| Saturday September 20, 2008 | ||
| 10:00 - 10:15 | Introduction | |
| 10:15 - 11:00 | Daniel Pinchbeck | The Future of Psychedelics |
| 11:00 - 11:45 | Allan Hunt Badiner | Catching the Buzz: Drugs or Dharma? |
| 11:45 - 12:30 | Screening: Postmodern Times | |
| 12:30 - 2:00 | Lunch break | |
| 2:15 - 3:00 | Robert Forte | Psychedelic Drugs and the Religious Experience: The Politics of Methodology |
| 3:00 - 3:45 | David Nichols, Ph.D. | Is There a Renaissance in Psychedelic Research and How Did it Happen? |
| 3:45 - 4:30 | Roland Griffiths, Ph.D. | Psilocybin Occasions Mystical-Type Experiences Having Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance |
| 4:30 - 5:15 | Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis | Ibogaine Healing in America and Gabon: A Contrast in World View and Public Policy |
| 5:15 - 6:00 | Dan Merkur | The Social Location of Psychedelic Mysticism |
| 6:00 - 6:45 | Sasha Shulgin, Ph.D. and Ann Shulgin | Q & A with the Shulgins |
| 7:00 - 7:45 | Psyche and Delia | Reading from a New Opera on the History of Psychedelics |
| Sunday September 21, 2008 | ||
| 1:30 | Introduction | |
| 1:45 - 2:30 | Alex and Allyson Grey | Psychedelic Families: What Do We Tell the Children? |
| 2:30 - 3:15 | Alex Grey | Contemporary Visionary Culture |
| 3:15 - 4:00 | Sean Helfritsch & Isaiah Saxon | Psilocybin, Experiential Art and the Language of Forms |
| 4:00 - 4:45 | Rick Doblin, Ph.D. | Mainstreaming Psychedelic Medicine: Patience is the Fastest Way |
| 4:45 - 5:30 | Bob Wold | Cluster Headaches and Psilocybin: A New Medication on the Horizon |
| 5:30 - 6:00 | Adjourn | |
(in alphabetical order)
Allan Hunt Badiner
Catching the Buzz: Drugs or Dharma?
I'm concerned with the relationship between psychedelics and Buddhism, the philosophical ground they share, the closeted psychedelic roots of Buddhist traditions of the West, as well as the inconvenient duality that undermines any chemically dependent spiritual path. Buddhism and psychedelics share the same ultimate goal: liberation of the mind. Few Buddhists claim that psychedelic use is a path itself, some maintain that it is a legitimate gateway, and others feel Buddhism and psychedelics don't mix at all.
Psychedelic and Buddhist perspectives are like overlapping concentric circles, and they share an acute attraction to mindfulness, and the primacy of direct experience. Certainly, in terms of Buddhist values, the ignorance and cruelty of the drug war evokes great compassion. Everyone has a different view of psychedelics in relation to spiritual practice, and in order to fully grasp any view with useful clarity, all voices need to be heard and respected.
Biography
Allan Hunt Badiner is a writer and an activist who is interested in how Buddhism relates to modern social problems. He is a contributing editor at Tricycle magazine, and serves on the board of directors of Rainforest Action Network. Allan edited the book, Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics (Chronicle Books, 2002), as well as two other books of collected essays: Dharma Gaia: A Harvest in Buddhism and Ecology (Parallax Press, 1990), and Mindfulness in the Marketplace: Compassionate Responses to Consumerism (Parallax, 2002). His new book, currently in the works, is called Buddhaland: The Eight Great Places of Pilgrimage in India. Allan holds a masters degree in Buddhist Studies from the College of Buddhist Studies in Los Angeles, and he is an Adjunct Professor currently teaching at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco.
Rick Doblin, Ph.D.
