SoundMind Bulletin 001 • August 2019
Many updates and dates to remember.
First of all, thank you again for coming out to the fundraiser on July 17th! It was great meeting so many of you in-person after weeks/months of knowing online versions of you. It is amazing to feel the energy directed towards this therapy. We are all so excited, and it is even more incredible to be excited together! We didn’t take many photos, but Lily Sage did capture our team speaking, view it here if you haven’t seen it already.
Expanded Access update
As many of you know, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is working toward FDA approval for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to be treated with MDMA through Expanded Access. MDMA has already passed Phase I (safety and dosage) and Phase II (efficacy and side effects) clinical research trials. In Phase III, they are further evaluating efficacy and safety ...
Aug 10-11: Psychedelic Medicine and Cultural Trauma workshop
Our whole therapy team (Michelle Joy, Aisha Mohammed, Jennifer Jones, Bob Sher, and Hannah McLane) plus our community organizer (Ayele Ajavon) are heading to Kentucky next week (Aug 10-11) for a Psychedelic Medicine and Cultural Trauma workshop. The speaker lineup and topics are incredible. It is open to the public and we would love to have an even bigger West Philly contingent there...
Local Psychedelic Medicine Conferences Coming up
Sleeping Octopus Assembly on Psychedelics is Sept 27-29th in Pittsburgh. It is a fun and relaxed time, a nice mix of healthcare workers, psychedelic enthusiasts, and locals. It is fairly MAPS-focused and very fun (more info: https://www.pittsburghsoap.com/). Hannah McLane and Michelle Joy will possibly be presenting and joining a panel discussion as well. We will post more info about this very soon!
Horizons Conference is October 10-14 in New York City (more info https://horizons.nyc/) This is more academic and a range of speakers from various organizations. In the future, we will work on updating you all about PTSD-specific events too, as this is super important to keep up with as we gear up to offer this therapy in West Philly.
Soundmind Groups and Gatherings
We are working to organize a few groups that can meet regularly in West Philly. One is a writing group to get more content for our website, submit to local media or academic journals, and create social media content. And write grants. We’re hoping we find a time that we can meet every couple of weeks in a park or elsewhere and just work on writing together. We may even turn this into a reading-club-writing-group hybrid, in that we can read articles together about PTSD, psychedelics, and social justice, and someone can then write about those to post online. We have a list of topics to choose from if you can’t think of one. If you want to write but haven’t filled out our volunteer form, either fill that out or just email us at info@soundmind.center to be added to that list. We are also starting a music therapy and music creation group, plus a community outreach group – so stay tuned for those.
Picnic in the Park • Saturday August 24th
Mark your calendars for a Picnic in Clark Park! This will be a chance to meet and hang out with others who are involved or looking to get involved. We may have to change days if the weather isn’t good, but ideally we would just have to move to Sunday if it is rainy. We’ll be there from 3–6 PM that day.
This will be a potluck picnic, so bring whatever outdoor-friendly treat you want to share, including your famous onion dip or your libation of choice.
Click the button below to learn more, RSVP, and add this to your calendar.