Psychedelic therapy

There are so many practices. What we're talking about is spirituality. Christians have an approach to spirituality, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists—all have approaches with a lot of common ground. It's no secret now. We live in a time where previously secret teachings are available everywhere. After China invaded Tibet, lineage holders of this tremendous ancient...

This book tells the story of where I went over 20 years of working with LSD. I followed a protocol established by Stan Grof, working in psychedelic therapy, which involved a completely isolated environment. I used headphones, eyeshades, and music, and worked with very high doses. I had 73 sessions over 20 years, working...

Well, I'm actually the last person you would have thought from the beginning of my life to end up writing a book on describing what happens on the long series of high-dose LSD sessions. I was raised in the Deep South, in Mississippi. I was a seminarian in the early days, studying to be...

So I began the therapeutic, psychedelic-oriented work that I knew would be required for me to have access to the kinds of experiences that would allow me to hopefully make some kind of contribution to my discipline, which is philosophy of religion. I started a psychedelic practice, which, after three medium-dose sessions, led me...

I followed the protocol established by Stan Grof, as reflected in his book Realms of the Human Unconscious and further clarified in LSD Psychotherapy, where he lays out all the nuts and bolts of this modality. I was always in a room, isolated from the world, protected, with just my sitter—my wife at the...

Sure. I can give you a kind of a quick overview. I began my psychedelic work when I was just hired as a university professor in Northeast Ohio, and I began this work as a pretty well-educated, dedicated agnostic with strong atheistic inclinations. That's where all the years of graduate school had brought me....

Yep.

It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

I'm an unusual person in that I've been a university professor all my life, a professor of religious studies, teaching in a small state college in Northeast Ohio. And I've also done one of the longest regimens of high-dose LSD work that I'm aware of in the background. I couldn't talk about it until...

I am. I think Stan's work is critically important to the emerging paradigm in transpersonal psychology. I came upon this book right after I was out of graduate school, just beginning my teaching career, just beginning to look around for where to take my research next. I came upon this first book by Stan...

It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

I stopped for six years because my wife, who was my sitter, asked me to—too many things were coming up out of my sessions that were very novel and disruptive, and she just wanted the whole thing to slow down, and she asked me to stop. So I did. And when I resumed, I...

I did this work within the Grofian protocol—totally isolated from the world with a sitter, a trained clinical psychologist. I did it at home, in a controlled environment, totally internally focused, without contact with the outside world. We amplified the states of awareness with carefully selected music designed to empower and expand these states,...

Well, Stan was very clear in his early books and in LSD Psychotherapy, published in 1980, the protocol differences between psycholytic and low-dose therapy versus psychedelic high-dose therapy. Psycholytic running doses anywhere from 50 to 150 micrograms and high-dose psychedelic therapy between 350 to 500. At that time, high-dose psychedelic therapy was being used...

Well, Stan was very clear in his early books and in LSD Psychotherapy, which was published in 1980, about the protocol differences between psychedelic and low-dose therapy versus psychedelic high-dose therapy. Psychelytic therapy runs doses anywhere from 50 to 150 micrograms, and high-dose psychedelic therapy ranges from 350 to 500. At that time, high-dose...

Well, I first saw Stan's early work and the distinction between psycholytic therapy and psychedelic therapy, so I knew working with high doses was safe and could be managed effectively. I knew the sessions would be more difficult working at that intensity, but I thought if I focused on confronting my shadow, I could...

It's a pleasure to be here, Bas and everyone. Thanks for the invitation. My voice is rough due to a cold, but this material is too important to pass up, especially an opportunity to talk with Duane, a friend for over 25 years. Our research and writing brought us together; now it's a deep,...

I used LSD because that was the substance Stan had worked with in his early years; that's what his research was based on, primarily, and I trusted what I saw in his work. After my sessions, my work always followed the protocols he laid out in his early book, LSD Psychotherapy. The sessions were...

Well, I was just out of graduate school back in 1978, and I read Stan Grof's first book, Realms of the Human Unconscious, published in '76. Immediately, I recognized the significance of Stan's work for my discipline, which is philosophy of religion. I'm not a psychologist or a therapist. I've never been particularly interested...

So let's begin. My psychedelic lineage is rooted in the work of Stanislav Grof. I was a brand new faculty member in 1978 when I first read his book, Realms of the Human Unconscious, and my life pivoted. That was followed quickly by his book LSD Psychotherapy in 1980 in which he laid out...

Basically, I made my living as a university professor at a modest university in Northeast Ohio. I'm a professor of religious studies. I have a degree in theology from Notre Dame and New Testament criticism in Cambridge, and a PhD in Philosophy of Religion from Brown—so very classically educated. I was raised in the...

