Notes from the Book Tour

From Swamp to Shining Sea

It was a long time coming… years of research and writing, then over a year while the manuscript was ferried through the publishing process. But on July 7^th, I launched my book with an event in Washington, DC – in conversation with Dr. Mikhail Kogan, an integrative health specialist who appreciates the benefits of plant medicines¹.

Then, as a guest of the Baltimore Psychedelic Society, I shared a stage with Bill Richards, Mary Cosimano and John Rhead – veterans of psychedelic research going back to the 1960s, to talk about the unique benefits of psychedelics in older life.

The Psychonauts of the Pacific Northwest

But the magic began when I arrived in Seattle, where I presented the book to a warm audience of therapists, older psychonauts and the Northwest Center for Creative Aging community. I was delighted to greet Dr. Sunil Aggrawal, the heroic palliative care physician who is taking on the DEA to make psilocybin available through the Right-to-Try laws – a cause I have long supported.

The following day I made my first-ever visit to Victoria, British Columbia, at the invitation of their local Elder Psychedelic Inquiry Circle (EPIC). Ferrying from Seattle to Vancouver Island, I was pinching myself the entire way.

One of the intentions for my book travels has been to personally greet people I have come to know mainly over zoom calls. In Victoria, I was delighted to connect with Kenneth – a warm, gentle soul, elder artist and highly evolved psychonaut.

Kenneth and his partner used my book launch as an opportunity to call in the members of the EPIC community – a lovely group – for a reading and conversation.

While perusing Kenneth’s extensive library of psychedelic literature, I pulled out a slim volume by Alan Watts. Inside was a folded piece of paper that might have been handed out on a Haight-Ashbury streetcorner – snippet below:

The second paragraph jumped out at me like a message from the past…

Finding My Tribe

In Portland, Oregon, the deeply moving and joyful encounters with people I’d only known through my computer screen continued. And in the midst of it all came the growing recognition that, through this project I am, indeed, connecting with my tribe.

I’d worked out the logistics of the trip from the Pacific Northwest to the Bay Area – renting a car in Portland and driving south with my old college friend. Very soon, the reality of moving from point A to B revealed itself through elegant rolling hills, stunning ocean vistas, and majestic redwood forests.

Stopped en route to meet the legend, Dr. Richard Louis Miller

In the Bay Area, the serendipity continued to unfold as I discovered kindred spirits and new friendships, centered around book events on a delightful houseboat in Sausalito and the stylish and elevated Berkeley Alembic cultural center.

Outside the Berkeley Alembic - they call it “El Monstro”

Back to Cal

As a UC Berkeley alumni (class of ’81), I was honored to be invited to give a departmental seminar at the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, by its director, Michael Silver.

This was a chance to re-connect with Tyler Toueg, a graduate student involved in BCSP’s study investigating the effects of psilocybin on well-being in older adults. I’d met with Silver and Toueg last February, when the study was first launching. Almost six months later, it was interesting to hear about its progress from Toueg and members of the supporting team.

Over the post-seminar dinner, we talked about the challenge of measuring changes in wellness pre- and post-psilocybin session. Some of the older adult volunteers, I was told, took issue with the lengthy and repetitive questionnaires, which some felt were excessively focused on negative outcomes such as suicidality – which the physician overseeing the study explained is an FDA requirement.

I appreciate the need for solid data to support legitimizing psychedelic medicine, particularly when it comes to older adults. That said, I left feeling grateful I’ve been able to document and share qualitative evidence of these changes through the stories of older adults in all their subtlety and poignancy – free of the constraints of scientific protocol.

Santa Cruz

My last stop was in Santa Cruz where the local psychedelic society had decided to celebrate its renewal under new leadership with a festive event focused on psychedelics in older life. There was live music, followed by a lively discussion about my book with SCPS co-executive director Elene Johas Teener. Looking out at the meeting room filled with my contemporaries, I could see that the message of elder empowerment through consciousness-expansion was hitting home.

It was also clear that, with this first leg of book promotion coming to an end, I will need to shift my focus to bringing the ElderVision Circles into being.

Elder Wisdom from Rob Brezsny

While on my travels, my friend Ana Holub sent me a link to the prolific and poetic astrologer’s brilliant take on Elder Wisdom. You can read the whole beautiful affirmation here.

But here’s an excerpt –

For those of you in your sixties and seventies and even beyond:

You may periodically get messages like the following, either subliminally or directly: "Your becoming is finished. What remains is arrangement. Tidy your affairs. Downsize. Distill your wisdom into digestible anecdotes for the young, who won't listen anyway. Make your peace."

I'm here to tell you that this is all a lie.

Here's what's true instead: You have more compost than anyone, 60 or 70 years of it. All of it has been breaking down in you this whole time, becoming the richest soil: every failure you metabolized, every love that ended oddly, every job that hollowed you out, every belief you had to abandon—plus all the glorious, gorgeous, generous stuff, too: the masterpieces you've crafted in the realms of art, intimacy, learning, and rigorous, vigorous living.

You're not running out of material. You're standing on a mountain of it.

And you now possess a power that younger people don't have access to: You have less to lose.

1. That evening’s event in DC inspired an Amazon review scree from someone in the audience who clearly missed the point of my talk and certainly didn’t read the book. If you have read the book and are so inclined, please feel free to offset it with a review of your own…