Dennis McKenna: Sam Believ is a leading voice in ayahuasca and plant medicine, focused on preserving its ancient roots while making its purpose, safety and transformative potential clearly understood.

Fewer than 1% of people have experienced it, yet millions live with anxiety, disconnection and unresolved patterns.

His mission is simple. When practiced with the right set setting, preparation and integration, ayahuasca could create lasting change from the inside out.

Originally trained as an oil and gas engineer, Sam brings a systems mindset to this work, prioritizing safety, screening and structure without interfering with the medicine itself. This approach led him to build the highest rated ayahuasca retreat experiences in Colombia, known for its safety, authenticity and participant care. Care.

Sam does not position himself as a guru. He sees himself as a messenger, sharing accurate information, telling real stories, and protecting the lineage of this medicine. He regularly engages in communities, leaders and skeptics alike, building credibility through lived experience rather than hype.

So, Sam, welcome to the Brainforest Cafe.

[00:01:48] Sam Believ: Thank you, Dennis. Thank you for having me on. And thank you for such a lovely bio.

[00:01:54] Dennis McKenna: Well, you wrote it, so it should be lovely. Yes. Thank you for coming on my podcast.

I really look forward to this.

It seems that you, more than anyone, that you, more than most people, are aware of the whole ayahuasca tourism phenomenon. Phenomenon.

And that’s something that’s going on a lot in Peru and in Colombia. Not so much.

You’re one of the few organizations that’s actually offering these retreats, which are, from all I can tell, very well structured and you have a lot of experience and you’ve had many people come, which is a testimony, I guess, to word of mouth and the way you run these things.

So how is it that you got into this? It seems that your retreat center, Le Wyra Ayahuasca Retreats is the top rated retreat program in Colombia.

[00:03:08] Sam Believ: Yeah. So I came to Colombia first nine years ago, and by that time I already heard about ayahuasca and I was curious about it. But as many people thought that ayahuasca is something you do in Peru or maybe Costa Rica. I had no idea that it existed in Colombia. Maybe because it had a different name in Colombia, which is Jaje. Or maybe because the psychedelic tourism here was not developed and still is not developed.

For better and for worse.

For better because it hasn’t been overrun like in Peru, where ayahuasca sold on the markets. And for worse, because, you know, Colombia always has been known for its plant medicine tradition.

And, you know, people like, like yourself and your brother, like when you went to. To to find novel psychedelics. You also went to Colombia. But what happened in 70s, 80s and 90s is the. Because of the security issues and the N.

Pablo Escobar and related situations, Colombia had this.

Gained this bad reputation. And people, you know, psychedelic tourism went elsewhere to places like Peru, rightfully so, and to places like Costa Rica which haven’t even had ayahuasca tradition, or Mexico. And now the situation is that Colombia has this beautiful ancient ayahuasca tradition, but it has been largely overlooked. At the same time, Colombia exports most of it ayahuasca to Costa Rica and Mexico. A lot of retreats serve Colombian ayahuasca there. It’s a bit of a situation where it feels a little bit unfair because it’s kind of same with coffee, right? Most of Basque Colombian coffee is exported to US or Europe. And what people drink here is not that nice. It’s changing now as well. So it’s a bit of that. But I started my journey with. Eventually I found ayahuasca here and I’ve never partook in ayahuasca elsewhere.

And in my case, I came to ayahuasca because I was depressed and it really helped me with my depression and further on kind of found me root of my. Helped me find the root of my depression, which is lack of purpose in life. And eventually gave me that purpose, which is to work with the medicine. So I’ve been. Since then I’ve been working with the medicine. Synchronicity started happening and I ended up organizing retreats. I’ve never really planned to. It just kind of happened.

And now about four and a half years later, since our first retreat, yeah, we’ve. We’ve been able to get good, very good results. We’ve given ayahuasca to now close to 3, 000 people and a very good reputation. I think largely because of my approach that is different from most people because of my engineering background. And I am a spiritual person now. But originally I wasn’t really that spiritual. I was very, in a way, scientifically approaching things. And because of that, we kind of organized the experience that is both traditional with indigenous shaman, but also kind of finding the balance between the Amazonian tradition and the Western knowledge in such a way that people can have those experiences and have overwhelmingly positive results.

[00:06:27] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. I think that’s very important that the. That you’re trying to bridge the traditional practices with the current scientific knowledge.

Bring these two together in a synergy because they’re not antithetical. They actually reinforce and enrich each other.

So the services you offer, as I understand it, is kind of full spectrum. I mean, you use a traditional medicine, but you also have all the tools of psychotherapy and modern, modern approaches to spiritual experiences and so on.

And I assume that you work with your commuted to reciprocity and you work with one or more indigenous communities. Can you tell us something about that?

[00:07:21] Sam Believ: Yeah. So we work specifically with one community that’s called Inga, Inga tribe from Colombia. They come from Putumaya, which is basically on the border with Ecuador. And that’s kind of where the Andean mountains meet the Amazon jungle. That’s the area where which they traditionally populate. And I’ve been working with one family for the last three years, and I’ve worked with the. With the dad, the uncle and the son now. So that’s three. Three different people from same family.

