maps • volume xvi number 2 • Autumn 2006 |
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R. Andrew Sewell, M.D.
asewell71@gmail.com |
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With contributions from:
Nicholas V. Cozzi, Ph.D.
Rick Doblin, Ph.D.
Robert Forte
Marc Franklin
Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D.
Paul Goodwin, Ph.D.
Casey Guillot, Ph.D.*
Jon Hanna
Jordan Holmes
Ilsa Jerome, Ph.D.
Sameet Kumar, Ph.D.
Christopher D. Lovett, Ph.D.*
Dan Merkur, Ph.D.
Julia Onnie-Hay
Erik Peden, Ph.D.
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.
Michael Allan Ruderman
Kevin Sachs, Ph.D.
Tobias C. van Veen, Ph.D.
*(candidate) |
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Perhaps you appreciate that scientists such as Ralph Abraham, Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Andrew Weil, and Nobel Prize winners such as Francis Crick, Richard Feynman, and Kary Mullis have found psychedelics valuable tools in formulating their great discoveries, and wonder how this can be so? |
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So You Want to be a Psychedelic Researcher?
R. Andrew Sewell, M.D.
With the current renaissance in psychedelic research,
after a forty-year moratorium, undergraduates interested
in the topic are increasingly starting to ask: How can I get
involved? Unfortunately, psychedelics are still heavily stigmatized,
and there is as yet no obvious infrastructure into which enthusiasts can
channel their energy. There are no psychedelic research graduate programs,
no psychedelic student groups, no psychedelic scholarships, and few professors
willing to provide mentorship or funding agencies willing to sponsor
such research. This leaves undergraduates inspired by psychedelics frustrated
and uncertain about what they should be doing in order to most help the
cause. Here are some suggestions and guidance for those so perplexed.
First, examine your motives for
entering psychedelic research? Is it
because psychedelics are novel and cool?
If so, you are apt to find psychedelic
research disappointing. While Dr. Timothy
Leary, perhaps the most famous of the
psychedelic researchers, found it a route
to enduring fame and hot sex with large
numbers of young women, he did this
primarily though his showmanship rather
than his scientific research. If such a
lifestyle is appealing to you, there are
shorter routes to this goal than decades
of scholarly study.
Or is it because you have had a
mystical or life-changing experience
on a psychedelic? You do not need to
become a psychedelic researcher in
order to continue your self-exploration;
you do not even need to continue to take
psychedelics, as there are many other
methods of changing one’s own consciousness,
from yoga to meditation to
Holotropic Breathwork. Such a path may
prove profoundly self-altering; however,
it is unlikely to change society.
Or is it because you are frustrated
living in a culture that tramples individual
freedoms, discourages introspection and
insight, substitutes lies and half-truths for
genuine science, encourages people to selfcensor
and conform to that which they
know is harmful and wrong, and that you wish instead to change society for the
better? You do not need to be a scientific
researcher in order to be an activist.
Ultimately, scientific research is only
useful as a tool in the hands of the activist,
for it is the activist who compels society to
improve.
Or is it because you are motivated by
a genuine curiosity about these peculiar
substances, and wish to apply the tools of
modern inquiry toward understanding
their properties? Perhaps you appreciate
that scientists such as Ralph Abraham,
Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Andrew
Weil, and Nobel Prize winners such as
Francis Crick, Richard Feynman, and Kary
Mullis have found psychedelics valuable
tools in formulating their great discoveries,
and wonder how this can be so?
Maybe you know that the discovery of
LSD was what sparked interest in the
serotonin system and prompted the
explosive growth of modern psychopharmacology
that continues today? Possibly
you contemplate what other wonders may
lie hidden in the closed box of psychedelic
science?
And are you willing to accept that
your unconventional interests may lead to
professional isolation or even ostracism,
and that the time-consuming navigation
of the layers of red tape endemic to
psychedelic research will inevitably slow your publication rate and consequently
promotions compared with your peers?
And are you aware that the total lack of
government or corporate support for such
endeavors means that you will never be
rich, and you may in fact eventually land
in jail on trumped up charges of one sort
or another? If such considerations do not
trouble you, then read on.
