Alexander Beiner is an author and podcaster. He's one of the founders of the media and events platform Rebel Wisdom and an executive director of Breaking Convention, Europe's longest-running conference on psychedelic medicine and culture. His upcoming book 'The Bigger Picture: How psychedelics can help us make sense of the world' (Hay House, 2023) explores how psychedelics could transform culture and society. He has a particular interest on how psychedelic experiences can be applied to systems change and improving how we have conversations around difficult cultural topics. He has also covered psychedelic capitalism journalistically for a number of years, with a particular focus on the ways in which economic and cultural incentive structures interact with the transformative potential of psychedelic medicines.

Trained as a counselor and meditation teacher, Alexander also runs retreats centered on combining practices drawn from cognitive science, the wisdom traditions and psychedelic philosophy to create powerful group experiences. He facilitates legal psychedelic retreats in the Netherlands in partnership with 'Awaken the Medicine Within', co-developed the UK's leading men's work process through Rebel Wisdom and has designed a number of popular online courses focused on sensemaking, embodiment and conversational practices. He has a particular interest in the phenomenology of the psychedelic experience and how we can combine ritual, practice and collective intelligence to expand consciousness in new ways.

Episode Highlights

▶ About Alexander's book, 'The Bigger Picture'
▶ Psychedelics and sense-making (and can we really make sense of all this?)
▶ The role of psychedelics in society
▶ Who should facilitate psychedelic experiences?
▶ The impact of capitalism on the contemporary psychedelic scene
▶ Dynamic tension between ethical approaches and profit-seeking in psychedelic industries
▶ The inconvenience of psychedelics for big pharma
▶ Unavoidable truths psychedelics reveal to us
▶ Concerns around the earth-based psychedelic supply
▶ IV DMT trials Alexander participated in and their impact on him personally
▶ Lessons and insights we can gain as individuals and a collective from psychedelic experiences
▶ Challenges and divisions within the psychedelic community

Brian James’s Links & Resources

▶ Website: https://Alexanderbeiner.com
▶ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexander_beiner/
▶ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alexander_beiner

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