Then (2000), True Hallucinations
Psychedelic Science After McKenna: Does the Field Engage His Questions?
McKenna died in 2000, before the research renaissance. His questions, about entity contact, plant consciousness, the combinatorial problem, were outside the scope of mainstream research in his lifetime. True Hallucinations ended with the 1971 experience; the research program that would address his questions was decades away.
partially-confirmed
The Psychedelic Science 2023 conference (Denver, 12,000+ attendees) included dedicated symposia on: DMT entity contact (multiple papers, including Timmermann 2023); plant consciousness and ayahuasca pharmacology; the Stoned Ape hypothesis revisited; the combinatorial problem in ethnobotany. McKenna's specific questions are now research programs. The Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research explicitly includes 'plant-human relationships' and 'entity contact phenomenology' in its research agenda. The combinatorial problem remains open but is being engaged by ethnopharmacologists with modern analytical tools. The questions McKenna died asking are being asked in peer-reviewed journals in 2026.
Sources
- Psychedelic Science 2023 Program
- Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic Research agenda
- Timmermann et al., PNAS 120(13) (2023)