Bill Brennan

Psychedelic Lived Experiences Summit Free summit bridging science and lived expertise with nuance and wisdom. Hear from 50+ patients, therapists, and researchers in psychedelic care.

This weekend is the Psychedelic Lived Experiences Summit! It's a much-needed event that features the voices of participants from psychedelic clinical trials, along with some psychedelic researchers, myself included. Here's a link to register for free:

psychedeliclivedexperiences.com/summit

Super important new paper on reports of challenging experiences by therapists who have participated in research trials of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Reveals huge rift between what providers believe is necessary and what industry is developing as a standard. #psychedelicscience

Very excited to share a fantastic new album from one of my oldest friends, Jeff Tobias. There are so many gut-twisting feelings in our current moment, and I think this album captures them in a unique and revelatory way

If that is the case, maybe it has something to do with a higher likelihood of adverse experiences in the rave group, maybe driven in part by their higher levels of baseline anxiety interacting with the less controlled setting? And/or drug purity? And/or polydrug use?

But it's a great study that inches open the door on the question of what is *actually* needed to benefit from psychedelics! I'm also intrigued by what looks like (?) higher variability in rave group outcomes. Despite overall equivalence with retreat group, ravers seem to have more spread/outliers

I came to make a similar point. Returning psychedelic users who hold therapeutic intent will rarely feel they've come away empty-handed. And it seems that ITPU history was significantly higher in the rave group than the retreat group, so this factor may have driven improvements differentially there.

Great interview!

YouTube video by Mahindra Humanities Center Psychedelic Projections: What do Psychedelics Really Offer? | Franklin King

A great (and not too long) discussion from Franklin King on psychedelics' putative potential to radically shift models of care & healing

An Open Letter Reply to Dr. Stan Grof - OPEN Foundation In this open letter, leading voices in the psychedelic field including Alex Belser, Andrea Ens, Bill Brennan, Dee Dee Goldpaugh, and Jeff Guss respond to Stanislav Grof’s recent statement addressing t...

Conversion therapy is a psuedo-therapeutic evil that we can't let take root in psychedelic treatments any more than it already has. We offer this letter in the spirit of drawing a clear line in the sand against such practices.

**If you agree, please sign the consensus statement at the bottom!**

On Minimizing Risk and Harm in the Use of Psychedelics Objective This article outlines recommendations from 30 psychedelic researchers on how to create a better psychedelic safety net. Methods A survey of 30 psychedelic researchers asked them to ident...

Excited to see the publication of our commentary on the need for a better psychedelic safety net. Much appreciation to @philosojules.bsky.social and CPEP for being such a catalyst for good work on this topic!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1176/...

Embark psychedelic therapy for depression: A new approach for the whole person "Embark psychedelic therapy for depression: A new approach for the whole person" published on 07 Nov 2024 by Akadémiai Kiadó.

Many thanks to Emmett Hulser-Morris & Brian Pilecki for their recent review of the EMBARK book! 🙏

doi.org/10.1556/2054...

I've got a friend who's a present leader in healthcare labor who used to be a journalist writing on the subject (and thus has extensive knowledge about it). He said he'd be happy to speak, though he couldn't be attributed in an article because of job restrictions. Would that be helpful?

Now that we're all acquainted, could I ask a favor?

Does anyone have the full text of this manuscript they can send me:

archives.lib.purdue.edu/repositories...

From the bits I've read, its critique strikes me as relevant to where we're currently at

Hi there 🏔️ I’m Bill, and I live in the Catskills, NY.

1) Consultant and trainer at Cybin, Gilgamesh, & others. Co-creator of EMBARK: a.co/d/gw2K0qq

2) GuideSite Consulting: guidesiteconsulting.com

3) Finishing “My Brilliant Friend,” which has been RIVETING.

4) Cat’s name is Moose.

GuideSite Consulting | Supporting Skillful Psychedelic Care Empowering your psychedelic research site or treatment clinic with holistic support, consultation, and training options.

2) I’ve recently co-founded GuideSite Consulting, which helps sites & clinics prepare to administer psychedelic treatments in ways that support efficacy & participant well-being. Our trainings hew close to what participants have told us about their experiences: guidesiteconsulting.com

At long last, the EMBARK book is available to purchase! Alex & I hope it is of service to the field as it finds its way forward.

a.co/d/isu50BX

Fantastic article! Thanks for writing it

Did Compass minimize adverse experiences in its psilocybin trial? One of the trial participants thinks so

A must-read interview w/ a patient who experienced persisting adverse effects post-psilocybin. "When the trial ended, it was like going from great support to no support. If you introduce psychedelic therapy, and there's no support set up once the treatment finishes, you shouldn't go ahead with it."

I quit cold turkey a few years ago, and it was rough

Psychedelic therapy & the Metaphysical Menu Would you like a side-order of Spinoza with that?

It was a pleasure to exchange thoughts with the always-great Ed Prideaux on Peter Sjostedt-Hughes' proposal to incorporate didactics on metaphysics into psychedelic therapy. TLDR: I think it's risky to offer to suggestible patients, but potentially a great competency for therapists to get trained in

His next sentence after that quote: "And that's why we do science." Eat truth, fallible minds!

is that we're not really respecting the fact that there's a brain involved as well as a reporting mind. And reporting minds, particularly smart ones, have very developed mechanisms for fooling themselves." (2/2)

I've been sitting with a Goodwin quote from his debate with @trpwolff.bsky.social that captures this well: "The risk that we run, if we interpret the very spectacular things that people tell us about their experience as the causal mechanisms for their recovery (1/n)

Agreed. And it's disappointing because if there were ever an opportunity to reconsider this dualism, it's PAT. I appreciated the Deckel et al piece's critique of Goodwin's complaint abt PAT's "odd dualism," which stems from this misunderstanding the "reciprocal & iterative" drug-therapy relationship

Thanks for the very cogent response, Eduardo! Particularly for so clearly naming the market incentive to downplay the therapy and overlook the associated risks

Belser and Brennan on the EMBARK model And what they think existing models of psychedelic-assisted therapy leave out

It was great to speak to Jules Evans (one of my favorite voices in the space) about EMBARK, the model of psychedelic treatment I developed with Alex Belser. He asked some very good questions:

www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/belser-and...

Max, deep thanks to you and your colleagues for this important article!

Let's! December is a bit overstuffed for me, but let's circle back around in January

Just read it. I love your authorial voice! And I'm grateful for the paper's project of linking of drug effects/treatment dynamics to a real-world instance of harm likely to be replicated post-FDA approval - something that hasn't yet been done in so thorough a way in the peer-reviewed literature 🙏