Dennis McKenna: The Chemistry Behind the Coca Leaf

The Many Faces of Coca – Part Two

In Part Two of the Many Faces of Coca series, 3L1T3 and Bryan sit down with renowned ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna to explore the science behind the coca leaf.

Part One focused on history and politics with Wade Davis, this conversation turns to the biology and chemistry of the plant itself.

What actually happens when coca is chewed?
What compounds exist in the leaf besides cocaine?
Why did human cultures independently domesticate coca multiple times?

Dennis breaks down the alkaloid chemistry, pharmacology, and plant symbiosis that shaped coca’s role in Andean societies for thousands of years.

Along the way, the conversation explores:

• The three coca species used by humans
• Why coca and cocaine are chemically and culturally different
• The entourage effect of whole plant medicines
• How alkaline activation changes coca absorption
• Why coca chewing may help treat cocaine addiction
• The scientific questions prohibition has prevented researchers from asking

The result is a clearer picture of a plant that has been misunderstood for over a century.

This episode is Part Two of a three-part series examining coca from history, chemistry, and lived experience.

Part Three will explore how coca prohibition shapes real life in Andean communities with Manuela Picq.

Key Points

• Coca comes from three main domesticated species in the genus Erythroxylum.
• The coca leaf contains multiple alkaloids, not just cocaine.
• Cocaine is only one compound within a larger phytochemical matrix in the leaf.
• Traditional coca chewing uses alkaline substances to increase alkaloid absorption.
• Whole plant use produces a broader entourage effect compared to isolated cocaine.
• Indigenous cultures independently domesticated coca multiple times across South America.
• Coca may help high-altitude populations adapt through increased energy, nutrition, and appetite suppression.
• Cocaine acts primarily as a dopamine reuptake inhibitor in the brain.
• Some evidence suggests chewing coca may help people transition away from cocaine dependence

Chapters:

00:00 – What Is Coca? The Question That Starts Everything
00:44 – Major Psilocybin News: Compass Pathways Phase 3 Results
04:28 – The Many Faces of Coca Series (Part 2 Introduction)
07:36 – Dennis McKenna Joins the Conversation
08:09 – Coca vs Cocaine: The Botanical Reality
15:06 – Why Humans Domesticated Coca
18:23 – Why Humans Seek Altered States of Consciousness
26:06 – What’s Actually Inside the Coca Leaf?
31:31 – Why Coca Is Not the Same as Cocaine
36:48 – Is Coca Addictive? The Science Explained
42:23 – The Medical Potential of Coca
48:41 – Why Drug Laws Block Scientific Research
55:25 – What We Learned From the Chemistry of Coca
59:33 – The War on Drugs and the Economics of Coca
01:00:42 – Next Episode: The Human Cost of Prohibition 

