So here I am again
Excising words from the aether, through my cognitive malaise and typed physically into a keyboard onto a website for your eyes to read.
This week I attended a lecture by Dr David Luke in the always wonderful Oxford Town Hall on the history and science of Magic Mushrooms.
This was a fascinating run through of data captured by monitoring programs, therapeutic studies and psychological surveys as well as the strange history of the reintroduction of the “magic mushroom” to modern culture in the 1950’s
This will explain better than I can
The journey was brisk to the bus stop, it’s getting colder here. I had watched the 1946 film A matter of life and death that morning - it’s poetic sensibility was still resounding in my own psyche.
Doctor Frank Reeves: Tell me, do you believe in the survival of human personality after death?
Peter: I thought you said you read my verses.
[to June]
Doctor Frank Reeves: Do you?
June: I don't know, er, I'd never thought about it, do you?
Doctor Frank Reeves: I don't know, I've thought about it too much.
Peter: I thought you said you read my verses.
[to June]
Doctor Frank Reeves: Do you?
June: I don't know, er, I'd never thought about it, do you?
Doctor Frank Reeves: I don't know, I've thought about it too much.
The bus was fast and furious, I was one of three travellers. Desert vibes in my ears, prepare for the thousands of people awaiting me on the other end of this tarmac loading screen.
Kari’s Oxford
People.
People. everywhere.
First stop, cross the road and enter the town hall - check the event is still on - grouchy security guy says “yes…what is it? mushrooms? whatsisname then? luke?”
“yes - thanks”
What a weird encounter.
Next stop Blackwells Book Store to pick up a book they absolutely definitely have in stock.
They didn’t have it in stock.
But they can order it in at full price. (website said it was 5 pounds off) - nope!
Time for dinner - some kind of bbq melt and a hot chocolate - it’s cold out here.
I had just under two hours to kill. Why not use it to explore the alleyways and old university haunts, I even found the github head office ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) - google lied, it’s just the blog office.
Stone Archways
Soon it was cold enough to abandon this plan, and head to the venue. A large imposing stone exterior housing the local seat of government and the museum of the city.
I waited outside the hall for an hour, slowly the room started filling up with more and more fellow travellers - the discrete older couples with beaming smiles⁴, the university friends fresh faced and giggly, the dreadlocked book reader, the older lady who kept staring at me - I ain’t gonna bite ya.
With every new face, the feeling of the room elevated - mostly sober yet awake
It was not long before a short haired - extremely loud - lady ushered us up the main stairwell and across the upper atrium to the hall entrance - the congregation quietly murmuring it’s way skyward.
Taking my seat now, I was struck with the sense of the room. a long ornately decorated hall, bursting with the echoes of history from other great speakers from the last millennia - the present building standing on the ruins of two previous seats of local government.
There was a twenty or so minute wait once we had entered the hall, people slinked in and out, gentle conversational patter echoed along the the textured ceiling. I read two chapters of The Peripheral by William Gibson - itself a prescient choice considering the subject matter.
Before long a shaggy haired meek looking gentleman from Seed Talks took the stage and in an instant the room fell to a stony silence, pierced only by the shuffling of feet and a tap on the microphone.
He introduced the seed talks initiative - which aims to bring the larger conversation about psychedelic use and practise and mental wellbeing to the general public through events such as the one I was presently sitting in.
Is it possible to have FOMO even if you are physically there?
After his fairly brief remarks, he introduced Dr Luke - who graced the stage with a good presence, and launched into his talk via slides on a giant projector screen - handily backlit so that it appeared as if by magic
Dr Luke begins
The opening 15 minutes were dedicated to the archaeological history of psychedelics which was a nice place to start - though as I’ll get too later - it was a little basic
The history was a good jaunt and a worthy primer to start what should have been a slightly more in depth conversation than the one we got, moving on from this he moved into modern psychedelic history from Hoffman to Mckenna to lastly, himself
He had himself taken part in a study of psilocybin effects on the brain, and is a Professor of Psychology at Imperial College
At this point, I found myself nodding along, everything said so far with a few small exceptions was information I already knew, and as I could clearly tell, the rest of the room did too.
and therein lies the problem of the evening, from this moment on, when he landed on himself - and the data - the room seemed to switch off somewhat, which was a weird thing to feel. the intro was laden with witty contextual quips - please laugh
His data was interesting - and had one big takeaway for the few normies in the audience
Psilocybin decreases brain activity in the Default Mode Network, but increases connectivity between the remaining areas of brain (neuroplasticity) - to illustrate this Dr Luke used a crude but effective way to explain this concept in a real and palpable sense.
