My recent work career has involved IT for my local university. After relocating a year ago I've been doing some building work, and some freelance writing. I am now ready to put a new 10 year plan into effect and I am going to start by studying for a degree, then progress down the academic route and hopefully do some work related to entheogens, a few years down the line.

I have two ideas of which route I wish to take, I've been balancing the pros and cons but I can't make a decision. I'm wondering if some input or advice from my fellow Nexians could help me make a decision.

I want to either study Psychology or Philosophy of Psychology/Philosophy of Mind. If I study Psychology then perhaps I would be biased in any future entheogen research work I do, as I am a proponent of entheogens. If I study more from a Philosophical stand point, then maybe my research will not be considered as concrete or reliable, and I'd just be someone putting out ideas rather than breaking any ground.

My use of entheogens makes me think that the Philosophy route is more fitting, as pursuit of ideas and understanding is part of the whole reason I use entheogens as a tool. The Psychology route might add more weight to any future research I may carry out, though this could be deemed more clinical, and not in line my own personal use of entheogens.

Perhaps it doesn't matter which route I take and I could do some work in either field, with equal standing (good or bad) and I'm thinking to much into the situation, and looking at it in black and white. Either way, if anyone out there could give me any advice, opinions or other input I would be very grateful.

Peace

Macre

It depends on what direction you want to take the entheogens, professionally speaking. You should know in advance that getting into a career that utilizes them professionally, especially scientifically, is incredibly difficult. Our society does not yet have a place for them. There are many people that want to get involved in this kind of work, and very few jobs. So you'll need to elevate yourself above the rest if you want a shot at getting one of those jobs.

If you want to be an author ala McKenna, philosophy would be OK, though psychology would be better. Major in one, minor in the other. If you want to actually work with these substances in therapeutic settings you'll need a psychology major, as well as an MD (if you want to actually administer the drugs). Psychopharmacology should be your focus. This will be exceedingly hard to get into though. Hopefully a couple decades from now things will be different.

My situation is more or less simmilar. About 6 months ago, i decided that i wanted to study philosophy. This is my second week as a student now, and although it´s quite a change of lifestyle, i´m definately enjoying it. I don´t know what´s best for YOU, but i strongly believe that challenging yourself intellectually is always worth the effort. You can never know in advance, how it will work out: during the first year of any academic study, you´ll always learn just the very basic stuff of that particular discipline. If you want to do something with entheogens therefore, i think it doesn´t matter where you start because in the first few years, you´re not gonna enjoy the freedom to decide for yourself what you want to learn anyway. That all comes later. Once the 'foundations' have been layed out, you can choose in what direction you want to take your study. But during the first few years, you´ll be basically discovering all of the different directions that you potentially could take. In each following year, you can focus more specifically on what you´re interested in, but the first year of any study is gonna be very broad anyway. I think that both psychology and philosophy offer a good starting point.

I love Psychology. I just received a Bachelors of Science in Psychology. It is awesome. The thing that sucks about that degree is that you will HAVE to do graduate school.

If that is something you want to do then i would say that you need to start right now on building your resume for graduate school. All of the Social Sciences are VERY competitive. So you need to join the department club. Do community service. Right now i am volunteering for a hospice, it is very rewarding. I get to talk with people who are on the edge of death, as a psych major i find that way interesting. Also plan for the GRE right now.v Professors will tell you how to make your grad school app palatable.

The scary thing about ANY social science major is that it leaves you with little workable skills to put on your resume. My wife is an engineer who graduated the same day as me. Her resume was filled with tons of skills. Mine was "I'm a strong writer". That is useless when you want to find a real job to pay for the 30 grand worth of student loans. I'd hate to hear that you went through the hell of school only to obtain a degree that you don't get to work in what you love. Seriously, plan now for graduate school. Get volunteer experience. Prepare for the gre. What i did is when i was a Jr. I put "big words" and their definitions all over my apartment. Right there is passive study for the english portion of the GRE.

I hope for you the best.

P.S. Also as a minor you should consider studying biology, Neuro science, genetics, or something Sciency. IF you want to work with ethnogens you need to know the nuts and bolts of whatever science that comes from.

Best of luck from your fellow in the hell of academia.

I am doing that exact thing right now. Today. My mind is RIGHT NOW being raped by academia. I woke up at 5 am and studied till 3.

Thank you all for your input. I've taken onboard what you have said and I now have a firmer idea on how I want to progress.

Here in the UK I have the advantage of being able to study part time for my bachelor's through the Open University. This way I can still earn a living while I am studying. It will take twice as long this way, but I'm in this for the long haul anyway.

It would be more advantageous for me to be working somewhere closely related to Psychology, so it would be better for me to be looking towards universities, hospitals and institutes. Of course it is difficult finding most jobs in the middle of a recession but there we go, that's life.

Next I would wish to study for a master's, which would take two years part time. A number of London's universities offer an MSc Research Methods in Psychology programme. This would not only help set me up for further research, it would also incorporate a certain degree of Philosophy within the programme.

A number of London universities have excellent Cognitive Neuroscience research centres, so perhaps I could look to get into one of them. This is a long time from now, so I should start to make my first steps and then see where the next few years take me. That's the rough outline laid out, but as we all know, over the next decade anything could happen. Thank you for your help.

Peace

Macre

Thats a good idea. Research methods teaches you how to tease out the math from everyday experiences. I loved that class, but that is when i learned that i cant do research. So instead i focused on rehabilitation. Less math

If you could, grab the bull by the horns and jump in full force. Meaning, if you could go full time. The key is to get the hell out of there as soon as you can because schools, like any other evil corporation, are set up in a way to take all your money. The less time you spend earning your degree the less money you give them.

You'll see. My university =, i swear to god, has stupid little fees for the stupidest mistake. And these stupid fees are usually 50 bucks. It's killing me. And do you know whats even funnier? Reps. from the university know that i will graduate this semester so they are calling me now to "donate to the school".

see if you can get into some form of brain research down the line, perhaps specifically involving microtubulin, and the effect of psychaedlics substances on the behavior(of said organisms). in my opinion looking at the brain from the standpoint of megnetic waves and neurons networking and firing off bits of information is not whole. microtubulin is the gap between understanding current moment process and memory processing and storing.

look it up if that sounds interesting, type in the name "Stuart Hammeroff" 'finding spirit in the fabric of space and time'