Category Archives: Altered States

Explorations of altered states of consciousness

How psilocybin uncovered repressed trauma and healed my pain

Posted on by
9

My experience at a psychedelic retreat

I was in high school during the 1960s and psychedelics were illegal by the time I started university in 1971. Although I was fascinated by writings on psychedelics by Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts and others, and the experiences recounted by various friends, my fear of adverse outcomes led me to avoid trying LSD when the opportunity presented.

In 2019, I read several accounts of people who had attended legal psychedelic retreats in the Netherlands and elsewhere seeking to facilitate personal development. I also read Michael Pollan’s best-selling book on the current psychedelic renaissance, Changing Your Mind. I was searching for new priorities and purposes in life after divorce and retirement. Maybe a psychedelic retreat could provide some clarity?

So I decided to attend a psychedelic retreat and this is an account of my experiences. They led in an altogether unexpected direction and led to the resolution of repressed trauma that I had been unaware of.

The Netherlands fully legalized the psilocybin-containing truffle form of magic mushrooms in 2019 and a number of organizations started to provide psychedelic retreats designed to facilitate personal growth, emotional breakthroughs and spiritual development. There is growing evidence for the transformative potential of a well-prepared psychedelic experience in a safe and supportive environment (see for example Madsen et al 2020, Aday et al. 2020, Kettner et al. 2021). . A new wave of research is also finding that psychedelics can offer significant therapeutic benefits for people suffering with depression, trauma or addiction (see here and here).

The Synthesis retreat centre in Amsterdam has been running 3 day retreats since April 2018. After speaking to several retreat facilitators at Synthesis, I decided to enrol for their first five-day retreat in October 2019. This would include two psilocybin ceremonies on the second and fourth day. Before enrolment, I undertook an interview and a health screening process, similar to that being used in clinical studies of psilocybin.

I also accepted an invitation to participate in a research study being carried out by the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London to investigate changes in wellbeing associated with the retreat process. This involved answering questionnaires at six different points in time; before, during and after attending the retreat, as well as wearing a bracelet during the retreat days to monitor various physiological variables.

Synthesis puts a strong emphasis on preparation before the retreat, support from facilitators during the retreat, and integration of the experience and its lessons into daily life after the retreat. The three-week preparation phase included weekly group Zoom calls and preparatory activities including journaling, meditation and the development of three intentions for the retreat. These intentions play a crucial role as the expectations of the psychedelic voyager usually have a strong influence on what is experienced. My two main intentions were: to reach closure on the end of my marriage, and to clarity on my goals and priorities in retirement. My third intention was more of a wishful hope that I would experience the ego-dissolution that psilocybin can cause, and that I had previously experienced several times when practicing Zen meditation.

The first day at the retreat – flight instructions

The retreat was held in a converted church in near Amsterdam, now decorated in a mix of Buddhist and shamanic symbolism. There were around ten of us, together with five guides. We came from Europe, UK and North America and ranged in age from around twenty up to me in my sixties. Most of us had not had any previous experience with psilocybin.

Each of us was paired with an individual guide who would help us prepare for and integrate our psychedelic experience. My guide emphasised the importance of being open to the experience and not resisting it. He recommended that I work on this in the breathwork sessions later that day and the next morning.

The guides also gave us “flight instructions”: advice on the process, what to expect, and what to do if the experience became uncomfortable. They emphasised the importance of our three intentions in creating expectations that would influence psychedelic experience and maximize its potential benefits. We were given a mantra “Trust, let go and be open” to use when we recognized that we were resisting. The first ceremony would be a medium dose of psilocybin followed during the second ceremony by a deeper dive if requested.

First ceremony

The second day started with silent meditation and then a guided breathwork session to further prepare us for the afternoon ahead. The breathwork surprised me by releasing some quite strong emotions, resulting in tears and bodily shaking, and I used the mantra to stay open to the experience.

