We get more irate mail on this one issue ...
Link is to an article ("In Memoriam: Terence McKenna") on our website. This article was one reprinted in our book on page 229-230 for those of you following along at home.
In the piece, we state that Terence's death was "probably" caused by his heavy use of DMT.
The article on the website, which came out first, caused such a steady stream of comments about that statement that we softened it a touch for the book, although not much. For instance we were sure to mention that it was an opinion, and that we meant not just casual but chronic use of DMT. Meanwhile people are still reading the website and writing us emails like this one:
i just came across your site while surfing. I like the name gonzo science but after reading your piece about the passing of Terence McKenna i wonder if the marriage of science and gonzo was such a good idea. You are bluntly stating that his drug use was the cause of his death. In no way will science back up that claim. Show me studies that show damage to the frontal lobes from ... dmt, you will not be able to. I agree that the man was pretty crazy, and believe all his ideas are little more than entertaining. But what you are stating is without any substance (pun intended!).
I hope you might think about changing your text, so as not to add even more misinformation and confusion about what are and what aren't the real dangers of drug use.
So you see, the people writng these emails are mostly drug law liberalization advocates like us, which is ironic.
Look people, for the record, that line in the Terence McKenna piece is mostly expressing my (Jim R) opinion. It is a considered opinion. Allen is sympathetic but generally more reluctant to use the word "probably." We will probably wind up changing that line in any future printings to express a shade more doubt, okay?
But what Allen and I are agreed upon is that when the world's most visible living advocate of exotic psychedelics dies of an extremely rare brain cancer, it is the smart choice to closely examine the case. Everyone knows that a single case study can't be generalized to the general population, but only a fool would continue smoking mad DMT without at least raising an eyebrow after Terence died the way he did.
The irate letter-writers are right to caution against a fearmongering approach to drugs. This is of course the farthest thing from our mind since in our "In Memoriam: Carl Sagan" piece, we praise Sagan's use of cannabis as a source and inspiration for scientific insights, as Sagan himself attested.
The irate letter-writers all point to the fact that humankind has ingested DMT-containing plants and plant mixtures for eons. And so, they argue, DMT may be considered as safe as cannabis or mushrooms, which are considered GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) by most well-informed people.
The salient point I want to make is this: Terence was mostly smoking synthetic DMT, okay? He was not downing the DMT-containing brew ayahuasca every time he wanted to do it, since by his own admission his ayahuasca experiences were relatively tame next to his experiences on the synthetic, lab-produced DMT molecule.
The difference may have been enough to kill him. Produced in the lab, DMT will be bereft of its natural context of the other molecules and enzymes and alkaloids and whathaveyou that it has been traditionally consumed with as part of a whole plant. Humanity's GRAS history with the DMT molecule has been largely spent with DMT supported by, and couched within, a rich natural context of accompanying plant constituents. Stripped of those, pared down to the bare naked molecule and replicated in the lab, its long-term safety is not necessarily going to be assured in the same way.
The case in my mind could essentially be the same as those experiments to see if Vitamin A could arrest advanced cancer. I mean hey, Vitamin A could only help, right? Hell, it's in carrots and tomatoes and those ain't killing anybody! So they got a synthesized bunch of Vitamin A and shot it into these advanced cancer cases, and had to halt the experiments when it became evident that it was killing them even faster. Same thing with a recent study on the supposedly benevolent and GRAS use of Vitamin E.
I submit that the same phenomenon may have been at work in the case of Terence McKenna. The systems theorists, naturopaths, and holistic health crowd are starting to understand this effect way better than practitioners of mainstream allopathic medicine, or mechanistic chemistry, or physics. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
In the piece, we state that Terence's death was "probably" caused by his heavy use of DMT.
The article on the website, which came out first, caused such a steady stream of comments about that statement that we softened it a touch for the book, although not much. For instance we were sure to mention that it was an opinion, and that we meant not just casual but chronic use of DMT. Meanwhile people are still reading the website and writing us emails like this one:
i just came across your site while surfing. I like the name gonzo science but after reading your piece about the passing of Terence McKenna i wonder if the marriage of science and gonzo was such a good idea. You are bluntly stating that his drug use was the cause of his death. In no way will science back up that claim. Show me studies that show damage to the frontal lobes from ... dmt, you will not be able to. I agree that the man was pretty crazy, and believe all his ideas are little more than entertaining. But what you are stating is without any substance (pun intended!).
I hope you might think about changing your text, so as not to add even more misinformation and confusion about what are and what aren't the real dangers of drug use.
So you see, the people writng these emails are mostly drug law liberalization advocates like us, which is ironic.
Look people, for the record, that line in the Terence McKenna piece is mostly expressing my (Jim R) opinion. It is a considered opinion. Allen is sympathetic but generally more reluctant to use the word "probably." We will probably wind up changing that line in any future printings to express a shade more doubt, okay?
But what Allen and I are agreed upon is that when the world's most visible living advocate of exotic psychedelics dies of an extremely rare brain cancer, it is the smart choice to closely examine the case. Everyone knows that a single case study can't be generalized to the general population, but only a fool would continue smoking mad DMT without at least raising an eyebrow after Terence died the way he did.
The irate letter-writers are right to caution against a fearmongering approach to drugs. This is of course the farthest thing from our mind since in our "In Memoriam: Carl Sagan" piece, we praise Sagan's use of cannabis as a source and inspiration for scientific insights, as Sagan himself attested.
The irate letter-writers all point to the fact that humankind has ingested DMT-containing plants and plant mixtures for eons. And so, they argue, DMT may be considered as safe as cannabis or mushrooms, which are considered GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) by most well-informed people.
The salient point I want to make is this: Terence was mostly smoking synthetic DMT, okay? He was not downing the DMT-containing brew ayahuasca every time he wanted to do it, since by his own admission his ayahuasca experiences were relatively tame next to his experiences on the synthetic, lab-produced DMT molecule.
The difference may have been enough to kill him. Produced in the lab, DMT will be bereft of its natural context of the other molecules and enzymes and alkaloids and whathaveyou that it has been traditionally consumed with as part of a whole plant. Humanity's GRAS history with the DMT molecule has been largely spent with DMT supported by, and couched within, a rich natural context of accompanying plant constituents. Stripped of those, pared down to the bare naked molecule and replicated in the lab, its long-term safety is not necessarily going to be assured in the same way.
The case in my mind could essentially be the same as those experiments to see if Vitamin A could arrest advanced cancer. I mean hey, Vitamin A could only help, right? Hell, it's in carrots and tomatoes and those ain't killing anybody! So they got a synthesized bunch of Vitamin A and shot it into these advanced cancer cases, and had to halt the experiments when it became evident that it was killing them even faster. Same thing with a recent study on the supposedly benevolent and GRAS use of Vitamin E.
I submit that the same phenomenon may have been at work in the case of Terence McKenna. The systems theorists, naturopaths, and holistic health crowd are starting to understand this effect way better than practitioners of mainstream allopathic medicine, or mechanistic chemistry, or physics. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
posted by Jim Richardson at 4:53 PM
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