Speakers (in alphabetical order)

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. Hosted by Jonathan Phillips.

Speaker biographies & abstracts (in alphabetical order by speaker name)

Kenneth Alper, MD
Kenneth Alper, MD is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at the New York University School of Medicine. His research on the medical ethnography of the ibogaine subculture has involved extensive contact and experience in the US and Europe, and is based on an extensive observer participant research perspective.

Dr. Alper organized the NYU Conference on ibogaine and edited the only English language scientific text on the subject, for which he received the Heffter Research Institute’s Award for Public Service in 2001. He is an independently funded NIDA investigator for his research on the quantitative EEG in substance-related disorders and is a member of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP).

Ibogaine and addiction
Ibogaine is a naturally occurring psychoactive indole alkaloid that is used to treat substance-related disorders in a global medical subculture, and is of interest as an ethnopharmacological prototype for experimental investigation and possible rational pharmaceutical development. Ibogaine is isolated from the root bark of the Tabernanthe iboga plant native to West Central Africa, where ritual eating of eboga has been a psychopharmacological sacrament in the Bwiti religion for several centuries, and likely among the Pygmies in much earlier times.

Outside of Africa, ibogaine is used across a diversity of settings including private clinics, homes, and hotel rooms, and religious contexts, in North America and Europe, in what has been termed "a vast uncontrolled experiment". The number of individuals who have taken ibogaine outside of Africa has increased fourfold during this decade. The treatment of substance-related disorders, specifically opioid withdrawal is the most common reason for which individuals have taken ibogaine. Reports of efficacy of ibogaine in opioid withdrawal may be valid irrespective of the methodological limitations associated with the clinical settings in which ibogaine is presently used. Unlike other outcomes such as post-treatment drug abstinence or craving, the clinical expression of acute opioid withdrawal occurs within a limited time frame, is easily operationalized, tends to be robust, and can be assessed accurately by typically experienced lay providers. It appears unlikely that suggestion or placebo could solely mediate the effect attributed to ibogaine in acute opioid withdrawal.

There are interesting parallels and important differences between ibogaine and the classical hallucinogens such as LSD, psilocybin or mescaline. As with LSD, serendipity has played a crucial role, and the counterpart of "Bicycle Day" for ibogaine is a day in June 1962 when a heroin-dependent individual experienced an unexpected resolution of withdrawal symptoms after taking ibogaine. Both ibogaine and the classical hallucinogens have been used as psychopharmacological sacraments, psychotherapeutic adjuncts, and treatment for substance-related disorders. Resistance due to the association with the 1960's counterculture and legal prohibitions regarding "psychedelic" agents has seriously impeded clinical research on both ibogaine and the classical hallucinogens and MDMA. However, ibogaineÍs apparent pharmacological mechanisms of action, and the central focus on acute opioid withdrawal in the ibogaine medical subculture are significant distinctions from other agents commonly termed psychedelics.

Rick Doblin, Ph.D.
Rick Doblin, Ph.D is the founder (in 1986) and president of MAPS. His dissertation (Public Policy, 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 has also conducted a thirty-four year follow-up study to Tim Leary's Concord Prison experiment.

Doblin has also studied with Stan Grof, M.D., and was in the first group to become certified as holotropic breathwork practitioners. His professional goal is to help develop legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics and marijuana, primarily as prescription medicines but also for personal growth for otherwise "healthy" people, and to also become a legally licensed psychedelic therapist. He currently resides in Boston with his wife and three young children.

The Psychedelic Rennaissance
Psychedelic research is the midst of a renaissance. There is more psychedelic research going in the US and around the world than at any time in the last 35 years. The first phase of this renaissance will be complete when LSD psychotherapy research is finally approved, since LSD is the most symbolically charged of all the psychedelics, even more so than MDMA (Ecstasy). MAPS expects to obtain approval for LSD psychotherapy research within the next several months, hopefully before Albert Hofmann turns 102 on January 11, 2008.

Rick Doblin presents an overview of psychedelic research around the world and discuss how we can move from where we are now to legal prescription use of psychedelics in specially licensed clinics by specially trained and licensed therapists. Then I'll discuss the linkages between psychedelic medicine and drug policy reform.

Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D
Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist specializing in psychospiritual development – seeing “neurosis” as the natural unfolding of human maturation. Dr. Goldsmith’s training includes Psychosynthesis, yoga psychology, Imago Relationship Therapy, regressive psychotherapies, Rogerian client-centered counseling, and other humanistic, transpersonal and eastern traditions (in addition to the lessons found in psychedelics research).

