“A clinical psychologist from Imperial College describes how Magic Mushrooms (Psilocybin), when used in a therapeutic setting, have been found to be a very effective treatment for depression. In this talk she draws on her experiences as working as a therapist on the groundbreaking Psilocybin for Depression study, and introduces us to some of the patients and their stories of transformation. Dr Rosalind Watts completed her clinical psychology training at University College London. After six years of practicing psychotherapy in the NHS, she joined a clinical trial at Imperial College, investigating psilocybin (magic mushrooms) as a treatment for depression. Her research explores patients’ positive views of this intriguing therapy.”
Tag: Psilocybin
“Research into psychedelic drugs was interrupted in the 1960’s due to regulatory changes. Recently, these compounds are once again studied both as therapeutic agents in psychiatry and as experimental tools to further our understanding of the human brain. David Nutt stands at the forefront of these developments as principal investigator of a team including Robin Carhart-Harris and other researchers at Imperial College, London. Together, they are running clinical trials of psychedelic substances including psilocybin in the treatment of depression. They are also using brain imaging to investigate the effects of psychedelic drugs on activity and connectivity within the brain. At this lecture, he will cover the latest research findings and share his vision of the future of psychedelic science.”
“Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, the psychologist, neuroscientist and Head of the Psychedelic Research Centre at Imperial College London. Yours is the world’s first organisation dedicated to the research of mind-altering substances and focuses on three key areas of study: mental health, social science and neuroscience. He was the first in the world to investigate the effects of LSD using modern brain imaging, and the first to study psilocybin – the active compound in magic mushrooms – for treating severe depression.”
“Bestselling author Tim Ferriss (Tools of Titans, The 4-Hour Workweek, etc.) probes the science, mysteries, and future of psychedelics with Dr. Roland R. Griffiths, a clinical pharmacologist at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Griffiths has been researching mood-altering compounds for more than 40 years, has published more than 370 scientific papers, and started the psilocybin (think “magic mushrooms”) research program at Johns Hopkins nearly 20 years ago. Dr. Griffiths and his colleagues have been leaders in the re-initiation of research with classic psychedelic drugs, which was blocked for a period of several decades. This session offers details and stories that can help both novices and experienced psychonauts get a better understanding of the applications of these incredible compounds.”
“Walter Houston Clark has defined “religion” as an individual’s inner experience of a Beyond, especially as evidenced by active attempts to harmonize his or her life with that Beyond. The Johns Hopkins experiments suggest that a large fraction of mentally healthy people with spiritual interests can have a profound experience of a Beyond—a mystical-type experience—with the aid of several hours’ preparation and a supervised psilocybin session. Furthermore, most of the study volunteers report that encounter as among the most spiritually significant of their lives and as bringing sustained benefits. How do we get from such experiences (however occasioned) to “religion” in Clark’s sense, and in the sense of a group pursuing spiritual ends? Perhaps that transition is, as Brother David Steindl-Rast claims, inevitable. The talk will address that process, and will argue that some social organizations have strong but unacknowledged religious aspects. It will also ask how nascent religious groups can form in ways that minimize the pathologies that so often have given the “r-word” a bad name, while channeling sociality to cultivate individual and collective well-being.
Robert Jesse is Convenor of the Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP; csp.org). CSP’s interest in non-ordinary states focuses on the betterment of well people, in contrast to the medical-model treatment of patients with psychiatric diagnoses. Through CSP, Bob was instrumental in forming the psilocybin research team at Johns Hopkins University, and he has co-authored three of its scientific papers. He also lead the writing of an amicus brief for the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the União do Vegetal’s use of a sacramental tea containing DMT, a controlled substance. A unanimous Court upheld the UDV’s right to its practice. Bob has long participated in the development of the Bay Area spiritual community that draws liberally from the non-creedal, non-hierarchical ways of the Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends). His formal training is in electrical engineering and computer science.”