Writer, director, and visual artist Oliver Hockenhull outlines the mounting peer-reviewed evidence that non-addictive psychoactive substances (including ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA) can have profound healing effects when used in a safe, therapeutic setting.
Clinicians, psychologists, neuroscientists, and authors outline the benefits from the treatment of alcoholism to the anxiety of terminal cancer patients, and beyond.
Through judicious editing and sublime visuals, the filmmaker succeeds with colorful advocacy for a new medical paradigm informed by "cognitive liberty", the freedom to dictate one's own consciousness. (In a recreation of the famous Good Friday Experiment, Hockenhull uses a recorded sermon from Dr. Martin Luther King's mentor, Rev. Howard Thurman, to fuse science, art, and spirituality into a seamless whole.)'
From Neurons to Nirvana introduces a vibrant spectrum of characters that champion psychoactive drugs as medicines and as enhancers Noted contributors include Amanda Fielding, Countess of Wemyss, director of the Beckley Foundation to Further Consciousness; Dr. Michael Mithoefer who conducted groundbreaking, successful posttraumatic stress disorder trials with MDMA; Dr. Dennis McKenna, author, ethnopharmacologist, and expert on DMT and Ayahuasca, and Dr. Gabor Máté, the award-winning Vancouver author and expert on addictions.