A Meeting of MINDS
In London and at Broughton Sanctuary, Yorkshire, August 2024
Kathryn and I have been in the UK for the past month where we worked with a superb group of partners to introduce the new Center for MINDS to leading researchers and thinkers investigating the power of psychedelics as transformative tools for society.
As many of you know, this area of research has become central in my life during the past two years since I came out of the psychedelic scientist closet. MINDS is a new nonprofit grantmaking and community organization I co-founded with Ford Smith, Sylvia Rzepniewski and a wonderfully dedicated team. Based in Austin Texas, its mission is to address the following question: can psychedelics, consciousness practices or a combination of the two catalyze extraordinary states of creative problem solving to help Humanity meet some of its greatest challenges? MINDS seeks answers to this question through science by supporting research through grants. As the UK is on par with the US in terms of the calibre and number of psychedelic research groups, we thought it a good idea to engage this community early. We were also certain they could provide us some key guidance!
On August 10th we held a dinner at a fabulous rooftop restaurant in London and two weeks later on the 23-25th we hosted a workshop event at an even more fabulous country setting, the exquisite Broughton Sanctuary in Yorkshire.
Both events engaged a cadre of UK and some international scientists, clinicians, students, writers, philanthropists, underground practitioners, psychiatrists, artists and even a philosopher. Their diverse backgrounds ranged from brain imaging studies, to large scale intelligence surveys, to PTSD treatments in shamanic settings, to DMT infusion trials, to technical designs for AI, and even to the impact of music on psychedelic experience.
At the dinner we had a last minute addition, Australian researcher Ruben Laukkonen who blew my mind with his work on insight research. We have all had Eureka moments when seemingly disparate ideas suddenly coalesce into a deliciously novel insight (novel to us as least). Ruben’s own work stirs psychedelics into the mix and this and the insight research field are well covered in a new book The Emergence of Insight. Insight occur in a complex context, sometimes referred to as the zeitgeist and MINDS core team member Matt Gillespie and I worked together to bring this in through psychologist Dean Simonton’s work on creative genius.
The great 20th Century writer Aldous Huxley and his close friend Humphry Osmond, coiner of the term psychedelic, first proposed that psychedelics were effective tools for insights into self, but could also generate outsights, novel understanding of the world at large. Seventy years ago they sought financial support to design and carry out studies in which a cohort of really powerful intellects would be given mescaline or LSD. They failed to find one red cent for their research as reported in a volume of their letters called Psychedelic Prophets.
MINDS was established to pick up this lost thread of inquiry into psychedelic outsight. We launched into our mission in 2023 with the fourth pillar being groundbreaking studies of creative problem solving by Willis Harman, Jim Fadiman and others in the mid 1960s. This work is described extensively in Fadiman’s book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide.
Each of these four pillars are a good foundation, but how do we now move ahead to study creative problem solving within its full, naturalistic ecosystem? As double-blind, clinically controlled environments are unlikely to be conducive to teasing out profound new insights, how do we design studies to capture what Jaime Wheal terms the full multivariate kitchen sink of creativity?
We convened in the Avalon conference room at Broughton for an introduction to MINDS. In the two days that followed I was immediately struck by the openness of the scientists and others who are often competing for scant grants. They shared not only their current work in ‘flash talks’ but flashes of insight into how we might engage the mystery of flashes of creative insight.
I am happy to report that the beginning of a framework started to emerge around the design of studies and practices which is the vein of gold that MINDS hoped to mine. Over the coming weeks we will be refining that rough map into a slate of research proposals to be peer reviewed and packaged for the growing community of potential donors in this space. We hope to return to the UK in a year or two by which time MINDS may be able to start international grantmaking.
Overshadowing both the dinner and the workshop was the US Food and Drug Administration’s decision declining to legalize and regulate MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. This historic event infused me and the workshop participants with the realization that Psychedelic research is at a crossroads. Several of the scientists and clinicians at Broughton expressed a clear sense of exhaustion after a decade shouldering the psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (PAT) boulder toward the (yet unpromised) land of governmental approval.
During the bright Sunday morning closing session in the green drawing room at Broughton Hall several participants expressed hope and encouragement around the research direction MINDS is seeking to open. The scientists and clinicians reflected that these studies would be unbound by their usual red tape and quite restricted funding prospects. A whole new generation of Psychedelic-Assisted Innovation (PAI) science and practice may emerge and revitalize the field and public perception of the value of psychedelics to society. PAI will of course come wrapped up in its own red tape and an as-yet-unplumbed path to regulatory approval (who can approve this?). Yet, perhaps PAT and PAI could work together to tip the balance and win the day.
Can psychedelics, together with a panoply of consciousness practice, bring humanity transformational healing, opening revealing into realizable visions for a sustainable, brilliant future? I believe they can and that through solid science and resulting safe and effective protocols we will get there. The medicines of our wellbeing can also serve as the elixirs of insight. There is much good work to be done.
With great relief and satisfaction, we are returning stateside tomorrow with a satchel full of insights as to how MINDS might best support the new science around psychedelics as creative catalysts for problem solving, design and leadership.
Count on more reports from me on this pioneering new science just born at Broughton way out in the Yorkshire Dales. Oh, and please don’t forget that if you have been inspired by any of this, or perhaps have your own experiences of extraordinary insight to share, please leave a comment and I’ll respond!
A special thanks to my dear Kathryn, my partner in all things, Matt Gillespie, MINDS’ launch director and creative partner, and to two extraordinary fellows who made this all possible: Alexander Beiner, who in my view is a true impresario of the UK psychedelic scene (and beyond) and his partnership was essential to bringing together and leading both events; and Roger Tempest, our generous host and cheerleader who offered us the exquisite Broughton Sanctuary, his family home of 32 generations.
Yours, Bruce
Wonderful to see this initiative gaining steam! While the FDA decision not to approve MDMA-assisted therapy was disappointing, I also believe the medicalization approach has its downsides. So much of the recent "psychedelic renaissance" conversation has focused on medicalization, with some airtime also given to the ceremonial and religious/spiritual use of psychedelics. Of the two, medical v. ceremonial, I think the latter is far more likely to be the more transformative pathway for our civilization. But usually left out of this conversation is the role these chemicals can play in catalyzing scientific and philosophical breakthroughs by dramatically amplifying creativity in the well-prepared mind. Psychedelics can function in many ways depending on set and setting: medicines, sacraments, and indeed, scientific and metaphysical instruments akin to particle colliders, except for ideas rather than protons!
Would love to host a gathering in Portugal @Dr. Bruce Damer!