Dr. Goldsmith has a master’s degree in counseling from New York University and a Ph.D. in psychology from Claremont Graduate University. He conducted his dissertation research, on the factors that facilitate or inhibit the utilization of mental health policy research, at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Dr. Goldsmith is a frequent speaker on spiritual emergence, resistance to change, drug policy reform and the post-modern future of society. Among his publications, Dr. Goldsmith is perhaps proudest of his “Ten Lessons of Psychotherapy, Rediscovered” chapter in Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments (Praeger, 2007). He is also a founder of several salon discussion groups in New York City.

Dr. Goldsmith may be reached via his Web site, www.nealgoldsmith.com.

The Ten Lessons of Psychedelic Psychotherapy, Rediscovered
In this talk, we will review some of the methodological lessons learned after sixty years of modern psychedelic research, draw connections to lessons learned earlier by tribal peoples, offer recommendations for changing policies and bureaucracies, and call for an integral world view unifying tribal knowledge and western research.

We will begin with a brief introduction to the history and applications of psychedelic psychotherapy and then move into a discussion of the methodological lessons learned over the past sixty years of clinical experience in the field. From this discussion, ten lessons from psychedelic research will be described and their tribal roots drawn. Then, since no critical analysis is truly justified or valid without an action plan for change, we will review the policy-making process and offer strategies for changing policies and bureaucracies. Finally, to implement tribal lessons will require a postmodern or integral world view and so we will conclude with an attempt to expand the conceptual implications of psychedelic research, policy, and practice beyond the clinical and methodological to the ethical and philosophical.

Alex Grey
One night, while employed at a medical school morgue preparing cadavers and studying the human anatomy, Alex Grey met his wife, Allyson Grey and took LSD for the first time. Triggering a mystical experiences, his agnostic existentialism transformed into radical transcendentalism. Alex has applied this multidimensional perspective to painted visions of crucial human experiences such as praying, kissing, copulating, pregnancy, birth and dying. Portraying the body as translucent, Grey's paintings X-ray" multiple dimensions of reality, interweaving physical and biological anatomy with psychic and spiritual energies, providing a glimpse into archetypal domains of awareness.

Grey's visual meditation on the nature of life and consciousness, the subject of his art, is contained in three books, Sacred Mirrors and Transfigurations, two monographs that follow the history of Grey's artistic life, and The Mission of Art which reflects on art as a spiritual practice. With a world reknown career of exhibitions and keynote addresses from Basel, to Tokyo, to Sao Paulo, Grey's art has been featured on Discovery Channel, Newsweek, Time, and on album art for Tool, Beastie Boys, Nirvana, and SCI. Grey is a member of the Integral Institute, is on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and is the Chair of Wisdom University's Sacred Art Department. Alex and Allyson Grey are the co-founders of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) a not for profit institution supporting Visionary Culture in New York City.

"Grey's vision of a flawed but perfectible mankind stands as an antidote to the cynicism and spiritual malaise prevalent in much contemporary art." - The New York Times

Creativity, Spirituality and Psychedelics
Alex and Allyson Grey will discuss artwork that was inspired by entheogens including the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

Allyson Grey
An accomplished visionary artist, Allyson Grey's complex, highly patterned, spectral painting style has always been influenced and informed by psychedelics. Her maniacal puzzles represent an essentialized world view consisting of chaos, order and secret writing. Co-founder of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York City, Allyson is the wife and partner of internationally renown artist, Alex Grey, and the mother of film actress Zena Grey. Born in 1952, Allyson received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Tufts University in 1976. She has edited and co-written a dozen books and journals, taught art at Tufts University, the Boston Museum School and at Omega Institute for 17 years. A leader of a growing community, Allyson has spoken widely at conferences and symposia. She has received numerous commissions for long-term and permanent installations of her artwork, which has been exhibited and collected throughout the U.S.

Creativity, Spirituality and Psychedelics
Alex and Allyson Grey will discuss artwork that was inspired by entheogens including the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

Charles Grob, MD
Charles S. Grob, M.D. is Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. He conducted the first U.S. government approved psychobiological research study of MDMA, and was the principal investigator of an international research project in the Brazilian Amazon studying the visionary plant brew, ayahuasca. He is currently conducting an approved research investigation on the safety and efficacy of psilocybin treatment in terminally ill patients with anxiety (www.canceranxietystudy.org). Dr. Grob is the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader, published by Tarcher/Putnam in 2002, and the co-editor (with Roger Walsh) of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore The Continuing Impact Of Psychedelics, published by SUNY Press (State University of New York Press) in 2005, and he has published numerous articles on psychedelics in medical and psychiatric journals and collected volumes. He is a founding member of the Heffter Research Institute, which is devoted to fostering and funding research on psychedelics.

