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.
November 16, 2016
It’s been more than six years since I participated in the Johns Hopkins Spirituality study, but it continues as the most life-changing event of my life.
November 22, 2016
“LSD, 100 MCG, intramuscular”
November 29, 2016
The War on Drugs is inherently anti-black. Most psychedelic users that I’ve encountered are hesitant to take a stance on the racial aspects of the drug war.
November 30, 2016
I feel safe openly advocating for the beneficial use of illicit substances because I have never been stopped by police without legitimate cause.
December 1, 2016
When stubborn drives for inclusion and connection in the present betray a racially divided past, psychonauts may be able to attend to histories of exclusion, separation and disconnection in order to deepen our understanding and engagement in the present.
December 2, 2016
For the movement toward psychedelic consciousness to be as transformative as it can possibly be, it is our obligation as a psychedelic community to be aware of our shortcomings and to challenge them head-on.
December 5, 2016
Social movements are remembered in history for the things they do and the actions they take, not for what they inadvertently hope will happen.
December 7, 2016
"The Trump victory is like watching a dart trap set up by the Founding Fathers spring into action. For better or for worse the system worked."
December 13, 2016
The psychedelic renaissance is afoot, and there’s almost no use arguing with the term anymore. It’s just too catchy.