Insights from studying psychedelic psychology and philosophy
Sacred Sexuality: 24hr Circle Saturday 27 May
Join me Saturday 11pm PST Sunday 7am UK for the next inclusive global gathering hosted by Entheo Society Washington.
Remember when we danced till Sunday morning? Stopping only to chat awhile about sex, drugs and complex cosmologies? Well now we can again! (On Zoom.)
Here’s the free link to join me this Sunday 28 May from 7am UK where I'm moderating the latest 24-hour open-access psychedelic circle from Entheo Society of Washington. Or just watch on Facebook here.
Make it part of your morning practice – or better still join from 5pm UK today Saturday 27, or anytime right through to 5pm Sunday.
The theme’s ‘Sacred Sexuality, Safety and Sexual Misconduct’.
I'm chatting about how some psychedelic ceremonies could benefit from some old school rave etiquette, and learn from lapses thereof – at 7am UK time Sunday morning, fittingly.
That's 11pm PST so prime late-night Saturday after dark chat for some of you.
Actually breaking through to the other side
Pioneers on ‘DMTx’ extended DMT trials speak about their experiences for the first time.
Omega-level operators speak about their time in ‘DMTx’ breakthrough states lasting hours as opposed to minutes
Mary Jacoob, ‘Divination of the Municipal Bank’
They told Dr Andrew Gallimore ‘It can’t be done. You’re mad.’
But as arguably the most far-out head in the space explained in he and Dr Rick ‘The Spirit Molecule’ Strassman’s proposal for extended voyages with intense visionary substance DMT, all you’d need is a regular target-controlled intravenous infusion kit. Like they use to administer general anaesthetic. Which you can buy off the Internet for £90.
Better still, get the interns at Imperial College Psychedelic Research Centre to whip up what’s colloquially become known as ‘The DMTx Machine’. And recruit some present-day explorers into the unknown to have a go on it first.
“It’s like bounding into the strongest moment of an ayahuasca session,” says Anton Bilton, founder of The Tyringham Initiative and backer of trials in extended DMT – ‘DMTx’ – experiences.
“This is a closer route to the mystery of our existence than sending rockets into space”
Eight intrepid psychonauts in total hooked up to titrated DMT drips under the expert eyes of Dr Robin Carharrt-Harris and team.
Pioneers from the hyperspace mission’s crew – Carl Hayden Smith, Jack Allocca, Alexander Beiner and Bilton himself – spoke about their courageous foray in a heavyweight forum hosted by Graham Hancock and DMTx’s inventors, Andrew Gallimore and Rick Strassman.
Psychedelic history hang in the air as Gallimore and The Strass witnessed their seemingly lunatic plans come to fruition, surprisingly smoothly.
It was only the day after his initial extended DMT voyage that I first met Dr Allocca, at the Breaking Convention conference in Whitechapel this time last year. He showed me photos.
“Can it help access the active intellect? The sum of all past, present and future knowledge?”
There he was with the brain scanner flashing away on his head, which looked visually appropriate at least. As did the chap playing a lute sat in the corner. The rest of the clinical testing room, ochre carpet and all, not so much. “I was literally being probed and scanned, like I was in a bad trip machine,” he relayed during an online debrief held this week.
I noted how healthy and insouciant he appeared, considering. Since, I’ve also noted he always appears healthy and insouciant – due to healthy psychonautic living, he says. At a talk by Dr Allocca I attended here in Shoreditch last month, he suggested that some DMTx crew members relished the experience more than others.
"We have to be careful not to create a biochemical Netflix”
Alloca, Bilton, Beiner and Carl Hayden-Smith – who went first, and spoke at length during Breaking Convention in Exeter – were certainly effusive on the call. Perhaps not in the manner of your average hyperspace debrief though – feelings of humility and gratitude, rather than stuff like the Library of Alexandria rushing past, provided a common thread in their trailblazing trip reports.
Props to Noonautics and Dr Gallimore for putting the panel together.
