Erik Davis | LSD, Drug Portals, Psychedelic Animism, & The Alien Interface

00:01 It's far from master, so we'll surely have a plan. There clearly may be something there beyond the realm of man And until you've thoroughly tested every last close chest of you I find the more you think you know The less you without TXC As we know they're lying to us just to know To what degree would we be Without TXC? A side chat show great con would be It's the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine. From The Sunshine State, I'm Greg Carlwood and people have been saying for a long time that our cold capitalist commodity driven dog eat dog archonically inspired wild wild western bullet train society is just about to come off the tracks only to crash and burn into a fireball of twisted steel likely sponsored by BetterHelp

01:01 And for many, it is impressive just how long we have run on not much more than fumes and antidepressants. But still the oracles insist it should be over any day now who's to say really but we certainly don't seem to show any signs of slowing our breakneck pace or god forbid course correcting as result of the never-ending warning signs and The latest culture wars legendary divisions in award winning weaponized internet technologies only complicate things further And I, for one am nostalgic for the kind of countercultures previous decades are pretty much known for. Places where the disenfranchised go to find connection enthusiasm for life and oftentimes psychedelically inspired meaning in a not so resonant mono-think money hungry mainstream

01:47 And wouldn't you know it, this is often the very thing today's guest Eric Davis is known for covering. He's an author, scholar, award-winning journalist, podcaster and professional talker whose work dances around the crossroads of alternative religion media the popular imagination in the cultural history of California he's the popular author of books like Technosis Myth Magic & Mysticism In The Age Of Information high weirdness, drugs, esoterica and visionary experience in the 70s. And most recently Blotter The Untold Story of an Acid Medium a richly illustrated exploration of the history art and design of printed LSD blotter tabs You can find his sub stack under the name Burning Shores and fun fact he also had the honor of being Terrence McKenna's final interview on this island earth

02:37 So much to talk about, so little time. The strange stuff scholar, psychedelic alchemy author and counterculture Californian Eric Davis welcome to THC. Hey Greg thanks for inviting me! Yes of course and I know many podcast guests are all about the latest work and for you that is this book Blotter The Untold Story Of An Acid Medium And i've heard you say a few very interesting things about acid that might help us get into the groove here I've heard you say that without question, LSD is the most important psychedelic in the history of the modern West and LSD's historic role is a great lens to look at the larger transformation and psychedelic discourse today. Well elaborate on what you mean by those statements and how this latest book fits in?

03:28 Sure i'm happy to do so i mean there's a lot of psychedelics that people are turning to now and seeing as important in many ways lsd is less discussed i would say certainly has a sacrament or the fuel. these days than other substances like psilocybin or ketamine, even DMT, ayahuasca. In a way those all have a little bit greater hold on the popular imagination right now and even to some degree the research and therapy world there are some really interesting research programs going on with LSD or versions of LSD looking at healing properties etc., but given how much

04:11 cultural sway once held it's actually kind of in a low point of cultural tension right now compared to. Even the nineteen fifties let alone the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, add this interesting outcomes that as well which we can talk about later but the reason i say is the most influential is that its first one biggest one and arguably still the best one it has the most bang for the buck in terms of the stories that unleashed i mean if you take the nineteen sixties beatniks were already eating peyote chemists were mixing up dmt. The grateful dead did dmt allen what's the dmt mushrooms had really come on yet thats more of a seventies thing in terms of the underground but by far and away the most significant in terms of radiating through cultural was lsd

05:06 for all sorts of reasons. And it not only influenced the obvious kind of subcultures like music and hippies, and even radicals—some of the radicals did not like acid culture but some of the radicals really embraced it—both the yippies who had a very psychedelic approach to political activism with a lot of prankster qualities in it but also the weather people or the weather underground Who are radical radicals like bomb throwing radicals and they thought lc was great because it broke down your conventional. Personality so you can develop a new revolutionary subjectivity

05:47 So there's all sorts of influences there, but also just in terms of the history of art and not just street art but actual art. And most conventional art histories don't really talk about psychedelics too much, but more recently some art historians have gone like look they were all doing this stuff and it totally made a difference Not everybody but a lot of people were told me the difference on the kind things that happen movies comic books. Even philosophy you know i think some other ways that people started to think about the world is like being

06:22 A social construction you know it's not fixed in stone there is no truth to the capital t. The kind of ideas that some people call post modern then a lot of ways those start emerging in nineteen seventies they have something to do with the kinda psychedelic perception like wow this is all just sort of a big story or you know it's all carnival illusion show magic show I think there's some relationships there as well. So, just think it has very significant influence on what comes and really sets up today's moment of the psychedelic renaissance wouldn't be there without influence of LSD even in terms of the lives of a lot of people who are leading the renaissance even if they're interested in other materials like Rick Doblin you know? It's all about MDMA

07:09 But if you go back in his history, and you go okay Rick like what was the really significant things that happened to you? And when did they happen LSD is gonna play a big role in that process. But there's something also about it That's a little more little more subtle in a way let's think about it from another angle so like ayahuasca Everybody knows this from the jungle everybody knows that back in the day the Indians were doing this on their own, and it has that sense of tradition. But LSD emerges like Athena from the brow of Zeus from industrial chemistry in the middle of the 20th century. These are large pharmaceutical operations if you look back at the history of Sandoz which is the corporation that

