Professor Bill Richards looks at me with kind eyes through the computer screen, his face framed by an overgrown plant, bookshelves and an abstract painting. It hangs behind him in shades of blue, yellow and red, the colours fluid and swirling yet handsomely encased in shapes that have no clear name. If that sounds akin to a psychedelic experience, you’re in luck: because Bill and I are sitting down to discuss just that.
Not one experience in particular, but hundreds of them. Hundreds which Bill has studied in his career as a leader in the field of psychedelic research. He was one of the first to explore psychedelics’ potential for treating addiction as well as end of life anxiety among terminal cancer patients. His passion for this subject began in Germany in 1963, where he studied with the psychologist Abraham Maslow and the psychiatrist Hanscarl Leuner. He returned to the US to carry out psychotherapy research with psychedelics from 1967 to 1977; then, at the height of the War on Drugs, he had to shut things down.
It wasn’t until 1996 that the findings of his seminal research came to light: but the resounding, if long overdue, success of his work has more than made up for the decades of silence. The article that relaunched his career, Implications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism, was published to a rare level of acclaim — one that has never left his side.
Today, Bill sits in the psychiatry department of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he led a study in 2016 on how psilocybin could be used among cancer patients to alleviate depression. It was described as “the most rigorous controlled trial of psilocybin to date”. He appeared in Michael Pollan’s 2022 documentary, How To Change Your Mind, and his much-lauded book, Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, is out in Spanish this May.
Bill is a rare breed in the field of psychedelics in that he straddles both scientific and spiritual sides of the discipline. What’s more, he believes the dichotomy that separates the two is false. “It’s not either-or,” he quips. For Bill, it would be remiss to discuss psychedelics in purely scientific terms, just as it would be reductive to explore only their spiritual dimension.
Alongside his psychology credentials, Bill holds a Master of Divinity from Yale (at which point he wished to become a minister) and a PhD from The Catholic University of America. “I grew up with a father who taught chemistry, physics and geology, and a rather pious mother — so science and religion have always been in my blood,” he says. Today still, he plays the organ in his local Episcopal Church. This dual influence has profoundly impacted Bill — whose ideas, out of all those I have heard, I find to be the most inspirational. The mystical experience induced by psilocybin or ayahuasca is, according to him, not caused by the drugs at all. Rather, these substances unlock what is already in our mind. Religious mystics, Bill argues, can access such states of consciousness without the help of psychoactive compounds.
These “transcendental states of consciousness” defy our categories of thinking about “time and space”. “Sometimes,” Bill adds, “it seems more the realm of philosophy than of science.” Some might perceive such a statement as invalidating the scientific relevance of psychedelics; but that is not Bill’s intention. “These drugs,” he says, have likely been around since the dawn of civilisation. They “emerge in cultures” and then “get suppressed”. We have lost touch with historic knowledge, with wisdom that used to be passed down among our ancestors. “Plato and Dante were writing out of mystical states of consciousness,” Bill claims. “But whether they were natural mystics or were munching on magic mushrooms, I have no idea.”
Bill is a rare breed in that he straddles both the scientific and spiritual sides of the discipline
Dante’s masterpiece The Divine Comedy tells the story of the poet’s voyage from darkness into light: he begins in Inferno paralysed by fear, but evolves as he travels into Paradiso. Bill is a fan of the epic’s final line, often quoting it in interviews. “The Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he muses. “Love is an intelligent energy at the core of creation — not just a mushy, fickle human emotion.” I think there lies the clue to reaching the transcendental state of consciousness he talks about. It is a state of consciousness that we can access through deep connections. There are still parts of the world — namely Peru, Mexico, Gabon and the Pacific Islands — where magic mushrooms and other psychedelic drugs are used ritually as part of sacred traditions. What wisdom do these bring? An enhanced awareness of our space in the world, Bill says. “We tend to think we are these isolated people dancing through the world” when in fact “we are all interrelated”.
Psychedelics can alleviate depression among those who feel lonely and helpless. By unlocking a mystical experience for them, Bill says, they get to the heart of inherent and “intuitive” knowledge — that we are all connected, which in turn unlocks our “inner resources”. Loosely translated, these primal agencies are self-acceptance and self-control. What Bill’s trials with psilocybin have shown is that, by administering just a small dose to patients, they are able to reckon with past trauma and grapple with obstacles standing in the way of inner peace.
His results with cancer patients are especially revealing. Those who ingested psilocybin found it helped to alleviate their fear of death. Many were, for the first time, willing to accept that they were going to die — an acceptance that brought them levity and a sense of personal affirmation. Suddenly they were willing to “engage with their families in meaningful ways,” rather than “hiding in a bedroom and waiting to die,” Bill says. “If the dosage is relatively low, [psilocybin] often triggers memories from childhood. Psychodynamic material, you know? Working through grief, guilt, trauma and interpersonal relationships. That is the realm of conventional psychotherapy.”
Why do such obstacles to legalisation persist, I ask, despite so many studies proving psychedelics are a safe and efficient option for the treatment of mental health disorders? As someone who lived through the War on Drugs (and whose work was so severely impacted by it), I expect Bill will have strong feelings about this. But he remains calm. “I think it needs to progress gradually,” he says. “First, let’s start by using psilocybin in palliative care.” This comes as US clinicians call for MDMA to be licensed in PSTD therapy. (Bill may be more pleased to know that, across the pond in the UK, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has recommended that psilocybin be granted the same freedoms of research as heroin and cocaine).
Despite his gentle manner, Bill does not beat about the bush. “I don’t know about microdosing,” he deadpans when I ask about this. “My area is macro-dosing.” He also believes the ongoing stigma around psychedelics is largely unjustified. When a ‘bad trip’ occurs, Bill argues, it is not because the drug itself is dangerous, but because people are not consuming it in the right circumstances. Often, Bill notes, because they have not been properly briefed on its effects or how to use psychedelics in a safe environment. “Like skiing or scuba diving for the first time: it’s good to get some instructions first,” he says.
Bad trips occur because the person using psychedelics is not facing the fears that have been dragged up from the depths. People are often reluctant to come face to face with themselves, Bill says. English writer Alan Watts called it “the taboo of knowing who you are”. I tell Bill the story of my ayahuasca retreat last summer, probably the most difficult experience I have ever endured.
“What happens if you see the giant anaconda serpent?” he responds. (Not the vision I had, but I see what he is getting at). “If you run from it, you’re going to enter a panic. A paranoia. So what do you do? You dive headfirst into its mouth and look at the world through its eyes. You become the anaconda,” he smiles.
These psychedelic experiences are not for the faint-hearted. They are intense, challenging, even violent. But they can also be beautiful and the rewards are priceless. By learning to accept and be at peace with ourselves, we also begin to heal the “wounds of society”, Bill says. Psychedelics encourage us to be “more inventive, creative, and proactive” when it comes to “empowering people who are disenfranchised”. In a divided and war-stricken world, I find this to be truly inspirational.
Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, is out now. Its 10th translation, into Spanish, is out in May
