cosmofeildingmellen

It's hard to separate my research in making the film from my knowledge of the broader subject from growing up with my mother who set up The Beckley Foundation and has done a lot of the research on psychedelics

What I did find really interesting from speaking with Tim is how he regrets taking the distribution of LSD into his own hands because it played a part in provoking the government to ban LSD which in turn stopped further scientific research which could have helped legitimise LSD from the start.

In the long run, I certainly believe LSD should be removed from the criminal underworld and regulated. I believe the War on Drugs as a whole is a very flawed policy which causes far more harm than the drugs themselves and denies help to those that really need it.

The science suggests that LSD could have amazing potential for treating serious psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety, but there is still a lot of research to be done.

We don't want people running out and thinking they can cure their mental illness on their own with acid from the street. This has to be taken extremely seriously. The scientists leading this research into LSD have gone to great lengths to insure safety. The studies are done in hospitals and there is always a medical professional there along with many other safety measures.

THere is a lot of room for LSD to be abused, and if too much of that happens it will hinder the scientific research again just as it did in the 60s.

I hope in the next 5-10 years there will be enough science for LSD to be approved as a medicine under very strict regulations

And when Tim says relatively large doses he means MASSIVE

An Orange Sunshine pill was 300 mics, which is between 15x to 30x bigger than a microdose!

Good questions...

I think first and foremost the focus should be on getting psychedelics approved as medicines for very particular medical conditions which will be heavily regulated by the government.

In the long run I think people should be allowed to experiment with these substances in very controlled and safe environments - just as psychedelics have been used in most ancient cultures for millennia.

But as you say, I think a lot of education is needed to prepare society for this kind of wider societal use.

Psychedelics are certainly not for everyone, but they can clearly be of great benefit to some people and some of those people have been a great benefit to society as a whole: e.g. Steve Jobs, Jimmi Hendrix, the Beatles, and Nobel Prize winning scientist Francis Crick

I think the research being done on LSD right now is totally fascinating. I was actually a participant in one of the pilot studies where they injected participants with LSD and tested your cognitive functioning

My mother, Amanda Feilding, runs the Beckley Foundation which was involved in designing the first brain imaging study ever done on LSD so I am very close to the subject.