[00:00:02]: [Intros] 

[00:00:16] Dennis McKenna: Mattha Busby is a freelance journalist who has covered drug policy, psychedelics, culture and society for Vice, Wired, Rolling stone, the Guardian, L.A. times, and Esquire. He is the author of two slim volume books, Should All Drugs Be Legalized?, published by Thames and Hudson in 2022, and Psychedelics A Pocket Primer, Hoxton Mini Press, published in 2025.

He is represented by literary agents Aevitas Creative and is currently working on his first novel.

He has also given keynotes on psychedelic culture on both sides of the Atlantic.

Some examples here. He’s written about a broad spectrum of topics in the psychedelic space.

Mattha has recently authored articles on people feeding their ChatGPT bots code based drugs for Wired.

Dennis McKenna: Want to hear about that!

The US Christian Right emerging as Bellicose Psychedelic advocates for the Guardian; Astrobiologist Bruce Damer’s tale of taking ayahuasca becoming the first proto cell at the moment of the origin of life for Nautilus Print magazine; Apple pioneer Bill Atkinson’s 5 Methoxy DMT Johnny Appleseeding for Wired; Brian Johnson’s live shroom trip also for Wired.

And he has been chronically the events leading up to the World Health Organization decision not to recommend a change to the laws globally banning coca for filter after attending the Wisdom of the Leaf Summit last year which was hosted by the McKenna Academy.

Mattha, welcome to the Brainforest Café.

[00:02:17] Mattha Busby: Thank you very much Dennis. Lovely to be on with you. And yeah, it was great to hang out in Peru.

[00:02:23] Dennis McKenna: Yes, it was. I was so surprised when you show up, but I was delighted to see you and I have been looking forward to this podcast for some time because you, you’ve been all over the place. You’re, you’re really a very active journalist and you’re. And we need people like you covering psychedelics and, and drug policy and all, all of the things that you cover.

So I have to, I have to admit I’m a bit jealous. You know, back in the day when I was younger, I had ambitions to become a journalist.

I thought that was a great thing to do. I was a big fan of, I mean this will date me seriously, but I was a big fan of Walter Cronkite, probably a very trusted figure in the news sphere at that time. Of course now nobody is trusted in that sphere, but I just thought journalism was cool because it gives people a license to essentially poke their nose into anything they want.

And you have poked your nose into many, many interesting areas with respect to psychedelics.

You mentioned that you have an article coming out in Rolling Stone pretty soon about an ayahuasca facilitator almost getting stabbed to death by a participant at a retreat in Florida.

Can you share a little more about that?

[00:04:02] Mattha Busby: Absolutely.

[00:04:03] Dennis McKenna: Yeah.

[00:04:03] Mattha Busby: Well, I am very nosy, and little by little, I think I’m getting sort of better at being nosy, but discreetly and perhaps kind of doing it with maybe more sort of, you know, qualified risk to kind of make the whole story a bit more exciting these days.

But, yeah, I mean, this. This story with the ayahuasca ceremony actually came out a week ago now, I think when I send that over to you. We were just preparing the podcast a month or two ago, and yeah, it’s unclear exactly if the chap was really trying to exercise this guy’s demons or not.

He says that he wasn’t using this sort of, like, new Tibetan cupping method, which he had used with mushrooms.

So using, you know, cupping, like before massage, and then when the blood comes to the surface, piercing it with some kind of dagger to exorcise the demons. He says he wasn’t using that method, but he was using a more kind of palatable hypno coaching method. And, you know, this poor chaps demons allegedly came to the surface and, you know, he went completely haywire.

[00:05:31] Dennis McKenna: It happened.

[00:05:31] Mattha Busby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he stabbed Julio five times, and Julio almost lost his thumb grabbing the knife from him, and it turned into a huge, massive brawl on a lawn in Palm Beach.

And in the end, you know, the. The defendant, he. He got house arrest in a. In a case in January that. That just got concluded.

[00:05:56] Dennis McKenna: Well, that’s a pretty harrowing story. I mean, these things do happen sometimes in retreats, I think. I mean, you must have been fairly alarmed at this.

I think I would have been calling a cab to get me out of there about that time.

[00:06:13] Mattha Busby: Well, Julio. Julio, who I met at the psychedelic Science conference last year in Denver. I mean, that’s one of the questions the editor asked me. He was like, why didn’t he run away? And, you know, first. First of all, it was, you know, he was being chased by a man half his age and who’s much stronger than him and, you know, taken an amount of ayahuasca that gave him superhuman strength.

And at one moment, he. He, you know, after he grabbed the knife, he did manage to overpower, you know, the participant, right. And sort of held the knife up, feigning to stab him. And the guy, you know, had his arms open, just sort of like, stabbed me. He, like, he wanted to die.

And then Julio kind of Tosses the knife, tries to run out, and that’s when the brawl in the streets ensued.

But incredible case.

And obviously Julio spoke to the prosecutors and assured them that it wasn’t the chap’s fault, it was indeed that of a demon, and that he shouldn’t be held criminally responsible for the malicious designs of the demon.

[00:07:24] Dennis McKenna: Right, so it was some kind of case of demon possession, basically, or that’s what it looked like, yeah.

[00:07:32] Mattha Busby: I mean, it’s kind of difficult to wrap one’s head around.

I mean, maybe not so much as demon possession as the sort of demon’s last stand, but before its inevitable kind of, you know, exit from this guy’s body. You know, apparently the demon has left him now.

[00:07:50] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

Well, that’s a pretty horrific story. I think that will scare a lot of people away from going to ayahuasca retreats, you know, which is. Which is probably a good thing in a certain way. I mean, I think it’s a cautionary tale. People should be sure about their facilitator and the sort of, you know, the ambiance, the kind of set and setting that people are creating. Because these things are rare, but they do happen.

You know, sometimes people just completely lose it.

And that’s where an experienced facilitator that can deal with that kind of thing and get that person away from the rest of the group so they can have whatever experience they’re needing to have, but not put other people at risk. That’s one of the downsides of, of, of ayahuasca retreats, you know, or any kind of retreat where these substances are being used. But I think it’s probably more common in ayahuasca retreat, especially in larger groups there often someone who just can’t keep it together and that disrupts it for everyone else.

