Joe Rogan - Nick Kroll on Going to Burning Man

But but I was like, you know what I'm going up Burning Man. I'm gonna try acid I went with my buddy with my college roommate Neither of us had done it before a guy had given it to us who I was like I've done this acid I know how to do it. He's like I recommend even taking the summer's acid and listening to classical music and eating fruit That was his and I was like, all right I was like I listen to classical music and eat fruit Yeah, and I was like I like classical music and I like fruit. So I was like this sounds great I was like so we're out in the fucking desert and we eat it on our last day and Have you been to Burning Man? No, I Thought it was I was kind of blown away. I found it. I've I enjoyed it very very much Fucking weird. I mean, it's like sure but it's I don't know it was like People executing whatever they're doing incredibly well, and there's a lot of different versions of it and stuff, but it's kind of There's a lot of pranksters there like there's it's actually not it's like there's a hippie dippy quality to it But then there's some real people kind of fucking with people in a fun way that I got a kick out of but we took Them took acid at like, I don't know for and we start we're driving around the desert, you know You're everyone's on bikes. You're just on a bike driving around. Did you have to wear a mask? No, this the dust was fine It was cool and like we start kind of feeling it and that I I've had visuals on mushrooms before but this all of a sudden The meltiness of everything started to set in and the W done acid in the desert before no never in the desert It's it's a good good place. It's a good place for it just cuz like visually what's happening is like It's pretty interesting. Like we went we driving around on bikes and we see these Immediately then like some couple is like can you take a picture of us as we like try to do a duo yoga? Pose with the sunset. I'm like, okay. I'm trying to Okay, I think I I think this is what you want You know And then we drive away from there and there these like porn stars who worked to want pictures of that or taking pictures themselves And I was like we're like, you know We're in the Burning Man spirit like we'll give them the gift of our music and like they don't want they're not they don't Want I'm not even hitting nothing. I'm just like literally like driving around We've got our little like, you know, our little Bluetooth speaker playing classical music and they And then we go and sit and and we're just now starting to peek right at sunset in the desert and it's like It was it was like oh this feels like some version of what heaven feels like, you know like where the the sky the colors in the sky are unbelievable and and the All of a sudden all the desert all the sand, you know This it's like this real fine alkaline dust and it's like you feel like you're seeing some really grid work You know, I don't know if you have that feeling where you're like, oh I can feel like I'm seeing some underlying dynamics of the Structural stuff. I've seen them on mushrooms. Yeah. Yeah where it feels like you're Witnessed to the pattern of things Like there's some sort of yeah the structure of things yeah, and that's what it felt like you were like you're looking at this like this Crazy, you know, you've got here. Yes You're you're seeing the the sand this very fine light sand with the really red mountains and then the blue really crisp blue sky with with The the white clouds and and it felt like you were like, oh I'm seeing some structural shit. That's going on It's it was quite and we're listening to this guy Eric Satieves like a classical musician and eating cherries This is pretty fucking sweet. I was like, it's cool that you followed it to a T you went with the fruit and Let's just have it, you know why not and I think classical music is but it was interesting because I I didn't so then So then the Sun sets and it's like what even at the height of it It didn't feel warm like mushrooms have felt it felt like Clinical clinical exactly that's exactly the worry about that It's very interesting that you said he took it riding bikes too because that's in a lot of ways an homage to Albert Hoffman That's how he found out about it, you know He synthesized LSD and you know got it in his skin when he was working with it and then rode his bike home and On the bike ride home realized. Oh my god. Whoa fucking tripping balls here Yeah without even knowing what tripping was. Yeah, I mean he he knew something was going on made it I mean he made I believe Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it the initial reason for creating LSD I think they were they were trying to come up with a drug to induce labor I'm pretty sure that was the original I think that's what they were working on and in the process synthesized LSD and LSD as a compound and it's one of those Unbelievably potent compounds where someone I think was Terrence We kind of described it as the the power to weight ratio is so huge That it's like if you had one ant that dismantled the Statue of Liberty in 30 minutes Like that's how That's how potent LSD is. Yeah. Well, I mean I took you actually said the Empire State Building Jesus I took a I mean I took a responsible amount like I was like, I don't need to like lose my mind here I've only micro dosed it. Yeah, I've only well one one time I doubled the mic but still it was a small dose It was enough to just like It is I had planned the synthesis of the compound when the intention of obtaining a circulatory and respiratory Stimulant Hoffman wrote the new substance however arose no special interest in our pharmacologics Pharmacologists and physicians testing was therefore discontinued, huh? Why did I think 25th attempt aptly named LSD 25 Not knowing he was not after like a psychedelic drug. No, I don't believe so dosed at 4 20 p.m. Y'all look at it Look at that Yeah, he does himself a 420 Most intense from 6 to 8 p.m. During that time he rode home on his bicycle fuck. It's a mess It feels great. So the so we we we sort of are peaking Around sunset and it's like it feels like I'm with my buddy of 20 years. I've known him since college We've gone through our lives together And there's that thing when you eat when you trip where you're like that space-time continuum thing There's like it feels less linear time where you're like I'm having thoughts that I had 20 years ago and I'm having them today and I'm gonna have them in 20 years and like Where this the linear nature of all this feels a little less, you know, and I'm with my buddy who's been like a witness to my life You know, so we're having this great large conversation about our lives and all that shit and the Sun setting it's beautiful And then it gets dark and it's like, all right, let's go watch the man burn now Like, you know that burning man everybody gathers 70,000 people gather you go to this big central area Where the man who's been sitting there for seven days is then there's like a crazy fire starter show fireworks go off and then you burn this like 30 foot man and it's dark and it's night and and It's like it was the other side. It felt like heaven and hell, you know like where you're all of a sudden and that's where I felt like it was weird cuz like that's where I felt the Clinical thing where I'm like, I feel sort of high but I now feel actually quite in a weird way quite sober and I'm I