Don Lattin Stories

Chaplains Are Learning to Become Psychedelic GuidesFrom Harvard to Berkeley and back to Boulder, a robust conversation has begun about bringing trained chaplains into the burgeoning network of those offering psychedelic-assisted therapy and spiritual care.

Chaplains are often ordained in a specific religious tradition, but are also trained to care for people of other faiths — or no faith — in hospitals, prisons, universities, and the military.

Whether it’s counseling families who have just lost a loved one in the emergency room, or dealing with soldiers recovering from the horrors of war, chaplains help people get through the most traumatic events of their lives.
LUCID News
May 4, 2022
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Recent articles for lucid.news
Science and mysticism, the secret psychedelic history of Alcoholics Anonymous, adventures on ketamine, Spanish castle magic, and a couple movie
reviews.

The War on Drugs Halted Research Into the Potential Benefits of Psychedelics
Now it’s finally starting
up again

In the fall of 1965, a 33-year-old father of three named Arthur King—a patient on the alcoholics ward at Baltimore’s Spring Grove Hospital—swallowed an LSD pill and laid back on his bed in a special unit called “Cottage Thirteen.” Sanford Unger, the chief of psychosocial research at the Maryland State Psychiatric Research Center, knelt beside King’s bed, holding his hand and reassuring the patient as he started to feel the drug’s mind-altering effects.

This was not a normal psycho-therapy session. During his 12-hour experience, designed to help stop his destructive drinking habit, King sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the photo of his son that he’d brought. Suddenly, the child became alive in the picture, which initially frightened him. Then King noticed that a lick of his son’s hair was out of place, so he stroked the photo, putting the errant strands back in place. His fear vanished. Later, Unger held out a small vase with a single red rose. King looked at the flower, which seemed to be opening and closing, as though it were breathing. At one point, Unger asked him whether he’d like to go out to a bar and have a few drinks. King didn’t say anything but was shocked when the rose suddenly turned black and dropped dead before his eyes. He never picked up another drink.
Slate, New America. and ASU
January 3, 2017
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Fighting fire with Zen at Tassajara
Monks meditate in the Zendo.

Being at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in the summer and the fall is being with fire, or at least co-existing with the possibility that a sudden fire could sweep through these rugged hills east of Big Sur and devour this historic Buddhist monastery and picturesque hot springs retreat.

That potentiality was certainly on the minds of 75 summer guests who heeded an evacuation order in late July and climbed into four-wheel-drive vehicles for the 14-mile, hour-long escape to tiny Jamesburg, where one finds the comforts of pavement and a road to Carmel Valley.

After burning for nearly three months and scorching an area four times the size of San Francisco, the Soberanes Fire was declared contained in October at a cost of at least $235 million, making it by some accounts the most expensive wildfire battle in U.S. history.
San Francisco Chronicle
November 23, 2016
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Calling all mystics

Clergy psychedelic study
aims to awaken spiritual experiences

Researchers investigating beneficial new uses for psychedelic drugs have set their sights on what may seem an unlikely group of volunteer subjects — your local priest, minister or rabbi.

Scientists at New York University and Johns Hopkins University have already shown positive results in an expanding program where psychotherapists have used psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” to treat depression and acute anxiety in cancer patients.

Roland Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins, is leading the new research, which stems from findings that volunteers who’ve taken psilocybin in a wide variety of research settings often report profound mystical experiences.

Griffiths wonders whether these altered states of consciousness are the same as those reported by longtime meditators or highly religious individuals. And he now has a three-pronged research project that will attempt to answer that question.
Religion News Service
October 22, 2015
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The New Sexual
Ethic
Thou Shalt Have Great Sex.

For most Americans, issues of sexual ethics and sexual morality have long been intertwined with the teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition. But today, growing numbers of people who call themselves “spiritual but not religious,” along with more liberal members of the nation’s churches and synagogues, are looking for a new sexual ethic—one that goes beyond the “thou shalt nots” of organized religion.

Many are searching for a more joyous, sex-positive theology. They are looking to see what their own sexual experiences tell them about spiritual truth—and to connect their spiritual and sexual selves.

This exploration raises as many questions as answers in an era of rapidly changing sexual mores. Today, once-closeted gay couples are living happily ever after in marriage; pornography formerly restricted by obscenity laws is available 24 hours a day for mass consumption online; teens flirt by “sexting”; and online dating sites facilitate everything from quickie hookups to clandestine extramarital activities (“Life is short, have an affair,” suggests Ashley Madison.com, a dating website specifically for married people). Without the sexual rules that once governed our relationships, how do we separate right from wrong? What makes sex “sacred”? What makes it “profane”?
Spirituality & Health
July-August 2013
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The Next Sexual
Revolution
SF minister spreads gospel
of sex in China.

The Rev. Ted McIlvenna, whose pioneering work in the 1960s helped inspire the sexual revolution and the gay rights movement, has a new crusade.

Next month, the 80-year-old Methodist rebel will lead a delegation of 10 sex experts to China to help an emerging class of financially independent Chinese women achieve female sexual empowerment.

“The second sexual revolution is about female sexuality,” said McIlvenna, a San Francisco preacher who owns what may be the world's largest collection of sex books, erotic art and vintage pornography. “And the women of China are starting to say, ‘What about our sexuality?’ ”
San Francisco Chronicle
February 18, 2013
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From Agnostic
to Zoroastrian

Saying “Hello” in Cairo

All I was trying to do was greet Mahmoud, the front desk clerk at my small hotel in the Garden City district of Cairo

“Issallam ‘alaykum,’” I proudly proclaimed.
Momdouh return my morning greeting with a thin smile.
“We don't say that her,” he explained. ”This is a Christian hotel. We say ‘sabah il-khayr‘ or ‘good morning.’”
Travel Writing
December, 2008
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All of us aging hippies and unrepentant cannabis connoisseurs will be forced to face the fact that “we” are “them.” If Prop. 19 passes, and California legalizes the recreational use of marijuana, we must face the (rock) music and accept the fact that the counterculture is now the mainstream culture.
San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, October 29, 2010
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The Rev. Ted McIlvenna, whose pioneering work in the 1960s helped inspire the sexual revolution and the gay rights movement, has a new crusade.

Mitt Romney and the Mormon Song and Dance

Election shows how far religion has come.

The last thing we heard before the lights went down and “The Book of Mormon” began was the couple behind us saying, “They are only two electoral votes apart.”

The New Believers

A surprising number of Asian Students are drawn to the supportive structure of
evangelical congregations.

The Rev. Ted McIlvenna, whose pioneering work in the 1960s helped inspire the sexual revolution and the gay rights movement, has a new crusade.

Mitt Romney and the Mormon Song and Dance Election shows how far religion has come.

The last thing we heard before the lights went down and “The Book of Mormon” began was the couple behind us saying, “They are only two electoral votes apart.”

The New Believers A surprising number of Asian Students are drawn to the supportive structure of evangelical congregations.

Mitt Romney and the Mormon Song and Dance

Election shows how far religion has come.

The New Believers

A surprising number of Asian Students are drawn to the supportive structure of
evangelical congregations.