Psychedelic news, science and culture, including progress from our contributor Dr Ben Sessa’s MDMA studies
Our featured contributors - Nikki Wyrd and Julian Vayne
Upcoming events by our Partners The Psychedelic Society
Psychedelic news and science round-up
New psychedelic research center launched in Mount Sinai
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) is a medical school in Manhattan, and the academic teaching arm to Mount Sinai, New York’s largest academic medical system. An article came out on the 7th January announcing the exciting news that the school has launched a new psychedelics research centre.
Founded by Rachel Yehuda, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry, the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research is sought to discover new and effective treatments for various stress-related disorders using different psychedelic compounds. Research from the centre will also investigate the biological effects of different psychedelics and develop psychedelic-therapist training courses and public education around psychedelic therapy.
Rachel Yehuda, PhD, Director of the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
We anticipate this exciting development will have a marked impact on pushing forward the ongoing psychedelic renaissance and new, informed approaches to treating mental health.
Exploring psychedelics and nature-connectedness
Our contributors Dr Sam Gandy, Rosalind Watts and Chris Timmermann published a recent article, in collaboration with other researchers from Imperial College, exploring the connection between psychedelics, nature-connectedness and mental health.
By examining the similarities between psychedelics and nature-contact and psychedelics' ability to enhance nature connectedness, the authors propose the importance of incorporating nature and natural settings into psychedelic therapy preparation and integration. They suggest that combining nature and psychedelic therapy could see a synergy in positive effects on well-being to produce overall better mental health treatment outcomes.
Image of article author and project contributor, Rosalind Watts
A tragic lesson to be learnt from self-medicating
On the 15th January, news hit as a US man suffered organ failure as a result of injecting himself with a tea made with psychedelic mushrooms (Injecting psilocybin mushrooms, or psilocybin tea, straight into your veins should not be performed under any circumstances).
The man had type-1 bipolar disorder and had read about the potential for psilocybin to treat symptoms of depression and anxiety. This self-medication resulted in a three-week hospital admission as the mushrooms grew in his bloodstream resulting in organ failure.
This close call demonstrates how the therapeutic potentials of psychedelics are becoming ever-more glamorized, yet the information available for safe and responsible use is not catching up. At The Psychedelic Renaissance we are passionate about increasing the full scope of non-bias psychedelic education, to avoid people self-medicating in ways that don’t risk their physical or psychological health, to avoid situations like the one above being replicated. In efforts to increase drug safety, our documentary team have put together harm-reduction resources which will be released soon on The Psychedelic Society website.
Exciting progress in MDMA for Alcoholism studies
Our contributor, Dr Sessa, announced earlier this month that his ongoing research into using MDMA for treatment Alcohol-use Disorder will be published in one of biomedical science's most prestigious journals - The Journal of Psychopharmacology.
His study, titled "First safety study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in patients with alcohol use disorder", aims to demonstrate MDMA is safe to use for patients. Showing MDMA is well-tolerated in patients will allow for expansion into investigations of MDMA's therapeutic potential.
MDMA-therapy's ability in allowing patients to investigate their trauma has led to its clinical trialling for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now MDMA is being investigated as a possible treatment for treating addiction. With published clinical evidence of MDMA's safety, we hope to see Dr Sessa's MDMA-based studies progress and encourage further related research. This could eventually lead to new and better treatments for alcoholism and other addiction-related disorders.
During documentary filming, we captured Dr Sessa in action at Bristol’s Clinical Research and Imaging Centre, the location of his MDMA-for-alcoholism studies. On the right he is shown in the Bristol University pharmacy collecting MDMA for his morning session
Our contributors and partners: Julian Vayne & Nikki Wyrd
Julian Vayne
Julian Vayne is an occultist and the author of numerous books, essays, journals and articles in both the academic and esoteric press. Over the past 30 plus years, he has participated in a group ceremony with a variety of druids, shamans and others. Julian facilitates psychedelic ceremony as well as providing one-to-one psychedelic integration sessions and support. He is the author of the celebrated Getting Higher: The Manual of Psychedelic Ceremony, co-organizer of Breaking Convention, a leading contributor to theblogofbaphomet.com and a co-director of The Psychedelic Museum.
