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The Psychedelic Club: A Documentary

A group of college students promote psychedelic drugs for mental health & consciousness research

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The Psychedelic Club: A Documentary

The Psychedelic Club: A Documentary

The Psychedelic Club: A Documentary

The Psychedelic Club: A Documentary

The Psychedelic Club: A Documentary

A group of college students promote psychedelic drugs for mental health & consciousness research

A group of college students promote psychedelic drugs for mental health & consciousness research

A group of college students promote psychedelic drugs for mental health & consciousness research

A group of college students promote psychedelic drugs for mental health & consciousness research

Wendi Yan
Wendi Yan
Wendi Yan
Wendi Yan
1 Campaign |
Princeton, United States
$3,230 USD 23 backers
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 Imagine overcoming depression with 1 pill. 

 

This is the vision that got this documentary started.

 

In the more formal way of speaking, this is a documentary about several students setting up psychedelic clubs at the University College London, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University, promoting the study of psychedelics for mental health and consciousness research, and expanding into an intercollegiate network across a few countries. 

But I could also say, it is a one-year video journal of my friends and I’s journey on finding out how psychedelic drugs could help solve a few problems in our society

how can we more effectively cure a number of mental illnesses (depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction),

better understand what consciousness is, and

alleviate human suffering?

 


 


~ THE STORY ~

 

My name is Wendi. I just finished my freshman year at Princeton, and have been taking a gap year since the fall of 2019 to pursue my artistic passions. It was on a subway ride in mid-August when it occurred to me that I would really like to make a feature-length documentary, about some of my friends. And I wanted to spend a whole year, or two, on it.

 

These are some of the weirdest people I have met. 

 

I remember meeting several of them for the first time at Princeton’s Envision Conference in December 2018. I’d had hours of mind-blowing conversations with these science majors about meditation, consciousness, literature, existential risks, society’s future.

Then, in a dinner circle, they said they were interested in psychedelics.

So unprepared to hear this, I secretly pulled out my phone and googled — yes, they are talking about drugs, hard drugs that produce hallucinations.


It turned out, most of these students—these newfound friends that I knew right away were going to change my life—had gone to really dark places mentally.

 

At various points not so long ago, they couldn’t find a justification to continue living.

One of them was sent to an eating disorder clinic for a few months.

Several of them engaged with serious suicidal thoughts.

Somewhere on their own paths of healing, they discovered psychedelics. Simply reading about psychedelics research on the internet served as a main source of hope for a long time. 

 

 

While pursuing medicine, neuroscience, or computer science, they went on establishing student clubs on psychedelics—compounds that have been heavily associated with the uncritical and unscientific hippie culture from the 1960s.

In the past few years, their journeys with the psychedelic clubs were filled with all sorts of emotional experiences:

being reluctantly bound to a hippie culture they don’t identify with,

failing to find an official faculty advisor after 10 of them expressed verbal support,

selling 1000 tickets in 10 minutes for the first public event, and,

losing a friend they started the club with as she took away her own life

 

 

In October 2019, they established the Intercollegiate Psychedelic Network (IPN), which, within the first 3 months, has grown to include almost 20 colleges from the US, UK, and Switzerland, with several more universities in the progress of setting up their own psychedelic clubs. 

The IPN is organizing the 2nd Intercollegiate Psychedelic Summit on April 17-20, 2020, on Harvard campus, almost 60 years after Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert got expelled from Harvard for their psychedelics research. 

Some of the confirmed speakers include:

a former President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA),

Psychiatrist-in-Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH),

cofounder of the World Transhumanist Association, and

the Founder and Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. 

 

 

These students are passionate about psychedelics with a serious cause. The individuals this documentary focuses on are simply a few in the larger movement among colleges and the broader community in the West working on psychedelics research and decriminalization. 

 

I feel fortunate to have been introduced to psychedelics by my friends, to witness what they have been continuously achieving, and, now, to tell their stories.

 

~ BUDGET ~

 

The money this campaign raises will be used in 3 ways:

1. Equipment

$5928

  • Canon C100 + 1 zoom lens
    (this is one of the cheapest film cameras for professional productions. It's cheaper this way than renting the camera for the whole time. I have already paid out of my own pocket for the other necessary equipments)
  • rental of 1 camera for 1 more filmmaker for several days, to get more dynamic views for events

 

2. My personal travel expenses 

$2649

  • 5 US cities, 1.5 months
  • plane and bus tickets + food + splitting the time between youth hostels + crashing my friends' rooms

 

3. *****Funding a few subjects to take psychedelics for the film in Amsterdam!!*****

$6157  

  • 6 days
  • flights (from the east coast & China) + youth hostels + basic food & transport
  • 3-5 subjects of the film + me + 1 other filmmaker

 

Magic truffles (a type of psychedelics) are legal in Amsterdam. If we get enough money, I will fund a few subjects of the documentary to take magic truffles in front of the camera, so that the documentary shows the entire process of how some of the students featured in the film use psychedelics to heal and gain personal insights. 

This is perhaps the most important part of the documentary. A lot of people are scared or concerned about psychedelics because of how crazy and unfathomable psychedelic experiences could sound like. I believe that a huge part of legitimizing psychedelics has to come from visually showing what psychedelic experiences look like when they are induced with care and seriousness.

Given the current stigma, researchers most often can't talk about their personal use, which makes it a precious things that a few of the subjects of this film agreed to take psychedelics in front of the camera. 

