IMAGE & DESIGN BY STEVEE POSTMAN WWW.STEVEE.COM
 

MIND
STATES
JAMAICA

October 1-6, 2002

Ticket Info
&
Location Info


Join us in beautiful Jamaica
for a conciousness-expanding seminar
unlike anything you've ever experienced before!

May 28: Conference Update, Plans Moving Ahead on Schedule...
For questions or to join our mailing list, e-mail mindstates@prodigy.net


PRESENTERS

Richard Glen Boire - Earth Erowid - Fire Erowid
Alex Grey - Jon Hanna - Stephen Kent - Jonathan Ott
Mark Pesce - Ann Shulgin - Sasha Shulgin, Ph.D.



Note: Erowid has provided web space for the Mind States conference, but is not involved in the organization of this event in any way.

RICHARD GLEN BOIRE is the Executive Director of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics. Richard holds a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an expert on constitutional and criminal law, specializing in the jurisprudence of extraordinary states of consciousness, dissident thinking, and shamanic inebriants. As well, Richard is the author of several books exploring the law of visionary plants and drugs, and has written numerous articles on the topic, which have appeared in publications such as the California Lawyer, Eleusis, The Entheogen Review, The Journal of Cognitive Liberties, The Resonance Project, the Journal of American Medical Association, Journal of Drug Issues, and Crash Collusion. From 1993-1999, Richard was the editor of The Entheogen Law Reporter (TELR), a quarterly journal on law, policy, commentary, and control theory of visionary plants and drugs.

Richard will be presenting two talks: "Rastafarians: From the roots of to today's Jamaican Drug Scene" and "Mother May I?: Adventures Through Control Culture (a postmodern look at how culture operates, with high-level techniques for evading control)."

EARTH EROWID co-created The Vaults of Erowid (www.erowid.org) in 1996. This non-commercial site collects high-quality data and publishes original research on the topic of visionary plants and drugs. The site currently receives over 250,000 unique visitors per month and has over 15,000 public documents and over 3000 images. Earth has written and edited hundreds of documents published on-line and his writing has also appeared in print publications such as The Resonance Project and The Entheogen Review, and he is a contributing editor to Trip magazine.

Earth and Fire will be co-presenting three talks: "The State of Drug Information 2002", "Grass Roots Peer Review", and "Drug Geeks : The Role of Informed Peers in Psychoactive Drug Information".
FIRE EROWID co-created The Vaults of Erowid (www.erowid.org) in 1996 (see description above). She has been the primary designer and chief editor of the Erowid site since its inception. Fire has innovated and developed drug information designs that have been emulated across the web. Her work is cited by newspapers, books, school education programs, college classes, and professional seminars around the world. Her well-referenced article "70 Common Drug Myths," which appeared in The Resonance Project, exemplifies the dedication to straight-forward, factual information that has become the hallmark of the Erowid web site. Fire is also a contributing editor to Trip magazine.

Earth and Fire will be co-presenting three talks: "The State of Drug Information 2002", "Grass Roots Peer Review", and "Drug Geeks : The Role of Informed Peers in Psychoactive Drug Information".

ALEX GREY is a visionary artist best known for his depictions of the human body that "x-ray" the multiple layers of reality, revealing the complex integration of body, mind, and spirit. His paintings have been featured on the cover of albums by the Beastie Boys and Tool, in Newsweek magazine, on the Discovery Channel, rave flyers and sheets of blotter acid, and have been exhibited throughout the world. His books include Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey, his philosophical text, The Mission of Art, and the recent Transfigurations. Sounds True released The Visionary Artist, an audiotape of Alex's art, philosophy, and vision practices. See www.alexgrey.com and www.sacredmirrors.com.