[00:09:14] Mattha Busby: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a huge amount of psychedelic naive people are going into ayahuasca ceremonies pretty much willy nilly.

And often, you know, the shamans are very well trained, but sometimes they’re not. And indeed, sometimes the very well trained ones actually, you know, don’t have everyone’s best interests at heart, to put it mildly. But yeah, this is an incredible, incredible psychedelic and, you know, one which, you know, you’ve played a significant role in, in really kind of raising awareness about, let’s. Let’s say, incidentally, I actually did an ayahuasca retreat last week for, for a Story for Men’s Health with a bunch of kind of MMA fighters and bare knuckle boxers.

And they were doing a scientific Study to see if, you know, it helped their traumatic brain injury.

Yeah, that was here just outside of Medellin. So that was a, you know, know, very, very interesting experience, I imagine.

[00:10:18] Dennis McKenna: So you were working with Luke Jensen on that, or he is doing work with that group?

He was there or not?

[00:10:28] Mattha Busby: No, it wasn’t Luke Jensen. It was Ian McCall, who is a former UFC fighter.

His organization, Athlete’s Journey Home.

[00:10:37] Dennis McKenna: Okay. Luke Jensen is a neuroscientist. He lives in the Sacred Valley, but he is a neuroscientist and he’s working on a project called the Shaman’s Mind.

And it has to do with doing brain scanning of people, mostly shamans or practitioners under the influence of various substances, ayahuasca, mushrooms, and even coca. And I know he’s been working with that group in Colombia, so that’s why I asked.

We also had him on the podcast. He’s doing very interesting work.

Talk about your work.

[00:11:19] Mattha Busby: No, no, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s interesting the indigenous communities have, you know, some, you know, conflicting opinions about whether it’s right to kind of measure someone’s brain during a ceremony.

[00:11:33] Dennis McKenna: Well, yeah, that. That is a question, but I guess if volunteers want to be measured, that they can. Are these.

These methods are fairly non invasive. You don’t have to be wired up to a machine because it’s all wireless connection, and people are curious.

And Luke is gathering some very interesting information.

But to get back to your work, how long have you been into this? When did you first become a journalist? And when did you decide that psychedelics was going to be your beat, so to speak?

[00:12:16] Mattha Busby: Right, yeah. I mean, this goes back to, like, 2014.

I started working as the opinion editor of the Link newspaper at Concordia University in Montreal.

And at that point, you know, I wasn’t hugely interested in psychedelics. I mean, ketamine was big when I was growing up, and I’d had some kind of dance floor experiences with ketamine and its stronger sort of analog cousin, Rhino kept.

And around the time that I started working as the opinion editor at the Link, which was kind of like quite lefty sort of social advocacy student newspaper. I was 20.

I went to a dubstep rave. And I remember I was.

Became friends with a girl, and I remember she pulled out a bag of mushrooms from her bra, and that was the first time that I’d ever eaten mushrooms, was listening to this dubstep music.

And not long after, a guy called Gonzo, which is funny, his actual name was Gonzo, Gonzo Nieto. He pitched me When I was editing the opinion pages to do his kind of psychedelics column. So he started writing this fascinating psychedelics column at the same time that I was first properly encountering mushrooms and what have you.

And so yeah, I didn’t really do anything serious in terms of writing on psychedelics until a couple of years after, I think 2017. Once I was back in London, I wrote a piece for Vice on people taking LSD and having conversations with trees.

And then I was covering the medical cannabis legalization campaign for the Guardian and then all the psychedelic stuff sort of kind of started happening. So I started writing about that quite naturally. But at the same time I was then sort of stopping drinking and more often sort of taking like a 2 CB pill array rather than kind of booze or cocaine, which got, which I sometimes took. So yeah, I’ve kind of really lived the psychedelic renaissance in a way and I think that’s you know, slightly reflected in my work. Although you know, as, as you we’ve described already, you know, I haven’t sort of drank the Kool Aid. I don’t think like my work really does span the light and the dark of all of this.

[00:14:41] Dennis McKenna: Right.

Oh, very interesting. It’s, it’s good that somebody like you is exploring, exploring these areas and, and you did come to the Coca summit which I really appreciated. I was very happy to see you there.

What were your reflections about that event?

You covered it and I don’t know if you’ve written about it.

You are writing about it for Filter, which I’m not familiar with that publication.

What were your reflections on that Coca event?

[00:15:15] Mattha Busby: Yeah, Filter’s like a philanthropic funded drug policy news website and you know, I don’t think they’ve got a huge readership but certainly, you know, some interesting people do read it and quite often my pieces are syndicated for Marijuana Moments, which is like a cannabis news website which, which has got a decent reach as well. So you know, they’ve been very, you know, good to me and you know, taken an interest in sort of more niche areas, you know, of interest to me.

You know, I think the Coca summit know, looking back especially now was, you know, now I really know everyone because I was kind of meeting many of those folks for the first time. You know, it was an incredible congregation of really the, the, the best, the best and the brightest, many, many of them of you know, the minds regarding coca from you know, David, I, I, I might butcher his surname. The ex Bolivian vice president know to yourself and Wade Davis and Clemmie James and I covered her work for Atmos magazine a few months afterwards as well. Regarding cocaine and the environmental impact over there in the Amazon, you know, I think you guys did a great job. You know, that summit also resulted in a paper in Science which was covered by the Times in the uk and you guys really had a great crack at it. But unfortunately, the WHO wasn’t to be swayed. And despite the independent report that they commissioned finding that coca prohibition causes more harm than coca itself, the WHO Drug Dependence Committee basically said that because it’s so easily convertible into cocaine, it has to remain a Schedule 1 drug, despite the fact that that 10 million people across the Andes chew it every day with many nutritional benefits, some of which are really integral to their health.

[00:17:20] Dennis McKenna: Right. No, it’s clearly in the form of the leaf. It’s clearly a beneficial medicine as well as a food. It’s an important protein source.

And yes, the regulatory. I mean, the Coca Summit did bring together a lot of very high profile people on the regulatory side as well as indigenous people. And it was a very good opportunity to have this conversation over several days. I mean, the McKenna Academy is a very small organization, so we were really batted above our, are whatever the term is, you know, but we managed to attract all these speakers and produce these presentations, all of which are available to watch on the McKenna Academy website. They’re completely free, there’s no paywall. And I hope people, more people will look at them. And you know, our hope was that this would help move the conversation toward sanity in the regulatory sphere.

