Psilocybin for depression with Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #11 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

‘White Light’ from Paul Cocksedge Studio

“We have really explicit conversations about sex, about violence, about death and ego death…”

Plus of course, “Paranoia, wanting to go to the toilet, feeling like you're going to the toilet, and the physical bodily experiences,” says Ashley Murphy-Beiner, psychologist and guide at Imperial College’s landmark ‘PsiloDep 2’ trial, which sounds suitably like a Quatermass movie.

Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner is exactly the sort of impressive individual driving the psychedelic renaissance: a mediation coach and Peruvian ceremony facilitator alongside her studies at Imperial College London, she’s noted for her research on ayahuasca for treating depression too. She’s talking about preparing psychedelic novices for their first trip on synthetic psilocybin, the active ingredient in old-fashioned magic mushrooms. It’s used mostly due to stigma around LSD.

“We let them know we’re not going to judge them on anything weird… although they’re not going to do anything like that, because mainly they're worried it’ll really embarrass them or, or cause shame,” she continues, giving a window into life with depression.

Depression is a ‘global burden’. The main cause of disability and the number one reason for taking time off work affects a quarter of a billion people worldwide, and more in The West. One in six Brits are on anti-depressants, and US figures rose by up to 30% during the COVID-19 crisis. Doomongers will be pleased to know there are plenty more sad stats in this week’s ‘zine.

Imperial College psychologist, meditation coach and ayahuasca advocate Asheligh Murphy-Beiner

Can psychedelics cure long term depression where talk therapy and medications failed? Although arguably still spectacular in comparison to existing treatment, results are frankly not as good as those for psychedelic studies on treating trauma, addiction, and end-of-life crisis. That’s partly because depression mostly remains a mystery, with the widely-accepted ‘serotonin imbalance’ theory recently publicly debunked. Ashleigh calls the causes “biopsychosocial” meaning there are biological, psychological and social implications. Many patients have come crashing down to Earth when faced with the cruel reality of life in late capitalism. Preparation and integration are absolutely essential, say trial patient advocates Ian Roullier and Leone Schneider of advocacy group PsyPAN. Dr Rosalind Watts created a treatment model, Acceptance, Connection and Embodiment to cover the ground between secular dystopian life and the psychedelic experience. 

Results of psilocybin for depression trials so far though are certainly optimistic compared to market anti-depressants. A major advantage is that psychedelic treatment opens up the mind, rather than numbing out all feelings, like current anti-depressants are said to. Opportunity and relish can once more be a part of depressive’s mindset. Plus they can dump their daily regime of equally barely-understood serotonin pills with side-effects like a plummeting libido. 

This is one subject for which there is certainly no silver bullet. Here’s Ashleigh talking about ayahuasca, and the ACE therapy model used at the trials with Dr Ros, plus the ethics of the trials and therapy itself, and rounding up the trial results on the Chasing Consciousness podcast, all of which you can see on the New Psychonaut YouTube channel.

This week’s topics arranged along Vital’s core learning pillars are below.

Next issue: MAPS MDMA-AT program designers Michael and Annie Mithoefer.

The Ethics of Caring in Psychedelic Therapy with Kylea Taylor

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #10 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

From Phantom VII by Neil Krug

“We don’t rush to sign up for ethics classes,” says Kylea Taylor, a storied therapist who’s become the conscience of the psychedelic renaissance.

But you’d be surprised, she says: “All our great tales and stories are concerned with dilemma, redemption and ethical themes. The field can be surprisingly interesting and worthwhile, plus you learn a lot about yourself.”

‘Ethics is the study of relationship’ says Taylor’s website for her InnerEthics program detailed in her respected book The Ethics of Caring. If we are defined by our interactions, then ethics are a crucial part of our existence. Taylor, I’ll point out, is no out of touch pharisee. Graduating in marriage and family therapy in the late 1960s, she worked as an addiction specialist throughout the 1970s including nine years in a residential rehab. She’s been with the Grof Foundation since the 1990s having trained there since 1984 (she calls them “Stan and Christina” at one point which is way cool).

