Dr David Luke

Exceptional Experiences with Psychedelics and Beyond with Dr. David Luke

New podcast interview with Haley Dourron at Furthure on ‘Exceptional Experiences with Psychedelics and Beyond’ for all the latest on the far out and freaky end of the spectrum psychedelic experiences..

open.spotify.com/episode/1Kng...

What I also find weird is that commercially grown roses have been selectively bred for their appearance as to often make them sterile, which makes it a pretty weird symbol of love!

Pleased to be joining counselling psychologist Dr Crystyn Scott & team at the Afterlight psilocybin retreat in Jamaica next month to offer guidance & support.

Afterlight are committed to helping islanders recover following Hurricane Melissa. A few spaces left

www.afterlightretreats.com/experience

Putting the psi back into psilocybin On psychedelomancy and exceptional psychedelic experiences

Putting the psi back into psilocybin - On psychedelomancy & exceptional psychedelic experiences

Latest Substack, exploring the paranormal experiences of the original pioneers of psychedelic science in the 50s & 60s on their initial altered excursions!

tinyurl.com/2mvw7w7d

.. and then over to yours for a tropane truffle party..

aye aye say I with me one good eye! 🏴‍☠️

There is defo a sizeable hint of this at the very least, as they tend to be the open eye 'true hallucination' type so beloved of tropane alkaloids, i.e., anticholinergic. The waking dream.

thanks!

So long as you've got your elf On mushrooms and miniature people

There's been a lot of discussion recently about a non-psilocybin 'magic mushroom' from China that induces encounters with small armies of little people.

I took a longer look under the tablecloth to see what all the fuss was about..

davidluke543044.substack.com/p/so-long-as...

So long as you've got your elf On mushrooms and miniature people

There's been a lot of discussion recently about a non-psilocybin 'magic mushroom' from China that induces encounters with small armies of little people.

I took a longer look under the tablecloth to see what all the fuss was about..

davidluke543044.substack.com/p/so-long-as...

oh 'that' acid...

Also as Steve notes, the 'open' eye visuals is interesting. But i have to say, I also saw very little people marching through our yurt once with my eyes open on ayahuasca (which contains DMT), although this isn't especially common. I'm actually going to post up that story next week.

'zactly, people see a lot of little people on DMT. Whatever is in those shrooms is doing something similar, it might even be working on similar receptors. I never said it had DMT in it, but it is worthwhile observing the similarities, ..and differences.

..and what is the active chemical then...? ;0)

DMT research from 1956 to the end of time (2015) Gallimore, A., & Luke, D. (2015). DMT research from 1956 to the end of time. In D. King, D. Luke, B. Sessa, C. Adams and A. Tollen (Eds), Neurotransmissions: Psychedelic essays from Breaking Conve...

And yet people were having visions of 'little people' (dwarves, elves, etc) on DMT from the very first obscure trip reports, before McKenna started raving about it, so that does not add up either. www.academia.edu/12936124/DMT...

Dream yoga on the high seas On pirate utopias and intellectual and psychic piracy

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Dream yoga on the high seas On pirate utopias and intellectual and psychic piracy

'Dream yoga on the high seas - On pirate utopias and intellectual and psychic piracy.' My latest post on Substack, exploring the very body, mind and soul of pirates, and, well, everyone really.

davidluke543044.substack.com/p/dream-yoga...

Image 'The Call' - Remedios Varo

You've undoubtedly heard of apparently precognitive dreams, or possibly had one. You may've even heard of the 'law of large numbers' as an explanation. But have you heard of the 'law of at large slumbers'?

New substack about my Popular Mechanics interview

substack.com/profile/1969...

The Battle of Portmanteau On finding artistic patterns in the war with guerrilla skeptics and their rigid support for a Nazi psychiatrist

My latest post on Substack, where I whine about Wikipedia, fail to coin a new psychological term, find myself sceptical about organised skepticism, but end up very much admiring some abstract art.. in..

The Battle of Portmanteau

davidluke543044.substack.com/p/the-battle...

Reawakening the Stoned Ape On the possible psychedelic origins of language, and why there might be better options than attending a ‘once every 17 years’ hypersexual psychedelic zombie orgy swarm party

Following on from my interview with @matthabusby.bsky.social
for DoubleBlind last week I've further extended some of those insights into the highly speculative psychedelic origins of (or contributions to) language evolution into a new Substack post -

davidluke543044.substack.com/p/reawakenin...

Excited that Breaking Convention, the UK's largest & oldest (& arguably best) psychedelic research conference, is returning to SE London in 2026 at the next door wich to Greenwich. Woolwich. I guess any old wich will do so long as you know which wich is which. See you there? breakingconvention.co.uk

Associations of Couples’ Psychedelic Use with Shared Reality and Relational Well-Being The resurgence in research with classic psychedelics (e.g. LSD, psilocybin) underscores their potential for improved well-being; however, the interpersonal context and mechanisms of psychedelic imp...

Some suggestion from this interesting new research that 'couples who trip together, stick together' - www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Had a great day listening to Max Cooper's incredible music through the 360 multilayered immersive sound installation at the University of Greenwich Immersive Lab with Max & a fantastic crew of fellow audionauts as part of my PhD student Viviana Caros project into audio ASCs & spiritual experience.

The serpent's tale of the original medical staff - Hippocrates and the therapeutēs

On altered states, visionary experience and healing in ancient Greece, the Amazon and my back garden

My latest substack:

davidluke543044.substack.com/p/the-serpen...

Chasing academic chimeras in the pursuit of exceptional experiences 2025 as the year of dream temples, salamanders, psychedelics and sawing children in half..

An auto-eulogising round up of my the lost/last year..
Chasing academic chimeras in the pursuit of exceptional experiences:
2025 as the year of dream temples, salamanders, psychedelics and sawing children in half..

davidluke543044.substack.com/p/chasing-ac...

Editors' picks: A highlight of 2025 publications - EveryONE Reflecting on the publications in PLOS One in 2025, the diversity and quality of the work is demonstrated in articles ranging from…

Props to the CPEP research team tinyurl.com/ywa6jbe8 especially lead author @eirini-k-a.bsky.social, our paper on post-psychedelic ontological shock got selected by PLOS One editors from among 1000s as a stand out paper in medicine in 2025.
everyone.plos.org/2025/12/16/e...

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Why the Pineal Gland Became a Spiritual Fixation In today's dispatch, we're unpacking what we actually know about the pineal gland.

A third-eye peeping exploration by Webb Wright of that particular 'dimethyltrypta-meme' that the pineal gland is the seat of the soul and neurochemical factory of the spirit molecule DMT, for which I chimed in with a few (interdimensional) observations.. newsletter.doubleblindmag.com/p/why-the-pi...

The Psychedelic Scientist The Psychedelic Scientist: High on ayahuasca, Bruce Damer saw how life on Earth began. He may very well be right.

Great article by @matthabusby.bsky.social on the origin story of psychonaut scientist Bruce Damer & the origin story of life on earth, and Bruce's MINDS project exploring the use of psychedelic for scientific creative problem solving nautil.us/the-psychede... see also doi.org/10.1177/2050...

Great piece by Tamlin Magee for BBC celebrates the many unsung contributions of Erowid.org to drug policy, culture and science & interviewing psychedelic nerds like myself, Erik Davis, Rick Doblin, Leor Roseman, & Nicolas Langlitz