Dennis Mckenna: Matthew Stahl learned lab chemistry while attending Texas A&M University  and Texas Lutheran University for four years at Texas A&M and two years at Texas Lutheran  University. He has worked in the automotive production industry for 32 years. The quality  department works with chemistry to achieve enhanced safety and better performance. I have read at least 200 books on psychedelics, numerous papers, and studied psychedelics for around 24 years. And I would add to this, he has investigated the chemistry of the tryptamines  at some depth. And that’s what we’re going to be discussing today. So welcome to the  BrainForest Café, Matt.  

Matthew Stahl: Thank you, Dennis. Okay. You see me okay?  

Dennis Mckenna: Perfect. This is great. And we’re recording. I haven’t forgotten to record.  Sometimes that happens, but not this time. So we’re good to go. So you have worked on this  LSI, this what is potentially the secret formula for the kykeon. The drink used Eleusis. And you’ve  come up with some very interesting hypotheses that the, and I am not the chemist that you are,  I’ll tell you. So I have chemistry, but I wouldn’t put myself up against you as a knowledgeable  chemist. But you have postulated that the formation of these Isovaleraldehyde adducts with LSA  was the secret of the kykeon, basically. The shamans or the priests, whatever, they grew the  barley in their gardens. And that happens to contain high levels of these aldehydes,  Valeraldehyde, crotonaldehyde. I can’t even say them properly. And that the claviceps paspali  that the barley may have been infected with, this was a very deliberate, probably a deliberate  infestation of the barley with this fungus. This is some pretty sophisticated pharmacology for  considering that this was thousands of years ago. 

But when this preparation was made, these adducts were formed under acidic conditions. And also in the liver, the similar kind of formation of these adducts leading to a lysergic acid. How would you say it?  

Matthew Stahl: Lysergic acid Isovaleraldehyde and lysergic acid Isovaleraldehyde , and also  lysergic acid crotonaldehyde. So we’ve got a triple psychedelic action. 

Dennis Mckenna: So the three derivatives, the iso and the Valeraldehyde and the  crotonaldehyde, is there a difference in potency between those? I mean, it seems in your book, it seems that LSI is the one that you focus on mostly. That’s the magic stuff. The others, maybe  not so much. 

Matthew Stahl: What is interesting is that the valeraldehyde and also the Isovaleraldehyde, these two aldehydes, which are found in barley, along with the crotonaldehyde, I had actually been in a trance state in front of my computer at work. And all of a sudden, something told me, well, I had been searching for two years for the source of these extremely high levels of these aldehydes. So for two years, I didn’t know where I could find them. And then all of a sudden, I thought, you know what, this was probably grown on barley, because I had read that all the priests had to do was take some honey, honeydew, and spread the  Claviceps paspali among the barley. And the barley, it’s kind of like a symbiotic relationship, because the Claviceps paspali is, of course, non-poisonous. We don’t want to get it confused with claviceps with the other ergot that is poisonous.  

Dennis Mckenna: Purpurea.  

Matthew Stahl: Purpurea, exactly. So this one is non-poisonous, and it contains very high levels  of LSA, just like, for example, Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds also contain around 83% LSA. So  with this symbiotic relationship, the Claviceps paspali provides the LSA, which is growing on the  barley, and the barley miraculously supplies the three very extremely high levels of aldehydes. 

So what is happening is all the priests had to do was simply infest the barley in their gardens with claviceps, and then simply stir them together in an acidic solution. And what I found 20  years ago when I discovered LSH is a fellow chemist of mine had posted a TLC on an old forum  called Blacklight, which is now defunct. But he discovered that when they took a morning glory  extract, and when they put this solution of morning glory into water acidified to pH 4 along with  Acetaldehyde, it formed LSH, Lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide. And so this also is very important because 

Dennis Mckenna: Let me stop you there for a minute just for the clarification of the layman’s  here. Okay. I’ll try to include myself. So they found this LSH is the conjugation of the lysergic  acid, amide conjugation of the lysergic acid with Acetaldehyde, just simple Acetaldehyde.

Matthew Stahl: Right, was simply, yes. 

Dennis Mckenna: And that’s also an active principle, that’s a psychedelically active, but the LSI  is more so? 

Matthew Stahl: Yes, the LSI is way more potent than LSH. And I’ll tell you what, how I had  discovered this was, I’ll tell you what, about seven years ago, I was looking through all of the  aldehydes, which are found in peppermint. I had read the book Road to Eleusis, and I remember  that there were just a couple of ingredients that they said had formed the kykeon. They said  that one of these ingredients was mint. And I was looking through all the active ingredients in  mint, and I was like, oh, look at this, there’s Isovaleraldehyde in mint, but there’s no  acetaldehyde. And I was like, you know what, let me see what’s so special about this  Isovaleraldehyde. And years before, I had read a book, I’m sorry, a paper from Dr. David Nichols,  who was also on your show, and he’s writing a memoir, I can’t wait to read it. But in this paper,  it’s called LSD and it’s like Lysergamide cousins. He had talked about how he took LSA and he  systematically attached different molecules to the amide NH of LSA forming these different new  molecules. And out of the 16 or 17 that he tested, he noticed that number 16 was 3- aminopentane. And when he attached this to the amide of LSA, he noticed that the rats  responded to it as if they had been given LSD. And what I found striking was that when I  counted the number of carbon groups and hydrogen groups and Isovaleraldehyde, I noticed 3- aminopentane and Isovaleraldehyde both contain 5 carbon groups and 11 hydrogen groups.  And I was like, oh my gosh, I wonder if we could attach Isovaleraldehyde to LSA and come up  with something that’s very similar to LSD, just like the rats responded to it. 

