Rick Doblin

Explores the benefits, risks, and growing acceptance of modern psychedelic therapy • Examines the contemporary psychedelic phenomenon, including the history of criminalization and legalization, psychedelics’ effects on the brain, recent clinical research, and new therapeutic potentials • Explores substances like psilocybin, LSD, DMT, ayahuasca, ketamine, and MDMA, including scientific evidence for psychedelics’ potential to treat addiction, depression, anxiety, trauma, and neurodegenerative diseases • Includes extensive practical information on safety, risk, and harm reduction for both laypeople and mental health practitioners Presenting a comprehensive guide to the exciting new landscape around psychedelics, psychopharmacologist Anton Gomez-Escolar examines the long history of criminalizing and (slowly) legalizing these substances and their increasingly demonstrable positive effects on body, mind, and spirit. Exploring psilocybin, LSD, DMT, ayahuasca, ketamine, MDMA, and other substances, Gomez-Escolar looks at the multitude of scientific studies providing critical evidence for psychedelics’ ability to treat addiction, depression, anxiety, and trauma as well as their potential to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. He provides key information for therapists and other health practitioners as well as explores the potential benefits and limitations of microdosing and how psychedelics could help with various neurological and mental health issues, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Breaking down substances by type, the author looks at the main risks of each psychedelic and its benefits, best harm-reduction strategies, and the neural pathways each affects. Gomez-Escolar also includes a large selection of resources for people seeking to engage personally with psychedelics for healing.

A cutting-edge exploration of the role of psychedelics in the end-of-life experience• Outlines 10 steps for dying gracefully with the help of psychedelics, including how to navigate the complex legal landscape and find the right guide and therapy• Looks at clinical studies of psychedelics from UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and NYU School of Medicine that show dramatic lessening of end-of-life anxiety in terminally ill patients• Shares wisdom from experts on psychedelic research and palliative care, including Roland Griffiths, Katherine MacLean, Ira Byock, and Anthony BossisExamining the evolving landscape that is found around end-of-life psychedelic care, Dr. Richard Louis Miller, a clinical psychologist for more than half a century, looks at how LSD, MDMA, psilocybin, and ayahuasca can be vital tools in allowing individuals in all stages of life to confront fears of dying and, in so doing, lead richer lives. Miller shares wisdom from experts on the frontiers of psychedelic research and palliative care—including Roland Griffiths, Katherine MacLean, Ira Byock, and Anthony Bossis—and examines cutting-edge studies from Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and NYU School of Medicine that show dramatically decreased anxiety in terminally ill patients through the use of psychedelics. He explores how different substances can help the dying overcome their end-of-life distress. He also provides testimony from researchers and patients participating in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy that helps convey the experience of ego death at the heart of the psychedelic experience. Miller outlines 10 steps for dying gracefully, without fear, with the help of psychedelics. He examines how to navigate the complex legal landscape and find the right guide, dose, and therapy. He also includes reflections from key figures in the psychedelic community as well as some of his own psychedelically informed mystical and near-death experiences. Revealing psychedelics as a portal of transformation, Miller shows how they are singularly valuable in helping individuals face the end of life with courage and serenity.

Psyche Unbound is an extraordinary compilation of twenty-two essays that honor the pathbreaking lifework of Stanislav Grof, the world's leading researcher in psychedelic therapy, breathwork, and the exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness. In honor of Grof's 90th birthday this year, the contributions range over the past half-century -- beginning exactly fifty years ago with Joseph Campbell's remarkable 1971 lecture in the Great Hall at Cooper Union setting forth the importance of Grof's findings, and Huston Smith's 1976 summary of their significance for the study of religion and mysticism, all the way through to the 2021 reflections by psychiatrists and researchers Charles Grob and Michael Mithoefer as part of the current renaissance of psychedelic therapy. In between are major essays that forward Grof's work on numerous fronts, both theoretical and therapeutic: transpersonal sexual experiences (Jenny Wade), implications for social and cultural change (William Keepin), comparative studies with Asian religious systems (Jeffrey Kripal, Tom Purton), the perinatal dimensions of Jean-Paul Sartre's transformational 1935 mescaline experience (Thomas Riedlinger), and parallel findings from quantum and relativistic physics (Fritjof Capra).

Over the past decade, many famous entrepreneurs and celebrities have begun to open up about their life-changing experiences with psychedelics that led to their personal successes. But less well-known are the wisdom-bringing psychedelic experiences of many top psychologists, psychiatrists, researchers, and others who have taken what they learned from their entheogenic experiences and applied it in their professions, leading to therapeutic advancements, scientific discoveries, and healing for thousands. In this profound book, Dr. Richard Louis Miller shares stories of psychedelic transformation, insight, and wisdom from his conversations with 19 scientists, doctors, therapists, and teachers, each of whom has been self-experimenting with psychedelic medicines, sub rosa, for decades. We hear from scientific psychonaut Amanda Feilding, founder of the Beckley Foundation; ethnobotanical explorer Dennis McKenna; research advocate and head of MAPS Rick Doblin; and the “Sunshine Makers”: Tim Scully, the scientist taught to make LSD by Owsley Stanley, and Michael Randall, the leader of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. We learn about recasting “bad trips” as unfamiliar challenges from psychedelic swami Dr. Allan Ajaya, therapeutic uses of MDMA from “the love doctor” Charley Wininger, decades of insights from psychedelic professor Thomas B. Roberts, as well as several others. Revealing the psychedelic wisdom uncovered in spite of decades of the “War on Drugs,” Dr. Miller and his contributors show how LSD and other psychedelics offer a pathway to creativity, healing, innovation, and liberation.

Psilocybin, the active ingredient found in psychedelic mushrooms, is an invaluable natural resource for spiritually revivifying the human psyche and reconnecting us to the biosphere and the vast intelligence of Nature. Interweaving the most recent scientific studies in the United States and Britain, more than 25 years of sacred mushroom exploration, and behind-the-scenes details on the political wars against psychedelics, Simon G. Powell offers a guide to safely navigating and maximizing the healing and spiritual potential of psilocybin. Powell explores the ecopsychological effects of wild psychedelic mushrooms, including enhanced biophilia, expanded awareness, mystical visions, and eco-shamanic encounters. He reveals how the beings and otherworldly teachers common in psilocybin experiences are actually emissaries from our higher consciousness that emerge when the floodgates of perception have been opened. He shares vivid descriptions from many of his own psilocybin journeys and shows how the mushroom offers a path of return to the ancient wisdom binding all life on Earth, a wisdom conveyed through tutorial visions and higher modes of perception. Illustrating psilocybin's healthful properties, now acknowledged by mainstream science, Powell describes his activism in the fight to keep psilocybin mushroom use legal in the U. K. and shows that an irrational rejection of scientific evidence underlies the harsh war against psychedelic states of consciousness. Laying the groundwork for a new relationship with our biosphere, Powell shows how the Earth's psychedelic medicines can reconnect us to the spirituality and wisdom of Nature and bring the human race back from the brink of ecological and existential disaster.