Following the remarkable impact of "Love and Grief in the Shadow of War" we are thrilled to unveil the next installment in the "Love and Grief" series. Join us on May 23rd as we delve into a topic that has significantly impacted the psychedelic realm, an issue increasingly coming to light - psychedelic narcissism.

Dr Rosalind Watts welcomes Iain McGilchrist, Laura Northrup, Brian Anderson, Daan Keiman and Mikaela dela Myco to spark a dialogue on the complexities of psychedelic narcissism, exploring its cultural underpinnings, different manifestations, and pathways to recovery.

We live in a culture that is based on, breeds, and rewards an individualistic, arrogant, and extractive orientation to life. This can be described as ‘Wetiko’, which is an Algonquin word for a ‘mind virus’ that leads to separation, selfishness, and insatiable greed (Paul Levy). We see extreme examples in the political leaders around the world, and at the top of most fields.

Many of us have hoped that psychedelic therapy could help ‘treat’ the Western world’s Wetiko epidemics: and indeed psychedelics can help people feel deeply connected, which is the opposite of Wetiko and perhaps its cure. But when we insert psychedelics into capitalist, materialistic Western culture, with no intact lineage to a tradition of grounded psychedelic use and no social structures to support healthy integration, psychedelics may amplify the problems we hoped they would solve.

The psychedelic field has problems, as all fields, of capitalist market forces driving a winner-takes-all attitude, which stifles collaboration, entrenches power structures that reward and promote extractive tendencies, damages the environment, drives short-termism, and distorts human values.

Wetiko brings separation, competing agendas, conflicts of interest, avoidance of difficult conversations, and dishonesty. There is also maverick energy, the ‘breaking into new frontier’ confidence which can do harm when it is not kept in check, and balanced with the needs of the collective. For example, in psychedelic research, the prioritizing of ‘data’ over care. The prioritizing of speed (and goldrush territory-claiming) over safety. We are increasingly hearing about massive lapses of judgment, sickening boundary violations, and the tragedies that ensue when therapists and facilitators become infected with Wetiko and see people as objects, there to make them feel good.

Within the context of psychedelics, participants are literally ‘under the influence ’ and in a state of increased vulnerability, where even small lapses in ethics are amplified and can have serious consequences. Survivors may feel shame about why they didn’t see what was happening. Often, before the attacks, they were flourishing with talents, vibrant social networks, and warm hearts: targeted because they had a lot that was worth taking.

This type of exploitation can be ongoing for years and can wreck livelihoods and pollute once-thriving communities of care.

As we navigate these challenges, our event seeks to open a conversation. We're not here to assign blame but to explore these complexities together, recognizing our shared responsibility in nurturing a healthier future. We want to create a space where our collective curiosity and empathy can flow, to realize that these are questions we are not facing alone.

Psychiatrist and author Iain McGilchrist will explain how modern Western ‘left brain culture’ breeds narcissism

Somatic psychotherapist and author of the book Radical Healership, Laura Northrup will discuss the healing impulse and the ‘shadow why’ (and how it can get inflated)

Psychiatrist Brian Anderson will discuss lessons from a key scientific paper from the 60s which warned of a link between LSD use and narcissism

Psychedelic and Buddhist chaplain, and psychedelic facilitator, Daan Keiman will highlight the common red flags in cases of harm

Psychedelic educator and founder of Tapped Out Coalition Mikaela dela Myco will talk about surviving severe psychedelic narcissism, and how rematriating medicine work could support the field

We will hear briefly about different community outreach/support projects, including PsyAware, SHINE Collective, Sacred Plant Alliance (Anya Oleksiuk), and Toxic Workplace Survival Guy (Matthew Green)

After the talks, we will go into breakout rooms to share our reflections on the talks in small groups, facilitated by experienced space holders.

To end we will listen to the Orison Tree Journey together, to soothe us and help us stay connected to what our grief teaches us about what we want to stand for, and what we want to ask for help with.

You will also receive a resource pack with links to all the wonderful projects and resources.

The talks will be recorded and sent afterward, the reflection circles will not be recorded.

Join us in shaping a community that prioritizes connection, empathy, and ethical stewardship over division and exploitation.

All event contributors are donating their time for free. All profits will go to Heal Palestine because the genocide in Gaza is an example of the most extreme Wetiko many of us have ever witnessed in our lifetimes, and raising money for anything else feels wrong.