AS AN UNDERGRADUATE
Get Your Degree! Lie Low and Infiltrate the System
The undergraduate years are a difficult time for the nascent psychedelic researcher because of the stigma that these drugs still hold. Many undergraduates come to realize that broadcasting their unconventional views at this time could potentially harm their future careers, and thus indirectly harm psychedelic research. Sometimes we have to conform to others’ expectations in order to establish a solid base of credibility, and wait for a time when we can be more independent in our pursuits. The book Why Shrooms Are Good by Joe Schmoe is likely to be ignored; Therapeutic Benefits of Psilocybin by Dr. Joe Schmoe considerably less so, even if both books say exactly the same thing. Incidentally, this was the path I followed; I didn’t breathe a word of my interests until I was already on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. Be warned, however–conformity for too long can corrode the soul. And in retrospect, you are freer as an undergraduate than you may think you are.
Educate Yourself About Psychedelics
Read what scientific literature does exist regarding psychedelics, not just the material that draws popular attention. If possible, take a course in psychedelics. Dr. Stacy B. Schaefer teaches a class on Indigenous People of Latin America at California State University, Chico, dealing in part with the peyote-using Huichol Indians. Dr. Constantino Manuel Torres teaches an Art and Shamanism course at Florida International University, exploring traditional cultures that use psychedelics. Northern Illinois University offers regular courses by Dr. Thomas Roberts. Invite him to be a guest lecturer at your own school! Dr. Roberts writes:
If your department or another would like to offer either course– Foundations of Psychedelic Studies or Entheogens – Sacramentals or Sacrilege? to students (graduate or undergraduate), it might be possible for me to travel every now and then and meet with a class, say over long weekends or for a day or two every couple of weeks. The rest we can do by Internet.
Alternately, design your own independent study course (or courses) for credit in psychedelics. This is the approach MAPS President Rick Doblin took for his undergraduate education at New College of Florida. Use Dr. Robert’s syllabus as a basis. Paul Goodwin is starting a web site aimed at interested students offering links and short descriptions of courses relevant to psychedelic studies. This should be online by the fall of 2006 (www.psycomp.org.uk). Keep current with the literature in your area of interest, and start thinking about ideas for your own research project.
Another graduate student writes:
I completed an honors thesis as an undergraduate, which basically was a literature review, and it ended up resulting in my first publication a few years later. It also led up to my masters thesis (a quasi-experimental study) and a few other papers in press. The best thing undergraduates can do to help is to prepare themselves, I believe. Be persistent about being a part of psychedelic research, if that is truly where your heart lies. I may not be able to do exactly what I want right now, but I still can keep it in mind for the future.
“The Implications of Psychedelic Research for XXX” often makes a good term paper topic. Rephrasing a title as a question is one tactic to use when encountering skeptical professors: “Do Psychedelics Have Implications for XXX?” or “How Should We Evaluate Psychedelic Claims of XXX?” Also, consider requesting that your local and school libraries acquire psychedelic books. Not only does this help spread knowledge, it also helps authors and encourages publishers to accept more psychedelic titles.
In the meantime, attend a convention! There’s quite a bit of psychedelic research presented at the yearly Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conferences (http://slsa.press.jhu.edu). Similarly, the Toward a Science of Consciousness conferences held in Tucson, Arizona every other year also always have some presentations dealing with psychedelic research (www.consciousness.arizona.edu). And more specifically focused on psychedelics and altered states are the yearly Mind States conventions, where aboveground researchers and underground psychonauts congregate to discuss their latest discoveries. The Mind States e-mailing list provides updates on similar events that happen worldwide (www.mindstates.org).
Underground publications often present cutting-edge discoveries in the arenas of psychedelic chemistry, botany, and pharmacology. The Entheogen Review, for example, was the first place to discuss the extraction of tryptamines from Phalaris grasses for ayahuasca analogues and the first to confirm the psychoactivity of Mimosa tenuiflora (= M. hostilis) without coadministration of a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. These days, countless web sites and discussion forums carry first-person reports of the latest synthetic psychedelics and botanical preparations. Amateur science flourishes in our current legal situation, in which professional science is so difficult to perform that most discoveries have to be made underground. Remember, though, that the rigorous controls present in aboveground science are usually lacking in underground efforts, rendering many results questionable at best. |
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Read what scientific literature does exist regarding psychedelics, not just the material that draws popular attention. |
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Write letters and share how you feel! Nobody can arrest you for an opinion –yet. |
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Start a Psychedelic Student Group
While one undergraduate is easy to
intimidate, large groups of them have a
history of occupying administration buildings to facilitate societal change.
