notes on psychedelics

world science festival, Psychedelics: Chemicals, Consciousness & Creativity
rick doblin, reggie watts, gul dolen

• rick doblin on psychedelics as an exploration of life and death, confronting moratality and understanding the enigmas of the human experience
• the doors of perception, aldous huxley and the paradox of self/non-self, of language; in needing language to describe an experience that transcends the definitive nature of language– that’s the problem with the huxley take on psychedelics, the intellectualization and elitist bias
• what are the implications of intellectualizing the psychedelic experience?
• exchange between medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex; unfiltered information interfering with our sense of self and the blending between self and external, ego dissolution (not death) since there is a self present
• the brain’s critical periods (a window of time in which the brain absorbs relevant information for lifelong application), are psychedelics the answer to reopening these critical periods?