Re: MAPS: Aspiring psychedelic researcher looking for guidance

[Christopher Lovett <clovett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, since there is no "right" way to go about making some kind of
important contribution to entheogenic research, as everybody has their
own unique talents/abilities/situations, all I can do is to convey what my
experience/story with graduate school has been, and hopefully this might
help others to gain some insight into the best way to go about doing what
they really want to do in their lifetime, at least as it involves grad
school... So, I was in a similar situation a few years back, with the same
questions and concerns, and, fortunately, I had the chance to meet Sasha
Shulgin briefly at the entheobotany conference in 1996. I asked him the
same types of things, as my undergraduate background is in biochemistry
and so I thought he would be the best person to ask. His advice, and my
current philosophy, on the issue was that I should get as strong of a
foundational background in graduate school as possible, i.e., work in a
good place with good people doing solid, reputable research, and then
pursue whatever it was I really wanted to do, which may not even be
possible to know until *after* graduate school anyway. And I think this
applies in general, even if your aspirations are not to study entheogens:
learn solid methodology and techniques that you can apply to whatever
particular interests you have now or in the future, even if they
drastically change when you leave graduate school. If you try to get as
much as you can out of graduate/medical school, you'll always have those
tools and sound techniques to do good research. And, believe me, the more
rigorous and stringent your research and its interpretation, the harder it
will be for people to argue with it, reject it or not take it seriously -
and this makes all the difference.

So, I didn't go the pure neuroscience/neuropharmacology route (while
these fields are obviously extremely valuable, and on a first pass ( :-) )
might seem the best route to go), as looking into these graduate programs
I discovered much of the research done in these fields is on animals and
never gets directly at the level of higher order thought and cognition -
it is on this level that the questions that really fascinate me arise,
especially about the exact nature of the interplay between the neural/
biochemical substrate of the brain/body and consciousness/experience/
higher level cognition. This type of research is just not possible to do
in animals, so I began looking for a field more focused on cognitive
neuroscience, especially the neuroscience of higher order conceptual
structure and thought. After 2 years in a psychology program studying the
cognitive neuroscience of psycholinguistic processing, however, the
theoretical background was just not there for me and so I switched to
cognitive science, where, while still using the methods of cognitive
neuroscience, I am able to more broadly study thought, conceptual
structure, "mental spaces" and how the language we use reflects the way we
think.

I've found that cognitive science is a *great* field (although at most
places it usually has somewhat of an emphasis in computational modeling),
though there are very very few programs compared to say psychology
programs. It is the pure *science of the mind*, drawing from the
disciplines of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience,
sociology, anthropology, and computer science (the field was largely
founded as an attempt to model and imitate the human mind on a computer
system - AI). It differs from say psychology, especially experimental
psychology, in its strong reliance on theoretical work done in other
fields, especially philosophy and linguistics, but also sociology and
anthropology - the data from say neuroscience are then used in an
integrative way to better understand and modify these theoretical
foundations, rather than looked at as orthogonal data from a "different
field." The boundaries between disciplines somewhat dissolve, and I think
ultimately the same type of thing will need to happen to truly understand
the entheogenic experience and consciousness in general. My experience with
experimental psychology programs, on the other hand, is that you work in
very restricted and limited domains, do tightly controlled experiments
that rarely resemble conditions in the real world, focus very much on your
particular data and how it fits in with currently accepted theories, and
then try to get as many papers published while being very politically
savvy during the entire process - this did not fit in with what I wanted.

Here, in a cognitive science program, I am able to work in labs doing
both brain-imaging (fMRI) as well as electrophysiological (EEG/ERP -
brainwave) research, but at the same time study in rigorous detail
theories from philosophy and linguistics while attempting to form a
coherent picture of how the mind works. The knowledge I'm receiving here,
as well as the skills of using a wide range of tools and methodologies
(including all of the biochemical methods from my undergraduate years),
will stay with me wherever I go from here, so now is the time to get all
of the details down, learning as much as I can from the great mentors I am
fortunate enough to work with here. In my mind, this is the purpose of
graduate school, even if it means not doing *exactly* what you want all of
the time. Also, cognitive science, in my opinion, is one of the best
fields to prepare you for further investigating and coming to a better
understanding of the nature of entheogens and their interaction with the
mind, and also how they can be used as tools in gleaning insight into the
nature of mind, consciousness and existence itself. I know these are very
specific questions I am trying to answer, so this field might not be the
best for answering many of the other entheogen-related questions there are
out there - i.e., throw some salt in all this if you like.

