Biography/Memoir

Sacred knowledge: how psychedelics shaped an academic’s life

“..all psychedelic experiences are not entheogenic experiences. If “entheogen” means a sacred experience of spiritual or religious meaning, only certain experiences approached the right way with the right dosage, etc, are likely to be of that profundity. I mean, a lot of people take psychedelics and see some pretty colors and giggle or get a little paranoid, and that’s not what we’re talking about.”

In the 60s, we were very excited about their promise in treatment of addictions: narcotic addiction and alcoholism. We were using them back then in helping terminally ill people live the end of their lives more fully, with less anxiety and less depression, less preoccupation with pain, more closeness to family members. These are very promising medical uses that are just beginning to be reexamined now, as the research has started to come alive again in the last 15 years. There was a 22-year period before that where absolutely nothing was going on in the United States or most of western Europe mainly because of the drug policy and the demonization of psychedelics. Technically I think I have the dubious distinction of giving psilocybin to the last person before it got totally dormant; that was in 1977. But for all practical purposes around 1973 the research was pretty dormant.

Original Article (Alternet):
Sacred knowledge: how psychedelics shaped an academic’s life
Artwork Fair Use: Adam Timberlake

Biography/Memoir

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Biography/Memoir

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