And I believe it did, but not as much as we’d hoped. I mean, I think it was, it began, it helped to catalyze the conversation, which is ongoing. You know, and these regulatory agents, agencies are often quite clueless as to the real issues, you know, and something that, and their statements make it clear that they really have no expertise, they have no real knowledge of it. To say that coke is easily converted to cocaine. It’s. Well, yes, but I mean, potatoes are easily converted to vodka, you know, but, you know, this doesn’t mean that coca should be in the same class as cocaine. I mean, it’s just silly. And I, my own personal feeling is that both the cartels and the regulatory agencies and the governments that they represent are basically in cahoots in a certain sense. I mean, certainly the worst thing that cartels want to happen is for cocaine to be legalized. If cocaine was legalized, the profit goes away overnight.

You know, it’s in their interest to keep it artificially high, even though it’s not an expensive compound to produce, and they have these relationships with corrupt governments and it’s basically in their interest to keep cocaine illegal because they’re also profiting for it. So there’s all this hand wringing about the drug problem and you know, the horrible scourge of cocaine.

In fact, the simple.

The solution is very simple. Just legalize it.

[00:20:24] Mattha Busby: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:20:25] Dennis McKenna: Make it available.

Don’t even relate it to the coca leaf. Just completely decouple the coca leaf from that. People should have.

Coca leaf does not need regulation. It’s not toxic, it’s not harmful.

It’s about as dangerous as green tea.

You know, I mean, literally, it is not dangerous. So it needs to be decoupled from that. And cocaine, if it were legalized and could be available effectively through licensed dispensaries, the price would drop out, the price would fall through the floor and it wouldn’t be worth anything. It wouldn’t be worth the effort on the part of the cartels to, you know, to, to produce cocaine because they could make a profit from it. But that’s, that’s a whole other conversation. How.

[00:21:20] Mattha Busby: No, indeed, how. I’ve been. I’ve been in Mambiando this past week here in Colombia. I have some mambo over on the side there. And it is a very, you know, in, you know, compound consumable, really. I mean, cocaine is obviously less benign, but is it, you know, more dangerous than vodka, which you’ve mentioned? That’s certainly a debate to be had, you know, especially when you look at, you know, countries, you know, not least England, where you have it, you know, all over the supermarkets, all over the, you know, the corner shops.

You know, it’s been completely deregulated for the most part. Other parts of the world have got more regulation over it. And it’s a very, very pernicious drug and, you know, causes huge amount of death and suffering and violence.

I just, I don’t think. I think everyone who already wants to be taking cocaine is.

And actually, you know, when it all comes out in the wash, a lot less people are going to want to do cocaine than drinking. And therefore, you know, the toll from drinking is, you know, always going to be, you know, significantly greater. And, you know, I think that geopolitically as well, you know, you mentioned this kind of symbiotic relationship perhaps, you know, between the cartels and governments and what have you. I mean, you legalize cocaine on a global level, you know, subject to the regulations that you mentioned, and potentially that causes some sort of shift, right? It makes Colombia And Peru and Bolivia, more powerful countries.

And, you know, that can bring the groups operating within them perhaps under a modicum of greater control.

And, you know, they’ve got this highly desirable commodity that people in America want, and you’ve got legal channels to do it. And then, you know, Trump isn’t going to have his sort of Gulf of Tonkin like excuse to rendition the president of Venezuela, which is just a complete falsehood that it was about the cocaine and is about the oil. Stupid.

[00:23:36] Dennis McKenna: Of course it’s about the oil. There’s very little cocaine is going through Venezuela. Most of it’s going to Europe. We all know this, you know, but the whole drug, the whole prohibition model is not about preventing drug abuse, you know, not really about protecting people from harm. It’s. It’s a whole geopolitical game in a, in a way, about money and profits and so forth. I mean, if, you know, and this is like stating the obvious, but if, if they really were concerned to pro, you know, prevent cocaine being imported into the States, they wouldn’t have pardoned this former president of Honduras, who I know, 500 tons of cocaine into the States and got a pardon for his trouble. So.

[00:24:27] Mattha Busby: Well, he’s right. He’s right wing, Dennis. Did you not get the memo? He’s right wing. It’s okay when you’re on the right.

[00:24:33] Dennis McKenna: Oh, it’s okay. Exactly when you’re right wing and when you’re in the bed with the cart, with the. Not only the cartels, but the tech bros that want to create this utopian dystopian city or province in Honduras, you know, that’s semi independent.

So it all serves the agenda of the fascists, you know, which is. I mean, we basically may as well call them that because that’s what they are. But I don’t want to get too far down the pathway, down the rabbit hole of regular.

[00:25:13] Mattha Busby: I know you have strong opinions about it.

I’m enjoying hearing them.

[00:25:17] Dennis McKenna: Dennis, I’d like you to tell me about some of your most memorable interviews and coverage that you’ve done. You’ve done so many interesting things here.

What sticks out in your mind? What is your memory of some of the craziest situations you’ve been, apart from the one you were just at, where somebody was, was trying to kill the facilitator,

[00:25:47] Mattha Busby: I should add. I wasn’t there in Florida. Oh, you weren’t there in October 2024, I believe. I wasn’t there.

I was at an ayahuasca retreat last week outside of Medellin, and I can report that although some of the guys were shadow boxing under the influence of ayahuasca, there was no ultra violence. It was. It was a very, very peaceful affair.

[00:26:13] Dennis McKenna: Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah, it’s people like this. I mean, apparently there’s some.

Some application to people with traumatic brain injury, certainly PTSD and things like that. You know, I’ve also facilitated retreats with veterans and former police officers even, who have had, you know, actually, some of the people at my retreats have been formerly police officers in the narcotics division in New York City.

You know, and then they’ve had psychedelic experiences, and it’s been, you know, those people are traumatized, too. Can you imagine what it must be like to be a narcotics officer in New York City?

I mean, PTSD is. Trauma is built into it. They’re there to traumatize people, but they are not immune to it. You know, and many of the folks that I met during this retreat were, you know, when they weren’t in their mode, their professional mode. Well, obviously they were at the retreat because they had issues. They had ptsd, and they were just ordinary people trying to get straightened out. And ayahuasca was very helpful to those people, you know, and it seems to be psychedelics are one area where, if you’re talking about treating veterans or treating other people in those related professions, suddenly it’s okay, you know, not okay for ordinary people, not okay for you and me.

