Telluride Mushroom: Nichols & Norris Honored

28 Sep Telluride Mushroom: Nichols & Norris Honored

Dr. David E. Nichols and Jo Norris were honored with the Lincoff and Salzman Awards at 39th Telluride Mushroom Festival this past August. The Telluride Mushroom Festival is a project of the Telluride Institute. For more information go here.

Every year the Telluride Mushroom Festival honors two members of its mycological community – the Salzman and Lincoff Awards.

“We make awards as a way to honor various icons in the mycological world,” explained festival coordinator and poet-in-residence Art Goodtimes, “both locally, those who’ve contributed to the festival itself — and most recently those who’ve made an impact on mycology nationally.”

Started in 2009, the Salzman Award is named for Dr. Emanuel and Joanne Salzman of Denver, founders of the festival. Dr. “Manny” Salzman passed away last year.

The winner of the 2018 award was Giuliana Furci of Chile’s Fungi Fundacion, who has added an international flavor to the annual gathering. And this year, long-time participant and presenter psychologist Jo Norris and her late husband, Carter Norris of Arizona, received the festival honor.

Always active in the Phoenix community, particularly in arts and education, Jo went back to school after she and Carter raised three kids. She earned her Master’s Degree in Counseling from Arizona State University and practiced Gestalt therapy for a number of years in the ‘80s.

Eventually Jo became more and more interested in the evolution of consciousness and, in the mid-1980s, experienced mushrooms for the first time. She was a co-founder of the Rim Institute, a research and retreat center specializing in altered consciousness. Rim offers spiritual and personal development seminars and workshops in the field, as well as retreats at the center’s headquarters near Phoenix, AZ. Terence McKenna and other entheogenic luminaries have been featured guests.

According to her son Andrew Norris, “Jo’s quest for ever deeper connections to spirit and healing laid the foundation for her interest in shamanic practices and cultures” –  which is how she learned about Doña Julieta (Casimiro Estrada).

A member of the International Council of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, Doña Julieta was invited to lead a workshop at the Rim and later, with Jo, who had a cabin at Trout Lake, attended the Mushroom Festival in Telluride.

Jo had several deeply personal experiences through Doña Julieta, along with Carter, who also became an avid lover of mushrooms and long-time participant in the Mushroom Festival.

“They both participated in a Fungophile trip to Kamchatka along with Gary Lincoff, Joanne, and Manny,” noted Goodtimes.

Added Andrew, “Jo’s experiences have given her a deep understanding of the connections that bind humanity beyond the physical realm and into the higher levels of universal love and compassion.”

The Lincoff Award was initiated last year after the death of the festival’s founding mycologist Gary Lincoff to celebrate lifetime achievement in the field of American mycology. The first winner was Paul Stamets of Washington’s Fungi Perfecti. Paul has done so much to bring fungal entheogens into the nation’s consciousness by championing the many medicinal and other uses of fungi. This year’s winner is festival keynote speaker, Dr. David E. Nichols of Santa Fe (NM).

Dr. Nichols originally conceived of a privately funded institute as the most effective mechanism for bringing research on psychedelic agents into the modern era of neuroscience. This vision led to the founding of the Heffter Research Institute in 1993.

Prior to his retirement in June 2012, Nichols was the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at the Purdue University College of Pharmacy, and also an adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (NC) where he continues his research.

In 2004, Nichols was named the Irwin H. Page Lecturer;  in 2006, was named the first Provost’s Outstanding Graduate Mentor at Purdue. The focus of his graduate training, beginning in 1969, and of much of his research subsequent to receiving his doctorate in 1973, has been the investigation of the relationship between molecular structure and the action of psychedelic agents and other substances that modify behavioral states.

Nichols’ research has been continuously funded by government agencies for more than three decades. He consults for the pharmaceutical industry and has served on numerous committees and government research review groups. Widely published in the scientific literature and internationally and recognized for his research on centrally active drugs, Nichols has studied all of the major classes of psychedelic agents, including LSD and other lysergic acid derivatives, psilocybin, and the tryptamines, and phenethylamines related to mescaline.

Among the scientific community, Nichols is recognized as one of the foremost experts on the medicinal chemistry of hallucinogens. His high standards and more than four decades of research experience set the tone to ensure that rigorous methods and quality science are pursued by the Institute.