08:05 Employ doctor albert hoffman discovered lsd first synthesized lsd. What kind of company is that it's a global corporation, it has its own origins in petrochemical industry lot of the pharmaceutical companies have their origins and petrochemical world so it's all about this modern moment you know what is the twentieth century The 20th century is what happens when you take the 19th century and you add petrochemicals. You know, you fuel the whole thing with gas! It's like the most magical thing in the world incredibly powerful it becomes plastics it becomes drugs it becomes dyes...it's just this extraordinary wizard drug and that's the 20th century is like the 19th century on this wizard drug

08:57 So some of it comes out in this situation where you know you're doing research on air got. You know originally drive from a fungus so it has some relationship to nature really important relationship to the fungal kingdom but it's a synthetic material and Albert Hoffman has his famous bike ride, but then here's the question. We got to go back strip away everything you think oh LSD Timothy Leary The Grateful Dead swirly tie dies just none of that exists and You're a company and one of your doctors has come up with this weird thing that has psychological effects And you know what the hell do we do with this thing? We gotta make money off. We got to sell it What is it how did we do it what story Do we tell about this weird substance

09:44 you know there's no model in western civilization for something like i was good everybody was drinking i was gonna go oh it's kinda like i was good. Okay we know how to deal with that but we don't know anything what is this thing and so what uc, over the years from the mid nineteen forties is a series of attempts to tell stories or create frameworks around what it is, because it doesn't fit into anything obvious so the first thing they do as they say well psychiatrist be interested in this psychiatry is huge booming world by the middle of the twentieth century

10:27 Psychiatrist be interested in this let's call it a psychotic medic which means. It mimics psychosis and that means that you know as a shrink you can take it and maybe no understand a little bit more about how psychosis works or if we understand more the neurological system that LSD works with through research we can understand more what the organic causes of madness is in the population. So that's the initial story, that's what it gets sold as And then it just becomes all these different things over the next 20, 25 years. It's a cure for alcoholism. It's a cure for frigidity. It's a quote unquote cure for homosexuality. It's a mind control device, a truth serum, a revolutionary drug and anti-revolutionary drug, a mystical cosmic oneness sacred medicine

11:27 And it's a good party drug, it's good to fuck. It just goes on and on and on there is all these frameworks so if you look at the history of acid you're not just looking at the history of counterculture or looking at this particular molecule You are looking at the modern world trying to come to terms with this multi-dimensional arguably metaphysical substance that doesn't really fit in any easy way in like modern secular rational materialism. And by following the story of LSD, you follow the story of post-war modernity and a kind of funhouse mirror. Yeah I mean that's a great setup! I did not know that

12:18 It involved coal tar, until I heard you talk about this previously. And I don't think many people know it is related to arrogant or that that's a part of the recipe which does put it a lot closer to mushrooms than some people might give it credit for and like... I had my psychedelic fun. I named the show The Higher Side Chats after all but I was more focused on marijuana and mushrooms. For reasons you've talked about, I was turned off by its MKUltra residue when it comes to LSD and turned off by the idea of something synthesized in a lab compared to grown naturally which is a little silly plenty of things in nature can kill you if smoked natural doesn't mean safe but lab created comes with skepticism behind the intention I guess? But these are the big stigmas

13:08 behind LSD that it can't really shake this association with mind control, even if it's not necessarily to control minds in the conventional sense. There is also the thing that oh well it was distributed through the musical culture just to keep hippies dumb and distracted and from getting on with their lives. And the whole system is happy to have some people swirl around in that for their youth and then wake up and be like, oh shit I'm way behind my peers. Those are some of the stigmas what are your thoughts on those sorts of things? Yeah no it's a great question i mean first just to clarification the coal tar stuff is not related to LSD itself but to the origins of the company of Sandos of the whole pharmaceutical company A lot of drugs came out of studying

14:00 petrochemical products. Sure, sure gotcha! But the relationship with ergot is key you know and it's not only that there is a natural fungus that was the inspiration for lysergic acid diethylamide, but that there's a history of psychological effects associated with that. Mostly really negative because their ergot is a fungus it grows on the rye it can make the rye toxic and so people... There are stories from the Middle Ages where whole towns get this kind of ergot psychosis and some of them go crazy and some of them die So there's already the sense of like a kinda witchy sort-of force

14:41 At the same time, there's been a long-standing discussion now about the possible role of ergot in some of the drugs that were presumably consumed as part of the ancient Greek mysteries and particularly the Eleusinian mystery rites. This was written up in Brian Muraresco's famous recent book The Immortality Key but it has been going on for decades so there seems to be some kind of tradition Even with air got now Hoffman synthesized that molecule. So it's they're just dealing with lab Synthesis and not basing it directly on substance, but it's inspired by nature I think one interesting thing here is just like a generational thing You know, I'm in my late 50s and I grew up in Southern California at the tail end of the counterculture I went to dead shows in high school things like that so I was still very much in

15:31 the current of a certain kind of acid culture that really began more than anywhere else initially in California. Whereas for a lot of younger people coming into drug culture, again like you say there's this association with MK Ultra and with mind control There's also this idea that synthetic things aren't as good they aren't very honest close to spirit or nature etc More recently, this has really grown in the last five years. Maybe give it 10 or eight or whatever where there's more and more people who widely accept the idea that The primary reason that LSD was available in the 1960s was because spooks were trying to control populations That would otherwise go revolutionary

16:26 And even farther where like all the leading lights of the underground, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Gordon Wasson and The Grateful Dead that they're actually all part of a conspiracy. That's a stronger conspiracy that you don't have to go that far to still buy the general story that you're talking about which is just a legitimate story you know the role of intelligence agencies in the post war reality is really really significant and it goes all across the board i mean to see a was supporting abstract expressionism in nineteen fifty so

