This episode, we're delighted to welcome my PsyCare colleague Anya Ermakova to the podcast. Anya's wide-ranging experience charts a course between some vital aspects of psychedelic science and the social and ecological practice of harm reduction. She has worked at the coal face of the psychedelic renaissance since 2015, having served as Science Officer for the Beckley Foundation, as well as longstanding involvement as a PsyCare field volunteer and board member of the Chacruna Institute, a non-profit advocating for greater involvement of indigenous and ecological perspectives in the psychedelic research world. Her research interests stretch from the design of clinical trials, to the neurobiology of psychosis, to the conservation of the Sonoran Desert Toad, possibly the only psychedelic amphibian known to science. 

Our chat took us into some fascinating territory, with the jumping off point being Anya's recent work on clinical trials of 5-MeO-DMT, a unique short-acting psychedelic that produces emotional but diffuse experiences quite unlike the content-rich cornucopia of the classical psychedelics. We ranged across the psychopolitics of intense, short-acting psychedelic experiences, to the wonder of psychedelic communities such as that surrounding the work of PsyCare, and through to the ecological consequences of the increasing popularity of 5-MeO-DMT on Sonoran Desert Toads, which are being exploited to serve a booming market in retreats. There's lots of detail on toad milking bootleggers, the need for pluralism in the psychedelic research community, and Anya's own passions and interests that drive her work and reverence for the psychedelic experience.

0:03:50 | Where it all begins: Freud and Castaneda, nutmeg and erowid, academia and PsyCare

0:08:21 | What's the clinical trial environment like

0:12:21 | What's it like taking DMT in a clinical trial

0:16:31 | Differences between psychedelics, DMT dissociation and integration, 5-MeO not visual at all!

0:20:21 | Phenomenology of 5-MeO

0:23:43 | Why short-acting intense psychedelics for medical uses?

0:26:54 | Recreational use of DMT and 5-MeO

0:30:00 | PsyCare and the role of harm reduction, outside of the medical environment

0:35:50 | A harm reduction society? Psychedelic institutions? Non-medical models for psychedelic use

0:38:43 | Will big pharma seek to restrict access to psychedelics to recoup its costs? Non-psychedelic psychedelics

0:42:45 | Communitas and the PsyCare community

0:46:09 | Anya's conservation work and the Chacruna Institute

0:48:32 | Psychedelic vertebrates, 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad milking crisis

0:55:05 | Synthetic 5-MeO-DMT, and a new psychedelic tradition

0:59:27 | Plant medicine traditions of 5-MeO-DMT, archaeological evidence of combined use with peyote

1:04:08 | Pluralism, weirdness and the psychedelic research landscape

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Our first guest on the podcast is philosopher, writer and researcher Jules Evans, Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions, Queen Mary, University of London. Jules is the author of numerous books on practical philosophy, the stuff that aims to make a real difference to our human suffering and flourishing – and he’s also been writing personally about the history of fascism in spiritual movements and the phenomenon of “conspirituality”, the crossover between paranoid conspiracy theory and new-age woo subcultures.

His current project is the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences survey, which will be feeding into a research project to map out the emerging discipline of “psychedelic integration”, namely… how do we reconcile our psychedelic experiences with the everyday? If you’ve had any kind of challenging psychedelic experience, please do go and fill out the survey!

We had a wide-ranging romp around Jules’ own experience of recovering from a bad trip, near-death experiences, philosophy and ecstacy, and the profound ambivalence of psychedelics: they can be both medicines or weapons, depending on cultural context. I hope you enjoy the ride, and get in touch if this sparks any thoughts – you can reach me at [email protected]

3:45 | What brings you to harm reduction? “Messing up your brain” with a bad trip. Anxiety, isolation, breakdowns, seeking help.

9:43 | So what helps us recover? Where is the evidence base? Isolation and the nature of trauma.

15:15 | Stoicism and CBT in recovery from crippling social anxiety.

20:16 | Ecstatic experience, the ancient Greeks, and creating a culture of integration. Near-death experience and experiential healing.

25:35 | Maturity, morality, and responsibility: Jung’s perspective. Loss and acceptance, learning interdependence, messiah complexes.

35:03 | Coping with mundanity, post-ecstatic blues, avoidance of the ordinary.

39:11 | Bad trips, psychosis, spiritual emergence and psychedelic culture. The spirituality-psychosis continuum, maintaining ambivalence.

44:17 | Equanimity with mystical experience. What does a culture that can relate to these experiences look like?

48:50 | Wellness cult(ure), disclosure, diagnosis. Psychosis, disturbing behaviour, stigma and the human experience of suffering.

55:24 | Psychedelic research, services like PsyCare, and sharing learning between psychedelic culture and mental health.

57:24 | How do we bear human suffering together? Do we need a psychedelic religion? Counterculture, pluralism, and psychedelic Christianity.

1:07:02 | Possible futures for psychedelic religion: deep greens vs extropians. The myth of harmony, traps to watch out for.

1:10:50 | Psychedelics and power. Occultism, brujos and ayahuasca as a weapon. Ego trips and messiah complexes.

1:14:54 | Challenging psychedelic experiences study, and the Ecstatic Integration newsletter.

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