Name: Joe Rogan Experience #946 - Dennis McKenna
Uploaded: 2017-04-17T22:37:17.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #946 - Dennis McKenna' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-04-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #946 - Dennis McKenna' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-04-17. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #946 - Dennis McKenna

It just seems the problem with the marijuana is five four three two one
Dennis McKenna ladies and gentlemen before we were just discussing how I was
saying that marijuana can be your friend and it can enhance your life
but if if you take too much it's it's such a
Seductive little creature because a little bit of it is like ah, this is nice.
This feels good
But if you get too crazy, especially if you get too crazy with edibles
It'll take you and take you away on this wild journey of
Paranoia and and and you'll it'll lock you up like some people just need to
take a couple weeks off. Just relax
That's always a good idea. It's a good idea, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think people
underestimate cannabis
I think it can be like you say it can really sort of knock you off your center
Especially if it's edible and like all these things you got to learn how to use
it. Yeah
I mean, it's basically that's what you got to do. You'll have to learn how to
use it
But you know, you know, that's my raps. Yeah, it is your rap. It's a great rap.
It really is
It's so important. It's I think it's so important for people to realize that
you gotta let
Like regular you like you like natural
Sober you it's important to be in touch with that
Like you don't want to always be high or always be caffeinated or always be
anything
Well, exactly. I mean, we're you know, people get
You know to these places and they fail to do a reality check on themselves, you
know
I mean I get emails from people all the time said well, I'm you know, life's
been pretty weird lately
I took mushrooms five times last week and you know, I was and it's like dude,
how about you lay off for a while?
Give yourself a chance because you know, they tell these stories and it's like
the idea of okay
Let's find your center go back to baseline lay off the sauce
Whatever it is you're taking and just chill out and try and reef rediscover
your center
It seems like common-sense advice, but people don't do it does seem like common-sense
advice, but common sense is not common
Yes, all you have to do is look around to realize what is it about people
though?
That once they indulge in any sort of a minute, it doesn't even have to be a
substance
It could be an activity like gambling for instance like once it gets in your
bones
It just seems like you're so compelled to just continue that behavior and and
the idea of
Stopping is almost more painful than the idea of wrecking your life. This this
is this is addiction. Yeah, this is basically these things are
reinforcing
They activate those pleasure circuits, you know in in the brain mediated mainly
through dopamine and
All of these I mean that the so-called drugs of abuse, which I think is a
terrible work terrible
But you know the reinforcing drugs the pleasure drugs work directly or
indirectly through the dopamine circuits and the dopamine is like your
Your button for pleasure, you know in the same way that serotonin
It's kind of on the opposite side. It's your button for more like euphoria
feeling good, but not the it doesn't have the the punch I guess that the
Which is why people can get addicted to gambling they can get addicted to sex.
They can get addicted to
Television all of these things. It doesn't have to be substances because they
all hit those same circuits, you know
Except the psychedelics which don't work on that reward circuitry. They work on
a different set of circuits
But yet even with those your behavior patterns can become addictive
And then you can start just doing psychedelics too much and it's not even the
psychedelics that are doing it
It's just this compulsive need to constantly change your state of mind. Mm-hmm
Yeah, that's quite true. And if people you know the way to use psychedelics is
is
There are many ways to use it, but basically use it the thoughtfully, you know,
I mean you can
All the question about recreational use versus spiritual use versus therapeutic
use I mean these are all ways to approach it
And I am not a person who says you must do it this way. You must do it that way
What I do say is do it from an informed place and do
approach it thoughtfully, you know, because I mean in other words don't
You know plan for it respect the medicine in a certain way, you know
Use it in a circumstance where you can learn from the medicine rather than
Have the medicine be sort of a
You know overlay up over whatever else you're doing. I mean this is something
that demands
Attention and I think that's the best way to use psychedelics and for whatever
you know, whatever
Spin you put on it. Is it spiritual is it therapeutic is it recreational is it
shamanic these are all labels the important thing is that
you know, you you you have the you approach the medicine itself the medicine is
the teacher
Right not the sitter not the shaman that's the psychotherapist if they're doing
the right their job correctly
In my opinion their job is to let you have your encounter with the medicine and
the medicine is what you learn from
They're there to facilitate that they can intervene if you get anxious or if
things go on make sure you know nobody comes to the door or that kind of thing
But basically it's to facilitate a learning opportunity where you and your
teacher which is the medicine be at ayahuasca or
mushrooms or whatever can have this
Intense one-on-one interaction, you know
I feel like with psychedelics as well as with all these other things we're
talking about any kind of drug I mean even coffee
Alcohol whatever and behavior patterns all these different things
I think one of the things that happens with human beings is you get so far
along in your life in these behavior patterns
become so
Like tight grooves that are carved into your psyche and then as you become an
adult
Then you start to learn like oh, there's got to be a better way to handle this
Let me figure out how to do this and it's almost like getting a car when you're
really young
And not learning how to drive until you like in your 20s, right?
