Survey on Psychedelics and Synaesthesia

Survey on Psychedelics and Synaesthesia

This is an invitation for people to take part in a survey on the use of psychedelics (and other psychoactive substances) and synaesthesia. We are looking for people who have used psychedelics and other psychoactive substances, whether or not they have had experiences of synaesthesia, and we are looking for people who have synaesthesia, whether or not they have used psychedelics and other psychoactive substances.

Synaesthesia can be defined as experiences in which there is a blending of the senses, such as shapes having a particular taste, sounds having a particular shape, or numbers having a particular colour.

Depending on how many types of synaesthesia experience you have had, and how many different substances you have consumed, we expect this survey to take anywhere upwards from 5 minutes to complete (perhaps taking as long as 30 minutes in the extreme), although on average we expect that for most people it will take about 10-15 minutes.

Participation in this survey is completely anonymous, and has been approved by the University of Greenwich Research Ethics Committee. Please follow this link for further details and the survey:

https://greenwichuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_bCW3OZwywP7IeNu

This research may be important in helping to establish the role of psychedelics in understanding unusual perceptual phenomena and neurobiological processes involved in consciousness, so thank you for taking part. Please forward this invitation to anyone else who may be interested in responding.

If you have questions about this study please direct them to Dr David Luke: d.p.luke@gre.ac.uk

Many thanks,

Dr David Luke
Senior Lecturer
Department of Psychology and Counselling
University of Greenwich

Dr Devin Terhune
Research Fellow
Department of Experimental Psychology
University of Oxford

The Great Elf Debate

Six hundred fractal thank yous to everyone (yep, 600 folk) who made it along to Canterbury at the beginning of April for the extraordinary Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness extravaganza, Breaking Convention. After a sleepless few days chipping away at the coalface of the new neurochemical renaissance there emerged a number of legendary quotes, cries of an epic and historic weekend, oodles of inspired blog reviews and even the odd manifesto manifesting online - all of which have been assembled here for your delight.

Attempting to bring as many of the departed Breakeros back together again, the ECC salon will now resume this Tuesday 19th April (tomorrow) at the October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London, in an effort to bridge the hyperdimensional divide between Kent's Breaking Convention and Daimonic Imagination with The Great Elf Debate, which will be led, widdershins, by Dr David Luke with help from friends. Elves, induced by DMT or otherwise, are of course a hot topic on Psychopraxis.

The Great Elf Debate

Dr David Luke + friends + you

Tuesday, 19^th April, 2011

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL

Please RSVP on Facebook (afraid so) so that we can anticipate numbers – Please pay on the door.

Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available

A few saucy comments and mischievous taunts and counter-taunts to get the ball rolling on the ontology of elves and then over to the good people of the floor to take the debate on a merry dance. We'll throw in some DMT, mushrooms, aliens and preying mantises into the faerie ring for good measure and then probe the audience for some thoughts on imps, piskies, gnomes, self-transforming machine elves and possible pro bono proctologists. Representatives from the Social Constructivist quad and from Tir Na Nog will be on hand to stir the pot.

Dr David Luke directs and curates the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series at the October Gallery, which occasionally zoops off in new and interesting co-creative directions like the Breaking Convention. He has often considered taking McKenna up on his elfin call for creating an embassy for the invisible but is really just too busy being a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich, the President of the Parapsychological Association, a Research Associate of the Beckley Foundation, a guest lecturer on the transpersonal masters at the University of Northampton, and an explorer of lost pirate utopias. He hasn't written a single book but promises to finish editing the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness anthology very soon.

Breaking Convention

The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series, in association with the UKC Psychedelics Society and with the Beckley Foundation, presents:

Breaking Convention:

A Multidisciplinary Meeting on Psychedelic Consciousness

Saturday & Sunday, 2-3^rd April, 2011

Virginia Woolf College, Univeristy of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7UG.

Early bird tickets available in advance. Prices, tickets and details coming soon.

Please also register your support on Facebook and spread the word however you can…

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=133266406729236

...A conference in four quarters is to be held over the weekend of the 2nd-3rd of April, 2011. Workshops, seminars and presentations from submitted abstracts will run in parallel with the track of invited speakers. We have an open call for papers for the parallel track running currently. To apply, please fill in the form at the bottom of this page: www.ukcpsychedelics.co.uk/conference

The films 'DMT: The Spirit Molecule', and 'Dirty Pictures' (a documentary about the Shulgins) will be screened at the conference. There will also be live music from the Ragnagrok Allstars, plus other exceptional psychedelic sonic succour.