Fish travel in schools for a reason! Another
strategy, therefore, is to start a
student group. One possibility would be to
form a chapter of a national organization
such as the Marijuana Policy Project
(MPP) or Students for Sensible Drug
Policy (SSDP). This approach would be
similar to student chapters of Greenpeace,
Amnesty International, or Students for a
Free Tibet.
One notorious troublemaker writes:
I took out an ad in the school’s
newspaper, Come to the first meeting
of the University of Chicago
Education Society. We met at
the spot that marked the beginning of
the Atomic Age, a Henry Moore
sculpture called The Nuclear Egg.
About a hundred people showed up.
We shared stories, brought speakers
to town, dreamed of a saner world,
and labored to manifest one.
At Harvard, where I work, there is no
recognized undergraduate student organization
focused on psychedelic research.
The procedure for creating such an
organization can be found on-line at:
www.college.harvard.edu/student/
handbook.pdf. The advantages of forming
a recognized student organization are
many. Not only can recognized groups get
permission to use campus facilities and
assembly halls for events and symposia,
they are also eligible to apply for funding
from the student government. A student
organization focused on psychedelic
research could engage in outreach with
other student groups and academic
departments encompassing most of the
physical, biological, and social sciences,
as well as those pertaining to the arts,
humanities, and civil liberties. Events
could be held on campus to educate and
inform, and university funds could be used
to bring in speakers and arrange conferences.
Such events could draw participants
from all over the world. While these
activities do not necessarily amount to
actual psychedelic research, they could
be fashioned in a manner to do so, if–for
example–a faculty member were enlisted
to supervise a survey-based study. More
importantly, student organizations spread
awareness, generate understanding, and
de-stigmatize psychedelics, thereby
helping to set the stage for actual research
when the time and place are right.
SSDP and the student ACLU
group helped sponsor the ethnopharmacology
society’s seminar on
the co-evolution of plants and
humans. We also were awarded a
grant from the student organization
office–raising more than a thousand
bucks!–and were able to bring in
Dennis McKenna as the outside
speaker. It was a splendid event, with
Dennis giving a great talk examining
plant chemical communication signals
that may be driving the interesting side of human evolution. It was
followed by a panel discussion that
included some of University of
Washington’s botany professors, a
classics scholar, and an Incan
medicine man.
Volunteer
Numerous organizations exist that
appreciate people who offer to do volunteer
work. MAPS needs help with their
on-line psychedelic bibliography, creating
abstracts for many of the articles that are
listed. The Erowid web site also sometimes
uses volunteers (see www.erowid.org/
general/about/about_volunteers.shtml).
Find an organization with which you
resonate and contact them to see what sort
of help they need.
Write Letters
Without government approval,
psychedelic research will stagnate as it has
for the last forty or so years. Government
politicians, agencies, and organizations
need to understand that people interested
in psychedelics are not thoughtlessly
promoting drug use, but are sincerely
searching for personal and scientific
truths. Write letters and share how you
feel! Nobody can arrest you for an opinion –yet.
Donate Money to Psychedelic
Organizations
This is by far the easiest way to get
involved. With no support from government
or industry, that means that funding
for psychedelic research is going to come
from one place only–you! |
AS A GRADUATE STUDENT
Your first stop should be the Heffter
Research Institute’s Scientific Advisory
Panel, which is a list of psychedelic allies
in the international academic world. The
locations where these individuals work
are areas where there is possible support
for psychedelic research.
Failing this, Dr. Alexander Shulgin’s
recommendation is to get as strong a
foundation in graduate school as possible.
