#77: Albert Garcia-Romeu - Priests on Psychedelics, Transcendent Experiences, and the Search for Meaning | The Psychedelic Series (5/5)
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Episode Description
Today, we’re visited by Albert Garcia-Romeu, one of the key members of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Coming from Miami, Albert grew up with a thirst for knowledge and a boundless intellectual capacity to improve. He read everything he could and developed a love for poetry and philosophy from a very early age. Those intellectual pursuits took him through a college career at Tulane University before working for the Forest Service in Montana. Venturing out into the wilderness, Albert had meditative experiences with nature that profoundly moved him.
Albert began to try and study what he called Transcendent Experiences in order to merge his love of psychology and philosophy with this moving experience he had with nature. That quest took him to California, where he started to conduct his research on these seemingly mystical events. From there, he followed his results and began to work in the realm of psychedelic drugs which had him move across the country, change his perspective, and set him on a path into the unknown world of psychedelic therapy.
Show Notes
Childhood: Albert describes growing up in Miami, his family, and his interests as a young child.
Philosophy: Always reading anything he could, Albert developed a love for existential philosophy which branched into Daoism and the Ancient Greeks.
Adventure In Nature: Growing up in cities, Albert and his friends wanted to get out into nature and submerge themselves deep in the forest away from civilization.
Meditation: In college, he began to go to a meditation group where he was exposed to a variety of techniques that provided unique experiences.
Finding A Path: Coming out of college, Albert was unsure about his path in life but found direction and perspective doing odd jobs.
Vapid Life: Albert and Sam discuss striking the right balance of a party filled-life, and how to make a lifestyle like that substantial.
Moving Forward: Albert begins to revitalize his interest in these mind-altering moments, and moves to California to begin research at Grad School.
Transcendent Experiences: Trying to academically quantify what is so hard to express, Albert, talks about his research working with individuals who have had profound existential experiences.
A New Beginning: Albert’s research leads him to a conference in Tucson, where he gets an opportunity to work at Johns Hopkins University
Breaking New Ground: Albert discusses what he does at Hopkins, and sheds light on some of the medicinal qualities of psilocybin.
Ego Death: The existential quality of a transcendent experience, Albert reflects on his patients’ feelings towards death and life during sessions.
The Plunge: Albert describes a story in which a patient had an interesting psychedelic experience related to her addiction to cigarettes.
Future Research: Albert discusses where the future of his research may go, as well as the potential groundbreaking aid that something like psilocybin can have on the Western Medical World.
Links From the Episode
Michael Pollan-How to Change Your Mind: https://michaelpollan.com/
Ken Wilber: https://integrallife.com/who-is-ken-wilber/
Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/research/BPRU/
Links to presentations by Albert: https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/garcia-romeu
Alterations in Resting-State Functional Connectivity Link Mindfulness Meditation With Reduced Interleukin-6: A Randomized Controlled Trial: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006322316000792
Epicurus (341—271 B.C.E.): https://iep.utm.edu/epicur/