17:06 You'd think they wouldn't give a shit about avant-garde art, but they were actually very concerned with shifting the locus of the art world to New York City and developing an idea of the artist as this free experimental person because that freedom was associated with the West as opposed to the control of the Soviets and the control of individuality. This is just my opinion. Even when you start to go into tracking the intelligence agencies in the 50s and 60s, what they were doing and what they were trying to do. It really is important to remember the context of the Cold War and the reality of what Russia was like for the people who lived under Russia. Most of the people in Czech

17:53 or in Hungary would probably have preferred not to be living under the yoke of Russia. So even though horrible things were done in the name of freedom, I mean, some of the MKUltra research was just—and this is not even getting into the conspiratorial versions of the story where it just continues and it's in everything. And you know, just leaving that aside, from what conventional historians will tell you about MKUltra, some of this stuff was straight-out torture and lab coats using drugs to hurt people In the name of whatever research so it's a horrible story and it kind of stains in a way. The sort of acid ethos or the acid mystique but here again is kinda interesting to think about in comparison less with mushrooms then with ayahuasca

18:46 Which is a widely and completely justified seen as a deeply natural product although one that requires human ingenuity i'm like the mushrooms you can't just. What kind of ground actually have to cook it and there's some human techniques i'm kinda cooking and practice involved in making this stuff, but it has this deep indigenous basis. It goes through and comes up from the people. And in the West now, it's widely associated with healing and really wrestling with the deep stuff and coming to terms with grief or PTSD being connected back into the natural organic world and getting the light of love for larger cosmos etc.,

19:28 But in its anthropological context, inside of both indigenous and mestizo communities, ayahuasca is almost always bound up as well with brujos, with sorcery. with black magic, we could call it. That there are these wars between shamans and that part of what the shaman is doing during a given session is like fending off evil darts that are coming in from the shaman over the hill and there's always these battles and da-da-da-da So if you actually look at the healing powers of ayahuasca which are considerable A remarkable substance You know a remarkable slice

20:08 Cosmic Space-Time has opened up, or domain or multiple domains is opened up with this marvelous substance that in its original context it also features this kind of sorcery. And in some ways I look at what the CIA did as this kind of modernist Brujeria like they were modernists brujos, they were modernists sorcerers doing black magic and in order to get their view of the world put forward. So it's stained, but it's also in a way part of that world of psychedelic power and again there were plenty of revolutionary elements of the counterculture that we're still using psychedelics as part of their attempt to build a better world I think we can look through a lot other forces to explain why the revolution didn't happen than the fact that hippies were taking

20:59 acid at shows, but I also believe that is part of the truth and for some of the reasons that acid was available was because some parts of the CIA were like yeah let's just get it out there see what it does or they'll just screw things up create chaos and that will be to our benefit. That doesn't surprise me. The idea however that that is the primary reason for the acid culture Individuals and families who have dedicated decades and decades to producing high quality lst are all working for the man is ridiculous it's just not true they might be deluded about what they're doing but they're not doing it because there. The arms of some kind of mind control industry

21:44 They're doing it because it's a remarkable substance that has a lot of positive effects, is utterly fascinating. Also fun and spiritually transformative for them! And that's one of the stories I tell in Blotter. I actually like to read this passage and you'll see why when I did it. It's not from me but it's something really important to understand about the LSD trade as opposed to other drug criminal operations so this is from blotter In contrast to the trafficking of other drugs in which profit is the sole motivating factor, LSD trafficking has assumed an ideological or crusading aspect. The influence and probable distribution by certain psychedelic generation gurus has created a secretiveness and marketing mystique unique to LSD particularly at the higher echelons of traffic

22:41 Their belief in the beneficent properties of lsd has been over the years as strong a motivating factor in the production and distribution of the drug, is the profits to be made from it say this is very true and very important as we kind of wrestle with what specific unique. About lsd and what i really like about this quote is that its not from some counter cultural historian like me it's from the d.a. is noting this in the nineteen nineties not in the seventies not in the sixties and the nineteen ninety that it still the case decades after the kind of full flower, what's the counterculture after the decade of the eighties when with the exception of the grateful dead psychedelics was not really visibly part popular culture or even most subcultures

23:35 There's a few little pockets of like psychedelic underground groups or whatever, but most of the dominant ones are not associated with acid even if acid was very much apart of the scene. I mean you don't get the butthole surfers without acid. It really tells us something about this kind of magical crusading element but there's also a real trickster quality to lsd i think in particular i think all psychedelics anyways should be seen as tricksters and part of that trickster with lsd does have to do with this kinda weird history we're not really sure. who's behind it or where it's coming from, or who is all involved in this being here. And there's a kind of mystery to it that once was a modern mystery and something kinda uncanny. Yeah I think those are all great points! I think the most reasonable way like you were saying to look at a lot of that unsavory history is just to say look they were

24:32 infiltrating countercultures to make sure that they stayed pretty tame and unfocused, let's just say. Because there were groups that were very focused and a real threat to the system like the Black Panthers. And it was a crazy time as you say so it's like you got to keep an eye on everything. I also liked that point about the capitalistic aspects or the crusading aspects as you said are unique to LSD or are definitely different from other substances. I mean, even marijuana my personal favorite is very tied up in drug cartels and all this kind of stuff. And LSD definitely doesn't seem to be, it's like they do think they are seeding gnosis like they are waking people up like psychedelic Johnny Appleseed or something and that's legit also the fact that ayahuasca is a technology is not just one natural thing requires two things to be put together by human hands and then opens up a portal

