Benefits

026: Sacred Plant Retreats with Maxwell Wieland of Munay Medicine in Peru, Part 1 /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is February 21, 2016, and we are discussing Sacred Plant Retreats with our guest, Maxwell Wieland of Munay Medicine in Peru.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

Topics:

  • Max has been in a working relationship with wachuma (san pedro), ayahuasca, changa (dmt), psilocybin mushrooms, iboga, morning glories, salvia, and other plant entheogens for a decade.
  • How did Munay Medicine come to be?
  • What is a typical stay like?
  • Munay is in the Sacred Valley of Peru, a wonderful location with a number of retreat centers, convenient to Machu Picchu and other sacred sites.
  • San Pedro vs. Peyote, the sustainability and eco-friendliness of San Pedro – can grow up to a meter per growing season. Can be propagated easily.
  • The word wachuma translates to “removing the head” (wach- meaning “remove” and -uma meaning “head”) which metaphorically might mean the death of the ego. The word comes from Quechua, the language of the indigenous culture of the same name in the central Andes.
  • As Maxwell told us, “The name San Pedro was an adaptation that came as a result of Catholic contact via Spanish conquistadors.” This is fascinatingly similar to the Bwiti tribe in Gabon who use ibogaine in a syncretic Christian-tribal tradition; it seems that part of the Andean adaptation to missionary influence was to rename this sacred plant after Saint Peter, implying that the entheogenic cactus holds the keys to the gates of heaven just as its new namesake, Saint Peter, is said to do.
  • “Breaking open the Head”, Daniel Pinchbeck’s book about his initiation with the Bwiti (using Ibogaine).
  • Max shares some of his backstory including trouble related to the illegality of plant medicine in the United States, which led to his moving to Peru.
  • San Pedro “Jeff Bridges” variety: Trichocereus bridgesii

 

Also, please check out this link from last show's guest, Kirk Rutter: Psychedelic Science Org UK – "Psychedelics could be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology or the telescope for astronomy."

025: Psychedelic Medicine Trials with Participant Kirk Rutter /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is February 28, 2016, and we are discussing Psychedelic Medicine Trials with a participant in a recent psilocybin study, Kirk Rutter.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

Special thanks to our guest on today’s show, Kirk Rutter, who offers listeners a rare glimpse of what it’s like to participate in a psychedelic medicine trial. Kirk worked with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, David Erritzoe (who sat in on the sessions), Prof. David Nutt (who oversaw the project), and Mark Bolstridge at the Imperial College of London, studying the impact of psilocybin on depression.

Topics:

  • Kirk shares a bit of background about why he sought out this study

  • The screening process

  • Kirk’s prior experience (none) and opinion of psychedelics before the study

  • No interaction with the other participants during the trials, meeting these automatic allies after the conclusion of the trials.

  • The benefit of the “dry run” of set and setting a week ahead of time. Compare this protocol to the DMT studies by Strassman – demonstrates the importance of a comfortable setting.

  • Kirk offers the term “psychedelic turbulence”, and the analogy of taking off in a plane: passing through the clouds, there may be some turbulence, and then once you reach a certain height it becomes calm.

  • Sanskrit text flashing in the darkness, faint geometrics, jewels, golden structures…

  • Describing the session room: niceties like ambient laser lights, aroma machine, candles, fresh flowers.

  • The music in the room. The care given to the playlist. The importance of the playlist as part of the protocol.

  • Psychedelic lacrymation.

  • The “psychedelic yawn”.

  • We all share our deep cries.

  • Using music to help embed the experience.

  • The roles of David, Robin, and Mark and how they factored into the experience.

  • Robin: “one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

  • We all don’t like the zoo. (E.g. “Meerkats basking under sunlamps.”)

  • Kirk’s experience of seeing “an Indian god ‘look in on me’ like a parent looking over a baby's crib”

  • Kevin’s experience seeing the same deity as Kirk: Ganesh, the "remover of obstacles", the "God of wisdom, knowledge and new beginnings". He sounds like a good totem to have through the 25mg experience”

  • Chanting, meditating

Check out Kirk’s blog for a first person description of what it’s like to participate in modern psychedelic research, including videos from your accommodations at the Imperial College campus in London.

022: Response to A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is January 7, 2016, and we are discussing A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

We discussed this film and interviewed its producer, Robert Barnhart back in August 2015 before the film’s release. Since then, the film has been released and you can rent or buy it on online. We’ve all had a chance to watch it again and we wanted to reflect on our impressions of the film.

