2009 Speakers
Alicia Danforth Alicia Danforth is a clinical psychedelic researcher and writer. Since 2006, she has coordinated and co-facilitated treatment sessions for Dr. Charles GrobÕs Harbor-UCLA cancer anxiety trial with psilocybin. She also oversees a nationwide Web-based recruitment effort for a similar trial currently underway at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Inspired by seeing first-hand how psychedelic therapy can relieve suffering, she began a Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto. In 2008, she was a speaker on the ÒRising ResearchersÓ panel at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, Switzerland. This summer will mark her sixth year as a Sanctuary volunteer at Burning Man. Earth Erowid co-created The Vaults of Erowid in 1996. This non-commercial web site collects data and publishes original research on the topic of visionary plants and drugs. The site receives over 250,000 unique visitors per month and has over 16,000 public documents and over 3000 images. Earth has written and edited hundreds of documents published on-line and his writing has also appeared in print publications such as The Resonance Project and The Entheogen Review, and he is a contributing editor to Trip magazine. Fire Erowid co-created The Vaults of Erowid in 1996 (see description above). She has been the primary designer and chief editor of the Erowid site since its inception. Fire has innovated and developed drug information designs that have been emulated across the web. Her work is cited by newspapers, books, school education programs, college classes, and professional seminars around the world. Her well-referenced article "70 Common Drug Myths," which appeared in The Resonance Project, exemplifies the dedication to straightforward, factual information that has become the hallmark of the Erowid web site. Fire is also a contributing editor to Trip magazine. Bob Jesse is organizer of the Council on Spiritual Practices (csp.org/about), which aims to shift modernity's awareness and practices with respect to primary religious experience (csp.org/PRE). CSP also encourages people to imagine and develop social contexts to contain such experiences and help them yield lasting benefit. Through CSP, Bob and his colleagues initiated a study, conducted at Johns Hopkins and reported around the world, of the psychospiritual effects of psilocybin in healthy volunteers (csp.org/psilocybin). This expands the emphasis in hallucinogen research beyond the medical treatment of ill people to include the betterment of well people, contributing to a science of pro-social development. On his home front, Bob is co-founder of a spiritual community formed around ecstatic dance. His formal training is in engineering. Andy Letcher is a freelance writer, academic lecturer and folk-musician living in Oxford, UK. He lectures regularly at Oxford Brookes University on subjects as diverse as neo-Paganism, Shamanism, and theory in the Study of Religion. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom and Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms: Discourse and Power in the Study of Psychedelic Consciousness, published in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness. Known for his iconoclastic style, and with doctorates in both Ecology and the Study of Religion, he challenges us to question received wisdom about psychedelics and psychedelic history. A prolific song-writer, tunesmith and exponent of English Bagpipes, he fronts psych-folk band, Telling the Bees. Valerie Mojeiko has worked with MAPS--the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies since 2000, facilitating research of the healing potentials of MDMA (Ecstasy), LSD, Ibogaine and other psychedelic medicines. In her work leading MAPS' psychedelic harm-reduction project, Valerie has prepared over 200 volunteers to provide peer-based psychedelic emergency services from Burning Man to Tel Aviv. Formally educated at New College of Florida and the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). William A. Richards is a psychologist in the Psychiatry Department of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Bayview Medical Center, currently pursuing research with entheogens, and also a clinician in private practice in Baltimore. His graduate degrees include M.Div. from Yale Divinity School, S.T.M. from Andover-Newton Theological School and Ph.D. from Catholic University, as well as studies with Abraham Maslow at Brandeis University and with Hanscarl Leuner at Georg-August University in Gšttingen, Germany, where his involvement with psilocybin research originated in 1963. From 1967 to 1977, he pursued psychotherapy research with LSD, DPT, MDA and psilocybin at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, including protocols designed to investigate the promise of entheogens in the treatment of alcoholism, severe neuroses, narcotic addiction and the psychological distress associated with terminal cancer, and also their use in the training of religious and mental-health professionals. From 1977-1981, he was a member of the psychology faculty of Antioch University in Maryland. His publications began in 1966 with ÒImplications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism,Ó coauthored with Walter Pahnke, and published in the Journal of Religion and Health. Steven Ross, M.D. is assistant professor of psychiatry and director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at Bellevue Hospital, and associate director for education at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. Franz X. Vollenweider, M.D. received his MD degree at the University of Zurich. He completed his doctoral thesis in experimental medicine at the Insitute of Toxicology of the University and ETH of Zurich, was trained in neurochemistry at the Brain Research Institute of the University of Zurich and in neuroimaging at the PET Center of the PSI-ETH. In 1994 he became certified in the specialities of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis. His research utilizes healthy normal subjects and is focused on these domains as well as on visual psychophysics in drug- and non-drug-induced altered states of consciousness. He is currently a practicing psychiatrist and the head of the Psychopharmacology and Brain Imaging Unit at the University Hospital of Psychiatry (Burghšlzli) and lecturer in the School of Medicine, University of Zurich. Bob Wold is founder and President of Clusterbusters, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit charitable organization dedicated to the research of cluster headache and to support people with cluster headache and their families. Based in greater Chicago with his wife and 4 children, Mr. Wold has talked to 1000s of cluster sufferers. In fact, over 25 years of his adult life was burdened with severe cluster headache that was resistant to all standard treatments. That all changed after he tried psilocybin, which has helped regain control over this illness for him... and now hundreds to perhaps thousands of other cluster headache patients all over the world.
2008 Speakers
Daniel Pinchbeck Click here for more information about 2008 speakers. 2007 Speakers
Kenneth Alper MD Click here for more information about 2007 speakers. Home - Photos - Speakers - Tickets - About - Resources Site by SD Photo & Web Design www.sdphotography.net
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