Americans are the world’s top consumers of cannabis and cocaine despite punitive US drug laws, according to an international study published in the online scientific magazine PLoS Medicine.
The study, released Monday, revealed that 16.2 percent of Americans had tried cocaine at least once, and 42.4 percent had used marijuana.
In second-place New Zealand, just 4.3 percent of study participants had used cocaine, and 41.9 percent marijuana.
The research was conducted at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, based on World Health Organization data from 54,068 people in 17 countries.
Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience.
Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they’d ever had.
The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called “magic mushrooms.” It’s illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.
The study involved 36 men and women during an eight-hour lab visit. It’s one of the few such studies of a hallucinogen in the past 40 years, since research was largely shut down after widespread recreational abuse of such drugs in the 1960s.
The project made headlines in 2006 when researchers published their report on how the volunteers felt just two months after taking the drug. The new study followed them up a year after that.
Experts emphasize that people should not try psilocybin on their own because it could be harmful. Even in the controlled setting of the laboratory, nearly a third of participants felt significant fear under the effects of the drug. Without proper supervision, someone could be harmed, researchers said.
Drugs that encourage the growth of new neurons in the brain are now headed for clinical trials. The drugs, which have already shown success in alleviating symptoms of depression and boosting memory in animal models, are being developed by BrainCells, a San Diego-based start-up that screens drugs for their brain-growing power. The company hopes the compounds will provide an alternative to existing antidepressants and says they may also prove effective in treating cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s.
“The fact that you might be able to take small molecules to stimulate specific cells to regenerate in the brain is paradigm-shifting,” says Christopher Eckman, a neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. “[This approach] takes advantage of the body’s innate ability to correct itself when given appropriate cues.” Eckman studies compounds that boost brain cell growth in models of neurodegenerative disease and is not involved with BrainCells.
“One of the other issues we’re going to be hearing a lot about in the next few months is the high cost of prescription drugs. Most of us can testify to the fact that drugs save lives. When I had heart surgery fourteen years ago, my own life was saved by a skilled surgical team, a caring wife, and some remarkable drugs. But drugs are costly -and it seems their price keeps rising. The sticker shock has sent many people -especially the elderly - across the border to Mexico and Canada in pursuit of affordable medicine.
And a report this week says that because of the cost, many middle class baby boomers are trying to do without. The pharmaceutical companies say you get what you pay for, they say it’s not cheap to develop new medicines. But in journalism as in medicine, it’s always helpful to get a second opinion. So if the cost of your daily meds leaves you feeling sad and depressed, unable to sleep or eat, I have a prescription for you - a consultation with the journalist Melody Petersen, who has written a powerful new book about what ails us.”
“It’s surprising to see such media exposure with these studies. Perhaps it really is the psychedelic renaissance. I would be really interested in hearing Keith Ablow’s scepticism, but it seems he was never given the chance to speak. Did his comments on psychedelics even air?”
Forget Lost’s Flight 815 and fasten your seat belts for Flight 627.
The pilot episode of upcoming TV show Fringe, directed by Lost executive producer J.J. Abrams, is a twisty-turny tech thriller replete with a doomed airplane, hairless weasels, rooftop chases in the Bourne Identity vein, acid-tripping federal agents and more translucent skin than you can shake a fat-encrusted artery at.
There’s a new psychedelic blog called “Psychedelic Research”. It’s author is Matthew Baggott who is a graduate student in neuroscience at UC Berkeley and a research associate at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute.
His reasons for starting the blog:
“This is a blog to track research and events relating to the scientific study of hallucinogens and consciousness. I hope that documenting my readings here will be interesting or even helpful to others. My writing goals with this blog are relatively modest: I primarily aim to provide abstracts from papers, linking to them whenever possible, with occasional brief comments about what interests me.
