Dua Lipa Interviews 'Queen Of Psychedelics' Amanda Feilding On Her 6-Decade Exploration Of Psychoactive Drugs

Multi-awarded singer Dua Lipa has been interviewing some interesting folks in her BBC’s “At Your Service” series. This season she invited psychedelics pioneering researcher and advocate Amanda Feilding, aka “the Queen of Psychedelics” or also “The High Priestess of LSD.”

Feilding has dedicated six decades of her career to research into consciousness, the exploration of altered states of mind and psychoactive drugs including cannabis, MDMA, LSD and psilocybin. Today, that work is done through the Beckley Foundation.

The BBC episode moves between past and present use and research on psychedelics.

“Now, there are many ways in which one can change one's consciousness. But what is fascinating is our ancestors have been developing these systems of getting a higher state of consciousness ever since we stood upright, basically,” Feilding said.

Her interest in psychedelics and consciousness came at an early age. At 10 she began studying “a very outside society lifestyle” with her agnostic artist father, Catholic mother, and Buddhist monk godfather.

“So I had a little bit of all the flavors, but then I was always fascinated with the mystical experience. And then at 16, I was introduced to cannabis, and in 1965 LSD came to London and I was an early experimenter with it,” she told Lipa. “And I must say I found it utterly amazing because it enabled one to experience those mystical experiences we had had in childhood again, in a kind of uncontrolled way.” 

Her London apartment became a sort of center for psychedelic life, with people “trooping in and out.” It was during this time that she met Dutch scientist Bart Huges, who believed psychedelics’ effect came through the serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2A) binding, constricting the veins and getting more blood in the brain, creating a great energy expansion. 

This period of exploration and discovery came before psychedelics was criminalized across the globe. Fast forward to the present, Feilding says the major shift toward psychedelics again took place in the last three or four years. 

“It was a very, very long, slow journey. I realized in 1966 that these compounds are really different from other drugs and should be categorized as different -it's a terrible pity they share the word ‘drug’ with the compounds which are, as we all know, very addictive, like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine. And they're all put in the same bag,” Feilding said. (Listen to the full episode.)

Beckley’s Podcast & Efforts For Standardization Of Best Practices

On August 3, The Trip Report by Venture Studio Beckley Waves announced the launch of The Trip Report podcast featuring interviews with scientists, entrepreneurs, investors and stakeholders “at the forefront of the psychedelic renaissance.”

Co-founded by Amanda Feilding, Beckley’s mission points at supporting the infrastructure for safe, legal and accessible psychedelic experiences. In June, it established an ethics council toward guiding industry standards and best practices in the psychedelics sector, among which experts summoned are Feilding’s longtime friends and collaborators MAPS’ founder Rick Doblin and expert mycologist Paul Stamets.

Meanwhile, the Trip Report aims at fostering an educated and informed psychedelic ecosystem, for which it has put out a newsletter for many years.

According to Feilding, the new podcast is “an opportunity to learn firsthand from the pioneers and builders of the psychedelic renaissance, who are working to expand safe access, and to increase our knowledge about the potential benefits of these remarkable compounds.”

Photo: Benzinga edit with photo by Vlada Karpovich on Pexels and Ground Picture on Shutterstock and Wikipedia.