This article describes how APS Sydney designed its Psychedelic Date Night event using science rather than substances. The author explains researching the psychology of attraction via Consensus.ai, identifying three key levers: physiological arousal from exciting activities, synchronized physical experiences between pairs, and a safe, consent-driven "set and setting." It then walks through how The Lansdowne Hotel's Chippendale rooftop was chosen to meet these criteria — offering elevation, a ping pong table, and parapet rooms for a substance-free stroboscopic light display designed to induce hallucination-like visuals. The piece closes with event details: 25 July, MC'd by Jay Katz.

While traditional talk therapy remains valuable and often necessary, many people are discovering that words alone don’t always reach the depth of a psychedelic experience.

Yopo, the oldest of them all, the grandfather of the entire lineage, the medicine with the longest unbroken ceremonial record in the world, has been passed over almost entirely. There is no clinical trial. There are no documentaries. No podcasts. There is no widely read account of his ceremony, his cosmology, or what generations of unbroken relationship with him has produced in the peoples who have carried him across millennia.

The Queensland Government is dismantling its expanded drug diversion program — a decision that peak medical, nursing, and legal bodies have condemned as prioritising political messaging over healthcare evidence.

Ironically, the opportunity to fully utilise psychedelics - which appear to be effective, in part, by promoting cognitive flexibility - may well be frustrated by present scientific inflexibility.

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After a particularly difficult year where I had been using methamphetamine in addition to the other problematic drugs I had used on and off for many years, my life was in ruins. I was unemployed, excluded from my profession, facing criminal charges for drug possession, isolated and broke.

On the final night of the retreat, I posed a question that has been weighing heavily on humanity: what does the future hold for our planet?

If psychedelics are oracles, they are fallible ones. But then, aren’t all oracles fallible? Well, that might depend on who you ask …

A end of year thank-you-very-much and 2025 update with Australian Psychedelic Society, Vice President Jess Maude

Pill testing is a win for everyone, not just for those who use these substances.