Rachael is a writer and environmental consultant who advises nonprofits and foundations on climate change. With an expertise in tropical forests, Rachael has conducted fieldwork in the Brazilian and Ecuadorian Amazon, Borneo, Uganda and elsewhere. After almost a decade in climate policy, Rachael has turned her attention to the spiritual implications of our current ecological crises. Rachael stumbled into psychedelics as a participant in a psilocybin clinical trial for major depression. Her writing excavates the potential risks, rewards, and societal implications of medicalizing and commercializing mysticism. Her work interrogates the intersection of the mystical and the moral, and envisions the role of non-ordinary states of consciousness in current and future forms of religion. Rachael explores these themes as a Junior Fellow at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions.
September 20, 2017
There is an urgent need for cultural humility in psychedelic science in order to prevent it from falling into the same limiting, and often unethical, traps that we see in Western science and medicine.
September 22, 2017
Even with its straightforward-sounding name, the Foundation for a Drug-Free World (FDFW) hides plenty beneath the surface—namely, a direct connection to the Church of Scientology.
September 26, 2017
Holotropic Breathwork is not just a breath technique. It was conceived as a non-drug way of accessing non-ordinary states of consciousness.
October 3, 2017
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy gave me the ability to feel compassion and empathy for myself.
October 4, 2017
The incredible mainstream press microdosing has received has managed to avoid many discussions.
October 23, 2017
Crispin Blunt suggested that legally regulating cannabis may well drag UK drug policy out of the dark ages.
October 25, 2017
Depression. Anxiety. Addiction. Most everyone of us knows somebody who is battling such a condition. Talk therapies may help, but sometimes they don’t. Antidepressants may help, but sometimes they don’t. Some patients are of the opinion that antidepressants are like “Band-Aids” in the way that they never really tackle the underlying issues of their problems.
October 27, 2017
To get a vision of the future of psychedelics from a legal and regulatory perspective, the most useful thing to do might be to see what's happening already in the realm of weed.
October 30, 2017
My destination was the International Drug Policy Reform Conference (Reform 2017). Judging by the throng of young college students crowding the lobby, I knew we were in the right place.
October 31, 2017
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas can tell us a lot about the building of the system we are now finding ourselves stuck inside.