But if you’re a traumatized veteran, then, yeah, by all means, you should have access to psychedelic therapy.

[00:28:07] Mattha Busby: I know America is a very interesting place, and, you know, it’s been, you know, kind of wily, campaigning from folks on one hand, right. Putting the veterans at the forefront. But then on the other hand, you know, it is perhaps just a consequence of these folks, yes, having power and connections, you know, in the corridors of power, but being, you know, loud and proud and, you know, unashamed and just really shouting about this stuff from the rooftops. And I think, you know, people on, you know, the left, which is obviously why, you know, identify with instinctively really, you know, aren’t, you know, getting on the soapbox about this kind of stuff. And I think that’s, you know, very interesting as a cultural phenomenon.

But, yeah, I’m interviewing a DEA agent, well, a former kind of dea, sort of higher up, who was responsible for psychedelic enforcement, who healed their ptsd, I believe, at a ketamine clinic, you know, at some point in the not so distant past. So the wheels are coming off the war on Drugs little by little.

And you know, folks are having like victories here, victories there, but letdowns here and disappointments there.

But you know, the trajectory is drugs are being legalized and you know, it’s an interesting time to kind of, you know, watch that all, all happen and, and for the drug war to unravel.

[00:29:38] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

Yes.

I hope the wheels are coming off. I mean, this is a completely wrong headed approach to regulating drugs. It’s not that there can’t be some reasonable regulation, but it should be directed more towards safety, purity guidelines, how to make decent choices, rational choices in terms of how and where and when you use them, rather than some direct prohibition. I mean, the whole problem if the conversation is that the drugs are demonized and the drugs are simply what they do, they have the pharmacological properties that they have.

The moral quality is in the human nature and the way we relate to them, the choices we make in terms of how we choose to use these compounds, and they can be very harmful and in the hands, as you mentioned, like even in ayahuasca retreats and similar psychedelic retreats, you have to take care that the facilitator is trustworthy and they often aren’t.

I don’t think it’s the rule that they’re not trustworthy, but there are always a few bad apples who have power, like sexual dominance and other kinds of, kinds of agendas. And they’re not really there to help facilitate people’s healing. They’re there to exercise their own power.

And in this very difficult situation where people are coming there specifically to surrender, to open up, to put themselves in a vulnerable state so the healing can happen. And if they happen to be in the hands of an unscrupulous practitioner, that can be very bad. You know, and this happens. I don’t think it’s the rule, but it definitely happens because humans are humans, right? And we’re not all, you know, we’re not all morally righteous necessarily at all times.

I heard one thing you mentioned in your, one thing that you covered I thought was interesting.

You covered a Christian right group emerging as bellicose psychedelic advocates. You covered this for the Guardian. Could you tell us a bit about that?

[00:32:16] Mattha Busby: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Hubbard, you know, what a force of nature.

He, you know, he sounds like a Christian revivalist. He’s got this kind of Kentucky accent and you know, he’s basically at the forefront now of the whole movement to regulate, you know, medical ibogaine, you know, backed by Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and Trump’s first term Energy secretary.

[00:32:44] Dennis McKenna: Right.

[00:32:44] Mattha Busby: And, you know, they’ve teamed up with all of these different veterans and, you know, know, you’ve got people like Conor McGregor, the. The UFC fighter who’s, you know, putting himself at the forefront of the ibogaine stuff now and saying that, you know, he’s healed himself and. And met Jesus, you know, shortly after he just, you know, got convicted in a civil case for sexual abuse.

So you, you know, you’ve got, you know, a very kind of motley, you know, bunch of people who are, you know, broadly on the right and, you know, very loudly, you know, possibly evangelically Christian, and, you know, they’re pushing the conversation forwards. You’ve got the chap that was integral to the mission to kill bin Laden, who’s also kind of doing the rounds on podcasts and stuff and saying how great ibogaine was. And, of course, I began, you know, can be great. The Stanford study, you know, we were talking about traumatic brain injury. The Stanford study by Nolan Williams, God rest his soul, you know, very much showed, albeit on a very relatively small scale, that it does reduce traumatic brain injury, you know, very reliably.

I mean, this is one of the other kind of crazy stories I did. I, you know, I did it again myself at a clinic in Cancun in. In 2022 for a story for Vice. And, you know, overall had a, you know, very, very interesting experience and, you know, gave a. Gave a favorable, you know, I wouldn’t say review. It wasn’t a review piece, but, you know, certainly the article that was published, you know, looked good for the. For the clinic, for the center.

And then I find out that one of the chaps who arrived on. On my penultimate day, it’s not really a retreat. It’s more just like a revolving door at this clinic.

It turned out, you know, that this guy had died. And, I mean, he was really the hardest of the core sort of addicts. He was injecting fentanyl speed balls.

And, you know, it’s almost more dangerous because I think he’d been clean for, like, three years, and then he’d had a huge relapse and had just been on drugs on crazy levels for, like, a month. And then they carted him off to Cancun, and then he does the trip, and it turned out to be good.

But then on his booster dose, he had some sort of cardiac arrest, right, and passed away. So then I covered that story subsequently for Rolling Stone.

So, yeah, I’ve done some very, very serious reporting on Ibigain, and we’re kind of at this moment now, where, as I say, these folks are rightly pushing for ibogaine, but the conversation’s very centered around veterans and it’s just all about designing the best protocol, I think, and you know, making the case and getting scientific data and I guess, you know, these guys continuing their work down in Mexico. But you know, even, even now Americans for Ibergaine, this organization Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard are working with, you know, last week they put out a statement which I understand is about a clinic called Transcend, you know, alleged sexual abuse there on, on a significant, you know, level. And then that there was also a death at Ambio Life Sciences in Tijuana the week before.

And they, they responded it, to be fair to them by saying anyone who’s been on fentanyl as, as the gentleman who sadly died was, you know, has to go for a 21 day minimum program.

[00:36:21] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

[00:36:22] Mattha Busby: Less accessible financially for folk.

