I met Molly Hickey in the early hours at my guesthouse, during my time in Peru: she was having a (loud) phone conversation outside my room… But asking her to keep her voice low was not the last time we had a conversation.
Later that same morning, I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to engage more scientists on my podcast. With genuine sense of curiosity Molly asked me about the topic of my podcast and upon learning, was delighted to participate and contribute with her perspectives gained through years of work in the field of neuropharmacology.
Molly’s specific work focus is psilocybin. In fact, I attended one of her talks in Pisac, Peru where she presented some of the promising results of certain psychedelics and psychedelic compounds showing a great potential in curing and helping people deal with different mental health illnesses, including PTSD, depression, anxiety – amongst many others.
In her windswept manner, she agreed to be interviewed in the two hours between the talk and before hosting her own storytelling night in Pisac, only to next day catch a flight to Iquitos, Peru. A town known as a gateway to the Amazon – from where thousands of people depart into the jungle to sit with the plant medicine.
Molly was on her way to participate and support a study conducted by Onaya Science with the indigenous Shipibo tribe, focusing on the effects of Ayahuasca, an entheogenic plant, endemic to the Amazon rainforest, for centuries used in ceremonies and healing rituals. The study was looking at the healing effects on trauma and PTSD in veterans.
On the eve of Molly’s departure, our conversation ventured into a few tangential topics that might pique your further interest in what it really takes to be a human being…
We spoke about various states of consciousness including psychosis and dreams. Molly had shared her personal experiences with psychedelics that helped her look beyond the symptoms previously treated by the conventional allopathic medicine.
From the anecdotes and stories gathered through her studies and professional research in the field of psychedelics, she shares an emerging perspective of plant medicine’s potential to help us lift up the veil of daily conditioning and deeply rooted trauma – to help us re-write our own stories and ingrained beliefs.
A thought explored in-depth by Robert Whitaker in the “Anatomy of an Epidemic“: while useful in some cases, current approach to prescribing medication for mental health illnesses lacks sufficient therapeutic and self-questioning to increase the probability of cure. The process which perhaps medicates away the very signposts from our subconscious that is trying to show us where we really need to be and what we truly need to look at…
I am delighted to invite you to be part of this conversation. Just like the lively and wiggly dancing lines of Molly’s art – it definitely went places.
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