019: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, first half

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

Today is December 9, 2015 and we are very excited to feature a special interview. This is the first half.

It is our great pleasure and honor to welcome Earth and Fire Erowid!

For context, Joe reads a quote from Michael Horowitz, personal archivist for Timothy Leary:

“Powerful descriptive writing about personal drug experiences mimics the effects of the drugs themselves. Reading Aleister Crowley on how hashish aided his meditation, or Mezz Mezzrow on playing in a jazz band on marijuana, or Gordon and Valentina Wasson’s otherworldly mushroom journey in a curandera’s hut in Mexico, or Anais Nin describing how LSD turned her body into liquid gold can be mildly psychoactive in itself. Especially so if you’d had your own prior experiences. We also collected books and studied the rituals of the peyote and mushroom cults, the history of the opium wars and laughing gas parties. We learned that drug literature is endless, and drug-taking was one of the earliest and most common activities of mankind.” - Michael Horowitz, from an interview about the Tim Leary Archives

Topics:

• What role did the “mildly psychoactive” effect Horowitz attributed to some drug literature play in the founding of Erowid?
• Feeling it before taking it – hours (or days) before
• Imagination, memory, DMT, neurotransmitters, hallucinations
• lucid dreaming
• Oneirogens (dream generators); list of Oneirogenic substances on Wikipedia
• dream pillows
• Calea zacatechichi (the "dream herb")
• the physical expression of one’s intention, e.g. the taking of a substance, can be just as powerful as the substance itself
• What is it like having a New Yorker reporter in your home for three days?
• Reflecting on Emily Witt’s profile of Erowid from inside the mirrored bubble
• Kevin preaches: “drug education about marijuana was the gateway drug itself”
• What could responsible drug education in school look like? Abstinence, fear-based approaches are the norm. What could be the alternatives for young people?
• Earth introduces the concept of electroceuticals
• Brad is hopeful about the psychedelic research renaissance
• Special thanks to Earth and Fire Erowid for their tireless efforts for over 20 years, and huge thanks to Erowid’s noble crew
• Erowid Experience Vaults: edited, curated alternative to “wild west” internet forums like bluelight.org; other contemporaries: lycaeum.org, deoxy.org
• statistics about trip reports submitted, triaged, reviewed, and posted
• Earth clarifies something in the New Yorker article: “we are in fact ‘the weirdos among the straights and the straights among the weirdos’.”
• Fire live-edits the Entheogens page on Erowid to add LSD after our observation
• corrections@erowid.org

FOLLOWUP FROM PREVIOUS EPISODE OF ENTHEOGEN, HONORING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF EROWID:

• Earth and Fire helped 17 year-old Brad avoid jail time
• Earth and Fire helped Kevin get through high school and college
• Joe got Erowid blocked from the network at his corporate job

SUPPORT EROWID!

• Donate money, choose a gift
• Become a member or monthly supporter, receive the excellent and beautifully designed Erowid Extracts newsletter
• Donate your books, used or new
• Volunteer to triage experience reports or for other projects, e.g. foreign language help

013: Interview with Robert J. Barnhart about his new film, A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin

This is Entheogen. We talk about tools for generating the divine within. It's August 21, 2015. We're talking about A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin with Robert J. Barnhart.

We are honored to be joined by Robert J. Barnhart, producer of A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin.

For historical context, we review the groundwork laid in the 1980's by organizations such as the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and Heffter Research Institute. Robert serves on the Boards of Directors of both organizations.

Basic research began as early as the 1940's and continued through the '50's and '60's, until Nixon's Drug Control Act of 1970 when the highly promising research was extinguished. In the words of Roland Griffiths, "Can you think of another area of science regarded as so dangerous and taboo that all research gets shut down for decades? It’s unprecedented in modern science."

Only as recently as in the last decade, thanks entirely to private fundraising by organizations like MAPS and Heffter, researchers have completed Phase I and Phase II studies. Plans for Phase III trials are on the horizon, and by some predictions, entheogens like psilocybin could be rescheduled to Schedule II (from Schedule I) perhaps as soon as 2020.

At $10/pill an effective one-time-dose treatment like an entheogen might not be economically feasible or lucrative enough for today's pharmaceutical companies to pursue taking to market. But what about regular, ongoing "microdosing" of something like LSD? And moreover, the potentially vast application of entheogens toward the "betterment of well people" (in the words of Bob Jesse) would seem to be highly interesting to a pharmaceutical company.

In addition to supporting MAPS and Heffter, Robert recommends the Beckley Foundation in England. Also, write to Congress and talk to people about your own entheogenic experiences.