The 4 main symposia are:

What do psychedelics mean?

Organised by Dr. David Luke, PhD. Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Greenwich; President of the Parapsychological Association; Director of the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series at the October Gallery, London

Psychedelics are substances with multiple dimensions, and can be considered artistically, clinically, spiritually, psychologically, neuro-scientifically, legally, ecologically, historically, culturally, magically, ontologically, etc. This symposium will fuse together a number of diverse perspectives and help us assemble some of the intellectual jigsaw pieces we have created out of these plants, fungi and molecules.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:
Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna, PhD.
Mike Jay
Paul Devereux
Charlotte Walsh
...plus more TBC

* * *

Current research on consciousness and psychedelics at the University of Kent

Organised by Dr. Cameron Adams, PhD., research fellow and lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent; and Dr. Anna Waldstein, PhD, lecturer in Medical Anthropology and Ethnobotany and convenor of the BSc in Medical Anthropology at the University of Kent.

In recent years the University of Kent has emerged as a centre for the study of psychedelic consciousness in the UK. This symposium presents a selection of relevant work by academics (and alumni) from across the University, including contributions from anthropology, conservation, sociology, criminology, mysticism and Hispanic studies. The breadth of research on psychedelic consciousness at the University of Kent spans from self-medication with psychedelics as a form of empowerment, the cultural identities of people who use psychedelics and other illicit substances, and the ability of consumers to influence drug policy, to the use of active imagination to access paranormal worlds, and the representation of altered states of consciousness in literature.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:
Dr. Cameron Adams, PhD.
Dr. Caroline Chatwin, PhD.
Dr. Axel Klein, PhD.
Dr. Anna Waldstein, PhD.
...plus more TBC

* * *

Ecstasy – Its place in medicine, society and politics: A Multidisciplinary Debate of the relative Benefits and Risks of MDMA.

Organised by Dr. Ben Sessa, MD. Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Somerset, UK.

During the so-called ‘Second Summer of Love’ in 1988 the media told us there would be ‘An Ecstasy Epidemic’ with the potential for serious harm or even death of young people on a large scale. This epidemic of mortality and morbidity did not happen and MDMA has remained a popular recreational drug in the UK for over twenty years. During this time it has been labelled variously as a potential neurotoxin on the one hand and ‘safer than horse riding’ on the other. Despite twenty years of extensive study there remains considerable lack of clarity about its actual degree of harm. In the last five years MDMA has become increasingly researched as an adjunct for psychotherapy; with several placebo-controlled trials completed or under-way throughout the world. Some therapists claim it is an essential tool for trauma-focused psychotherapy – yielding response rates for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder far in excess of traditional drug treatments. But despite these advances MDMA continues to experience an extremely polarised opinion from the general public. This symposium will bring together experts in the field to debate MDMA: Is it friend or foe?

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:
Dr. Rick Doblin, PhD (Chair)
Dr. Ben Sessa, MD.
Dr. Jon Cole, PhD.
Professor Val Curran, MD.
Dr. Andy Parrott, PhD.
...plus more TBC

* * *

Bold Visions: The Future of Psychedelic Research.

Organised by the UKC Psychedelics Society.

The psychedelic community is witnessing a research renaissance with rich results, legitimate protocols and government approvals. The success of MAPS is booming, the science is ever more supporting, groups such as the UKC Psychedelics Society are sprouting, and university courses on psychedelics are manifesting. This symposium will see data from current research and questions about where the future of psychedelics lies. What are the far reaches of research? What political problems present themselves? What limitations and lessons have we learnt from the past?

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:
Dr. Rick Doblin, PhD.
Amanda Feilding
Dr. Andy Letcher, PhD.
Andy Roberts
...plus more TBC

* * *

With thanks to MAPS for their affiliation with this project and Blue Firth for the artwork.

Consciousness, creativity and the quest for human happiness

Well at least I have an excuse now for my general lack of content here at psychopraxis recently. For the last few months I’ve been a busy cyber-elf helping source articles for the new edge cutting blog and website on consciousness, creativity and culture – Brainwaving.com

Established and created by the UK’s leading charitable foundation for research into altered states of consciousness and drug policy, the Beckley Foundation, the excellent (imho) new site features hard-hitting articles, films and documentaries on everything from parapsychology and ecology to drug policy, politics, the internet and the future of reality itself. Check it out.