Mainstreaming Psychedelic Medicine: Patience is the Fastest Way
One day, psychedelic psychotherapy will be legally available in every town in the US. The psychedelics will be pure and prescribed under the supervision of therapists/psychiatrists with special training. This state of affairs will probably precede the establishment of a post-prohibition world. It will begin to develop in about ten years or less, after MDMA is approved by the FDA for the treatment of people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and will take about thirty more years to develop. The growth of the hospice movement is a good model, with the first hospice clinic in the US opening in 1974 with over 3000 clinics in existence by 2004. Today, psychedelic therapy is mostly an illegal practice, with some practitioners still willing to practice their healing work with psychedelics despite the risks involved. A strategy for how the underground becomes mainstream, then eventually taken for granted, will be discussed.
Biography
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.
Encyclopedia Pictura
Psilocybin, Experiential Art and the Language of Forms
This discussion will focus on psilocybin's effects on the visual artist's emotions, identity, process, and understanding. Through channeling the shamanic archetype and its tools, contemporary artists can discover the devotional mode of creativity and its range of aspects - from enthusiasm to psychosis. Research into the brain's pathways of visual cognition confirms psilocybin's role as a tool to vivify these pathways for an individual artist. Systems-thinking, morphometric imprinting, synesthesia, visual modeling, and augmented reality will be explored. By examining these potentials of visual communication and the current ramp towards mediums that increasingly resemble direct experience, we are led to a better grasp of the artist's opportunities in the current social, environmental, and technological scenario.
Biography
Isaiah Saxon, Sean Hellfritsch, and Daren Rabinovitch are congealed together as the creative team Encyclopedia Pictura. Their film work includes collaborations with Bjork, McSweeney's, Grizzly Bear, and Will Wright's video game "Spore." The E.P. group has a diverse range of enthusiastic pursuits. Their recent actions include the design and construction of 3d camera and viewing systems, large-scale puppetry, body choreography, physical and digital sculpture and painting, and the development of a usable visual language as an augmented reality application. They are currently using permaculture design science to create a regenerative human settlement in the Santa Cruz Mountains whilst they write their first feature film - a 3d shamanic experience for children. Their creative influences include Buckminster Fuller, Hayao Miyazaki, Walt Disney, Terence McKenna, Bill Mollison, Jaron Lanier, and Leonardo DaVinci.
Robert Forte
Psychedelic Drugs and the Religious Experience: The Politics of Methodology
Entheogens burst into western society with profound political consequences that severely hampered the research community from legally exploring the spiritual characteristics of these remarkable substances. What type of psychedelic research would there be if we were free from the narrow scientific and legal parameters that presently define it? Stanislav Grof, for example constructed a novel model of the psyche based on his observations from LSD research that would be near impossible to conduct today. This talk is a continuation of a conversation, begun by Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary in 1961 at the Visionary Experience conference in Copenhagen, about how best to advance the science of religious experience. Leary was much to blame for this important work being pushed aside by politics. If we could push those politics aside and examine what is possible, what would we see?
Biography
Robert Forte is a scholar of the history and psychology of the ancient and modern use of psychedelic drugs. Over the last thirty years he has worked with Frank Barron, Stanislav Grof, Mircea Eliade, Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Claudio Naranjo, and many other seminal figures in the modern psychedelic movement. He is editor of Entheogens and the Future of Religion, Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In, and the 1998 and 2008 editions of The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. He holds a master�s degree in the psychology of religion from The Divinity School, University of Chicago , was a director of the Albert Hofmann Foundation, and taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and advisor to the Purdue University Library Special Collection on Psychoactive Substances.
Alex Grey
Contemporary Visionary Culture
Worldwide
there is a movement of art and culture inspired by entheogens.
Festivals and rock concerts give sanctuary to tens of thousands
taking psychedelics and celebrating tribal unity. Alex Grey will
offer an illustrated view of current and future trends in
contemporary entheo art and gatherings born of the alchemical
crucible.
Biography
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.
http://www.alexgrey.com
Alex & Allyson Grey
Psychedelic Families: What Do We Tell the Children?