Work in a highly-respected institution
with good people doing solid, reputable
research, pick up as many skills as you can
along the way (for you never know which
will ultimately be useful) then pursue
what it is that you genuinely want to do,
which you might not even know until
after graduate school anyway. Learn solid methodology and techniques, gain as
much knowledge as you can, hone your
analytic skills–while keeping sight of the
big picture–and then apply all these
resources to psychedelic research when
the time comes. 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 that can make all the
difference. If you try to get as much as you
can out of graduate or medical school,
you’ll always have those tools, analytical
skills, and knowledge of sound techniques
available to do excellent research in
whatever field you choose. In addition, it
is important to have proficiency and
credibility in a field other than psychedelic
research, to serve as a fallback
position when changing political winds
make times tough.
My own path was one of going to
medical school and becoming a medical
doctor, which I figured was a necessity if I
ever wanted to actually give these drugs
to people, which I do. Furthermore, I
believe that an M.D. sometimes has more
credibility than a Ph.D. or politician
when it comes to telling people what’s
good and bad for them. My grant proposals
can afford to be a little more daring
because if they’re all turned down, I
won’t be living on the street–seeing
patients for money is always an option.
One disadvantage, of course, is the length
of training–which in my case (neurology/
psychiatry) was ten years after
college. Another disadvantage is the large
loans and consequent temptation to
specialize in something more profitable
than psychedelics (and ample opportunities
to do so). But I have no regrets about
the path I have chosen to follow.
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… consider
requesting that
your local and school
libraries acquire
psychedelic books.
Not only does this
help spread
knowledge,
it also helps
authors
and encourages
publishers to
accept more
psychedelic titles. |
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If you wish to follow the Ph.D. route,
however, pure neuroscience or neuropharmacology
is extremely valuable, as it is
much easier politically to give
psychedelics to animals or tissue cultures
than it is to humans, and there is a large
amount of funding available in areas
indirectly applicable to the study of
psychedelics, such as the pharmacology
and physiology of serotonin. This sort of
research builds the credibility necessary to
apply for funding to study psychedelics
directly. Unfortunately, much of the research done in these fields is on animals
and never directly examines higher-order
thought and cognition–the levels at which
psychedelics engage human consciousness
in the most fascinating way. And sadly,
there are few academics in these fields
willing to serve as mentors for students
interested in psychedelics.
Experimental psychology, the study of
the human mind, is also valuable, but
psychonaut psychologists have given
graduate-level psychology study mixed
reviews. Today’s experimental psychology
Ph.D. programs reportedly involve working
in very restricted domains, performing
tightly controlled experiments that rarely
resemble real-world conditions, focus
primarily on outward behavior (as opposed
to studying mind), and interpreting
data in ways that are inevitably constrained
by how well they fit with currently
accepted theories.
Clinical psychology will allow you to
build the skills necessary in any multidisciplinary
team researching the psychotherapeutic
value of psychedelics. When
psychedelics are ultimately approved as a
treatment modality, a clinical psychologist
will undoubtedly be part of any such
treatment team. And as a clinical psychologist,
you’ll be able to design clinical trials
sensitive to set and setting, which are
largely ignored in contemporary psychedelic
research. A focus on psychedelic
psychotherapy outcome research would be
an especially useful degree, and could lead
to a job at MAPS. Clinical psychology
graduate students report that the most
prominent psychological perspective today
is cognitive-behavioral, an approach more
balanced between observable behavior and
cognition. Less mainstream, transpersonal
graduate schools such as the California
Institute of Integral Studies, the Institute
of Transpersonal Psychology, or the
Saybrook Institute provide an alternative
to the prevailing cognitive-behavioral
paradigm. Collectively, these institutes are
the central hubs of clinical psychology
wisdom, knowledge, and experience from
the sixties, largely due to the influx of
faculty such as Ralph Metzner, Stanislav
Grof, Richard Tarnas, Stanley Krippner,
and other veterans of the psychedelic
science community.
Also consider psychoanalytic training, which is not just for M.D.s anymore–
learning to navigate the subconscious is a
valuable skill for anyone doing psychedelic
psychotherapy! A dream is not so
different from a trip, and dream analysis
skills translate directly. But if you’re
interested in research, make sure that you
get a Ph.D. rather than a Psy.D.
Cognitive science is a pure science of
the mind, drawing from a variety of
disciplines, including computer science.
(Cognitive science was largely founded as
an attempt to model and imitate the
human mind on a computer system.)
