Last Week in Psychedelic Sundays

“Part of what psychedelics do is they decondition you from cultural values. This is what makes it such a political hot potato. Since all culture is a kind of con game, the most dangerous candy you can hand out is one which causes people to start questioning the rules of the game.” -Terence Mckenna

For those who follow my work, it will be no surprise that the topic I research the most is Psychedelics. In this post, I will share with you some of the hidden gems of my recent journey through the psychedelic digital jungle of interesting articles, podcast, and studies that I have found.

Denver Will See Whether Voters Favor Decriminalizing Psychedelic Mushrooms

Denver residents will be voting on a measure to decriminalize the possession, consumption and cultivation of the psychedelic in May 2019 after the city's elections division confirmed that campaign organizers had collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Scientists studying psychedelic ayahuasca as a potential anti-depressant

A study published in Psychological Medicine found "significant antidepressant effects of ayahuasca" in 29 patients with treatment-resistant depression. Brazilian researchers made the conclusion following a randomized trial in which patients received either ayahuasca or a placebo in a hospital setting.

Psychedelic therapy for depression

Two of the more rigorously-controlled clinical trials supporting this designation examined the effect of supervised psilocybin experiences on individuals with depression and anxiety secondary to life-threatening cancer diagnoses. Headed by Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins University, and Stephen Ross at New York University, these studies report rapid and sustained reductions in depression and anxiety. The subjects enrolled were randomly assigned to different conditions: psilocybin or placebo. Placebo conditions consisted of a low dose of psilocybin or niacin, which produces flushing. Both studies blinded the supervisors and the subjects: neither were sure what dose of psilocybin had been given, if any. Both groups found that for 60-80% of subjects, six months after a high dose experience, there had been a 50% or greater reduction in symptoms. Over 60% of these individuals met criteria for the remission of their depression.

Psychedelic drug MDMA may reawaken 'critical period' in brain to help treat PTSD

Neuroscientists have found that the psychedelic drug MDMA reopens a kind of window, called a 'critical period,' when the brain is sensitive to learning the reward value of social behaviors. The findings may explain why MDMA may be helpful in treating people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Ralph Metzner, LSD and Consciousness Researcher, Dies at 82

Dr. Metzner, who received a Ph.D. at Harvard in 1962, was a graduate student there when he began working with Dr. Leary and Richard Alpert, who were clinical psychology professors and had begun exploring therapeutic and other uses for LSD, psilocybin and similar hallucinogens. The three later collaborated on “The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead” (1964), one of the core texts of the emerging psychedelic movement.

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The acid test: Here's what LSD does to your brain

Essentially, the LSD turns off the thalamus’ filtering ability.
Suddenly, a lot more information floods through. Your cortex, where you do your processing and thinking, gets hit with a tidal wave of raw data from your senses.
Cognitive overload, the study terms it.

The New Science of Psychedelics: A Tool for Changing Our Minds

Enter psychedelics: LSD, magic mushrooms, mescaline, ayahuasca—drugs you’d expect to find at a rave or a music festival, not in your psychologist’s office. But that may be about to change, as research in psychedelics increasingly shows their potential for treating psychological conditions.
Previously known as a food and nutrition expert thanks to books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, author Michael Pollan switched tracks a bit for his latest project. His newest book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, published last year, has been an integral part of de-stigmatizing the psychedelics conversation.

From Hollywood to Silicon Beach, L.A. Professionals Are Using LSD to Amp Up Their Careers

“These drugs are a way to program your mind,” he says with the unabashed brio of a successful software engineer. “Our brain is like an operating system. Most people are burdened with shit code. I figure out how to reprogram your subconscious brain.”

On the Eve of the Great Psychedelic Debate

There’s no clear line separating drugs that make it into club psychedelic from those that do not—marijuana, ketamine, ecstasy and all sorts of substances can at times produce the hallucinogenic effects commensurate with a psychedelic experience. But normally when we talk about the classical psychedelics we refer to a narrow class of fungi and plants—or the substances derived from them in a laboratory—that change levels of serotonin in the brain and produce vivid hallucinations and shifts in consciousness. Not all of these substances are illegal. The mint plant salvia divinorum exhibits powerful and unusual psychedelic effects and remains legal in most countries outside the British Commonwealth, while magic mushrooms can be legally bought in some countries like Jamaica and Brazil. A special exemption even exists in the United States to allow members of the Native American Church to consume the hallucinogenic cacti known as peyote after the Drug Enforcement Administration was sued by the church for trying to prohibit a plant that had been used for four thousand years by Native Americans.

Am I a Sectarian Drug User? A Brief Legal Comment on the Religious Use of Ayahuasca in Brazil, Belgium and the Netherlands

It’s never easy for people belonging to minority groups to express their identity and have the freedom to live accordingly. Often, majority groups feel threatened; their fear and misunderstanding then interferes with earnest dialogue, clouding judgement and eventually leading to exclusion, oppression, stigmatization, etc. Opening any history book on peoples and nations can inform you of a wide variety of catastrophes caused by man’s egocentrism and sense of superiority. Our common understanding of the detrimental impact of such events has stirred the need for constant vigilance, and the international recognition that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” (article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Yet, if I am born free and equal in dignity and rights, then why do the authorities of my country refuse to see me as anything other than a drug user belonging to a harmful sectarian organization? If we are supposed to act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood, why do they mark my religious practice as a threat to public health and cut off all possibilities for earnest and constructive dialogue?

What Could a Conscious, Psychedelic #MeToo Look Like?

As we set our intentions to create containers that will facilitate it, we can listen to the plants (and chemicals) for answers. We can sit with our grief and hold space for the trauma. We can question our gender identities and socialization. We can develop a deeper sense of our own embodied “yes,” “no,” and “maybe,” and learn to better honor both our own and others’ embodied consent. We can build communities strong enough to hold regular talking circles (even in times without active crisis), and sustain long-term transformative justice processes. We can stay tuned into the othered ways of knowing we learn from altered states. Our medicine communities are blessed with access to these other forms of intelligence to help us face the hard work that #MeToo calls us to do. If not us, then who?