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Psychedelics & Climate Anxiety — an online workshop

13.07.2021 14:00  – 15:00 

Location: Online (via Zoom)

Did you ever feel despair in the face of the unfolding climate crisis? Did you grieve over the current state of the planet? More and more people are feeling climate anxiety, but there are still few spaces to actually talk about it, to share our experiences, and to think about ways to deal with it.

The RCC Alumni Association together with the RCC are happy to invite you to such a space: please join us for “Psychedelics & Climate Anxiety — an online workshop“ on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 14:00-15:00 CET online on Zoom. Our two presenters, Theresa Leisgang and Raphael Thelen, are engaged journalists and the authors of the recently published “Zwei am Puls der Erde. Eine Reise zu den Schauplätzen der Klimakrise – und warum es trotz allem Hoffnung gibt“, an inward and outward journey to places affected by climate change, from South Africa to the North Cape. The workshop language is English, but you are welcome to ask questions in German as well.

To attend, please register here.


Workshop announcement:

The climate collapse is just one symptom of an underlying perception crisis: the patriarchal gaze that sees the world as a resource at best, an enemy at worst. In this situation it's the Global North on one side, and beyond the frontline – devastation. Aldous Huxley famously called his book about psychedelics “The Doors of Perception”, researchers like Rosalind Watts and Sam Gandy from the Imperial College London later picked up that thread, weaving it with studies about depression and nature connectedness. Their findings: psychedelics have the capacity to increase human nature-connectedness. In the words of one of the participants in their study describing insights from their journey: “Now I understand: I am nature.” This might have high significance in a world that humanity has so far been recklessly driving to the brink of collapse, especially given that psilocybin studies show it is effective against depression. In this workshop we follow the question: Are psychedelics a glimpse of hope for a generation that is increasingly paralyzed by climate anxiety, helping them to regain response-ability?