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Transcript

0:16

Let's try something simple. Define coca. Is it a stimulant, a nutrient source, a sacred plant, raw material, a drug? Depending on who you ask, you'll get each one of those answers. So instead of arguing about policy, today we're going to start with the chemistry. What's actually in the leaf? Welcome back to Divergent States. I'm Elite and always with Brian. Great to have you here. As always, I'm great to be here. Absolutely. Quick little like off topic update I wanted to give everyone. ah Just it's not on really about coca. It's not directly related to that, but it's related to the broader psychedelic landscape. Compass Pathways just announced statistically significant phase three results for their COM 360. That's their synthetic psilocybin formulation in treatment resistant depression. So it's late stage clinical data, know, phase three. It's pretty far along. Crazy. Yeah, in one of their trials, two 25 milligram doses showed like a negative 3.8 point difference in what's called the MADRS depression scale. And at week six compared to a one milligram control dose with a P value of under 0.001. So let me slow that down for you. A three to four point MADRS difference is considered clinically meaningful, especially in treatment resistant populations. It's not a miracle narrative, but it's a measurable improvement in a group that really doesn't ever respond to anything. So Compass is also reporting there's rapid onset as early as the next day. There's a subset of patients maintaining the response up to six months later, 26 weeks. Right, especially for treatment resistant depression. We all know that's, mean, that's what ketamine therapy is so good for. It also has a generally tolerable safety profile, which means most people Generally accept it and do well on it. For people cycling through antidepressants and not getting any relief, that really matters. So to zoom out a little bit, if approved, this would be the first classic psychedelic to clear phase three and move toward FDA approval. That's a structural shift. It moves psychedelics further into regulated psychiatry. You've got insurance billing, clinical infrastructure, standardized delivery models. And all that intersects with everything we've been discussing in this COCA series. Because once molecules move into pharmaceutical channels, they just don't stay molecules, they become products. They become protocols, become policy, and they become economics. Compass is not a sponsor of this show. We've had them on before because these conversations should happen in the open and we don't do corporate hype, but we also don't do just reflective dismissal. We look at the data and we ask better questions. So this is where I really want your input with these phase three findings now go in public. We have the option to bring Compass leadership back and offer a kind of a celebratory lap or, you know, victory lap. to the I lost my place. There is. With these phase three findings now public, we have the option of encompass leadership back, not for a victory lap, but to go line through line through the results. So what does, you know, a negative 3.8 MDA RS difference really mean? How durable is durable? What does access look like outside press conferences, you know, or press releases? What happens with pricing and insurance? Where does therapist involvement land? So if you want that conversation, tell us. comment on Spotify, jump in the Discord, hit the Patreon thread, or just leave a note on the subreddit. If the community wants it, we'll do it. And we'll do it in a way we always do, independent, sharp, and transparent. So let's get back to the COCA conversation, because the plant conversation is bigger than any one company. And understanding traditional use gives us perspective on what modern systems do with powerful molecules. Yeah, so this is part two of our series. uh the many faces of coca. Last episode, we spoke with Wade Davis about the history of coca, how a plant used for thousands of years became legally equated with crack cocaine and international law. And we talked about colonial ideology, we talked about early eradication efforts, and we talked about how scheduling frameworks were built before serious nutritional research was even done. So today we're going to shift the conversation a little bit. Today isn't about politics or treaties. It's about the plant itself. What is the leaf? How much alkaloid is in there? What happens pharmacologically when it's chewed? Why would humans domesticate the same plant multiple times independently? So joining us today is world renowned ethnopharmacologist, researcher, and longtime plant scholar, Dennis McKenna. He is on the show for the season finale and actually sparked the inspiration for this series. So I thought it would be fitting to bring him back to help explore the topic. The next episode will move on to lived realities on the ground with Manuela Peek, how criminalization shapes daily life, youth, gender, and violence in Indian communities. But before we get to lived experiences, we're going to need biological clarity. All right, before we jump in, a quick word about something that aligns with this conversation. When we talk about plant medicines and altered state, curiosity isn't enough. Preparation also matters. So the Zendo project offers psychedelic peer support and harm reduction and training that's grounded in real world deescalation and psychological support. So it's practical skill building, essentially. If you care about responsible use, whether community, spaces, festivals, or just being steady, just being a steady presence for somebody in a room, this is worth looking into. You can use our code divergent state or divergent S10 for 10 % off their sit training and that 10 % supports the podcast as well. That is divergent S10. So we'll have that in the show notes for you as well. But all right, let's listen to some music and we'll get back to the show. Sounds good man, we'll see you there. you m you you Joining us today is world-renowned ethnopharmacologist, researcher, and longtime plant scholar Dennis McKenna. He's on the show for the season finale and actually sparked the inspiration for the series. So I really thought it was fitting