And I personally believe that.

I don’t say that the white person can’t be a shaman. I think it’s entirely possible.

But I think when you have indigenous shamans that grow their own ayahuasca, they have tradition that been passed from in a lineage from generation to generation. For me, it just feels natural and comfortable to ground myself in that tradition. And then obviously part of the proceeds goes to the shaman, goes back to his family and is funding, directly or indirectly funding their community. So I do believe that it’s kind of fair to have, you know, people that not only discovered that medicine, but kept it alive through many hardships and persecution from, you know, Catholic church, for example, to get some benefit and, you know, be able to live a good life and have give good life to their children as opposed to, let’s say, if I was the shaman and I just buy medicine cheaply and with a huge markup. So it’s like, I think there should be fairness, but it’s elegant because not only it’s fair, but also

[00:09:10] Dennis McKenna: it’s also

[00:09:11] Sam Believ: bringing in the knowledge that’s been there for generations. So that’s what I believe in, right?

[00:09:18] Dennis McKenna: Well, yes. I mean, in something like this, your not the guru, you’re not the ayahuasca, but you’re the facilitator.

And no, it’s best to leave the actual conduct of the ceremonies. And so I leave that to the professionals.

[00:09:36] Sam Believ: Right.

[00:09:36] Dennis McKenna: I mean, that’s always how I’ve felt about it that, you know, these folks have been immersed in this tradition for decades. And do they.

Does your Tita and his family, do they work with the community to.

Are they growing the ayahuasca that they can use or.

[00:09:58] Sam Believ: Yeah. So all of the ayahuasca that we serve is grown in their own community. They have obviously people planting and taking care of the plants and they have like a large chunk of forest where they. I think it’s close to 50 hectares of ayahuasca. Like a lot of people are very concerned, like, oh my God, we’re gonna run out of ayahuasca. And it’s so unsustainable. In reality, it’s very sustainable. I’ve been there myself several times.

And ayahuasca actually grows where almost nothing else grows, in an infertile soils.

And it grows very easily.

You know, you take a, you take a, a little vine, you cut it in pieces, you stick them in the ground and you come back later and you have some vines growing. But it does, it is a labor intensive process because you need to, you know, clean out the, you know, the other grasses to make sure that the plant can grow. Another beauty of growing ayahuasca is that ayahuasca uses trees to grow upwards to the sun.

And so as opposed to, let’s say, growing coca, where you have to cut the trees down, growing ayahuasca, you need to keep the trees. So it kind of is a reforestation effort indirectly.

[00:11:17] Dennis McKenna: Right. So you couldn’t create tons of biomass in the jungle of ayahuasca without cutting down a single tree.

So that’s. That in itself recommends ayahuasca as a sustainable crop.

So tell me a little bit. As I understand it, north of the Puta Mayo, ayahuasca is yahe, and they’re actually a little different.

They involve a different admixture plant.

Primarily in the north, the yage contains diploteris cabarena as the primary admixture plant, whereas in the south, the admixture plant is chokruda, is Psychotria viridis. Your formulations, do they reflect the Colombian variety? Colombian type of ayahuasca with the diploteris admixture, or how does that work?

[00:12:19] Sam Believ: So it’s an interesting question. I was convinced that it was always the chagarapanga or diploteris cavitana, as you say, but apparently my shaman said that they actually use both, and it depends on which one they have available.

So it can be both chakruna and chagro panga, because those, you know, traditionally in Colombia, yeah, it’s more of the chagro, but sometimes they, they also have brews that, that have chakruna. But yeah, I would say 80, 90% Chagro, they prefer it, I think it’s also seen as the more stronger. Stronger one.

[00:12:57] Dennis McKenna: Right. It has higher levels of dmt, supposedly.

So. And that difference is noticeable, I take it. So is chagriponga. It’s also a vine, so it must be fairly easy to grow as well, like ayahuasca.

[00:13:17] Sam Believ: No, as far as I know, it’s more of a bush, if I remember seeing correctly. It’s kind of like a low bush.

That’s how it looked like. Yeah, I see. And so ayahuasca takes about. The ayahuasca vine takes about three to five years to mature, but the chagro takes about only seven to eight months to have, you know, to harvest it. So it’s a much. It’s a sort of like, easier part on which there’s less focus, more focuses on growing the vine because chagro you can obtain easily and quickly.

[00:13:50] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

Okay. Well, you’ve something I should point out to our listeners. I tried to look@lawira.com and actually that doesn’t exist anymore.

That site is. It’s now ayahuascaincolumbia.com about that.

[00:14:12] Sam Believ: It was always ayahuasca in Colombia. But lora, we bought the domain that redirects because we actually started as ayahuasca in Colombia, because when I first found that there was ayahuasca in Colombia, I got very excited about it.

[00:14:24] Dennis McKenna: So.

