Psychedelics Today

Kyle and Joe interview Rachel Turetzky & Douglas S. Wingate about their perspectives on the Wilson\Leary 8 Circuit Model of consciousness. They recently released a CE approved program on Psychedelic Education Center to train therapists on this model and how to integrate the 8 Circuit Model into your clinical therapy practice.

In this episode:

Maybe Day and maybe logic: Honoring Robert Anton Wilson and learning to hold beliefs, models, and interpretations more lightly
Reality tunnels: How biology, experience, culture, and conditioning filter our perception of reality
Robert Anton Wilson's legacy: Guerrilla ontology, stand-up philosophy, Prometheus Rising, and using humor to destabilize rigid beliefs
Timothy Leary beyond the caricature: His early work in psychology, the development of the Eight-Circuit Model, and the parts of his intellectual legacy that are often overlooked
The first four circuits: Bodily safety, emotional territory, language and symbolic thinking, and social and relational conditioning
The upper circuits: Sensory and somatic intelligence, metacognition, archetypal and transpersonal experience, and unitive states of consciousness
Metaprogramming: Identifying the beliefs, imprints, and automatic patterns shaping our lives—and developing the capacity to revise them
Circuit Zero and Stanislav Grof: Prenatal and perinatal experience, the basic perinatal matrices, and the lasting influence of early development
Normalizing unusual experiences: Archetypal encounters, ancestral material, entities, out-of-body experiences, synchronicities, and other phenomena that conventional psychology may struggle to interpret
Psychedelics and re-imprinting: How expanded states may loosen entrenched developmental patterns and create opportunities for psychological change
Pleasure as therapeutic material: Anhedonia, chronic survival states, the "hedonic intelligence" of Circuit Five, and learning to experience joy without treating it as a distraction from the work
Clinical applications: Using the model during psychedelic preparation to identify intentions, developmental imprints, and material that may emerge
Medicine and dosage selection: How MDMA, ketamine, psilocybin, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT may produce different experiences depending on the intention and dose
Integration and verticality: Grounding expansive, archetypal, or unitive experiences through the body, emotions, relationships, and everyday life
Chapel Perilous: Understanding destabilizing experiences, ontological shock, spiritual emergencies, and the process of reconstructing meaning afterward
Beyond psychedelics: Connections with yoga, meditation, occult practice, Chinese medicine, chakra systems, and other psychospiritual traditions
The new course: The structure of The Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness: An Integrative Framework for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, including its 14 lessons, practical exercises, assessments, certification, and continuing-education options

Denver mushroom decriminalization changed the national conversation around psilocybin access, personal use, and grassroots psychedelic reform. In this episode of Psychedelics Today, Joe Moore speaks with Travis Tyler Fluck, an autognostic mycologist, educator, activist, end-of-life doula, and longtime Colorado mushroom community organizer.
Fluck was involved in Denver's 2019 psilocybin campaign, which made adult personal use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms the city's lowest law enforcement priority. The campaign passed by a narrow margin and helped open the door for later reforms in Oakland, Washington, D.C., Oregon, Colorado, and beyond.
This conversation looks at the people, ethics, and tensions behind Denver mushroom decriminalization. It also explores what happens after a law changes: how communities educate themselves, how personal use spaces develop, and how grassroots access fits alongside regulated psychedelic services.

Aspen Psychedelic Symposium is the focus of this conversation with Martha Hammel of the Aspen Psychedelic Resource Center and Tasia Poinsatte of Healing Advocacy Fund. They join Joe Moore to discuss this year's symposium, how it fits into Colorado's evolving natural medicine landscape, and why Aspen has become a strong setting for serious public conversations about psychedelics.

Hammel explains that the symposium is now in its third year and is designed to bring major psychedelic voices to Colorado's West Slope. She also outlines the local roots of the Aspen Psychedelic Resource Center, which grew out of education and outreach work around decriminalization and the Natural Medicine Health Act. Poinsatte describes Healing Advocacy Fund's broader role across Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico, where the group works on safe access, implementation, affordability, and public education.

Seeing What Is There is at the center of this conversation with journalist and author Erica Rex, who joins Joe Moore to discuss her book Seeing What Is There: My Search for Sanity in the Psychedelic Era. Rex brings an unusual mix of personal experience and scientific rigor. She came to psychedelic medicine after breast cancer, participation in Roland Griffiths' clinical trial for cancer-related depression, and a long career in journalism covering science, nature, climate, and technology.

ALS and ketamine therapy are at the center of this conversation with psychiatrist Dr. Michael Alpert and Peter Alberding, who was diagnosed with ALS in late 2023. Alpert is a Boston-area psychiatrist with experience in MDMA-assisted therapy research for PTSD and a private practice that includes ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Alberding shares what it has been like to face a fatal neurodegenerative illness while working with ketamine in a structured clinical setting.

Alberding explains that he was not looking for a casual psychedelic experience. He wanted help facing fear, grief, loss of function, and the reality of death. Over time, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy became a tool for processing those changes more directly than talk therapy alone had allowed.