How are we facing death and illness in the age of COVID? What’s the current state of death in the culture at large?

How will an individual experience of facing death be shifted when psychedelic therapy becomes widely available?

How would a society that embraces psychedelic experiences approach death and dying?

Many institutions seem to be coming to an end. Can we embrace and benefit from this time of dissolution and transition?

Maria Mangini, PhD, FNP
Tony Back, MD
Ladybird Morgan, RN, MSW
In conversation with Liana Gillooly

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📷Mariavittoria Mangini, PhD, FNP has written extensively on the impact of psychedelic experiences in shaping the lives of her contemporaries, and has worked closely with many of the most distinguished investigators in this field. She is a founder of the Women’s Visionary Council, a nonprofit organization that supports investigations into non-ordinary forms of consciousness and organizes gatherings of researchers, healers, artists, and activists whose work explores these states.

📷Anthony Back, MD is a medical oncologist and palliative medicine physician at the University of Washington, and will be graduating from the CIIS Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research Certificate program later this year. He cofounded a nonprofit startup Vitaltalk to scale communication skills training for doctors and nurses, based on NIH-funded research, that has reached more than 100,000 clinicians. He published a first-person account of his own experience (What Psilocybin Taught Me About Dying) in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

📷Ladybird Morgan, RN, MSW has worked as a registered nurse, clinical social worker, healer and educator for 20+ years. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Humane Prison Hospice Project. Ladybird has worked with The Zen Hospice Project, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and is currently a staff member at Commonweal. She holds space for families and caregivers, medical practitioners, as well as directors of programs and institutions around the world to find their clearest voice as they step across significant thresholds in aging, life and at death.

📷Liana Sananda Gillooly is a lifelong advocate for social justice, drug policy reform, ending war, and environmental protection. She is Development Officer for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and Co-Founder of North Star, working to integrate psychedelic wisdom into emerging industry surrounding the field of psychedelics. She is a trained death midwife and has given a TedX talk "Is There a Better Way to Die?"

Psychedelics & Death