After a light lunch, we prepared the truffle tea. We ground up truffles and ginger, then added boiling water to make a ginger tea. Mattresses were arranged in a large circle in the ceremony room, each with pillows and a gravity blanket. When everyone was settled on their mattresses, we were served our truffle tea. I drank it all and then ate all the ground truffles left in the cup. I put on my blindfold mask, lay down on my back and covered myself with the gravity blanket as music from a curated playlist started to play. I was to lie there for the next five hours, apart from one trip to the toilet.

After maybe 15 or 20 minutes, I started to notice light and patterns. As I looked more closely these would break up and extend into intricate moving geometrical patterns or distinctive rainbow bands of colours shimmering and rippling. Every time I looked at something it would expand into fractals, or geometric patterns of immense detail and dynamics. I could drill down into these dynamic patterns and every level would expand.

And then my mind was totally caught up in the music. The music was much more than sound, it was colour, emotions, patterns, and very real and very solid. I experienced tones or chords as solid objects, that changed and grew with the music, building dynamic structures.

As the afternoon went on, the music and the visual patterns became less distracting. I started to get visions and to experience changes in my sense of self. I saw my parents and I was a child. I experienced myself as other people and even as four separate people.

I rummaged through the traumas of my life, revisiting periods when I was with my first wife and now-estranged daughters. I also revisited periods in my second long-term relationship. I re-experienced the love that I felt at those times, as well as the grief and sadness at the failures of those relationships. Curiously, the end of my most recent marriage did not come up.

When eventually I surfaced from my inner voyage and took the mask off, I looked at my hand. It looked gaunt and wrinkled and was going black and blue as I looked at it. When I went to the toilet and looked in the mirror, I saw an old man, a stranger, looking back at me.

I went back to the mat and kept drifting in and out of a meditative state, seeing difficult times in my life as if watching a movie, and still avoiding feelings. Towards evening, I went outside in the wind and watched the leaves and trees against the sky. I was cold but invigorated and feeling somewhat more open and connected.

Uncovering repressed feelings about my estranged daughters

On the third day of the retreat, I had a one-on-one session with my guide to understand and integrate the previous day’s experience, and to discuss strategies and intentions for the next day’s ceremony.

I was surprised that my trip had not focused on recent issues, but on the trauma and grief dating from the estrangement of my two daughters twenty years previously. I separated from my first wife in 1992 when my daughters were five and nearly eight. We divorced the following year and reached an agreement under which I had the girls about one-third of the time over the next seven years.

When I told my ex-wife in 1999 that I was going to work for a UN organization in Geneva for a year, she and my daughters refused any further contact. I have not seen them again since late 1999. Despite my close relationship with the girls, she convinced them that I was seeking to avoid my child support obligations. My efforts to show that I was not avoiding child support or seeking to avoid it were fruitless.

I was close to my daughters until they cut off contact, and the estrangement was hard for me to accept. I found a psychologist in Geneva and saw him for two or three years, reaching a point where I felt I had come to an acceptance of the situation and dealt with the grief and loss.

More recently I started counselling with another therapist about current issues and some of the emotions around the estrangement of the girls came up again. She spent time helping me to address that, and I thought I had reached acceptance of the situation and was no longer troubled by it.

Lying in bed falling asleep after the first ceremony, I became aware of the presence of buried feelings about my daughters’ estrangement. It felt as though they were encased in thick armour, like a spherical steel container. During the next day and night, I was always aware these encased feelings. It seemed like they were partly buried and partly protruding into my consciousness.

I very much wanted to get rid of this armour, to release whatever was inside. If I was ever going to explore what was buried deep inside my mind, this might just be the best place to do it. I determined to take advantage of the higher dose of truffles planned for the second ceremony to do this.

Second ceremony

We prepared the tea starting at 12 noon, this time with a higher dose of truffles. Almost immediately I was engrossed by extraordinarily intricate dynamic mandalas of bright lights, crystals, diamonds, endlessly unfolding, filling all space. I went deep into this space and was floating in front of an enormous spaceship. I felt I had a huge crushing weight on my chest and found that I stopped breathing unless I consciously took breaths. For a while I was worried that I would die if I forgot to breathe. Then I realized that I had guides sitting beside me and a medic nearby. They would notice if I wasn’t breathing, so I relaxed and stopped worrying.