And then as I researched more, I was in shock because I noticed that the chemical formula of Isovaleraldehyde, which is C5H10, is very similar to the chemical formula of diethylamine, which is used in the synthesis of LSD because diethylamine has a chemical formula of C4H11. So it’s very similar. And then I was also in shock to discover that these have very similar molecular weights. So the molecular weight of 3-aminopentane that Dr. Nichols discovered has the exact same molecular weight of Isovaleraldehyde. So the molecular weight of the  Isovaleraldehyde is 83 grams per mole and the molecular weight of diethylamine is 73 grams  per mole. So it’s very similar. And then I also noticed that the tail end of, well, I’m sorry, I also  noticed that Isovaleraldehyde looks almost identical to the tail end of DMT. And I was in shock.  I’m like, oh my gosh, these are just about identical. So there were all of these similarities, which led me to investigate if I could somehow attach Isovaleraldehyde to LSA.

And so I had this experience 20 years ago forming LSH, which is still an active psychedelic, but it’s very weak compared to LSI. So in the book in chapter 5, I went ahead and discussed my experiments that were performed about five years ago. And so I knew that Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds contained 83% LSA, which is what I needed as a starting material. 

Dennis Mckenna: Now, let me ask you, I don’t mean to keep interrupting, but I’m looking for  clarification here. So Nichols’ extensive paper on the Lysergamides didn’t include  Isovaleraldehyde or Valeraldehyde. That wasn’t the derivative that he talked about in that paper. 

Matthew Stahl: Right. Right. Right. He had no aldehydes. Right. Right. Now what is interesting is  I’ve been in contact with Dr. Nichols and he is so fascinated with this because when I explained  all of this to him, he now is very interested. He has a license to work on this kind of work and  he’s now interested in actually synthesizing LSI. And so this is his paper right here, LSD and its Lysergamide cousins. And this is the table which I show in the book. So number 16 is the important 3-aminopentane, which, you know, has all these similarities to the aldehyde Isovaleraldehyde. But what’s even more interesting is that I had discovered a  paper from 2022, a Chinese paper on the young barley. And it’s several pages long. And when I  was reading this paper, I noticed a table that showed about 10 different aldehydes that are in  barley, young barley specifically. At the young growth stage, these levels of these aldehydes are  extremely high. And what I noticed, very peculiar, was that Isovaleraldehyde and valeraldehyde  and crotonaldehyde were extremely high. And the valeraldehyde and the Isovaleraldehyde, they  have the same chemical formula. So there’s 7.5 of Isovaleraldehyde and 7.5 of valeraldehyde.  And I’m around, I’m sorry, 16 is the level of the valeraldehyde and around 7 of the  crotonaldehyde.  

Dennis Mckenna: What are the units? 7.5 what? Milligrams of valeraldehyde? 

Matthew Stahl: Yeah, I don’t know exactly what the units are. I wish I knew. But when I  compare them to the units found in peppermint, they were 100 times stronger than what I’ve  seen in peppermint. 

Dennis Mckenna: So proportionally much stronger in the young barley?

Matthew Stahl: Much, much stronger, yes. And I’ve used a mint in the past and it just doesn’t  have anywhere near the strength levels of the barley. 

Dennis Mckenna: Right, right. So you’ve been able to incubate the Isovaleraldehyde with the  LSA under acidic conditions, under fairly mild acidic conditions and this thing forms. But you  haven’t been able to actually isolate and do molecular evaluation like Nuclear Magnetic  Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy or mass spec to demonstrate that this compound is actually  formed, is that right? 

Matthew Stahl: Exactly. And Dr. Nichols, I think, is going to take it from here since he has all of  the lab equipment necessary to perform expensive chromatography and this kind of thing. 

And he told me he plans on synthesizing it and also writing a journal paper. And of course, citing the book that I wrote. 

Dennis Mckenna: So you take it on faith that when you do this procedure and make this adduct  that you’re forming all three of these things, all three of these. Exactly. And you really boost the  psychedelic potency to much higher levels and this is maybe the secret of the kykeon. 

Matthew Stahl: Yes. And what is exactly? 

Dennis Mckenna: But Nichols, a couple of other people have said, well, and I’m not here to  challenge you because I’m not qualified to challenge you, but these chemists are, you know, and  they say, well, he’s not really forming this thing. He’s forming, he’s doing an extract of LSA out of  the seeds. But you differ. You say, I’m actually doing a reaction under aqueous conditions, acidic aqueous conditions, and this thing is forming. And you claim that this is going on in the liver too, which, again, seems plausible to me. I mean, it’s a fascinating thing. It’s that if you have really discovered the, you know, this ancient formulation, I mean, this is big news in, you know, everybody’s been speculating about it. I’m sure you’re familiar with Brian Muraresku’s work. 

Matthew Stahl: Absolutely.

Dennis Mckenna: You know, Carl Ruck and so on. But again, they, I mean, their work is very  much built on speculation, you know, and it’s, and it’s archaeoethnobotany, and they’re looking  at residues in these beverage vessels of that sort of thing. And, you know, you have to take it  with a grain of salt for sure. I mean, you know, there was one discovery, I think, in Spain at some  temple of, you know, a skeleton that was exhumed that had ergot. That doesn’t prove anything  other than that somebody was taking ergot. But, you know, your theory, if this is true, and this  can be verified, pretty much cracks open the mystery, you know, and everybody’s been  speculating about that. 

Matthew Stahl: Thank you. And I have done experiments, for example, the latest experiment I  did five years ago was with 40 Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds. So in the book, I explained how I  used only three simple steps to do this procedure. So the first thing I did was I extracted the  pure LSA residue, which is kind of, I describe it as looking like a piece of a dark banana peel after  it scraped up. So I took this without mixing it with the barley. And all I experienced was  sedation, no visuals, it was uncomfortable. However, when I took the same extract a week later,  and I stirred it for 20 minutes, it could probably even be done for just 10 minutes when I started  with the barley and an acidic solution acidified to pH four and drank it. It was like night and day,  all the sudden it was stimulating. It felt exactly like LSD, but it was beyond LSD. It felt like an  anxiety free version of LSD, sort of like ALD 52 combined with mescaline.  

