Joe Rogan & Dennis McKenna on the Myth of the Gateway Drug

Hello freak bitches. You know, whether it's through warfare or disease or some new government usurping the old power or whether it's through predators and prey and there's always some weird sort of reaction to something gaining too much power. And whether it's ideas or ideologies or patterns, they gain too much power and then something shows up that sort of tends to diminish that and erode the very foundation of it. That's what I feel about psychedelics, that in many ways what they're doing and even the sneaky door, like the people that talk about cannabis being some sort of a gateway drug. It's not a gateway drug to the bad ones. I think if anything, it's a gateway drug to the ones that are going to change the world if it doesn't do it on its own. Yeah, I mean this concept of a gateway drug is, you know, it's just stupid in a sense. This is something that the drug warriors have come up with. Particularly so. I mean, I'm here to tell you coffee is a gateway drug. Alcohol is the biggest one. Probably chocolate ice cream is a gateway drug. We've all taken these things and, you know, look where we are now. Right. So gateway drug, it's just the concept is absurd. If it was not sold in any environment where there were a choice to have all sorts of other illegal drugs, it wouldn't be a gateway drug, would it? No. Well, the alcohol one is the most ridiculous one because it's everywhere and it's the one that inhibits your, or loosens your inhibitions more than any other drug, is responsible for the most foolish behavior. It's everywhere. You can get it at every restaurant. You can get it almost everywhere you go. Even to the point where it's not even recognized as a drug. Yeah, exactly. That's the cognitive dissonance for years. You know, the FDA could not classify tobacco as a drug because it was a different regulatory framework. Well, of course it's a drug, you know, and somebody said, yeah, it's the only drug you can use when used as instructed will kill you. That's hilarious. Isn't it funny that the word drug, I'm not funny, but isn't it problematic at the very least that the word drug is sort of this gigantic blanket that we throw over all these things that perturb consciousness? Right. Well, drug. And that good and bad. Yeah. Positive and negative. No beneficial effects whatsoever and a massive one. This is another reason, this is another example of why this conversation about drugs is so shallow because we're talking about drugs, you know, this completely scary, as you say. Good people don't use drugs. What about which drugs? Why don't we talk about which drugs because there's thousands of drugs. So which one are we talking about or we just ban all drugs? I feel like just calling them drugs is a problem. How could you call DMT the same thing that you call alcohol? That seems to me to be so crazy. It's just not a useful term. Right. And then also, I mean, the problem that they're facing and that we have to acknowledge, which I've been saying a lot lately, is we're made of drugs, right? That's why drugs work. We are made of drugs, right? We're biochemical engines that run on drugs, which are neurotransmitters and hormones and enzymes and all of these things in biochemical system. They're involved with signal transduction, with, you know, organisms are networks of communication. They're mediated by neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters, if you isolated them from the brain, put them into a bottle and sold them, that would be a drug. Well, it is a drug. So this idea that, you know, we are inherently biochemical systems, you know, and people don't want to acknowledge that, but that's the truth. You know, we're made of drugs. So the people that want to have the drug-free America, I'm sorry, you know, we're made out of drugs. Drugs are built into who we are. That's why drugs taken from plants or from the outside have the effects that they have, you know, because they affect these systems that, you know, are big brains. This is kind of a consequence of evolution. You know, we have these enormous brains, you know, that evolve very quickly. And we like novelty, you know. We have all of these brain receptors. We like to stimulate those receptors because it makes us feel good or it's interesting or for all sorts of reasons. We like to tweak our states of consciousness. It's just built into who we are, you know, and it's not a bad thing. Well, this is a problem with the way you're thinking. You have too many facts and you use too much science and you don't have enough Jesus. I'm sorry, excuse me. You don't have enough Jesus in your life. If you had Jesus, you wouldn't need all this nonsense. And then that Jeff Sessions would make sense to you. Right. That may be true, but unfortunately I don't. So yeah, I'll just continue to be deluded and believe in science. Well, it's just so important. Facts and things like that. It's so important that you embrace Jesus and you just won't. I can't do it. I mean, I did it. I'm a recovery Catholic. I've been there. I know the drill. I know the territory.