to bring him back on and help explore this topic. Next episode, we're going to move into lived realities on the ground with Manuela Peak, how criminalization shapes daily life, youth, gender, and violence in Indian communities. But before we get into that lived experience, we need the biological clarity. Dennis, great to have you here. Welcome back. Yeah, thanks for joining us. Nice to be back. Great, so when we, yes, it's awesome to have you, sorry. When we say coca, what are we actually talking about botanically? Well, you're talking about uh coca. Obviously, the coca plant is the source of cocaine. And there are basically three species involved botanically. So the genus erythroxylum. So there's erythroxylum coca, erythroxylum novogranitensis, and erythroxylum... uh Ipidu, I believe it is, if my memory serves. And all of these have sub-varieties and so on. But those are the three main uh coca species. And uh coca is a big genus. The erythroxenum is a fairly big genus. There's like 150 different species. But these are the only ones that I know of. And I am not a scholar on coca. on the botanicals of coca, but could be wrong. But I think those are the only ones that are commercially important. The only ones known to contain cocaine. The others may, but maybe it hasn't been looked into so much. know, those are the ones that are both the source of cocaine and the source of all these coca products, coca leaf products that are now being developed in an effort to kind of destigmatize coca, coca leaf and coca from coca. As I'm sure Wade made clear to you probably multiple times in your conversation, coca is not cocaine, you know, and that the problem with the plant is the world's perception and particularly that of the regulatory agencies that are in charge of whether to make these things legal or not, their mind, coca is equivalent to cocaine. And that's a problem because, uh you know, he probably talked about this recent World Health Organization conference uh committee on narcotic drugs, and they made the same stupid error that they've made for decades, which is to equate coca and cocaine. Well, they're obviously not the same and but it makes it very coca's got to be coca leaf and all the uses that it has hasn't has to be decoupled from cocaine. If there's going to be any kind of regulatory reform that makes coca products available to a wider world. And there's many, many products that there could be. And I'm sure Wade, and you have covered this territory probably pretty well. A little bit, yeah, I think that's why we talked about the importance of this coming out because up in March, when this will be coming out in the middle of March publicly, they're gonna be voting with the WHO going over its legal status. I'm not saying I think this will maybe move the needle any, but it's good to have that, you know, the background out there so people can kind of make their own decisions how it's going. Right. Well, like most of these substances, know, the, you know, I mean, I'm I'm in the more of the psychedelic arena, but they, face the same challenges and, and, uh, you know, we should have learned, actually, we should have learned with prohibition. You know, we learned a lesson. Alcohol, it's impossible to prohibit it. People are going to find it no matter what. because they want that product. And prohibition as a model for drug control just doesn't make any sense because it creates an artificial illicit market and it gives these substances, cocaine is the classic example, it gives these substances a value that it only has because it's illegal. I mean, cocaine is not... an expensive compound, you know, it's worth pennies. What makes it worth so much is the fact that it's illegal. And the problem is, well, there are many problems. What the problem is, it's in the interests of the cartels, obviously, to keep these things to keep Coca or keep cocaine illegal. If Coca were legalized, the bottom would drop out of the market, you know, if a reasonable regulatory framework. could be developed where cocaine, if you want cocaine, if you're into that, go to the drug store and buy it. Get a prescription, cost a few bucks and knock yourself out. That's the way to handle it. That's the way to handle both of these things. Right. You don't have to worry about adulterance or anything like that then. So. Yeah. Well, you don't have the glamour or supposed glamour associated with, you know, illicit drug. You don't have that. Also, you know, it's not just the cartels. It's in the interest of the corrupt governments that are in charge of regulating this stuff. You know, they're as interested in keeping it illegal as the cartels. You know, the cartels motives are clear. We want to sell an illicit drug and and charge a lot of money for it, the agencies and governments that should be saying, well, no, there's a better way. They're in there as corrupt as the cartels. And it's in their interest to keep that thing illegal. Who suffers from this? mean, basically, who suffers from it are the farmers, you know, whose whole livelihood depend on coca. And basically, They're just farmers. They would like to grow coca and sell it into legal markets. And they could make just as much and they wouldn't have the threats, you know, that the cartels uh bring to them. Because basically the current situation is that cartels will, you know, ride into town, ride into one of these villages and say, well, you work for us now, you know, and if you don't like it, well, we'll kill you. We'll kill your family. You know, I mean, they're not really interested in negotiating. It's just, you will do what you tell you to do. So uh it's a very complicated situation with a very simple solution, you know. Yeah, that's very true. I think that's one one thing we've noticed coming back throughout this entire series uh is follow the money. It's all about the money and who's who's profit. It's always about the kind of moving back to where we're going with it. Why would humans repeatedly domesticate this plant? It's interesting, mean, because coca has been independently domesticated multiple times. How unusual is that in plant history? Well, it's actually pretty unusual. I mean, the fact that, and as Wei talked about it probably, and Dawson White is kind of the person at the forefront