Omni: Do you think there is such a thing as a bad trip?

McKenna: A trip that causes you to learn faster than you want is what most people call a bad trip. Most people try to hold back on the learning inherent in drugs. But sometimes the drug releases the information and says, "Here's what you need to know." The information may be, "You treat people wrong!" and nobody wants to hear that or, "You have some habits you need to think seriously about," and who wants to do that?

Omni: How can you advocate drugs so strongly when such pain, disruption, and chaos may be associated with taking them?

McKenna: We should talking about the word ecstasy. In our world, ruled by Madison Avenue [and Japan], ecstasy has come to mean the way you feel when you buy a Mercedes and can afford it. This is not the real meaning. Ecstasy is a complex emotion containing elements of you, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy. What has replaced our prehistoric understanding of this complex of ecstasy now is the word comfort, a tremendously bloodless notion. Drugs are not comfortable, and anyone who thinks they are comfortable or even escapist should not toy with drugs unless they're willing to get their noses rubbed in their own stuff.

Omni: What people specifically should not take them?

McKenna: People who are mentally unstable, under enormous pressure, or operating equipment that the lives of hundreds of people [or one] depend on. Or the fragile ones among us -- those to whom you wouldn't give a weekend airline ticket to Paris, those you wouldn't expect to guide you out of the Yukon. Some people have been so damaged by life that boundary dissolution is not helpful to them. These people are trying to maintain boundaries, their functionality. They should be honored and supported and not encouraged to take drugs. If because of genetic or cultural or psychological factors it's not for you, then it's not for you.

We're not asking everybody to feel that they must take drugs, but rather, just as a woman should be free to control her body, for heaven's sake, a person should also be free to control his or her mind. Everyone should be free to do it and be well informed of the option. Drug information isn't that much different from sex information. We make a gesture toward sex education in schools. And we've come a long way. We no longer make adulterers stitch large letters on the fronts of their clothing. But the issues of drugs are more complicated because there's a vast spectrum, from aspirin to heroin, and each has to be evaluated on its own strengths and weaknesses.