The deep black space then transformed into an extraordinarily beautiful kaleidoscopic space filled with endlessly changing crystalline lights and colours. This went on so long that I started to worry. I wanted to go deeper and get past the light show to “important” stuff. I became very restless and repeatedly pulled off my blindfold.

My guide asked if I wanted more truffles and I said yes. After taking a second dose, about half the amount of the first, I put my mask and headphones back on. Now the music dominated and took me with it, and I started resenting it. I realized I was resisting, and said to myself several times “It’s me, don’t blame the music”. I then had a series of quite intense visionary experiences which became increasingly emotional. Some of these involved dramatic changes in the sense of self. I did not resist but leaned into the uncomfortable emotions that arose.

I saw my girls as they were when they were last with me. I experienced an intense feeling of loss and grief. Over and over, I said to myself “I miss you” as the feeling intensified. And at some point, I let go of the young girls and experienced the presence of my daughters as adults now. The grief transformed into love and I started crying and shaking.

One of the guides had noticed how overwhelmed with emotion I was, and sat next to me and held my hand, and his simple presence reassured me and encouraged me to open to my feelings.

After some time, I had an extended vision of the evolution of the universe, the earth, life, my ancestors and my place in the chain of life with my children following. And I saw myself getting very old and dying. I did not experience the dying itself but did experience that I was gone and that life goes on. And how crucial love is to that journey.

I was the last one left in the room by the time evening came. And still in an altered state. People came back into the room for a final closing and sharing circle. I was still there. Hadn’t left the room for close to 8 hours, apart from 2 trips to the toilet. On my second trip to the toilet, I looked in the mirror. Unlike in the first ceremony this time I saw a strong and healthy man looking back at me.

Integration

On the last day of the retreat I had another one-on-one session with my guide. I realized I had suppressed the feelings of loss, probably a decade ago, because they were too painful and had genuinely thought that I had accepted the situation. But in reality I was still caught up in the need to get the girls to realize they have been misled about me. Letting go of that need freed me from the anger and resentment I had been stuck in. My guide advised me to practice connecting with the deepest parts of myself and experience and express my love for all my children. That love is unconditional and does not depend on what the girls might believe. I don’t need to demand a response and the armour is gone.

We had weekly group video sessions over the next three weeks with the Synthesis guides to support and guide the integration process.

Two years later

After the retreat, I wrote letters to my daughters. I enclosed documentation of the child support payments made over the years. They can examine the facts if they want to. I no longer worry about what they might believe about me. I continue to write to them from time to time, so they know about my life and that I think about them and am open to communication.

I was somewhat disappointed that I did not have a profound no-self experience at the retreat or come home with clarity on what I wanted to do in retirement. It was not until around ten months later, when I volunteered to participate in a research study on the association of positive outcomes with psilocybin-induced experiences, that I realized that I had indeed had an extraordinary outcome, though not one I had anticipated. The pain and trauma that I had repressed, and did not know was still there, has now been replaced by openly experienced love accompanied by some sadness. Two psilocybin journeys in a supportive environment with appropriate integration has made a profound and long-lasting change, a change that I was not able to achieve through several years of psychological counselling. I feel like I’ve taken a very heavy weight off my mind and that has been incredibly liberating.

Research has shown that psychedelics have the capacity not only to retrieve past traumas, but to simultaneously dampen an overactive emotional response when it is relived. Even so, I doubt I would have had the courage to press through the resistance and repression if I had taken psilocybin on my own. My confidence that I was in safe surroundings with expert guides to assist if I got into difficulties allowed me to drop my resistance and surrender to the experience.

I have spent some time thinking about whether to share this deeply personal experience but decided it might be helpful to others to document my experience of the potential of psychedelics to resolve past traumas and issues.