[00:14:25] Sam Believ: But then I thought about it, and when people come and they tell their friends, where did you drink ayahuasca? They say, I drank ayahuasca in Colombia. And it’s very imprecise. So we then came up with the name Loira, which is the tool that shamans use to clear the energies. And also in the Kichu languages, it means air and wind. But yeah, it still redirects to ayahuasca and Columbia. So that’s the main website.

[00:14:52] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. So you’ve suggested a number of different topics here.

I think the first one is interesting. You say ayahuasca. Columbia is actually the forgotten cradle of ayahuasca.

And it’s been largely overlooked by the tourist boom. And the tourist boom is happening mostly in Peru, as I understand, although there’s a lot of it going on in Ecuador, also Costa Rica. And certainly Costa Rica is no place where the indigenous traditions exist.

So you’re closer to this original ayahuasca tradition which has its roots in Colombia, as you claim.

[00:15:43] Sam Believ: So I don’t. I don’t say that ayahuasca comes just from Colombia. I think it obviously comes from the northwestern Amazon.

[00:15:50] Dennis McKenna: Right.

[00:15:50] Sam Believ: But ayahuasca is as traditional in Colombia as in Peru, at least on the equal level. And as you like, I recently interviewed Wade Davis, who is your friend, and, you know, he’s the. The person who he studied with Richard Evan Schultes. When he first went to study ayahuasca, he went to Colombia because it was. Back then it was kind of known as this center, and, you know, the. The yahe, later letters that were also popularized the topic of. Of ayahuasca or yahe.

[00:16:25] Dennis McKenna: Right.

[00:16:26] Sam Believ: So it is. It is kind of a bit of a historical unfairness where, like, all of the tourism went to Peru and none of it went to Colombia. But as I was saying earlier, it has benefits to it because Colombia was overlooked.

It did not become overrun by tourism. So now, as it slowly starts to accept psychedelic tourism and develop it, it’s happening at the slower pace in which, for example, a shaman.

Ayahuasca in Colombia is legal, but it’s only legal if you have an indigenous shaman with a permit from his indigenous council. So not everyone can serve ayahuasca.

And. And we went to Putamaya. We’re actually also working on a documentary now about ayahuasca with my good friend Sam Lipman Stern. And we tried to find ayahuasca at the market in Putumaya, and we couldn’t, as opposed to in Peru, where you can kind of find it everywhere. So in a way, it is still more traditional. And I like the approach here where it’s being popularized, but still, there are some rules to it. So there was benefits and there were drawbacks. But my dream personally is to take more people, get more people from outside of Colombia to come here and to engage with ayahuasca specifically, because Colombia was known for bad drugs or what, Coca, for example, or cocaine? Because coca is not bad in itself. Coca is an amazing plant, but cocaine obviously caused a lot of harm. But coca and ayahuasca, they grow in the same forest, in the same jungle. And how beautiful would it be to have this redemption arc for Colombia now, where it goes from this place where people, you know, came for bad drugs to now people coming for sort of good drugs or the medicine. So that’s a bit of my unrealistic dream, that over time, Colombia can reinvindicate, revindicate itself. And I know you’ve been to Colombia. It’s. It’s a beautiful country, and it’s no longer unsafe. It’s for.

[00:18:32] Dennis McKenna: For.

[00:18:33] Sam Believ: For some people, they say it’s much safer than Peru and even Mexico. So it’s just this. People are still stuck in the past 30, 40 years ago when they think, you know, Pablo Escobar, like, it’s. It’s kind of gone. And Medellin went from being.

[00:18:49] Dennis McKenna: That’s not happening so much anymore. Yeah, I’ve heard it’s quite safe most places in Colombia, you know, so that’s good.

And it’s good in some ways that you’re a few years behind in terms of the ayahuasca popularity, because you’ve had an opportunity to see how other retreat centers are operating, who’s doing what, and you can learn from them and not make those mistakes. And it sounds to me like you’ve taken those lessons to heart, and it must be working, because you’re the most popular ayahuasca retreat in Columbia. You say you’ve had over 3,000 guests over the period that you’ve been operating. So that’s quite a few people to run through this process.

But as long as you can sustain the supply, why not?

This is kind of the eternal conundrum with ayahuasca, as you know, it’s like this plant. Anyone who’s experienced it can see that potentially it has the potential to heal the world. It could heal the planet. We can’t make enough ayahuasca for 8 billion people.

But to develop these centers that have sustainable supplies, that attract people from all over the world that are able to come, I think that’s the right approach. And, you know, it’s an evolutionary process.

The more ayahuasca you could produce, the more people you could invite.

But it’s always good to proceed cautiously with this thing.

[00:20:35] Sam Believ: I think, well, maybe instead of cutting Amazon down, we can just plant more ayahuasca and then, you know, find a way to make this work. Because, honestly, right now, the problem is not the ayahuasca supply at the moment. The problem is people are not ready yet. There’s. There’s been very small amount of people that tried ayahuasca, and let’s be honest, a lot of them did it in such a way that people were scared and they got traumatized. So it’s also like, I believe it needs to be done in a certain way where people create a lifelong relationship with the plant and don’t just get one experience where they’re scared and don’t want to come back to it again.

