Summer In Production Notes

Well, this has been an amazing summer so far.  

In June we were able to shoot the start of Dr. Stephen Ross' psilocybin research study, an expanded project designed to further investigate Dr. Charles Grob's amazingly positive results at UCLA.  NYU's Bluestone Research Center hosts the the project.  The great team of intelligent, dedicated, committed people having already found volunteer subjects reporting fantastic, important results for themselves.  

We then went to Baltimore for a second round of interviews with Dr. Bill Richards and Dr. Brian Richards in their magnificent home.  Bill is a pioneer in psychedelic research and therapy and is currently serving as the male guide in the JHU studies.  His work began in the 60's.  The entire history of this research can be told by his life experiences.  Brian represents the second generation of researchers who employ 21st century methods to address quality of life issues for the subjects.

Then I went on to Washington D.C. to take initial steps into interviewing scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse.  They follow this research closely.  I'll have to return for those interviews.

In July we went to Northern California to interview Annie's mother Charlotte who is an amazingly strong fireball at 83. She lives within an hour's drive of Annie and they are making the most out of their time together now.

Frank Echenhofer, a psychologist currently researching ayahuasca at CIIS, granted us a remarkable interview and is generously sharing some of his footage from Peru with us.  We look forward to spending more time with him.  He combines the use of EEG brain activity measurements and subjective reports of his volunteer subjects to explore the relation between internal events and measurable effects in the brain.

These are my production notes which are my take on the research being done.  I am not a scientist so have yet to express eloquently my impressions of the sum total of all this work.  Stay posted...