Nikki Wyrd
Nikki Wyrd is one of the directors of the psychedelic conference Breaking
Convention. She is an editor of thePsychedelic Press Journal and runs the Universe Machine publishing house. Her copy editing work can be found in most notable books of recent years related to psychedelics, occultism and medicine. Along with Julian Vayne, she co-authored The Book of Baphomet, which beautifully blends scientific rationale with magickal actions. Nikki often talks at conferences and festivals, holds space at retreats and gives workshops centred around shamanic/ceremonial practices.
Join Julian and Nikki for an immersive and interactive ceremony this upcoming February to celebrate Imbolc - the festival that marks the beginning of spring in the Celtic wheel of the year. See event listed below.
Events
Some upcoming events on behalf of our partners, the Psychedelic Society, featuring our proud contributors, and run by some of our project core team members:
Can Psychedelics Change the World? Panel Discussion & Exclusive Preview of The Psychedelic Renaissance Documentary - 18th February
In light of a global mental health and ecological crisis, psychedelics hold the potential to shift our cultural paradigms, perspectives on human psychology and relationship to the planet as a whole. But how can an individual experience translate to wide scale systems change? Among the current mass instability of our planet, we will hear from key contributors to our documentary, including Chris Timmerman, Darren Springer and documentary director herself, Anya Oleksiuk, as we ask the question - can psychedelics change the world? Following the event, all ticket holders will be given access to the unseen documentary footage.
Imbolc Celebration with Julian Vayne and Nikki Wyrd - 1st February
Imbolc is the festival which marks the beginning of spring in the Celtic wheel of the year - time for purification, cleansing and opening the ways for the year ahead. Working with both ancient and modern ritual practices, Julian Vayne and Nikki Wyrd will be using techniques of changing consciousness developed from Chaos Magic and metamodern Deep Magic to connect with the spirit of the season’s turning and each other.
Medicating Normal Film Screening & Panel Discussion with Dr Ben Sessa, Dr Emma Robinson, Wendy Racliffe and Angela Peacock - 3rd February
Medicating Normal weaves the stories of five people impacted by prescribed psychiatric drugs and leading experts - it follows the journeys of a newly married couple, a female combat veteran, a waitress, and a teenager – whose doctors prescribed psychiatric drugs to help with stress, mild depression, sleeplessness, focus, and trauma. The event will consist of a screening of the documentary followed by a post-screening discussion featuring our contributor, Dr Ben Sessa.
Mushrooms have been growing wild since prehistoric times. Their therapeutic value has been prized in indigenous cultures, for thousands of years. They play a critical role in medicinal practice and were noted in some of the first books on herbal medicine written thousands of years ago.
Come and learn the basics of mushroom cultivation, explore various techniques for growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms such as Oyster, Reishi, Shiitake and many other strains of mushrooms.
Exploring 5-MeO-DMT: Therapeutic Potential, Ethics and the Shadow with Dr Malin Uthag, Christopher Timmermann, Rafael Lancelotta & Chad Charles - 11th February
Mainstream media often associates 5-MeO-DMT with powerful effects on the psyche. However, beyond the experience, this fascinating molecule offers a much broader landscape of potentials, clinical redefining the Sonoran toad venom as a promising therapeutic.
Traversing through culture, science and moral debate, join a panel of leading scientists and experts as we dive into the known and the unknown of psychedelic toad venom and its mysterious psychoactive molecule, 5-MeO-DMT.
MycoTek: The Art & Science of Mycelium Cultivation - 21st February
Through a mixture of theory and practice, we will lead you through the process of growing your own lion’s mane fungi! Suitable for beginners, one could not hope to find a simpler way of cultivating their own fungi. It is low cost and requires minimal equipment or expensive tools, it has a very low environmental footprint and is well suited for people who lead busy lives or are tight on space.
Psychedelics and Cluster Headaches with Dr Jonathan Leighton, Dr Brian McGeeny, Corina Breukel & Ainslie Course - 22nd February
Cluster headaches, notoriously labelled “suicide headaches”, are among the most excruciating conditions known to medicine. Psilocybin, LSD and 5-MeO-DALT have all been found not just to reduce the frequency of attacks but to prevent and abort entire cluster headache cycles. There is an urgent need to make these substances available to patients and remove the threat of prosecution for patients who self-medicate. Co-organised with the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS), join us for this panel event as we explore psychedelic science, medicine and policy.