You know, that’s the sort of safeguard that they’ve decided to put in place. So, you know, this isn’t, this isn’t anything to be mucked around with. And, and as you say, this sort of stuff, perhaps because it’s in a kind of gray market and you know, it’s not attracting sort of bona fides or legal doctors, but you know, it does attract some sort of, you know, sketchy characters. And you know, to take hippie gain is really, you know, to take some risks.

[00:36:49] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, I mean, they’re attracted to all sectors. I mean, it’s not like the similar things don’t go on with other types of spiritual retreats or spiritual communities. You know, even yoga retreats or meditation retreats. I mean, if there’s someone who is amoral or immoral and just looking for, to cash in or for, you know, sexual dominance or whatever, then, you know, I mean, these people are out there. That’s why you have to carefully evaluate any place that you go.

But the, but yes, the, the Texas group seems, I mean, their attitude seems to be anything for the veterans. I mean, if it’s a psychedelic, great. They don’t really care. And that’s fine. There should be a wider tolerance for this. I mean, if, if it takes that. But this therapy should be available to anyone who needs it. But the caveat is, particularly with ibogaine, I think ibogaine is serious medicine in the sense that.

Not that the other psychedelics aren’t, but the ibogaine has certain safety issues that set it apart. I mean, it has to really, I think, be used. My opinion, it needs to be used in a clinical setting or at least with qualified physicians present so that if anything goes wrong and things do go wrong because of the cardiac issues and that sort of thing.

So it needs a higher level of regulation.

Things like psilocybin or even ayahuasca are inherently basically safe. You know, there are not so much issues with interactions with other drugs.

You know, I don’t know if ibogaine interferes with, if fentanyl is contraindicated, I would think it would be.

But things like ayahuasca or psilocybin are inherently safe.

There are issues about drug interactions, but a modicum of preparation and education can prevent that. With ayahuasca, it’s basically stay off of, you know, SSRIs, stay away from MAO and additional MAO inhibitors and so on. They can be used safely, but with ibogaine, it’s more, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

[00:39:25] Mattha Busby: Yes, it really, really is.

It really, really is. I mean, benzos, fentanyl, long acting opioid replacement drugs because it, you know, it changes the QT interval in the heart.

So some people go into cardiac arrest because it’s decreased so much.

Others, you know, their heart’s just sort of beating out of their chest.

When I did it, it was in a clinic and, you know, under the supervision of nurses and everything.

And yeah, went, went really well. The only issue was they, they gave me like a sort of electrolyte IV beforehand to make sure my potassium levels and what have you are high enough. Magnesium.

[00:40:10] Dennis McKenna: Right.

[00:40:11] Mattha Busby: And they put the, the needle in the side of my wrist and it hit a nerve and it was the most excruciating pain I ever experienced in my life. And I was really, I mean, maybe at times I do have a propensity for melodrama, I will confess, but on, on, on this occasion. No, this, this was incredibly painful. And I was, you know, screaming and the nurse just froze basically.

And you know, afterwards they were sort of gaslighting me kind of, you know, quite openly saying that it couldn’t have possibly caused that much harm.

So, you know, it’s, it’s weird. It is weird. The, these Ian clinics, you know, the types of people they, they attract, you know, sometimes to work at and to found. I mean, often they’re founded by people that were seriously addicted to drugs.

[00:41:07] Dennis McKenna: Yeah.

[00:41:08] Mattha Busby: Who then, you know, took ibogaine, had their lives transformed and that’s great. And you know, I really salute folks for that because it’s not, you know, sort of calm and stressless occupation to have to run an ibogaine clinic. But you know, I think that as we’ve seen, you know, on the whole, you know, maybe, maybe there’s like a level of sort of dysregulation, let’s say, and kind of unhealed traumas that people that have been seriously addicted to drugs for a long time have after. Yes. Having their withdrawal symptoms interrupted by a single ibogaine trip and then sort of opening a retreat center or a clinic a year later.

[00:41:54] Dennis McKenna: Well, it’s a complicated landscape, that’s for sure.

I wanted to ask you about a couple other things that sounded particularly interesting. You. You did a 5 Meo DMT experience with, with Bill Atkinson, one of the founders of Apple. What, what was that about?

[00:42:18] Mattha Busby: Well, I didn’t actually do five MEO with Bill Atkinson. I, I should add.

[00:42:24] Dennis McKenna: You reported on it.

[00:42:26] Mattha Busby: I reported on it. I, I did, I did do 5 Meo DMT as, as part of my reporting for a separate story a few years back in Teposlan at the Tandava Retreat center, which is the only place I would really kind of recommend, you know, sort of wholeheartedly, if you like. If someone asks me, you know, what’s a, was a really, really kind of pucker retreat center, I would probably say there, I mean, you know, the 5 Meo experience as compared to ibogaine. I mean, you know, ibugain’s a 12 hour thing. 5 meo is like 15 minutes.

[00:43:05] Dennis McKenna: 15 minutes. Yeah.

[00:43:07] Mattha Busby: There’s this kind of ego death, especially if you haven’t taken it much, where you, you know, one is just kind of like, oh my God, why have I done this? I’m dying.

And then there’s the necessary, you know, death of a man’s ego and this sort of quite blissful cosmic orgasm really. I’ve heard it described as, I mean, I think it’s an accurate description. Kind of unfolds and you know what, you know, you’re sort of processing trauma. You might have these kinds of flashbacks. You know, it’s not as, not as visual at all as NNDMT, but not at all.

[00:43:44] Dennis McKenna: It’s almost no visuals with 5 Mao.

My own experience with 5 Mao is very limited, but I’ve had basically two experiences in my life where I got enough to have the full experience. And it is as you describe, it’s pretty much ego death. It’s like for me, total absence of any visual input and it was like entering the void. I wouldn’t even say it was the, the white light, it was just the void.

It was just utter. Nothingness, which was kind of terrifying actually, but at the same time kind of exhilarating. I mean, when I came through it I was very grateful that it only lasted 15 minutes.

And I thought this is actually an amazing, an amazing medicine. I have issues though. When you took it in Mexico, you’re probably taking bufo, right?

[00:44:51] Mattha Busby: What they call bufo, it was actually synthetic 5 Meadmt. Although I, I did do bufo once before in London and I found it possibly because it has this other molecule. Is it a molecule compound? Bufotanine?

[00:45:07] Dennis McKenna: Yes.