Alex will be presenting a talk and a workshop on the topic of visionary art.
JON HANNA is a free-lance writer, editor, and graphic artist. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art, and has written for High Times, The Resonance Project, Morbid Curiosity, and has a regular column titled "Sources" in The Entheogen Review. He is the author of the Psychedelic Resource List (now in its fourth edition), and recent editing projects included the book Ketamine: Dreams and Realities by Dr. Karl Jansen, and a guest co-editing stint with Sylvia Thyssen for two special issue of the MAPS Bulletin--one that focused on the intersection of Psychedelics and Creativity, and a second that dealt with "Sex, Spirit, and Psychedelics." Jon was a producer of Mind States conferences in 1997 and 2001, in Berkeley, CA. Speaking gigs in 2002 include presentations at the Towards a Science of Consciousness conference in Tucson, Arizona and the Ayahuasca Healing Retreat in Manaus, Brazil, and the BOOM Festival in Portugal..

Jon will be presenting on the topic of psychedelics and animation.

STEPHEN KENT is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who has become one of the most acclaimed didjeridu players on the contemporary global music scene. Stephen grew up in Britain and East Africa, and learned to play didjeridu while working in Australia during the early 1980s as musical director of Circus Oz. After spending time among Aborigines in the Northern Territory, the didjeridu became a focal part of his music. He has performed in the groups Lights in a Fat City, Trance Mission, The Beasts of Paradise, and Megadrums, as well as with Steve Roach, Kenneth Newby, and Terence McKenna. Stephen also programs a weekly World Music radio show. See www.didjeridu.com/skent.html.

Stephen will be presenting an instructional workshop on how to play the didjeridu, as well as providing an electrifying evening performance.
JONATHAN OTT is a prolific and highly regarded writer, translator, publisher, reviewer, and pundit on virtually every aspect of entheogen botany, chemistry, pharmacology, bioassay, culture, history, and politics. The term entheogen itself is most closely attributed to him; he was one of the people who helped coin it, and its propogation as a meme is due in large part to its use in his books. Jonathan has also produced and co-produced numerous conferences and seminars on entheogens over the past 25+ years. Jonathan was the translator of Albert Hofmann's 1979 LSD--Mein Sorgenkind (first published in English in 1980 as LSD: My Problem Child), and produced an English translation of On Aztec Botanical Names by Blas Pablo Reko. Articles and excerpts of his books have been translated into numerous other languages. His writing has appeared in numerous journals, and he is co-editor--with Giorgio Samorini--of the bilingual publication Eleusis: Journal of Psychoactive Plants & Compounds.

Jonathan will be presenting two talks: "Shamanic Snuffs or Entheogenic Errhines" and "Pharmacomania or Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde."

MARK PESCE founded the Interactive Media Program at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. An author of three books and journalist, contributing to WIRED, Feed, and Salon.com, Pesce is best known as the co-creator of the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), which brought 3-D graphics to the World Wide Web, and is a core component of the forthcoming MPEG-4 standard for interactive video broadcasting. Pesce is also a a Contributing Editor to TRIP: the Journal of Psychedelic Culture, which has been publishing his "On Drugs" series of essays on civil liberties throughout 2002. During his tenure at USC, Pesce co-wrote, directed and co-produced an adaption of the Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, updating it thematically and musically for the age of Information and the current culture of dance and electronica. Pesce's latest book, The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming our Imagination, examining the high-tech tsunami of the 21st century--and its expression in children's toys--was published by Ballantine Books in October 2000.

Mark will be presenting two talks: ""Bios and Logos" and "Year of Juilee".
ANN SHULGIN is a researcher and writer who--for a time, while they were still legal--worked with psychedelics such as MDMA and 2C-B as a lay-therapist. Her unique insight into the beneficial effects that psychedelics can have is invaluable. With her husband Sasha, she has co-authored the books Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved: A Chemical Love Story (PIHKAL) and the long-anticipated sequel, Tryptamines I Have known and Loved: The Continuation (TIHKAL), and is currently working on a forthcoming book that dabbles in cactus quinoline alkaloids, tentatively titled Book 3.