On preparing for DMTx
Carl Hayden-Smith: ”I treated it as a DMT church. For a month: no drugs, no caffeine… and no orgasms. That radically ramped up the intensity."
Jack Alloca: “I followed the psychonautic lifestyle that I always do. I haven’t even drank a cup of coffee for years. But being among first brings apprehension: ‘What am I doing to myself?’ I’d flown straight in and was really jet lagged.”
Anton Bilton: “I tried to bring a sense of sacredness that is important to me. Four to six weeks of no sex, no drugs, no alcohol, lots of meditation.”
On riding it out
Jack Alloca: “I’ve taken over 100 different psychedelic compounds. The body load can be strong during DMTx, I used controlled breathing to moderate that. My neuropharmacology knowledge assured me about toxicity.”
Alexander Beiner: “A entity told TerenceMcKenna ‘Don’t give way to amazement.’ I used attitudinal techniques like curiosity, then discernment, and a combination of concentration and mindfulness meditation, to attempt that.”
Lessons from the deep
Alexander Beiner: "The sophistication of the teaching was impeccable, with a crisp quality. It demonstrated the overlap between the metaphysical realm and how we show up, every day, as a human.”
Jack Alloca: “The message was of primal being, connected in nature. A beautiful pastoral environment with Dr Seuss style simian entities who were uninterested in my presence.”
Carl Hayden Smith: “‘Live well.’ Human life is precious and short. Life – brief, void – forever. ‘Entities’ obviously have a very different ontology.”
One small step for heads?
Anton Bilton: “My interest lies primarily in communicating with the sentient other. This is a closer route to the mystery of our existence than sending rockets into space.”
Jack Alloca: “I was able to savour a narrative about myself which isn’t usually possible with regular, shorter DMT trips. Real world lessons about responsibility. Although I did rush to the toilet while still breaking through at one point, which was the first time I’d moved around in the breakthrough state before.”
Carl Hayden Smith: “I was taken beyond the white room of the DMT space and was surprised to be shown there was more than one ‘oneness’… an infinite multiplicity of cosmic unions.”
Being sensible…
Carl Hayden Smith: “The human experience is vital and extremely important. Aldous Huxley warned about ‘living in a dreamworld’ and this tech could combine with AI to offer exactly that."
Jack Alloca: "We have to be careful not to create a biochemical Netflix. How can we understand what is useful and bring it back to the human experience, seamlessly and coherently and healthily?"
Okay now we can talk about entities
Carl Hayden Smith: “They benefit from our energy. There’s a mutual exchange. The MRI scanner first seemed to attract entities; they were intrigued by the notion of someone else doing the scanning. Second session in the MRI, there weren’t any. I think they were embarrassed they’d given the game away that I was immortal last time.”
Jack Alloca: “I have been privileged to see entities in spaces besides DMTx. My lucid dreams often feel more intense than DMT. Are we equipped to navigate hyperspace? Or are we simply devising a way to process the deluge of incoming information? Either way, we are faced by a very powerful modality.”
The Strass sums up
Rick Strassman: “Nobody’s mentioned endogenous DMT. What is the relationship between the concentrations of DMT used in our daily lives and a breakthrough dose? It’s especially in the frontal cortex; is it a reality thermostat? Is the purpose to keep us in a consensus range?”
“If DMT stimulates the imagination… can it access the active intellect? The sum of all past, present and future knowledge?”
“Less whimsical, and more on the practical or metaphysical side, grounding in the problems we are facing as individuals and societies.
“The set-up is not user-friendly. We can improve it with systems used for insulin, pumps that mean you’re not bed bound. Then we can look at operating in the 3D world while breaking through, quantified self approaches and interpersonal communication during the experience.”
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I graduated from Vital
Plus I got an offer from modern-day mystery school Exeter University to study a psychology MSc.
The Zoom call background display of certificates grows albeit slowly
This certificate just arrived from Vital. And I got an offer from modern-day mystery school Exeter University to study a psychology MSc.