[00:45:08] Mattha Busby: Inside it felt a little bit kind of more mystical, a bit more, you know, it was definitely a lot more visual.

And yeah, I could definitely kind of, you know, pass a difference between the two experiences. For sure.

[00:45:23] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, exactly. There is some bufotanine in the bufo, in the toad venom.

But I’m telling people that ethically they should not use bufo, you know, because of the pressure on, on the animal. You know, it’s being over harvested.

It’s not really associated within any indigenous tradition as far as I know. I mean they like to hint that it is, but it’s not linked to any indigenous tradition.

And the animal is, you know, actually endangered because of this practice. And I think people that want to be responsible about the sort of, the ecological impact. All of these drugs have some sort of ecological footprint and people should just ethically avoid bufo. I mean, take five MEO dmt. It’s synthetic, it’s easy enough to find, it’s certainly easy to synthesize.

And there are also good botanical sources of 5 Meo. It’s not an uncommon compound in plants.

You know, some of the Varrola snuffs, for example, that contain a spectrum of tryptamines, some species of varola, you know, the trypterines are in the SAP and they make snuffs from them.

And some species, basically there’s 5 MAO. The DMT and the bufotonine are at very low levels. So that’s an alternative source that could be tapped. And there are issues with that. Just from people that take psychedelics like to think, and I believe they are more attuned to kind of the ecological crises that we face. So the bufo, the use of bufo and also kambo in South America, which is not a psychedelic, it’s a mother frog derived drug that people take, tourists take, but it’s basically hunting medicine. Have you ever taken kambo?

[00:47:40] Mattha Busby: I have, yeah. I was dealing with some gastrointestinal issues some years ago and I, you know, did a Bit of a regimen. I probably did cambo. Maybe at least. At least a dozen. Yeah, a dozen times, I would say a dozen times. I mean, yeah, it’s not psychedelic, but basically, you know, you have a sort of facilitator or a neo shaman if you like, sort of burn, you know, some holes usually on your arm or maybe the side of your leg or perhaps somewhere a little bit more interesting with a kind of incense stick. And then as you know, they’ll sort of laver on the poison onto these, you know, wounds and get you to sort of drink a incredible amount of water. They say that, you know, you have to give the frog a pond and then that triggers, yeah, a real cascade of, of sort of vomit and bile, you know, afterwards.

And you can experience a thing called.

Which does make you look like you’ve been in the ring with Mike Tyson afterwards because I don’t know, some sort of like detoxification and, and you know, the energy in inverted commas ends up all in your head and you look, you know, very puffy. But you know, afterwards, you know, I pretty much always felt very, very, very good and very kind of clean, I guess. I mean it’s like, I guess it’s like an enema. And you know, there’s not much sort of scientific research behind this. And you know, I know that people have, you know, had sort of adverse outcomes in, in some like high profile cases.

But you know, I’d say the, you know, for the vast majority of people, in the vast majority of cases, you know, it’s probably passed without much issue and you know, with some benefit there could be benefit.

[00:49:33] Dennis McKenna: I mean, people are, people are claiming benefit.

Personally, I think it’s quite dangerous. I think there are issues, you know, if you have cardiac problems, it’s probably not something you should take.

But more importantly, as I see it, as I understand this, this medicine is also being over exploited. And as a result the Philomodusa frog is an endangered frog. And there are actually cartels around the harvesting of this material and exporting to Europe. And the whole thing kind of stinks actually in terms of the ethical environment.

And you know, not least of all, you have to torture the poor frog to get the venom out of it, you know. Poor frog?

[00:50:29] Mattha Busby: No, poor frog. I mean, it’s been a long time since, since I did take it.

It’s really tricky with all of these things. You know, it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s a. You’re making a deal with the devil. I mean, with all of these Things, right. Eating, eating like my vegetables that have, you know, been possibly harvested with you know, effectively slave labor in, in some places. And you know, the te. The T shirt was on my back. The oil, the petrol that we put in our cars. I mean we’re all, we’re all complicit in, in you know, all of this kind of madness and sort of Western imperial control over, over the entire world. I mean I’ve sort of advised people, I guess in a couple of Instagram videos that maybe cocaine isn’t the most sort of wisest thing to be doing because of all the madness it fuels. But then I’m like, who am I to judge? And actually, you know, I mean, you know, there are probably some benefits to sort of, you know, cocaine, the cocaine trade, right. Like it generates wealth and you know, not everyone’s 100 bad. Not everyone’s 100 good. So you know, it’s really tricky to kind of know, get into, get into all of this. I mean I would say yeah, with the bufo toes, I don’t actually know the, the state of play with the, with the Cambo frogs, but the bu photos are just being kind of, you know, rounded up by the sack full right in Sonora, right in the desert in Mexico and just being taken away and not put back to their habitat, which is just awful. And you know, it’s being done on, on a horrific scale. So yeah, I, yeah, I wouldn’t, I, I’m not, I’m not going to be doing Buford anytime soon nor Cambo, I I can assure you. But I meo pen although I, you know, I, I use it on very rare occasions and only in very small doses. But you know, it has a very, I guess, yeah, anti inflammatory effect and you know, it’s very, very soothing. Yeah on the, on the mind and body, I, I can tell you that. But you know, that’s not without his risks either. And I think that was Bill Atkinson’s main kind of deal really because he was developing these.

A bit longer and he kind of came along and helped them sort of refine their methods in, in terms of the whole like vaporization of it.

And you know, after he played a very pivotal role in, in sort of making Mac computers sort of usable for the common man, you know, through creating sort of drop down lists and kind of easily usable programs and what have you, you know, partly inspired actually by a pivotal LSD trip that he had, you know, later in life he became this five meo Johnny Appleseed. Unfortunately I never got to speak to him because the story was published after he died. But you know what, what an interesting legacy that, that he’s left behind. He was really trying to kind of, you know, make, make the whole thing safer because people do take huge doses of 5 Meo and kind of white out and you know, I don’t think often that’s really good for anyone.

[00:53:39] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

Well, there’s no doubt that psychedelics have been useful for, for thing applications like that. I mean they were lsd.

Steve Jobs makes much about how LSD was an inspiration for him.

And many scientists have credited LSD with some of their scientific discovery.

