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The monthly dispatch from the TPR production team $$PLAIN_TEXT_PREVIEW$$
Welcome to our May newsletter
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Dear friends, We hope you are enjoying the Spring and the sunnier, warmer days, and the beginnings of T-shirt weather! Here’s an overview of this months newsletter: Outline of this month’s newsletter: Project updates Some of the latest updates in psychedelic science and culture Our featured contributors Upcoming events by our partners - the Psychedelic Society
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Project UpdatesFUNDRAISING CALL
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After five years in the making, The Psychedelic Renaissance, is nearly ready. A ground-breaking documentary on the resurgence of the movement and its far-reaching consequences, it's not an understatement to say this work represents a significant milestone for our community as a whole - and society. The Psychedelic Renaissance documentary follows the work of several key practitioners in the field, including Dr Ben Sessa (MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy for Alcohol Addiction at Bristol University); Dr Rosalind Watts (former lead clinician in the Psilocybin for Depression study at Imperial College); Dr Chris Timmermann, (UK’s leading DMT neuroscience researcher, and Amanda Feilding from the Beckley Foundation. This project will be released for free on general release. And now it needs our support to get over our final funding hurdle - the team needs to raise £38,000 to cover post-production, distribution and release costs. Your donation would help immensely in our collective mission to educate the public, and bring about systemic change in the field of psychedelics and mental health.
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Prisoner of the War on Drugs - William Leonard PickardThis month, we published a blog about William Leonard Pickard, who spent 20 years imprisoned for alleged conspiracy to manufacture LSD in the largest case in history. Our documentary director Anya Oleksiuk recently interviewed Pickard to find out about his time in prison and his hopes and concerns for the ongoing Psychedelic movement. To celebrate Leonard’s freedom and the launch of the Psychedelic Society’s new video-on-demand platform, we made the event for free for streaming, which you can watch here.
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Psilocybin Rescheduling ProjectOur team members are passionate followers of the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group’s (CDPRG) Rescheduling Psilocybin Project - an ongoing effort to see psilocybin being re-licensed as a schedule 2 drug, making it more available for research and medical uses. We recently wrote a blog about the project and are excited about this upcoming event, collaborated by our partner organisation - the Psychedelic Society, alongside the CDPRG, to hear from experts about the urgency of psilocybin rescheduling and how we can get involved.
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Psychedelic NewsResearch on the positive impacts of drug-testing and harm-reduction published The Loop is a non-profit NGO that provides drugs testing services and harm-reduction consultations at festivals. From 2017 - they have been gathering evidence to determine how their services, a combination of drug test results and consultations, affected people’s subsequent drug-taking. Their research was published this month. Key outcomes from the study were Over half of festival-goers disposed of their drugs when the testing results showed them the substance wasn’t what they expected. Nearly half reduced their dosage and took smaller amounts over a more extended period. For those whose sample was stronger than expected, nearly three-quarters took less or didn’t take the substance at all.
These outcomes highlight how drug testing services can reduce the risk of festival-goers experiencing toxicity and fatalities due to impurities or overdose and the necessity of harm-reduction services, especially at events where people are likely to take drugs.
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The Loop - festival drugs testing service |
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The “Psilocybin Cup” - a first of its kind In Oakland, California, where psilocybin-containing mushrooms are decriminalised, psychedelic mycology enthusiasts recently took part in a Psilocybin Cup. Over 50 mushroom growers sent samples to Hyphe Labs - where scientists identified the percentage of the psychoactive compounds, psilocybin and psilocin in each mushroom. After three days of online lectures about all things plant medicine, the winner was determined. The project aims to create a community among psychedelic mushroom enthusiasts and increase education about the therapeutic benefits of psilocybin. You can find more information about the summit on their website.
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Psilocybin, creativity, and neuroimaging Magic mushrooms have been long associated with creativity and more abstract thinking. However, research published this month showed that the short-term outcomes of psilocybin decreased creativity, as measured by a standardized scientific test. Nonetheless, when re-measured a week later, people’s creativity who had taken the psilocybin was increased, highlighting the long-term effects of psilocybin on creativity. The researchers also showed that psilocybin-induced changes in creativity were associated with changes in the default mode network, a group of connections in the brain associated with daydreaming and imaginative thinking.
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Our Contributors and Partners: Darren Springer
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Darren Springer is an educator, researcher, and event organizer based in the UK. Known around the world for his Shroomshop Masterclasses, he is a keen mushroom cultivator and teacher. By day he is an Organic Horticulturist and Food Enterprise. Darren is a regular presenter at numerous psychedelic gatherings worldwide, sharing his extensive research on psychedelics and how they can help support humanity in the here and now. Collectively his work aims to inform and empower individuals from diverse backgrounds to cope with social challenges and contribute to community development and self-improvement in an innovative, creative, culturally-aware style. If you’re interested in the cultivation of medicinal, psychedelic, or other strains of mushrooms - be sure to check out Darren’s Mushroom Cultivation for Beginners online course. Darren is also running an in-person mushroom cultivation retreat this July in Jamaica, the home of the world’s first fully legal psilocybin industry. More information here.
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The Psychedelic Monopoly - Tuesday 18th May 7-9pm Psychedelic investment has been likened to a "gold-mine", and for-profit companies looking for domination in the field continue to emerge. In collaboration with our supporting organisation Chacruna Institute, The Psychedelic Society will bring together experts to discuss the rise of capitalism in the ongoing psychedelic movement.
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Conscious Voicing Jam - Wednesday 19th May 7-8.30pm Stefano Sgarbi composed music for our documentary, he is a musician, producer and workshop leader. His conscious voicing sessions are safe spaces for people to explore their voice and the art of vocal sounding and experience sharing among a community of like-minded others.
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In Conversation with Dr Gabor Maté - Tuesday 1st June 7-8.15pm Our documentary director Anya will join Dr Gabor Maté in conversation to explore his work with childhood trauma and how this can lead to addiction in its many different forms. Addiction will be explored as a symptom or a response to something that has happened in our lives, as Dr Maté advocates the need to address the root cause of a problem for deep healing.
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