The room had been split in two via the seating, so for him it was easy, left hemisphere and right hemisphere - and he selected 6 volunteers to talk to each other across the room.
following that he then asked everyone to talk to everyone around them, but to keep it at the same volume or quieter than the six who were talking.
Crude, but like I said effective
This brought the room back up - the stream of psychedelic puns woven into his talk had fallen flatter than I think he hoped so the pick me up was needed.
Hard to please a crowd of people who know a lot more than this lecture was providing.
Therapeutics
This was the most interesting part of the lecture for me, and a shame it came near the end of the obviously cut short presentation - studies suggesting uses for psychosomatic pain (something I have familial experiences with) and uses for addiction and depression disorders
For further reading I highly recommend this paper among others.
Analysis of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy in Medicine: A Narrative Review
There was interesting control vs high dose studies with evidence that those who received a single large dose of psilocybin still had antidepressant effects six months later. Other data suggested that smoking cessation following a large dose was much more achievable - this could be game changing in terms of addiction care! And a big reason why states like Oregon have decriminalised Psilocybin use.
This is where things got strange and flat (a strange metaphor given the neuroplasticity model) - I understand giving a talk is nerve-wracking, stressful and involves a living dialogue between speaker and audience, much as any performer. Again my suspicion is that the level of awareness in the room was actually much higher than his presentation had anticipated.
I found myself nodding along, looking at the ceiling, itself a wonderous work - and thinking to myself, The only new data I have seen was the model of his brain - which is novel and did give a nice representation but where’s the main course?
At multiple moments in the talk, he would pause at his laptop and says “oh I am going to skip that”. - I found this a little silly, given his talk ended up being 50 minutes long.
For an event scheduled to last 2 and a half hours, I was in the hall for 1 hour and 40 from being seated - Q and A included. which brings me to precisely that.
More answers than questions
The Q and A really shone a light on the awareness of the audience, there was 7 questions in total (IIRC). 5 of which were intelligent - and two that deserved better answers than they got in my opinion. - (SSRI’s and dosing)
The problem again was, Dr Luke seemed unwilling to discuss anything that he had not spoken about - barring microdosing which I will get to. His answers veered back to repeating himself, and giving a somewhat party line - he does have to be careful what he says in this setting.
The microdosing question got a big laugh from the audience, someone had finally said what seemed to be missing from his talk and on everybody’s minds. He spoke for a few minutes - in what was obviously something he had skipped in his presentation - but again basic information.
He did have one interesting comment, he believes most DIY microdosers are actually minidosing - above the perceptual threshold.
He then ended with a joke that most people laughed at out of sheer tiredness.
He proudly proclaimed “But I am a macrodoser” with a big shit eating grin.
From there I took my mortal shell out of the establishment and down the road to my bus stop - conveniently 200 yards away - within minutes I am hurtling away at some speed, typing out shorthand notes.
I believe in the work that Dr Luke is doing, and I am especially interested in the data his PHD student is collecting on NDE’s in relation to psychedelic and emergent spiritual experiences. There were hints to this in the early portion of the presentation - set and setting being key to when and where to say certain things - so I forgave him not bringing the woo into it - though the room was certainly open to it.
On a side note - he can go woo
Documenting these experiences from an unbiased lens and working hard to achieve datasets is going to be a key part of the coming decades in the burgeoning field of consciousness study, and how psychedelics can fit into that from a multitude of disciplines could very well shape healthcare in the future.
We need to achieve that presentation worthy main course.
In the words of the ever present in spirit Terence Mckenna