of studying the evolution of the coca plant. And he points out that, yes, in separate parts of South America, these plants were independently recognized and developed. you know, uh for their for their properties, for their virtue. But they were independently domesticated. And that is kind of an unusual situation. Yeah, I mean, any idea of what traits might be selected for when they're doing that? What what say again? What kind of traits was it more of an artificial selection where they're finding different species that get what kind of traits would they be selecting for in that? Well, that's a good question. uh I guess that comes up with any of these indigenous medicines, particularly the psychoactive medicines. The question with ayahuasca, for example, a perpetual question is how do they figure out how to make an active brew from two plants that either one of which prepared separately would not be active? they're required to reinforce each other. I think the same goes for coca. I think people select it for taste and flavor and uh but obviously for the stimulant properties as well. And indigenous people are very clever of uh identifying things in their in their environment that can be can be used in this way and that affect affect the mind effect. I mean, I think that's kind of a innate human trait. You know, we have a inbuilt impulse to alter consciousness. You know, whether we want to have visions or we want to have something that relieves pain or something that stimulates us like coca, it seems that we are not satisfied with ordinary states of consciousness. You know, ordinary states of consciousness are boring. We want something different. We want something better. At least different. Kind of a temporary vacation from our ordinary boring existence day to day. Not that I'm accusing you guys of being boring, but you know what I mean. No, we were pretty boring. Is there any evidence of coca and high altitude populations co-evolved? At uh high altitude. Is there any evidence coca and high altitude populations of Andean societies co-evolved? Co-evolved? Oh, co-evolved. Well, yeah, I mean, I think you could say so. know, co-evolution is a complicated thing, but coca has been, it hasn't been necessarily domesticated, but it's been known and used for at least 8,000 years. That's what we know about. So you could probably project from that that it was known well before then. So in the sense that these populations have evolved in very harsh environments, these high altitude environments. the human body, the human organism is immensely adaptive. And you could look at that, for example, in the... in Andean populations, they have much higher levels of hemoglobin and all that, because they've adapted to this high altitude environment. And these populations are inherently experimentalists, you know, they buck around with plants, they, they try things out. And here comes a plant that makes the much gives them energy makes them much more able to tolerate the uh the environment, the altitude and all the harsh conditions is a good source of protein, is a good hunger suppressant. I mean, it ticks all the boxes just in terms of being a plant that helps people optimally adapt to their environment. So that's coevolution. We select for the strains that we want. They select for the varieties. It's a reciprocal process, which we sometimes call symbiosis. I like to talk a lot about symbiosis these days because that's really what drives, that's what drives evolution. Fundamentally, that's what drives evolution. Right. In your view, did humans domesticate coca or did coca domesticate humans? This is a perpetual debate, you know, and that's the thing. It's reciprocal. Well, it's the idea of symbiosis. mean, Michael Pollan asks the same thing about corn. Did corn domesticate humans or did we domesticate corn? A little bit of both. I it turns out that corn is a perfect crop for... industrial agriculture, know, in global industrial agriculture. So in the sense that that the cultivation of corn has fostered that you could say, yeah, corn has arranged itself has arranged to spread across the world and fulfill its mission for world domination, you know, and we monkeys are just helping that long, you know, and the same is true with a lot of these. drug plants and medicinal plants. So the answer is yes, actually. It's not that coca is domesticating us or we're domesticating coca. It's a reciprocal process. That's nature of symbiosis. uh Regular ingestion of coca is going to change our metabolism. evolve enzyme systems and various things that ways that we might adapt to the consumption of coca. So it, it, actually does affect us. And then we being number one, curious and number two, always after a good high, you know, we're going to look at what's available of the different varieties of coca and through trial and error, select the ones that we like best. you know, those that taste good, those that give you a good lift, whatever the property is you're looking for, you could select for those properties. And this goes on in all cultures, you know, especially cultures where psychoactive plants are used, you you get a very similar situation going on with something like kava. in the Pacific Islands, in Polynesia, the Pacific Islands. Cava is kind of the coca of those cultures. And there are many varieties of cava. Some are recognized as having qualities that the people appreciate, which is to make you feel mellow and loquacious and like conversing, you know. Cava is a much better social lubricant than alcohol. And that's what people do in Polynesia. The men, mostly the men, now the women can do it too, but used to be the men would sit around and chew cava and what they call, what they say in Hawaii, talk story, they chew cava and tell stories. And so they would select varieties of cava that... facilitated that use, but they knew about other varieties that had different uses. They have a variety called today in Pidgin English called today, meaning it lasts two days and it's more of a sedative. It's not something you would take socially, you know, but it is useful. Modestly, and they understand and make that distinction. Indigenous people. You know, they're very sophisticated about plants. They don't have analytical equipment. They don't have