Amanda Feilding

Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March, is an English artist and drug policy reformer. In 1998, she founded the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust that promotes a rational, evidence-based approach to global drug policy policies, directs and supports pioneering neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and cognition and facilitates investigations of the new avenues of treatment for mental and physical conditions as well as the enhancement of creativity and well-being.

Early life and education

Feilding is the youngest child of Basil Feilding, great-grandson of the 7th Earl of Denbigh and the Marquess of Bath, and his wife and cousin, Margaret Feilding. The Feilding family is descended from the House of Habsburg and came to England in the 14th Century. Since then the family intermarried into the British aristocracy and is directly descended from two illegitimate children of Charles II of England and his mistresses Barbara Villiers and Moll Davis. She grew up at Beckley Park, a Tudor hunting lodge with three towers and three moats situated on the edge of a fen outside of Oxford.

From an early age, Feilding was interested in states of consciousness and mysticism. She studied Comparative Religions and Mysticism with Prof. R.C. Zaehner, Classical Arabic with Prof. Albert Hourani and sculpture. She concentrated later on learning about altered states of consciousness, psychology, physiology and, later, neuroscience.

In 1966, Feilding met and formed a relationship with Dutch librarian Bart Huges. Since the late 60s, she lived with Joseph Mellen with whom she had two sons, Rock Basil Hugo Feilding Mellen (born 1979) and Cosmo Birdie Feilding Mellen (born 1985). She and Mellen separated in the early 90s and on 29 January 1995 she married James Charteris, 13th Earl of Wemyss, 9th Earl of March, son of David Charteris, 12th Earl of Wemyss, 8th Earl of March under the Bent Pyramid in Egypt.

Feilding gained notoriety in 1970 when she performed trepanation on herself, about which she made a short cult art film entitled Heartbeat in the Brain. Trepanation was part of her exploration into the effects of different techniques to alter and enhance consciousness. During this period, she wrote Blood and Consciousness, which hypothesized that ratios of blood and cerebrospinal fluid underlie changes in consciousness and the theory of the "ego" controlling the distribution of blood in the brain. During the 1970s and 80s she painted and produced conceptual artworks associated with consciousness, which were exhibited at the ICA in London, PS1 in New York and other galleries in the US.

Feilding holds a longstanding interest in investigating consciousness for the benefit of the individual and society. She has supported research into different ways of altering consciousness from meditation to the use of psychoactive substances and trepanation.

Trepanation

Feilding learned about the ancient practice of trepanation from Bart Huges, whom she met in 1966, and who published a scroll on the topic. The hypothesis that she investigated proposes that trepanation improves cerebral circulation by allowing the "full heartbeat" to express itself, which Feilding hypothesises cannot normally occur after fusion of the cranial bones. To compensate for this theorised change, she hypothesised that humans developed an internal system of control of blood flow in the brain, a development that Feilding identifies with the origins of language. Trepanation, Feilding hypothesises, allows people to achieve higher states of consciousness that she theorises children experience before their cranial bones fuse. Recent research on patients with cranial lesions in collaboration with Prof. Yuri Moskalenko has provided evidence of blood flow changes. This is part of an investigation on the change of intracranial dynamics with age, and ways to increase cranial compliance (which, they theorize, might to help limit the detrimental changes associated with aging). Through this investigation, a non-invasive means of assessing intracranial dynamics, the Moskalenko method, has been developed by Moskalenko, Feilding, et al.

Feilding ran for British Parliament twice, on the platform 'Trepanation for the National Health' with the intention of advocating research into its potential benefits, but received few votes (40 in 1979 and 139 in 1983). 35 years later, she has supported research into the physiological effects of trepanation and cranial compliance at the Sechenov Institute for Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry, St. Petersburg.

Beckley Foundation

Through the Beckley Foundation, Feilding supports scientific research investigating psychoactive substances, such as cannabis, MDMA and psychedelics.

In 2007, the Beckley Foundation-funded LSD study on consciousness was one of the first involving LSD and human participants since the late 1980s.

She has also supported other psychedelic research projects. These include investigating the efficacy of using psilocybin as an aid to psychotherapy in overcoming addiction, a set of brain imaging studies investigating the effects of psilocybin and MDMA on cerebral blood supply and the recall of distant memories, the neurophysiology underlying the beneficial effects of cannabis, the effects of cannabis on creativity, the effects of the different components of cannabis and the importance of the THC/CBD ratio in mental health. Current research supported by Feilding include the first brain imaging study investigating the effects of LSD on the brain, an investigation of the link between LSD and creativity, an investigation on the use and efficacy of psilocybin in the treatment of recurrent depression, investigating the molecular sites of action of ayahuasca using ketanserin, a brain imaging study investigating the extent to which glutamate release is involved in DMT experiences and a study investigating the use of cannabis in the treatment of brain gliomas.

Feilding is active in drugs policy reform, arguing that benefits as well as harms should be considered in forming policies. In 2007, Feilding convened the Global Cannabis Commission Report, authored by a group of leading drug policy analysts, which lays out a plan for possible reforms of cannabis control policies at national and international levels. The report was presented at the 10-yearly UN General Assembly Global Drug Policy Review in Vienna in March 2009 (the Beckley Foundation is a UN accredited NGO). The Cannabis Commission Report is being published by Oxford University Press and the Beckley Foundation. In 2013, President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala asked the Beckley Foundation to advise on the Guatemala government's policy on drugs.