According to the Beckley Foundation’s founder and director, Amanda Feilding… “Our world is changing fast, to adapt successfully we must have our wits about us. We must both maximise our access to the most useful and interesting information and optimise our consciousness, loosening the mind in the quest for better solutions. The Beckley Foundation was set up to investigate consciousness and its full range of altered states. It has a strictly academic, scientific approach to consciousness, how better to understand it and thus how to manipulate it in the quest for enhancing human happiness. The purpose of the new site Brainwaving.com is to expand the Beckley’s reach, to be an Exchange, thereby covering new areas not currently included in the scientific approach of the Beckley Foundation, and reaching new audiences, particularly the young.

The website will be an exchange of interesting information and ideas with the purpose of exploring love, creativity and the quest for human happiness. It will aim to be entertaining and illuminating. We expect it to evolve as it goes along. We see it as an information exchange for people interested in consciousness, evolution and a better world. We hope that with the collaboration of friends and fellow travellers, we will bring together a stimulating train of knowledge and ideas.

Around the world, there are many millions of people who are looking for commonsense solutions to the urgent problems facing humanity. But to see these solutions, we must free ourselves from the constricting shackles of redundant concepts. Brainwaving.com aims to provide a platform on which new ideas can be explored. It can be seen as an intellectual Go-board, an evolving web for the exchange of fresh thoughts at the frontiers of our cultural outreach.”

And did those Beats in ancient time, trip upon Englands mountains green?

Ronnie Sandison brought it into the UK in 1952 and pioneered the psychotherapeutic treatment of mental “illnesses” at a Gloucestershire hospital using it, calling it psycholytic therapy. The following year Francis Crick supposedly gained enough insight from taking it at Cambridge to discern the double helix shape of DNA. How far has LSD traveled across the genes, neurons, minds, imaginations, songs, tongues, tastes, fashions, passions, protests, peace marches, parties, happenings, discoveries, ideas and cultural changes of Britain in the last 58 years? Come and take a trip down memory lane, and (turn on, tune in and) find out.

The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series, in association with the Scientific and Medical Network presents:

LSD in Britain: A Cultural History

Andy Roberts

Tuesday, 26^th January, 2010

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL

(Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). – email: rentals “at”octobergallery.co.uk

RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.

Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available

Andy's book, Albion Dreaming: A popular history of LSD in Britain (Marshall Cavendish, 2008) was born from a desire to chronicle the history of this intriguing drug. Andy's talk, illustrated by powerpoint and DVD takes you on a history picnic to sample everything from the drug's arrival on these shores in 1952, through the medical and military experiments, the counterculture, to the sad death of Albert Hofmann. It is probably the only talk on LSD in which you'll hear the words of the Reverend Ian Paisley.

Andy Roberts is the author of several books on folklore, UFOs, cryptozoology and popular culture. His overall interest is in the strangeness of the multiverse and what and why people choose to believe. Besides his books Andy has written for numerous magazines including Fortean Times, where he currently co-writes a monthly sceptical UFO column. His magazine articles have dealt with cults, the Grateful Dead and telepathy, the search for the Death Ray and a great deal of other weirdness. He once edited an Incredible String Band fanzine and is really quite obsessive about the Grateful Dead.

His interest in LSD stems from his first acid trip in 1971 when the ultimate force of evil foretold the future to him. He's still waiting for that particular future to manifest but followed the Prince of Darkness' strange invitation into the labyrinth of 1970s counter culture to see what he could find.

Government finally admits to abandoning reason on the drugs issue

“Imagine you are seated at a table with two bowls in front of you. One contains peanuts, the other tablets of the illegal recreational drug MDMA (ecstasy). A stranger joins you, and you have to decide whether to give them a peanut or a pill. Which is safest?

You should give them ecstasy, of course. A much larger percentage of people suffer a fatal acute reaction to peanuts than to MDMA.

