Friday Brunch: Mountebank-shysters make a buck on Mount Shasta, and other stories
Including: Amanita Muscaria third-most-popular psychedelic in the US...
This is a links / brunch newsletter as I did a long piece on Kyrsten Sinema on Monday and I don’t want to overload you with big stories. So here are some storoids:
A reader got in touch with me about a man called Lowell Johnson, who claims to have entered Mount Shasta and encountered a 36,000-year-old Lemurian civilization. He sells retreats at Mount Shasta, except, in at least one case, he took the money and then cancelled the retreat. The aggrieved customer looked into Johnson and found a whole string of court cases against him, in multiple states, for breach of contract, mortgage foreclosure and other issues, with tens of thousands of dollars owed to people. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think it’s possible Johnson may not have genuinely encountered the ancient civilization of Lemuria.
There have been previous law-cases involving the sacred site, which is thought to be home to an energy vortex that makes people lose all financial discrimination. A few years back, a widow in Sacramento met an ‘intuitive life coach’ called Tammy Adams at Mount Shasta. The widow was so entranced by the ‘shaman’ she handed over power of attorney to her, and gave her home to Adams’ company, the House of Angels Foundation. The widow sued Adams in 2020. Here’s a TV news report
In other news:
Tomorrow (Saturday) we have a Founders Club at noon EST featuring Dr Tom Pollak, psychiatrist at Kings College London who co-wrote the first paper on AI psychosis. Tom and I are working together on a research project about AI spirituality and we’ll discuss the AI-fuelled mysticism / psychosis continuum. All Founding Members can come along but you can also come along if you fill out this 5-minute survey for another study I’m doing - just email me afterwards. 600 have already filled out it, thank you for that, I would love to get to 1000.
Here’s another first-person account of AI-fuelled psychosis from Instagram. I wonder if these cases peaked from Feb to September 2025, when ChatGPT was new and more sycophantic, and there are fewer cases now…?
On Sunday, there’s another online peer support group for anyone experiencing post-psychedelic difficulties. Dr Christian Jurlando will be talking briefly about his post-psychedelic crisis and recovery, then we go into breakout rooms for people to share in smaller groups. Message me if you are experiencing post-psychedelic difficulties and would like to attend.
Next Wednesday join 200 others (eek) for a free online talk by Steven C Hayes, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, on how psychedelic experiences inspired some of ACT’s principles, and how ACT can work within psychedelic therapy. Tickets here.
After the paywall, corruption concerns about the FDA’s voucher fast-track program for drug developers; has the bottom fallen out of the psychedelic training market; ethnic minorities’ negative view of psychedelics (but not cannabis); New Jersey approves state-funded psychedelic trials; a good new paper on psychedelic safety; another Busby banger about an ayahuasca exorcism gone wrong; a Rand report on psychedelics and microdosing; plus a mad few days in international politics.