And so you're just driving this thing it's smashing into trees and grinding the
gears and then somewhere along the line
You're like, oh my god. I'm fucking myself up. I have to figure out a way to do
this correctly
And there's two different approaches. There's one the abstinence approach,
which is very popular people say well
I'm straight edge now
I don't do anything and that's it and I just you know
I just do wheat grass and I run hills and stuff like okay, you could do that,
too
I mean right you can do it you definitely can do that, too, but it's I
Just don't think that there's anything wrong with any of these things
I think there's something wrong with the way we use them and I think it's one
of the inherent problems with things being illegal
Mm-hmm is that we can't discuss this and we don't have people like you or
centers where people can go where people can become
Educated on the proper way to use these drugs or medicines whatever you want to
call them these compounds and get something out of them
That can really be beneficial, right? That's that's exactly right
I mean, I've said this many many times that you know drug education what they
call drug education in this country is a joke because the whole emphasis is on
don't use them
That's absurd. That's like telling you know an 18 year old guy full of
testosterone don't have sex, right?
You know, come on. It's built into the genetics. They're gonna go for that what
you have to do
What they can't bring themselves to acknowledge in the drug education field is
it's not about telling people not to use drugs
It's about teaching people how to use drugs
If they choose to right, I mean like any other skill people have to learn to
drive they have to learn to do yoga
They have to learn to do whatever they do. There's an educational process. I
tell people many times, you know, my shtick is
There is no such thing as a bad drug and that's another problem with the
dialogue. The badness is projected onto the drugs
Drugs are simply compounds with a certain pharmacology. There's no moral aspect
to them. The moral dimension comes and how do people use them?
That's where you know, it's human behavior. That's moral or immoral
I say, you know, there's no such thing as a bad drug
Plenty of bad ways to use drugs
You know, but that comes from the person not the compound
I've been really disturbed lately by these new super potent
painkillers. Oh, it's like fentanyl. Yeah, the stuff that killed Prince and car
fentanyl now is the big menace
fentanyl's bad enough car fentanyl is
Something like a hundred to a thousand times more potent than than fentanyl
what yeah
so a spec literally a
Pinhead or less of the car fentanyl is a lethal dose. Oh my god. Yeah, so this
is
really not good, you know, because I
I am a certainly not an expert on you know, the sources and all this but
apparently this stuff is being made in China
Imported here and they use it to cut heroin because it's so strong but people
are dying left and right
You know because of car fentanyl is far more
Far more toxic than heroin or even fentanyl. So, you know, we're so
You know there is so much I
Don't know so much confusing and fuzzy thinking about the whole drug issue, you
know, for example as long as we're talking about
opiates for the moment, which is not really what I came here to talk about, but
You know, you've heard of cratum. Yeah, right?
Now the DEA and the FDA it's it's a plant it's used in Thailand. It is an opiate
There's no doubt about it. It hits the opiate receptors and
They want to schedule it but the problem is that in Thailand traditional areas.
It's often used to get off of heroin
So it's potentially part of the solution not part of the problem. It's you know,
it's relatively easy to quit and
the big thing about cratum it doesn't cause respiratory depression and
respiratory depression is what kills people from narco, you know from heroin
overdoses it's
the alkaloids and mitragyna do not do that and cratum is currently in those
weird
semi-legal states in this semi-legal state, but the DEA would love to schedule
it but again
They had plans to and there was some pushback about this and people were saying
things like I'm saying wait a minute
Let's take a second look at this. This may be part of the solution
because it could be a kind of
In a sense an herbal methadone. I mean methadone is not the best way but
something that people could substitute and
Then gradually taper off
Cronom has some weird sort of property where at low doses is a stimulant. Yes
I've tried it before but only at low doses. I've had there's a company that
sells it
They've been here we have it right here. Oh, there are lots of companies that
sell it. Yeah, it's this company
Urban ice organics
That's the name of the company
But I take two or three of those and it's like a cup of coffee and it's you
know
Like no weirdness. No, right. I don't feel high that at a low dose
It is that why is that a stimulant who knows just unique pharmacology how
strange though at higher doses?
It's uh, it's definitely an opiate and is it something that impairs motor
skills?
Well, not so much. I mean
Just in the sense that it
It's like being high on morphine or heroin. So it does. I mean, you know
So it really can give you that kind of a feeling absolute
Wow, that's interesting. You know, it hits the opiate receptors
But then it also hits a few other receptors as well, which is part of the
stimulating effect but you know why the pharmaceutical companies are not all
over this plan
I don't understand because
For a long time the the holy grail and drug discovery when it comes to analgesics
is find the narcotic that is
not toxic
you know the analgesic that is not toxic hopefully not addicting but
That's not gonna happen and is there an LD 50 for this stuff. Oh sure. I mean
there's an LD 50 for most things
I don't know for people don't know lethal dose at 50%
Yeah, it would be hard. Yeah
The lethal dose for 50% of the side of the sample
But in the her