As far as the (loosely-knit) Consciousness Studies program at the
University of Arizona, I was involved in that for 2 years, and it seems to
me that the emerging field of "consciousness studies" is just still too
nascent to really be a coherent field. What I mean is that people involved
in their own particular research that, say, come to present it either to
the group or at one of the biennial conferences, usually end up talking in
terms that are highly specific to their field (whether it is neuroscience,
psychology, anthropology or philosophy), including whatever specific
definition(s) of "consciousness" exists in that field, which often goes
right over the heads of people that are not familiar with that field at
least fairly deeply (if you're not a philosopher and have read Dave
Chalmers' book you know exactly what I mean). So, in my opinion, people
end up leaving a talk, or having read a paper, still having a lot of the
same concepts and questions they came with about consciousness, at least
on a rigorous and technical level. There is just not too much integration
or unification of ideas within the field right now - everyone is
communicating with everyone else in different languages that are only
half-understood by most of the people outside of that specific discipline.
So, the point being, we are pretty far from having a solid graduate
program in "consciousness studies" because of the lack of standardization
and unification of terms and concepts and the lack of serious
communication between fields when trying to reach an integrated
understanding of what we are talking about when we say "consciousness" in
the first place.

So, overall, my best advice is, whatever route you follow, learn as much
as you can and keep your mind, eyes and ears open. Take it all in and
integrate it with your own interests and ideas, always being authentic to
yourself, but never shying away from something because it seems too rigid
or intuitively "wrong" or entrenched with illusory modes of thought - now
is the time to change the outdated models of how we understand our
"reality" and to make a real difference. Hopefully, this account from my
limited personal perspective has helped in some small way to stimulate
some ideas in you about how to best proceed with your future, at least in
an academic sense, whether your research/studies end up involving the
biochemical and neural bases/correlates of the entheogenic experience,
techniques of psychotherapy, medicine, experimental psychology, religious
and contemplative approaches, the interdisciplinary field of cognitive
science or even law reform, and you are eventually met with tremendous
success, achievement and satisfaction on both a personal and professional
level.

Good luck!

Chris


On Fri, 1 Mar 2002, Jon Freedlander wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Mar 2002, PsilocyberSpore wrote:
>
> > Hello, I will first start off by introducing myself.  My name is Tom
and I am 20 years old.  I am currently a sophomore at the University of
Rhode Island.  I am a psychology major with a minor in philosophy.  I am
also involved with the honors program, as well as several on campus
student organizations  I am a very serious student.  I am deeply
interested in psychedelics and their potential for utilization in
psychological treatment.  I have immersed myself in the literature
regarding this topic for the past 3 or 4 years.  I recently joined MAPS,
as I believe that it is a very important organization, and vital to the
continuation of psychedelic research in this country.
> >
> > With that said, I was hoping that you fine folks on this list could
give me some guidance as to how to most effectively pursue my goal of one
day becoming a researcher in the field of psychology and studying these
interesting chemicals and their potential benefits.  I am planning on
attending graduate school as soon as I finish my undergraduate work here
at URI.  Do any of you know of any graduate study programs in the country
with professors who are interested in the topic of psychedelic research?
I would also appreciate any advice at all that you may have that could
help me along the way to achieving my goals.
>
>
> hi tom,
>
>
> I am in a similar situation. I am currently attending the University of
> MD, Baltimore County, and will be graduating this May with a B.A. in
> psychology. I have had some difficulty locating graduate schools with
> programs related to psychedelics. The University of Arizona has a Center
> for Conciousness Studies, but as far as I know, it is not affiliated (at
> least not directly) with the graduate school there. The University of
> British Columbia has recently introduced an undergraduate philosophy
> course on psychedelics, but i am not aware of this being including in any
> of the graduate curricula. What I probably intend to do is attend a
> graduate program in either Experimental Psychology or
> Behavioural/Cognitive Sciences, and focus my thesis work on some aspects
> of psychedelics. If you do find any graduate programs that are more
> directly psychedelic oriented, I would be eternally grateful if you could
> send me the contact info for them; and if i find any, I will gladly do the
> same for you.
>
> good luck! =)
>
> _______________________________________________________________________________
> Jon Freedlander
> Research Assistant
> Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
> www.maps.org
>
> "Wisdom cannot be transmitted, it keeps you hanging on..."
> 							--Robyn Hitchcock
>
>
>
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