Dennis Mckenna: So this was when you mixed LSA, or LSA in this with the aldehydes. Yes, with  the aldehydes. That’s what happened. Yes, exactly. What is ALD 52?  

Matthew Stahl: ALD 52 was also discovered by Dr. Hoffman. It was found to have no anxiety compared to LSD. It also has twice the serotonin blocking power of LSD. So I think that plays a large part in why it’s no anxiety. I can describe, for example, the last experience I had over five years ago using the 40 Hawaiian baby woodrose seed stirred with the three grams of barley, which I use AoJiru young barley, which comes in a small three gram nitrogen sealed packet. I simply opened the packet with scissors and poured in 60 milliliters of water. And the LSA extract is in there and it’s acidified to pH four. You can use vitamin C, DL-tartaric acid, citric acid. What I used was just 10 milligrams of DL-tartaric acid to get it to pH four. So I would spin this on a magnetic stir and I drank it and I was just, I could not believe it. It felt exactly like 160 micrograms of LSD because there’s approximately 0.04 milligrams of LSA per each seed. And I use 40 seeds times 0.04. It came out exactly and felt exactly like 160 micrograms of LSD. I had hours of colored close-eye visions. The euphoria was just over the top and infinite. The music enhancement was just heavenly. The beauty was magnified to ultra-high levels. The music just sounded incredible. I was just in shock at how well this worked because when I didn’t stir it with the barley, all I got was  sedation, no visuals. It was a complete night, you know, day to night difference, yes. 

Dennis Mckenna: So something is going on in terms of these chemical modifications. Have you  taken Hawaiian baby woodrose itself, just by itself, ground up and ingested? 

Matthew Stahl: Well, I’ll tell you what. I have always extracted it to get the Pure LSA. I’ve read  so many hundreds of reports of people projectile vomiting and having just hours of cramping.  And what’s happening is you’re not actually supposed to ingest the seeds like these people are 

doing because the seed pulp itself is nauseating. So what I do in like two simple steps is  separate the, you know, the Pure LSA from the seed, you know, the nausea causing pulp in the  seed. And it only takes like 20 minutes. So when you read my book, you’ll see that all of my  discoveries are virtually zero nausea. I’ve always been fascinated with creating psychedelics that  have no nausea. 

Even if it’s ayahuasca caps, I prefer, you know, that they’re no nausea. People have a hard time believing that there are zero side effects. I’ve taken this up to 40 seeds, the equivalent of 160 micrograms of LSD. And they can’t understand that there’s no side effects because almost throughout all of time, people have been ingesting these seeds and that’s where they  get the cramping and the nausea and the sickness. So when you do separate it from the seeds, you don’t have any of that. And it’s just a sublime, just wonderful experience because there are no side effects. And I believe I could even take this up to 50 seeds was, which is the equivalent of 200 micrograms of LSD and still experience no side effects. So.

Dennis Mckenna: Yeah, for Hawaiian, Hawaiian baby Woodrose, I’ve only ever just dealt with it.  And as you say, just taking the ground seed, but it’s very potent. I mean, 25 seeds is actually a  high dose of Hawaiian baby Woodrose. And in my experience, you know, eight to 15 seeds is  very, is quite sufficient. And it’s an interesting psychedelic. It’s not anything that’s going to knock  you off your, off your rocker, but it is an interesting psychedelic. But then I took 25 seeds once. 

And that was almost, that was all the things you say. It was very nauseating plus a certain degree of what I interpreted as vasoconstriction. And I’m not sure what it was. So I’m kind of surprised that even back then, just in the raw form, I’m kind of surprised that Hawaiian baby  Woodrose hasn’t become more popular as a recreational psychedelic. And your work is  probably going to change that. 

Matthew Stahl: I absolutely think so. Like I said, zero side effects. I’m just in shock. There’s no vasoconstriction, no cramping, no sedation. In fact, it’s actually stimulating just like mescaline or LSD. I can take it at three in the afternoon and I would still be up till about two in the morning. However, I did find it a little bit easier to fall asleep than you would LSD. And that way it was similar to ALD-52 and that it was a little bit easier to fall asleep. But yeah, I started off low when I first did these experiments. I started off with around five seeds and then I went to 25 and then 30 and then 40. And yeah, I’m just blown away by the complete lack of side effects. And the colors are just the most beautiful colors I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve seen neon-like colors with the 40 seed dose converted to LSI. These colors are very neon-like. Purple yellows, red greens, blue yellows, colors that don’t even exist on this earth. And for hours I could close my eyes and just see these colored visuals like you would see on a combination of say LSD and mescaline. They’re like movies being played and they’re in color. And it had become absolutely my favorite psychedelic. And I’ve taken ayahuasca around 140 times, bridgesii cactus tea 120 times, LSD probably about 200 times. And yet I found  this my favorite psychedelic and there’s no nastiness to the bridgesii. 

Dennis Mckenna: This is the formulation that you’ve made, the acidic adduction. So I guess  basically the definitive proof of your work depends on getting the pure compound. So Dave is  talking to some colleagues and said that he’s trying to get that synthesized and then he or  somebody, maybe not him, but somebody will give it a nibble and figure out and either confirm  or disconfirm that it’s a psychedelic as you claim. And it seems quite reasonable that it might be.  What the issues seems to be with the synthesis, several people including Dave have said  something about the reaction with the aldehydes is not, I have an email from him. Let me see if  I can pull it up here. The condensation of Lysergamides with an aldehyde is not something you  would get in a lab. So I don’t know how it would happen in the liver. And he says, I suppose if  you have a very large concentration of the aldehyde relative to the amide, you might generate  some kind of electrophilic intermediate in the reduction of the aldehyde that could hook on to  the amide electrons of Lysergamides. So this is real chemistry. I love it when they dirty, but  might not be very high yielding, but maybe you could get a few hundred micrograms if you ate  enough lysergicamides. 