gas chromatographs and that sort of thing, but they don't need them because the plants, the relationship is based on organoleptic traits. What does it taste like? What does it smell like? What does it look like? the human body and the human brain is the best analytical instrument that we have because because that's where the action is, you know, and uh so people can adapt to it and they could just evaluate it based on desirable qualities and they could reject those that have them and and favor those that do. And those are the ones that get cultivated. And those are the ones that that uh perpetuate this symbiotic relationship. uh The ones that are not selected, they may still live in the wilds, but they're not... uh they are not effectively, they haven't become global commodities. They're just sort of in the wild and not really... they don't really have that symbiosis with human beings. Yeah. Excuse me. you brought up the chemistry and talking about the chemistry, what what alkaloids are actually present in the coca leaf. Well, There uh with it's called a coganine, I think it is. It's a relative of cocaine. uh All of these, I can't give you a list. I'm not as educated as Wade. I can't give you a list off the top of my head of all the alkaloids, but there are four or five of them. Cocaine is the primary one. And the others are, uh they are part of what they call the entourage effect. in plant medicines. It's very rare that a psychoactive plant or any plant medicine, there's not just one active ingredient. There's a family of related compounds. This is true of coca. This is why cocaine is uh in some way an impoverished experience because they've taken the one alkaloid out of coca that has the stimulant properties. they've left everything else behind. So uh chewy coke is actually a richer experience in terms of the way the body experiences it than cocaine. uh But all of these coca derivatives are in the tropane alkaloid class. So uh alkaloids in other plants that are tropanes are very different in their pharmacology. For example, in Brugmansia, which used to be called tree detouras, they're now called just Brugmansias, or indetoura, or the nightshades, those compounds are things like atropine and scopolamine, hyocyanine, and so on. uh So these are tropane alkaloids. They're in the same family as coca, but their actions couldn't be more different. You know, these are kind of dissociative uh delirious, basically, is what they do. They can be sedative. uh They have medicinal uses. uh For example, Dramamine is a form of a modified tropate alkaloid that relieves nausea. And there are even uh patches. uh that you can put behind your ear that contains copolymy to relieve motion sickness. So that class of tropane alkaloids is so different than coca and cocaine because cocaine is basically a stimulant. These things are basically sedatives or uh depressants. Yeah, scolamine, scolopamine, that one's strange. That's the, eh they call it the zombie drug, I think. the whole kind of debate between it with the difference between coca and cocaine reminds me a lot of like marijuana with dabs versus flowers. You've got the flowers that people just smoke and then they've got the concentrates where they just pull out the THC and. Right. just concentrated THC, you miss that entourage effect with it. In fact, that's why a lot of uh the distillates and stuff will have added terpenes because it helps with that entourage effect, which you're not going to get if it's just a pure distillate. That's right. That's right. is something that, uh you know, kind of technological pharmacology, technological pharmaceutical industry has got this prejudice that, you know, if we could, they want to hold in on the single active ingredient, you know, that they think that they identify as the single most active ingredient. There's more of a profit motive than a medical motive here. You know, the whole herb extract that contains all of these different compounds is probably a better medicine than the isolated single compound. But the herbal products are, you know, more difficult to patent. And basically the pharmaceutical industry, you know, they have... I they want to discover new drugs to treat people. That's one of their motives. But the overall boating is making money. And that's going to take everything else, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. So is it accurate to say that cocaine is really only one component in a broader phytochemical matrix? yes. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's accurate to say. Okay, so how does the alkaline activation, you know, when they chew a coca, they have to have a little bit of alkaline with it, whether it's ash or whatever as they say. How does the alkaline activation change absorption? Well, it makes it more bioavailable. So uh alkaloids are bases, right? So uh in their natural form, probably in the plant, they're probably complexed with some organic acid of some kind. you basically added the alkaline into the chew, liberates the free base, it dissociates the cocaine. from the acid that it might be coupled to makes it more available. I mean, it's very, if you drink coca tea, for example, you get a mild stimulant effect, but you don't get the same effect that you do when you chew it with the alkaline because that liberates it and that makes it more available. And that's the preferred way to do it. If you want an actual... you know, effect from it, if you want a stimulant effect. Right, so what chemically changes when coca becomes cocaine hydrochloride? Well, then you're taking the free base and you're complexing it with another acid, in this case an inorganic acid like hydrochloric acid. And that's a way to take an extract, just say a whole extract of coca, and you can complexify it. You can add hydrochloric acid and it will make the free base. And then you can, I mean, will make the, sorry, it will make the salt of the alkaloid and that becomes more water soluble than base soluble. So then the organic solvent soluble. So if you then take that extract and partition it, you know, like separation funnel against a organic solvent, if you've got the, uh you know, the, uh, free base form will remain in the organic phase, but the salt will be water soluble. So can you remove everything