“Self-compassion and self-work are absolutely key”

These days it’s not only addiction counsellors and psychedelic pioneers who sometimes deal with tricky individuals. Not for nothing are self-books with titles like The Five Types of People Who Will Ruin Your Life all the rage. It turns out that ‘drawing boundaries’ which we’ve all been told is the secret to negotiating life by our (childless, spouseless, mostly jobless) therapists, doesn’t actually work against bastards. Or if not bastards then the folk who’ve worked out they can make their ethics up as they go along, mostly – in a world where God is dead and Alfred North Whitehead is yet to be a household name. 

“Ethical relationships are the relationships that are healing”

Taylor tells of an acquaintance, a qualified and licensed female therapist, who dabbled with holotropic breath work and shagged a long-term male client who she’d had an intense session with. He sued her and she lost everything. “Why did this happen to a good, well-intentioned, well-trained therapist?” says Taylor, “because we need to discover as much as we can about our motivations, be completely sensitive to client safety, and educate ourselves about extraordinary states.”

It’s not difficult to accept that psychedelic drug use and exotic religious ceremonies might get a bit sketchy sometimes. Denizens of the underground learn to pick their way around the gloom; some though trip over, into the murk. Go down into the Power Trip podcast rabbit hole for New York Magazine’s exposé series covering both the nascent scene and recent trials at MAPS, where perfection is absent even in the most optimistic of scenarios. 

“If clients feel trust they’ll be more willing to go into strange spaces”

Because we are human, reminds Taylor. She’s trained with Stanislav Grof’s Foundation since 1984. He wrote in LSD Therapy that we should strive to be more than human nonetheless, and Taylor thinks so too. 

“Self-compassion and self-work are absolutely key,” says Taylor, who advised on MAPS’ new Code of Ethics. Current ethical codes don’t examine therapist motivations, and certainly not higher states of consciousness. While we must grill ourselves on our own weaknesses, we mustn’t overly admonish ourselves for mistakes in a new, difficult arena. 

“We turn up the volume in psychedelic therapy. All internal and relational dynamics present have more impact for the client. Thoughts, words, feelings and intuitions affect the client and the therapist, much more than in a regular therapy session,” warns Taylor. Kundalini is one of her fields and she advises to look out for spiritual emergencies of both the dramatic and everyday kind: “realisation of cognitive dissonance can be a huge shock for many.”

Self-work leads to self-realisation, self-compassion, stronger boundaries, and a finer relationship with others. It makes a psychedelic therapist better at their job.

“Ethical relationships are the relationships that are healing. If clients feel trust they’ll be more willing to go into strange spaces and approach difficult feelings,” says Taylor.

Here’s what else I flagged up, colour-coded to Vital’s themes of Approach, Therapy, Space Holding, Medical and Integration.

The Legality of Psychedelic Therapy with Courtney Barnes

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #9 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

NO. 63 by Norbert Schoerner from Gallery 46

This week Vital students heard from hero lawyer Courtney Barnes of Barnes Caplan LLC, state policy advisor for Decriminalize Nature, and associate attorney at Denver cannabis specialists Vicente Sederberg LCC.

When Brits now based in the USA visit me in London nowadays, they’ll chuckle “I forgot weed is still illegal here!” as if that’s quaint and amusing. So I spent most of this week checking out UK legislation and musing on that. Muse upon this week’s insights including the opening of the world’s first psychedelic ‘amazement park’ in my home town of Bristol, where Ben Sessa’s Awakn just secured UK government funding and a green light for Celia Morgan’s addiction treatment using ketamine in North America.

