PT425 – Dr. Gabrielle Lehigh – The Transformative Potential of Psychedelics, Community, and Live Music
Psychedelics Today
Psychedelics Today, LLC
4.6 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2023
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, David interviews Dr. Gabrielle Lehigh: Co-Founder and Managing Director of Psychedelic Grad, a web-based community serving as an educational and career hub for up-and-coming psychedelic professionals; and the host of the related podcast, "Curious to Serious," where she speaks with students and professionals about the path they took to land in the psychedelic field.
Lehigh recently earned her Ph.D. with research on something not many are looking at: the stories behind powerful and transformative psychedelic experiences specifically at music events, based on 38 interviews and over 500 surveys mostly collected at day-long festivals in the southern United States. While the goal was largely data collection in support of the clear potential for therapeutic benefit in using psychedelics in recreational settings (as many of us who have experienced this can attest), she was surprised to learn how many people still blindly trust dealers; how much festival security can affect safety; how the community often makes more of a difference than the music itself; and how many parallels exist between colder clinical models of psychedelic-assisted therapy and the completely open festival experience.
She discusses how she found her way from environmental justice to psychedelics; what people are most looking for on Psychedelic Grad; why she chose to use the word "transformative" in her research; what music she has had her best experiences with; why psychonauts shouldn't forget about Pink Floyd; and much more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody. Welcome to Psychedelics today. My name is David Drapkin, and I'm going to be your host in |
| 0:16.7 | conversation with Gabby LaHai from Psychedelic Grad. Gabby and I have had a couple of chats |
| 0:22.7 | before, once very enjoyably on her podcast, Curious to Serious, back in March 2020, where she |
| 0:30.4 | interviewed me and go check it out. It was really lovely to chat with her, so I thought we |
| 0:34.6 | definitely have to have Gabby on our show, particularly to talk about the organization Psychedelic Grad that she's the director of. |
| 0:42.7 | They are doing a lot in the space for particularly new people that want to enter the psychedelic industry, that want to get training. |
| 0:50.6 | They want to just have some questions asked and to belong to a community. |
| 0:53.6 | So we really enjoy that. |
| 0:54.5 | And it fits nicely with Gabby's role as an anthropologist. |
| 0:58.7 | So she talks about kind of that initial professional academic start to her life in anthropology |
| 1:04.7 | and how it evolved into her current PhD that she literally just finished when we recorded this episode back in April. |
| 1:11.1 | And yeah, an anthropological, psychedelic, focused PhD around festivals |
| 1:16.5 | and how they create this kind of alternate reality for people that use drugs there, |
| 1:21.3 | particularly aspects of liminality and absorption, |
| 1:25.1 | which, yeah, we were really interesting talking about that, |
| 1:27.3 | particularly around the shared experience of being in that reality, which, yeah, we were really interesting talking about that, particularly around |
| 1:27.7 | the shared experience of being in that reality, in a temporary community and the role of |
| 1:33.7 | music and dance and nature in particular. Okay, if you have not yet subscribed to our platform, |
| 1:41.5 | liked and given us a review, then please do. Check us out on social media |
| 1:45.5 | psychedelics today. We are everywhere. Our main website psychedelics today.com has a backlog of all |
| 1:51.3 | of our podcasts, articles and current events happening. And our training website, psychedelic |
| 1:57.5 | education center.com, is full of wonderful content. I'd also love to get some |
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