Near-Death Experiences – Part 1

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve had a number of near-death experiences over the years. Almost all of these were the result of sheer stupidity doing risky things. I recently read an account by someone who survived having seen certain death approaching. That and other recent circumstances have got me thinking about my own experiences and meditating on death and dying more generally.

In this post I remember two incidents in which I was knocked unconscious and would never have known about it if I had died. These experiences had a far greater impact on me and my feelings about death and dying than any of the incidents where I realized that death was a probable outcome.

The water slide in question

In the early 2000s, I was in South Africa for three weeks as one of the staff for a WHO global training course. The course was being held in a small game park and resort, which was closed to general visitors. There was a water slide which was also closed, but several of us persuaded the staff to open it one lunch time for us. The water slide was a fully enclosed tube with water running through it which ended over a small swimming pool about 2 metres deep. My friend J and I were the first two there and each did a slide down the tube. I sat up in the tube and found there was too much friction so that I went down quite slowly.

For my second slide, I lay down completely flat in the tube. I do now remember the initial moments, going quite fast and bouncing around in the tube. I must have hit my head on the side of the tube on the way down because I was unconscious when I entered the water and went to the bottom of the pool.

J had gone down before me and was already walking back up the path to the top of the slide. Halfway up he looked back and saw me lying on the bottom of the pool. He initially thought I was clowning around and kept walking. But when he looked back again, I was still in the bottom of the pool. He ran back down to pull me out of the water. I was bleeding heavily from a cut over one eye, and he told me later he thought my skull was broken and my brains were coming out.  I regained consciousness a few minutes later, I don’t know whether he did resuscitation or I started breathing on my own. I asked him what happened and where was I. When he told me we were in South Africa, I was astonished. I had no memory of going to South Africa or any idea why I would be there. I was as astonished as if someone had just told me I was in Siberia.  I knew who I was and who J was, but I had no memory of anything that had happened in the last few weeks.

An ambulance came, and I was taken to the nearest town with a hospital, where they took X-rays of my head and neck. And debated for some time whether the signs of fractures in my neck vertebrae were new or old (they were old). I was fitted with a neck brace and they stitched up the split skin over one eye. My amnesia gradually disappeared over a period of a day or so, until eventually I could remember the initial part of going down the slide and starting to oscillate. But the actual blow to the head and the aftermath before I came to has remained a blank.

After the accident

It was an existential shock to realize that if I had not been pulled out, but drowned, I would never have known. I would not have known I was about to die. Amnesia meant my mind was a blank in the minutes leading up to possible death. It was profoundly disturbing to realize it was entirely possible I would die without ever knowing about it. And it continues to be a realization that I keep revisiting.

I also realized that the state of being dead is nothing to fear. I experienced “not being there” in any form and its nothing at all to be afraid off. You don’t exist, and there is nothing to experience the not existing.

The second experience occurred a couple of years later in Geneva. I had left work to ride to the gym on my bicycle. I was riding in the bus lane on a road which went down a long slope from the World Health Organization. I was riding quite fast and became worried that a bus might be coming up behind me. I looked back and in doing so steered the bike into the gutter. I hit the gutter at speed and went over the front handlebars. 

That is the last memory I have until I suddenly became aware that I was on my bicycle and covered in blood. I was bleeding quite profusely from skin loss on legs and arms and riding in heavy traffic. I had no idea where I was at all but knew from my injuries that I must have been in some sort of accident. I got off the bike and rang my wife on my mobile. I explained I had been in an accident and had no idea where I was. She told me to go to the nearest street corner and tell her the names of the streets. I did that and it turned out I was near the main train station about three and a half kilometres from where the accident occurred.

She came and got me and took me to the hospital, where they diagnosed concussion (duhh!), cleaned and bandaged my wounds, and kept me overnight under observation. When I returned to work and told colleagues what had happened, one of them told me he had seen me on my bicycle riding in the traffic and had not noticed anything unusual. Apparently I am capable of riding in traffic while unconscious. Or perhaps conscious but without any memory-retention ability. I could easily have ridden in front of a car and been killed. As with the first experience, if that had happened I would never have known.