Psychedelic attorney Courtney Barnes. I only use lawyers who wear Pucci, personally

I did pick up: in the US and undoubtedly here in the UK, you can get busted for supply for leading a ceremony even if you’re not the actual supplier, although ‘duty of care’ legally obliges professionals to point enquiring patients towards the safest route to psychedelic experience they know of. Any kind of illegal activity whatsoever is unthinkable for any professional in a US state where psychedelics remain illegal. “I’m a member of my local emergency services and can’t possibly get involved in anything beyond the law,” said one Vital student.

Screening potential voyagers, ideally via a spoken reference is highly recommended. From a licensed US facilitator: “My clients come from two close and respected community sources. Many have experience from their youth and would like to undertake a significant, intentional experience for the right, realistic reasons, in the forest, with someone trained to look after them.” Interestingly, when this Vital student evaluated possible experients he covered all the bases recommended for both the legal treatment he was licensed in his state of residence to provide, and the canny, no-stone-unturned, word-of-mouth recommendations for underground practitioners. 

Next issue: Kylea Taylor charts a path through the ethical warpstorm of psychedelic therapy

Emerging landscapes with Dr Bennet Zelner

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #8 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

‘Liquidated Chanel’ by Zevs, works avaialble from Magda Danysz gallery

The final lecture in Vital’s first core module of five, Psychedelic Therapies: Historical and Current Approaches focussed on the future.

And not only that of psychedelic use, medical or otherwise. 

Dr Bennet A Zelner is developing and applying ‘biomimetic’ solutions inspired by the natural world, to on-the-ground business practice. Right now he’s associate professor of business and public policy at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. His research there includes a radical study on the impact of psychedelic insights on organisational leaders, with the petri dish being a local copper mine. 

“Around 2013 I felt disconnected from work, marriage and life in general,” he explains of his psychedelic journey, "I put the blame on myself; after all, I had external measures of success supposed to fulfil me. I was reintroduced to psychedelics, this time in an intentional setting. The insight was that my profession was completely dysfunctional, which wasn’t supposed to happen.”

After examining this with his psychedelic circle, “Gradually I realised I could use what I had learned to possibly affect change. I started working with a focus on psychedelic assisted mental health treatment.”

Dr Zelner’s experience of the vastly successful Frome Model of healthcare in Somerset, UK provided the evidence for his economic solutions that integrate business, community, wellness and health.

“Pharma has leveraged the social and financial disconnection which contributes to mental distress”

He now advises a plethora of businesses and orgs, including the MIND European Foundation for Psychedelic Science and Europe’s Synthesis, where its first leadership retreats with Zelner and Sampson are underway. Dr Zelner is teaching along with fellow psychedelic academic, lawyer Rachelle Sampson. Plus, in the spirit of altruism he helps out with his local Brooklyn Psychedelic Society. Plus, he’s behind the investment fund trying to turn on business, Transformative Capital.

“Today, about 40% of Americans report that they feel isolated and don't have meaningful relationships,” says Dr Zelner. The pharmaceutical industry has leveraged this hyper-individualism, the social and financial disconnection, which itself is contributing to the mental distress they're supposed to be trying to address the first place.” And which it is holding at bay at very best, with big pharma profits tripling and patient numbers rising steadily. 

“Frightening as it may be, the chaotic state of our systems holds the potential for true change”

This happens across the business sector. ’Extractive economics’ where resources and revenue are taken from a community and applied elsewhere, contribute to the sense of disconnection impacting healthcare, says Dr Zelner. “The CEO to worker pay ratio rose from 24 times to over two thousand, between 1980 and 2017. That’s one example; another is chain stores taking over local businesses, Main Street to Wall Street.”

Re-connecting finance and communities will benefit healthcare in and of itself, while bottom-up innovations in healthcare provide fertile ground for communities and local businesses to grow organically. 

“The current chaotic state of our current systems, as frightening as it may be, I think, also does hold the potential for true change,” says Dr Zelner. 

Here he is talking to London’s Psychedelic Society plus you can see more of Dr Zelner over in the New Psychonaut YouTube lecture hub.

