This week I continue my series of psychedelic elder confessors with the great Dennis McKenna – author of the classic book, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna.

Dennis, the younger brother of Terence, was featured in my previous book, Psychedelic Medicine, discussing the plant medicine known in South America as ayahuasca – a potent rain forest concoction containing the active ingredient DMT.

McKenna has conducted research in ethnopharmacology for over 40 years, and our last interview focused on the science of this fascinating substance. However, this recent interview focuses more on Dennis's personal experiences in academia and industry as he gradually found his present niche as a writer, researcher, teacher, and advocate for the study of mind-altering plant medicines.

He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, and was a key investigator on the Hoasca Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca. He is also the younger brother of Terence McKenna. From 2000 to 2017, he taught courses on Ethnopharmacology and Plants in Human affairs as an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. In the spring of 2019, in collaboration with colleagues in Canada and the US, he
incorporated a new non-profit, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. He emigrated to Canada in the spring of 2019 together with his wife Sheila, and now resides in Abbotsford B.C.

Listen at 9 am PACIFIC, as we drop my pre-recorded interview with Dennis McKenna.

Finally, if you know a good candidate for our *Confessions of the Psychedelic Elders* series – or are yourself interested in sharing your story – please contact us at [email protected].

Our distinguished guest on Mind Body Health & Politics today at 9 am PST is Dr. Dean Edell– a pioneer in the field of health broadcasting, and my very inspiration for this program.

I was inspired by Dean Edell because he had the courage to speak to America with the truth, integrity, and warmth that many of us valued in our doctors. Listeners called in with questions and they received straightforward honest answers. When he did not know an answer, he said so, and he then said he would find out... and he did.

Dr. Dean Edell actually requires little introduction, since his syndicated radio program aired live for 31 years – from 1979 to 2010 – and was the second most listened to radio talk show in America for much of the 1990s. The program was syndicated on over 200 stations across the country. His television program, Dr. Dean, aired on NBC beginning in 1992.

"Dr. Dean's" medical CV included an M.D. from Cornell University Medical School in 1967, a private ophthalmology practice in San Diego, and a teaching position in anatomy at UC San Diego – all before leaving the practice of medicine in the 1970s to pursue his true love of communicating information.

During the '70s, Dr. Dean lived in a vintage bus as a hippie, experimenting with different lifestyles, including organic farming, painting, and the topic of this morning's broadcast – psychedelic exploration.

Later, after starting a jewelry and antique shop to supplement his income, Dean served as medical director of the Sacramento County Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation Center. A co-worker introduced him to the owner of a small music station, where he would begin his career as the on-air personality America grew to know and love.

Concerned with declining scientific literacy in the United States, he railed against pseudoscience and magical thinking – fad diets and unproven healing methods – while promoting research into the therapeutic use of marijuana and psychedelic drugs.

In 2010, Dean retired from media broadcasting and now lives in rural Mendocino County.

I am deeply honored to have Dean Edell – my neighbor, a fellow member of a growing tribe of psychedelic elders – on Mind Body Health & Politics.

This morning (9 am Pacific) I continue the Psychedelic Elders series with the latest confessor, my dear friend Cliff Barney (92 years old).

Cliff is a former journalist who has written for major U. S. dailies, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Hearst-run San Francisco Examiner, and covered the semiconductor and computer revolutions in Silicon Valley as a bureau manager for McGraw-Hill’s Electronics magazine. He studied and taught at the San Francisco Gestalt Institute, and holds an M.S. in counseling from California State College, Hayward.

He was born in New Bedford in 1929 and grew up in Rhode Island, the only child of a father who was the first of his family to leave the farm in 250 years in Swansea, Mass., and a mother whose family emigrated from Scotland in the late 19th century. Though neither of his parents got past the fifth grade in school, they nonetheless managed to send him to Dartmouth College, from which he graduated with an A.B. in 1951.

He has written about the press, aging, and Latin American politics in a blog, Cliff’s Notes, and about contemporary Mayan culture at carolinamccall.com, the website he runs with his artist wife.

I welcome Jerry B. Brown, PhD and Julie Brown, coauthors of The Psychedelic Gospels.

Jerry B. Brown, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and the Founding Professor of Anthropology at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, where he teaches an online course on “Psychedelics and Culture.” Professor Brown researches, writes and teaches on psychedelics and religion as well as on psychedelic therapy.