I guess death was a more certain possible outcome for the South African experience. If my friend had not seen me on the bottom of the pool and got me out in time, I would have almost certainly died. This was a much more traumatic experience (after the event) than other “near-death” experiences where I was conscious and realized I was likely to die. I’ll write about them in a later post.

I recently read a blog post by Nathan Hohipua in which he argues that it is impossible to (truly) imagine our deaths, and that the only possible attitude towards death is one of anxiety. He claims that “The light of consciousness cannot really, truly imagine its own extinction” and concludes that “Anxiety is the only possible response to death because it’s just what it is to contemplate something that literally can’t be contemplated because it is the end of all possibility of contemplation.“

I think he is wrong in generalizing his own inability to imagine the state of being dead to others. In the waterslide accident, I truly feel that I came back from an experience identical to that of being dead. No memory, no awareness, no experience, nothing. If I had not come back, I would never have known it. That realization has been profoundly disturbing. But the state of being dead? I experienced “not being there” in any form and its nothing at all to be afraid off. You don’t exist, and there is nothing to experience the not existing. I may be missing something, but I don’t have any problem accepting that there will be a future point after which I simply don’t exist. Its exactly the same as before the point in time at which I started to exist (some time after conception).  I have not existed for billions of years and I will also not exist for billions more.

The process of gradually losing function and experiencing pain and possibly loss of mental functioning, whether through ageing or illness, that is a completely different issue. And something that does worry me. I am working on accepting and letting go of the mental drama about it. And eventually when needed, do some contingency planning and prepare a living will. Nathan Hohipua says that if someone tells you they have completely accepted their death, they are deceiving themselves. That likely is true in some cases. And might be true if you are referring to the process leading up to the point of death. But completely untrue for me, if you are referring to the state of being dead. I’ve experienced it, and its nothing to be afraid of.

Breath: the new science of a lost art —- a review

Posted on by
Reply

In two earlier posts about breathwork (here and here), I described my experiences with Wim Hof breathwork and transformational breathwork. More recently I have done a three-day holotropic breathwork retreat and a workshop on transformational breathwork, which gave me the chance to experience a range of breathing techniques.

A friend recommended I read Breath: the new science of a lost art, by James Nestor. Published in 2020, this book became a New York Times bestseller. It describes Nestor’s 10-year journey exploring various forms of breathwork and the scientific research about them.

The first half of the book examines breathing methods for improving health. Nestor focuses extensively on nose breathing versus mouth breathing and on various “under-breathing” techniques which are said to make dramatic differences to chronic lung conditions such as asthma and emphysema, as well as promoting general good health and increased endurance and athletic performance. Nestor spends some time discussing his experiment in solely mouth-breathing for two weeks (his nostrils were physically blocked for the duration) followed by two weeks of solely nose breathing. He taped his lips shut at night so he would not mouth-breath while asleep.  He took extensive measurements of physiological indicators and other factors, such as time spent snoring. Mouth breathing resulted in substantially worse health and mental states, as well as higher blood pressure and heart rates. Nose breathing resulted in dramatic improvements. He also reviews a lot of research and ancient knowledge supporting these conclusions.

James Nestor having his nasal passages examined

This half of the book was fascinating, and I’ll certainly experiment with some of the techniques. Although he warned that breathing methods will not cure cancer or make an embolism go away, this part of the book still reminded me of books I’ve read where the author claims their diet, exercise, or whatever, will cure all your health problems and turn you into a high-functioning human.

