Contents

  1. Cover Image
  2. Title Page
  3. Epigraph
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. INTRODUCTION: What’s Happening in America?
    1. A Call for Transparency
    2. What Determines Policy: Science or Ideology?
    3. A Call to Freedom
  6. CHAPTER ONE: LSD: A Powerful Tool
    1. A Brief History of LSD
    2. Leading the Way
    3. A Seminar for the Like-minded
    4. The Biochemistry of Changes in Consciousness
    5. Learning from the Past, Working in the Present
    6. How University Research Is Suppressed
    7. Unlocking the Secrets of Neuroscience
    8. The Mystery of a Mind-Changing Molecule
    9. The Quantum Change in Consciousness
    10. Artist, Researcher, Reformer
    11. LSD Brain-Imaging Studies
    12. LSD and Changes in Consciousness
    13. Psychedelics Shake Up Rigid Patterns
    14. United States’ Political Influence
    15. Birthing Brain Cells with Ayahuasca
    16. LSD’s Burst of Connectivity
    17. Not Addictive Medicines
    18. Voluntary Healing?
    19. Four Thousand Journeys
    20. Observations from 4,000 LSD Sessions
    21. A Package from Albert Hofmann to Stanislav Graf
    22. Transformation from Materialist to Mystic
    23. A New Worldview
    24. Observations from 4,000 LSD Sessions
    25. Neither Panacea nor Devil’s Drug
    26. Understanding Our Ecological Interconnectedness
    27. Caution Required
    28. A Psychedelic Explorer
    29. The Condensed Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide
    30. A Country of Hypocrites
    31. Putting Real Dangers in Perspective
    32. Forbidden Fruit and the Folly of Prohibition
    33. Six Variables for a Safe and Beneficial Psychedelic Session
  7. CHAPTER TWO: MDMA: Heart Medicine
    1. A Cherubic Cheerleader for Psychedelic Research
    2. Drawing a Map from “X” to Rx
    3. The Long Road to the Pentagon
    4. Coming of Age in a Time of Change
    5. A New Tool for Self-Discovery
    6. The DEA Schedules MDMA
    7. How to Start a Psychedelic Pharmaceutical Company
    8. The Mission to Legalize MDMA as Prescription Medicine
    9. Overcoming the Global Suppression of Research
    10. MAPS: The Intersection of Politics, Science, and Psychedelics
    11. Two Phases Down, One More to Approval
    12. Maximizing Benefits and Minimizing Risks of MDMA-Assisted Therapy
    13. Evidence of Safety in Clinical Setting
    14. “Ecstasy” Off the Street
    15. Early Treatments: End-of-Life Suffering, PTSD, and Addiction
    16. Finding Common Ground with Psychedelics as well as Non-Drug Techniques
    17. Pioneering Government-Approved Research
    18. The MDMA Neurotoxicity Scandal
    19. Physiological Effects, Side Effects, and Complications
    20. The Power of the Placebo
    21. Initial Results Bode Well for Safety
    22. What’s Keeping MDMA Underground?
    23. Advice for Personal Experimentation
    24. Demonstrating MDMA’s Safety and Efficacy in Treating End-of-Life Anxiety
    25. Called to Help and Be Helped
    26. A Family Copes with Tragedy
    27. DEA Shuts the Lid on MDMA Research
    28. The Bay Area MDMA Study with End-of-Life Anxiety
    29. Nonclinical “Anecdata”
    30. Looking Critically at Risks
    31. MDMA’s Relation to Amphetamines
    32. Emergency Room Visits from MDMA
    33. Underworld Production of Synthetic Drugs
    34. Is MDMA a Sex Drug?
    35. Bottom Line: Get Educated
    36. A Husband and Wife Team for MDMA Research
    37. MDMA for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
    38. Overcoming Research Suppression
    39. Suppressed but Not Banned
    40. Hopeful Horizons
    41. Is MDMA Rightly Considered a Psychedelic?
    42. Overcoming Treatment-Resistant PTSD
    43. PTSD: The Nature of the Beast