Growing up in a culture where psychedelics are demonized, mind-altering substances are not a welcome topic of conversation in many homes. Knowing the perils and promise of entheogens, many of us face the question of whether to broach the subject with our children at all and if so, how. Alex and Allyson Grey will share from their own experience and site reports from MAPS, Erowid, Entheogen Review, Drug Policy Alliance, and include both U.S. and European source material. The Greys will lead a discussion where participants will be invited to air diverse points of view.
Biographies
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. http://www.alexgrey.com
The
symbol system in the paintings of Allyson Grey represents an
essentialized world view comprised of chaos, order and secret
writing. The devotional, quality of the paintings resonate with
Tantric art, Jain cosmological diagrams, and the science of chaos
dynamics. Allyson received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Tufts
University, has edited and co-written a dozen books and journals,
and has taught at many venues including Tufts University, Boston
Museum School and at Omega Institute for 18 years. She has
lectured widely, had public art commissions and solo art exhibitions
in New York City and throughout the U.S. Allyson, wife and partner
of Alex Grey, is co-founder of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in NYC,
and the mother of film actress Zena Grey.
http://www.allysongrey.com
Roland Griffiths, Ph.D.
Psilocybin Occasions Mystical-Type
Experiences Having Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual
Significance
Two studies at Johns Hopkins have
characterized the effects of psilocybin administration under
supportive conditions to carefully screened and well-prepared
hallucinogen-naÔve adults who reported regular participation
in religious/spiritual activities. During the 8-hour psilocybin
sessions, which were conducted individually in an aesthetic
living-room-like setting, volunteers were encouraged to use
eyeshades and direct their attention inward. As assessed on the
session day, most volunteers had a "complete" mystical
experience after a high dose of psilocybin, although more than a
third of volunteers also indicated that their experiences included
fear, anxiety, or unpleasant psychological struggle at sometime
during the session.
R. R. Griffiths, M. W. Johnson, and W. A.
Richards The Social Location of Psychedelic Mysticism
Biography
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.
Dan Merkur
Psychedelics
and other entheogens have been used historically in at least five
types of social organization. (1) Religious renewal movements are
mass social phenomena, considerably spontaneous, and socially
disruptive. They rarely last more than a generation. (2) Religious
specialists, alone in their communities, may use drugs, and train
their students. Examples include shamans, bards, alchemists, and
members of some priesthoods and mystical orders. Self-selection to
be religious specialists makes these traditions potentially long
lasting. The drug experiences tend to confirm the general religions
of the cultures. (3) Religious initiations into tribes, sects, or
mystical orders are single brief exposures to drug experiences that
accomplish spiritual awakenings, but leave further spiritual
development to the general religions of the cultures. (4) In cases
of religious associations, everyone in the tribe or sect partakes;
and the general religions of the cultures or sects are profoundly
shaped by the drug experiences. (5) Modern Western psychotherapies
have uniquely used drug experiences to promote characterological
change, and have at least a potential for an equally unprecedented
transgenerational longevity.
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 several books, including The Ecstatic Imagination: Psychedelic Experiences and the Psychoanalysis of Self-Actualization, The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible, and The Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience.
Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis
Ibogaine Healing in America and Gabon: A
Contrast in World View and Public Policy
Dimitri
will discuss his experience overcoming a 20 year Heroin, Cocaine,
and Methadone dependency with the use of a single treatment of
Ibogaine. His talk will focus on his experience treating over 250
drug users with Ibogaine in a non clinical setting, his trips to
Gabon, his own Bwiti initiation, and recent incorporation of the
Bwiti ritual into the Ibogaine treatments.
Biography
Dimitri Mobengo Mugianis is a founding member of Freedom Root, The Ibogaine Project. He is an Ibogaine treatment provider working in NYC and a Bwiti initiate and Nganga.
