Image: Creative Commons
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Ayuahuasca cooking (Wikimedia Commons)
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How do you plan to approach educating people about the taking of psychedelics within the context of being creative?In the final session, on June 11, I'll be talking with visionary artists Peter Westermann and Brian Scott Hampton about the connection between psychedelic experiences and the visionary art genre's growth in recent years. Peter and Brian are both up-and-coming artists, and they each have a unique flair for creating visual masterpieces that challenge us to be more aware of how our perception works.There is a certain flow and synesthesia inherent in their work, and it's that mind-manifesting quality that, I think, connects visionary art and psychedelic experiences. Psychedelics, used carefully and in safe contexts, can help encourage collaboration and community, so we'll also talk about how Brian and Peter work together on creative projects. I'll also share some insights into how visionary art, and psychedelic-inspired creative work in general, can help improve culture and consciousness.Psychedelic drugs' effect on human spirituality isn't quantifiable like the treatment of trauma. So is spirituality dealt with differently in the courses? The researchers joining us for the course aren't just quantitative researchers—many are social scientists or physicians also working on building qualitative knowledge about how psychedelics can affect healing, consciousness, and spirituality. Rak Razam is an experiential journalist who has traveled extensively among ayahuasca-using communities in North and South America, and has lots of stories to tell about how different groups use ayahuasca in ceremonial contexts."If you decide to come out of the psychedelic closet: be yourself, be educated, and talk about your own experience as much as you can."
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Psilocybe cubensis - Ecuador (Creative Commons/Flickr)
Social justice movements don’t succeed until they have a face, and psychonauts won’t have a face until we stand up and tell our family, neighbors, and friends about our own experiences. Of course, as MAPS and others work to develop psychedelics into legal medicines, we’ll see even more “coming out” of subjects who were treated in the initial studies. But the vast majority of psychedelic users aren’t diagnosed with a mental illness. It’s much harder to dismiss an uncle, brother, or childhood friend who has been benefited medically, psychologically, or spiritually from psychedelics.
If you decide to come out of the psychedelic closet: be yourself, be educated, and talk about your own experience as much as you can. It doesn’t hurt to point out that FDA-approved clinical research is taking place with multiple psychedelics.Ultimately, what do you hope people to take away from the courses?Our goal for this course is to show how applying insights from psychedelic research can help us lead more conscious, responsible, sustainable, healthy, and fun lives. We also want to show how it is possible to have open and honest conversations about psychedelics without falling into the traps of stigma and fear. I also hope it inspires people to find ways to be a part of the fast-growing field of psychedelic science and medicine by learning to ask the right questions about the risks and benefits of psychedelic drugs.What area of psychedelic use and research most interests you?Used carefully, with the right intention, and in the right settings, I believe that psychedelics can help open up access to alternative ways of seeing the world. They can help open up possibilities for better healing, and help us come to see ourselves—our entire species—as competent, creative, and possessing all the resources we need to create a safe and sustainable world for ourselves and for future generations. What psychedelic science teaches us is that all we need to do is direct those resources most effectively.