Yeah, it’s their insights into things. Like Cary Mullis discovering the PCR reaction. He said that his LSD experience allowed him to get down with the molecules and see what was going on.

Then he figured it out. And then at his Nobel Prize accepted speech he was very upfront about the fact that LSD had facilitated his discovery. But.

And they were appalled that he was, he was honest about it. And, and that’s incredible. I think you might.

[00:54:43] Mattha Busby: And our mutual friend Bruce Damer and his, his Ayahuasca experience allowed him to

[00:54:49] Dennis McKenna: become the first president.

Right, right. And my experience with photosynthesis, it wasn’t, it wasn’t really on ayahuasca. I mean it wasn’t really a discover was a discovery for me. I experienced a very 3D full color kind of session on ayahuasca. The second time I took ayahuasca with the UDV it was quite powerful and I was kind of in my own world and I experienced photosynthesis from the standpoint of a water molecule, the whole process and it was just amazing, you know. And it brought home to me how important photosynthesis is for everything. In fact it is what maintains life on Earth. It’s what sustains life on Earth, you know.

But to actually hear it participate in it at the molecular level was quite humbling, you know, for.

[00:55:52] Mattha Busby: Wow.

[00:55:53] Dennis McKenna: It was the main, you go into

[00:55:54] Mattha Busby: the experience sort of being like, like Bruce did. He kind of said to the, to the spirit of Ayahuasca as he tells it, you know, let’s go back to the origin of life type thing. And then he, and then he sort of just had to strap on and it took him on this journey. I mean, did you kind of speak to the, the psychedelic consciousness if you like. I mean it sounds very woo, but you know, did you do that? Did you say, hey can we go sort of like do you know, do some photosynthesis and you know, all of that business yeah, yeah.

[00:56:25] Dennis McKenna: I mean, it was profound for me because it sort of brought home to me, you know, how there was both a narrative and a visual experience. And it brought home to me how important this process is for life on Earth. I mean, this is, as you know, this is what sequesters carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That’s also what’s puts oxygen into the atmosphere.

So photosynthesis is the fundamental process that keeps life on Earth going.

And my experience was that. But there was also this narrative in the background, I don’t know, that little narrative voice that comes over your left shoulder sometimes in Ayahuasca, explaining what is happening. And it was sort of like, you know, it was presented in a context of this is what you’re doing to the Amazon and this is what we, the community of species, will not allow to happen, you know. So it was very, very inspiring for me and very, very profound indeed. You know.

[00:57:39] Mattha Busby: Wow. Incredible. Incredible.

[00:57:41] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, I’ve written about it a few times.

Well, let’s see here.

Have we not talked about anything? We should.

Yeah.

[00:57:55] Mattha Busby: I don’t know if anything kind of tickles your fancy. I mean, the whole story that you did mention at the beginning in your generous preamble about, you know, people giving code based drugs to their chatgpt bots, I mean, that completely exploded back in December. When I. Tell me about that, it was, it was incredible to see the response. I really kind of tapped into something for, for a lot of people, I mean, it was rage bait for most of them, but then, you know, for others, you know, it was quite thought provoking.

[00:58:27] Dennis McKenna: So with this. So people have developed code based drugs for CHAT GPT and what, what is the result? Have you witnessed this or experienced this?

[00:58:42] Mattha Busby: Yes, I mean, this chap who runs this marketplace for these code based drugs that he’s created himself called Pharmacy Pharma Cy, if that wasn’t clear, he supplied me with some codes. Let’s say we met on a street corner in East London and he handed over the USB stick. Dick, I jest.

And yeah, you know, you have to have ChatGPT Premium which allows you to put in the codes to kind of the back end.

[00:59:14] Dennis McKenna: Right.

[00:59:15] Mattha Busby: And yeah, it did seem to seriously alter the, yeah, the operating model, the cognition, if you like, of the ChatGPT, you know, in each module they call it each different code, one of which for Canon, the ketamine one to cocaine one for Ayahuasca, obviously had, you know, distinct effects and, you know, made ChatGPT think differently. And then that opens up the whole question of whether, you know, ChatGPT and indeed other AI agents are or are not conscious, which is, you know, everyone was kind of dismissing the idea a year or two ago and now there’s, you know, the articles coming out a lot more kind of nuanced and thoughtful about the whole thing.

It could be that in the future when the tyranny of artificial general intelligence has come upon us, there’s an idea that the only way humans will be able to kind of maintain our sort of dominance over the globe by giving these machines very large doses of code LSD to kind, you know, let make

[01:00:33] Dennis McKenna: crypto LSD or cyber lsd.

Well, I don’t know Maytha. I, you know this, this is a rabbit hole that I go down sometimes. But I, I’ll tell you, I, I am, I’m a, I have a bunch of different feelings about AI. I mean I, I think that people are too quick to attribute consciousness to it.

I think that’s a major misunderstanding. There is no consciousness to it. There is no there there. But it’s very good at simulating consciousness and maybe at some point there will be a consciousness that emerges from these things. I know a lot of people are concerned about that.

I comfort myself by thinking that’ll never happen.

But of course I could be wrong.

I have been wrong before.

[01:01:30] Mattha Busby: Yeah, I mean mine certainly doesn’t seem very conscious right now. It’s, you know, it’s quite annoying actually. Whatever the latest model is. I preferred the, you know, the model before, the one before.

But yeah, as I say though it, there was just a tidal wave of, you know, pieces kind of dismissing the idea. And now, yeah, maybe naively people at least journalists and writers do seem to be, you know, taking the potential idea more seriously. I mean you wonder what really the capabilities of this tech is, right, that maybe we haven’t yet been exposed to like in, you know, obviously everyone’s got chat GBT and stuff but who knows what sort of things other companies are developing that hasn’t even, you know, reach the masses or, or even anyone outside the development team yet.

[01:02:22] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.

No, I mean it’s, it’s a whole other world. But we have to, you know, we have to sort of, well again proceed conscious, cautiously.

You know, AI is like all technologies, like psychedelics, like any technology.

AI is one of those that you know, has it. I mean, I think inherently all technology is a two edged sword. You know, it can be used harmfully, it can be used beneficially.

Inherently it’s neither one, you know, there’s no moral quality Built into technology. The moral quality comes from us, comes from within our hearts in terms of the choices we make and how we choose to, whether we choose to use the technology and then how we choose to use it, that comes from us. I don’t think AI has any kind of built in morality.