Psilocybin Mushroom Research
Over the past decade there has been a resumption of clinical research with hallucinogens. In particular, several studies have been approved in the United States and Europe exploring the clinical effects and therapeutic potential of psilocybin, the active alkaloid of hallucinogenic mushrooms. This talk will review the ethnobotany, anthropology, chemistry and toxicity of psilocybin, as well as the implications of the prior record of psychiatric investigations in this field. The hallucinogen treatment model with advanced-stage cancer patients with existential anxiety will be examined, including past and current research methodologies and outcomes.

Julie Holland, MD
Dr. Julie Holland is a board certified psychiatrist in New York City. As an undegraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Holland majored in the "Biological Basis of Behavior," a series of courses combining the study of psychology and neural sciences, with a concentration in psychopharmacology, or drugs and the brain. In 1992, Dr. Holland received her medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine, where she performed research on auditory hallucinations, extensively interviewing nearly one hundred psychotic patients. In 1996, she completed a psychiatric residency at Mount Sinai Medical Center, where she was the creator of a research project treating schizophrenics with a new medication, obtaining an IND from the Food and Drug Administration. In 1994, she received the Outstanding Resident Award from the National Institute of Mental Health.

From 1996 to 2005, Dr. Holland ran the psychiatric emergency room of Bellevue Hospital on Saturday and Sunday nights. A liaison to the hospital's medical emergency room and toxicology department, she is considered an expert on street drugs and intoxication states, and lectures widely on this topic. She published a paper in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, describing a resurgence of the drug phenomenon smoking marijuana soaked in embalming fluid, typically a carrier for PCP. During her college years, Dr. Holland grew interested in a new drug and authored an extensive research paper on MDMA (ecstasy), resulting in multiple television appearances, forensic consultations, and a book, Ecstasy: The Complete Guide. She has been quoted as an authority on MDMA in Harper's magazine and has published in the journal Lancet about the putative neurotoxic effects of MDMA. She has also written two articles for the quarterly journal of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a consortium of international hallucinogen researchers. The first detailed a survey of ecstasy and other drugs used at New York City raves, and the second reviewed an international conference on psychedelic research held in the Netherlands.

Dr. Holland has a private psychiatry practice in Manhattan since 1996. She is also available for forensic consultation. Please see her website, drholland.com , to learn more.

The History of MDMA and Therapy
Dr. Julie Holland will speak about MDMA (Ecstasy) and its use as an adjunct to psychotherapy. MDMA's objective and subjective effects will be delineated, and special attention will be given to how these effects lends themselves to the psychotherapeutic experience.

The history of MDMA from its patent in 1914 to early psychotherapeutic use to the present will be examined. The problems inherent in recreational use, such as drug substitution and misinformation, will be highlighted.

Finally, the potential for MDMA to be useful in the field of psychiatry will be discussed, as well as a quick review of MDMA research around the world.

Michael Mithoefer, MD
Michael Mithoefer, MD, is a psychiatrist in practice in Charleston, SC, and is Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at The Medical University of South Carolina. He is Board Certified in Psychiatry and is a Certified Holotropic Breathwork Facilitator. Before going into psychiatry in 1991 he practiced emergency medicine for ten years, and was board certified in both Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine. Dr. Mithoefer is the Principal Investigator for the first FDA-approved MDMA therapy study, which evaluates the safety and effectiveness of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for subjects with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Treating Posttraumatic Stress Disorder with MDMA
MDMA facilitated treatment of PTSD, Michael C. Mithoefer, MD

A phase II clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treatment resistant Posttraumatic Stress Disorder was begun in the United States in March, 2004.1 It is a double-blind, placebo controlled trial involving the administration of MDMA or inactive placebo on two or three occasions under the direct supervision of a male/female therapist team. During these eight-hour experimental sessions vital signs are monitored as subjects revisit their trauma with minimally directive guidance and support from the therapists. Preceding these sessions are two non-drug preparatory sessions and at least nine non-drug follow up psychotherapy sessions aimed at integrating the MDMA experience. Subjects with significant medical problems or some psychiatric disorders such as active substance abuse, psychosis or bipolar disorder type I are excluded. The hypothesis being tested is that MDMA will catalyze the psychotherapeutic process by decreasing levels of fear and defensiveness, which are often obstacles to effective therapy for PTSD. The primary outcome measure is the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale2. Neuropsychological function is also measured before and after two MDMA or placebo. At the time of this writing 15 of the 20 subjects have completed the study and 4 are currently enrolled. Preliminary results suggest that the effect of MDMA- assisted therapy on PTSD symptoms in this treatment resistant population is quite robust compared to the same therapy with placebo. There is no evidence for a decline in neuropsychological function after MDMA in these subjects, most of whom are MDMA-naive.

