Lessons from the Psychedelic Experience

The mainstream is warming to the idea of psychedelics, once "mind-bending drugs" and the preserve of old hippies and new ravers. Imperial College has opened an entire research centre devoted to magic mushrooms. CEOs microdose LSD for performance enhancement, while even Sting goes public with his enthusiasm for ayahuasca. They now hold the promise of being a "breakthrough treatment for depression", while also being a prime frontier of bluster, speculation and venture capitalism. Psychedelics – and the healing and earthly salvation they promise – seem to represent a singularity of novelty, a newly-discovered territory of the imaginal lept on by ravenous colonizers.

But putting aside the hype, the scare tactics and the machinations of power – what mysteries does the psychedelic experience hold? What are the contours of its terrain, and what is its relevance for therapeutic practice? What is this extraordinary phenomenon, co-created between the plant world and the human psyche, that gives rise to such singular experiences that they are regularly described in the scientific literature as "mystical"? And what are the parallels between clinical concepts and the phenomenology of the psychedelic experience? In this talk, I will share personal observations, hard-earned lessons, frantic hand-waving, poetry, and some theories and models – my intention is to share treasures retrieved from over a decade of personal exploration with psychedelics, and 5 years of working with them professionally.