, and I'm happy for
Speaker 1: you to be doing this podcast, which I know that
Speaker 1: you always have this double nature between your activist self
Speaker 1: and your scholar self. And now that you're a little
Speaker 1: bit older, not old, but rich, hired from the d
Speaker 1: p A, you can delve into being a good students.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate all your questions. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to end in not such a great finaleg
Speaker 1: I guess I don't think a lot about that. I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the things about me that I
Speaker 1: don't really care where things are going or what's happening.
Speaker 1: Like I have my ideas of what I think is
Speaker 1: right and I think I should do, and I think
Speaker 1: all we can do is like kind of hope to
Speaker 1: give our contribution to stewart things in the correct way.
Speaker 1: So I am not all enthusiastic. I also have so
Speaker 1: I am this active director of the Chichroni Institute, and
Speaker 1: I have a part time job as public education and
Speaker 1: cultural specialist of Maps. At MAPS, they're super enthusiastic about mainstreaming,
Speaker 1: you know, M D M A and psychedelics. I am
Speaker 1: not on that mainstreaming wagon myself. I think these things
Speaker 1: are expanding and there's a continued interest. And to me,
Speaker 1: I'm not like more happy that more p drink Ayahuaska.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to make more impact and more people
Speaker 1: have more access. I think this plants are not for everybody,
Speaker 1: and they're incredibly powerful and sacred and deep and meaningful,
Speaker 1: and those of ones, those of us that want to
Speaker 1: use it, and those of us that have felt touched,
Speaker 1: and those of us that have dreamed with the spirits
Speaker 1: of Ayahuaska and being in that space, visit that reality
Speaker 1: and resonated. We should have our rights, and we should
Speaker 1: be protected. We should never be put in jail, and
Speaker 1: we should have some recognition that there is something deeply
Speaker 1: noble and sacred about this path. And also we can't
Speaker 1: explore and abuse the people that taught us. There has
Speaker 1: been five years of colonization and Indigenous people continue to
Speaker 1: be incredibly kind and receiving a bunch of like desperate
Speaker 1: white Northerners full of anxieties in crisis, you know, with
Speaker 1: post modernity and job issues and money issues and health
Speaker 1: issues and all kinds of stories. And we're still visiting
Speaker 1: the Amazon, and they sit and they sing, and they
Speaker 1: heal and they teach us. And for that, I am
Speaker 1: extremely grateful. And I want to build paths of justice
Speaker 1: and resprosty towards Indigenous people. I want to build legal
Speaker 1: protections towards Ayahuasca users. I want to build protections for
Speaker 1: queer people not to be abused by homophobe leaders and
Speaker 1: extremely patriarchal organizations. I want to build safeguards for the
Speaker 1: conservation of the plant species, and I want to celebrate
Speaker 1: and to honor the beauty of these traditions. I want
Speaker 1: to create a culture of study, of research, of incredible
Speaker 1: intellectual knowledge around the traditions, because these plants are good
Speaker 1: not just to drink and to eat and to have
Speaker 1: transcendental experience. They're also grout for us to think, to
Speaker 1: think reality, to study, to have intellectual inspiration, to learn
Speaker 1: about the ultimate mysteries about life. And they are great
Speaker 1: resources and companions for all of this. So we're engaged
Speaker 1: in education, We're engaged in restarosity. We're engaged in psychedelic justice,
Speaker 1: in talking about minorities and honoring the women and the
Speaker 1: elders and the people that came before us. Aguaska is
Speaker 1: our teacher and friend. Chikruna organization is named after Aguasca.
Speaker 1: It's an honor and a true pleasure to serve this path.
Speaker 1: It has been incredibly rewarding. And I word and forward,
Speaker 1: and I wording for so all of that day. I say, hallelujah,
Speaker 1: it sounds great. You're doing amazing stuff. So thank you
Speaker 1: ever so much for joining me on psycholaps. Thank you big, everybody.
Speaker 1: Bye bye. If you're enjoyed going Psychoactive, Please tell your
Speaker 1: friends about it, or you can write us a review
Speaker 1: at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We
Speaker 1: love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave us
Speaker 1: a message at one eight three three seven seven nine
Speaker 1: sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can
Speaker 1: email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, or find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. You can also find
Speaker 1: contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by
Speaker 1: me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus
Speaker 1: and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick from my Heart Radio, and me Ethan Nadelman. Our
Speaker 1: music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to
Speaker 1: a Brio s f Uca Grimshaw and Robert BB. Next
Speaker 1: week I'll be talking with one of America's best known
Speaker 1: progressive prosecutors. It's Chase A. Budan, the recently recalled District
Speaker 1: Attorney of San Francisco. I grew up visiting my own
Speaker 1: parents in prison. My earliest memories are waiting in lines
Speaker 1: at prison gates to go through metal detectors and to
Speaker 1: get searched, just to be able to see my parents,
Speaker 1: just to be able to give them hugs. So as
Speaker 1: long as I can remember, I've been impacted by and
Speaker 1: thinking about this country's response to crime and how we
Speaker 1: meet out punishment and what rehabilitation means. And I've been
Speaker 1: acutely aware of the tremendous carnage that the Warren drugs
Speaker 1: has left in its wake. And when I went to
Speaker 1: law school, I wanted to try to fight to change
Speaker 1: that system. Subscribe to Psycoactive now see it, don't miss it.