For the first time, the UCL Society for the Application of Psychedelics will be hosting a one-day symposium on the 25th May 2024.

For the cost of entry, you'll be treated to day of talks and Q&A from a multidisciplinary lineup of artists, students, lobbyists (the nice kind) and experts working in the field of psychedelic research; wrapping up with an afterparty just around the corner at the our Student Union bar.

Event Details:

Date: Saturday 25th May
Time: 10am-6pm
Location: B304 Lecture Theatre 1, Cruciform Building, London, WC1E 6BT
After party: 6pm-late, The Institute Bar, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL
Ticket price: £5 for students, £10 for non-students
Registration Link: https://studentsunionucl.org/whats-on/clubs-societies/ucl-society-for-application-of-psychedelics-presents-student-psychedelic

Speaker Lineup:

Short talks:

Keynote Speakers:

Programme:

Registration

Time: 09:45 - 10:30
Duration: 45 minutes

Intro Session

Time: 10:30 - 10:35
Duration: 5 minutes

DMT-assisted psychotherapy

Speakers: Michelle Baker Jones + Graham Campbell
Time: 10:35 - 11:45
Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes

Acute effects of extended DMT

Speaker: Lisa Luan
Time: 11:45 - 12:10
Duration: 25 minutes

Brief announcement about Lunch & Where to find it

Time: 12:10 - 12:15
Duration: 5 minutes

Lunch break

As a no-frills event on a tight budget, we are unable to provide lunch for attendees. We recommend bringing a packed lunch, or using the break to walk for five minutes down to Tottenham Court Road, where you can find any number of restaurants and shops. 

Time: 12:15 - 13:15
Duration: 1 hour

How to be a psychedelic artist

Speaker: Harry Pack
Time: 13:15 - 13:40
Duration: 25 minutes

Quantifying the Qualitative: Exploring Psychedelic-Induced Mystical Experiences through Machine Learning

Speaker: Agathe Fauchille
Time: 13:40 - 14:05
Duration: 25 minutes

Break

Time: 14:05 - 14:20
Duration: 15 minutes

Navigating psychedelic policy: challenges, changes & opportunities

Speaker: Alex Piot
Time: 14:20 - 14:45
Duration: 25 minutes

The anthropology of cannabis and psychedelics 

Speaker: Neil Carrier
Time: 14:45 - 15:55
Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes

Break

Time: 15:55 - 16:10
Duration: 15 minutes

Psychedelics, Language and Consciousness

Speaker: Jeremy Skipper
Time: 16:10 - 17:20
Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes

Break

Time: 17:20 - 17:35
Duration: 15 minutes

Creating a psychedelic safety net

Speaker: Jules Evans
Time: 17:35 - 18:45
Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes

Closing session 

Time: 18:45 - 18:50
Duration: 5 minutes

Afterparty! 

Time: 19:00 - 00:00
Location : The Institute Bar

UCL Society for the Application of Psychedelics Presents : Movie and Drinks Social

You asked for a social, and so you shall have one!

On Tuesday 26th March, we’ll be screening a classic movie in the psychedelic cannon:  ‘The Holy Mountain’ by Alejando Jodorowsky, followed by drinks at the TCR bar, just around the corner. 

We can’t wait to see you there!

Location:  Online only

Zoom Link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/99342982623

About the speaker :

Akua is a public speaker and advocate of individual therapeutic uses of psychedelics. She advises parents dealing with the effects of grooming and gang activity, as well as assisting them with intentions and integration whilst healing themselves first and working with psychedelic medicines. Akua has worked with people coming out of high-demand organisations & religions, prison and coercive control situations.

Akua's journey with psychedelics started after she found that her teenage son had been groomed into a County lines drug dealing while at school. The shame and guilt brought on depression, high blood pressure and a cancer scare. Although the police, and youth services were 'doing their best', Akua realised that institutional outdated practices were not working. She had to find a different way. Akua learned about psychedelic medicines, alternative healing modalities and African spirituality. By putting these together, she was able to treat her depression and eventually get her son out of the drug dealing ring.

Akua works full-time as a designer and importer of natural and artisanal products from Ghana. She is also the founder of African Spiritual Practices events. She is the founder of Hub and Culture Cooperative Popup shop which makes a monthly appearance at 327 Kentish Town Road. 