25:35 to mother ayahuasca, whatever that is. And all we're talking about with LSD is a raising the complexity of taking things that are natural. I mean really you should think anything in the material world made of matter is natural or has the potential to be part of a recipe for something like LSD or Ayahuasca like they're much closer than someone might think. And I've heard you use the term portals before when discussing these things and it's such a provocative term The thing that I find so interesting about ayahuasca is that its portal is very reliable. Mother Ayahuasca tends to come and do the same things, rip you apart and then the next day build you back up. And it's always snake based. There are just these boxes that so many ayahuasca journeys check in the personality type of this overarching spirit is pretty baked-in

26:34 but other substances not so much. And I think that's a curious thing, like how do you rectify the idea that substances open up portals to something else sometimes somewhat random and then sometimes kind of reliable? How do you fit that into your worldview and make sense of it because its pretty bizarre? I mean I would step back and maybe question a little bit about the regularity or the reliability of the ayahuasca experience to some degree, not exclusively. But just as an example in the West or in America I'll just say people often talk about mother-grandmother ayahuasca and you get a sense that sort of maternal energy is part of the kind of essence

27:32 Of the plant but in a lot of indigenous communities i was is male medicine. It's associated with the forest and hunting where as you know here i'm generalizing cuz every indigenous group is different there's tremendous amount of variation but there are plenty instances Where women's magic is associated with cultivated plants herbs medicines and men's magic hunting magic and i was wild you go into the jungle together you may cook it at home.

28:07 but you get it from the wild and so it's associated with a different kind of space that gets sort of lost or transformed as it becomes translated into more american or developed world your america frameworks just one example, no some people i know see snakes every time some people never see snakes but there is i would say consistency there but i think part of that consistency Ask compared to something like acid part of that consistency is there for a variety of reasons some which are very interesting you think about i was used even in the west generally and.

28:49 Formalize group situations where there's some sort of facilitator or leader sometimes that leader calls themselves shaman sometimes they say they're just a facilitator, sometimes the use tobacco sometimes they don't sometimes they use feathers sometimes they don't. What is the basic structure of a buncha people coming together with sort of like fear and anticipation and prayer Doing this thing together and being led through the arc of the experience that has sustained itself as the drug translated from indigenous in misty communities in south america into the global world. That's not the case with earlier drugs so like the beatniks in the fifties

29:35 Would drive down to texas and buy like boxes in boxes of payo de. Bring it back and they didn't like their north beach apartments they were not trying to do native american church ceremonies say the mushrooms, you know maria sabina is the source of all knowledge and wisdom within a certain kind of. So i've been framework but when it started to go down even when they went to what line got maybe they did a ceremony that someone in the ceremony, when they brought back people were trying to call on the saint send do it at night only in this way people were just like walk around the fields and going festivals there was something informal about the way that the west

30:22 encounter psychedelics that didn't happen with ayahuasca. To me, it says something about the substance that it lends itself towards that kind of organization, that kind of structure and by doing that you also set up more consistency in terms of the kinds of experiences people will have especially confronting really difficult things and then being sort of transformed through them or torn apart brought back together Whereas with something like LSD, like I talked about there's no given framework for it. So everybody is kind of making it up as they go along so some people do it with individual therapists who are leading them and they have eye shades and they're listening to music that they were already doing out in the 1950s And then later on it's like maybe we should listen to tapes that are describing these other worlds You know Timothy Leary made a famous manual

31:21 in the early sixties by taking a tibetan book of the dead which is this book that describes the afterlife visionary worlds to hell's and heavens, you will encounter when you die after you die. Describe them this book he took the language of that but can't just gonna rewrote it describe an acid trip people would have this book and for a year couple years in the middle of six before it really blew up it was quite common that people who are experimenting with lsd read this book, who's like away organizing story so for them maybe had a certain consistency. What's it goes into the larger world is being done in a million different ways there isn't that kind of regularity at the same time i would say that lsd very much has

32:10 a distinct spirit and character, maybe less personifiable. It's a little bit more you might say psychological but that's too limited of word so it's interesting I think there are these characters that different psychedelics have different drugs in general and the part of getting to know them is sort of like getting to know that particular personality or that particular set of features But it also has a lot to do with our own model of what's happening think about the grateful dead in a little nutshell, the grateful that starts by making music for the acid test. Which means they're making music for the merry pranksters this group in early nineteen sixties start taking accident very like

33:00 prankster playful clowning not visibly sacred but also very mystical and strange kind of way but they're not being like this is a religious substance and they're not saying oh this is for psychological healing there basically having a gas that just trying to make life magical hilarious bizarre ridiculous. They start there and then over the decades they become this kind of psychedelic. I'll call it a religion some people don't like that when you have that word but i'm ok with that there's a ritual there is no sense of community, there's a lot of love there's a lot of utopian thinking is of course there's a dark side as well

33:41 People learn these songs, the songs map their soul journeys. When people are together thousands of people together in the hall going through Dark Star or going through Terrapin Station and we're going through drums in space there's a collective framework that I think probably gave a consistency to people who took acid that way like yeah mostly take acid at dead shows and it's familiar like this boogie and go on and then there's weird parts then there's like a space thing and then you come out at the end and you have a grilled cheese sandwich, that little bit of nitrous. That's kind of the framework but acid I think can move in lots of different directions and has moved in a lot of different directions but it's partly about the framework that we bring to these things that gives them consistency. Right! That is true. It seems like were very susceptible to prior input

