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Introduction

During this episode of Psychedelics Today, your hosts Kyle Buller and Joe Moore talk to Zach Leary host of the MAPS podcast and It’s All Happening. We have an incredible time talking to Zach and his worldview, experiences, opinions and much more. It was a very fun time recording with Zach and we hope it can happen again in the near future.

Show Notes

Joe and Kyle discuss Zach’s connections with Ram Dass
Zach Leary calls himself a futurist and we discuss what a futurist is.
- A natural way to continue the narrative of our physical evolution and our spiritual development.
- Cyberspace is an invention as a result of our human condition.
  - The way and the reason we invented it is that we found a need to create another dimension.
- Futurism and transhumanism and embracing the way technology is augmenting the human experience is a great place to be.
Do you see any major problems in psychedelia?
- Overall, it’s a great time to be into psychedelics.
  - There’s so much research and data available to the end-user and the discussion is improving.
  - Many people are starting to be more open about their beneficial relationship with psychedelics.
  - It’s important to get people in the mainstream aware of their beneficial properties.
  - The Ayahuasca fad going on in the U.S. has many people calling themselves shamans, which raised a red flag to Zach.
  - It used to be that going to the medicine man was a common occurrence in any culture.
  - Mysticism didn’t go away, it just got turned into a more doctrinal practice.
The part of the church that bothers Zach is the authoritarian aspect, that there is only one god.
- There’s an element of fanaticism when someone says there’s only one drug that’s worth taking.
- April 19 is the 75th anniversary of the first intentional use of LSD (Bicycle Day).
- We have to start re-thinking about what “natural” means.
  - The human imagination and what it creates is a by-product of nature.
There’s no stopping the technological march, the train has left the station.
- A return to nature can include biodiverse rooftop gardens in New York.
- It’s very hard to get off the grid.
What do we have that’s readily available and sustainable?
- Mushrooms
- LSD
- Other synthetic compounds that don’t bother the rainforest, etc.
Drugs that may not be sustainable:
- Ayahuasca, Peyote, 5-MeO (Sonoran Desert Toad - Bufo Alvarius toad venom)
- Some people are playing fast and loose with 5-MeO
  - There are people who give do things to “patients” that are non-consensual while they are under the effect of the drug.
Psychedelics are often highly individualistic.
- It’s nice to be able to jump in with a shaman, but to what extent?
There is some cultural appropriation here when you take ancient practices and move them into new environments.
- It’s best not to ignore the roots and traditions of these practices but honor them as best as you can.
How do we not make mistakes in psychedelics?
- There’s so much data, examples and role models now.
- There are best practices based on data now.
Zach would like to see less consumption of MDMA.
- People over-consume MDMA.
- More of a concern about bodily harm.
- 2-3 times a year is probably enough.
There are parallel paths going on and if the parallel path of computers and humanity are going on, what does that look like eventually?
What are some of your major influences in the psychedelic world?
- Terence McKenna, Jim Fadiman, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Dennis McKenna
How would you like to see the future of psychedelics evolve?
- We’re seeing the rumblings of what’s to come.
- There’s going to be a firmly legitimate place in the psychiatric world for the psychedelic therapy.
- Hopefully, it carries over into recreational use and cognitive therapy.

Links

About Zach Leary

Zach is the host of both the “It’s All Happening with Zach Leary” podcast and “The MAPS Podcast.” They have helped to cement him as one of the most thought provoking podcasters in the cultural philosophy genre of podcasting. He’s also a blogger/writer, a futurist, spiritualist, a technology consultant and socio-cultural theorist.

In all of Zach’s work he blends his roles as a spiritual aspirant and a futurist into a unique identity all his own. His spiritual background has it’s roots in being a practitioner of bhakti yoga as taught through many of the vedantic systems of Northern India, in particular Neem Karoli Baba as taught by Ram Dass. Through the practice of bhakti yoga he has found keys that unlock doorways that allow the soul to experience it’s true nature of being eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss. In addition to bhakti yoga, Zach is influenced by many different methods and traditions of consciousness exploration ranging from trans-humanism to buddhism and clinical psychology. Zach is also a frequent pundit on the political systems that are fueling todays economic and cultural structures. At the core of all of Zach’s work is the belief that we have been fused together by the collective practice of using technology to expand our species imagination with spirituality and mysticism to define the very nature of who we are.

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