Next issue: As the first psychedelic park and Awakn’s clinics open in Bristol we ask: is Albion here? Plus guest lecturer Courtney Barnes on US law

Contemporary Research with Dr Rick Strassman

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #6 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

John Giorno ‘We Gave a Party for the Gods’ in the gardens at Chateau de Versailles

Who would inject test subjects with large doses of intravenous DMT four times in a row thereby opening a new paradigm in psychedelic research?

And who, on an otherwise genteel psychedelic training course, would casually riff on orgasms, prophets and brainwashed assassins? Before announcing that it’s probably the placebo effect anyway?

Who turns up at self-declared ‘21st Century Mystery School’ The Tyringham Initiative as sole representative of the USA, and whacks a bible on the overhead projector before calmly explaining that entities are angels? Despite being an ordained Zen buddhist lay priest. And, besides all this drugs stuff, once found a new way to grow embryonic avian dorsal root ganglion neurons, suspended in a semi-solid agar matrix? As one does.

Who, in this psychedelic renaissance of ours, is totally styling it in double denim while sharing police medical reports on the fallout from satanic ayahuasca rituals on Facebook? 

Dr Rick ‘The Strass’ Strassman does all these things and much more.

Like a strong ecstasy pill he sneaks up, and you don’t realise how out there you were till 24 hours later. Displaying affection and disdain for the contemporary space in equal measure, like the sensitive and driven do, this dark horse of psychedelia rattled through a sharp snapshot of the science, peppered with his own astute asides. 

And yes, he spoke about the sex, death and God stuff. And the pineal gland, and the entities. 

“I knew I had to be really well trained to do work like this”

Dr Strassman played with a straight bat in his startling breakthrough book The Spirit Molecule, covering his pioneering DMT tests that catalysed the psychedelic renaissance and become one of the most compelling areas of experimental science. In his opening to this ‘Contemporary Research’ lecture he urged Vital students to also take a scientific approach when rising through the ranks. 

Dr Rick Strassman will put the cat amongst the pigeons at your ceremony

“Stanford in the 70s was pretty cutting-edge. It was a very interesting time, intellectually,” he reminisces, “I was 20 years old in July 1972, and I was watching the sun come down on acid, and decided I wanted to study psychedelics. I wrote a manifesto, got a bit hyper manic, and 19 out of 21 medical schools rejected me straight out. Of the others, one refused talk about it in the interview. The other heard me out, and rejected me anyway. So I knew I had to be really well trained to do this.”

Look normal, and they will suspect nothing. Dr Strassman’s rigour paid off and his research on DMT at the University of New Mexico between 1990 and 1995, which he successfully applied for state funding. Like a tripedal DMT vision shaped as a giant rotating bejewelled milking stool, he stands astride neuroscience, theology – in fact he’s about to reveal his ‘theoneurology’ research – and the imaginative, creative chaos of the trickster archetype. He is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico and on the advisory board of Eduardo de la Luna’s Wasiwaka centre in Brazil. 

“Stanford in the 70s was pretty cutting-edge”

His latest, The Psychedelic Handbook released in 2022 offers up his own thoughts on grassroots healing. DMT: The Spirit Molecule is a core psychonaut text and here’s that Joe Rogan movie. Aficionados recommend DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible and Inner Paths To Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies of which Dr David Luke says "This book raises many fundamental questions about the nature of reality that have barely been asked in the scientific community, let alone answered, and I strongly urge all researchers of consciousness to read it.”

"This book raises many fundamental questions about the nature of reality that have barely been asked in the scientific community, let alone answered, and I strongly urge all researchers of consciousness to read it.”

In the company of fellow travellers he is liberal with his opinions that were always well-informed, and tempered where required. Often these ran contrary to narrative – as the wisdom of the serious players often does.  Listen to him talk about God and DMT along with a bunch more on the New Psychonaut ‘lecture channel’.

