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.
August 17, 2016
I was a couple strong beers in when I reached over for my friend’s vaporizer and took several drags. It was pretty psychedelic.
August 19, 2016
I had the very strange joy of driving a Hillary Clinton rally with a van full of cannabis activists.
August 22, 2016
“Ya I love it, good taste. Fresh!” I had no idea what I’m doing.
August 29, 2016
We would have only one chance to intercept Hillary Clinton in the parking lot.
August 30, 2016
What if honest drug education, harm reduction, long term integration, and acknowledging risks, took the place of propaganda?
September 1, 2016
Activists have started creating new spaces for healing, acceptance, heightened consciousness, and fun—a completely legitimate reason to do anything, especially get high.
September 1, 2016
Timothy Tyler, was serving a double-life sentence without the possibility of parole for selling LSD.
September 6, 2016
“Ralph, have you ever done LSD?” Of course, my dad’s speaking to a policeman, and it’s the 70’s, and my dad hadn’t done LSD.
September 9, 2016
“Let It Happen” by Tame Impala came on as if there was a switch inside my brain where the drug started working.
September 15, 2016
We passed out the tabs of acid, we toasted, and we dropped. And then suddenly, up we went. I stood up, gingerly putting my weight on my right leg. And...nothing. No pain. No tenderness. I was invincible.