Program Recordings

Ketamine: The Promise & Peril brings together clinicians and journalists for a thoughtful discussion on one of the most complex substances in contemporary mental health and psychedelic care.

At once an anesthetic, a therapeutic tool, and a substance with real risks of misuse and dependency, ketamine occupies a unique and often poorly defined place in medicine and culture. In this panel, Howard Kornfeld, MD, and Will Barone, PsyD, moderated by Annie Oak, examine ketamine’s clinical promise alongside its medical, psychological, ethical, and societal risks.

Topics explored in this conversation include:

- ketamine’s therapeutic potential in psychiatry, trauma care, pain treatment, and recovery
- the differences between structured ketamine-assisted care and unsupervised use
- addiction risk, dependency patterns, and “therapeutic self-medication”
- ketamine-induced cystitis and other harms associated with frequent use
- prescriber responsibility, overuse, and the risks of low-oversight treatment models
- black market ketamine, adulteration concerns, and harm reduction in social settings
- preparation, integration, frequency, and what responsible ketamine care can look like

This panel invites a balanced and honest conversation about ketamine in its full reality: a substance with genuine healing potential, real peril, and many grey areas in between.

Panelists:

Howard Kornfeld, MD — a Diplomate in Pain Medicine, recognized by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine
Will Barone, PsyD — a Clinical Psychologist based in Oakland, CA who has focused his career on researching and implementing psychedelic-assisted therapies to improve the treatment of mental health conditions
Moderator: Annie Oak — psychedelic journalist and event producer based in San Francisco, CA Q&A.

In Part 1 of our 3-part Psychedelic Chemistry Basics series, chemist Paul Daley offers a rich introduction to the history, structure, and significance of phenethylamines—the compound class at the heart of many of Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin’s most important contributions to psychedelic chemistry. Protégé of Sasha Shulgin and steward of the Shulgin lab, Paul begins with a broad historical overview before exploring the chemistry of phenethylamines, including their relationship to mescaline, their role in the history of psychedelic science, and how structural changes can influence activity, duration, and effects. The session also includes discussion of entactogens, receptor science, and a live audience Q&A.

In this intimate class, Dr. Paul Daley, latter-day colleague and sidekick of the legendary psychedelic chemist, Sasha Shulgin, guides us through the groundbreaking work Shulgin did in the realm of novel tryptamine chemistry, sharing insights into how his discoveries have shaped the field and where they might take us in the future. If anyone has had the pleasure of a whiteboard chemistry lesson from Paul, tucked by the fireplace in Sasha's old lab, you know how special it feels to be an audience to his curiosity and wonder. This is a rare opportunity to learn from someone who learned from Sasha himself.

In this intimate class, Dr. Paul Daley, latter-day colleague and sidekick of the legendary psychedelic chemist, Sasha Shulgin, guides us through the groundbreaking work Shulgin did in the realm of novel tryptamine chemistry, sharing insights into how his discoveries have shaped the field and where they might take us in the future. If anyone has had the pleasure of a whiteboard chemistry lesson from Paul, tucked by the fireplace in Sasha's old lab, you know how special it feels to be an audience to his curiosity and wonder. This is a rare opportunity to learn from someone who learned from Sasha himself.

Many interesting and useful compounds are found in plants. In this session, Dr. Paul Daley addresses basic chemistry relevant to isolating these materials through plant extraction, cleanup of crude preparations, compound separation, and analytical detection. Important concepts include the nature of partitioning between phases (immiscible liquid pairs, stationary and moving liquid phases, and liquid and moving vapor phases), used routinely in cleanup and chromatography.

Much of psychedelic history has been erased, forgotten, or never formally recorded — clandestine out of necessity. At this gathering at Shulgin Farm, we took the opportunity to talk about lost information in the archives, to honor the missing decades of underground practice, and to recognize the women and elders who have carried this wisdom forward. This intimate AMA featured Adele Getty and Maria Mangini, two longtime contributors to the psychedelic movement whose lives and work illuminate the sacredness of community care.

Shulgin Foundation‬ hosted neuroscientist Dr. Gül Dölen and Joe Dolce, author of Modern Psychedelics: The Handbook for Mindful Exploration, for an eye-opening talk on Dr. Dölen’s research, which is changing how we think about psychedelics and their effects on the brain. Her early work showed that even octopuses become more social on MDMA, suggesting these effects go back millions of years. More recent studies suggest psychedelics could reopen "critical periods" in the brain—windows when we’re especially open to learning. They explore how this science could shape new treatments for conditions like depression, addiction, and PTSD, and what it might tell us about consciousness itself.