Psychedemia; Exploring The World Behind The Trip

by Pieter Navis

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.

Here’s Tom with the weather” ~ Bill Hicks

Today I was browsing Facebook and I came across a video about an academic conference on psychedelics, called Psychedemia. This video gives an hour long overview on the subjects which were discussed during the conference. To sum up in their own words:

Psychedemia is an academic conference hosted at the University of Pennsylvania from September 27-30, 2012. This conference will feature university scholars and researchers from across the country in the fields of medicine, psychology, neuroscience, ethics, rhetoric, and anthropology to discuss recent ideas and discoveries in psychedelic studies. Researchers will be brought together with clinicians and professionals in interdisciplinary symposia that will explore an array of culturally-pertinent subjects. Psychedemia

A lot of different speakers are shown in this documentary; the documentary was created to give an overview of the conference which lasted for 4 days. But although you see a lot of short clips, the overall result is very interesting to say the least. The medical, ethical and philosophical implications can be huge, if psychedelics were allowed back into the mainstream. And a lot of questions I have asked myself are raised at the end of the documentary.

Watch the documentary here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a short summary of what caught my attention.

After a short introduction, ‘our’ psychedelic past – the history of the use of and the research on psychedelics in the west – is examined. Did you know that in the early 50´s and 60´s there was a lot of research on psychedelics? Even the CIA worked with LCD (read more in the book Acid Dreams). In some ten minutes a lot of research is shown with some famous names on the list; to name a few Albert Hoffman, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary and (from recent times) Rick Strassman. If you’re not familiar with these names, I suggest you search them if you’re interested in (the research on) psychedelics.

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