Location :
Online only
Zoom : https://ucl.zoom.us/j/99342982623

Bio:

Dr. J. Christian Greer is a scholar of Religious Studies with a special focus on psychedelic culture. His latest book, Kumano Kodo: Pilgrimage to Powerspots (co-authored with Dr. Michelle Oing) analyzes the pilgrimage folklore associated with the rainforests of Japan's Kii Peninsula. His forthcoming book, Angelheaded Hipsters: Psychedelic Militancy in Nineteen Eighties North America (Oxford University Press), explores the expansion of psychedelic culture within fanzine networks in the late Cold War era. He is the co-founder, and currently the co-chair of the Drugs and Religion program unit at the American Academy of Religion. Also, he has held teaching positions at Harvard University, Yale University, and is currently a lecturer at Stanford University. He has recently launched “The Psychedelic Universe: Global Perspectives on Higher Consciousness,” an intensive summer school seminar hosted by the University of Amsterdam’s Graduate School of Social Sciences.

Abstract:

The connections between psychedelic drugs and religion have deep historical roots in human history, and can be found across a wide spectrum of human cultures. The most famous connection is perhaps the Indo-Aryan hymns to “soma” of the Rg Veda (c.1500–700 BCE), which has fascinated and confounded scholars for more than a century. Antiquity is rich in psychedelic ceremonialism, from the ritual use of the San Pedro cactus within the Chavín civilization (900–200 BCE) in the Peruvian highlands, to the spiked viticulture of Greco-Roman society. While the religious use of drugs is widespread and complicated, it is definitely not simply a thing of the past, nor are they only found in non-Western cultural settings.

In this lecture, I will underscore the ways in which religious meanings have been associated with psychedelics across time and space. This historical survey will then be brought to bear on today’s “Psychedelic Renaissance,” as we will pay special attention to the ways in which unspoken religious biases informed the ways neuroscientists and research clinicians use terms such as “mystical,” “spiritual,” and “religious.” As will become clear, the usage of these terms within psychedelic clinical trials is far from value-neutral, and belies a problematic naiveté with respect to their complex (and often contradictory) meanings of religious terminology.

Zoom link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/99342982623

Abstract:

Visual hallucinations can be broadly divided into those of a simple or complex nature. In this talk I will discuss the evidence and theories underlying the generation of both types of hallucinations in the psychedelic state, in experimental manipulations and in patient groups. I will also discuss our most recent research paper, where we assess the contribution of visual stimulation in generating simple and complex experimentally induced hallucinations.

Bio:

Oris is a third-year PhD student based across the Child Vision Lab and the UNITy project at UCL. She uses behavioural methods, EEG and fMRI to understand the neural processes underpinning visual hallucinations induced experimentally and pharmacologically.

Zoom Link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/99342982623

Abstract:

One of many things that differentiates the current psychedelic renaissance from 20th century research is a greater focus on neuroscience. During the multi-decade hiatus of psychedelic research, neuroscience as a discipline grew by leaps and bounds – spearheaded by extensive technological, methodological, and analytical developments. One subfield of neuroscience in particular that has received much attention in the psychedelic space is human neuroimaging. The application of human neuroimaging – using modalities such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetoencephalography (MEG) – to psychedelics has offered an unprecedented window into the functional brain changes underlying the acute psychedelic experience. In this talk, I’ll survey the current state of knowledge in the exciting fledgling field of psychedelic neuroimaging – highlighting core findings, limitations, contentions, and possible paths forward.

Bio:

Dr. Manesh Girn is a postdoctoral neuroscientist specializing in psychedelic drugs at the University of California, San Francisco. Working closely with psychedelic research pioneer Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, he conducts research on the neural mechanisms underlying the psychedelic experience and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. He has been lead or co-author of over 20 peer-reviewed publications to date on topics including psychedelics, the default mode network, abstract cognitive processes, and brain network organization. Manesh also runs a popular digital platform on YouTube and Instagram called "The Psychedelic Scientist”, where he disseminates the latest findings and developments in psychedelic science in a layperson friendly manner. Finally, Manesh serves as the Chief Research Officer at EntheoTech Bioscience, a pioneering Canadian bioscience company focused on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and multidisciplinary mental health solutions.