Here we go. My work derives from Stan Grof's work, and these two books changed the course of my life. I finished graduate school in 1978 and read Realms of the Human Unconscious at that time, and my life pivoted. I did my work as a philosopher, not a psychologist or therapist. I was...

Share in the animistic community is the belief that nature is infused with consciousness, fused with mind and soul. And, of course, now we know how vast the physical universe is, and the question becomes, how large is the mind of the universe? How deep is it? So, I was just out of graduate...

Well, I know it's a radical book, and I think we are at a pivot point in history, and I think that psychedelics represent a major transition point, a true historical before-and-after point with respect to philosophy, not just psychology. It generates not only a new therapeutic protocol for healing the personal psyche, but...

The focus of the psychedelic renaissance on therapy is crucial, healing the human psyche with controlled studies. My work rocks that boat somewhat because it doesn't follow those therapeutic protocols. It involves high doses and taps into something challenging to integrate with current therapeutic models. Yet, there's an underground community that hasn't waited for...

Wouldn't that have been interesting? I did have an opportunity to do some teaching at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program, but this came rather late in my series. Basically, I did my work between 1979 and 1999, when I was between 30 and 50 years old,...

Now, as you know, in Stan Grof's work, he differentiates clearly between low dose psychotherapy and high dose psychedelic therapy. Low dose, maybe up to 100 sessions unfolding the mind gradually, layer by layer; psychedelic therapy limited to three sessions designed to trigger something approximating a near-death episode experience for people who were facing...

Let's start with the safety protocol. I basically used the protocol established by Stanislav Grof and published in his book LSD Psychotherapy. He distinguishes between low-dose psycholytic sessions and high-dose psychedelic sessions. I always worked in isolation, in the privacy of my home or my wife's clinical office. I had a sitter—my first wife,...

Okay? Looks like it's just as a winner. Okay. This is my psychedelic lineage. My psychedelic lineage basically grounds in the work of Stanislav Grof. When I was 29 years old, fresh out of graduate school, just beginning my academic career in Ohio, I met Stan Grof's work, Realms of the Human Unconscious, and...

Well, I was trained as a philosopher of religion, and right as I was beginning my career at Youngstown State University, I met the work of Stanislav Grof, the foremost authority on integrating psychedelics into psychotherapy. I read his book, "Realms of the Human Unconscious," which had just been published. This was a long...

Over the next 20 years, as I progressed through the academic world, I did 73 high-dose LSD sessions—completely internalized, completely protected, with a sitter using traditional formats, privately, safely protected from the world with the assistance of a sitter who kept me safe and secure. I found that it engaged me systematically into an...

So the visions I'm sharing today come from my work, Diamonds from Heaven, or LSD and the Mind of the Universe. My psychedelic lineage is squarely in the tradition of Stan Grof. His early writing, his books published in '76 and '80, provided the foundation for my work and determined the methodology I used...

Well, I'm the last person you would expect to have written this book. I was raised in the Deep South, grew up in Mississippi. I studied theology at the University of Notre Dame. I was actually in the seminary for three years in high school and one year in college. I did my master's...

Yeah, let me just mention something about the method, to give a context, because that was an important aid in solving a problem, a challenge with work. Doing the work the way that I did, what I did was to work after three medium-dose sessions, always following Stan Grof's protocol. So I was always...

What happened was, fresh out of graduate school, 29 years old, in the middle of my Saturn return. Didn't know that yet at the time, had finished my dissertation. Was looking for where to take my research. I was a brand-new professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University, and I read Stanislav Grof's...

No, I think it's pretty much conventional in that respect. You're always working in complete isolation with a sitter and a very carefully curated playlist of music. The difference is that after three medium-dose LSD sessions, I shifted to very high levels of LSD, working at 500 to 600 micrograms. At first, I did...

No, it was quite conventional. I was always working in complete isolation, with a sitter, and a carefully curated music playlist. The difference was that I shifted to high doses of LSD, between 500 to 600 micrograms. Initially, it was for efficiency, but it became a more profound project. I carefully documented everything, knowing...

I want to emphasize that I did this work as a philosopher. I was not a therapist. I was not primarily seeking healing, though healing did come, but I was seeking to understand our universe as deeply as I could by exploring my consciousness as deeply as I could. So a few observations on...

Let me back up a bit about method. Stan Grof distinguishes between low dose psycholytic therapy and high dose psychedelic therapy. Low dose psycholytic therapy, usually 50-200 micrograms, peels the unconscious layer by layer, helping heal issues in the unconscious through multiple sessions. High dose psychedelic therapy is different: used primarily with terminally ill...

First, let me say a few words about the protocol that I used, and then describe where this journey, which I'm telling the story of in LSD and the Mind of the Universe, went. Most of you who know Stan Grof's work, and I have to assume a certain familiarity here, know that the...