Regular readers know how massively impressed I am with Psychedelics Today’s year-long flagship practicioner training course.
Expert advice informed me to “get a speciality” before formal postgraduate study. Initially I was stumped. Not for long. Vital was unapologetically aspirational, and altruistic – its teaching faculty an all-star squadron of psychedelics.
And the US course was less than half of the price of the admitedly well-know, flashy European alternative… which actually went spectacularly bust just as Vital was winding down.
The second Vital cohort’s just started. You can still just about get on it. There’ll be offers, maybe bursaries too.
Modern day mystery school Exeter University announced the world’s first legit psychedelic postgrad
While aimed at clinicians, therapists, activists and professionals, they took me. Then let me ask the likes of Bill Richards and The Mithoefers whatever I wanted. Questions about laughing and crying respectively, come to think of it. My tutor was an expert in Carl Jung and alchemy, and the study group featured a disaster zone psychotherapist, an ex-banker who takes veterans to jungle ceremonies, and an otherwise straight-up christian pastor who’s been licensed to guide mushroom ceremonies for years. Plus a permaculture gardening psychedelic sex therapist. I held space on retreat which was fucking wild and a story for another day.
I really miss having it in my life. And felt like I was cheating death a bit (with inevitable upcoming consequences) by carrying on with learning about a fascinating and worthwhile subject, at the highest level available. Until I remembered that was the idea in the first place. The colourful and attractive people are a syncronicity. And amost certainly a sign things are going in the right direction.
On that front. I’ve received a formal offer to study on a psychology MSc from modern day mystery school Exeter University.
That’s where the Philosophy of Psychedelics set-up is. The world-ranked institution based in the West Country of England just announced the world’s first ever legit university postgrad in psychedelic science and humanities too.
Goddess willing I start in September. There’s all sorts of logistical hurdles still to be overcome. And other possibilities to consider. Or events that require adapting to: pre-Covid I’d just taken a job in Ibiza, and found myself on the penultimate British Airways flight off the White Island with only three other passengers, sat in adjacent rows drinking and sharing life stories at 10.30am.
Plus I’ve a bunch of Vital notes still to write up in the Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine which I’ll post over the summer. Sign up for Messages from the Ether below, or follow me on Twitter and Instagram to stay with the vibe.
More West Country shizzle:
Summer 2023 Kaftan Collection
Sold to support my training and research they’re part garment, part mystical experience.
Sold to support my training and research they’re part garment, part mystical experience
Never turn up to the ceremony underdressed again with unique tie-dye kaftans from New Psychonaut
Email me at kaftans@newpsychonaut.com with your enquiries for custom colours and combinations. Or click through to the merch store to browse the collection.
Conceived and crafted over lockdown to get myself away from a screen (what did you think I’d be making, sourdough bread?) they take the otherwise exhausting notion of ‘festival wear’ to another level.
Unofficial Vital ‘Zine Class of ‘23 Edition
As seen in my presentation to classmates and tutors on Psychedelics Today’s Vital training course.
The final slide of my Vital student presentation
Click here to see all the issues of the ‘Zine I’ve made to cover my studies on Psychedelics Today’s acclaimed training course Vital.
You’ll see the cribsheet format I presented to classmates and tutors near the end of the final term. There’s a modest sample below.
I still have a handful of sessions to write up which I’ll enjoy doing over the summer. In autumn ‘23 I have plans to study further which are in good stead. More details when they’re fully confirmed.
Looking for Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine? Here’s the latest issues:
I created the Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine as a focus for my studies on Psychedelics Today’s year-long practicioner training course Vital. Each issue features far-out facts and observations from the Vital course, including exclusive presentations from the top names in psychedelic thinking worldwide.
It’s like a blog-within-a-blog, where you’ll currently find most of the articles on this site.
Avid psychedelic students can browse by category and lecturer effortlessly, in this Class of ‘23 Edition I made for my presentation to classmates and lecturers.
MDMA for couples therapy: 4/4 octopuses can’t be wrong.