This, of course, is only a thought experiment; nobody would consider doing it for real. But it puts the risks associated with ecstasy in context with others we take for granted. Yes, ecstasy is dangerous and people who take it are putting their lives on the line. But the danger needs to be put in perspective”*

(*taken from a New Scientist editorial by Prof. Nutt entitled "Drugs drive politicians out of their minds")

Unfortunately, the scientist who put forward this bold but reasoned statement, based on an intense scientific analysis of the evidence for the harms associated with MDMA, was recently sacked from his Government position for stating this and similar claims. Prof. David Nutt, was forced to resign last week from his post as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) by the home secretary Alan Johnson, after supposedly stepping over the line as a scientific advisor by refusing to keep quiet about the truth. Accused of campaigning instead of advising by Johnson, Nutt stated that his position as an independent advisor was severely compromised because the Government wished the ACMD to support their politically-led policy regardless of the scientific evidence.

Three more scientific advisors in the ACMD today resigned following Nutt’s sacking. Read Nutt’s latest response “Government’s should get real on drugs” in the New Scientist here. Read the important Lancet paper co-published by Nutt that reviewed the perceived dangers of 20 common drugs, both legal and illegal, according to a wide panel of experts. This categorisation clearly shows that both ecstasy and LSD are considered less dangerous than alcohol, indicating the current controlled drugs classification system is a farce and a mess. Science and sense must prevail over politics and prejudice! Please join the campaign to have Prof. Nutt reinstated by signing the petition, and join one of the Facebook groups. Also check out the "Nice People" Take Drugs cards by Release.

Taking the mush out of mushrooms: Forthcoming Letcher lecture

Attempting to unravel some of the mycelial-like myths and mysteries that pop up in the mush surrounding the magic mushroom, Dr Andy Letcher will be deconstructing the cultural history constructed around fungal cultures this month at the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series. See you all down the rabbit hole on Tuesday, 24^th November at the October Gallery for a reinvigorating mycophilic gathering in true salon style.

Making Sense of Magic Mushrooms

Dr Andy Letcher

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL

(Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). – email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk

RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.

Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available

For those who have encountered magic mushrooms, the psilocybin experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling and clear. To make sense of it, each person must perform an act of translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar. But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original psychological framework has given way to that of mysticism, itself replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.

In this talk, Andy Letcher will encourage us to move away from the mushroom experience itself – the usual province of trip-lit –, to a consideration of how it has been interpreted throughout history. For, contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom as we do. Along the way he will ask whether magic mushrooms bring genuine transcendence, or if the experiences they occasion forever bound by culture.

Andy Letcher is a freelance writer, academic lecturer and folk musician living in Oxford, UK. He lectures at Oxford Brookes University and Bath Spa University on subjects as diverse as neo-Paganism, shamanism, and theory in the Study of Religion. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom and Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms: Discourse and Power in the Study of Psychedelic Consciousness, published in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness. Known for his iconoclastic style, and with doctorates in both Ecology and the Study of Religion, he challenges us to question received wisdom about psychedelics and psychedelic history. A prolific song-writer, tunesmith and exponent of English Bagpipes, he fronts psych-folk band, Telling the Bees.

DMT and Death meme mutates into zombies

The infectious weirdness of the association between DMT, Death, and the God of a Thousand Eyes that I can't stop talking or writing about appears to be a meme mutating into some unexpected mediums. Glass artist Agelos Papadakis based one of his latest exhibition pieces on the Disembodied Eyes article behind this DMT lecture, and then generously reinvigorated my recent rant in Edinburgh with some otherworldly projections. Occult wordsmith Duncan Barford, over at The Baptist's Head, also appears to have been inspired by the mutli-eyed mind-blowing muse. He's inked a curiously Cthulhoid short story fusing the parapsychopharmacology research with a juicy zombie plot to make for a strangely compelling and only minimally fictitious horror epic in miniature. Lovecraft would love it! The snippets below from The Guardian of the Threshold dangle nicely in the mind, methinks....

The Armed Response Unit has just been. I counted seventeen head-shots, but I don't think they finished the job. Usually it's quiet afterwards, but as soon as the van left the bodies were hammering on the gates again and making that moaning noise…

The absence of DMT from the living dead indicated at the very least that they had somehow bypassed the normal process of dying. It might one day lead to an understanding of why they were still walking around. Read more...

Image - Zombies storm London and take over world - www.nowpublic.com

Bard medicine: Psychedelic plant poetry blossoms in London

Due to some fortuity and randomness the entheogencia poet, author and performer, Dale Pendell, happens to be gracing our shores next week and has agreed at the last minute to come and give a talk on Wednesday 22nd July for the increasingly ad hoc Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series. Being moved by the Muse in the moment (and possibly also due to the on-the-hoof spontaneousness in arranging this event) there is no accompanying blurb for Dale’s talk, but rest assured having read some of his books and seen him speak and perform I expect we are in for a shamanarchic, poethnobotanical delight of some strange and wonderful variety.