Location:

Anatomy Building, JZ Young Lecture Theatre G29

Medical Sciences and Anatomy Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

Zoom Link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/99342982623

Abstract:

Drawing from the extensive data of the Great British Intelligence Test (GBIT) which recruited more than 500k participants between 2019-2020, we explore the cognitive ramifications of recreational drug use including those of psychedelic use. Notably, a substantial portion (over a quarter) of the initial cohort returned for repeated assessments at six-month intervals over four years, providing a longitudinal dataset. In this design, a range of cognitive abilities such as memory, attention, reasoning, and language were measured at regular intervals with our bespoke cognitive testing platform, the Cognitron. Advanced machine learning techniques were used to perform data-driven clustering based on patterns of drug use, then to offer detailed insights into the cognitive profiles associated with those patterns. The study's structure was designed to reduce self-selection bias characteristic to online surveys, as participants were initially unaware that psychedelic use would be investigated, thus bolstering the ecological validity of the findings. This talk will discuss these results and place them within the broader scientific and public dialogue on psychedelics.

Bio: 

Maria Bălăeţ is a computational neuroscientist at Imperial College London, specialising in neurodegeneration, sleep, and recreational drug use, particularly psychedelics. She employs large-scale cognitive testing and AI algorithms to study cognitive variations in individuals with neurological or psychiatric conditions, or who use drugs recreationally. Recently, she led a segment of the Great British Intelligence Test, examining the effects of recreational drug use in the UK, with a particular focus on cognitive and mental health effects. Beyond research, she is an active science communicator, having delivered dozens of lectures across the UK and abroad on psychedelics and harm reduction. For updates follow her on Twitter @emmsskyyy.

Webinar link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/94324808976

Dr. Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH, is a retired emergency medicine physician who works to improve the global relationship of science, clinical practice, mental health, and the public to the phenomena that might be referred to as spiritual, meditative, energetic, mystical, psychedelic, magical, and related phenomena. To those ends, he is currently the founder, philanthropic supporter, and volunteer CEO and Board Chair of the Emergence Benefactors registered charity, and chief organizer and co-founder of the global Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium. He is currently involved in neurophenomenological research of advanced meditative states with colleagues at Harvard and has been a participant in numerous fMRI and EEG studies of advanced meditators, including at Harvard, Yale, U Mass, and Vanderbilt.

He has published scientific articles in Pediatrics, Child Abuse and Neglect, and the Journal of Medical Toxicology. He is the author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, co-author of The Fire Kasina, and co-founder of the Dharma Overground. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Esquire, Vice, Wired, BBC Radio 4, Evolving Dharma, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, Dan Harris’ 10% Happier Podcast, Slate Star Codex Blog, Buddha at the Gas Pump, Meaning of Life TV, Deconstructing Yourself, Spiritual Explained website, Guru Viking, Buddhist Geeks, Cosmic Tortoise, Startup Geometry, Imperfect Buddha Podcast, and many others.

"What many might call “spiritual”, “mystical”, “energetic”, etc. experiences and effects, we refer to as emergent phenomena. We refer to practices designed to lead to emergent phenomena, such as meditation, psychedelics, yoga, prayer, etc., as emergent practices.

As emergent practices continue to scale up in society, our aim is to give health care systems, mental health providers, and those who are helping to teach and promote various practices the information they need in order to make better decisions about how to both promote the benefits of these practices and manage the various effects that they can produce.

The Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium’s mission is to use ontologically-agnostic, multidisciplinary, first-person, psychometric, neurophenomenological, biochemical, and clinical scientific methods to conduct studies on emergent practices and phenomena to generate clinically-relevant information that can add value to practitioners, patients, clinicians, and healthcare systems.

By finding the skillful overlap of the perspectives of science, spirituality, religion, clinical medicine, and mental health, we can generate outcomes that are as beneficial as possible for all concerned."

The calm of mindfulness has become the exemplar for the science of contemplation. The quietude of this secularized version of Buddhism appeals to western scientific affective biases, is relatively accessible to contemporary research methods, and its effects on stress and inflammation seem uncontroversially beneficial. Yet, a focus on low arousal practice has left a large swath of mind-body practice underexplored. Research on psychedelic experience helps fill this gap, but behaviorally induced experiences remain largely unaccounted for. Here we will explore the Neuroscience of Jhana meditation, a Buddhist concentration practice that joins strong emotions (e.g. raptures of joy, pity) and deep calm (i.e. absorption states). While there are many phenomenological similarities between Jhana meditation and the psychedelic state, one major difference is the degree of control that practitioners have over the experience. Based on research with 30 of the worlds most skilled Jhana meditators and inspired by the similarities and differences between the phenomenology and neuroscience of jhana and psychedelics, this talk will explore (A) to what extend different contemplative states of mind are constructed or pure? (B) how complex system inspired metrics can inform the relation between neuronal flexibility and rigidity to wellbeing? and (C) what the neurophysiological and cognitive mechanisms underlying both Jhana meditation and psychedelics can tell us about the possible benefits and challenges of combining these practices?

