Dr Anna Waldstein, a leading expert on the political and spiritual dimensions of medicinal plant-use, along with multi-award winning novelist Joanna Kavenna and Chair of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, David Nutt discussed the root of our cultural ambivalence towards ‘intoxicants’ at the ‘How the Light Gets In’ festival last year. The session was moderated by Güneş Taylor, a training fellow at the Francis Crick Institute
A recording of the session, title ’Dangerous desires: Must we adopt a new attitude to social drugs?’ is now online.
Is the drive to explore one’s different levels of consciousness universal? How should we understand (and indeed pronounce) the word ‘recreational’ in contemporary discussions of drugs? How can we move on from ‘unconscious party culture’? What are the alternative social imaginations for cannabis?
Watch Dr Waldstein’s thought provoking contributions to this three-segment debate here