else that's lipid soluble, you get a more pure form of the coca in the cocaine in the aqueous fraction, and then you can purify that and crystallize it out in a pure form. So that's... It's basically, it's not complex chemistry. mean, it's, you know, uh it's something anybody, it's a fairly basic process, as you can tell, because uh these cartels that harvest cocaine, that harvest cocoa process, they first process it to a base, you know, and I think it's called pasta in in Spanish, so the cocaine base is the free base, and then it can be further purified by partitioning against uh an aqueous solution containing some acid. That will make the cocaine water soluble and makes it possible to uh crystallize and into a solid form. Make sense? Yeah, yeah exactly. I mean it makes perfect sense. What's lost when the plant matrix is stripped away? Well, other things, know, other, uh, mean, the alkaloids will, will follow the cocaine through that process. So what you get from that first step is not pure, but then you can put it through a further purification step. What's lost are the other components that are either not water soluble, like the flavor and aroma components, many other things that are left behind. with that, when the coca is extracted, and which give coca, you know, its flavor and its organoleptic properties. And, know, like, as Wade probably pointed out, bombay, which is one of the chewable forms of coca, where the coca leaf is turned into a powder. And And it's mixed with base, it's mixed with alkaline in that form. And then that is taken, that's chewed or put in between your teeth and your gums and you just suck on that. And that's another way to take cocaine and preserve the flavor components and all that in that form. Reminds me of plug tobacco a little bit. So is uh coca addictive at all? Yes and no. is addictive uh in the way that stimulants are addictive. Addiction is a very uh loaded word because uh like opiates, example, like heroin, for example, is clearly addictive because it Causes physiological changes that if you get dependent on it You know you really have to have it at that point it becomes an essential component That's why it's so hard to kick Coca and amphetamine and very similar in their pharmacology. These are stimulants that work primarily on dopamine uh cocaine uh on the pharmacological level is basically a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. That's what it is. It's dopamine that's getting you high, not the cocaine, you know, but the cocaine is preventing the uh reuptake of dopamine. Normally it's like you've heard of SSRIs. Well, those are serotonin, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Well, The same thing goes on with dopamine, which is another neurotransmitter. these uh cocaine is a very effective uh dopamine reuptake inhibitor. So there's more dopamine available and you feel more stimulated. Is it addictive? Well, let's put it this way. Is ice cream addictive? You know, is coffee addictive? mean, there are lots of things we like because we're because we like them, you know, and we become habituated to them. But you're not facing the same kind of uh physiological changes that are hard to change back. mean, addiction to cocaine is a matter of will, you know, just resolving not to do it, which is somehow... which is often very hard, you know, because it has a pull, it has an attraction, the feeling has an attraction. But if you stop cocaine, if you stop heroin, you go through a withdrawal process, which can't even be life threatening, you know, it really, if you stop cocaine, you will miss it, you will want it, but it won't put your body through these kinds of changes. If you could get over that hump, where you no longer feel the craving to take cocaine, you can get past it. So a few things have come up, interestingly, lately, it turns out that the best treatment for cocaine addiction that has been found, and this works going on in South America, because it's not allowed to go out in the States, as far as I know it isn't. uh The best uh remedy for cocaine addiction is chewing coca. That helps people get off cocaine. They chew coca, so then they still have a coca habit, but the coca habit's actually benign, because coca's good for you. Unlike cocaine, which is not. Yeah, so if someone had used CoCA daily for years, would it be a concern at all? If they use cocaine, well, if they use Coca for years, no problem. mean, I mean, they may be dependent, whatever that means. But, you know, again, we're all dependent on something, right? I mean, I'm dependent on chocolate. That's my addiction. But I've been that way for years. I have no intention of giving it up. And it's but it's not going to kill me. You know, the sugar. chocolate will kill me before the chocolate does. And the thing with coca, you can chew coca uh in this form of chewed leaves or bombay for years and years. And uh it's actually quite beneficial. uh I don't know if uh we've mentioned on our coca summit site, There's a number of links. I'll send you a link to the links. We have a page on the COCA summit with a growing list of articles on COCA. One of them I'd like to call to your attention that's up there is an article by Andrew Weil in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, or maybe it was the Economic Botany. It's kind of an old article. uh but it's still got lots of good stuff. And the name of the article is, uh you know, the medical, I think it's called the Therapeutic Potential of Coca or something like that. I'll send you link to the article. Yeah, we'll the link in the show notes. So if anybody's listening and wants to check it out, they can just take a look at the show notes and click on it go to. Go to go to the McKenna Academy. It's McKenna.academy and then look at the COCA summit, which is right there. If you scroll down, you'll see the COCA summit, which is uh we did that conference just about one year ago in Peru. And uh it's it was really a wonderful thing that we were able to do. uh You know, if it weren't for Wade, it would never have happened. I mean, he is the you know, apart from the fact that he's a good friend and we've worked together for, believe it or not, about 45 years on different things. But he's a very articulate, passionate advocate for COCA. And