[00:21:16] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

[00:21:17] Sam Believ: With the way that I was talking to Wade recently, and I was telling him that he should come and. And try drinking ayahuasca here with us because he had experiences in a very sort of indigenous setting where it was, like, scary and unsafe and it can put you in a bad sort of bad place. So it’s important to have the right set and setting and also the proper preparation which people, by the time they engage with ayahuasc training and courses, and that’s what we provide, so that by the time you drink ayahuasca, you know exactly what to do when you sort of get. Get to the. To the difficult parts of it.

[00:21:55] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. And this is. This is obviously the right approach.

Set and setting is very important, and people should be educated about the potential risks and the right way to approach it, dietary practices and all that. And from what I’ve seen looking at your website, you devote a lot of effort to make sure that people are properly prepared and you provide a setting and a ceremony that is not scary. They shouldn’t be scary. You know, they should be fulfilling. They should be ecstatic.

And you’re working on that. It’s interesting what you say, you know, about the differences between ayahuasca and coca are two economies.

Coca is also, of course, a very beneficial plant and unfairly stigmatized. I mean, cocaine is a terrible drug, you know, or I don’t say terrible, I say it can be a harmful drug.

You know, it has its place. But it’s so different than the coca plant, which is, you know, a beneficial medicine in almost always and very hard to abuse. You know, it’s. I mean, because of its formulation, ayahuasca is trickier in that sense. I think ayahuasca people can use it individually, on their own if they’re prepared to do it.

But it really calls for a group setting and it calls for a structure. I sometimes say ayahuasca is a liquid.

It will fill any vessel that you pour it into. And if the structure is not appropriate, you won’t have a good experience. If the vessel that holds the experiences is not well thought out, people will not be assured to have a good experience. It sounds like you.

Lawira really emphasizes that and works with trusted Ioscaros and so forth. So there’s nothing you’re doing. I haven’t been there, but I intend to go one of these days.

And from everything I can see on the website, you’re doing the right thing.

[00:24:21] Sam Believ: It would be a dream for me, Dennis, to.

To give. To be able to give you ayahuasca at my place. And kind of, once again, I keep mentioning Wade because he also mentions you, and I know you’re great friends. And I really appreciate this generation, your generation that created this environment where now our generation can continue with this work. But to kind of see what are the fruits of your labor in which you educated our generation. Now we kind of took it a little further and we, you know, made this experience a little more palatable for.

[00:24:59] Dennis McKenna: For a.

[00:24:59] Sam Believ: For a Westerner.

I mean, some people dislike that and they. They say, no, it has to be this adventure and you have to go to the jungle and you have to be bitten by mosquitoes and be scared of anaconda. But that’s, that’s. That’s not my approach. And I guess it would be. It would be so great to have to have you over and give you the. The sort of more comfortable ayahuasca experience.

[00:25:22] Dennis McKenna: Sure, you can do it anywhere, as long as it’s appropriate. It’s not where it is.

It’s how you approach it.

And as you know, ayahuasca is now a global phenomenon. It’s been grown various places in the world.

I introduced the first ayahuasca vine. I think I was the first to introduce it to the wild in Hawaii in 1975, 1976.

That plant grew into an enormous ayahuasca vine, which we call the mother vine.

And cuttings from that plant were then found their way all over Hawaii.

It happens to love Hawaii. There’s an abundance of ayahuasca growing in Hawaii right now. And you can say, well, this is.

This is biopiracy. This is appropriating people’s sacred plants and so forth.

But it’s not like this hasn’t been going on for 500 years.

You could say the same. About probably two thirds of the food plants that we eat were the result of biopiracy. So plants move around.

[00:26:39] Sam Believ: I see it less as biopiracy and more of a Prometheus bringing fire to people because, you know, a thousand years from now, when all of us are dead, the people will be using the divine in Hawaii and healing. So I think it’s incredibly impressive.

Yeah, kudos to you.

[00:27:02] Dennis McKenna: Yeah. Well, I think if you have to introduce an invasive plant to an island ecosystem like Hawaii, it may as well be ayahuasca, because people will get some. Some use out of it, as opposed to many other potentially invasive plants. And, you know, it’s just. It’s something that the. That the world needs. The world needs this. This healing and.

Couple of things. You talk about the cost to authenticity ratio in ayahuasca retreats. What do you mean by that?

You Mean, you get what you pay for, basically, or.

[00:27:42] Sam Believ: Yeah. So I’m very passionate about one topic, which is obviously, how can I give ayahuasca to as many people as possible? Obviously it has changed my life and thousands of people that went through our doors. Like I see, you know, right now, as we speak, there’s a group of 20 people that just arrived today, and they’re going to go through experience. And I see a bus of people coming sad and sort of like not really happy. And then they go through this experience and then they leave happier, better, and they change their lives. And amount of healing stories that I’ve heard is impressive. So it changed my life and many other people. And I constantly think, how can I get more people to go through that experience? And my philosophy is ayahuasca by itself is already a very difficult experience. People are already afraid of it even before they come. So how can I make it more accessible? How can I make it less scary? How can I make it easier to get to? How can I make it more affordable? Because if ayahuasca is, you know, five, $10,000, that means only very small amount of certain kinds of people will be able to afford it. So my approach is affordability is, is very important.

