In this episode, syde & WarcoBrienza welcome Abigail Calder, PhD candidate at University of Fribourg.

For decades, most rhetoric about psychedelics focused on their negative effects. This might make it seem like we know all there is to know about bad reactions to psychedelics – but how much do we really know? In her recent talk at ALPS conference 2023, Abigail aimed to separate fact from fiction and give an update on the unwanted, negative effects that can occur with psychedelics, in all settings.  

Questions to Abigail Calder:

• What are the main adverse effects expected from psychedelics ? 
• What is the chance of getting a bad trip with MDMA or LSD ? Can you provide some kind of probability based on your research ?  
• And what would be the least risky psychedelic after your research ?
• During a psychedelic experience, How could we distinguish an hallucination from an insight ?
• How can psychedelics influence people’s values ? Changing people’s values … this is where marketing or even education failed!

Biography of Abigail Calder:

Abigail Calder is a PhD candidate at the University in Fribourg, Switzerland, where she heads a research project on the effects of LSD on neuroplasticity in healthy people. She also conducts research into the adverse effects of psychedelics and their underlying causes, as well as psychedelics’ effects on people’s values and well-being, and she recently joined the ALPS Foundation as its research coordinator. She completed her Master’s degree in neuroscience at the University of Bonn and holds a Bachelor’s in psychology from TU Dresden.

This interview was recorded during the Alps Conference 2023 on psychedelic research in Geneva, Switzerland on 27.10.2022. More info on the Alps Conference here