OPEN Lezingen

In literature much can be found about the visions and the insights people can get from ayahuasca. What is striking here is that the visions are described in great detail while the insights only marginally are mentioned. This lack of information lead to a bachelor thesis on the insights ayahuasca can give. What kinds of insights can people get? Are these insights applicable in daily life? If yes, how do people use these insights? These questions were central in the research ‘Insight in Ayahuasca’. Through interviews a first effort was made to answer these questions. The difference in setting and its possible influence on the insights people gain is also researched. A distinction was made between the religious setting (Santo Daime) and the ritual setting (shamanistic/therapeutic) and if the insights can actually be used in daily life. In this presentation the results of this research will be set out.

Ibogaine has been used for centuries by members of the Bwiti religion in western equatorial Africa as a religious sacrament, medicine and hunting aid. Since the discovery of the ability of ibogaine to interrupt addiction and withdrawal symptoms by Howard Lotsof it has also become of interest to the West. The complex pharmacology of ibogaine, in addition to its natural origin has caused it to be a substance that is of little interest to the pharmaceutical industry. However, over the years ibogaine has proven to be at least reasonably effective in treating different substance addictions in animal models. In the few clinical trials that were performed ibogaine showed promising results. Setbacks in the development of the drug have been its neurotoxic effects in rats and a number of deaths that were related to its use. In recent years little has been published regarding ibogaine research. In the meanwhile ibogaine use appears to be increasing in non-clinical settings and private clinics all over the world, the uncontrolled experiment continues. Should further research into ibogaine be pursued?

The revival of psychedelic research signals an inspiring change in official attitudes towards ‘mind-altering’ substances, altered states of consciousness and their potential as catalysts of religious/mystical experience, ‘self-healing’, consciousness research and creative expression. At the same time this ‘research’ still requires authorization by institutions that have a monopoly on the manufacture, trade and application of mind-altering substances, and that continue to enforce a ban on their use and to promote coercive interventions and punishments against those who use these substances outside authorized medical and scientific research.

The aim of this conversation is to examine the ways beliefs, assumptions, hypotheses and/or understandings impact the interpretation of empirical research used to silence and exclude ‘drug users’ from the ‘court of specialized discourse’ in which their fundamental rights are discussed and decided. Contrary to expectations, we will argue that a radical improvement in the effectiveness of regulatory measures can be achieved at little or no extra cost, possibly even with enormous cost-saving, and without recourse to complex medical or scientific explanatory models, simply through the adoption of reasonable differentiations, that are based on the outcome of drug use, and neutral with respect to the drug, the agent’s intent, and the setting in which drug use occurs.

This presentation will examine the legal aspects of the use of ayahuasca. No plants or other natural materials containing psychoactive substances like DMT or psilocybin are controlled under the UN 1971 Convention. The same goes for preparations made of these plants like, for example, ayahuasca. The member states of the Convention however do have the right to adopt more strict measures of control, and this has happened in several cases. This presentation will give a general overview of the current status of the use of ayahuasca in various Western countries.

The Dutch Supreme Court chose a far more restrictive drug policy than the Convention ever required. Recently arrests took place of leaders of the British Santo Daime churches because of importing their sacrament ayahuasca from Brazil. So far only the Santo Daime churches and the União do Vegetal have been able to successfully fight the diverse criminal accusations, by relying on their fundamental right to freely manifest their religion. The Amsterdam district court in 2001 was the first one that recognized the fundamental right of the Santo Daime churches to use their holy sacrament ayahuasca during their rituals. It considered the prosecution of the churches for possession or delivery of this ayahuasca in violation of the principle of freedom to express someone’s belief which right is protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Human psychopharmacology–the experimental administration of mind-altering drugs to human subjects–is an essential tool for characterizing the relationship between brain structure, neurochemistry, and symptomatology. This talk will summarize the last twenty years of completed, ongoing, and planned research at Yale on the drugs ketamine, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol, salvinorin A, dimethytryptamine (DMT), and psilocybin, discussing their use not only as a tool for better understanding human consciousness but also as therapy for specific diseases.

About Andrew Sewell

After graduating with a BA in Physics from Cornell University, Dr. Sewell decided to pursue his interest in entheogens by obtaining an MD from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in 1998 then completing a combined residency in Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine in 2004, where he served as Chief Resident in Neuropsychiatry. Following this, he attended a substance abuse research fellowship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where he served as Managing Editor of the McLean Annals of Behavioral Neurology. He also published the first paper ever on the response of cluster headache to psilocybin and LSD, presenting the data both at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting and the International LSD Symposium in Basel in 2006. He followed this with a discussion of the effect of LSA-containing seeds on cluster headache at the 2008 World Psychedelic Forum. For the last three years he has worked at Yale University in the Schizophrenia Research Group under Dr. Cyril D’Souza, studying the effects of psychotropic agents such as THC, amphetamine, iomazenil, and salvinorin A in human subjects. His research interests include the pathophysiology and treatment of cluster headache, mechanisms and characterization of psychosis (both induced and in schizophrenia), and therapeutic applications of entheogens. Dr. Sewell is board-certified in both neurology and psychiatry, serves on the Erowid Expert Network and the Scientific Program Committee of the American Neuropsychiatric Association. He has published widely on cluster headache and the relationship between cannabis and psychosis.