Profile – Ronald K. Siegel (b. 1943)

Ronald Siegel is a pioneer of drug studies and explorer of altered states of consciousness. In the 1970s he and his colleagues trained people to become ‘psychonauts’ – that is, to go into altered states and report what they experienced as it happened. He has researched the effects of LSD, THC, marijuana, MDMA, mescaline, psilocybin, and ketamine, among other drugs, and has acted as consultant on several investigations of drug use. He is not just an experimenter and theoretician of psychopharmacology, but has trained in martial arts, experienced sleep paralysis, taken part in shamanic rituals, and was once locked in a cage for more than three days without food or water, all in the interests of investigating consciousness. He has a PhD in psychology from Dalhousie University and is author of many books on drugs, hallucinations, intoxication, and paranoia.