Jonas Mago:

I am a cognitive neuroscientist and wellbeing aficionado, interested in the cognitive mechanisms underlying human flourishing. My research investigates contemplative practices that aim to bring about wholesome states of mind – from meditation and prayer to collective cultural rituals and psychedelic therapies. I work from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining cognitive, neurobiological, computational, and phenomenological approaches to shed light on mechanisms of self-regulation. I am currently pursuing my doctoral studies in Neuroscience at McGill University,
supervised by Dr. Michael Lifshitz and co-supervised by Prof. Dr. Karl Friston. Previously, I completed a master’s in Mind, Language, and Embodied Cognition at the University of Edinburgh (UK) and undergraduate studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University College Maastricht (Netherlands).

I’m grateful to be supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Mind and Life Europe, and the USONA institute.

*Due to room bookings, this event is for UCL students and staff only*

Visit the Kinda Studios website.

“We translate neuroscience into a range of executions, providing an evidence base to guide creative designs and directions. This helps underpin products, services, experiences and ideas with cutting-edge science to drive meaningful impact and behaviour change.

By working with the science of the brain and body, we can reshape designs to provide new ways to experience wellbeing, connection and engagement.

Our work is driven by science which underpins the three lenses of connection:

​To self: Mental, Emotional & Physiological Health

To others: Empathy, Synchrony & Collective Experience

To environments: Built & Natural Landscapes

​By creating an evidence-based foundation, we help tackle the widespread issue of disconnection and support everything from sleep to sustainability, anxiety to creativity and collective action to individual change.”

Robyn Landau

In an exploration of the connected body, Robyn’s expertise in Neuroaesthetics uncovers how our experience of the world around us impacts our states of being. Her approach integrates a career in the music industry, somatic practise, science and communications to build practical tools and creative applications to help enhance experiences of the everyday. She believes creativity is a fundamental component of life, and accessible to all. As a ceramicist, yoga practitioner and dancer, she fuses these organic and energetic schools of thought with tangible science for greater access and impact.

Katherine Templar Lewis

Connecting and enabling cross-disciplinary collaborations and insight, Katherine is an interdisciplinary mind, an experienced knowledge broker and reality hacker. With an extensive academic background in genetics, experimental psychology and neuroscience she now sits at the intersection of technology, science and culture. Her passion is translating cutting edge science insight into creative intelligence, accelerating it out of labs and into the real world through artistic and creative collaborations that help us better understand ourselves, our world, drive connection and inspire change.

In person at UCL - 26 Bedford Way, Room 448

Zoom link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/94324808976

Microdosing is the practice of regularly using low doses of psychedelic drugs. We developed ‘self-blinding’, a novel paradigm where voluntary citizen scientists implement their own placebo control without clinical supervision. Using this method, we conducted one of the largest placebo-controlled trial on psychedelics to-date (n=191). Small, but significant microdose-placebo differences were observed, however the trial suffered from weak blinding. To incorporate low blinding quality into the interpretation of trial results, we developed a novel analytical technique, the Correct Guess Rate Curve (CGRC), that can estimate what would be the outcome of a perfectly blinded trial based on data from an imperfectly blinded trial. The application CGRC argues that the observed placebo-microdose differences are likely to be false positives created by weak blinding. Beyond its implications for microdosing, these results suggest that placebo-controlled studies that do not assess blinding quality are more fallible than conventionally assumed.

Placebo effects are also influencing psychedelic assisted therapy, i.e. macrodoing; however in this case blinding is near impossible due to conspicuous drug effects. To estimate the effect of positive expectancy, we analyzed the relationship between pre-treatment expectancy and therapeutic outcomes from the recent psilocybin vs. escitalopram trial. In the escitalopram arm increased expectations were associated with improved outcomes, but surprisingly the same association was not found in the psilocybin arm. The inverse relationship was found with respect to suggestibility: increased suggestibility was associated with better outcomes in the psilocybin arm, but not in the escitalopram arm. Lastly, the implications of these results for psychedelic medicine and future research directions will be discussed.