Matthew Stahl: Sure. And also in the book, I also describe this procedure was done back in  1938 using an amide and also a Cinnamaldehyde. And they created this was back in 1938. It was  actually a famous paper written by some Indian chemists. And they were the first to discover  that you could actually condense aldehydes onto amides and they would be stable. The way  they perform this reaction was you have to have a dry amide and a dry aldehyde and you don’t  even need a solvent. All you do is heat them both together in a flask and you put a reflux  condenser on it so that no pressure builds up. So they heat this up just for a little bit and then  they remove the reflux condenser and evaporate off the excess aldehyde because aldehydes are  volatile and then you’re left with the new compound. So this has been done before and I think it  possibly could have been the way that LSH was formed in the experiments where Dr. Grogler  injected LSH into rabbits and noticed that they became stimulated and acted as if they had  taken LSD. So we have some papers where this was done and I don’t know if that may help  them to read that paper, but I do give the references in the book.  

Dennis Mckenna: Yes, the references were all in the book and it was all described in vast detail  several times. You keep repeating yourself but I guess you want to get into people’s thick skulls  how you do this.  

Matthew Stahl: So much information. I tend to repeat certain things to help people understand  things better. Yes. 

Dennis Mckenna: Right. Well, it’s very interesting if this pans out with the pure compound and  it confirms what you’re saying then that’s an enormous discovery and that’s a contribution to  this perpetual mystery about the Eleusis compounds of what was really going on. It’s  remarkable that also it presupposes that these priests were pretty sophisticated chemists. They  didn’t think in chemical terms but it was either an accidental discovery, claviceps plus the young  barley that it grew on and then possible to speculate that they did add some form of acid, some  lemon juice or something when they made formulation. Exactly. They put the pH down and  voila they get this and basically they get all three. I mean the postulate is they get all three. Yes.  But the one that you seem to feel is most active is LSI.  

Matthew Stahl: Yes. Absolutely. I believe the two most active are LSI and also LSV, Lysergic Aacid  Valeraldamide. The levels of that were around 16 and the levels of Isovaleraldehyde were  around 7.5 and both of these levels just eclipsed all of the other 10 aldehydes that are in barley  which are around one. These are way, way, way, way higher and let me see here. What I found  interesting too is when I was doing these experiments I ordered all kinds of different barley. I  ordered barley extracts, barley powder, AoJiru young barley in the three grams nitrogen packs  and immediately I went for the Japanese AoJiru young barley and I was just blown away. It  worked remarkably from the first time I used it so I didn’t even bother with the barley extracts.  This was my preferred thing to stir it with and what’s interesting is when I talked to Carl Ruck on  the phone he said the word kykeon means to stir which is exactly what I’m doing in these  experiments.  

Dennis Mckenna: Interesting, interesting. 

Matthew Stahl: And also thank you when I talk about soma in the book the divine elixir  something very interesting I discovered in my research is that back in 2003 a Soviet  archaeologist when he was excavating the Astro-Zorian temples way back in time he discovered  you’re not going to believe this he discovered vessels mortars mortars and pestles and then  these mortals he discovered that they had seed indentions and what’s fascinating is I use the  exact same procedure for making soma. I use mortars and pestles and vessels and I also crush  the seeds. The word soma actually means to sprinkle distill or extract and that’s what I’m doing  in these experiments and what’s very interesting too is that even though the Hawaiian baby  woodrose is known to come from Hawaii it actually originates in India.

Dennis Mckenna: Of course it originates in India so that’s this soma connection is something  that you don’t talk too much about in the book but that’s also amazing like in one fell swoop  you’ve solved two major mysteries of ancient psychedelics you know the kykeon and soma and  your book is the first I’ve read that says anything about soma being a vine you know there are  theories that it’s a mushroom that it might have been a Ephedra that it might have been a  harmala and so this the the work of this russian archaeologist claiming that it was a vine that’s  also a new take on it and if that’s true then that that would explain you know as you well know  one of the things about soma that sort of perpetuates the mystery I dismiss Wasson’s theory  completely it was not amanita muscaria it may have been psilocybe but it just doesn’t have the  pharmacology exactly but if it was prepared from Hawaiian baby woodrose or it or you know  our Argyreia another species they’re all very high in these alkaloids exactly play the formulation  of soma as well  

Matthew Stahl: yes exactly and also not only does the soviet archaeologists talk about it but in  the encyclopedia of psychoactive plants by the late great Christian Rätsch who’s no longer with  us right he also talks about how it is written that soma is believed to come from a vine and  what is even fascinating  

Dennis Mckenna: the only place I’ve heard that but but I it’s plausible enough you know  

Matthew Stahl: thank you and also now after I had done all these experiments and tripped on  this lsi geez at least six seven times using the aojiru barley I had this book on my bookshelf 

and I happened to open it even though I hadn’t read it yet I had bought it and I was just in shock  because William Scott Shelley this remarkable researcher on soma he talked about how soma  was mixed with barley and I was like oh my gosh this has been written about before  

Dennis Mckenna: it’s Rätsch’s book that you held up  

Matthew Stahl: this one is William Scott Shelley it’s called Soma and the Indo-European  Priesthood oh William Scott yes this is a fascinating book because he spends a whole chapter  talking about how when the women prepared soma for the men sitting in front of the fire the  ritual was to mix the soma with the barley he mentions barley over and over throughout the  entire chapter and I was just in shock because I’m like this is exactly what I’m doing and they  also mentioned that the color soma was a golden green color which is the color of the 60  milliliter brew that I made and there’s so many similarities and apparently barley was highly  respected and used countless times during the rituals and he actually says in the book that soma was mixed with barley and I was just blown away when I read that and what I wish I could  get a hold of William Scott Shelley I don’t know how because I’d like to talk to him or let them  know that I’ve ran several successful experiments and I think he would just be in shock to know  that 

Dennis Mckenna: we want to put that book on your episode page for the podcast now the  name of the book again is what I can’t  

Matthew Stahl: this one this one is called soma. 