Wim Hof, the Iceman

The second part of the book looked at breathing techniques which are more extreme and claimed to be radically transformative. These include various forms of breathwork which affect the autonomous nervous system and can improve immune system function and the ability to withstand extreme cold. Wim Hof breathwork is a well-known form of this and Nestor spends quite some time reviewing studies of it, and investigating the biological mechanisms involved.  He does practice some Wim Hof breathwork with an instructor, but as far as I could tell, did not actually include cold exposure training.  He much more briefly discusses holotropic breathwork and his discussions with Stan Grof and other holotropic breathwork instructors.  He did one holotropic breathwork session early in his exploration of breathing methods and did not experience much at all. He is dismissive of other participants who had dramatic experiences, noting that their breathing did not appear much more intense than his and that their experience came on very quickly. He largely dismisses the effects of holotropic breathwork as psychosomatic (due to set or setting rather than the breathing technique).

I was disappointed in the inadequacy of his approach to understanding it. My experience is that the results of holotropic and other forms of breathwork is very dependent on your willingness to open to rather than resist the experience (yes, set is important). To a greater extent than in psychedelic drug trips, the holotropic breather is largely in control the intensity of the experience. In my first transformational breathing session, I held back from allowing the bodily energy and emotions full expression due to embarrassment, but later I found that I would very rapidly start to experience powerful emotions and bodily energy in a breathwork session.  Nestor’s description struck me as that of someone who had held back in their first and only holotropic session.

A third type of breathwork covered in the second part of the book involves drastically increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air breathed. Normal outdoor air concentration of CO2 is around 0.04% and carbon dioxide therapy involves breathing a mixture of 15-35% CO2 with normal air. Although blood oxygen levels do not change significantly, the very high concentration of CO2 induces an intense fear of not being able to take another breath and arises from chemoreceptors in the brainstem. It is a much more primitive and uncontrollable biological reaction than fear mediated by the amygdala. I recently met someone who told me he had purchased a cylinder of CO2 and was experimenting with breathing mixtures involving around 7% CO2.  He claimed that this invoked a very intense fear of death which enabled him to break through to deep unconscious fears and address them. At the time I had not read this book and thought he was a nutcase. Nestor claims that this form of conscious breathwork (a much more intense version of breath-holding practice) allows the practitioner to develop much greater chemoreceptor flexibility and tolerance. In effect, it vaccinates the practitioner against excessive stress responses to events in their life. Hmm, its an extremely unpleasant experience, and I think I will pass.

James Nestor breathing high concentration of carbon dioxide

While I was disappointed at Nestor’s lack of interest in exploring holotropic and related forms of transformational breathwork, I did learn a lot and enjoyed reading the book overall. I can see why it was a bestseller in the pandemic period, when no doubt many people were stuck in lockdown with time to experiment. Anyway, I’m heading to the bathroom now to shave off my moustache so I can tape my mouth shut tonight.

Atheism and Spirituality

Posted on by
Reply

Late last year I volunteered to participate in a research study on psilocybin-occasioned mystical experiences.  I completed an online survey and later was interviewed by the principal researcher in a more than hour long semi-structured zoom interview. In the survey, I had answered a question on religious affiliation with “Atheist”. During the interview, the interviewer expressed surprise that I practiced Zen meditation as she equated atheism with a materialist philosophy.  I in turn was surprised at her assuming that a spiritual practice implied a belief in God or gods, particularly as my practice was to a large extent within a Zen Buddhist context, which does not treat the historical Buddha as a god or invoke concepts of gods.

I refined my thoughts on this topic in several online discussions, where I found both religious believers and some other atheists were very hostile to the idea that an atheist could have a spiritual practice. And I noticed that some of the atheists who did say they were spiritual, defined “spiritual” in terms of experiences like the enjoyment of a sunset or a moving piece of music, or the feeling of being part of nature.  

Continue reading →

Zazen, left brain, right brain, self

Posted on by
2

During the last COVID wave, while activities were restricted and I was largely staying at home, I intensified my zazen (sitting meditation) practice. With more attention to my  practice, I was surprised to find I was easily sitting for 45 minutes and spending less of that time lost in thoughts and more time simply being present here-now aware of the arising and passing on random thoughts, sensations and sensory inputs.

