“I now feel a stronger connection to God, in everything that I do,” says Ahmed, originally from Peterborough and after returning from the US now an honorary fellow at the University of Birmingham’s theology department. “It’s way more pronounced now, in a way that I didn’t anticipate."

"Miriam argues that a deeper, more direct connection with the Sacred can catalyze to rekindling our relationship with our immediate environment."

He and Volat want RiverStyx to stay nimble, able to step in where others are not and where results look most promising. “As a philanthropist, I’m always looking for the leading edge,” Swift says. 

"We have the opportunity to get this right — the interface between mainstreaming of these medicines for alleviation of trauma, without perpetrating more trauma in these keystone communities.” -Miriam Volat

"If we envision a future where indigenous peoples, their medicines, & traditional knowledge are honored, respected, and supported to thrive for generations to come then what specific actions can we take to do no harm, to truly be in right-relationship with these cultures?" 

For Petersen, psychedelic chaplaincy presents itself as a form of spiritual harm reduction in the current paradigm of psychedelic research. “What’s missing is a rigorous and grounded approach for how to hold space for people to reckon with the epistemological and ontological questions that can arise but not always do arise.”

“We’re looking for doctors, nurses and advance-practice providers who have clinically significant symptoms of depression and anxiety. We hope to help them address their feelings of grief, inadequacy and moral distress as a result of caring for COVID patients,” said Dr. Anthony Back, the lead investigator.

"In the west we need to redevelop healthy relationships with these plants - yes they can be dangerous and risky, but that's where relationship is, where we respect those edges. RiverStyx is looking into how to help put a lot of these plant medicines back into a place of honor and respect."

"How does a research study get funded? The most common way is to apply for a grant from the government. But what if what you’re studying is so controversial that government funders won't touch it?"

“Often when we push things out, that’s when they become problematic. Actually bringing them into the fold of society and our consciousness has great power,” Swift says.

"I absolutely loved the guiding work. As a psychologist, there's no other venue where you can see the nature of true psychological healing unfold over this short period of time. You  feel  transcendent love leading to changes in perspective."

"Psychedelics not only have the potential to work at the root level of psychological issues, but if we accept that almost all social problems are psychological in themselves, then psychedelics may help to address the source of almost every other philanthropic effort—from environmental devastation to the volatility in our economic system."

"The campaign war chest for Initiative 502, which would legalize marijuana, swelled by more than $1 million on Monday with new donations from an Ohio insurance magnate and two executives of the Kirkland-based Riverstyx Foundation a family-underwritten foundation which, in its own words, supports “attempts to lessen human suffering caused by fear and misguided social policy.”"

Some spoke of a growing sense of trust in God, of less rigidity and more flexibility in their theological outlook, and of a sense of freedom from striving in their work. Some described what Swift called “an increased openness to other religious pathways, not as an intellectual question only.” Speaking of other religions, one pastor was quoted as saying, “I felt as if I embodied them.”

“We are under threat of physical and cultural extermination,” Evanjuanoy adds. “Colonization has not stopped...We reach out to allies and share our voices [in order to] continue moving forward with protecting our territories and forming alliances, to help each other’s communities resist.”

"The healing centers around colonial trauma. The plant itself is rare and precious, and the culture and the way of life that is deeply connected to the Indigenous people of the US having their own mental and community healthcare system that addresses all of post-colonial ills" - Miriam Volat 

"Native American communities are suffering. Their suffering isn’t something of the past, but those traumas continue to reverberate and continue...and now recognizing that plant medicines are powerful healers. Native communities are already using them and what they need most is support and strategic thinking on how to ensure that they have continued access to that medicine. And that’s what they want most.”

“We’ve lost touch with how to connect to primary religious experience,” she said. “Modern traditions, especially the Abrahamic traditions, are spooked by it. Christianity has burned people at the stake and killed off indigenous traditions for saying (psychoactive) plants can show us another realm of being. It goes deep.”

Pioneering donors including Ferriss, Jesse, businessman Carey Turnbull, T. Cody Swift of the Riverstyx Foundation, and the nonprofit Heffter Research Institute were indispensable in the early years of psilocybin research. “These are the people who have been keeping the flame alive through the darkest years,” Johnson says.

"Kamenetz has a vision. He dreams of a world in which the trauma of the Jewish past can be healed through psychedelic experiences, a world in which chemically assisted mystical encounters are a normative part of Jewish spirituality."

"Brother David's envisions a world when all our family ecosystems are regenerative and organic. Producing our food, clothes, personal care and medicines in ways that support thriving rural economies and biodiverse wild habitats." 

“It’s about generations to come,” said Iron Rope. “To reconnect them to the land and to the medicine. And that’s the healing process that we’ve been missing.”

"So much is happening on a level beyond our consciousness," Swift says. "It showed me that this is not just a recreational tool. It's a profound tool for understanding the mind."

Two studies published Thursday in the Journal of Psychopharmacology — one conducted at Johns Hopkins University and the other at New York University — found that a single dose of psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, can produce immediate, lasting, and positive effects for cancer patients with anxiety and depression.

"Scientists are testing whether drugs that alter consciousness can treat intractable mental health conditions... Potential applications include treating addiction, post traumatic stress disorder, neuropathic pain, epilepsy, and anxiety caused by diagnosis of a life-theratening illness such as cancer...Donors to MAPS, which has a $3.5 million budget this year, include the social justice organizations Libra Foundation and RiverStyx Foundation"