And that’s kind of, I guess, what helped us grow because I always charged as little as I can. And I’m not saying it’s, it’s free, it’s still a business, and I have to pay wages to my team, which is more than 30 people, and it is expensive. But at the same time, we are our prices three to five times cheaper than our competition. And it’s not because I don’t like money. I also want to have nice things. But it’s also like, my approach is how can I keep it as affordable as possible and get as many people to go through this experience? Obviously, it’s been very difficult recently because dollar keeps devaluing and we set our prices in dollars, and so we had to increase the price. But we have experiences that start from like close to $700 as opposed to three or $4,000. And that’s kind of my, my commitment to prices, like how much, you know, how much healing can you get and how little do you pay for it? Because obviously it depends on what you compare it to. But there is definitely industry, like the big pharma, that wouldn’t want people to replace daily intake of medications with a yearly trip to, to, to, to South America or Central America. So there, there is.

But, but for people, it’s like the less money we spend on our healing, in a way, the more money we have left for other things in life. More joyful things.

[00:30:42] Dennis McKenna: That’s right. Well, it is a business, after all. You, you have people, you have to support you. Any business has expenses, but you’re trying to hold those down.

This is not about ripping people off. This is about giving people one of the most valuable experiences of their life, possibly one and possibly for many, the most important transformative experience of their lives. So that’s worth something.

At the same time, you realize that price is an issue for many people. So ethically, from all I can tell, you’re in the right place. You’re in the sweet spot, you’re realistic. I got expenses, I’ve got ayahuasca to buy, people to pay.

That’s okay. That’s perfectly. Obviously you can’t do this for free, and that’s all right. It’s the spirit in which it’s done and sort of the economic realities that there’s just no getting around. So.

So in that sense, I think your approach is correct. And the fact that it’s affordable is probably one of the reasons why it’s also one of the most popular.

There’s nothing people, everybody likes a good deal, so you offer a good deal and it’s worth what people want to pay. So in that sense, you don’t have to really apologize to anyone. You’re doing the best you can with the constraints that you have, and that’s a good thing. So good for you. Kudos to do that.

You mentioned this also indigenous reciprocity. We’ve already touched on that.

And I think this is very important.

Unlike many psychedelics, particularly the synthetics like MDMA and so forth, or even psilocybin, which can be used in clinical settings, they’re highly structured.

And these types of clinical treatments are often many thousands of dollars. They put them outside the reach of most people, and more importantly, I think they separate us from nature.

These are not nature oriented. Ayahuasca is immersed in nature and so it’s a natural medicine.

I don’t think that you can really take ayahuasca out of that context and turn it into a clinically applied medicine. Although various companies are trying, but I think they’re barking up the wrong vine in a certain sense. If I could make that statement, that’s not the approach. Ayahuasca is quintessentially a natural medicine and it should stay that way.

Of course, pharmaceutical technology could make analogs of these things.

You could make formulations that contain mixtures of DMT and monoamine oxidase inhibitors and so on.

Those are interesting, and they may have applications. They are not ayahuasca.

Nobody should mistake them for that. You know, ayahuasca is a very complex brew, as you know, and it often involves more than just the two admixture plants. So context is everything and formulation is everything. These are natural medicines, and these are catalysts that waken us up to our connection to nature in a certain way. You’re not going to get that in the clinic, not in the same way.

You have to do it in nature to really appreciate that.

[00:34:53] Sam Believ: I believe in that, and I believe that the spirit and the medicine itself, I know it doesn’t sound very scientific, but it’s very perceivable. It itself will not allow ayahuasca to be taken out of context. Because if you, you know, take it in the. In the skyscraper, in a busy city, in a very sterile medical environment, I think you will just not have a great experience. And then eventually the divine itself will tell you, like, what are you doing? You’re doing it wrong. It kind of has its own spirit that will guide you, like, in case, like, I. I like to tell the story. For a period of time, I was drinking it way too often. I was too excited about it. I didn’t do my homework. And then eventually told me, like, I. I gave you homework. Why did I. You do it? And it gave me a bad trip. Ayahuasca will, I believe, protect itself. And that’s why on my own podcast, I recently interviewed.

I’m so bad with names, but it’s a person that has, like. Like a fund, and he was involved in raising a lot of money for ketamine clinics. And he said that putting psychedelics into this medical model failed. It just didn’t work out because they. They’re not that easily bottled up. And I really like your approach to the idea of Gaian ambassadors, where those spirits themselves made a decision to come out of the jungle and come to people’s life to maybe see if we can. If they can make us crazy primates calm down a little bit and stop destroying our environment.

[00:36:22] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. Very much so.