Dennis Mckenna: I can’t see it the lighting is bad just tell me what the title is. 

Matthew Stahl: the title of this book by William Scott Shelley is Soma and the Indo-European  Priesthood cereal cultivation and the origins of religion so the title on here he talks about cereal  and guess what the barley is a cereal. 

Dennis Mckenna: barley is a cereal exactly we’ll we’ll get that book and we’ll we’ll thank you  we’ll link it that’s do you know if this gentleman is still living yes he’s still living? 

Matthew Stahl: I just can’t get a hold of him I’ve tried to google emails and I’ve just and also I’ve  talked to Mark Hoffman who was taking care of Carl Ruck a professor Carl Ruck who wrote the  book Road to Eleusis and he said he also been unsuccessful in getting hold of him but I had  bought one of William Scott Shelley’s books a long time ago called the elixir where he also talks  about ergot being used in the kykeon it’s called the elixir right also by William Scott Shelley well  

Dennis Mckenna: I’m gonna look him up because I’ve never heard of him actually until you  brought him up but that’s thank you very interesting that he’s been writing about all this. 

Matthew Stahl: yeah he’s been writing about this right so and uh-huh. 

Dennis Mckenna: well yeah so that’s all very interesting and the other thing I wanted to talk to  you about your interests have not been limited to the Lysergamides you’ve actually uh I was  fascinated in your book by your writing about uh THH and in ayahuasca formulations I’m very  interested in THH for a number of reasons as you know it’s the one of the three Beta-carbolines  primarily Beta-carbolines in ayahuasca uh about equivalent to harmaline or harmine, harmaline  as a trace in ayahuasca but your claim that in these analogs that you created with ayahuasca it’s  really the THH that brings the depth of the out into the experience and DMT without the THH is  uh much less rich in some sense and you know your book I have to say I never realized that THH was a psychedelic in its own right I always thought of it as I mean it’s an uptake inhibitor I think it is an MAO inhibitor a weak one I may be wrong about that but I think it’s it is an MAO  inhibitor as well do you have any understanding  

Matthew Stahl: yes yes I’ve researched that and I looked at a chemical company who sold small  portions of THH the the MAOI activity is extremely weak uh right however yes a THH is mainly  an SRI serotonin reuptake inhibitor you would have to take like a hundred times the normal  dose to actually experience the MAOI activity of say 150 milligrams of harming so it’s really not  perceptible yes THH is a fascinating compound for most of my life I have tried to educate people  on how important it is to ayahuasca and I remember you wrote a paper on ayahuasca a while  back and I carried it around with me and I even quote you in the book about how it’s possible that THH extends the half-life of DMT and 

Dennis Mckenna: it makes sense right because it has the hot the longest half-life of any of the  Beta-carbolines right and the other interesting finding we did this biomedical study of  ayahuasca back in the 90s and the most possible one of the most interesting and possibly  anomalous discoveries was that in these people in the UDV who take ayahuasca roughly two  weeks it increases the density of the serotonin transporters  

Matthew Stahl: exactly 

Dennis Mckenna: and this is anomalous and we thought well what does that mean when we  made this discovery and then we looked into the literature and it turns out that all sorts of  pathologies particularly alcoholism certain kinds of depression homicidal behaviors this sort of  thing was all linked to anomalous deficits in the serotonin transporters so the the yes the  inference is that ayahuasca and the people in in the study they all came to the UDV in a state of  life crisis and they started drinking the tea and they got better and their lives straightened out  we speculated that it was the stimulation of the serotonin that you know they probably had  deficits of the serotonin transporter right the ayahuasca fixed that it’s the connection was  almost too neat yes i remember it was THH in that mixture that was doing the trick absolutely  and  

Matthew Stahl: i remember reading towards the end of your paper where you discussed that  where people with anger issues people with alcoholism and depression were cured after taking  these ayahuasca sessions and people who had lived their life being irresponsible although that’s  all the sudden became responsible people in life after drinking ayahuasca yes THH is extremely  fascinating how i got interested in it was a long long long time ago i’d say about over 15 years ago there was a person on the forums named 69 Ron and this person had discovered how to  make THH from harmaline but he kept it a secret he didn’t tell anybody and on the forums  forever and ever people were like how do you make THH and i remember on one of the forums  for like eight or ten years they kept asking people do you know how to make THH and even  though i didn’t know how to do it outside of Shulgin’s method which uses like five different  chemicals and argon gas i decided to give it a shot so what i did was i knew a little bit of  literature where you could take zinc and put it into vinegar and create tiny bubbles of hydrogen  gas i did from harmaline by putting harmaline in this and stirring it for an hour and a half i just  didn’t know how to precipitate it nobody else did and then i went into a trance state similar to  the shamans do when they can’t figure out a problem and a 10 precent ammonium hydroxide  so when i did the experiments and first i added the harmaline you know to the beaker with the  spinning vinegar and the zinc dust and after i precipitated it out I was able to successfully do this  with 10 precent ammonium hydroxide which is over the counter it’s a janitorial cleaner and i  precipitated it and i got the same yield as what Shulgin got a 75 percent yield in TiHKAL l now  the only problem with TiHKAL is that an inexperienced person was the one who took the THH not dr Shulgin and this person described it as similar to harmaline however it’s not at all like  harmaline it’s completely different harmaline is a rima and it’s sedating whereas THH is an sri  and it’s stimulating and like you said it’s very psychedelic so after i learned how to make THH i  posted it on the forum so that other people could do this I was the first chemist to post how to  do this over the counter without using the the very difficult procedure that dr Shulgin used and  on my research of THH i discovered like you said it’s a beta carboline and it’s also related to  ibogaine and i discovered it’s just as visual as ibogaine at 300 milligrams i could take 300  milligrams of THH in a capsule and for hours on end i just saw the most beautiful 4k visions now  they’re in in monochrome like blue or green however when you add dmt even a small amount  the visuals become colored i for example once i took 300 milligrams of THH and I saw the  interior decorations of palaces i saw the checkered floors the beautiful windows the winding  staircases i’ve been transported like a bird all across LA and i could look down and i could see  the swimming pools this is on THH another time i was flying over what looked like Atlantis and i  zoomed in for a bird’s eye view it seems THH seems to tap into the archaic record that’s in the  universe the past the present the future the supernatural the most beautiful visions and when  you combine this with even a small say 30 milligram amount of dmt the visions are all colored  similar to the the artwork of pablo amaringo i was looking at his book a long time ago like how  did he see all these visions it’s because he had this approximate 300 milligrams of THH with the  dmt and the color visuals all make sense. 