uh because he is, because he's well known and has tons of contacts in this area, we were able to pull this summit off. And uh it did not. convince the World Health Organization to change their minds, but certainly many of the people at that COCA summit were also at that conference. And it's a slow, slow process. Governments are by inherently, there's a lot of inertia, and they don't want to change. And uh even though it's like, well, I would say, even though the solutions are obvious. In a certain way, I'd say that the economic factors are what's keeping cocaine illegal. It's in the interests of the cartels that it stays illegal. It's in the interests of the governments that are supposed to be regulating it that it stays illegal, because many of those governments are quite corrupt. And you talk about cocaine being addictive. I'll tell you what's addictive. Money is addictive. Right. You know, and that's the problem. m It's again, yeah, we always circled it always comes back to that. It seems that it does, yeah. Yeah, it's the one real common denominator through it all. uh So kind of moving towards like modern pharmacology, what scientific questions haven't really been asked because COCA is scheduled. Well, I think, you know, uh probably many. mean, there's there's there's so here's here's what there is. There's a lot of folk data, you know, uh which is not invalid. It's valid data. There is uh things like Andy Wiles article, which I will send you where he was actually able being a doctor. He was able to prescribe coca leaf to people. and then could observe what what helped them. and I believe. I'm not sure, technically, I think any doctor could prescribe coca. However, were you going to get coca? Right. That's the problem. But as a result of the of the coca sub, we're working on that. There are there are we. shouldn't say me, because I have nothing to do with it other than being part of the McKenna Academy. But uh there are a couple of different groups. One uh is working on doing preclinical studies on coca, uh which is what you have to do if you're going to develop this thing as a botanical drug. And the FDA has a special category for botanical drugs. They're different than dietary supplements, right? Botanical drugs have a much greater degree of research behind them. They can be patented and you can make claims for them. You can make actual therapeutic claims for botanical drugs. You could protect that intellectual property. Dietary supplements can't really be protected. You could say all kinds of things about them, but you can't claim that it... diagnosis mitigates or cures any disease. That's FDA language. You can't claim it does that. That's an unallowed claim. You can make what are called structure function claims for dietary supplements. can say, I mean, you can make statements like, this is good for you. This makes you feel great. Or you could say, you could be a little more specific. You could say, well, it supports the immune system or it supports cognitive function. But when you cross the line and you say this relieves depression, that's a no-no. You're making the drug play at that point. So the dietary supplement whole regulatory framework is a mess. So that's not realistic. but that's the way it's been constrained. You can't really make real claims. In Canada, for instance, uh they have a similar regulatory uh problem, but they're able to make claims based on traditional uses. So they can actually claim indigenous uses as a health benefit. So in Canada, they don't have dietary supplements. They have what are called natural health products. And you can actually make statements about these things that are disease claims, disease related claims. in the States, as you might expect, regulatory uh framework is kind of a mess because it hasn't been well thought through. uh Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much, I mean, we see that again with all the psychedelics and everything. A lot of times the wisdom comes before the regulatory agencies catch up. seems to be the case. Well, that's right. I the regulatory agencies are often the impediment to discovery, you know, because again, it's such a complicated thing. you know, you have different players and you have the pharmaceutical industries that want to protect their discoveries. They want to be able to patent them. They want to be able to exclude anyone else from patenting or developing those products. So they have an incentive to, yes, investigate these things, but then not share that knowledge that becomes proprietary knowledge. They're not interested in sharing it. These are like company secrets, right? oh So that's a problem. I personally think that when it comes to plants, my inclination is toward minimal regulation. think I and I think Prohibition is just not a model that works. What does work is education. And that's a lot of what we are about at the McKenna Academy is giving people uh information to make good choices about whether to use these substances. And if they decide they want to use these substances, how to use the substances. I mean, these are choices that we make. People should be empowered. to make informed choices about the substances that they choose to put in their body. And that's not confined to drugs. That's confined to anything you might want to put in your body. should, you know, if you expect a specific health benefit or any kind of effect, you should take the time to educate yourself about how to employ it in a way that maximizes the benefits and minimizes the harm. This is not such a complicated thing. And coca leaf has many benefits. it's about as harmful and toxic as green tea. It's not really a problem. People don't get addicted to coca. You can chew coca for years and if your supply is cut off, no problem. People don't feel any craving. I would feel craving if my chocolate supply was cut off. That's a psychological lack. I realize my body is not lacking anything. Probably it'd be better off without it. We don't have much common sense when it comes to how to regulate this. And then we have, we have governments that have appointed themselves as being in charge of this, these kinds of things. And I think a better approach is the government should be actively involved in educating people how to make good