The talk will describe the protocol, present some preliminary data and give some clinical vignettes from subjects' experiences.

Ethan Nadelmann, Ph.D
Ethan Nadelmann is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.

Nadelmann was born in New York City and received his BA, JD, and PhD from Harvard, and a master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics. He then taught politics and public affairs at Princeton University from 1987 to 1994, where his speaking and writings on drug policy, in publications ranging from Science and Foreign Affairs to American Heritage and National Review, attracted international attention.

He also authored the book, Cops Across Borders, the first scholarly study of the internationalization of U.S. criminal law enforcement.   A new book, co-authored with Peter Andreas and entitled Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations, was published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

In 1994, Nadelmann founded the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy institute created with the philanthropic support of George Soros. In 2000, the growing Center merged with another organization to form the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. Described by Rolling Stone as "“the point man”" for drug policy reform efforts, Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the most prominent proponent of drug policy reform.

Psychedelics and Drug Reform
Issues involving psychedelics are often seen as distinct from broader drug policy issues involving other psychoactive drugs (heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, etc.) and the role of the criminal justice system. This makes some sense given the unique qualities of the psychedelics, but there are also important reasons to include the psychedelics in broader drug policy reform efforts.

Andrew Sewell, MD
Andrew Sewell is descended from Welsh coal miners on his mother's side (the same who fought the Zulus at Rorke's Drift) and British coal miners on his father's. When the Labor party made the universities merit-based after World War II, both his parents defied tradition and went to college; met, and emigrated to America when Andrew was young to seek a better life. As an undergraduate at Cornell, Andrew studied physics like his father, but a late brush with psychedelics changed his mind and he went to medical school instead.

After receiving MD at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and completing a combined residency in neurology and psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Sewell recently completed a three-year research fellowship in Alcohol and Drug Abuse at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where he studied the response of cluster headache to psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD, and LSA. He now works at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System/Yale University School of Medicine doing cannabis research, and hopes to continue the work on cluster headache there also.

In his spare time, Dr. Sewell volunteers actively for the Burning Man organization, a community of which he has been a part for almost a decade, rides his bike, and enjoys the company of his two cats.

Clusterbusting with LSA
Cluster headache is a rare syndrome of circadian-linked headaches with accompanying autonomic signs such as drooping eye, contracted pupil, runny nose, and a compulsion to pace about or bang the head. The intensity of these attacks is severe enough that patients have been known to commit suicide to escape the pain. Anecdotal evidence indicates that LSD or psilocybin may produce striking remissions in the disorder, often at sub-hallucinogenic doses. This study was intended to establish whether lysergic acid amide (LSA), a naturally occurring analogue of LSD found in the seeds of the plants morning glory, Hawaiian baby woodrose, and ololiuqui (Rivea corymbosa) have similar effects.

367 patients in a pre-existing registry of cluster headache patients who have agreed to take part in clinical trials on cluster headache were surveyed to determine whether they were using LSA-containing seeds to self-medicate their cluster headache. 55 subjects either were or had done so. Those meeting inclusion criteria were interviewed to determine the effects of LSA on their cluster attack intensity and frequency, as well as cluster period and remission period length. The Hallucinogen Rating Scale (HRS) and Peak Experience Profile (PEP) were administered in order to quantify the strength of the subjective effects experienced. Subjects were also encouraged to send a one-gram sample of the seeds that they had ingested for quantitative analysis of LSA content.

Many subjects, including those with refractory chronic cluster headache, experienced striking remission of their disease, often using doses that produced either no or very mild subjective effects. At the time of this abstract submission, we have not yet completed the quantitative analysis to construct dose-response curves.

LSA may abort acute cluster attacks, terminate cluster periods and extend remission periods, often at subhallucinogenic doses, in a manner similar to that of LSD and psilocybin. This study adds to the anecdotal evidence of pronounced medical benefit from these psychedelic drugs, and adds further weight to the argument that this putative effect needs to be studied in a randomized placebo-controlled trial.

About the host
Jonathan Phillips

Motivated by his work at the September 11th Fund, Jonathan Phillips began the street-theater/media group, Greene Dragon. He also served as a political columnist for Music for America, but after experiencing a number of mystical experiences, he changed his focus from activism to evolving human consciousness.

Currently, he is the managing editor of the web magazine, Reality Sandwich, covering the frontiers of art, science, culture, spirituality and sustainability. Jonathan also serves as the executive editor of the weekly newsletter, Souldish.com, which lists the top consciousness-raising events in New York City. He created and directed "The Ayahuasca Monologues: Tales of the Spirit Vine" and is now organizing The Evolver Salon. Jonathan has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Time, and the cover of New York Magazine.

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