We’ll start with a quote from Alex Grey:

"A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin puts an original face on psychedelics. Not the typical faces in the media of delusional drop-outs associated with drugs, but the faces of normal Americans, some suffering from the final stages of terminal cancer. After one dose of psilocybin the face of joy, relief and peace is nothing short of miraculous. A medical mystical miracle is in our midst, and this film beautifully describes the facts! Bravo to Robert Barnhart and all the production team, the courageous chemists, doctors and patients who are helping our society re-evaluate Psilocybin as a medicine for the Soul." ~Alex Grey

Hofmann discovered LSD, creating the modern psychedelic movement; not many people know he also isolated and synthesized psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms.

Shutting down of research. Schedule 1. “No medicinal value, addictive”

Kevin purports that Maria Sabina had given Albert Hofmann an “academic boner” over his successful synthesis of the active alkaloid in her magic mushrooms, psilocybin.

“Throughout history, people have been able to have this mystical experience. The drug is a reliable way of getting one, but it's not about the drug, it's about the experience.” - Anthony Bossis

Ann Levy’s son’s eulogy for her

How does the experience help you confront death?

“We’re all star stuff.” - Carl Sagan

Bill Richards: 6 basic categories of a "core religious experience":
1. Unity
2. Transcendence of time and space
3. Noetic / intuitive knowledge
4. Sense of sacredness / awesomeness
5. Deeply felt positive mood / joy / peace / love
6. Ineffability / paradoxicality (difficult to put into words)

Psilocybin and LSD as aphrodisiacs

Why not? Why can’t we provide the relief these treatments offer?

Brad: “word.”

Wikipedia: List of Schedule I drugs and Schedule II drugs

Rent or buy the film on Vimeo

When you rent you can also watch DMT The Spirit Molecule

The film’s website has a convenient “who’s who” of psychedelic researchers on the participants tab, with names, titles and photos, and a short bio when clicked

021: Psychedelic First Aid with Special Guest, Sara Gael of MAPS and the Zendo Project /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 14th, 2015, and we are discussing the Zendo Project with special guest, Sara Gael, Harm Reduction Coordinator for MAPS.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook.

Our guest, Sara Gael, has been involved with the Zendo Project since its inception in 2012. Since then she has helped coordinate harm reduction services at festivals all over the world including Burning Man, Afrika Burn, Envision Festival, and Lightning in a Bottle. She is also an intern investigator in the Boulder, Colorado Phase II Clinical Trial of the Safety and Efficacy of MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy. Sara works as a psychotherapist in private practice and received her Master’s in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology at Naropa University.

Topics:

  • What is the Zendo Project?

  • Zendo is billed as Psychedelic First Aid for Festivals & Events: “The Zendo Project provides a supportive environment and specialized care designed to transform difficult psychedelic experiences into valuable learning opportunities, and even potentially offer healing and growth. In turn, our work reduces the number of drug-related hospitalizations and arrests.”

  • Safe Space

  • Talk through, not down

  • Sitting, not guiding

  • Difficult is not bad

  • What type of training does the “sitter” or “facilitator” receive?

  • Benefits of human contact, touch

  • How to volunteer with Zendo

    • Volunteers are needed for Burning Man, Afrika Burn, other festivals

  • Sara discusses experience in the field at Burning Man, BOOM, Cannabis Cup, etc.

  • How does Zendo work with medical and other support services

    • KosmiCare at BOOM in Portugal, where drugs are decriminalized, provides a glimpse of a post-prohibition future: their efforts are sponsored by the local government and festival, and they include onsite testing of pills.

    • Erowid Center helps bridge the gap with EcstacyData.org which features pill testing results database, in addition to the psychoactive vaults of Erowid.org.

  • What’s the deal with folk remedies (bananas, oranges?)

  • Nice things that smell good, art supplies, beautiful space, pillows, blankets, tea – your Psychedelic Grandma’s house

Resources:

018: Honoring the 20th Anniversary of Erowid /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. We talk about tools for generating the divine within. It's Nov 25, 2015. We're talking about the 20th Anniversary of Erowid.

But first: check out our Entheogen t-shirt, just in time for the holidays!

Reference:

The Trip Planners – article in the The New Yorker by Emily Witt

Topics:

Erowid’s mission: “Documenting the complex relationship between humans and psychoactives.”

Thanks to Earth and Fire Erowid for their hard work over the last two decades.

Our personal experience with the page:

  • Joe got Erowid blocked from his corporate job 15 years ago

  • Erowid helped 17 year-old Brad avoid jail time

  • Erowid helped Kevin get through high school and college

The accurate, honest information from Erowid vs. the limited, outdated info supplied by anti-drug programs.

Informing doctors.

Erowid precept: don’t take anything without first researching it.

Does this information make people more likely to try drugs?

Is there a double standard for psychedelics? Alcohol, pharmaceuticals, football?

The Shulgins’ Friday Night Dinners, attended by Earth and Fire.

Donate to Erowid, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.