 

 

Extra money raised will go into:

  1. leveling up the film's quality: music commission with other artists, VFX work
  2. outreach: festival submissions, traveling expenses for visiting organizations and individuals for further promotion work 

 


 

~ BACKGROUND ~

 

There is a "psychedelic renaissance."

We are inheriting a legacy from ancestors, including indigenous cultures that have used psychedelics from millennia, as well as the researchers of the 1900s. 

Now we must ask ourselves - what will our legacy in using these tools for healing and growth be?

 

While psychedelics are still classified as Schedule I (US) and Class A (UK) drugs--the same groups as heroin, more and more research has shown promising effects of psychedelics in treating a number of mental illnesses: depression, PTSD, anxiety in cancer patients, alcohol addiction, and more.

 

Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins University, and New York University have been three major universities in psychedelic research in the past few years.

Several cities in the US and a few other Western countries are decriminalizing psychedelics.

Famous podcasters Joe Rogan (7 million Youtube subscribers) and Tim Ferriss (often ranked #1 business podcast on all of Apple Podcasts) have both dedicated multiple episodes to a range of psychedelics. Tim Ferriss is also a major donor of the world's first two psychedelic research centers that opened in 2019. 

 

A little timeline of the very recent events:

 

June 2018 - Harvard journalism professor Michael Pollan published How to Change Your Mind, a book about the history of psychedelics and his own psychedelic experiences. The New York Times Book Review listed the book as one of the 10 best books of the year.

October 2018 - FDA granted psilocybin "Breakthrough Therapy" for Compass Pathways' psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression

April 2019 - Imperial College London opened its Centre for Psychedelic Research -- first of its kind in the world

May 2019 - Denver (CO) became the 1st US city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms

June 2019 - Oakland (CA) became the 2nd US city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, while also decriminalizing DMT, ibogaine, and mescaline

September 2019 - Johns Hopkins University opened its Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research, with $17 million in research funding

November 2019 - FDA granted psilocybin a "Breakthrough Therapy" status for treating depression for the second time in over a year

now - activists in California and Oregon are pushing for state-wide decriminalization and legalization, respectively, of psychedelics. Berkeley (CA), Chicago (IL), Columbia (MI), Dallas (TX), Portland (OR), Port Townsend (WA), and Santa Cruz (CA) see city-level decriminalization efforts.

(full timeline of psychedelics can be found here)

 

Ever since I picked up and devoured Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind right at the beginning of 2019, I felt compelled to learn more about psychedelics because of my long-time passion for mental health. And throughout 2019, I felt like I was witnessing history happen in front of my eyes. 

The friends I met in December 2018 went on to establish psychedelic clubs at Harvard in February, at Penn in April (where they organized the 1st Intercollegiate Psychedelic Summit), and at Princeton in October. Then in the fall I found out about UCL's psychedelic society and its beautiful story spanning the last 4 years, which brought tears to my eyes when I read the long message from its founder.

I could not imagine not having something documented seriously.

This documentary could seem quite ambitious for a fresh young filmmaker like me. But, imagine witnessing history happen around you, imagine you happen to be friends with the people who are part of this history, imagine you happen to be taking a gap year and you are deeply committed to art, who would resist at least trying to make the documentary happen? 

 

The past 4 months of developing this project were filled with excitement and hope, as well as doubt and fear. I can't believe I am releasing this campaign and sharing with more people about this project that's tremendously important to me. 

 

I'm excited to share my friends' stories with more people.

People who are frustrated by the current mental health system, in which medicine often doesn't work and therapy is costly and time-consuming.

People who are open to new possibilities of envisioning a more joyful future. 

 

Your support will mean a lot to me, to people in the film, and the hundreds more students, researchers and activists of psychedelics.

 

 



~ SCHEDULE ~

 

In the last 4 months, I have:

 

I’m currently at home organizing the footage, running this campaign, and doing more preparation work for future filming.

At the end of January, I will be heading to the Sundance Film Festival to volunteer for 9 days, and hopefully get to chat about this documentary with as many people as I can!

 

Here is the rest of the production schedule: 

 

GENERAL FILMING

March-April, 2020   
San Francisco, Philadelphia, Princeton, New York City, Boston

  • interviews with students, researchers, professors & other relevant individuals
  • student club meetings (meditations, rituals, etc)
  • the 2nd Intercollegiate Psychedelic Summit at Harvard

June, 2020
Amsterdam

  • a few subjects taking psychedelics (magic truffle) in Amsterdam, including the preparation, the trip, and the integration

POST-PRODUCTION

June-August, 2020

  • Finish the fine cut by the start of September

OUTREACH

from September, 2020, onwards

  • Submit the film to major film festivals like Sundance, Hot Docs, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and IDFA
  • Organize screenings on college campuses and organizations related to mental health, psychedelics, harm reduction, and consciousness studies

 


 

 

~ LAST WORDS ~

 

To be honest, I have no idea how much interest in this film there exists. I would imagine that many of you would be quite skeptical.  


Maybe we are being dumb.


And ignorant. And delusional. And overly idealistic. In which case, this documentary could still be quite entertaining. 

 

If you put aside the value judgment of how right these students are in their belief in and pursuit of using psychedelic drugs to eliminate mental sufferings, this documentary will still serve as an intimate archive of a few young individuals trying, not without doubt, to tackle some of the hardest problems in our society.

We may leave it to time and history to judge, perhaps through continuous reframing, what these students have been doing :)

 

If you have any questions, please let me know at: me@wendiyan.com

 

 

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