34:35 on a lot of things that are on just the high weirdness spectrum. Even the alien encounter, a lot of people talk about that as well do people see gray aliens because of the sci-fi movies and some reports that were framed in a certain way and popularized or is that literally what they see? People like Jacque Fresco say it's a display all the time People will say they get visited by Mary or Jesus, or was it just a being of light that you wanted to be Jesus? So you were visited by something. But obviously cultural residue spills over into a lot of these experiences. That is something that might be interesting about LSD is its short history. I've heard you mention that Albert Hoffman even though people know the bicycle story what he describes in his trip

35:27 has a lot of significance because it is a blank canvas. And I don't actually really know what he said about what he saw, maybe you can share that but it is interesting to hear an unadulterated report from a modern substance. Yeah, I would say there's two things that I think of right now though there's other stuff you could talk about one Is that while he was on Solid dose two hundred fifty mike's you know more than most of us would feel comfortable in necessarily. You know he had a death experience it was late on the couch he had all these physical symptoms and then he was floating above his body describe did as if he had died

36:12 So there's something about, you know you had mentioned that about ayahuasca but it tears you apart and brings it back together. But there is something about strong psychedelics that have this death rebirth pattern in it where you kind of lose it maybe feel like you lost your mind maybe think your dying or dead and then go through the whirlpool pop out on the other side most of time and there's a sense revitalization renewal and sometimes just a sense of exhausted happiness that it's over the deal is over in there yes so thats very interesting that pattern came up with his description and really is description of the longer description of experience you wrote many years later which is important to recognize cuz it probably makes a difference. The other thing is that he saw witches

37:06 So there was something about the kind of supernatural a cold spooky world of the imagination. That seems very available and you know from that you can get into like, the connection between fairy lore and aliens in why they so similar to things jacques valet pointed out in the nineteen sixties and it's still kinda true what do you were saying about people see your joseph for aliens and what is it really in this idea that it's just a display but let's sit with our display little bit more i think there something more interesting, is the more interesting than to just say oh its just a display which is that if we think about.

37:49 the visionary experience not just on psychedelics but just in general as an interface right i mean we're on interfaces right now and looking at a computer you know i got a calendar it's gotta great little trash can down there, no drag things to the trash can was that actually a trashcan no son actually trashing its a bunch of little on and off gates shuttling around inside this machine thats all it is but i cant talk to agree to on and off light pulses that I'm not going to be able to write an email like that. that world to be constructed into an interface that i can handle the trash can cuz i know what a trashcan is gonna human being living in this world with trash cans. Show the whole thing everything you're doing on the screen even if your doing code isn't it interface allows you to interact with the kind of true guts of the machine that, do u call machine language you and i are humans we speak human language we don't talk machine language

38:50 Only very rare people actually talk machine language even brilliant coders don't do machine language you don't need to. So let's take that a step farther ago ok what we're seeing is not just the display were seen interface and the interface gives us familiar things drawn from our culture or personal experience even from the way we perceive the world like. We recognize there's something like sacred geometry are there certain kinds of architectures that have a secret quality it sometimes the spaces get organized in these ways and what can i do that's like church that's like a mosque or like, is some kind of geometric dimension was all because of the way were wired for geometry but what if whats happening

39:40 Is that we are in a communication relationship with call it nature or the cosmos but something very. That does not speak human language abstract super abstract and what we learn particularly as we develop our relationship over time with substances in a thoughtful way. It doesn't have to be a sacred way, I think it's a way of learning we recognize were in the learning relationship where its like oh you learned about that? We learned not to do this, we learned how to do this over time the rich substances like ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, cannabis other drugs and not so sure if we can talk about those but those ones are real classics You could just keep learning your whole life

40:34 How to modulate what's appropriate what's not where the messages coming from whats the value when are you deluded so we're in this kind of process and really what that visionary experiences is a visual audio spatial display that's booted up it allows us to interact with something that added six stream. Is so abstract and so non human that we can't handle it and i think part of what happens let's say with Smoking dmt which is super intense and it's kinda like the peak of an ayahuasca trip impacted into five minutes. We are hurled into something completely overwhelming is that that's a substance that let you go farther into and through the interface

41:22 And if you learn that substance, it just gets weirder and weirder because it's like you're peeling off the familiar layers. It's harder to get language around what is actually happening. So I think that's a really helpful framework because it's like okay so Jesus and Mary come up in your trip does that mean its time to recover your Christian roots or go back to church? Not necessarily but it doesn't mean that it's just a goofy bubbling up of some random image there some like the way that the trash can is linked to particular procedure that jesus and mary are link to certain

42:07 ideas and experiences in forms of knowledge that are a value in the psychedelic space and there different than the anaconda or their different, then alien or they're different then the trickster fool. And those different archetypes if you want to call them that are indicating something about you even if they aren't what they see and there's a phrase that i use my book high weirdness Which goes into a lot of the stuff i'll be it to some excessively intellectual degree at some places although other parts of it are really fun is this phrase. Take things seriously but not literally and i think that's a really important

42:53 Added to develop in relationship to these things cuz if you don't take them seriously then you just fucking around, you're wasting everybody's time i mean sometimes it's fun just have fun on drugs. Whatever can be celebratory and could be very goofy it can be very hilarious right now that's part of the two and also has its own serious news to it In fact even that's important to take seriously if you just say oh yeah it's fine i don't care then you're missing something there is actually something really profound about the fun, do u can have on psychedelics. What if you start to take it literally well then your on that slippery slope then you're going down that labyrinth of rabbit holes and i get strict cd and it gets sticky and maybe there's some glimmering truth but a lot of people who get literal about it they get lost they get deluded. But its not about just saying oh this is nothing who cares no it's taking seriously but not literally

43:53 Yeah, I really like that distinction and the trash can example is really great. I've talked to many guests about Jacques Bellay's perspective on UFOs and the concepts of a display versus an interface. I do think that's probably a better term but i have not heard a better analogy than the true language is ones and zeros, circuit board language indistinguishable for a person. But you put the trashcan icon there to facilitate an easier communication between us in that thing." I think that's great.