Dennis Mckenna: right right so one question here i mean this this thing with THH this is almost  as mind-boggling as your discoveries with lsi for one thing absolutely most people don’t know  that THH is any kind of psychedelic but then the other thing when you say you combine THH with DMT in these analogs and and it gives more color to the dmt gives color to the experience are these are there’s nothing else in there in other words i guess my question is if THH is such a  poor maoi if it’s such a poor mao inhibitor then combining dmt and THH would not activate the  dmt orally 

Matthew Stahl: absolutely yes. 

Dennis Mckenna: so how does that have to is there harmaline in it as well? 

Matthew Stahl: yes absolutely i have to use 150 milligrams of harmine i don’t use any harmaline  right  

Dennis Mckenna: that explains it so it’s a three component preparation with harmaline and  maybe vine extract and right it has the vine extract it has dmt but if you were doing that  completely synthetic catalog it would be harmaline plus THH and then dmt so a 64 dollar  question a lot of people gonna want to work with this THH where can i order it? 

Matthew Stahl: right  

Dennis Mckenna: is it available? 

Matthew Stahl: yes yes it is available i have seen it at a place called

Dennis Mckenna: where is it? 

Matthew Stahl: it’s called i believe the website if you google it it’s called

Dennis Mckenna: okay. 

Matthew Stahl: yes now the website is not affiliated with me in any way i just know that he’s  been around probably 15 years and he has pure THH another place people have been ordering  it from is called liftmode however i’m a little cautious because they get their THH from China  and what i noticed on the forums is that a handful of people the way to test THH is you take a q tip and you wet it in vinegar and then you take up a little bit of the THH and you smear it on a  paper plate in front of a black light it’s supposed to glow light blue if it’s pure THH now some of  these people notice when they have the Chinese THH when they smeared it on the paper plate  after dipping the q-tip and vinegar they notice that there was also a green coloration which  indicates that there’s still unconverted harmaline in it so i’m a little bit wary of the Chinese  made THH which is very cheap i recommend either people make it or say buy it someplace reputable i think even bounty botanicals i’ve seen it there there’s a couple places that uh they  do have actual pure THH and of course you know i made my own for a good 15 years. 

Dennis Mckenna: right and most people have neither the equipment nor the knowledge right  how to do it exactly so lazy people like me we just want to order it so right right I will get back to  you about the details on this okay we’ll put all that uh okay we’ll put all that on the episode  page because uh okay i just think you know i think that these compounds are revolutionary and  i think i do too that people should have access to them right and they should have safe sources  and yes good have uh obviously good information how to use them how to properly use them  and you’re i would say now officially one of the elders so you’re responsible for not misleading  people you know exactly making people aware of both the uh the promise of of these things  and also the pitfalls because there are always pitfalls you know but uh the THH work is fantastic  and uh it’s i absolutely working with this as far as i know  

Matthew Stahl: nobody’s really working with it right uh THH is extremely fascinating uh it’s just  one of my all-time favorite compounds uh i still have probably uh 70 grams of it to rest the last  of my life um i’ll continue to use it forever i have  

Dennis Mckenna: send 50 of it to me and we’ll call it 

Matthew Stahl: absolutely no problem 

Dennis Mckenna: so do you do you prefer this THH harmaline dmt combination to the lsi  formulation or  

Matthew Stahl: i’ll tell you what i find them all actually very similar uh i find when you prepare  ayahuasca using a good amount of THH and harmine uh and the dmt that it’s basically  equivalent to lsi, lsv, lscr combination which i make in a brew and i also find all of this equivalent  to bridgesii cactus tea i find really no differences across the spectrum they’re both just  extremely potent extremely colorful extremely euphoric music enhancing uh they open up  realms of the divine you know incredible spiritual insights and revelations and healing is just so  extreme uh and what got me interested also in making dmt capsules a long time ago was that i  read a book called ayahuasca analogues by great yeah the late great Jonathan Ott yes and in this  book he they didn’t know about THH back then but he had prepared capsules of dmt and  harmine together and he noticed early on that he saw geometrics however he noticed that  there was kind of like a drowsiness he said he could fall asleep at any time and the reason for  this is because they didn’t know about THH back then and they didn’t include it in the capsules  so what THH since it blocks serotonin it’s stimulating uh when it when it’s combined with the  dmt there’s an infinite euphoria there’s incredible music enhancement just like ayahuasca  bridgesii cactus tea or the lsi brew so THH adds euphoria it adds it’s it’s actually responsible i believe for the teaching and the insights and the healing inherent in ayahuasca it just does so  many things yes  