felt like I'm witnessing these things and I feel removed from them in a way that when you're I feel like when you're on mushrooms in some way you're like you feel kind of inside of the the flow of of nature and but I was also like It's the end by the time the end of burning man Like there are people there all week and building it and putting all the stuff together an artist It's interesting and then like there is definitely of a section of burning man, which is just like super wealthy People showing up for like debauchery and and like to be around Models who are nearly naked and it's like and that's when and you look around and and the aesthetic of burning man is like somewhere between like Mad Max game of Thrones and Tron It's somewhere in that space which is fucking rad but then when you're kind of on acid and you're kind of looking around and I had this feeling of like uh The rich are here to collect their spoils Do you think that having the the great experience of seeing the sky and the desert and all the Beauty and when you're like wow, this is amazing And then when you have something like a fire and then on top of that you have a giant group of people Yeah, it seemed and then you realize there's not really a lot of law enforcement here Like this seems like you could be completely chaotic Yeah, it's and it is like the fire itself is protected because I think someone ran into the fire last year. Yeah Yeah, fucking killed himself. Jim ran right in that fire. This year was like this year was pretty well regulated Like because we had seen a couple nights before at sunrise There was like, you know, they have all this it's what I found to it It was like the kind of the duality of it all like burning man feels very much like there's this like sacred and profane shit all happening together and it's Oftentimes pretty cool and like Sunrise a couple mornings earlier. There's this like 20 foot wooden dragonfly statue that someone had built and They are they lighted on fire, you know, they're just like now we're gonna burn it like some dude It's been a year making the statue now we're gonna fucking burn it and so there there were park rangers all around it and So there's no getting inside they lighted on fire and then the Sun rises over to the left And then you looked at I looked up and there were like 30 people parachuting out of the sky At sunrise and you're just like what the fuck is going on? But it was me. It was really cool I really I enjoyed that but by the time Saturday rolled around, you know, there is something about fire That's very primal and you can feel like there's like there's some pagan quality to it all and it's cool but it's like you could feel like everybody's like energy kind of getting like Little darker and more primal and and I hit a point where I was like, alright guys I gotta I gotta get the out of this like 70 fat and I also had a fear of like I wasn't scared of the fire I was scared of like I was seated watching and I was like I'm scared of a trampling Yeah, that's what I mean by like the giant group of people and then also with a fire and and then a gathering When when you're dealing with a big gathering, there's always the potential for someone acting out whether they just need a lot of attention or they go crazy or I mean think about Adverse reactions to psychedelics. Yes and 70,000 people the potential for something going haywire is pretty high Yeah What I found interesting over the whole week was because I was pretty skeptical I didn't go in I went in being like I want to experience this thing that a lot of people have Experience. I just want to like know what that experience is But what I found fascinating is there's there's some law enforcement around there's some Rangers around But there's really no it's pretty anarchical like there's really very little But in as in so much there's actually Like some unspoken rules that basically everybody's kind of following Which I found kind of fascinating where you're like, there's no everybody's on bikes there are crazy art cars running around with like Fucking shooting fire into the air. There's no there seems to be no like regulatory board being like, let me make sure that the your crazy 30-foot three-tiered iron car is up to Yeah There seems to be very little of that and yet it all seems to function Pretty smoothly like there's like some unspoken Acceptance of certain rules. I'm sure there are people freaking out. I know there are people like But it's mostly people like being like I took too much drugs And I didn't hydrate and like they go to the medic and there but like weirdly I found it all operating pretty smoothly But that's when that the the acid then sort of turned a bit where I was There's some darkness here that I want to get away from it's It seems like whenever you have a situation where you get a bunch of people that want to do something Outside the norm they want to get together and they want to experience something That's just they're bored of society and this is their big break and it seems like there's there's so much Expectations and there's kind of a code that these people want to follow and that code is that you know It's almost like a utopian vision of a better society even if it's for only a week or so Yeah, and I think it works for a week. Like I don't know if society I don't know how a society would function and like largely lawless I mean the biggest rules are like don't put your trash anywhere like there's no garbage cans anywhere Don't pee outside like pee in a porta potty pee in a jug take it back dump it out because it's like no mark no leave no no mark and It works, but I guess it it works for a week where you're like everybody's agreed for that week and then you go back to your life, but like I Don't know I got a fucking kick out of it like there's and there's you know, there's like we there's one night You know, they're all these crazy light shows at night It it becomes like this crazy Tron like light show everywhere You look you at the horizon for as far as you can see is just like people on bikes that are all lit up crazy Art cars crazy pieces of art that are lit up And it's really wild But like you go we you know you ride around bikes and there are also and we like roll up to this area where there's a Like a mechanical arm holding these lights that are LED lights that are in this, you know in a circle and you lie below it and it's like a light show, you know But it's this like vortex light show. So everybody's kind of looking up at and it's really trippy and fun You're very much like well, it's a trippy and I we I laid down I was like this is rad and then this dude rolls up my friend sees this you know those costumes of like Those like Tyrannosaurus Rex like that. They're inflated and they kind of are like, you know You see like dudes like walk around they're like individual sized things, but they're like it's super weird So I look at this guy and I start cracking up and my buddy just took that Tyrannosaurus Rex and walked him through the middle of everybody having their quiet trippy moment, you know It's like this Tyrannosaurus Rex just kind of rolls through it. He's just like He was here before you you know, it's like so it's kind of fun. It's just like Everybody's like having their trippy moment and then it gets fucked up and then a minute later They're back to their trippy moment, you know, I got a real I got a fucking kick out of it. It was weird