Dimitri is a co-founder of VOCAL NYC drug users union and has spoken around the world about drug user�s human rights, Harm Reduction, Drug policy, and Ibogaine. He has been featured in numerous publications and media outlets including National Public Radio�s �This American Life,� and his work is the subject of an upcoming documentary by Michel Negroponte.
Dimitri recently 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.
Is There a Renaissance in Psychedelic Research and How did it Happen?
The
definition of renaissance is: a renewal of life, vigor, interest,
etc.; rebirth; revival. If there is a renaissance in psychedelic
research, to what or to whom can it be attributed? Did it just
happen spontaneously? This talk will provide an overview of several
events that may have contributed to the genesis of this revival.
Incorporation of the Heffter Research Institute in 1993 was one such
event, but many individuals played key roles in a process that has
taken place over at least three decades and has led us to the
present moment. This renaissance, if we can call it that, has
resulted from the dedication and work of a relatively few
individuals who believed strongly that psychedelics did not get a
fair shake in their earlier incarnation in Western society and who
have worked to educate the public and to increase understanding of
the actual nature of these substances.
Biography
David
E. Nichols, Ph.D. 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
The Future of Psychedelics
Beyond
the potential for psychedelics in medicine and psychotherapy, these
substances may have importance as tools for creativity, scientific
innovation, and spiritual communion. As psychedelic research
develops, we can look at the role of plant teachers and shamanism in
tribal cultures for perspectives on what the future of psychedelics
might hold for our desacralized postmodern world. Could science and
spirituality fuse together to form a new level of human
consciousness?
Biography
Daniel
Pinchbeck is one of the founders of Open City, an art and literary
journal. He was a 1999-2000 Fellow of the National Arts Journalism
Program at Columbia University and has written for many leading
magazines. Author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
(Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) and Breaking Open the Head (Broadway Books,
2002). He is Editorial Director of Reality Sandwich.
Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, Ph.D & Ann Shulgin
Sasha and Ann
Answer Questions about Psychopharmacology, Psychotherapy, and Drug
Policy Reform
Q&A
format on psychedelic chemistry, history, policy, the future.
Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, Ph.D. is a pharmacologist, chemist and drug developer. He and his wife Ann Shulgin authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL. Shulgin discovered many other noteworthy phenylethylamines including the 2C* family of which 2C-T-2, 2C-T-7, 2C-I, and 2C-B are most well known.
Shulgin personally tested hundreds of drugs, mainly analogues to various tryptamines (family containing LSD, DMT, and psilocybin) and phenylethylamines (family containing MDMA and mescaline). There are an infinite number of slight chemical variations, all of which produce slight variations in effect � some pleasant and some unpleasant � and all of which are meticulously recorded in Shulgin's books.
Ann Shulgin has worked as a lay-therapist with psychedelic substances such as MDMA and 2C-B in therapeutic settings while these drugs were still legal. She often appears as a speaker at conventions, and has continued to advocate the use of psychedelics in therapeutic contexts.
Together with her husband, chemist Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, she has authored the books PiHKAL and TiHKAL and contributed to the book Entheogens and the Future of Religion.
Bob Wold
Cluster Headaches and Psilocybin: A New Medication on the Horizon
Cluster Headache is not what you usually think of when someone says they have a headache: the pain will wake you up out of your sleep and is so searing painful that people are known to pull out their hair or bang their head against the wall to distract themselves from this pain. Indeed, cluster has been nicknamed "suicide headaches." You will leave this talk knowing a lot more about cluster headache and the story of how patients just like me came to find in psilocybin and LSD a profound medication that helps more than the medicines we currently can get from our physicians. Clusterbusters is doing something about that: we work closely with Dr. John Halpern of McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School and are, in fact, sponsoring Dr. Halpern's clinical project to evaluate psilocybin for people with episodic cluster headache. Up to twenty- four subjects will be receiving psilocybin in this project, but please take note that this is a study of cluster headache patients with a psychedelic and not a psychedelic study with cluster headache patients. To bring research with psilocybin to Harvard has been a long and complicated road, but you will learn why it is the most important one to take: many lives depend on it and we want to count on your support.
