Amanda Feilding

Amanda Claire Marian Charteris, Countess of Wemyss and March (Feilding; born 30 January 1943), also known as Amanda Feilding, is an English drug policy reformer, lobbyist, and research coordinator.

Born in 1943, Feilding is the youngest child of Basil Feilding (great-grandson of the 7th Earl of Denbigh and of the 3rd Marquess of Bath) and his wife, Margaret Feilding, who was his second cousin.

She grew up in Oxfordshire at Beckley Park, a Tudor hunting lodge with three towers and three moats, which was owned by her father and situated on the edge of a fen outside Oxford.

From an early age, Feilding was interested in states of consciousness and mysticism.

At 16 years old, with just £25 in her pocket, she embarked on a journey to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where her godfather, Bertie Moore, had become a Buddhist monk.

Although she did not reach Ceylon, Feilding hitchhiked as far as the Syrian border, where she spent time living with Bedouins before returning to the UK.

Feilding then studied Comparative Religions and Mysticism with Professor R.C. Zaehner, and Classical Arabic with Professor Albert Hourani.

She concentrated later on learning about altered states of consciousness, psychology, physiology and, later, neuroscience.

Feilding had her first psychedelic experience at 22 years of age, when an acquaintance spiked her coffee with a massive dose of then-legal LSD.

The experience nearly broke her, and she retreated to her family home for months to recover.

Feilding has been a proponent of utilising the cognitive effects of cannabis since the 1960s.

She has experimented with trepanning, drilling a hole into the skull to expose the dura mater, a technique used in some cultures to treat mental illness, and considered by some to provide a calming effect or a higher state of consciousness.

Feilding is also a proponent of the use of LSD to trigger long-term improvements in creativity.

Feilding received the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Organization’s Science Pioneer Award at the United Nations in 2022.

The award, also recognised by the US Congress, highlights women entrepreneurs.

Feilding gained notoriety in 1970 when she performed trepanation on herself, with a dental drill.

She made a short art film about the experience, entitled Heartbeat in the Brain.

In 1998, she founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness, later renamed to the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust which initiates, directs, and supports neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and cognition.

She has also co-authored over 50 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, according to the Foundation.

The central aim of her research is to investigate new avenues of treatment for such mental illnesses as depression, anxiety, and addiction, as well as to explore methods of enhancing well-being and creativity.

The 1998 documentary A Hole in the Head contains footage from Heartbeat in the Brain.

Feilding also began to microdose herself with LSD while she was in her 20s.

In 1998, Feilding founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness, later renamed Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust which claims to promote a rational, evidence-based approach to global drug policies and initiates, directs, and supports pioneering neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and cognition.

The central aim of her research is to investigate new avenues of treatment for such mental illnesses as depression, anxiety, and addiction, as well as to explore methods of enhancing well-being and creativity.

The Foundation states that Fielding has co-authored over 50 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Feilding is the Founder and executive director of the Foundation.

Through the Beckley Foundation, Feilding initiates, directs, and, supports scientific research investigating psychoactive substances, such as cannabis and other psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and MDMA, commonly known as Ecstasy).

Considered one of the pioneers of the renaissance of psychedelic research, with the New Scientist calling her the "Queen of Consciousness", she has initiated several ground-breaking research projects.

Of note is a study investigating the efficacy of using psilocybin as an aid to psychotherapy in overcoming depression and nicotine addiction, a brain imaging study investigating the effects of psilocybin and MDMA on cerebral blood supply, an examination of the effects of cannabis on creativity and of the importance of the THC/CBD ratio in mental health, and the first brain imaging study investigating the effects of LSD on the brain.

Feilding has also been active in drug policy reform and was among the first to start building an evidence-base upon which new policies could be formed, arguing that benefits as well as harms should be considered.

In 2007, Feilding convened the Global Cannabis Commission, producing a 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.

2011 saw Feilding bring together members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy Reform (a panel of world leaders and intellectuals) and political leaders from 14 countries interested in reform.

Together, at the House of Lords, they launched the Beckley Foundation Global Initiative for Drug Policy Reform, a joint initiative with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, which was set up to support the BF's initiative to drive forward alternative approaches to drug control to create more humane, evidence-based policies that would reduce the potential harm of drugs to individuals and societies.

From these meetings, two important reports were written and published.

The first, in 2012, was entitled 'Roadmaps to Reforming the UN Drug Conventions'.

It detailed ways in which the UN drug conventions could be amended to give countries greater freedom to adopt policies better suited to their individual needs.

The next, in 2013, was a rigorous academic analysis by the widely respected Institute for Social and Economic Research.

A 2019 Guardian article offers this analysis: "It would be fair to say ... that her credibility as an advocate has not always been helped by her storied history with self-experimentation".

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 changing ratios of blood and cerebrospinal fluid underlie changes in consciousness, and also described the theory of the "ego" as a conditioned reflex mechanism that controls the distribution of blood in the brain.