Next issue: Dr Bennet Zenner, the mycelial businessman

Philosophy of Psychedelics with Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #6 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

From Internice Eating the Weather by Charlotte Wendy Law

“The most exciting talk is the space right now is coming from philosophers,” said the 21st Century’s answer to David Attenborough, Merlin Sheldrake at June’s Breaking Convention conference in London.

Psychedelic philosophy or ‘psy-phi’ aims to legitimise psychedelic insight, the culture of consciousness expansion and post-industrial ideology.

The discipline applies academic rigour to tripped-out insight. It suggests how expanded consciousness can be applied in areas ranging from business to ecology – and revamp psychotherapy.

Fittingly, psychedelic philosophy’s origin is the West Country of England. The academic centre being Exeter University, which announced the first bachelor’s degree in psychedelic studies at its 2022 Philosophy of Psychedelics conference.

Other cosmopolitan hubs like Amsterdam and Berlin have got their eyes on our special cider. Exeter University’s much-anticipated compilation Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience, is published by Bloomsbury this summer. And its colourful co-editor Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes materialised before Vital students this week, direct from Dartmoor.

Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes, who edited Exeter’s tome, is a leading light in the movement. The reboot of Marvel superhero Karnak is modelled on him. Beyond providing much needed aesthetic airs – he is rarely photographed without a falcon on his arm – he provides psychedelic philosophy’s imaginative spark.

“Humphry Osmond wrote to Huxley that he believed LSD’s greatest potential was its philosophical, social and religious implications,” he says, “I think the potential is still there.”

Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes has documented the rich relationship between philosophy and psychedelic use, and spearheaded the rehabilitation of controversial philosophers including Henri Bergson, Ernst Junger and Nietzsche alongside rebranding cuddlier thinkers like Spinoza, George Bernard Shaw and Sir Humphry Davy. 

Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes of Exeter University’s acclaimed Philosophy of Psychedelics department, which announced the first bachelor’s degree in psychedelic studies at its 2022 Philosophy of Psychedelics conference.

His books Noumenautics and Modes of Sentience are out now from Psychedelic Press. Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience is available to preorder now and out 18 July 2022. Find him at philosopher.eu and @PeterSjostedtH.

You can watch Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes’ TED Talk on consciousness here plus a bunch more I put on this YouTube resource channel.

These five items I pulled from the week’s research are themed along Vital’s natural element-themed structure. Air provides an overview of psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life. Click straight through to your pet subject below.

Next issue: Dr Rick ‘Spirit Molecule’ Strassman spares no set or setting in his evaluation of the space right now

Transpersonal psychology with Dr David Luke: Vital Student Zine #5

My unofficial Vital Study Zine #5 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space

Mary Jacoob, ‘Constellation 01’ via Gallery 46 Whitechapel

The next stage of human consciousness is calling. Are we brave enough to answer?

Dr David Luke is the most intrepid researcher of the psychedelic renaissance - ‘the real new psychonaut’. Straight out of London but living “on the edge… of Sussex” his inspirational investigations include DMT space exploration, the psychedelic divine feminine, biophilia (tree hugging) and psionic powers – often conducted “in the field”.

David Luke dropped out of lecturing to study shamanism, and returned to Britain with consciousness expanded. Since he’s been at the vanguard of the psychedelic renaissance, consistently leading by example.

Senior lecturer at all the best universities, co-founder of Breaking Convention, and director of the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics which sounds incredible, he is a global figure in the transpersonal psychology movement. And he spoke to Vital students about it.

In the Zine this week:

Approach: Transpersonal psychology is back

Therapy: Psychedelic mysteries of the feminine

Space: Out in the field with citizen science

Medical: DMT vs Death

Integral: Alchemy for the People

Kool Aid Corner: Your regular round-up of trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Air provides an overview of psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life. Click straight through to your pet subject above or browse the whole thing via the Vital Study Zine main page.

See Dr Luke interviewed here plus a bunch more videos I put on this YouTube resource channel.

Next issue: ‘Psychedelic philosophy’ aims to legitimise the culture of consciousness expansion. With Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes