Fingerprints of the Gods author Graham Hancock has slammed the decades long 'War on Drugs' prevalent in Western societies.
'[W]hen the state sends us to prison for essentially exploring our own consciousness, this is a grotesque abuse of human rights,' he said in an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
'If I as an adult am not sovereign over my own consciousness then I am absolutely not sovereign over anything. I can't claim any kind of freedom at all.
'What’s happened … under the disguise of the war on drugs is that we have been persuaded to hand over the keys of our consciousness to the state. The most precious, the most intimate, the most sapient part of ourselves - the state now has the keys. And, furthermore, they have persuaded us that that is in our interest.'
Hancock also talked at length about the hallucinogenic Amazonian brew, ayahuasca, positing that it is 'an emissary' from an embattled rainforest, evidence that cave art was inspired by psychedelic experience, the brain as a transceiver rather than a creator of consciousness, the BBC's attack on his reputation, and the transhumanist possibility of one day being able to upload consciousness to machines.