Here's Dennis McKenna. Watch and weep all those who doubted the insights and honesty of the MetanoiaMan. At the 5:10 mark he states, "The only difference between Psilocin and DMT is one molecule that allows Psilocin to be orally active WITHOUT a MAO inhibitor, and at higher dosages, you are in tryptamine land." Mushrooms, Ayahuasca, DMT, all get you into that place. Now stop your ignorant yapping and realized Ayahuasca and high dose mushrooms is the same experience. Stop fetishizing Ayahuasca as something new and different worth a ten hour plane ride. Pleased to educate all my Psychedelic Brothers and sisters...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yF2eJP_C4U
Did you stop watching the very video you cite at 6:10? From 6:10 to the end Dennis McKenna describes some significant differences between DMT/ayahuasca and mushrooms.
Have you done high dose mushrooms, low dose mushrooms, smoked DMT or taken ayahuasca/pharmahuasca? A friend of a friend is a veteran of hundreds of mid dose and a dozen or so high dose mushroom trips, the same number of mid and high dose LSD trips, a dozen or so breakthrough smoked DMT experiences and a half dozen pharmahuasca experiences, and WITHOUT A DOUBT, there are notable differences in the experiences.
First, the use of smoked DMT is unique, 2 minutes up, 10 minutes experience in a completely different, alien environment, and then 15-20 minutes down to virtually normal except for the general sense of well being, understanding and oneness that it leaves you with. This experience is unlike anything that any dose of ingested mushrooms will give you in both intensity, qualitative experience of being rocketed into another dimension and then returning, and duration.
Mushrooms and orally ingested DMT with an MAO inhibitor, or IV DMT, are much more similar but still very different experiences in reliably predictable ways. As McKenna states in the very video you cite to assert their sameness, the high dose mushroom experience provides more of a download of information and experience with no included plan for corrective action. Ayahuasca/pharmahuasca on the other hand not only leaves you with information and understanding of some or many things in your life and of the universe, it also gives you both the knowledge of certain actions or thought patterns that you need to change and, more important, the strong desire and motivation to change them. This motivation to make positive changes is one reason that ayahuasca/pharmahuasca can be so useful in treating chemical dependence, psychological addiction, depression, and other psychological and psychophysical illnesses, ailments, and maladaptive behaviors. This desire and motivation to act differently and make changes is one's life is something that is mostly lacking in the mushroom experience. Mushrooms are much more of an intellectual exercise or experiment. It can certainly have beneficial effects and lead to action and change in one's life, but that will mostly be dependent on how you choose to process and act upon the insights you gain from your mushroom experience, if you choose to at all. On the other hand, the cathartic life changing experiences, understanding, motivation and inspiration one gets from ayahuasca/pharmahuasca is an inherent part of the drug's effects. This is why I would describe mushrooms as providers of great insight and understanding, and ego dissolution, and describe ayahuasca/pharmahuasca as all those things plus tremendous psychophysical healing properties as well. Mushrooms are a tool, ayahuasca/pharmahuasca is a medicine.
The following is admittedly anecdotal evidence, but it is still data and evidence nonetheless. It simply cannot be given the same weight as a controlled quantitative study, but when considered alongside the reports and experiences of others over time it can still be valuable evidence and information. In the case of native South American shamans, we are talking thousands of years of anecdotal and culturally transmitted information and knowledge of this sort which simply cannot be denied. My FOAF helped detox and prepare two of his/her friends to enter a non-12 step addiction treatment program, one for oxycontin and one for crack and oxy, with the use of 75mg smoked DMT. The results were unexpected and astounding. Both had been to "rehab" twice before, both were binging the week before intake in order to party as much as possible before their sequestration. Both knew the ropes and were already planning how they would beat the system, smuggle drugs in, or find ways to get high or zoned out off their addiction treatment meds or their medications for other unrelated health issues. Both had complete reversals in attitude and desire to both enter their programs, comply with the requirements and be successful in stopping their life damaging and truly no longer enjoyable addicted dependent lifestyles and behaviors. They both smoked the DMT simply expecting a powerful drug experience as part of their last minute binging and were not at all predisposed to how they felt afterwards. They were both truly shocked by both the experience itself and how it affected them. My friend who gave it to them had not really planned to, but did so to keep them both from going out and scoring more crack and oxy and with the hope that it might provide some insight. . No one involved had any expectation of the complete turn around in perspective and desire to change for the better. My FOAF has little doubt that the same result would not have occurred through the use of high dose psilocybin which would have lasted 8-12 hours and left their bodies drained and tired the next day compared to the 30 minute DMT experience that actually left both feeling more together, clear headed and much, much happier about their prospects and programs they were entering than they had been just 30 minutes before which had been the result of years of abuse and over a week of truly excessive life threatening binge behavior.
If you have not done these substances yourself or personally witnessed their effects you should not comment on them. If you choose to rely on information provided by others such as Dennis McKenna, then you need to rely on ALL the information they provide, not just parts of it.
Also, I would like to point out the work of Alexander Shulgin as a whole. Both Tihkal and Pihkal are detailed works describing the significant differences in effects that result from one atom or one electrons shift from one position to another within a molecule. Shulgin worked creating molecules never tested before by shifting and changing their elements in the most minimal ways possible and then testing them on himself, his wife and friends to assess their differences. You should read them both and then you will not be so quick to state that a tiny difference in structure is inconsequential, or just listen what McKenna has to say in the last minute of the Youtube video YOU cited.
My response is not meant to be combative or argumentative. My hope is simply to provide the contrary information and experience I possess for consideration by both you and other readers. Thank you. One love, much love.
