Psychedelic Microdosing at the Alter-Natives Festival
Happy Friday!
In a couple of weeks, I'll be talking at a festival of ideas about my experiments with psychedelic microdosing. As my favourite people in the whole world, you're most cordially invited!
At AlterNatives last year I spoke about my experiment living without money for a week. (Mark Boyle, who lived moneyless for a slightly more rigorous 6 years, was also on the bill - but there were technical difficulties so they had to settle for me alone!)
It was a fascinating weekend of workshops, walks, tea and talks at Braziers Park, a Strawberry Gothic mansion in the Oxfordshire countryside (near where I grew up).
The most memorable talk was Miguel Farias's presentation of his research on meditation, which introduced me to how meditation can be more dangerous than you might imagine from the current NHS mindfulness craze (LINK for much more detail).
As Swami Venkatesananda said: "Meditation is like cooking — and, you know, in cooking scum comes up to the surface."
I can't wait to see what I learn this year!
Here's the poster (I'm the guy with neck ache lying on the floor in agony, but that's a different story...) -
Inexplicably Popular on the Blog This Week
Sarajevo Gives Thanks to the UN (2011)
"We needed two things: arms and food. So the UN gave us malaria tablets and condoms – well they had promised to ‘protect’ us!"
This piece, based on a visit to Bosnia (beautiful Bosnia!) in 2007, was recently shared by an Italian journal, which has led to an unexpected spike of interest from Rome.
While I was in Sarajevo, almost everyone I met had lived through the horrors of war, when their city was under siege by the Serbian army of excessively-foreheaded war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. For almost four years.
Unsurprisingly, they all remembered those who had supported them.
"We had to smuggle weapons into the city, against the wishes of the UN. In this, we got a lot of help from Colombian drug cartels. They did more to help save Sarajevo than the UN."
Oops.
Thanks for reading! Now what?
RSVP if you want to come to Braziers Park for AlterNatives. My talk and discussion will be on Saturday 8 April, at 4.30pm. Maybe we can travel together - it'd be good to see some of your faces IRL. :)
Otherwise - it's heads down for the weekend. We've got 7 days before the first reading of all four episodes of Foiled. As Sabrina would say -
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I love crisps.
Stay cool.
d