Maps Podcast

Most of those who have engaged in the psychedelic experience can attest to some sort of mystical experience taking place. Even with that happening it doesn't always bring one close to religion. Why is that?  Walter Houston Clark has defined "religion" as an individual's inner experience of a Beyond, especially as evidenced by active attempts to harmonize his or her life with that Beyond. The Johns Hopkins experiments suggest that a large fraction of mentally healthy people with spiritual interests can have a profound experience of a Beyond—a mystical-type experience—with the aid of several hours' preparation and a supervised psilocybin session. Furthermore, most of the study volunteers report that encounter as among the most spiritually significant of their lives and as bringing sustained benefits. How do we get from such experiences (however occasioned) to "religion" in Clark's sense, and in the sense of a group pursuing spiritual ends? Perhaps that transition is, as Brother David Steindl-Rast claims, inevit

Many variables factor into the diseases that afflict our lives that go beyond the obvious medical symptoms. Complex unconscious psychological stresses underlie and contribute to all chronic medical conditions, from cancer and addiction to depression and multiple sclerosis. Therapy that is assisted by psychedelics, in the right context and with the right support, can bring these dynamics to the surface and thus help a person liberate themselves from their influence. Gabor Maté, MD is a Canadian physician, speaker, and the author of four bestselling books published in nearly 20 languages on five continents. His interests include the mind/body unity as manifested in health and illness, the effects of early childhood experiences in shaping brain and personality, the traumatic basis of addictions, and the attachment requirements for healthy child development. He has worked in family practice and palliative care, and for twelve years he worked in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, notorious as North America's most conc

Mac McClelland joins the MAPS Podcast for the first original episode of content for the show. Mac is an award winning journalist who wrote the article “The Psychedelic Miracle” for Rolling Stone magazine. The sub headline reads: "How some doctors are risking everything to unleash the healing power of MDMA, ayahuasca and other hallucinogens.”  Mac’s fantastically in depth journalistic prose combined with her own personal experience with psychedelically assisted psycho-therapy creates an epic discovery into the world of psychedelic research and the doctors that engage in it.   Mac was interviewed by Zach Leary and the podcast is reflective of not only the Rolling Stone piece but also of her own personal journey, the current landscape of psychedelic research and an examination into corners of the country engaged in this work that you might know even exist.    Mac McClelland is an award-winning journalist and author of Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story and For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story From B

Since 2008, the NYU Psychedelic Research Group (established in 2006) has administered a moderate dose of psilocybin to 16 participants in a double-blind placebo-controlled trial of the efficacy of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in individuals with advanced cancer and psychosocial distress. Dr. Ross will present preliminary clinical observations and data from our study, in which a majority of patients have experienced acute and sustained reductions in death anxiety, existential distress, and depression; as well as increases in spiritual states and practices, and improved family system functioning. Stephen Ross, M.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine and Associate Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Radiology, and Medicine at the NYU College of Dentistry. He directs the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse and the Opioid Overdose Prevention Program at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City. He is Director of Ad

Scientific Problem Solving with Psychedelics James will describe how to best use psychoactive materials for enhanced problem solving, a poorly understood and under-researched area. However, there are established methods that open minds to useful solutions for real problems. He will share his personal experience as part of a group that established the basic guidelines: set and setting, substance and dosage, as well as whatever else was necessary to effectively dissolve barriers to solving hard science problems. James Fadiman, PhD completed his dissertation at Stanford on the effectiveness of LSD-assisted therapy just as all research was shut down. During the subsequent 40-year lull, he has held a variety of teaching, consulting, training, counseling, and editorial positions. He has taught in psychology departments and design engineering, and for the past three decades at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University) that he co-founded. He has published textbooks, professional books, a self-h