Hear about their extensive research throughout Europe as well as their Confessions as Psychedelic Elders and why they think this is an exceptional time for psychedelics. Jerry and Julie are married and are veteran psychonauts as well as diligent scholarly researchers.

For the Covid Update I discuss the variants and vaccinations.

I also interview the distinguished clinical psychologist, author and researcher, Dr. Thomas B. Robert’s on his very personal experiences with psychedelics. This interview is part of an upcoming book: Confessions of Psychedelic Elders.

Tom’s research investigates psychedelic mind-body states for the leads they provide for learning, cognition, intelligence, creativity, mental health, and abilities that reside in them.

Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., is professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University and a former visiting scientist at Johns Hopkins. The coeditor of Psychedelic Medicine and the author of Psychedelic Horizons, he has spoken at international conferences on psychedelics, consciousness, and psychedelic science.

As I continue my series of interviews with the "Psychedelic Elders" with Wisconsin-based psychologist, Dr. Allan Ajaya.

Allan received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He followed this with a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, in the Psychiatry Department.

Early experiences with psychedelics led him to discover how transcendent experiences can free one from identifying with his contracted personality. He reports having taken over 150μg of LSD on more than 900 occasions, and once accidentally ingested a mega-mega-dose of 5,000μg (Warning: do NOT try this at home).

However, he discovered that the ability to see beneath the veneer of consensual reality, to the archetypal realm, and to experience the underlying unity of all that exists, using psychedelics (even very large doses) is short lived.

He turned toward spiritual practices as a way of remaining in transpersonal awareness. He studied with with Eastern spiritual teachers, notably, Chogyam Trungpa, Swami Satchidananda, and Swami Rama. He was initiated as a swami on the banks of the Ganges, in Rishikesh, India. For the next twenty years he periodically travelled to India, for further study, to teach, and to deepen his meditation.

Allan is also a mentor for professionals who are learning to be psychedelic therapists. He is interested in how entheogens (another word for psychedelics), psychotherapy, and self-inquiry compliment one another in opening us to the intelligence that manifest as all that is. He is author of Healing the Whole Person and Yoga Psychology: A Practical Guide to Meditation. Go to BeingAwareness.org for a full list of Allan's books and to contact him.

Following my delightful interview with New York City psychoanalyst Charley Wininger, during which he openly spoke about his decades of responsible, recreational experimentation with psychedelic medicines, I am inspired to conduct a series of interviews with prominent psychotherapists, authors, and other public figures on their personal use of psychedelics, entitled “Confessions of Psychedelic Elders.”

On Tuesday, December 15, 2020 (9am PACIFIC), we will hear the confessions of two nationally-known doctors, David Geisinger and Howard Levene.

Dr. David L. Geisinger, is the 82-year-old author of Kicking It: The New Way to Stop Smoking and Permanently Going The Distance: Finding and Keeping Lifelong Love, written with his life partner, Dr. Lonnie Barbach.

Dr. Howard I. Levene – 85-year-old former Commander and medical officer in the U.S. Navy – is founder of Diabasis House, and a faculty member at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and Department of Psychiatry, UCSF Medical School.

My guest on Mind Body Health & Politics is Charley Wininger, LP, LMHC – a licensed psychoanalyst and mental health counselor specializing in relationships and communication skills – about his new book Listening to Ecstasy.

Recognized as “The Love Doctor” by the New York Times, he’s been treating couples and individuals in his Manhattan and Brooklyn offices for 30 years. Although Charley does not use MDMA in his practice, he is open about his own personal, "responsible recreational" usage, and he lays out the guidelines for such use in the book.
Our discussion will focus on the "chemical connection" produced by MDMA, how it can strengthen marriages and relationships, as well its potential for aiding in the process of graceful aging.

Finally, we will revisit the question of how a renewal of psychedelic research and experimentation can alleviate the loss of community in our modern world.

Dr. Richard Louis Miller interviews Tim Scully and Michael Randall – two major historical ​figures in the "War on Drugs."

​Tim Scully was the scientist taught to make LSD in quantity by LSD pioneer Owsley Stanley and Michael Randall was the leader of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love whose world wide LSD distribution network financed the Weather Underground to successfully break Tim Leary out of Federal Prison where he was serving time for drug offenses. Both Scully and Randall served time in Federal Prison.