Biography
Bob Wold is founder and President of Clusterbusters, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit charitable organization dedicated to the research of cluster headache and to support people with cluster headache and their families. Based in greater Chicago with his wife and 4 children, Mr. Wold has talked to 1000s of cluster sufferers. In fact, over 25 years of his adult life was burdened with severe cluster headache that was resistant to all standard treatments. That all changed after he tried psilocybin, which has helped regain control over this illness for him... and now hundreds to perhaps thousands of other cluster headache patients all over the world.
Supporting Program
PostModern Times
Mixing cutting-edge thinkers with state-of-the-art animation, PostModern Times presents a new understanding of our world, highlighting practical techniques for creating a sustainable future. The current planetary crisis issues from severe errors in the Western mindset leading to social and ecological catastrophe. On an exterior level, we tried to dominate nature rather than mesh with the biosphere. At the same time, we denied the individual and interior aspects of psychic reality. Through a mix of interview and narration, PostModern Times explores the work of scientists, philosophers, shamans, and technicians who push beyond the limits of current knowledge to make a new planetary culture.
Directed by Joao Amorim; Executive Producer
Daniel Pinchbeck; Produced and Co-directed by Nikos Katsaounis;
Edited by Pedro Tarrago; Design Rodrigo Lima; Animation Carlos
Duba
Biography
Joao Amorim, is a Brazilian Director focusing on animation and documentary film making. He is currently represented by Curious Pictures, New York.
Joao has worked world wide as an industrial designer, animator, and Animation Supervisor for many years prior to directing. In 2007, Joao directed the short, "Toward 2012" featuring Author Daniel Pinchbeck. This project has lead to the production of the animated web series "Postmodern Times," produced by iclips.net, and focusing on issues around consciousness and sustainability.
He is currently working on 2012, Time for Change, his first feature documentary, highlighting ideas on sustainability and consciousness.
Joao lives in-between New York's East Village and Chapada dos Veadeiros, Brazil. In Chapada, Joao has been developing a permaculture project, putting sustainability in to action.
Psyche & Delia
Scene IV: CIA/MK-Ultra
Readers: Thomas Tuthill, Carleton Schade, and Ed Rosenfeld (co-librettist)
Psyche
and Delia is a new opera project about the controversial history of
psychedelics.
It is based on a series of events from history concerning real people. The scene being presented is a reading from the opera's libretto of the main scene in the opera concerning the CIA's involvement with psychedelics and other approaches to interrogation and mind control: the MK-ULTRA program. Readers of the scene are: Thomas Tuthill, Carleton Schade and Ed Rosenfeld (co-librettist).
Biographies
Mark Anton Moebius (composer) is a Berlin-based composer of operas, orchestral and choral works. He has been awarded a number of grants and prizes.
Gerd Stern (libretto) is a poet, writer and media artist. He is one of the founders of USCO, a multimedia arts collaborative active since the 1960's. His own work and the group's work has been shown and performed in museums, universities and galleries all over the United States and abroad.
Edward Rosenfeld (libretto) is a writer, editor, publisher and technology consultant. Several of the scenes in Psyche and Delia are based in part on MK-ULTRA, a screenplay written by Rosenfeld.
Isaac
Abrams (scenic design) is a self-taught artist with an academic
background in journalism and history. Abrams has worked extensively
in the areas of painting, sculpture, film animation and computer
animation. One of his paintings appeared on the cover of the book
"Psychedelic Art."
MAPS Conference in April
April 15-18, 2010 in the San Francisco Bay Area
The Psychedelic Science conference will bring together international experts exploring clinical applications, issues relevant to healthcare professionals, and social and cultural issues surrounding the therapeutic and recreational uses of psychedelics.