• Allan Hunt Badiner - Co-editor of Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics
• Rick Doblin, Ph.D. - Founder/president of MAPS
• Alex Grey - Artist and co-founder of Chapel of Sacred Mirrors
• Allyson Grey - Artist and co-founder of Chapel of Sacred Mirrors
• Roland Griffiths, Ph.D. - Psilocybin researcher, Professor of Behavioral Biology and Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
• John Halpern, MD - MDMA, psilocybin and peyote researcher, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Laboratory for Integrative Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
• Sean Helfritsch & Isaiah Saxon - Video artists, creators of Bjork's Wanderlust 3D music video
• Dan Merkur - Psychoanalyst, author of The Ecstatic Imagination
• Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis - Ibogaine therapist
• David Nichols, Ph.D. - Founder of Heffter Research Institute, Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at Purdue University
• Daniel Pinchbeck - Author of Breaking Open the Head and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
• Sasha and Ann Shulgin - Psychedelics elders, authors of Tikhal and Pikhal

More speakers and a schedule to be announced shortly. The opening reception and party will be Friday, September 19 from 8pm until 2am. Presentations will be Saturday, September 20 from 10am - 6pm (with a lunch break) and Sunday, September 21 from 1:30pm - 6pm.

Rick Doblin, Ph.D.

Rick Doblin, Ph.D. is the founder (in 1986) and president of MAPS. His dissertation (Harvard's Kennedy School of Government) was on "The Regulation of the Medical Use of Psychedelics and Marijuana," and his master's thesis (Harvard) focused on the attitudes and experiences of oncologists concerning the medical use of marijuana. His undergraduate thesis (New College of Florida) was a twenty-five year follow-up to the classic Good Friday Experiment, which evaluated the potential of psychedelic drugs to catalyze religious experiences. He also conducted a thirty-four year follow-up study of Tim Leary's Concord Prison recidivism experiment. Doblin has also studied with Stan Grof, M.D., and was in the first group to become certified as holotropic breathwork practitioners.

Alex Grey

Alex Grey is an artist, author, and teacher. His series of twenty-one life-sized paintings are illustrated in Sacred Mirrors:The Visionary Art of Alex Grey. Grey's artwork has been exhibited worldwide, and has been included in the album art of such popular rock groups as Nirvana, the Beastie Boys, and the Talking Heads. Alex teaches courses in visionary art with his wife Allyson Grey at the Open Center in New York City, Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO, and Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. He authored a book, The Mission of Art, which represents his exploration of art as a spiritual path. Grey has been a student and practitioner of Buddhism for twenty years.

Allyson Grey

Allyson Grey was born in Baltimore in 1952 and studied at the Museum School of Boston. Her watercolor and oil paintings are filled with a mystical unpronounceable alphabet and vivid spectral geometries of order and chaos. Grey's abstract works employ densely measured grids coalescing into crystalline mandalic imagery or shattering into fields of lush impastoed color. The labor-intensive and spiritual quality of the paintings relate them to tantric art, Jain cosmological diagrams, and the science of chaos dynamics. Her work has been exhibited at Stux Gallery in New York City.

Roland Griffiths, Ph.D.

Roland R. Griffiths Ph.D., is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His principal research focus in both clinical and preclinical laboratories has been on the behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs. His research has been largely supported by grants from the National Institute on Health and he is author of over 300 journal articles and book chapters. He has been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, and to numerous pharmaceutical companies in the development of new psychotropic drugs. He is also currently a member of the Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence for the World Health Organization. He has an interest in meditation and is Principal Investigator of the psilocybin research initiative at Johns Hopkins.

John Halpern, MD

John H. Halpern, M.D. is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA and Associate Director of Alcohol & Drug Abuse Research, Biological Psychiatry Laboratory, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, USA. He is on the Editorial Board of CNS News.
John is currently conducting a multi-year study investigating the neurocognitive consequences of ecstasy-abuse, financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), USA. He is also leading a clinical trial of MDMA-assisted therapy for anxiety, and he has conducted a controlled longitudinal study of neurocognitive- and psychosocial consequences of the legal, spiritual use of peyote (mescaline) by Native Americans.

Sean Helfritsch & Isaiah Saxon

Encyclopedia Pictura is a congealed version of Isaiah Saxon and Sean Hellfritsch. Both of these people have been alive since 1983. Since then they have mostly been growing taller in the town of Santa Cruz and then working hard and tough in the town of San Francisco. They are interested in Virtual Reality, Psychokinetic Energy, Anarcho-Primitivism, Clowning, Cryptozoology, Natural Geometry, Psychedelic Shamanism, and Fruit Sandwiches. They also take part in the group Mangello Tipperary, along with artist Daren Rabinovitch. Their next project is a stereoscopic jungle musical for Devendra Banhart.

Alan Hunt Badiner

Allan Hunt Badiner is a student of Buddhism, a contributing editor at Tricycle magazine, and an ecological activist. He edited the special section on Buddhism and psychedelics in the Fall, 1996 issue of Tricycle, and the book, Dharma Gaia: A Harvest in Buddhism and Ecology. His written work appears in several other books including Dharma Family Treasures, Meeting the Buddha, and Ecological Responsibility: A Dialogue with Buddhism. Allan holds a masters degree in Buddhist Studies from the College of Buddhist Studies in Los Angeles and serves on the boards of Rainforest Action Network and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Dan Merkur

Dan Merkur is a psychoanalyst in private practice and a research reader in the study of religion at the University of Toronto. He is the author of many books, including Gnosis An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions; Ecstatic Imagination, The Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization; and Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking

Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis

Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis is a founding member of Freedom Root, The Ibogaine Project. He is an Ibogaine treatment provider working in NYC, Bwiti initiate and Nganga.
Dimitri is a co-founder of VOCAL NYC drug users union and has spoken around the world about drug userÕs human rights, Harm Reduction, Drug policy, and Ibogaine.
He has been featured in numerous publications and media outlets including National Public RadioÕs ÒThis American LifeÓ, and currently his work is the subject of an upcoming documentary by Michel Negroponte.
He has returned from his most recent trip to Gabon, Africa where he participated in several Bwiti initiations in Pygmy, Fang and Tsogo Villages using the sacrament of Iboga.
He is a poet, musician and lives in Brooklyn with his wife Roman.

David Nichols, Ph.D.

David Nichols is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Purdue University, as well as a co-founder of the Heffter Institute, where he serves as Director of Preclinical Research.

Dr. Nichols has published more than 200 research articles on various aspects of the medicinal chemistry and neuropharmacology His laboratory has published numerous studies elucidating details both of the mechanism of action of MDMA and of the biochemical events related to the neurotoxic effects seen in animals following administration. Dr. Nichols coined the name 'entactogen' to describe the unique psychopharmacological effects of MDMA and related compounds.

Daniel Pinchbeck

Sasha and Ann Shulgin

2007 Speakers

Kenneth Alper MD, Rick Doblin Ph.D, Neal Goldsmith Ph.D, Alex & Allyson Grey, Charles Grob MD, Julie Holland MD, Michael Mithoefer MD, Ethan Nadelmann Ph.D and Andrew Sewell MD.

Click here for more information about 2007 speakers.

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