There are four main categories of things that distract my attention from being here-now:

  • Largely verbalised thought sequences. These can be somewhat spontaneous, jumping across subjects and concerns, or more focused on solving a problem, thinking through a situation or piece of work to be done, planning, strategizing, worrying, pondering the past or future.
  • Distracting sensory stimuli with associated thoughts and emotions, eg. An intrusive noise, an insect flying around or crawling on my skin, an itch, or an ache or pain.
  • Images that appear in the minds eye. These can be random or connected.
  • Full-blown dream-like visions or daydreams, sometimes short, sometimes long.

I also occasionally experience auditory or olfactory hallucinations. For example, a voice saying something, or a distinct smell.  But these are rare.

Continue reading →

Neurotransmitters and brain function

Posted on by
Reply

Although I’ve taken a general interest in brain function and states of consciousness, until the last few years I really only paid much attention to the relationship between brain waves and states of consciousness, and in particular the use of brainwave entrainment methods to facilitate certain states (see earlier post here). Only in the last few years have I looked more closely into the complex and interacting roles of brain waves, neurotransmitters and various brain networks.

By Thomas Splettstoesser (www.scistyle.com), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41349083

Neurons (nerve cells) in the brain form elaborate networks, with each neuron having up to 15,000 connections with neighbouring neurons at contact points called synapses. While the nerve impulse travel through the neuron as an electrical impulse, it does not cross the gap known as the synaptic cleft but rather stimulates the release of a chemical messenger: a neurotransmitter. This crosses the synaptic cleft and is received by neurotransmitter receptors on the target cell. A neurotransmitter with increase (excitatory) or decrease (inhibitory) the probability that the target cell will produce a nerve impulse.

There are three main types of neurotransmitters in the brain: small molecules used for fast signal transmission between neurons, small used for slower modulation of network activity, and large molecules (peptides) used for even slower modulation of cell circuit functions. Most neurons have receptors for most of the neurotransmitters in all three of these categories.

Continue reading →

Psychedelics and the health risks of drugs, alcohol and tobacco

Posted on by
Reply

In the last decade or so, there has been a renaissance of interest in the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. While natural psychedelic substances have been used by humans for many thousands of years, psychedelics had a massive cultural impact on the West in the 1950s and 1960s. Albert Hoffman, a research scientist working for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz, accidentally invented LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) in 1938 and discovered its psychedelic properties five years later. In 1955, a New York banker named Gordon Wasson sampled the psilocybe (magic) mushroom in Mexico and published an article on his experience in Life magazine.

Scientists discovered the role of neurotransmitters in the brain in the 1950s, and psychedelics inspired scientists to search for the neurochemical origins of mental disorders previously thought to be psychological. Psychedelics were also used in psychotherapy to treat various disorders, including alcoholism, anxiety and depression, with some promising results, although these studies generally did not reach modern standards of research design.

However, psychedelics were also embraced by the counterculture and became linked in the mind of authorities with youth counterculture and the anti-Vietnam war protests. By the end of the 1960s, most Western governments had outlawed and forced underground the psychedelic drugs which had been legal in most places previously, and also shut down all scientific research.

In the 1990s small groups of scientists managed to start conducting various trials of the therapeutic uses of psychedelics and this has led to the so-called psychedelic “renaissance” in which larger well-designed trials of psychedelic use for treating a range of mental disorders are being carried out by research groups at institutions such as Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins University and New York University. Just today, it was announced that the Australian government will be providing $15 million funding for clinical trials into the use of psilocybin and other psychedelics for the treatment of mental illnesses, including depression and PTSD. Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind gives an excellent account of the history of psychedelics, both above ground and underground, and the psychedelic renaissance, and was a best seller. See also this article by Michael Pollan on the “Psychedelic Renaissance”.

