I recently gave a talk to Effective Altruism Toronto on psychedelics and doing good. The slides are available on Slideshare, and I've also posted them here along with the event description. The links from each slide are also included below. I hope you find this interesting or useful. Enjoy! Link: A list of ongoing psychedelic clinical trials Link: … [Read more...] about Psychedelics and Doing Good (Presentation Slides)
Psychedelics
Psychedelic Research as a Potential Cause Area for Effective Altruism (Presentation Slides)
Back in July I gave a talk on psychedelic research as a potential cause area for Effective Altruism. If you read this blog, you probably know something about psychedelic research already. If not, see the following posts for a refresher: Psychedelics, Personality Traits, and Values: A Closer Look at the Research Mystical Experience & Psychedelics: Meaningful, … [Read more...] about Psychedelic Research as a Potential Cause Area for Effective Altruism (Presentation Slides)
How to Have a Mystical Experience: A Research-Based Guide
After reading the last post on this topic, you may be wondering how to have your own mystical experience. That's understandable, as mystical experience is widely considered one of the most profound and meaningful someone can have. Mystical experience is characterized by feelings of self-transcendence and direct connection with the divine, a sense of cosmic unity, … [Read more...] about How to Have a Mystical Experience: A Research-Based Guide
How Psychedelics Take Us Back to the Garden of Eden
A few weeks ago I saw a talk by Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris about using psilocybin to treat depression. It was fascinating and the video is below if you want to watch. Carhart-Harris works at Imperial College London as head of their psychedelic research group, and at around 28:00 he says something very interesting that I had never heard before. He suggests that psychedelics might … [Read more...] about How Psychedelics Take Us Back to the Garden of Eden
Mystical Experience & Psychedelics: Meaningful, Measurable, Life Changing
In the last post we saw that there are some significant, lasting changes in personality traits and values that come as a result of psychedelic experience. It appears that the catalyst for these changes is something called mystical experience. What is mystical experience, and why is it so powerful? A mystical experience, as we will see, is one of the most profound and … [Read more...] about Mystical Experience & Psychedelics: Meaningful, Measurable, Life Changing
Psychedelics, Personality Traits, and Values: A Closer Look at the Research
The last post asked the question: Can we derive values from psychedelic experience? That is to say what, if anything, does psychedelic experience tell us about how to live our lives? Some related questions came up: Is there a common set of values that unites the psychedelic community? To what extent are values actually imbued by the psychedelic experience, and to what extent … [Read more...] about Psychedelics, Personality Traits, and Values: A Closer Look at the Research
Can We Derive Values From Psychedelic Experience?
It's a sort of spider-like creature, but a spider with gaping jaws. It crawls towards me on the floor - right towards my face as I'm lying on my back. Now a swarm of these creatures completely cover my body and begin to eat me alive. It started simply from seeing the closet on the other side of the room. A dark and shadowy place - reminiscent of monsters in the closet - and a … [Read more...] about Can We Derive Values From Psychedelic Experience?
Explaining Psychedelic Creativity with Sliding Scales of Perception
The more psychedelics I take the more I have the desire to “bring something back” - a little for myself but mostly in order to be better able to convince more people to take psychedelics. The more one can parse out the details of the experience, I think, the more able one is to explain the potential benefits to others. This is especially true when engaging with rationally … [Read more...] about Explaining Psychedelic Creativity with Sliding Scales of Perception
7 Remarkable Things I Learned at Psychedelic Science 2017
I recently attended Psychedelic Science 2017 in Oakland, California. Overall it was a highly encouraging and impressive event, put on by MAPS and the Beckley Foundation. Here's what I discovered at the conference. 1) There’s more psychedelic research going on than I’d ever imagined Psychedelic Science 2017 was the largest psychedelic research conference ever. There were over … [Read more...] about 7 Remarkable Things I Learned at Psychedelic Science 2017
Recreating the Psychedelic Experience in Virtual Reality
For some time now I’ve been interested in the prospect of recreating the psychedelic experience in virtual reality. This has led me to try several "consciousness" based VR experiences, mostly around meditation and most of which were unremarkable. Recently one VR experience stood out, called SoundSelf. SoundSelf involves chanting while the game creates a real-time feedback … [Read more...] about Recreating the Psychedelic Experience in Virtual Reality
DMT
“Little gnomes carting us all around the Universe” - this is all I manage to write down after smoking DMT. It was a wild experience - the same week as this and only a few days after this - apparently a good time to try the most potent psychedelic known to man. A lot has been written about the DMT trips, but here I'll just talk about mine. This is a short post because the … [Read more...] about DMT
Edible MJ
My friend has baked some cookies. I know this friend's drug tolerance borders on the absurd, so I eat little more than one crumbly square inch of cookie. It tastes vaguely of peanut butter, mostly of marijuana. Friend 1 eats half a cookie and Friend 2, who has baked them, maybe three times that. The first half hour is good. Friend 1 and I order food on the computer, … [Read more...] about Edible MJ
Vitamin K
Is this really strong for you guys as well? I can hear myself say it but it doesn’t feel like me talking. The air is getting thick, I'm dizzy and the whole world feels like it's starting to float in ether. It's only been five minutes. We've gotten a hold of some ketamine and mixed up the oral and nasal doses. We don't find this out until later, but what's meant to be a … [Read more...] about Vitamin K
Psychedelics on Mars
Bear with me here - Elon Musk’s company SpaceX is building rockets to go to Mars - having recently announced we will get there as soon as 2018. But Musk doesn’t want to just land on Mars and do some experiments there, or maybe take a few pictures. He wants to start a full blown human colony on the planet’s surface - a completely new Martian society. And while this … [Read more...] about Psychedelics on Mars
1P-LSD Banned in UK (Psychoactive Substances Act in Effect April 2016)
As the rest of the developed world slowly begins to “wake up” and adopt rational and evidence-based drug policy… the UK government cements its place as a regressive force with the passing of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016. Hey! Are you interested in attending a legal psychedelic retreat? Atman Retreat allows you to explore the healing, transformative, transcendent … [Read more...] about 1P-LSD Banned in UK (Psychoactive Substances Act in Effect April 2016)