View from the Far Side
THE VISIONARY BLOG BY DENNIS MCKENNA
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The Symbiotic Revolution: Dennis McKenna on Reclaiming Natural Psychedelics
Ethnopharmacology Field Guide · Psychedelics & Consciousness Psychedelics Ecology By McKenna Academy 11 min read A symbiotic revolution, in Dennis McKenna’s telling, begins with a quietly subversive idea: that the medicines we most need are not locked inside a patent or a clinical trial, but growing in the wild, waiting to renew an alliance with our […]
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The Symbiotic Revolution: Dennis McKenna on Reclaiming Natural Psychedelics
Ethnopharmacology Field Guide · Psychedelics & Consciousness Psychedelics Ecology By McKenna Academy 11 min read A symbiotic revolution, in Dennis McKenna’s telling, begins with a quietly subversive idea: that the medicines we most need are not locked inside a patent or a clinical trial, but growing in the wild, waiting to renew an alliance with our […]
How Mushrooms Evolved Psilocybin Twice, by Two Different Routes
Ethnopharmacology Field Guide Mycology Biosynthesis Psilocybin By McKenna Academy · 8 min read Psilocybin is the compound that made a whole genus of mushrooms famous. Yet it turns out that at least one unrelated group of fungi builds the exact same molecule using a completely different set of tools, assembled in a different order. A […]
Tiwanaku and Wari: Visionary Plants and Power in the Andes
Ethnopharmacology Field Guide Adapted from the research of Constantino Manuel Torres, PhD 12 min read In one desert cemetery at the foot of the Andes, one in every three graves held a kit for inhaling a visionary powder. That powder came from vilca, the seeds of Anadenanthera colubrina, and in the work of Professor Constantino Manuel […]
Psilocybin & Ayahuasca: How Schultes Brought Them to Western Science
Ethnopharmacology Field Guide Adapted from the research of Dr. Mark Plotkin, PhD, Brian Hettler, Pascual Gonzalez, and The Amazon Conservation Team 11 min read Before he turned thirty, a young Harvard botanist had already carried two of the world’s most powerful plants of the gods, psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca, from Indigenous hands into Western science. […]
“Life is a journey, always with ups and downs. Sometimes one scales mountains, and sometimes one descends into the abyss. I’ve lived long enough to have done both, several times…”
Dennis McKenna Ph.D.
