Benjamin Mudge has a background in music, art and political activism, and is now a PhD candidate in the Psychiatry Department at Flinders University researching the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca for people with bipolar disorder. After psychiatrists prescribed him 17 different pharmaceuticals over a period of 10 years (all of which were problematic), he gave up on pharmaceutical psychiatry and decided to find his own solution to living with manic depression. He has been managing his bipolar disorder with ayahuasca for 14 years (without any need of pharmaceuticals) and was awarded a PhD scholarship to research whether his personal protocol could assist other bipolar people. Mudge is director of <a href="https://www.bipolardisorder.me">Bipolar Disorder CIC</a>, a not-for-profit community interest company working for the interests of bipolar people. His vision is to make ayahuasca ceremonies available to bipolar people as an alternative treatment to pharmaceutical drugs. He is also an advocate for the religious freedom of ayahuasca ceremonies, and led a team of ayahuasceros to the Parliament of the World’s Religions that succeeded in receiving the Parliament’s recognition of ayahuasca ceremonies as legitimate religious practices. His spiritual practice involves singing sacred ayahuasca songs, which he shares under the name Santa Estrela.

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