The psychedelic compound, MDMA, was first synthesized in a German laboratory in 1912 and was virtually forgotten until it was resynthesized in 1976 by chemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin in California.  Shulgin’s self-experimentation inspired the realization that MDMA was a potentially valuable tool for psychotherapy so he introduced his psychologist friend Leo Zeff to MDMA and this directly led to the beginning of MDMA-assisted therapy.  Throughout the late 70s and early 80s, a number of therapists and psychiatrists used MDMA to safely enhance the therapeutic process and found it was ..read more

I knew the annual fundraiser for the Pearl Psychedelic Institute would be bigger than last year, by virtue of the venue. But, having put on my fair share of nonprofit events, turnout is never guaranteed. Case in point: I was coming from another fundraiser, 40th Anniversary party at one of Asheville’s premiere music venues. Turnout was acceptable and lots of money was raised. But, when I got to Highland Brewing, the line was out the door. I was shocked. I couldn’t get in. I sat outside and chatted up some friends. I was also impressed by the “scene.” The attendees could easily be mistaken for ..read more

Going into MAPS’ Psychedelic Science 2023 conference in Denver, CO, I was concerned about the sheer size of this year’s iteration. This was the first MAPS conference since PS2017 in Oakland, CA and the number of people attending the 2023 conference was about four times larger. It made me think of the relatively intimate first Psychedelic Science conference I attended in 2010 in San Jose, CA which seemed to maybe have a few hundred attendees. PS2023 sold a total of 13,200 tickets before the Fire Marshall put a stop to it and it was being held at the cavernous Colorado Convention Center and I wa ..read more

In my last post, I commented on the role being-with plays in healing. Being-with is our willingness to feel, or be-with, whatever it is that is happening inside of us. It is to bring our conscious awareness as fully as possible to the experience that is happening in the present moment. This willingness-to-be-with difficult feelings involves working with resistance which allows for a deep working through of our suffering. We sometimes need support and guidance to be-with feelings that are uncomfortable. In psychedelic assisted therapy, the therapist supports our effort to be-with our experience ..read more

Have you ever had one of those moments? …when time slowed down, your senses came alive, and you felt a deeper sense of connectedness to what was happening? For me it was snowshoeing in the early morning across a frozen crater lake atop Mt. Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We had camped at -60°F on the summit that night. My feet felt like frozen sirloin steaks. It took about an hour to get them into their boots and I thought I’d try moving around to get the blood flowing again. I was running over the lake when a gust of wind blasted through the valley below up onto the peak w ..read more

Ketamine was first synthesized in 1962 by Calvin Stephens, an organic chemistry professor at Wayne State University, who was working as a consultant for Parke-Davis. Dr. Stephens was tasked with finding an alternative anesthetic to phencyclidine (PCP) which was used as a general anesthetic from 1953-1965 and was causing issues when patients were sometimes waking up from surgery with prolonged psychotic emergence reactions. Ketamine was first tested on humans in 1964 in Jackson, Michigan by Dr. Edward Domino who tested it on one of the prisoners at the State Prison and when he described the pri ..read more

Dr. Raymond Turpin pens his second blog highlighting the history of psychedelics. I would assume that many of you who visit this website already know a thing or two about psychedelics but there are some that are hearing the buzz about psychedelics being used in medicine and are curious about what is going on.In this blog, I would like to write about the origin and meaning of the term “psychedelic” as well as how this is an articulate yet very general early description of what is often occurring during psychedelic experiences. It also explains what has hindered this class of medicines from bei ..read more

This entry is written by Guest Blogger Joshua Stack. Joshua Stack is a communications professional and human services advocate. Stack has been involved with myriad causes including rock 'n' roll philanthropy for more than 20 years. He has also lobbied on Capitol Hill for hunger relief for Feeding America. S tack is a long time Asheville resident with his trusty terrier Baxter and can be found malingering in coffee shops and music halls in his free time. HIs devotion to the ground breaking treatments pursued by the Pearl are due to the loss of dear friends to suicide as well as his own struggle ..read more

This is the third in a series of three blogs examining the use of MDMA as a psychedelic medicine. In this installment, we will discuss the FDA’s Expanded Access or Compassionate Use program and how The Pearl Psychedelic Institute is the first site in the United States to begin this program and how it will be conducted. MDMA-assisted therapy is not exactly a new idea. Although it was first synthesized in 1912 by a German chemist, MDMA had no known utility until an American chemist, Sasha Shulgin, re-synthesized it in his home lab in the Bay Area around 1976 and gave it to a therapist friend of ..read more

This is the second in a series of three blogs examining the use of MDMA as a psychedelic medicine. The first installment, "The History of MDMA", was published on March 9th. In this installment, we will consider the condition that is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and why MDMA may be well-suited to provide treatment when it is embedded in a specialized protocol under clinical supervision. In the third installment, we will discuss the FDA’s Expanded Access or Compassionate Use program and how The Pearl Psychedelic Institute is the first site in the United States to begin this program and h ..read more