In Conversation
– with Douglas Rushkoff
From hanging with Tim Leary in the 80s underground psychedelic culture to playing a crucial role chronicling the rise (and maybe fall) of cyberpunk rave culture in the 90s, Douglas Rushkoff has been at the frontline of some startling cultural shifts over the past few decades. His latest book, Survival of the Richest, is a ...
Permaculture: Stories celebrating floristic and fungal abundance
– David Holmgren
By Liam Engels
David Holmgren draws on a lifelong passion for ethnobotanical knowledge and practise to tell stories that celebrate abundance and diversity, pushing the boundaries of social and, at times, legal norms. These true stories cut paths through the psychosocial wilderness towards a relocalised ethnobotany of the everyday to sustain us in the shadow of failing techno ...
Strychnine
– Keeper Trout
What is strychnine, and why do people seem to believe that it is in so many different plants and drugs? Has that ever been true? If so, why, when, and where? And why do so many people want to believe that strychnine causes symptoms that it does not? Keeper Trout takes us on a fun ...
A Prescription of NeuroGnostics; Entheogenic Herbalism
– Rachel Gagen
By Liam Engels
We are going to explore psychotropic herbalism, organic biological organisms used as a medicine that have an affinity for the mind. In particular, herbs that have an affinity for the parts of the mind that govern our interpretation of information from the external world and in response, adapt our inner world. Medicines that regulate ...
Some Traps, Pitfalls and Questions of the Psychedelic Path
– Nick Sun
By Liam Engels
With the increasing acceptance within the mainstream, many people are seeking psychedelics for many reasons. Healing, meaning, spiritual awakening, pleasure… The list goes on. There are also many routes for meeting these medicines as well. Medical, shamanic, spiritual, self-experimentation etc... But this is still new territory, and we are in a period of mass experimentation, ...
PRISM: Trip sitting and psychedelic harm reduction
– Steph Tzanetis
By Liam Engels
The principles for psychedelic support (otherwise known as ‘trip sitting’) that are promoted by international groups like MAPS Zendo Project and Kosmicare Association, as well as PRISM. Psychedelic support in music event settings is different from psychedelic assisted psychotherapy (PAP) in many ways. For example, with PAP a sitter is with a person when they ...
MDMA research down under: What does a decade of persistence look like?
– Dr Stephen Bright
By Liam Engels
Prior to MDMA being banned internationally in 1987, it was showing promise as a pharmacological adjunct to psychotherapy. In the past decade, there has been significant global growth in clinical trials of MDMA that have shown MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can be effective in treating treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol use disorder, and social anxiety ...
Preparing the Vessel
– Lila Lieberman
Lila has been working with medicinal plants and indigenous methodologies of healing for twenty-five years. She began her journey in the Atacama Desert of Peru and later initiated as sangoma - traditional healer and seer - in the Shona tradition of South Africa, where she was born. She has spent many years engaging cultural wisdom ...
Mapping Entheogenesis Through The Ecological-Self
– Jef Baker
Evolving from my 2015 Honours thesis examining the overlaps, intersections, and parallels between the philosophy of Deep Ecology and the Ayahuasca experience, this presentation explores the concept of ‘The ecological Self’ as a key aspect of entheogenic awakening. The ecological Self is a concept developed by Deep Ecologists such as Freya Mathews, Arne Naess, John ...
Philosophical issues in psychedelic research: A review of emerging themes
– Dr Chris Letheby
Serotonergic (or “classic”) psychedelics have struck many researchers as raising significant philosophical questions that, until recently, were largely unexplored by academic philosophers. In this talk, based on collaborative work with Jaipreet Mattu (University of Western Ontario), I will give an overview of four emerging lines of research at the intersection of academic philosophy and psychedelic ...