The State of Ecstasy: About the Speakers
Conference Speakers. The State of Ecstasy: The Medicine, Science and Culture of MDMA. The Golden Gate Club at the Presidio, San Francicsco, CA. Friday, February 2, 2001, 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM.
Jose Carlos Bouso
Mr. Bouso was born in Madrid in 1970, and graduated with a degree in psychology from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in 1994. He researched at the Department of Biologic Psychology and Health at the Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, from 1994 to 1998, collaborating in research related with psychotherapy, psychopharmacology and computerized cerebral cartography. During the years 1996 to 2000 he worked with juvenile delinquents in a Madrid remand home. Bouso is currently developing an authorized MDMA/PTSD protocol at the Psychiatric Hospital of Madrid, and will focus on this work for his PhD dissertation at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.
John Cloud
John Cloud is a staff writer at Time, where he has worked since 1997. Previously, he was a senior writer at Washington City Paper, D.C.'s alternative weekly, and he has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Out magazine. He covers social issues for Time, writing often about sex and drugs but not rock and roll. In 2000, he wrote a cover story for Time about ecstasy.
Rick Doblin, Ph.D.
Founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a non-profit membership-based research and educational organization that is sponsoring clinical studies designed to obtain FDA approval for the use of MDMA as a prescription medicine. Rick recently obtained a Public Policy Ph.D. from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. His dissertation focused on the regulation of the medical use of psychedelics and marijuana.
George Greer, M.D.
George Greer, M.D. is Medical Director of the Heffter Research Institute and psychiatrist in private practice. From 1980 to 1985, he and his psychiatric nurse wife conducted over 100 therapeutic sessions with MDMA for 80 individuals. In 1985, Dr. Greer was involved in an extensive hearing process with the Drug Enforcement Administration to keep MDMA available for medical research, and coordinated a lobbying campaign in Congress to prevent restrictions on research with new psychedelic drugs in 1986. From 1992 to 1998 he was Clinical Director of Mental Health Services for the New Mexico Corrections Department.
Charles S. Grob, M.D.
Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Grob conducted the first FDA approved study assessing the effects of MDMA in humans, and he was the Principal Investigator of a biomedical research project on the Amazonian plant hallucinogen ayahuasca. He has lectured and written extensively on the issue of hallucinogens and MDMA.
Steve Heilig, M.P.H.
Steve Heilig is director of Public Health and Education for the San Francisco Medical Society, founding Co-Editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, and Director of the Bay Area Network of Ethics Committees. He is a widely published author and frequent lecturer at universities and hospitals, with a focus on medicine and policy, and environmental health. He has been a Join Together /Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in substance abuse issues. In 1993 he authored a still-definitive review of MDMA research for the California Society of Addiction Medicine.
Jessica Malberg, Ph.D.
Jessica Malberg received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1998, where she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Lewis Seiden and published several papers investigating the interaction of environmental temperature, core body temperature and MDMA-induced neurotoxicity in the rat. Jessica is currently a Post-Doctoral Associate at Yale University in the Department of Psychiatry, working in the laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry.
Ethan Nadelmann, Ph.D., JD
Ethan Nadelmann is one of the world's most respected and high profile critics and commentators on U.S. and international drug control policies. His critiques of U.S. drug control policies and recommendations regarding harm reduction strategies and other alternatives to punitive drug prohibition have attracted international attention and played a decisive role in stimulating the growing debate over drug policy worldwide. Nadelmann received his B.A., J.D., and Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard as well as a Masters degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Nadelmann founded the Lindesmith Center and now serves as the Executive Director of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, which merged in July, 2000. He is author of the book, Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement (1993), and a highly regarded expert on the international aspects of crime and law enforcement. He also co-edited the book, Psychoactive Drugs & Harm Reduction: From Faith to Science (1993).
David Nichols, Ph.D.
Dr. Nichols has been at Purdue University since 1974, and has published more than 200 research articles on various aspects of the medicinal chemistry and neuropharmacology of drugs that act in the brain. The general theme of his research is to understand how changes in brain neurochemistry affect behavior, through the use of molecular probes. His laboratory has published numerous studies elucidating details both of the mechanism of action of MDMA, and of the biochemical events related to the neurotoxic effects seen in animals following MDMA administration. Dr. Nichols coined the name entactogen to describe the unique psychopharmacological effects of MDMA and related compounds.
Dustianne North, M.S.W.
Dustianne North graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA in 1994 with an undergraduate degree in World Arts and Cultures and Anthropology. Her graduate work has focused on Social Welfare, a field in which she is now a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA. North founded the Gathering of the Tribes Conference and Festival, which is held in Los Angeles each spring to allow underground 'tribal dance collectives' to share their knowledge and talent bases. These 'tribes' have become a source of academic and personal inspiration for North, as they represent a movement toward a more community-based model of living, learning, and celebrating. After nearly a decade of participating in the Los Angeles tribal underground, North has witnessed the evolution of the culture and the role of Ecstasy in its development.
Marcela Ot'alora, M.F.A.
A native of Colombia South America, Ot'alora went to the US in 1980 to attend the University of Maine. In 1987 she received a Master's of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has been an artist and a teacher for eighteen years. She is in Madrid, Spain working as a therapist in an MDMA and PTSD project.
George Ricaurte, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Ricaurte received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1979, and his medical degree from Northwestern University Medical School in 1981. He has been with the Department of Neurobiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine since 1988. His research and subsequent findings for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, especially that on MDMA neurotoxicity, has gained him much notoriety and respect. Dr. Ricaurte has authored/co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and 30 book chapters.
Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D.
Dr. Rosenbaum is Director of the San Francisco office of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation. A medical sociologist and the mother of a teenaged son, she has had both a professional and a personal interest in drug education. In 1994, she co-authored Pursuit of Ecstasy: The MDMA Experience, a definitive study of MDMA users (the first sociological research on Ecstasy funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Emanuel Sferios
Founder and National Director of DanceSafe, a non-profit organization promoting health and safety within the rave and nightclub community. DanceSafe’s activities include performing laboratory analyses of street drugs, providing literature on safer use of drugs, and staffing harm reduction information tables at events and nightclubs across North America.
Alexander Shulgin, Ph.D.
Author of close to 200 scientific research papers, 20 patents, 3 books and 10 book chapters. For 30 years he held a license to analyze psychedelic drugs, during which time he synthesized nearly 200 chemicals related to psychedelic drugs and re-discovered MDMA.
Ann Shulgin
Writer, artist, wife and mother who guided many people through therapy sessions using MDMA before it became illegal. In her books and lectures, she provides illuminating accounts of these experiences. As well as PIKHAL and TIKHAL, she has authored or co-authored several book chapters and articles on the therapeutic and spiritual uses of psychedelics.
Sue Stevens Sue Stevens is the widow of Shane Stevens who passed away from cancer on October 2, 1999. The couple had tried MDMA therapy to confront many issues in their relationship that were affected by his cancer. They believe that the MDMA sessions allowed Shane an extra three years of life or more, due to the emotional & psychological changes they experienced during and after the sessions. It is their dream that one day others will be able to get this help and not have to break the law as they did.