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL

(Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). – email: rentals “at” octobergallery.co.uk

RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.

Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available

Imagination and Fire: New Work and Conversation with Dale Pendell

Dale Pendell is the author of the award-winning Pharmako trilogy on shamanic ethnobotany (Pharmako/Gnosis, Pharmako/Poeia, and Pharmako/Dynamis), Inspired Madness, a book about Burning Man, and Walking with Nobby, a book of conversations with the philosopher Norman O. Brown. Works in progress include The Great Bay, a futuristic novel of a post-collapse society, and Stealing Fire, a new book of poems.

He and his wife Laura and a familiar cat live in the foothills of the Sierra in California, where they grow pine and oak trees, along with some manzanita. Their performance group, Oracular Madness, most recently appeared at Burning Man. http://dalependell.com

Entheogens and Ecology: How green are psychedelic plants?

Given the fact that we are fast descending into the biggest wave of mass extinction in 65 million years (almost certainly most of it man made) its encouraging to see that the latest issue of the Bulletin of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is dedicated to the vital and lively relationship between psychedelics and ecology.

Ordinarily reserved for psychedelic research news, this 72-page special issue of the MAPS Bulletin has a great crop of refreshing and refoliating articles ranging from an interview with the recently deceased founder of the Deep Ecology Movement, Arne Naess (who was inspired to create the movement through his own LSD experience), to a retrospective by Harvard psychedelic psychologist, Ralph Metzner, on consciousness expansion and the birth of the 1960's green countercultre. Other contributors to this great journal, available free online, include Kat Harrison, Stanley Krippner, Greg Sams, Jeremy Narby, Dennis McKenna, Dale Pendell, John Allen, Daniel Pinchbeck, and (me of course) David Luke, along with other writers and some spectatular artwork.

"...I think that the bottom line on the evolutionary scale is that these plants are teachers... These plants are trying to teach our species about nature, and about how we fit into that. " Dennis McKenna

Neuroscience and psi

It’s relatively well known that in 1924 the German psychophysiologist Prof. Hans Berger named the electroencephalograph (EEG) and was the first person to use it on humans, thereby identifying some of the different brain waves (e.g., alpha rhythms). What is not so well known is that Berger had switched from studying astronomy to studying psychology in the early 1890’s after he had a near fatal accident during which his sister apparently telepathically knew that he was in danger, and she forced her father to send Berger a telegram to check he was alright. Consequently, Berger developed the EEG to study the electromagnetic signals emitted from the brain that he believed carried the telepathic transmissions between minds.

Continuing with this tradition, the oldest continuous running organisation established to scientifically study the mind (predating any psychology bodies still in existence), the Society for Psychical Research, a body dedicated to paranormal research, is this month holding a lecture day on psi and the brain. Lectures, among several, include one on near-death psi experiences in the absence of any brain activity by Dr. Peter Fenwick, and another on the speculated psychedelic neurochemistry of psi by Dr. David Luke (yes me again). Should be a good day out.

10am – 5pm Saturday, April 25th

PSI AND BRAIN

Chair: Prof. Bernard Carr

Speakers: Dr. Peter Fenwick, Adrian Ryan, Dr. David Luke, Dr. Ian Baker and Robert Charman

What are the implications of psi for the relationship between mind and brain? Can some psychic interactions be explained by or associated with particular brain processes? If so, what physical or chemical effects on the brain are likely to trigger or accompany such interactions and what is the relationship between the brains of the people interacting? What sort of psi experiences would seem to transcend a brain-based explanation altogether?

In this Study Day, five leading experts will address these questions, placing particular emphasis on geomagnetic and neurochemical effects, EEG correlations during psychic healing and ESP experiments, and the apparent independence of the brain of near-death experiences. The meeting will end with a general discussion with audience participation.

St Philip's Church, Earls Court Rd, London W8, 10am-5pm.
Cost: Members £30 / Non-Members £35. / Students, Over 60s or Unwaged: £2 discount.
Tea, coffee and biscuits will be served, but bring your own lunch.
Advance booking is recommended, as space is limited (Tel/Fax: 0207 9378984)