Dennis Mckenna: that’s what you say and i think that’s possible because uh there’s no doubt  that phenomenologically the ayahuasca experience is much different than pure dmt i mean they  both have virtues but the ayahuasca experience is uh much richer in a certain sense much more  archetypal i guess you could say dmt and as you know synthetic dmt puts you into some weird  place but i wouldn’t call it archetypal i don’t know what i would call it you know you’re probably  familiar with Andy Gallimore’s work on this yes uh yes uh well one thing another thing i mean  they’re you’ve been mucking around with these things for a long time so there’s there’s a lot to  talk about but i wanted to uh also ask you about your work with the uh with the cactus with the  bridgesii and you’ve got an interesting formulation for for that too  

Matthew Stahl: yes um so for for the longest time i grew a huge patio full of bridgesii and it got  the morning sun only and I had a you know canopy to protect it from the uh it got about 60 sun  due to the canopy during the afternoon so for most of my life uh i’ve taken bridgesii cactus tea  about 120 times and uh the way i used to do it was i explained how to easily you know process a piece of cactus and turn it into the tea back in the early days uh in order to get the nausea  causing particles out of the cactus i would you know brew the tea and then i would strain it  through a spaghetti strainer and i would take the tea boil it down and then i would strain the tea  through a cotton ball in a funnel and i would do this over and over because the cotton ball  would clog and i’d have to replace it was just exhausting doing this and then one day i had a  vision from the spirit world that told me just take the tea once you’ve boiled it and place it into  a tall jar in the refrigerator and give it two days and all of the nausea causing particles will fall to  the bottom and so i did this and after two days i noticed there was a one quarter inch green  layer of particles at the bottom so what i did was i would decant off all of the liquid above the  particles and just drink that and there was zero nausea in fact i would drink this i would wait an  hour and i lived down the road from one of the world’s largest water parks and i would go there  and swim and trip uh i did this for years on end uh just all summer long and i used to be a  lifeguard at this same water park for three years i was a deep water lifeguard and so i lived close  by and it was just heavenly because all the nature looks like a fairy tale the music playing over  the speakers was heavenly the bathing suits just glowed neon this nature looked incredible yes  it’s one of my my favorite psychedelics i absolutely love the cactus  

Dennis Mckenna: but didn’t didn’t you have a special formulation i forget the details but you  added something into it not lecithin but some additive that uh am i getting this wrong that it  wasn’t it was something that you added something to the formulation yeah enhance the  bioavailability or something  

Matthew Stahl: oh yes absolutely i know what you’re talking about now yes in in the chapter  towards you know the chapter on the bridgesii cactus tea i talk about where there were periods  where i didn’t have i didn’t want to harvest you know too much cactus so i would harvest a  small one and in order to make it just as potent as a large cactus once again we go back to THH for uh i talk about how i would drink the cactus tea first and then one hour later i would take a  capsule of anywhere from 200 to 300 milligrams of THH and you always want to do it in that  order because there’s potential tiny amounts of MAOIs and the cactus and you want that to run  through your system before you take the THH otherwise if you take them at the same time your  heartbeat will be a little fast you don’t want to do that i’ve done that before so as long as you  take the THH capsule about an hour to an hour and a half after you drink the cactus tea all of a  sudden it makes a small cactus feel like a big cactus and i discovered when i was looking at the  receptorome uh chart for THH i was in i was in shock because not only does it THH block  serotonin just like regicide does but it also agonizes all three of the adrenal receptors a2a, a2b  and a2c which are associated with things like euphoria color enhancement music enhancement  just wonderful things and they overlap so well so when i would drink a small amount of tea and  then take the capsule an hour later it was just amazing it was if you had taken a large piece of  cactus because they overlap so well and they both stimulate many of the same receptors and  someone on one of the forums even described THH as being very similar to mescaline and i  agree at higher levels at 300 milligrams it does feel very much like mescaline there’s a diamond  like sparkling to all of the visuals there’s the music enhancement the visions the the euphoria  especially when it’s combined with small amounts of dnt it’s just all of these things that overlap  with the cactus and the THH so i was able to make a very cheap sort of uh cactus go a long ways  by using the extremely cheap you know cheap THH with it  

Dennis Mckenna: right right and well it’s it’s kind of surprising to me that THH has not become  sort of known in the psychedelic community but obviously there is a community of people like  yourself who are very experimentalists and you’re experimental ethno pharmacologists is what  you’re right you know and you’re experimenting with these ancient formulas and you’re really  uh unpacking what what they’re what the secrets are and it turns out these these formulations like the lsi formulation and the THH in in ayahuasca these are a reflection i think of the  sophistication of these of these shamans these priests who figured that out and another  another thing i wanted to mention before we closed that we were getting up to the top of the  hour not that we have to quit exactly on the dot but i did want to mention you mentioned that i  mean you’re you’re a true psychonaut and you’re a chemical engineer and your inspiration for many of these formulations basically comes from a shamanic teacher that yes well that’s  amazing i mean you have visions so then you put them into practice you uh and that’s of course  that’s very much in the ayahuasca tradition you know you you take ayahuasca to learn about  the properties of other plants it’s a whole right exactly all of that that’s basically using  ayahuasca as the channel for the energy of the other plants and and so in these trance states  which doesn’t have to be psychedelically altered state these are spontaneous trances that you  have. 