Most hallucinogen research still takes place with a pharmacology context. But increasingly, people are using research tools from other domains, such as neuroscience. As a result, I think our understanding of hallucinogens and human consciousness may both be improved. Although science has yet to fully realize this promise, there are many studies that contain gems of insight. Hopefully this blog can help reveal these gems.”
What we were doing was not science - it was magic. We thought we were doing science but we didn’t know anything about science at the time. We set up what we called an experiment, but what we should have really called a ritual. Honestly it was a ritual but we had the idea that if we took a large dose of mushrooms, along with ayahuasca and heard this sound, that we could generate this standing wave form and that we could actually transfer that into the body of a mushroom in a stable way so that it would be outside the body and it would be sustained by it’s own superconducting circuitry, and you would be able to see it and be it at the same time. It would be, in a sense, an artifact from beyond that you generate out of your own head. It would be a super, transbiological artifact, translinguistic matter that would be meaning itself fixed into a biological matrix.
RAK> And do you think it succeeded, the experiment?
DENNIS> (hesitates)… No… (laughs) No, not exactly… What we were trying to do, essentially, if I can harken back to the basis of this in myth and history, I mean the closest analogy to it is the Philosopher’s Stone. We were trying to recreate the Philosopher’s Stone, which in some ways is the ultimate artifact. That thing that exists and is both mind and matter and responds to thought and is you and can do anything you can imagine, literally, anything you can imagine.
How deep does the rabbit hole go? Gnostic Media is proud to present the official online edition of The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007. If you enjoyed “Zeitgeist - The Movie”, you will love this video; the creators of this video are listed as one of the sources for the Zeitgeist Movie. The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007 is a video version of the book, “Astrotheology & Shamanism” by Jan Irvin & Andrew Rutajit. The painstakingly detailed and heavily footnoted research in the book comes to life in this video and is now available to you for FREE! For further research of the claims made in this video, please read AstroTheology & Shamanism - this book is available to order as a combo with the DVD. Thousands of years ago, in the pre monarchic era, sacred plants and other entheogenic substances where politically correct and highly respected for their ability to bring forth the divine, Yahweh, God, The Great Spirit, etc., by the many cultures who used them. Often the entire tribe or community would partake in the entheogenic rites and rituals. These rites were often used in initiation into adulthood, for healing, to help guide the community in the decision process, and to bring the direct religious experience to anyone seeking it. In the pre literate world, the knowledge of psychedelic sacraments, as well as fertility rites and astronomical knowledge surrounding the sun, stars, and zodiac, known as astrotheology, were anthropomorphized into a character or a deity; consequently, their stories and practices could easily be passed down for generations. Weather changes over millenniums caused environmental changes that altered the available foods and plant sacraments available in the local vicinity. If a tribe lost its shamanic El-der (El - God), all of the tribe’s knowledge of their plant sacraments as well as astronomical knowledge would be lost. The Church’s inquisitions extracted this sacred knowledge from the local Shamans who were then exterminated…It is time to recognize the fact that this Pharmacratic Inquisition is still intact and destroy it.
Five years after taking the lead in “Operation Pipe Dreams,” which prosecuted people who sold marijuana pipes around the country, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan is leading a similar investigation called “Operation True Test.”
The newest project for Ms. Buchanan is looking into companies that sell “masking products” that are supposed to help drug-users pass employer drug tests.
[…]
Only a small amount of product was seized during the search Wednesday, Ms. Kinsley said.
The main items taken were documents — including bank records, business documents and order forms.
Also seized, Mr. Chong said, were 8,000 to 10,000 copies of the recently released documentary “a/k/a Tommy Chong,” a film chronicling his journey through arrest, prosecution and nine-month prison term.
“It’s a way to punish the distributor financially,” Mr. Chong said. “There’s no way to get the DVDs back until the investigation is over.” Mr. Chong said he has no ownership in the film.
He called the documentary a “focal point” of the raid. It was released about a month ago, and sales were slow, Mr. Chong said.
