The Psychedelic Scientist

B ruce Damer had the audience under his Gandalf spell. He was giving a keynote speech in a grand hall at Breaking Convention, a psychedelic-consciousness conference in Exeter, England, in April 2025. Tall and slender, very much bearded, and sporting two large gold hoop earrings, one on either side, Damer looked exactly like you would expect a sexagenarian psychedelic professor to look. A boyishly enthusiastic speaker, he said a psychedelic trip had transported him through time to face a deep trauma. “If you believe in a ‘mother ayahuasca’ or a healing force, I was allowed to experience my conception and birth and be in my mother’s belly,” Damer said. His birth mother had given him up because she and his father were too poor to raise him. Ayahuasca had released him from the pain. “Being in the belly, I could feel her love, and it healed,” he said. “As a result of the clarity and the opening of the blockage that had been this sort of knot in my belly, my whole system opened wide,” Damer continued. “And I thought for a moment, I could potentially travel through time to a place where I’ve been working on the question of how life began, the birth of us all.” ADVERTISEMENT Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . As Bruce Damer sees it, psychedelic experiences can lead to scientific breakthroughs. In psychedelic science, a field dominated by scientists who are loath to be pigeon-holed as too woo-woo, Damer, 63, has become a cult figure by wearing his woo on his sleeve. His adoptive mother described him as “in his own world” when his new parents brought him home. And he has been his own thinker ever since. His science cred is sound: a Ph.D. in computer science from University College Dublin in Ireland, former relationships with Xerox and NASA, and papers published in journals like Astrobiology . Currently he is a research associate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The debate around the psychedelic renaissance has been dominated by claims that hallucinogens like psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca reach deep into the brain and ease anxiety, depression, and PTSD, especially when coupled with psychotherapy. A steady stream of studies has validated the compelling anecdotal reports , and the laws prohibiting the use of psychedelics are-bit-by-bit in parts of the world-being liberalized as people increasingly turn on, tune in, and feel better. ADVERTISEMENT Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . But Damer contends psychedelics hold potential for more than addressing the mental health crisis. He is driven by the belief that psychedelic drugs can crack open the minds of scientists and other problem-solvers. In 2023, he founded the nonprofit organization the Center for MINDS (Multidisciplinary Investigation into Novel Discoveries and Solutions). Its philosophy: “Psychedelics and other consciousness practices may be our greatest underutilized tool for sparking paradigm-shifting breakthroughs.” Damer is convinced ayahuasca sparked his own paradigm-shifting breakthrough....

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