Scientific Problem Solving with Psychedelics - James Fadiman

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Scientific Problem Solving with Psychedelics

James Fadiman, PhD

James will describe how to best use psychoactive materials for enhanced problem solving, a poorly understood and under-researched area. However, there are established methods that open minds to useful solutions for real problems. He will share his personal experience as part of a group that established the basic guidelines: set and setting, substance and dosage, as well as whatever else was necessary to effectively dissolve barriers to solving hard science problems. Drawing from that research, he will describe which aspects of enhanced cognitive processes lead to successful solutions, followed by reviewing the range of problems attempted, solutions found, and the implications for renewed research. Even informal experimentation can be vastly improved by understanding how best to use these materials to potentiate new thinking about technical obstacles and to initiate conceptual breakthroughs.

James Fadiman, PhD completed his dissertation at Stanford on the effectiveness of LSD-assisted therapy just as all research was shut down. During the subsequent 40-year lull, he has held a variety of teaching, consulting, training, counseling, and editorial positions. He has taught in psychology departments and design engineering, and for the past three decades at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University) that he co-founded. He has published textbooks, professional books, a self-help book, a novel, and a series of videos ("Drugs: The Children are Choosing") for National Public Television. His books have been published in eight languages. He was featured in a National Geographic documentary and had three solo shows of his nature photography. He sits on two non-profit boards and has been the president of several small natural resource companies. He was involved in researching psychedelics for spiritual, therapeutic, and creative uses when it was legal, and recently published The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys and released a series of videos (with Kokyo Henkel) on Buddhism and Psychedelics. He is now conducting surveys of psychedelic use and has pioneered research on micro-dosing of a number of substances for a host of conditions (jamesfadiman.com).