Begin Again Moments: Psychedelics
4/19/202618 min
These are just two powerful moments from full Begin Again episodes. Want the full story? You can watch and listen to the complete conversations on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. In this eye-opening episode, Eleanor Mills shares her deeply personal experience with psilocybin, exploring how a guided psychedelic retreat helped her confront fear, let go of the past, and rediscover a sense of connection and purpose. From moments of surrender to profound emotional breakthroughs, Eleanor reflects on how the experience reshaped her understanding of herself and the world around her. Joining the conversation, Professor David Nutt, one of the world’s leading experts on neuroscience and psychedelics, breaks down the science behind hallucinogens. He challenges common misconceptions, explains why substances like psilocybin are classified the way they are, and reveals their potential to treat conditions such as depression and PTSD. Together, they explore the line between stigma and science, risk and healing, asking whether psychedelics could play a transformative role in mental health and personal growth. The full episode with Eleanor Mills can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsxiUp6fV_4&t=2079s The full episode with Professor David Nutt can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e82IejQ3tEI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Eleanor Mills· Guest0:29
Just before I was made redundant from the Sunday Times, I had been on a retreat, uh, in Jamaica where I'd taken some magic mushrooms, and during... It, it was, it was a kind of, um, therapeutic retreat. It wasn't just, like, taking them for larks.
Davina McCall· Host0:44
It was medicine.
Eleanor Mills· Guest0:45
It was medicine.
Davina McCall· Host0:46
It was, it was seen as a medicine where you could- Probably.
Eleanor Mills· Guest0:47
It was a properly- ...
Davina McCall· Host0:48
learn from it ...
Eleanor Mills· Guest0:48
spiritual- Okay ... journey where you were going into taking the magic mushrooms, asking it some questions, and you do three heroic doses in a week. And they call them heroic doses because they want you to reach that point of kind of singularity, where your ego dissolves.
Davina McCall· Host1:03
Does that mean the amount? So it's, it's quite a li- Yeah ... a heroic dose is really- Heroic dose is quite a lot ... gonna be... Okay.
Eleanor Mills· Guest1:07
So I took eight grams of psilocybin, um, and, you know, then I ma- I, a- and everyone was doing that too, so it was a, it was a lot. And what it did was it kind of, on the last day, they said, um, you know, "Take away, throw away everything you don't, you no longer need in your life," um, and all kind of blow it up. And I had this