44:31 When I think about people having their trips or sometimes they have these high strangeness experiences that sound just like trips, but they're not on anything. Or some people say because the brain produces DMT you can never rule out a random dump of DMT that takes you to that place puts you in the portal so to speak and i think there's probably a significance to what People see in those trips If you see Mary, maybe there is a reason for it besides something weird in your psyche. I know people see things like the elephant God Ganesh and they're like, I never had any kind of association with that before or interest in it or anything. Maybe whatever's on the other side doesn't know you all that well so it tries something out. Hey, Ganesh has worked for other people let me see if it works for you. Oh no? Well, you're fading away and we didn't get anywhere okay well... See ya!

45:24 That could be possible, but with mushrooms Terrence McKenna used to say things like it is a megaphone used by an alien intergalactic other to communicate with mankind. And that's kind of in the realm of spirit being attached to something physical and you facilitate communication through the interface of LSD or ayahuasca but its also kind of different. The idea that it's like a galactic cosmic telephone that was seeded on the earth and is just comes in a bizarre package but you eat them and that's like dialing a phone number, and now your communicating with something I don't know if we should even distinguish between alien and spirit but some kinda intelligent something and I just think thats really fascinating

46:17 that's the function of these substances. I don't know if it's even right to say that things have to have a function from a human perspective, but it seems like there is some agency involved and that these are reliable communication tools. I guess I want to know what's on the other side of the interface? Maybe no one knows but what do you think?" Well, that's the rub and even without trying to answer that impossible question We decide on some level to accept the possibility that this is a communication situation i mean there's a lot of evidence for it if you're on the inside.

46:57 But there's also a way of looking at it in a way that still, a kind of faith or a kind of religious idea that there really is an other. That is trying to communicate with us through that. That certainly how it feels A lot of time. That may even be the only way you can explain things because they seem like messages but I also believe that part of the wisdom possibility of these things again taking them seriously but not taking them literally is also to kind of question our own habit of a tree beating agency outside forces that if they. Display communication that might also just be another kind of dodge or another kind of way getting us off track

47:50 And not because they have a deeper message for us, but because we're in this situation. We can't even understand we don't even know how to think about it in the conventional way but to think about as if it is just getting messages from another who's identifiable that might actually be part of our learning part of it is to go beyond that particular kind of projection because that tends towards the literalism here's a good example just ordinary synchronicity not ordinary like intense ones but synchronicity so i first lecture was on philip k dick and i had prepared it all out like written it out much more than i do these days, and i was seeing there is five minutes before my first lecture super nervous.

48:42 And i realize that even though i was gonna talk about balance you know it's gonna talk about narcissism, i didn't have a good short definition of what is the most important shit i'm starting five minutes so i picked up my paperback copy of vallas just kind of like maybe it's in here open it up. the first passage my eyes are on on the page that i open to randomly was. No system is the belief there's a higher god just this nice two sentence very phil dickey and definition of narcissus okay right so let's think about that for a moment hit me like oh my god i can use it on one hand,

49:32 I asked for something i got a response usually the world is random you don't get messages from books that way in that sense but this time i did. What's the same time can really go any farther than that, is it by start to build up a story about what that is i started taking literally and i can go down a rabbit hole and i don't think that's what it is. I think thats the rabbit hole so i have two kind of both except the message and suspend my ability, do you really know what it is too excepted the world is mysterious and then i dont know

50:14 So i think that there's a balance of like leaning into the communication. The wisdom from nature wisdom from the cosmos the wisdom from your own soul and sort of not quite trusting your minds desire to turn it into something that can rely on so its kind of a two edged sword the way that i approach you Yes, I like that a lot. I think it was Terrence McKenna who said the universe runs on narrative You know A lot of people try to boil it down to one thing and that's pretty close I mean I've heard desire as well And I think when you think about many different things One of those two words is a top contender for sure and this is a quote from technosis That I actually think

51:01 flushes this out even more, but you say the funny thing about games and fictions is that they have a weird way of bleeding into reality. Whatever else it is the world that humans experience is animated with narratives rituals and roles that organize psychological experience social relations and our imaginative grasp on the material cosmos The world then is in many ways a web work of fictions or better yet stories The contemporary urge to gamify our social and technological interactions is, in this sense, simply an extension of the existing games of subculture—of folklore—even of belief. This is the secret truth of the history of religions! Not that religions are nothing more than fictions crafted out of sociobiological need or wielded by evil priests to control ignorant populations

51:53 but that human reality possesses an inherently fictional or fantastic dimension whose quote game engine can and will be organized along various visionary banal and sinister lines. I love that. I think it relates to what we're talking about and I don't know how to use it practically, to navigate reality but you could definitely take that paragraph and see how it could be weaponized against us to gamify reality in certain events to make us participate in all sorts of ways that they've been trying to study since the MKUltra days to bring it back to that but that's a great paragraph. I think that's right stories narrative gamification

