Paratopia

Friday’s Guest: Dr. Dennis McKenna

Our very special guest this week will be Dr. Dennis McKenna. Dennis and his brother Terence, traveled to the Amazon’s La Chorrera seeking a hallucinogenic plant that enables the Witoto tribe to talk to elf-like “little men.” These experiences seem to connect to the DMT, and psilocybin compound experiences as well.

But there’s possibly a greater connection to the UFO/alien phenomena you may or may not know about. In this episode we’ll explore these compounds, their effects upon ingestion, and whether or not these “hallucinations” are opening an altered state of consciousness that allows for repeatable contact with the “other”. Are these the UFO enigma’s “aliens”?

For the last twenty-five years, Dennis McKenna has pursued the interdisciplinary study of ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. He is co-author, with his brother Terence, of The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching (Seabury Press, 1975; Citadel Press, 1991), a philosophical and metaphysical exploration of the ontological implications of psychedelic drugs which resulted from the two brothers’ early investigations of Amazonian hallucinogens in 1971.

He received his doctorate in 1984 from the University of British Columbia. His doctoral research focused on ethnopharmacological investigations of the botany, chemistry, and pharmacology of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, two orally-active tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. Following the completion of his doctorate, Dr. McKenna received post-doctoral research fellowships in the Laboratory of Clinical Pharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health, and in the Department of Neurology, Stanford University School of Medicine. In 1990, he joined Shaman Pharmaceuticals as Director of Ethnopharmacology.

He relocated to Minnesota in 1993 to join the Aveda Corporation, a manufacturer of natural cosmetic products, as Senior Research Pharmacognosist. He currently works as a scientific consultant to clients in the herbal, nutritional, and pharmaceutical industries. Together with two colleagues in the natural products industry, he incorporated the non-profit Institute for Natural Products Research (INPR) in October 1998 to promote research and scientific education with respect to botanical medicines and other natural medicines.

Dr. Mckenna serves on the Advisory Board of the American Botanical Council, and on the Editorial Board of Phytomedicine, International Journal of Phytotherapy and Phytopharmacology. He is a founding board member and Vice-President of the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit scientific organization dedicated to the investigation of therapeutic applications for psychedelic plants and compounds. He has also served as board member and Research Advisor to Botanical Dimensions, a non-profit organization dedicated to the investigation of ethnomedically significant plants. He was a primary organizer and key scientific collaborator for the Hoasca Project, an international biomedical study of Hoasca, a psychoactive drink used in ritual contexts by indigenous peoples and syncretic religious groups in Brasil. He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brasilian Amazon. He has served as invited speaker at numerous scientific congresses, seminars, and symposia. Dr. McKenna is author or co-author of over 35 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, European Journal of Pharmacology, Brain Research, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurochemistry, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Economic Botany, and elsewhere.

Join us Friday night for an interview not to be missed!

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