Thanks to all who have helped plan and organise this event: including Matthew Green of Resonant World, Anya Oleksiuk of PsyAware, and the speakers and facilitators in the ‘Love and Grief’ volunteer group.

Dr Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London.

He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry.

He is the author of several books, but is best known for The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009).

He lives on the Isle of Skye, has two daughters and a son, and now grandchildren.

Laura Mae Northrup, MFT is the author of the book Radical Healership: How to Build a Values-Driven Healing Practice in a Profit-Driven World and the creator of the Inside Eyes podcast, an audio series about people using entheogens & psychedelics to heal from sexual trauma. Drawing from her work as a practicing somatic and psychedelic psychotherapist, she consults and speaks internationally on issues related to the treatment of sexual trauma. Her work focuses on defining sexual violence through a spiritual and politicized lens, mentoring healing practitioners in creating a meaningful path, and supporting the spiritual integrity of our collective humanity. She lives and works in Oakland, CA.

Brian Anderson, MD, MSc is a staff psychiatrist at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General and UCSF. His completed training includes a mental health research fellowship at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, general adult psychiatry residency at UCSF and medical school at Stanford University. He holds a masters in medical sociology and for several years conducted ethnographic studies of drug users in community settings. In 2018, as a fellow in the UCSF BAND Lab director by Dr. Josh Woolley, he conducted an open-label pilot study of psilocybin-assisted group therapy for demoralization in older long-term AIDS survivors.

Daan Keiman has worked in the field of psychedelic care for over 15 years and has guided hundreds of clients through psychedelic experiences - yet they have recently decided to step back from guiding group ceremonies in order to continue their studies and apprenticeship. Daan offers a sobering, grounded and down-to-earth perspective on psychedelic care. One that honors the unseen, the earth and the ancestors, and one that encourages practitioners to go slow and examine their own 'healing impulse'.

Mikaela de la Myco comes from a blended ancestry. Her ancestors come from southern Italy, the Caribbean and Mexico and she uplifts their perspectives in the space of entheogens.

In her everyday life, Mikaela serves as a mother, an educator, a folk herbalist, a community organizer and an entheogen facilitator in occupied Kumeyaay & Luiseno territory, also known as San Diego, CA. She cares for all people with ancestral healing ways and holds a special focus on serving small-businesses, cooperatives, non-monogamous people, psychedelic families, femmes, and people seeking full-spectrum herbal womb care. She has collaborated as an educator and activist with hundreds of companies and organizations within the sacred earth medicine space and is well-known as a maternal caretaker in the community.

​Her platforms, Mama de la Myco and mushWOMB generate educational content. She founded the Tapped Out Coalition (responding to traumatic events by seeking justice for unpaid bipoc healers and workers). Mikaela de la Myco stands for rematriating entheogens by advocating for ethics and womb-to-tomb psychedelic literacy.

Dr Rosalind Watts is a clinical psychologist and an influential voice in the psychedelic field. Her research focuses on how psychedelic therapy can increase ‘Connectedness to Self, Others and World’. Her 2017 Ted talk about psychedelic therapy had more than a million views but she has critiqued her earlier ideas, realising that these ways of working cannot be safe or effective until we create community infrastructure of care around them.

In order to start building a web of connectedness for people after psychedelic sessions, she co-founded a global online integration community, ACER (‘Accept, Connect, Embody, Restore’) which takes a collective approach to personal growth, and encourages re-alignment to the wisdom of nature.

After years of focusing on the importance of Psychedelic Integration, Dr Watts is now also developing infrastructure for ‘Psychedelic Outegration’, and exploring this within the ACER community. Some members become Elders who are supported to share some of the ACER practices free of charge in their local ecosystem. You can find out more about ACER and how to join the community at acerintegration.com .

For free open access to therapy and research tools, such as the ACE manual, ‘pearl dive’ audio for psychedelic preparation, and the WCS psychometric tool for measuring Connectedness, please visit drrosalindwatts.com

https://www.gofundme.com/f/unpaid-ancestor-project-workers-healers

https://www.healpalestine.org/

https://matthewgreenglobal.substack.com/

https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/radical-healership/

https://www.lauramaenorthrup.com/inside-eyes-podcast

https://www.instagram.com/mamadelamyco/

http://acerintegration.com/

http://drrosalindwatts.com/

If you're feeling generous, any donation you can offer would greatly support our harm reduction efforts.

Love and Grief in the Shadow of Psychedelic Narcissism