    44. Striking Results: Emotions as a Map to Healing
    45. Climbing Down Ladders to Dark Feelings
    46. The Need for More Research into Trauma and Addiction
  8. CHAPTER THREE: Psilocybin
    1. Breaking the Psychedelic Research Taboo
    2. A Groundbreaking Study
    3. Spiritual Psychopharmacology
    4. Psilocybin and the Primary Mystical Experience
    5. The Gold Standard: Double-Blind with Active Placebo
    6. Tough but Fair
    7. Trailblazing for Future Research
    8. Scientific Observation of Mystical Experiences
    9. More Real than Reality
    10. A Lasting Change
    11. Permanent Changes in Personality
    12. Defining Consciousness Expansion
    13. A Medicine, Not a Drug
    14. Fear and Trembling
    15. Taking Psilocybin Seriously: Medicine or Drug?
    16. Current Research for Cancer Insight
    17. Friday Night Meeting with Charlie Grob
    18. Seeking Solace for the Terminally ll
    19. Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Revives Psilocybin Research
    20. Study Results Published in a Mainstream Scientific Journal
    21. The Active Placebo
    22. The Future of Psilocybin Research
    23. Going Organic
    24. The Retreat Model of Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy
    25. Psilocybin and Depression
    26. When Nothing Else Has Worked
    27. No Need for Mushrooms
    28. More Effective with Fewer Doses
    29. Deep Healing
  9. CHAPTER FOUR: Ayahuasca: Teacher Plant
    1. Sharing Ideas with a Pioneering Researcher
    2. Hard Science in the Amazon
    3. Therapeutic Properties of Ayahuasca
    4. U.S. Supreme Court Rules
    5. Despite Impressive Results, No Research in the United States
    6. Bottom Line: Funding Needed
    7. An Immediate Connection with a Fellow Psychonaut
    8. Plants Meet People
    9. A North American in a South American Paradigm
    10. Vomiting: The Safeguard against Overdosing
    11. Mind-Body Medicine
    12. Not for Everyone
    13. Unregulated Mind-Body Medicine Abroad
    14. Cheerleader for Psychedelic Research
    15. The Science of the Sacred
    16. From the Amazon to the Laboratory
    17. What’s Driving the Popularity of Ayahuasca?
    18. Medicine or a Sacrament?
    19. DMT
    20. Know Before You Go
  10. CHAPTER FIVE: Psychiatric Prescription Drugs: Tired Soldiers
    1. A Drug-Induced Epidemic of Disabling Mental Illness
    2. Questioning the Psychiatric Paradigm
    3. The Schizophrenia Conundrum
    4. The Early History of Psychiatric Treatment
    5. Modern Drugs for Modern Times
    6. Long-Term Consequences of Antidepressants
    7. 2012: The Exercise Study
    8. Following the Money
    9. Lobotomy Nation
    10. Living Naturally with Julie Holland
    11. Resisting the “New Normal” of Overmedication
    12. How a Society on Drugs Can Return to Living Naturally
    13. Natural Movement for Natural Moods
    14. Medicating and Suppressing Natural Moods
    15. The Drug-Dependence Epidemic
    16. Leveled Emotions on Combination of Contraceptive and Antidepressant
    17. Tired Soldiers in the Long Battle with Psychiatric Illness
    18. Zoloft vs. Exercise
    19. A Universal Prescription for Stress
  11. EPILOGUE: FDA Approval by 2021?
    1. Is 2016 the Year of “Coming Out” for Past Psychedelic Users?
    2. An Optimistic Forecast
    3. A Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration
    4. Signs of Hope at the American Psychiatric Association
    5. Setting Modern Psychiatry Straight
    6. No Such Thing as a One-Dose Miracle Cure
    7. Challenging the Annuity Model
    8. Breaking through to Phase III Approval
  12. Footnotes
  13. About the Author
  14. About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
  15. Books of Related Interest
  16. Copyright & Permissions
  17. Index