Matthew Stahl: yes um so i believe all of these discover discoveries believe it or not originated  from an Aztec shaman who visited both my wife and i uh 20 years ago so what happened was a  dear friend of mine gave me uh each of us like 10 hits of old acid it was like 15 years old and he had uh stored it in between the pages of a book not even in a baggie and when i looked at it i  noticed that like 50 percent of it was degraded because only half of it glowed blue in a black  light so we decided well we’ll take a larger dose thinking that it wasn’t that potent so we both  took like 10 hits and it had a sick feeling you know for a while i guess because it was very old  and then all of a sudden it catapulted us to this extremely divine state and what’s amazing is  that my wife said look over there and we looked on the wall and what formed out of the  shadows of the christmas tree was a shaman from aztec air and i was scared at first because i’m  like oh my gosh there’s this living man in our living room and he’s staring right at us and and  you’re right and i was a little scared and then i calmed down and she was like watch him and he  showed both of us and we both saw the exact same thing which is even more amazing and he  showed us the rise and fall of several civilizations and to the left and right of him were centaurs  they were naked female on top with horse bodies and he sat on a living chair made of spirit  animals and he showed us the rise and fall of all of this and then what i noticed was when i got  up and walked around or even sat in a different place he followed me across the wall and he  stared into my eyes the whole time and i believe when you stare into somebody’s eyes like that they’re spiritually just on a level where it’s not superficial and i believe that what happened was he was actually downloading me information during this time by staring into my eyes after showing me those visions because not but a week later i discovered that  important 1992 paper by Austin on how you know addux can can join with amides to form new  compounds and this important paper is mentioned in my book and is uh forms one of the main  theories for how this lsi actually works so this shaman somehow had given me this information  that i discovered this important paper a week later and what i noticed is that i’ve been through  five uh very profound near-death experiences in my life like a shaman i was very close to death  several times for example there was one time we were living in an apartment and we were on the third floor and we were asleep and the entire apartment complex caught on fire and we had  almost burned to death we were just minutes away from burning to death except for a  policeman banging on the door and that’s when we you know grabbed our car keys and just  went down the stairs suffered smoke inhalation but what i noticed was approximately one week  after each one of these near-death experiences i had a vision that would rise to the front of my  consciousness and each one of these was a discovery that i talk about in the book and in my  latest near-death experience back in june i had a heart attack and the doctors told me that my  lad valve was 99 block so i was 99 close to death the doctors who all visited me in the hospital  you know called it a widow maker because i was so close to death and you know i had known  about Isovaleraldehyde before the heart attack however one week after the heart attack once  again i was sitting in my computer at work and then i saw the vision of barley and i googled it  and all of a sudden this paper came up from china and i was amazed because it showed the  extremely high levels of these three aldehydes which is what i had been searching before  because i had used just one drop of the pure chemical before and mixed with the lsa at least 20  times and i tripped just like lsd just using a drop of this but i was frustrated because i didn’t  know what the source of this that the greek could have used and then the vision occurred to me  so i talk about in the book each one of these discoveries have a chapter and i talk about the  near-death experience that i had and what’s interesting too is the word shaman as you know  means to know and i believe the shamans are chosen by the spirits at birth and they’re usually  struck and down in their 20s and 30s and that’s when it happened to me was in my 30s that’s  when i started having these near-death experiences and when i tell friends about all these  experiences they’re just like they just can’t believe this has actually happened to a person but  oh and something else before we leave i want to mention that one of the very first few books i  ever bought out of the 200 books was by Terrence Mckenna the archaic revival oh yeah here  okay yes and then i also have food of the gods wonderful and i also have the invisible landscape  and actually these were the these were the very first three books that’s that got me on my  journey and i also used to listen to Terrence Mckenna ‘s tapes his his speeches i would spend a whole day just going through all the tapes and i was just fascinated with it and also your book the brotherhood of the screaming abyss is just incredible thank you  

Dennis Mckenna: yeah well you know uh you know there’s a there’s a new definitive biography  of terrence that’s out probably the strange attractor we did three podcasts with Graham St John  and i’ve i’ve read the book it’s really good i mean it really is the definitive biography of my crazy  brother you know who was who was also you know an incredible person as we know 

Matthew Stahl: yes he was the the the premier um psychedelic scientist of our time yes 

Dennis Mckenna: i don’t know if i’d call him that but i’m sure he’d appreciate the description  yes well matthew it’s been a wonderful conversation we’ve covered so much in a short time um  i really appreciate your time and uh i’ll follow up with some questions and get some of these  links you shared and make sure those are on the episode and uh we’ll let you know when it  drops uh  

Matthew Stahl: okay thank you thank you and and also uh mark hoffman wanted me to mention he’s a friend of mine he’s written three books he said that he he has uh a lot of his friends work at the Shulgin institute and i will be talking with them on the phone very soon  because they’re very interested in all of this so the Shulgin institute is going to also take this  further just like dr nichols and there’s a maps meeting on the kykeon so we hope to progress  and i hope that this evolves you know even beyond the book and thank you so very much  

Dennis Mckenna: i think it will i think you brought this to the attention of this community and  now that you’ve got the Shulgin people and dave working on it you know your contributions will  be will be recognized and will be extended so thank you you’re a true uh pioneer my friend and  uh i i wish you all the best  

Matthew Stahl: thank you um you know when the moment you contacted me i had uh just  tears streaming down my face because i was just your generosity and your kindness and i  couldn’t believe that i’d actually be able to meet with you and have a conversation together i’ve  just been such a long admirer of you and your brother for the longest time thank you so very  much  

Dennis Mckenna: well thank you thank you uh and i’m sure my brother would say the same  you know yes because of his tapes and because of who he was he’s still very much with us so  

Matthew Stahl: yes his spirit is very much with us and like you know the other day i was  watching the program with uh paul stamets and he talked about ai and he talked in the they  asked ai uh why do you think humans would go around doing random acts of kindness and he had replied that the machine didn’t know why somebody would do this because there was  no they didn’t they didn’t see why you know what kind of outcome could come out of this  because the ai lacks the spirit exactly i really enjoyed i’ve now discovered all of your programs  and i’ve been watching one like every few days and the one on dr nichols and his memoir and  uh sharon mckenna i’ve just blown away they’re just incredible podcasts and i hope that and i  talk and at the very beginning of my uh blue light link i also mention a link to your podcast  because i hope other people will also discover it just like i did  

Dennis Mckenna: well thank you yes we we need eyeballs on our podcast that’s for sure all right  well thank you so much for making the time this has been a wonderful conversation  

Matthew Stahl: yes wonderful thank you have a wonderful day okay thanks you too