There are far fewer such programs than
comparable psychology programs, which
are ubiquitous, yet cognitive science
differs from experimental psychology in
that it relies strongly on theoretical and
empirical work done in other fields (such
as ethnographic research), especially
philosophy, neuroscience, and linguistics,
but also sociology, anthropology, and
cultural studies. These data are then used
in an integrative way to better understand
and modify theoretical foundations, rather
than looked at as orthogonal data from a
different field. The boundaries between
disciplines often dissolve, resulting in
integration that is necessary in order to
understand the psychedelic experience
and consciousness in general.
Cognitive science, as the science of
higher order conceptual structure and
thought, will permit you to broadly study
the mind itself, its cognitive components,
how it is manifested in neural tissue, and
how meaning is created, organized,
modified, and communicated by humans
in the real ecological, social, and cultural
environment that we inhabit. Many
cognitive science programs emphasize
computational modeling, which is unfortunately
still in its infancy. One cognitive
scientist writes:
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, what thought is, and how we
comprehend reality.
Ultimately, when deciding on a
graduate program that will nurture your
growth and refine your skills, your
decision should be based on the professors
under whom you will be working, the type
of research that is carried out in their labs,
the resources available to you, and the fit
of your questions and ideas with those of
your advisor. Whatever route you follow,
learn as much as you can and keep your
mind, eyes, and ears wide open. Absorb
and integrate what you are studying with
your own interests and ideas, but never
shy away from something because it seems
too rigid or intuitively wrong or entrenched
within illusory modes of
thought. Decide what you think is accurate
and what is not, know why what you
think is wrong is wrong, then envision a
better way to understand and explain the
phenomenon.
There are many paths to becoming a
psychedelic researcher. Like the Internet,
science views censorship as a system failure
and routes around it; psychedelic research,
which has long lain fallow, is slowly
germinating once again. You may end up
studying the biochemical and neural basis
for the psychedelic experience, psychedelic
psychotherapy, religious and contemplative
approaches to the ecstatic experience, the
nature of consciousness, law reform and
public policy, going on ethnographic and
anthropological expeditions, or designing
and running clinical trials. You may
become a strong voice in the media. But
what matters most in the end is that you
attain success and satisfaction on a personal,
professional, and spiritual level,
while at the same time remaining true to
yourself and your beliefs. |
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Read “Recommended resources for
self-education,” adapted from Thomas
Robert’s Foundations of Psychedelic
Studies course on the MAPS website at:
http://www.maps.org/sys/
nq.pl?id=951&fmt=pagesss
This article also appears in the
Summer 2006 issue of The Entheogen Review |
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Author Contact Information
All authors have agreed to serve
as resources for aspiring psychedelic
researchers.
Nicholas V. Cozzi, Ph.D., Pharmacology
nvcozzi@earthlink.net
Rick Doblin, Ph.D., Public Policy
rick@maps.org
Robert Forte, Master of Arts, Religious
Studies (AMRS)
robertforte@earthlink.net
Marc Franklin, Photographer
thelordnose@yahoo.com
Paul Goodwin, Neuroscience
and Pharmacology
p.goodwin@psycomp.org.uk
Casey Guillot, Ph.D. candidate,
Clinical Psychology
caseyguillot@hotmail.com
Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D.,
Social/Environmental Psychology
neal@inch.com
Jon Hanna, Roustabout, Neer-do-well
jonrhanna@prodigy.net
Ilsa Jerome, Ph.D., Social Psychology
Ljerome@bigplanet.com
Sameet Kumar, Ph.D., Clinical Psychology
skumar@aptiumoncology.com
Christopher D. Lovett,
B.S. Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology,
M.S. Cognitive
Science
Ph.D. candidate, Cognitive
Science
clovett@cogsci.ucsd.edu
Dan Merkur, Ph.D., Comparative Religion
Dan_merkur@yahoo.ca
Julia Onnie-Hay
julia@maps.org
Erik M. Peden, Ph.D., Molecular
and Cellular Pharmacology
epeden@genetics.utah.edu
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.
troberts@niu.edu
Michael Allan Ruderman
mruderma@ucsc.edu
Kevin Sachs, Ph.D., Accounting
Ksachs3@nyc.rr.com
R. Andrew Sewell, M.D.
asewell71@gmail.com
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