Ann will be presenting a talk on "Places in the Psyche," describing the varieties of psychedelic experiences--places where you can find yourself, both good and awful--and how to deal with them, and a second talk related to "The Shadow."

SASHA SHULGIN, Ph.D. is a pharmacologist and chemist who has synthesized and bioassayed hundreds of psychoactive compounds. He has written the book Controlled Substances: A Chemical & Legal Guide to Federal Drug Laws, and along with his wife Ann, he co-authored the books PIHKAL and TIHKAL. He is currently working on a forthcoming book that dabbles in cactus quinoline alkaloids, tentatively titled Book 3, and also spends his time fielding questions for Ask Dr. Shulgin on the Alchemind Society web-site.

Sasha will be presenting two talks "Psychoactive Cacti" (a discussion of several psychoactive cacti, and the presentation of an outline of the analytical procedures used to determining what active alkaloids are present), and "Synthetic Psychedelics" (a review of the known synthetic psychoactive compounds, and some speculation as to what might appear in the future).


TICKET INFORMATION

$1,300.00 per person

Payment for tickets should be made out to Mind States, and sent to:

Mind States
POB 19820 (Dept. EW)
Sacramento, CA 95819

Ticket purchases are non-refundable.

Payment can be made with a credit card only through PayPal, by sending the money to the e-mail address mindstates@prodigy.net. PayPal accounts are easy to set up, and they provide a secure means to transfer funds electronically at no cost.

Payment sent via snail mail must REACH us no later than September 27th. Payment sent electronically via PayPal must be made by September 28th. Please e-mail us to let us know that payment has been mailed or sent via PayPal so we will know to keep a look out for it. Unfortunately, unless we receive payment by these deadlines, we are unable to reserve a spot at the event.

Contact mindstates@prodigy.net for registration details.



LOCATION INFORMATION

Jamaica is an island paradise, with beautiful white sand beaches, a turquoise sea, coral reefs, swaying palm trees, winding mountain rivers, and spectacular waterfalls. To paraquote one guidebook: "It is a 'far-out' setting where you can drool over sunsets of hallucinogenic intensity that have nothing to do with the 'magic' mushrooms that show up in omelettes and teas." Our seminar will be held in Negril, "a place where inhibitions are lost and pleasures of the flesh rule." Although strictly speaking, Cannabis is illegal in Jamaica, it is clearly tolerated to a larger degree than in the United States: "Herb is a part of daily life in Negril so don't be surprised if your first potential supplier is your hotel porter and you lose count of the men who hiss 'sensi' as you pass them in the street." Of course, Jamaica is also renown for its 'world' music, particularly the reggae of Bob Marley and others. The attitude in Negril, as well as most of Jamaica, is laid-back and "hippie friendly."

Water sports such as snorkeling, scuba diving, glass-bottomed boats, and fishing voyages by canoe may be highlights of your time spent in Jamaica; reefs are crowded with soft and hard coral, brightly colored sponges and fish, octopuses, starfish, turtles, and more. There are several sunken wrecks off the coast that have become artificial reefs, including a ganga-smuggling plane that misjudged its landing at Negril airstrip, and another such plane that was sunk deliberately. Jamaica's second largest wetland is in the Negril area, with over 6000 acres of rivers, peat bogs, and grasses, running directly parallel to the beach. This is a haven for shrimp, rare plants, and birds.

To make the most of your time in Jamaica, we suggest that you purchase a guide book, which will provide you with an abundance of information about the sights and activities available.

Although you don't need a passport to enter Jamaica, it may be easier if you have one. Without a passport you will need your original birth certificate and a photo ID.

Click here for more about our 2001 event:
Mind States: Further Perspectives on Altered Consciousness

Click here for more about our 1997 event:
Mind States: Current Perspectives on Visionary Plants & Drugs


Note: Erowid has provided web space for the Mind States conference, but is not involved in the organization of this event in any way.