The Future of Psychedelics: Symposium

Amanda Feilding has been hailed by The New Scientist as the “hidden hand” behind the renaissance of psychedelic science and drug policy reform.  When she set up the Beckley Foundation in 1998, she did so with the determination to make a reality of many of her lifelong dreams, such as bringing about the first ever brain imaging study on LSD, the results of which were released by the Beckley/Imperial Research Programme in April 2016.

This year has been characterized by spiraling scientific success: the LSD results were followed by the publication of very promising findings from a Beckley/Imperial pilot study using psilocybin to alleviate treatment resistant depression, led by Robin Carhart-Harris; and, most recently the Beckley/Sant Pau collaboration led by Jordi Riba saw ayahuasca stimulate the birth of new brain cells; a discovery which suggests the Amazonian plant brew could be developed into a treatment for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

So what is next for Amanda Feilding?  Where will she steer psychedelic science, and what new potential therapeutic applications for these important compounds will be revealed by the Beckley Foundation’s collaborations? Amanda was delighted to discuss the future of psychedelics in the afterglow of Beyond Psychedelics at a bonus symposium, on a panel with MAPS’s Rick Doblin, with whom she is co-hosting the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference in Oakland, California, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Research Project, celebrated ethnopharmacologist Dennis McKenna and EmmaSofia founder Terri Krebs.