Balázs Szigeti:

Balázs has a physics degree from Imperial College and earned a PhD in computational neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh. After graduating, he spent a few years as a biomedical software engineer at the Icahn Institute of Genetics in New York. He became involved with psychedelics science in 2016, when he invented 'self-blinding', a novel methodology that enables self-experimenters to implement their own placebo control without clinical supervision. Using this methodology, Balázs lead the self-blinding microdose study, the largest placebo-controlled study on psychedelics microdosing to-date. Balázs continues to look at the interaction of placebo and expectancy effects in psychedelics, both micro- and microdosing, using innovative experimental designs and modern data science techniques.

Online Zoom Link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/94324808976

One of the most common side effects of standard anti-depressant treatments (i.e. SSRIs) is emotional blunting. Conversely, evidence from psychedelic depression trials suggest that patients may experience an increase in emotional responsiveness. This talk will present some recent data from the Imperial psilocybin/depression trials which look at the neural correlates of these effects, using emotion and music stimuli.

Matt Wall:

Matthew Wall is a Senior Imaging Scientist at Invicro LLC, and an honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. His work focuses on the application of neuroimaging (particularly fMRI) in neuropsychopharmacology and translational drug development. He has specific interests in work with psychedelics, cannabis, sex hormones, and in developing and improving neuroimaging methodology.

*POSTPONED*

Who's Psyche is it Anyway? - The horror of suggestion from Mesmer to the psychedelic renaissance.

Location: Cruciform Building - B404 LT2 Gower Street London WC1E 6BT

In 1956 Humphrey Osmond coined the neologism 'psychedelic' to collect together a set of compounds with a seemingly consistent set of effects, the revelation of the psyche. In this talk I will subvert the usual assumptions about the nature of what is revealed after their ingestion. I will put forward the argument that rather than revealing the contents of an individual's 'personal unconscious' what is revealed is the illusion of a stable monadic self. The self (or ego) is revealed to be a phantom. The self is revealed to be porous, or, more radically, diffuse and ephemeral. By positing mimesis (a janus faced concept consisting of imitation-suggestion) as fundamental to the psyche, I will, in other words, argue that what is often revealed by the ingestion of a psychedelic is the affirmation of the subject's fundamental participation in inter-individual affectivity over and above any form of antecedent psychological individuality.

Looking to the history of the study of psychological healing since the dawn of 'psychotherapy' with Franz Anton Mesmer in the 1780s, I will show how the implications of the revelation of the self as a phantom are potentially so disruptive that it has been and continues to be vehemently and ubiquitously defended against. Psychiatric discourse, by taking western medicine as its mode, has naturalised the subject as a stable monadic self defined by the limits of the body's skin. Despite this the spectre of (imitation-)suggestion haunts modern clinical research to this day, with serious implications for psychiatry, and in particular the ethics and practice of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

I will argue that due to some aspects of the participants subjective reports (for example ego-dissolution) and the importance of extra pharmacological factors in shaping the experiences precipitated by psychedelics, these substances threaten the conception of the subject as a stable monadic self and reveal the limitations of Double Blind Randomised Controlled Trials (disrupting contemporary psychiatric discourse altogether). As such, clinical research into these substances necessitates a conception of the subject (such as the one provided), and interdisciplinary research methods, unbound by the limitations of discourses predicated on the notion of a stable monadic self.

These ideas will be explored with reference to Gothic horror including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as Mimi Cave's 2022 directorial debut Fresh.

Timmy Davis

Timmy Davis is a trainee at the SITE for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Psilocybin Rescheduling Project manager at the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group. He is a contributing member of Drug Science's Medical Psychedelics Working Group and a guide on the psilocybin for treatment resistant depression trials at Kings College London, as well as a welfare and harm reduction manager at music festivals in the UK and a team leader for Kosmicare at Boom festival. He graduated from Birkbeck College, University of London with an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies and with a BA Hons in Philosophy and Religion from the university of Kent, where he was president of the UKC Psychedelic Society for three years.

He co-authored a chapter entitled The Feminine Enshadowed: the Role of Psychedelics in Deconstructing the Gender Binary with Cameron Adams PhD in the book Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine (2019) and The Medical Use of Psilocybin - Reducing Restrictions on Research and Treatment (2020) as well as authoring New, Strange, Odd and Weird Perceptions - A Lacanian Approach to Psychedelic Experience (2020) and THOU ART NOT THAT - Towards a Psychoanalytic Understanding of the Bad Trip (2022).

