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.
February 8, 2017
You might imagine progressive drug laws go hand-in-hand with social democracy. It's not the case in Sweden.
February 10, 2017
A legal, regulated cannabis market would help prevent problematic use and give treatment options the radical revamp they need.
February 14, 2017
I was able to heal my relationship with death, and that in turn allowed me to heal my relationship with life.
February 14, 2017
I was on duty the night Alex decided to commit suicide in the communal showers.
February 16, 2017
The most common consequences of drug policies, whether focusing on the supply or the demand side, bring disproportionate harm to women and girls.
February 27, 2017
Reducing drug policy down to defining “good” substances and “bad” substances is missing the entire point.
March 1, 2017
Many of us are well-meaning in our engagement with plant medicines, but we cannot disregard the real-world impact that our actions inevitably have, regardless of intent.
March 2, 2017
Even if we don't necessarily share religious, spiritual, or mythological assumptions, are we able to reconcile between such seemingly different and antagonistic worldviews?
March 9, 2017
In underground sessions, you’re taking a huge risk choosing to work with someone who may not have adequately prepared or may have dubious subconscious motivations.
March 14, 2017
I’ve yet to lift my self-imposed ban on mirror-gazing, but if one were in front of me now, my face would reflect the same slack-jawed childlike wonder I felt in fifth grade as the sun-filled sky turned black while my gym class watched our first lunar eclipse from the playground.