The Queen of Psychedelics – Amanda Feilding

A Film by Alice Rausch.

In what has been called the 'psychedelic renaissance', our founder Amanda Feilding has herself been called by many names. 

Once dubbed the 'crackpot countess', she was later recognised as the 'Hidden Hand' behind the Psychedelic Renaissance. Now, she has been called everything from the 'First Lady of LSD' to the 'Queen of Psychedelics.'

A saying often attributed to Schopenhauer tells us: all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. 

We are now starting to enter the final stage. The potential of psychedelics is becoming accepted by the general public, but still the research is entangled in the legislation of the past, throwing endless obstacles and extra costs in our way.

Amanda started exploring the mechanisms underlying the potential benefits of psychedelics in 1966, yet now continues with more vigour than ever before: Amanda is currently embarking on her most ambitious programme of research yet, focused on LSD – ‘The Double-Headed Research Programme’. This research has the potential to revolutionise how we understand the underlying changes of consciousness and its altered states, and will elucidate the potential of psychedelics to treat conditions of mental and physical health, many of which have thus far never been explored.

We hope you will enjoy the above film, made by Alice Rausch, which celebrates the work Amanda has dedicated her life to – work which, in recent years, has finally begun to bear fruit for society. 

Amanda is now focusing on fresh frontiers; these new studies, in collaboration with some of the world’s greatest academic institutions, will begin in the first quarter of 2024.