Entheogen

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024: A Microdose of Alex & Allyson Grey Feb 29, 2016

Show notes

024: A Microdose of Alex & Allyson Grey Brad, Kevin, Joe

Today is January 24, 2016, and we have for you a microdose of Alex & Allyson Grey.

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’ll begin with a quote from the New York Times: "Alex Grey's art, with its New Age symbolism and medical-illustration finesse, might be described as psychedelic realism, a kind of clinical approach to cosmic consciousness. In it, the human figure is rendered transparently with X-ray or CAT-scan eyes, the way Aldous Huxley saw a leaf when he was on mescaline. Every bone, organ and vein is detailed in refulgent color; objects and space are knitted together in dense, decorative linear webs."

Psychedelic, inspired by entheogens

Best known for the Sacred Mirrors series

CoSM, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors: “The Mission of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, CoSM, is to build an enduring sanctuary of visionary art to inspire every pilgrim’s creative path and embody the values of love and perennial wisdom.”

Alex’s art is featured by Tool, Nirvana, The String Cheese Incident, Meshuggah, and the Beastie Boys

Alex and Allyson’s shared journey, visioning the same image, painted by Allyson as Jeweled Net of Indra and by Alex as Universal Mind Lattice

022: Response to A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin Jan 25, 2016

Show notes

022: Response to A New Understanding- The Science of Psilocybin Brad, Kevin, 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.

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 Dec 28, 2015

Show notes

021: Psychedelic First Aid with Special Guest, Sara Gael of MAPS and the Zendo Project Brad, Kevin, 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.

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:

020: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, second half Dec 18, 2015

Show notes

020: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, second half Brad, Kevin, Joe

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 second half.

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

Topics:

Kevin and Earth reminisce about Burning Man 2007, the “Eclipse/Man-Burn-Early Year”
What was Burning Man like in 1995?
Fire tells the story of a Burning Man purist in 1995 who had stopped going since there were people there she didn’t know
“radical self-reliance” and community reliance
Earth asks Kevin: “did you carry out your own poop?”
When they moved to California in 1994, Earth worked remotely for his dad’s tech company; what was working remotely like in 1994?
Earth started New College in Sarasota, FL, the same year Rick Doblin graduated; Fire joined the next year. (Rick’s wild time at New College in the ‘80’s described in Acid Test by Tom Shroder)
Earth and Fire discuss their friendship with Sasha and Ann Shulgin and the famous Friday night dinners
Erowid becoming an educational nonprofit in 2008
Erowid’s Library

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

And be sure to catch the first half of the interview.

019: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, first half Dec 10, 2015

Show notes

019: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, first half Brad, Kevin, Joe

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

018: Honoring the 20th Anniversary of Erowid Dec 03, 2015

Show notes

018: Honoring the 20th Anniversary of Erowid Brad, Kevin, 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.

017: Modern Shamanism Nov 27, 2015

Show notes

017: Modern Shamanism Brad, Kevin, Joe

This is Entheogen. We talk about tools for generating the divine within. It's October 15, 2015. We're talking about Modern Shamanism with special guest, Micah.

We would like to thank our 3,000 monthly subscribers for listening to the show. We want to hear from you! Visit EntheogenShow.com and subscribe to our newsletter to receive show notes by email when new episodes are posted. Get in touch on Facebook or Twitter. And spread the word about Entheogen!

And check out our first Entheogen T-shirts! Show your support of Entheogen and start a conversation at the same time.

This episode we are grateful to be joined by special guest, Micah, to discuss the use of Ayahuasca in a modern context, as well as in the traditional setting.

Background:

Erowid Ayahuasca Vault: Basics

Topics:

- the traditional preparation vs. a chemical extraction

- the traditional context vs. modern comforts

- shaman vs. therapist

- jungle fauna, icaros vs. modern metaphors and music

- other psychoactive plant medicine: tobacco, chocolate/cacao, wine, sassafras, black pepper

- creating a container for deep experience

References:

Santo Daime

União do Vegetal

Controversy Brews Over Church's Hallucinogenic Tea Ritual

**Tee Shirts** Nov 23, 2015
Show notes

T-SHIRTS ARE now available!

Support the show, and the cause!

016: Breathwork Nov 22, 2015

Show notes

016: Breathwork Brad, Kevin, Joe

This is Entheogen. We talk about tools for generating the divine within. It's October 12, 2015. We're talking about Breathwork.

We would like to thank our 3,000 monthly subscribers for listening to the show. We want to hear from you! Visit EntheogenShow.com and subscribe to our newsletter to receive show notes by email when new episodes are posted. Get in touch on Facebook or Twitter. And spread the word about Entheogen!

Holotropic Breathwork was developed by Stan Grof, an early researcher and practitioner of LSD Psychotherapy, as a substitute for LSD when the substance was outlawed.