“

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

                        Trip-sitting for a dear friend: after

                               "No man was ever wise by chance."   Lucius Seneca

"You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself."   Miles Davis

“ Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ” - Gandhi

                         Trip-sitting for a dear friend: during

              "I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance."   Pablo Casals

"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."   U Le Guin

“ And now, let us believe in the new year that is given us - new, untouched, full of things that have never been. ” - Rainer Maria Rilke

                  Trip-sitting for a dear friend: before

               "Who will prefer the jingle of jade pendants if he once has heard stone growing in a cliff?"   Lao Tzu

I'm just off to the Netherlands with a dear friend.  They're planning to take psychedelic truffles and have asked me to 'trip-sit' for them.  Thinking about the different things I can do to support them, I came up with the somewhat 'clunky' acronym IDSPM. It stands for Information, Discussion, Safety, Practicalities & Measurement.  

“

Love makes labour light.  Love alone gives value to all things. 

” - St Teresa of Avila

     Psychedelics: a group retreat - the ceremony, integration & follow-up

                     "Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit."   Aristotle 

The previous posts in this sequence are 'Psychedelics: a group retreat - initial thoughts' and 'Psychedelics: a group retreat - meeting up, orientation & the ceremony'.  

“ There is nothing so practical as a good theory. ” - Kurt Lewin

     Psychedelics: a group retreat - lessons: playlists, nature & integration

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”  Albert Einstein

           “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”  Aldous Huxley

“ If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito. ” - Anonymous

                                                 Psychedelics: Sam Harris/Roland Griffiths conversation

     "There isn't any formula or method.  You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done."  Aldous Huxley

Sam Harris is ... Roland Griffiths is ...

Conversation link tweeted on 21st November ... 122.39 ...

35 min in ... MDMA/ecstasy ... yes does have a dopaminergic effect and can produce dependence?

Around 70 minutes indiscuss low dose psilocybin and meditation practice.

“ No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. ” - Aesop

Psychedelics: a group retreat - lessons: ceremonies, duration & organisation

"And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been."   Rainer Maria Rilke 

“ The vision must be followed by the venture.  It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs. ” - Vance Havner

     Psychedelics: a group retreat - meeting up, orientation & the ceremony

"Today we can walk around together, talk, eat, and be silent together.  Later I believe we'll have the opportunity to act and suffer together.  All that is necessary to 'make someone's acquaintance' as they say."  Pierre Sogol, professor of mountaineering, speaking in Rene Daumal's book "Mount Analogue". 

'Breaking Convention' - the fifth biennial international conference on psychedelics - took place at Greenwich University in London from 16th-18th August.  There were apparently 1,200 or so attendees for the 6 concurrent programmes - academic, workshop, performance, cinema, entertainment & installations - as well as an art exhibition.  I went primarily because it allowed me to hear pretty much all the relevant research groups in the UK present on their current findings.  As you can see from the other quite extensive writing about psychedelics on this website, I'm very interested in the encouraging emerging research highlighting potential therapeutic value of psychedelics.  Although I focussed on the academic programme, there was much too much even here to manage an ove

“

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

” - Henry Ford

          Psychedelics: again the pilgrimage - current experience, lessons

" ... the current system for bringing promising biomedical research to the bedside is operating at an obsolete level of efficiency, causing great delay, and consequently resulting in the loss of many lives."  Roger Rosenberg (JAMA 2003;289:1305-6)

  "Any unexplained phenomenon passes through three stages before the reality of it is accepted. During the first stage it is considered laughable. During the second stage, it is adamantly opposed. Finally, during the third stage, it is accepted as self-evident."  Arthur Schopenhauer