They don’t call them plant teachers for nothing, you know, they do teach us, and they have a lot of wisdom to share with us. And a lot of it does have to do with kind of recognizing the interconnectedness of all life, you know, So I really think the concept of the psychedelics, the natural psychedelics are, you know, they are ambassadors from Nature. And the message to us is basically, wake up, you monkeys, you’re wrecking this place.

And the more people that realize that, the more chance there is that we can slow this down, this headlong plunge toward effectively immersing ourselves in a completely artificial environment and separating from nature completely.

The tools that we have, particularly the tech tools that we have, encourage all that and we need to push back against that. There is no substitute for direct contact with nature, for being immersed in nature.

And ayahuasca is one of the primary gifts that nature gives us.

So this is symbiosis.

That’s basically what it is, symbiosis and co evolution.

And these are important plants in that respect.

[00:37:58] Sam Believ: In the way we’re in a war or a cold war or sort of situation where it’s either we’re gonna, people that are destroying the planet are gonna win or the people that are raising the consciousness are gonna win. So in a way, plant medicines is one of those ways to raise the consciousness in which we kind of just you know, zoom out and look at the bigger picture. It’s like, what, it’s not all just about capital and profits. It’s also like, what are we leaving behind? And because, because of such a large sample size of people that I see and to which, to whom we give the medicine, every group, there’s at least one person that gets that message directly from Ayahuasca mind. We don’t tell them, we don’t set any expectations, we just guide people on like what to do in the ceremony. But the information comes from ayahuasca directly. And many people see this and they say, like, yeah, the violence showed me the pain of the, of the world. It showed me the suffering that the planet feels. I myself never had that kind of experience. But hearing this inspires me and I, I do believe that the more people partake in plant medicines or even other modalities which will make them a bit more conscious. I think we can survive as species and if not, then eventually, I don’t know what it’s going to be, a nuclear war or some other cataclysm, but we will drive ourselves to extinction.

[00:39:30] Dennis McKenna: Well, it seems that we’re headed toward that. It seems that the people that unfortunately are in charge of kind of the world geopolitically or think they are in charge are some of the, I mean they should be the wisest people, but they’re actually the dumbest people that are doing that. The orientation is all about profits and never a thought toward the impact on the environment or the Impact on other people, other communities.

So it seems that the people that could really be helped most by a medicine like ayahuasca are the most immune to it, or they would never expose themselves to that kind of an experience.

[00:40:22] Sam Believ: Yeah. I can’t help but ask myself, like, what would happen if we give ayahuasca to those leaders? Or maybe, like, from my point of view of being the ayahuasca or psychedelic maximalist is like, what if you would require a certain amount of ayahuasca ceremonies for a certain position of power? It’s like, oh, you want to be a mayor, have 30 ceremonies? You want to be a president? Well, that’s. That’s at least 100. Right. Because by the time somebody goes through that, they. There’s no chance they will not have understood at least that message that you described, that we’re all connected. It’s like killing another person or hurting another person.

It’s like cutting off your own finger. All we are is just this thin layer of slime on the surface of a rock flying through the space. That’s what life is. And. But at the same time, we’re so competitive and destructive, and it’s something that’s easily understood almost immediately, just after a few ayahuasca experiences.

[00:41:23] Dennis McKenna: Yes, that’s true. Yes. The.

The slime covered rock tumbling through space.

That could come right out of my mouth. I’ve said that many times. I mean, this is basically what we are. And if we give ourselves that perspective, what we lack is humility.

And I think ayahuasca and these other things can, can help with that. The lack of humility is actually a character flaw.

And many people ask me, what have you learned from ayahuasca over the years, taking ayahuasca? And I have to answer, what it tells me is it always reminds me how little we know. That seems to be the message for me. Remember how little you know.

And so the implication of that is you have a lot more to learn, and we have to acknowledge that. And also, you know, there’s no excuse for arrogance. I mean, arrogance has no place. Humility is a much better approach to the world because it implies a certain openness to learning and an acknowledgement that, you know, we are, we’re not. We have no real knowledge. You know, the knowledge comes from nature.

And so that’s part of the lessons that you could learn from ayahuasca. The other thing, it’s interesting that I was just reading an editorial today in the New York Times.

Reading the New York Times was probably one of my vices, I should probably do much less of it, but I tend to do it. But I was reading an editorial about how empathy, this trait, this ability to understand what another person is feeling, which psychedelics will foster that, you know, an understanding of connection between people.

But many of the people in MAGA and even some of these Christian nationalists and Christian oriented movements, they’re now saying empathy is a sin, empathy is a bad thing. You shouldn’t have empathy.

And I just cannot wrap my head around that. You know, it seems that if you have no empathy, then what do you put in place of it? You put selfishness and self interest.

And that is what seems to drive so many people.

[00:44:08] Sam Believ: You know, it’s very interesting because I’ve been baptized into Christian Orthodox Church when I was very little, but I’ve had zero visits to church, zero reading of Bible. It was not forced on me and it just never happened. The only reason I got baptized is because I was in my kindergarten. A priest came by and he said that if you don’t get baptized, the devil is going to steal your soul. So I convinced my mom to baptize me. But I’ve never really connected to this heritage till my ayahuasca experiences were directly in the ceremony. I have experienced Christ consciousness.