As part of my work on the global burden of disease for the World Health Organization (WHO), I carried out several assessments of the direct and indirect health impacts of the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. I recently did an approximate update to year 2019 for deaths directly due to drug use disorders (overdoses and directly toxic effects) and indirect deaths from road injury, suicide and infectious diseases attributable to drug use. A proportion of HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C deaths can be attributed to injecting drug use with contaminated needles. The great majority of direct and indirect deaths due to drug use are due to the use of opioids, both illicit and pharmaceutical opioids. Very few deaths are associated with psychedelic drug use, but I was curious to get a ballpark estimate for comparison with other drug deaths. I will present a brief summary of the broad estimates of drug-attributable deaths, then review evidence on the likely contribution of psychedelic drugs.

Continue reading →

Explorations of hypnagogia during lockdown

Posted on by
2

The restrictions during the second wave of covid-19 have been less severe in Geneva than during the first wave, although France has closed my nearby border until mid-December and instituted strict lockdown again. However, I went to a bakery the other day and saw a notice that said people aged 65 and over were asked not to leave home. I had been keeping pretty much at home in any case, and one of the things I decided to do in this period was to see whether I could achieve WILD, ie. wake-induced lucid dreaming.  I’ve previously had success with DILD (dream-induced lucid dreaming) which is the best known technique and involves becoming aware you are dreaming while you are in a dream. WILD involves transitioning directly from the hypnagogic state into the dream state while maintaining awareness throughout.

The hypnagogic state is the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, during which images, dreamlike visions and other sensory experiences may occur. To achieve WILD, you aim to remain aware as an awake dreamlike vision transitions into a full-blown dream as you fall asleep. I started to pay close attention to what I was seeing and experiencing during the hynagogic period, aiming to stay consciously aware as the dreamlike fragments arose, and to figure out how to figuratively “dive” into the dream. But this goal was postponed as I became fascinated with the variety of hypnagogic phenomena I experienced as I lay with my eyes closed transitioning towards sleep.

Continue reading →

Breathwork and sensed energy

Posted on by
2

In an earlier post, I described my experience with transformational breathwork and the Wim Hof method. I’ve continued to practice these, and to do some online sessions with the breathwork instructor from the retreat I attended late last year. In looking around for more information on breathwork, I came across a book by David Lee called “Life force: Sensed Energy in Breathwork, Psychedelia and Chaos Magic” (Norwich: The Universe Machine, 2018).

Lee gives an overview of and simple instructions for ten types of breathwork, as well as discussing their various purposes and effects, and the relationships between them. This is interesting enough, but his approach to understanding breathwork completely changed my experience of it. He describes the book as an exploration of “sensed energy” and schemes of belief that work best for experiencing, cultivating and manipulating these subtle sensations. In particular, he frames breathwork in terms of the arousal and relaxation of sensed energy.

Transformational breathing produces within minutes a tingling within the hands and feet and a sense of energy surging around the body. Lee advises to simply witness this energy as it circulates and coalesces into definite sensations and emotions. Layers of unresolved emotion may surface and the high level of sensed energy helps them to resolve. So breathwork may untangle pain and discomfort from the past. Lee describes how to modulate the intensity of the breathwork to hover in the space between suppression of this unresolved material and its too intense activation, allowing a process of resolution to occur, rather than repression or re-traumatizing. I certainly experience intense emotions at times during breathwork, and the periods of “tantrum” and application of pressure to particular points on the body enable you to intensify and experience or release these intense emotions.

Continue reading →

Breathwork and altered states of consciousness

Posted on by
4

Until recently I had paid little attention to breathwork techniques for achieving non-ordinary states of consciousness.  I’ve done zen meditation for many years now, on and off, and spent quite a bit of time paying attention to the breath, counting the breath etc, but I had been somewhat sceptical of claims I had read that breathwork could induce psychedelic-like experiences.

Late last year I went to a 5 day retreat in the Netherlands which introduced me to a number of new (to me) practices aimed at personal transformation. Among these were breathwork sessions which introduced me to several forms of breathwork, including the form of energising breathwork taught by Wim Hof, the Iceman. Our facilitator was a trained Wim Hof instructor. He also taught us another form of breathwork, called transformational breathwork, and I will describe one of my transformational breathwork sessions at the retreat.

Continue reading →