I have become aware over the last few days of the terrible incident where Gabby Petio, the young blogger from Vanlife, was found dead. I watched the hour-long police video some days before of her and her boyfriend being stopped because of dangerous driving. The result...
A specter is haunting society, and that specter is psychedelic therapy. More precisely, it is the unconscious attitudes around psychedelics, which include a messianic projection of healing, salvation, success and profit onto psychedelic molecules, or Plant Spirit...
by Florian Birkmayer, MD “In order for the branches of the tree of life to grow into heaven, the roots have to grow into hell.” –C. G. Jung in the “Red Book” Some years ago, I came across the term “Negative Capability” in an article by Philip Pullman (who wrote the...
Will power doesn’t heal addiction – living your personal myth does Florian is an addiction specialist and together we have taught classes in Europe and the US on “The Alchemy of Addiction.” In the class we offer the perspective that addiction cannot be healed by will...
We all meet resistance during the journey of healing. It’s natural. When the unconscious starts to hand us uncomfortable information or push us towards inward and outward changes in our lives, the ego will often resist. The ego hates change, uncertainty and not...
In her 1963 novel “The Wall” (Die Wand) the Austrian author Marlen Haushofer (there is also a 2012 film) describes a woman who finds herself living in the Austrian alps by herself, cut off from other humans by a vast invisible wall. She only has a dog, a cat and a...