Bonus: Robert recounts the story of how his would-be high school film project about the psychedelic experience may have serendipitously inspired his new film.

For more about the studies, check out Anthroposophia: A different kind of love story: One woman's psilocybin experience by Sandy Lundahl.

Thanks again to Robert Barnhart for joining us. Stay tuned for the release of A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin.

012: Interview with Carl A. P. Ruck, the Man who Coined the Term "Entheogen", on Renegotiating our Covenant with Mother Earth

This is Entheogen: three human beings discussing generating the divine within while still being human beings.

In this episode, recorded on June 22, 2015, we are honored to be joined by Dr. Carl Ruck, professor in the Classical Studies department at Boston University. Ruck is credited with coining the term Entheogen to describe neurotropic substances.

Ruck explains the importance of the term entheogen as distinct from neurotropic and other terms which may be used in scientific literature (see also: alchemy…chemistry, astrology…astronomy; alchemy minus theology = chemistry).

Dangers of guidance under the guise of a false guru.

Ancient entheogenic substances and principles of practice being reinterpreted in modern culture is prone to pitfalls.

"Our own European culture has a rich panoply of paradigms to help us with the experience, but we're told that it has nothing to do with this kind of drug induced visionary experience, so people don't understand that the ancient greek myths are a fantastic way of mapping out a pathway for self-discovery." - Carl A. P. Ruck

What is the role of the entheogen in society?

Finding ways to go to "the origins of religious cognition."

Should entheogens be used in a ritualistic setting, or as a private experience?

The Gaia Project: Reclaiming the Mysteries of Eleusis (more info)

The Breaking Conventions conference

Further reading: Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness

008: The Trip Treatment

Recorded on Feb 26, 2015

This is Entheogen: three human beings discussing generating the divine within while still being human beings. In this show we're discussing the Trip Treatment, an article in the New Yorker by Michael Pollan in the Feb 9, 2015 edition.

Topics:

- use of entheogens for terminal cancer patients, nicotine addicts, PTSD

- use of entheogens for "betterment of well people" (in the words of Bob Jesse)

- Roland Griffiths, trained as a behaviorist and holding senior appointments in psychiatry and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, is one of the nation’s leading drug-addiction researchers. Pollan quoting Griffiths: “There is such a sense of authority that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it can be threatening to existing hierarchical structures. We ended up demonizing these compounds. Can you think of another area of science regarded as so dangerous and taboo that all research gets shut down for decades? It’s unprecedented in modern science.”

- Robert Jesse, founder of Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP) in 1993, former VP of Oracle.

- Rick Doblin, founder of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in 1986.

- Charles Grob, at U.C.L.A., who won F.D.A. approval in 2006 for a Phase I pilot study to assess the safety, dosing, and efficacy of psilocybin in the treatment of anxiety in cancer patients.

- David Nichols, emeritus professor of pharmacology at Purdue University and a founder of the Heffter Research Institute in 1993, key funder of psychedelic research.

- Robin Carhart-Harris and David Nutt of Imperial College, London. See prior coverage on the show: Entheogen 002: Psychedelic Research Renaissance, Part 2

Also:

- Roland Griffiths, a leading psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins University and the States of Consciousness Research Team is conducting an anonymous, web-based study to characterize experiences of personal encounter that might be described as "Ultimate Reality," "Higher Power," "God" or any aspect of the God of your understanding. If you’ve ever had such an experience, taking the Johns Hopkins survey could serve science and help others.

005: A Positive LSD Story – Tangible Benefits of Entheogens

Recorded on January 19th, 2015

This is Entheogen: three human beings discussing generating the divine within while still being human beings.  In this show we discuss tangle benefits of psychedelic use.  We open with one our favorite Bill Hicks bits.

Topics:

   Francis Crick, Cricked

- Francis Crick, Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, deduced the double-helix structure of DNA: may have been influenced by LSD.

- Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR, a scientific breakthrough that accelerated the sequencing of the human genome: "I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took. [...] What if I had not taken LSD ever; would I have still invented PCR?  I don't know. I doubt it. I seriously doubt it."

- Steve Jobs: “Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”

“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and you're life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.” - Steve Jobs

Also: "Here's to the Crazy Ones"

Douglas Engelbart, early computer scientist, presenter of the Mother of All Demos, had "two LSD experiences."

- Kevin Herbert, early Cisco engineer: "When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing.  It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain."

References:

Interview with Patrick Lundborg: 60’s psych & garage guru, psychedelic culture scholar and author of brilliant „Psychedelia” and „Acid Archives” books, discussed in Entheogen #003

What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer by John Markoff

"Shaking one's snow globe" with LSD: Entheogen 002: Psychedelic Research Renaissance, Part 2