Dennis McKenna

Dennis Jon McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist and author.
 * "The consistent "understanding" if you will, that comes home to me when I take psychedelics, especially psilocybin or ayahuasca, is that, we really only comprehend a very small part of reality, and that small part, very imperfectly. Something like, "you monkeys only think you're running the show..." and that is both humbling and reassuring."


 * "I do think psychedelics propel the cultural evolution process... the changes of the last fifty years or so owe a lot to the diffusion of psychedelics into the wider society... and it's still happening. Things like ayahuasca are literally "emerging from the jungle" because they have a very important message for our species... I really think these plants are the way we communicate with the rest of the biosphere...I'm not speaking in any mystical sense here, I'm talking biochemistry. You really have to view these compounds in the larger context. Psychedelics, the natural ones anyway, are plant secondary compounds. A good deal of human history is shaped by human interactions with plant secondary compounds. Contacts between Europe and Asia were about spices, Europe raped the New World to get their hands on their drug and food plants, coca, chocolate, etc., even while vigorously stamping out the "demonic" entheogens." -- http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?smlid=121