52:37 Yeah no thanks for bringing that up i was like oh yeah forgot about that one and you're right it's not necessarily helpful but i think we're in this weird place right now where to understand the world more how its actually working you kinda have to start engaging explanations or truths or perspectives. That are necessary obviously going to help situation It's a weird conundrum about where we are i mean i think there are other ways of thinking that are maybe no better or worse way to do it like its more helpful to think ecologically and to think about how

53:20 nature actually works and to think about the possibility that we could be building sacred or imaginal relationships with the planetary condition. I think that's better than just, you know thinking we're gonna go off in spaceships to Mars and leave the earth behind as some kind of husk I think that's a worse narrative than the other one. But, especially when it comes to how human beings create reality or live in their realities that the hard truths about what we're doing are weaponizable but that's kind of where we are at this place in history where almost everything is weaponizable and

54:01 That means that you can have to accept it as part of the picture and it also means that you can't just push back against something saying all that's weaponized x and y is like everything everything. You know it might actually be the case that, Let's say climate change is super real. There is some human involvement in that process, it wouldn't be happening the way it is without us in some significant way and therefore there are really good reasons to have global arrangements around how to use resources or whatever but that process as more libertarian and conspiracy-minded people will remind us

54:47 can be totally corrupt. Control, faceless bureaucrats quasi-totalitarian regimes that are using climate change in order to install some kind of higher order of control all that kinda stuff and some of it can go into paranoia but even if you leave the crazy stuff aside your like yeah! That might have to happen So what is the case? There is a way to avoid mass collapse just about climate change and not think about anything else there is a way to do it or ways to do it but actually requires. Forms of social control that most of us find completely horrific that might be a real bind answer what you do, add how do you think through that is because its so it's weaponizable even if that is saving gesture and i'm afraid we're in a lot of those

55:45 those kind of double binds and it makes it really hard to think through things, and to take a stand. And to be clear about how we want to navigate through things because every step of the way is kinda booby trapped. And drawn into these larger cultural wars that we might not wanna... No no I'm just talking about this particular issue." It's like you can't just talk about this particular issue if say this boom boom boom boom you're absorbed into this whole other framework So it is Trixie times. It's true, it's true especially through this interface of the internet I mean you can engineer consensus on all kinds of things just by amplifying voices that have the perspective You want to amplify and suppressing other voices and then saying see everyone agrees what do you mean there's alternative takes on this? I don't know. I don't see any

56:39 And that does occur as well. But yeah, you can envision a scenario where global change is required to fix something I guess it comes down to trust and abuse of power. And even if they had good intentions on this one, I feel like the trust is broken so I guess we're all going down with a ship because you should have been more trustworthy before you wanted to impose these controls on top of all the others but... This is that cosmic game we play. This is The Big Motion Picture Stage Show and we're all just kind of apart of it Well, this has been a lot of fun. We covered a ton of ground and of course blotter the untold story of an acid medium is your latest book we kind of went away from it but It weaved throughout this whole thing Would you like to say a few more words about it? To make people more inclined to pick it up or even mention the sub stack or anything else You got going on before we call it in This Is Why We Do The Dance

57:35 You know people can check out my sub stack at burning shore it's where i'm doing most of my writing now don't really write for other magazines and stuff the way you used to, that's a lot of fun there is no stuff about psychedelics but a lot of things as well. And then the new book people are really liking is going to be my most popular book. Out of the gate like in terms of people responding to it right away a lot about other ones are kind slow burners and just tons images in it because one of the reasons that's pretty short, there's been nothing like nobody ever really dealt with like the whole history of water what made it why they need it with the images are super fun to work on archives so many crazy pictures

58:15 You mentioned at the very beginning that I've written a lot about the counterculture, like the underground. And from where we are now even though most of these substances are still scheduled in America there's this sense that that counter culture is over and that psychedelics belong to everyone and that were in this kind of new domain and they're being normalized and medicalized and turned into features of wellness industry and Instagram influencer culture They really changed the way they show up in society so why do we care about the old counterculture days i have heard enough of them like no actually more stories now.

58:54 But not the same old story that we're familiar with, not the adulation of rock stars or one more recounting of Timothy Leary. What we need is to uncover the juice and the meat of the counterculture because those are our meaning like educated white, not from indigenous cultures. Those are our ancestors. That's our lineage. That's our tradition and people appreciate those things when they look at indigenous cultures, oh they have ancestors. They have traditions. They have lineages and you know all these beautiful practice traditions and ideas that have been carried through and that are luckily part of the psychedelic conversation today not as much as they could be

59:46 There's always the issue of appropriation and all that but they are part of the picture we i feel have an obligation also to really understand appreciate. Are elders many of whom are right now can you leave this is the boomer cut off time and A lot of these elders are gone, but some of them aren't. And so it's actually a really important time to recover and understand these stories and new stories different stories. And so blotter is a different story It's about artists, people making these images. People who want anonymity because they're inside the acid trade. What are their values? What is their relationship to God? What is their relationship to truth or to honor and there are really different stories and so I was really blessed to be able to not just look at

1:00:36 this cool print media but uncover a lot of stories of individuals who are operating in this very far out domain but doing it away that has value for us today. Yeah, that's a great pitch. I think it's a really creative avenue to get into a crowded space There's lots of psychedelic and LSD books but you're right? I don't know any about blotters and It's also something that kind of went by the wayside I also don't know anyone of my generation who has taken acid that way That I know of And there is something to be said about aesthetics and art and inspiration and psychedelics like it's all kind of