Timmy organises and chairs the Psychoanalysis and Psychedelics event series for the Maudsley Psychedelic Society, as well as regularly speaking on the topic.

Robert Dickins, PhD, is a literary historian and publisher. His research focuses on the connection between writing and altered states of consciousness.

His talk is titled: “Holy Moly: Bottled Madness and Lysergic Poesy”.

Location: Cruciform Building - B404 LT2 Gower Street London WC1E 6BT

Link to join Webinar

Since ancient times, people have used poetry to explore and describe the effects of psychoactive substances, and their words and experiences tell us much about the worlds and societies they inhabited. This talk explores a literary history of psychedelic drugs in the mid-twentieth century—a time of cold war anxiety, pharmaceutical revolution and cultural transformation in the anglophone world. How did LSD users make linguistic sense of the drug’s effects? And what do their chosen words tells us about that era?

Psychedelics were introduced into western addiction medicine as far back as the 1930s. One of the first to receive this treatment was Bill Wilson, the founder of alcoholics anonymous, who experienced a profound shift in his cravings and urge to drink. 

Location: Cruciform Building - B404 LT2 Gower Street London WC1E 6BT

In the first psychedelic research era of the 60s, the therapeutic effects of these substances in treating addiction were first explored with some of the highest effect sizes in addiction medicine to date. In this modern era there are several early stage controlled clinical studies confirming these findings. 

These studies though fundamentally negate a key element – the processes and mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effects. In this talk I will describe how multimodal digital and neurobiological investigations can be incorporated into these studies to unravel the therapeutic potential of these compounds in treating addiction and how these insights can greatly advance psychedelic medicine.

Rayyan Raja Zafar BSc. MSc.

Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership (MRC DTP) PhD Candidate

Centre for Psychedelic research & Neuropsychopharmacology

Online Zoom Link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/95185292110

Topics covered in the talk will include: research , ethics, drug policy, the medical setting verses sacred medicine retreats, how people can get into working in this field.

Lauren Macdonald is a psychiatrist, researcher and psychedelic guide at the Centre for Psychedelic Research (Imperial College London). She is also co-founder of Essence Medicine a non-profit advocating for patients facing life threatening illness to access legal, psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy.

Jo Neill is a Professor of Psychopharmacology at the University of Manchester, Chair of the Drug Science Medical Psychedelics Working Group and Trustee of Heroic Hearts UK.

ABSTRACT:

Certain psychedelic states can give rise to alternate metaphysical beliefs, such as the recently-researched psychedelic-induced shift from physicalism to panpsychism (that minds are ubiquitous in Nature). Whilst some may see these shifts as delusions, there are logical reasons to keep an open mind as we do not yet agree upon any answer to the mind-matter problem: the question as to what relation the ‘mind’ has to ‘matter’. Philosopher of mind and metaphysician Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes (University of Exeter) will consider issues with the standard Western approach to the mind-matter problem, which in turn will lead to the opening of possibilities of other metaphysical systems (such as Spinozism). This in turn will offer new natural frameworks for fathoming psychedelic experiences.

BIO:

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is philosopher of mind and metaphysics who specialises in the thought of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Whitehead, and in fields pertaining to altered and panpsychological states of consciousness. He is a research fellow and associate lecturer at the University of Exeter where he has co-founded the Philosophy of Psychedelics Exeter Research Group, the ambit of which includes taught modules, conferences, workshops, and publications.

Peter is the author of Noumenautics, Modes of Sentience, editor of Bloomsbury's Philosophy and Psychedelics volume, the TEDx Talker on ‘psychedelics and consciousness’, and he is inspiration to the inhuman philosopher Marvel Superhero, Karnak.

*POSTPONED*

Rayyan Zafar (Imperial College London) will speak to SAP about psychedelics for addictions.

Psychedelics were introduced into western addiction medicine as far back as the 1930s. One of the first to receive this treatment was Bill Wilson, the founder of alcoholics anonymous, who experienced a profound shift in his cravings and urge to drink. 

In the first psychedelic research era of the 60s, the therapeutic effects of these substances in treating addiction were first explored with some of the highest effect sizes in addiction medicine to date. In this modern era there are several early stage controlled clinical studies confirming these findings. 

These studies though fundamentally negate a key element – the processes and mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effects. In this talk I will describe how multimodal digital and neurobiological investigations can be incorporated into these studies to unravel the therapeutic potential of these compounds in treating addiction and how these insights can greatly advance psychedelic medicine.