I’ve never read Bible, of course. I mean, I’ve picked up some information because you know, you’re in this culture.

But for a person that calls himself a Christian to do not. Like what is Christianity without, without compassion, it’s like it’s, it’s a animism. It’s like, makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like, you know

[00:45:13] Dennis McKenna: how I feel about it. Without compassion, without empathy, it’s just an empty shell, you know. But then I have a problem with religion, you know, in general, sort of, because a lot of what religion is about is effectively giving people a set of a dogma, set of beliefs. And the expectation is just believe this, don’t keep asking all these pesky questions, you know, just accept.

Like empowers people to turn off their minds, to stop thinking about things.

And in that sense it’s a very authoritarian kind of top down thing.

Certain things are just not to be thought about, not to be pondered about.

And the psychedelics are the opposite of that. Psychedelics opens us up to the entire realm of experience.

And a thing that comes with that is often empathy, a sense of connectedness to nature, the understanding that we’re all part of nature and we don’t own nature, we don’t dominate it. And the Christian perspective is very much about how we do dominate it.

We should dominate it. So I think that needs to be pushed back against because it then justifies all these environmentally irresponsible things and greed and.

And what seems to be driving our culture toward some of the darker futures that we could envision.

And the other thing I think that psychedelics trigger, particularly ayahuasca mushrooms also, is awe.

Awe is. Awe is an important emotion to have.

Again, it goes back to this fundamental realization of our smallness when compared to the vastness of existence, to the vastness of the universe. Those are good things to internalize. I think it helps us to be better people, and that’s what psychedelics help us to be, if properly used, is to become better human beings.

And getting rid of these internal traits like empathy and awe and humility.

These are values to be cultivated and encouraged, not condemned. And you see so much of the opposite in the current cultural discourse, you know, which is disturbing. Disturbing.

[00:48:16] Sam Believ: I’m an optimist. I think we still have a chance, and I think this recent reemergence of psychedelics is no accident. And I think that we have a chance if people, you know, more people find psychedelics or some form of spirituality and, you know, Internet, the information is moving along fast. I think there’s a chance that we will fix it. I believe so. At least that’s what I’m betting on. Because the other option is grim.

[00:48:51] Dennis McKenna: Right? Well, the other approach, we know where that leads. That leads to the death of the planet or the death of our species and a lot of places that we don’t really want to go.

What are some of the. You have some.

You mentioned the good and the bad of psychedelic tourism. Would you like to speak about that?

[00:49:18] Sam Believ: Yeah. So the good obviously, is people coming and having a great experience and coming back healed.

And also the economy, they bring both to indigenous people and just to local people. Like, you know, for example, here in this area where we are, there’s not much employment and people are not like all indigenous, but obviously they. They’re. They’re mestizo, right? So they. They get jobs and they have good life. And myself included and my family, we.

The economy of it is. Is really beautiful. But the. The drawbacks are like what happened in. In Peru when too many people come too quickly.

Every. Everybody and their grandmother is a shaman all of a sudden. And then things are taken out of context, and then the medicine starts to be used in an unproport setting because people think that if someone is. Looks indigenous and has a necklace with Teeth or some. Some bracelets, they’re shaman. It can’t be further away from the truth. It’s like, if I’m gonna wear a stethoscope, it’s not. It’s not gonna make me a doctor, even though if I might look like. And even buy myself nice glasses.

So the. The real shamans are very scarce, and it’s really hard to find. So when. When there’s the boom and the person sees like, oh, this guy is a shaman, is. And he drives a nice car and has a nice house. Let me pretend I’m one as well. And then you start getting negative consequences. So I think in this popularization of psychedelic tourism, we have to be careful with that. And, you know, if it scales gradually and people are able to adjust, like my shaman, he has three kids, and maybe all of them become shaman. And the generation from now, there’s three times more shamans, like real ones that been in the tradition, or even foreigners that come and learn properly. But as if it’s. If it’s. If it’s just few years and everyone wants to be a shaman, they don’t really know what they’re doing, because ayahuasca is an amazing medicine, but it’s a very powerful tool. It’s like dynamite, right? You can take dynamite and you can carve a beautiful rock or whatever, you know, make a. Make a mine. And, you know, it’s. It’s not a good analogy because it’s pretty destructive. But let’s say.

[00:51:37] Dennis McKenna: Let’s.

[00:51:38] Sam Believ: Let’s say hammer. You can have a hammer, and you can build a house with a hammer, or you can take and kick someone, punch someone a hole in someone’s head, right? And it’s not that the tool is different, it’s just a different intention or like your professionalism. So ayahuasca, if not done properly, in an improper setting or without a real shaman, it can cause harm as well because of how powerful it is and the psychedelic trauma that it can cause.