1:01:12 in there and so yeah, I look forward to getting into that but thank you for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure. I appreciate it! Yeah thanks Greg And boom goes the dynamite, Eric Davis the Californian counterculture commentator. A very highly requested guest actually ever since his book High Weirdness came out Well I finally asked him and he had this blotter book coming out and i thought well we can probably thread the needle back and forth between this new release and some of the older work and I'd say it was pretty successful It's been a while since we did a psychedelic focused show and its kinda good to go back to the roots you know

1:01:55 I am one of those people who's had a lot of skepticism around LSD in particular because of its history and lab synthesization, and the work of people like Dave McGowan and John Patash. Obviously i'm more skeptical of that university-sponsored biopharma psycho intelligence network than ever before So when I get interview requests from like the doctors in that space, yeah. Usually decline. I always have mixed feelings around these subjects now but i think Eric strikes a good balance for me and it's just interesting to talk to someone who really does know so much about that culture and puts LSD in particular in a well-educated and positive light. I also thought he made two really good points on the pro side

1:02:45 One being that you can't really put ayahuasca in the natural category when it does need to be combined and brewed up by human hands. That's not exactly a natural, unadulterated substance and maybe it's not fair to hold LSD up to some different standard just because it also requires human hands But the other interesting point was about the dealers or the propagators of LSD that they do feel more like they're on a mission to make the world better and to make more people see the world through the psychedelic lens, which from their perspective is a radical improvement.

1:03:31 It isn't so much about the money, that is a fair point at least in my anecdotal experience I would say that. Now i can even say that about weed obviously the cartels have been big into that but when it comes to LSD In particular its interesting and maybe noteworthy That those dealers tend to be motivated by more than just the profit Those were couple of new ways to look at for me And Eric has written about such an expansive range of subjects that I knew we'd have plenty of stuff to fold in. and i've gotta say his trash can icon analogy, and his preference for the word interface over facade... That really stuck out to me as useful too! As is the idea of taking things seriously but not literally So a lot to like, and I know that Eric hasn't always been kind to the conspiracy culture in his writings

1:04:26 Much like Mitch Horowitz. But I am well aware of conspiracy culture's worst tendencies Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy and we take it too far, and we over-speculate And these things aren't a problem for me! I consider the faith based trust in a corrupt and sinister system to be the bigger problem or the more dangerous mental attunement But sometimes a person might latch on to that conspiracy-minded, paranoid, erratic dangerous word salad description. And that is one of our archetypes sure it's the one the system loves to highlight and overexpose but it's not like it's a total fabrication and there's nothing to it so when I came across something like that I would just pretend I didn't see it and keep reading the material that I liked

1:05:16 He's a really good writer though and I just wanted to make clear that his sub stack is Burning Shore. Obviously there's a link in the show notes but Burning Shores, which i know came out of my mouth at least once, Is the name for the Horizon Forbidden West DLC so Freudian slip! My bad In higher side news I have been adding a free plus show from The Archives To the Free Show RSS feed at the end of every month Really just as a promotional preview of just how much better the two hour shows really are. April's was with our guy Chris Knowles, Lucifer Technologies and The MK Ultra Terrestrials A real THC classic And the only way to get these free plus shows or to even see them anywhere is to be subscribed to the Free Show RSS feed So basically by being subscribed in a podcast app

1:06:11 which 95% of the listeners are anyway. But for those ones that aren't, I don't really know where you're listening but you're going to want to listen in one of those apps for the added benefit of those free plus shows so look for that if you weren't aware but as far as the most recent show i put out and how it was received by the plus raters Greg Reiss, cyclical cataclysm the big secrets and a grand unified conspiracy theory of everything well you know it was a good one confirmed by the 4.8 love to see that mmm it doesn't get much better I want to keep the people happy and I want to know that we're pretty well aligned on what we all think is the best of the best and I would put Greg Reiss up there

1:06:59 He's fun. He can talk about pretty much anything we hold similar perspectives on the big picture stuff Can't really ask for much more and last but not least let's do the meetup calendar thing Hiresidemeetups.com anyone can go there and check the events that are upcoming or make their own You don't have to be a plus member at all sometimes that isn't totally clear But here's what? We got Salem, Virginia on May 12th people are meeting up at Parkway Brewing May 16th, the monthly recurring Flame International Restaurant Meetup in LA. May 19th a casual meet and greet at The Witch's Hat in South Lyon Michigan. May 23rd Pasadena California at the Yerth Cafe. May 25th Minneapolis Minnesota at Indeed Brewing and we'll call it right there even though there are several for June already

1:07:54 It's a beautiful thing. Podcast listening is such a solo experience, well this is an opportunity for you to find some new local friends based on a mutual love of THC why not? And with that I'm getting out of here big thanks to Eric Davis once again let him know if you enjoyed it check out his sub stack for some really compelling stuff that's well written and of course Blotter is the new book Hope you had a good time, I've done my part. Your move psychedelic weaponizers drug use demonizers and boring baseline consciousness contemporaries Your fucking mood.

1:08:51 You get to your desk and your boss says it's a mess And you soul slowly goes to a place where nothing grows When you think he's not around, you insert a SETI sound The OM says turn it down and you say its just the higher side chats Who do ya think could be invited? To Bohemia Grove. To a Bilderberg club Who do ya think could be invited By a Rothschild to a party on a submarine Diving down To the center of the earth Through the Marianas Trench Your teeth begin to clench From the sulfurous stench The mask you're given doesn't fit Because you're not one of them

1:09:47 Starting today, you'll make plans to get away. There's no one to hold you down and the what-ifs start to drown Then you wake to the glare of a cofluorescent stare And the light winks at you cause its life is almost through But it's holding on to quit time just like you It's time for the High Side Chats! the