A well organized event, amazing but hot place (some calc on the roof in the summer?) and a good mix of old and young, male/female, and seriously international. I loved to see the young people and students talking about their personal experiences, obviously the subject is engaging. I am less impressed by the presentations; too much the same, the selection of subjects, the protocols, the data, the outcomes, all as expected and as was more or less known (but scientifically less rigorous as one tries to convince us) forty or more years ago. What is really new, what insights were transmitted, what new applications or therapies were introduced?
Too much dry data, more or less results as expected and protocols we know well, everybody trying to prove the stuff is not that bad and can bring amazing results in therapy. I was waiting for really amazing insights, like what MDMA in a lab in space does, or that you can cure hair loss, or impotence (sex was generally excluded from research programs!), how personality traits (Enneagram, big Five. Myers-Briggs, not just age and prior substance history) are related to outcome or how users tend to vote! There is a world of users outside the clinical trials, and what they do and experience and how their worldview or happiness is changed is what matters to me more than what some hundred volunteers report in and after rather clinical and sterile sessions.
For people like me, having been to too many of these conferences, the content is less important that the contacts, the live interaction; there I did find that enthusiasm, those visions and personal engagement that I missed in most of the sessions. Of course Ben Sessa with his TED-approach (are you sure you didn’t take a little self-medication there, Ben) compensated, there were some really engaged speakers and luckily the personal account Aha-Aya presentations that kind of overshadowed other conferences were mostly absent. There was much ex-post self-reporting (which I, with Kahneman, find somewhat eschewed) and somewhat less hard scanning and chemical data, but so what, as I see the brain as a tuner anyway with epigenetic DNA expression as the mechanism for thinking.
The general trend is to prove that psychedelics, in a controlled environment, are safer than most drugs, that they effective in treating many psychological ailments like addiction, depression, PTSD, autism, etc. etc. and for many improve quality of life. This, however, restricted to vague categories like mystical experiences, mindfulness, the real life issues like sex were kind of repressed or, as keynoter Griffith (J. Hopkins) indicated ‘inconsequential’. This says more about the sterile set-up, maybe without white coats, but still ignoring what in most therapeutic sessions comes up. It exemplifies however the general trend, let’s make this legal, limiting the range of application, maybe even keep this well within the confines of the medical profession, treatments and substances prescribed and all kept nicely controlled, with lots of work for trained professionals, monopolistic suppliers of the prescribed substances (Rick Doblin obviously sees MAPS developing into producer of legal substances like MDMA), the sixties forgotten!
However, the way I see it, there is much more to these substances than what is covered at this kind of conferences. Not only more potential uses, but also hidden dangers beyond the purely medical ones. One of them is the potential for magical use (real or imaginary, as long as there are believers it’s there) that is mostly ignored, but very much a reality at the ayahuasca-scene in S-America and not only between the ayahuasceros. With all the potential of use in therapy, once the general public (and the religious status quo folks and the legal profession) will become aware of this, they will cry “witchcraft”, “black magic” and force everything underground again. The scientific proof that mind over matter (or healing without scalpels or drugs) is possible, has enormous consequences. Not much about that at IPR 2016, but the word ritual did come up, placebo too, but mostly hidden as ‘protocol’ like the notion, that there should be both a male and a female monitor at sessions. At some sessions I had the distinct feeling, that a new ‘elite’ class of psychedelic therapists is preparing for a nice and well paid medical monopoly, kind of ignoring that every weekend tens of millions of people use these same miracle cures for other purposes.
Another danger is that people, by using psychedelics, become aware of their mask, their programming, their slavery to the system, authorities might fear that the sixties “freedom” notions become common again. Most of the anti-magical religions (Like Islam) and elitist governments are dead against this. We may cure PTSD of veterans, but what if they start supporting the likes of Bernie Sanders? And as Rick Doblin remarked, the real outcome of a session may depend less on how many monitors etc. are there, the substance by itself may work as well (or as he indicated, the insurance companies may think that after a while).
In general, the ICPR is probably what science needs to get achieve more decriminalization, some legalization and funding for more research, but it tends to be a bit repetitive, boring, lots of ‘brainers’ presenting in classical mode with lots of stats and data sheets, a few more inspired ‘believers’ like Ben Sessa might add some juice to an event that did, I must admit, gave a good overview of current ‘scientific’ research. Compliments for the new generation of Amsterdam, that made this happen, this was an impressive bottom up initiative by “Open”.
Luc Sala, June 2016
More about my ideas about the future of psychedelics at www.lucsala.nl/future.pdf and if you didn’t get one of my books, at http://www.share-shop.nl/sacredjourneys.pdf there is a free download of this tripguide for psychonauts, feel free to distribute the link.
PS. I will speak at http://entheo-science.de/ in Berlin 3-4 Sept. and the annual Myster summer party is 31 of July, see www.myster.nl/agendanl.htm