choices about how they use substances and, and, and, you know, develop real drug education, not bullshit drug education, you know, which is what exists right now. It's mostly the official stance as well, abstinence, don't do it, you know, but this is like, this is not practical because people have an inherent impulse to alter consciousness and that's perfectly legitimate. And so we should make sure that they have safe ways to do that that are also satisfied for that innate urge. Yeah, education is important. I think that's kind of what we do here. A lot of it is just educating and talking to people. So we can, you you get the word out and you can make an informed choice. Conscious liberty, you know, is probably one of the most important things. So we're going to head over to the Patreon a little bit, kind of loosen it up, talk a little more. If you guys enjoyed the conversation, go to patreon.com slash Divergent States, sign up there. The micro dosers and above, get Early episodes every two weeks. So thank you again, Dennis. It's been a great talk for the public episode We'll move over to patreon and uh check it out there. You guys have fun you you So before we close today, I just want to thank Dennis McKenna again. Thanks for being on the show. was a great time talking to you, as always. So today, we kind of clarified. We got a little more on this coca series, kind of expand the planet. We figured out what coca is botanically, what's actually in the leaf. We learned a lot. Right? It's so great having these, like being able to have these experts. Come on. And if you guys really like that, you guys want to hear more about these experts or be part of the conversation, you can join Patriot and our column slash Divergent States. Come over, sign up on the microdose tier. You get early episodes. You get on the macrodose tier a little higher. You can get video episodes. we've got several out there. And if you really want, you can join our psychedelic elite thumbprint here. You know, that's on you. Yeah. So. If you like it, just do it. I promise it's worth your time. Absolutely. So, you know, we talked about all this, Brian, and when you hear it all laid out, the botany, the chemistry, and the adaptation, what do you think stands out to the most on this episode? stands out to me the most. That's a good question. um Well, you know, there's clearly uh quite a lot of different chemistry between the plant and the powder. Like, cocaine is a very isolated piece of this plant. And as Dennis uh was able to outline, the fact that he knew the names of several different alkaloids in the plant was very impressive. Like, just off the top of his head. But just knowing that there's several different ones and you hit on it and... in the interview about the entourage effect and we talked about that a lot in the cannabis industry. So ah that really stood out to me just like how different the plant like I mean we talked about this in every episode but just how different the plant itself is to the drug that we know. Yeah, and here's the part that keeps hitting me about it is if this plant has this long adaptive history, if it's been chewed daily without collapse and it functions differently than the extracted alkaloid, then the story we've been told isn't complete. We don't have the whole picture. So when you think about how does it change the word drug when we're talking about something like coca. It changes it completely because when you actually learn some information about this and kind of understand how it works, like, Coke is clearly more like a tea or like a coffee um versus this drug that we know it as. is like super dangerous environment. think of Scarface where the dude's getting his arm cut off with a chainsaw and like the fucked up videos that are out there of people getting taken out by cartel members and things like that. That's what we associate Coco with. But in reality, when you look at its history and everything before the drug war and cartels and all the illegal activity, this really isn't anything To be quite frank with you, if this was something that was available for everybody, don't think anybody would really care. Yeah, I think it'd be like uh even less than Kratom or something like that. Yeah. you don't brag about drinking gray Earl tea. It's got caffeine in it. It's a stimulant. It'll do things. when it comes to cocaine, that's a completely different story. Yeah, and that's kind of what we're trying to do here, separate that story of the coca leaf and the ceremony indigenous use to the modern cartel version of what we think. So next episode, we're going to shift to the lived realities on the ground. We're going to move from the molecules to the people. We're going to be speaking to Manuela Peak about what coca looks like in daily life, how criminalization reshapes youth. gendered labor around coca, how prohibition fuels violence in ways the plant itself never did. So, Brian, after hearing the science today, does it make you more curious, more unsettled about what happens when the law steps in? 100%. I would think uh specifically on this topic, but if you just look over the broad approach to the war on drugs, the war on drugs created this environment where it's dangerous and corrupt. It was made illegal to try to improve society, but all it did was corrupt governments and uh change lives and destroy lives. Yeah. versus if cocaine was something that you picked up at CVS, like you wouldn't look cool bringing that to a party like, hey guys, I brought the cocaine. Like everybody would be like, that guy has to, yeah, it wouldn't be cool. It would be seen as a crutch. the way smoking is now, if you, smoking is not something that people really like, like, cause it smells bad, it's unhealthy, all kinds of things. And I feel like, If it had never been made illegal, it's exactly where it would live and there wouldn't be any problems ah in terms of all the corruption and money that's laundered and funneled just through this one plant. Right? As we keep saying, and it's coming back up again and again, follow the money. So if this episode helped you understand the biology, the next one's going to show you the human cost. And that's where the conversation really becomes unavoidable. we'll see you there, guys. See ya. uh you