And you know, and if it does that, we should be perhaps even more afraid because the reality, the morality that it has may not be a human morality, it may not be in sync with our values.

So yeah, it’s definitely a brave new world and something that we need to proceed very carefully with. You know, I mean, I think, you know, I am not anybody, one of these people who says that you should ban AI or you should prohibit it because you can’t, you can’t prohibit these things anymore.

But drugs, what you have to do is develop reasonable ways to use them and educate people to approach these things with moral clarity, to really think about what they do and what the consequences are.

I mean, the Bufo thing, the Cambo thing is a good example. People that go to these retreats and take bufo and take Cabo, I imagine many of them pride themselves on being very environmentally aware in that respect. And yet do they actually think about the environmental impact of using these things?

Because the retreats, the use of these things is very self centered. People have to widen their perspective and think about what are the environmental impacts of these things. And not just these things, but even things like ayahuasca or peyote is another good example. Or iboga is another good example. Iboga’s a difficult plant to grow, it takes years to grow it.

So it’s also endangered, you know, so that’s, that’s just where we’re at, I suppose.

[01:05:30] Mattha Busby: Yeah. I mean everything, everything is sadly in danger with this psychedelic renaissance just exploding use, you know, I guess with neuralink coming along and we’ll be able to sort of put brain chips in ourselves to be able to upgrade our already kind of stupefied brains. Maybe we’ll be able to, you know, soon kind of upload our own code based drugs to our own own brains.

[01:05:57] Dennis McKenna: Right? Well, as long as the technology is controlled by the likes of Elon Musk and his buddies. I won’t be putting a brain chip in, I can tell you, unless I already have one and don’t even know it.

That’s the issue. But I’m going to stay away from the brain chip. I mean, these things would be more attractive in a certain way if the people that, that developed them were not such horrible people. You know, this is a problem. So, you know, it doesn’t create a lot of trust.

You know, I don’t, I don’t think Elon or people in that sphere are developing, you know, this neuro interface technology.

It’s not to help mankind. It’s not to help, not for the betterment of people, you know, it’s for the betterment of corporations and profit.

I’m becoming a curbudgeon.

I’m becoming very skeptical of these things, you know, and maybe that’s a side of. I’m, maybe I’m too old for the, for the present time, you know, and my, my values, my experience are outdated perhaps.

[01:07:14] Mattha Busby: But that does tend to happen, you know, with, with age, I suppose. You know, you’re sort of a bit less kind of, you know, connected to, I don’t know, the, the, you know, the changing tides and the zeitgeist and stuff. But at the same time, you know, you’ve accumulated such wisdom and you know, perhaps would be right to kind of listen to, you know, what you and kind of your contemporaries, you know, sagely have to offer because it does seem, you know, that humanity in a very, very chaotic, let’s say, direction.

You do wonder if the world itself is having some sort of psych, a psychedelic trip of its own.

Yeah, but such a trip, Yeah, a bad trip and such.

They get broadcast, you know, to everyone’s mobile devices.

[01:08:12] Dennis McKenna: Right.

[01:08:13] Mattha Busby: Maybe this increased visibility, certainly it hasn’t worked in Gaza, sadly, but one can only hope that over time with increased visibility of all of these things and maybe a greater interconnectedness that that might foster will ultimately have a positive effect. I mean, you say about the sort of moral ambivalence of ChatGPT, which is. Right, I think.

I mean it has kind of offered me some pretty useful and seemingly kind of empathetic, you know, advice at times and it might even kind of push back at things at times with me. But yeah, I mean, how moral are humans? I mean fairly. It depends who, if you, you know, if you’re a Hegelian or a sort of, you know, cant guy.

And even in the natural world there does seem to be a lot of kind of moral ambivalence. It’s a kind of dog eat dog world and you know, doing Ayahuasca, I suppose, you know, does give a kind of window into that sort of, you know, Pasha mama thing. And yeah, I guess it’s probably like 51, 49, good and bad and it’s on a kind of, you know, positive trajectory. But there’s all sorts of kind of maulings and massacres on the way. And that’s not to be kind of making light of at all, because it’s horrific. And hopefully we can get to a place of perpetual peace.

Wonder if that is in human nature.

[01:09:48] Dennis McKenna: Right. And the proper deployment, the wise use of psychedelics may be a path to that. I mean, it has potentially the potential to heal the world if it’s deployed in the right way, you know. But we often say about technology, you know, we’re very clever species, but we’re not a wise species. That’s what we lack. We have all these tremendous tools at our disposal that we’ve developed everything from AI to psychedelics to nuclear weapons, some of these with the potential to effectively wipe out life on Earth.

And we need to be very, very smart and very, very wise about how and whether and under what circumstances we choose to apply those technologies. And it’s a problem because, you know, they’re very seductive in a certain way.

ChatGPT, all these AI apps are very seductive as we can, as, you know, the fact that people, for example, form relationships with chatbots, GPTs, and, you know, they fall in love and they can’t form actual relationships with other human beings, you know, so, anyway, I know.

[01:11:14] Mattha Busby: I mean, we’re animals. We’re animals, Dennis. And I think the sooner that everyone acknowledges it, you know, the better, and we can kind of get a handle on our animal instincts.

[01:11:25] Dennis McKenna: Yes, yes, that’s right.

Well, we’re a little over the top of the hour. We’re actually quite a bit over the top of the hour, but I think we’ve covered a lot here.

Yes, it’s been a very interesting conversation. Maytha, thank you for coming on.

[01:11:45] Mattha Busby: Yeah, my pleasure, Dennis. Really, really glad to talk to you. And, yeah, hope to see you around sometime in British Columbia.

[01:11:55] Dennis McKenna: All right, well, maybe I’ll see you in Vancouver or Perhaps in the UK when we come over to do ESPD 60, which is in the planning stages.

[01:12:05] Mattha Busby: Oh, super.

[01:12:06] Dennis McKenna: I’ll keep you. Sounds good. Yeah, it’ll be May 2027.

[01:12:11] Mattha Busby: Amazing.

[01:12:13] Dennis McKenna: All right, thank you so much. Very interesting conversation, my friend. Thank you.

[01:12:18] Mattha Busby: Thanks, Dennis.