Dr. Ben Sessa will discuss MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for Addictions - Psychedelic Medicine for the Future of Psychiatry.

UCL LOCATION: lecture theatre G22 in the north west wing building

Ben has specialist training as a child and adolescent psychiatrist and  is interested in the developmental trajectory from child maltreatment to adult mental health disorders, including adult addictions. Dr Sessa’s  joint interests in psychotherapy, pharmacology and trauma have led  him towards researching the subject of drug-assisted psychotherapy  using psychedelic adjuncts. In the last 15 years he has been part of  scientific and clinical studies administering LSD, psilocybin, ketamine,  MDMA and DMT to patients and volunteers.

He is the author of psychedelic medical exploration books; The  Psychedelic Renaissance (2012 and 2017) and To Fathom Hell or Soar  Angelic (2015). He has recently completed research with Imperial  College London exploring the world’s first MDMA-assisted therapy  trial for the treatment of Alcohol Dependence Syndrome.

Alongside Prof. David Nutt, Ben has also been a long term advocate of drug policy reform in the UK; believing that current laws  hamper research and increase, rather than reduce, the burden of  problematic drug use on individuals and society.

Read more about Dr. Ben Sessa here.

Nathan White will be presenting a recently published article addressing the genetic changes induced by ayahuasca in the context of PTSD.

Location: UCL Cruciform Building -- B304 LT1

Article: "Pharmahuasca and DMT Rescue ROS Production and Differentially Expressed Genes Observed after Predator and Psychosocial Stress: Relevance to Human PTSD"

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschemneuro.1c00660

Abstract: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with cognitive deficits, oxidative stress, and inflammation. Animal models have recapitulated features of PTSD, but no comparative RNA sequencing analysis of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the brain between PTSD and animal models of traumatic stress has been carried out. We compared DEGs from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of an established stress model to DEGs from the dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) of humans. We observed a significant enrichment of rat DEGs in human PTSD and identified 20 overlapping DEGs, of which 17 (85%) are directionally concordant. N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a known indirect antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective compound with antidepressant and plasticity-facilitating effects. We tested the capacity of DMT, the monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) harmaline, and “pharmahuasca” (DMT + harmaline) to reduce reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and inflammatory gene expression and to modulate neuroplasticity-related gene expression in the model. We administered DMT (2 mg/kg IP), harmaline (1.5 mg/kg IP), pharmahuasca, or vehicle every other day for 5 days, following a 30 day stress regiment. We measured ROS production in the PFC and hippocampus (HC) by electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy and sequenced total mRNA in the PFC. We also performed in vitro assays to measure the affinity and efficacy of DMT and harmaline at 5HT2AR compared to 5-HT. DMT and pharmahuasca reduced ROS production in the PFC and HC, while harmaline had mixed effects. Treatments normalized 9, 12, and 14 overlapping DEGs, and pathway analysis implicated that genes were involved in ROS production, inflammation, growth factor signaling, neurotransmission, and neuroplasticity.

Meeting HPPD with harm reduction: post-drug perceptual change and the problem of flashbacks.

Under-researched, little-understood - and maybe more common than you think - Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD) stands as a significant psychedelic risk as treatments scale and hype abounds. How should researchers and users make sense of it to ensure harm is reduced?

Ed Prideaux is a Brighton-based MSc Psychology student, writer and journalist staging research and raising awareness into HPPD and post-drug perceptual changes. He seeks to bridge HPPD patient groups with the psychedelic community through advocacy for the Perception Restoration Foundation. He has written about psychedelics for the BBC, VICE, Unherd, and The Independent, and published pieces on music, history and psychology for The Guardian, The Spectator, The Quietus, The Financial Times, and others.

Location: Cruciform Building B404 LT2

Webinar Link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/92100474416

Therapeutic psychedelic administration and contact with nature have been associated with the same psychological mechanisms: decreased rumination and negative affect, enhanced psychological connectedness and mindfulness-related capacities, and heightened states of awe and transcendent experiences, all processes linked to improvements in mental health amongst clinical and healthy populations. Nature-based settings can have inherently psychologically soothing properties which may complement all stages of psychedelic therapy (mainly preparation and integration) whilst potentiating increases in nature relatedness, with associated psychological benefits. Maximising enhancement of nature relatedness through therapeutic psychedelic administration may constitute an independent and complementary pathway towards improvements in mental health that can be elicited by psychedelics.

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