So that’s the negatives of it. And for people listening that are maybe curious about drinking ayahuasca, I don’t say, come to Loire, because there’s many great retreats out there. But if you do, do your due diligence, look for testimonials, look for reviews, make sure that they know what they’re doing and they’re careful with such a powerful tool that ayahuasca is.

[00:52:30] Dennis McKenna: Yes, what you speak to is something I very often talk about. Ayahuasca is a kind of technology, like a hammer. Or, you know, another.

Any tool that we might use could be used beneficially or harmfully.

And I truly believe that these.

There’s no inherent goodness or badness inherent in the technology itself. You know, in the conversation about drugs, it often comes up, well, you know, these are bad drugs. You know, cocaine is a bad drug.

Cocaine is neither good nor bad. It all depends on how it’s used.

And that’s true of any technology. And particularly, really, it’s the choices that we make. The moral dimension of how to employ technology comes from the human heart.

That’s what’s good or bad, and that’s what we have to cultivate. And what these teacher plans can help us, help us evolve into. We have to cultivate, be thoughtful about the choices that we make, how to employ these things. And as you point out, not all shamans are good people.

They’re dealing with a very powerful spiritual technology. They’re dealing with something that in a situation where people come with the expectation that they’re going to be in a very vulnerable position, they’re going to open up to these experiences. If the shaman does not have their best interests at heart, then there’s a real problem for all sorts of abuse, sexual, psychological, financial, all of these things. And you see plenty of that.

And that is not confined to ayahuasca spirituality. That is something that all spiritual traditions have to deal with. Because the fact is, not everybody is enlightened. Not everyone is a good person. And many people, they lust after power.

And these things give the practitioner a certain authority and power over people. And if they’re.

If the people are not clear about it, then they can be victimized. So I don’t think that this is something that is, you know, you can’t. I mean, you can pin that on the psychedelic therapy practices, but it’s also human nature. I mean, all human institutions have to deal with this, you know, and this. This has to do with.

This has to do with effectively cultivating our own inner moral qualities.

And something that makes psychedelics so useful is they are teacher plants. They can help us learn to be better people and get over these, because we all have.

Nobody is entirely pure or entirely good. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to be as good as we can, you know, And I think in a lot of respects, what that boils down to is to see other people as another soul suffering in this world that you can relate to and understand, you know, your own limitations. So ayahuasca, you know, ayahuasca can be a wonderful teacher in that respect and help people to evolve into a better place.

[00:56:22] Sam Believ: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Everything, everything is about intention and about what’s, what’s inside the heart at the end of the day because everything can be taken out of context and done wrongly. So, yeah, but yeah, being careful, doing due diligence will prevent a lot of the risks and harms.

[00:56:46] Dennis McKenna: Indeed, indeed.

Don’t register with the first website that pops up. You know, do a little research, find out who’s look at testimony and that sort of thing. I noticed on your website you give quite a few clips of people that have been there and that’s good because that, you know, that reflects what’s going on and that gives other people a chance to hear from people that have been through it and that helps them make a good decision. So I think, you know, I think that’s all very useful, even, even further

[00:57:24] Sam Believ: so on the website, I can control it and I can delete the bad video and add the good one. Go where the retreat owner has no control over the reviews, which is Google, Reddit or Internet at large.

Search somewhere where it’s unbiased and this way you will get the proper answer.

[00:57:47] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, yeah.

All right. Well, it’s been a wonderful conversation.

I think we’ve covered a lot of good points here.

Anything we didn’t say that we should have said that you can think of?

[00:58:04] Sam Believ: No, I think it was great and it was very educational, especially for someone who doesn’t know much about ayahuasca.

And thank you so much for, for having me on.

You know, I, I just want to express my gratitude to you and, and your generation because like the book you’ve written, co authored with your brother, it taught the entire generation how to plant mushrooms. And I think the, it, you know, without those kinds of things, we wouldn’t be where we are now at our level of understanding psychedelics. So I just hope to be one of the many in our newer generations, hopefully worthy successors of the labor you started and to continue sort of spreading the message responsibly, mixing indigenous knowledge with some science and hopefully a few more generations from now, we will get to the point where, you know, maybe life is a little better on, on this planet. So I appreciate, appreciate you a lot and the fact that you’re still doing this work even in older age, that’s very inspiring.

[00:59:22] Dennis McKenna: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I’m part of the older generation and it’s true it’s younger people like you that are, that are carrying the torch into the future, but you’re doing a good job.

So, I mean, we’re all involved. This is a co. Evolutionary conspiracy, right? Co evolutionary and symbiotic conspiracy with the community of intelligence on Earth. You know, I’m one of these people that thinks that all life is intelligent.

And, you know, the biosphere itself is a. Is a sentient being. So we’re all immersed in that. So thank you for this conversation. It’s great.

We’ll get this up on the website. All the links to your various sites will be up there. So thank you so much for coming on. The pleasure was mine.

[01:00:18] Sam Believ: Thank you, Dennis. Thank you for having me on.

[01:00:21] Dennis McKenna: Okay. It was great. Have a good day.