“It’s selling like crazy now, thanks to Mary Beth. She’s brought us a nice publicity gimmick.”
Ms. Buchanan would not comment on Mr. Chong’s allegation or discuss what alleged crimes are being investigated as part of Operation True Test.
“Representative John Conyers, Chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, sent a letter to the DEA inquiring about the “paramilitary style enforcement raids” conducted against medical marijuana distributors in California. In case anyone hasn’t been following this story the state of California permits the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Since the federal government does not and the current Federal apparatuses’ have chosen not to look the other way in respect of State’s rights, there have been Federally motivated enforcement actions against people and businesses that are legally permitted by the State but not the Federal government.
Ed Brayton observes:
All of this can be blamed entirely on the Supreme Court, which issued one of the most indefensible rulings in its history in Gonzales v Raich. And yes, this one you can lay directly at the feet of the liberals on the court. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer were all in the majority in ruling that the federal government has the authority to overrule state medical marijuana laws.
I ran across something specific related to this Conyers’ letter that ties back to some previous comments I had about drug advocates trying to Trojan Horse recreational use under cover of medicinal use.”
They each have paid $1,680 to spend nine days at Souther’s Blue Morpho lodge in the Peruvian jungle and to sample the plant potion for themselves.
But this is not some Amazonian Kool-Aid Acid Test and these are not Merry Pranksters.
LSD and other recreational drugs are not for them, and many shun alcohol. Ranging in age from early 20s to late 50s, they work as university professors, marketing executives and environmental activists. Then there’s Heather, a tall, muscular woman who competes in Ironman races.
With the help of ayahuasca, they hope to address persistent emotional, physical or psychological afflictions that Western medicine has failed to alleviate. Others seek more spirituality in their lives.
The Kingwood teenager’s story of decapitating a corpse and using the head to smoke marijuana was so outlandish that at first Houston Police Department senior police officer Jim Adkins did not believe it.
Yet, Kevin Wade Jones Jr., 17, appeared almost indifferent as he relayed the bizarre description of his and two friends’ activities at an Humble area graveyard, Adkins said.
Brain-imaging studies performed in animals at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory provide researchers with clues about why an increasingly popular recreational drug that causes hallucinations and motor-function impairment in humans is abused. Using trace amounts of Salvia divinorum - also known as “salvia,” a Mexican mint plant that can be smoked in the form of dried leaves or serum - Brookhaven scientists found that the drug’s behavior in the brains of primates mimics the extremely fast and brief “high” observed in humans. Their results are now published online in the journal NeuroImage.
I was willing to give the documentary that doubt, because otherwise this film is little more than an unfunny schtick overshadowed by the importance of social upheaval the camera crew happens to connect with, seemingly unexpectedly.
[…]
In other words, this is not the time for a juvenile documentary, the stakes are too high (cough). Medical marijuana is shifting the debate around the tangled world director/writer/former Austinite Kevin Booth dives into with his documentary, American Drug War: The Last White Hope, a serious analysis of current drug enforcement. A long, thorough treatment of drug policy in how it formed and how it impacts today that was refreshing after the plodding and senseless Super High Me.
An analysis of century-old bottles of absinthe — the kind once quaffed by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso to enhance their creativity — may end the controversy over what ingredient caused the green liqueur’s supposed mind-altering effects .
The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80- to 100-proof.
In recent years, the psychedelic nature of absinthe has been hotly debated. Absinthe was notorious among 19th-century and early 20th-century bohemian artists as “the Green Fairy” that expanded the mind. After it became infamous for madness and toxic side effects among drinkers, it was widely banned.
The modern scientific consensus is that absinthe’s reputation could simply be traced back to alcoholism, or perhaps toxic compounds that leaked in during faulty distillation.
Fluid intelligence was previously thought to be genetically hard-wired, but the finding suggests that with about 25 minutes of rigorous mental training a day, healthy adults could improve their mental capacities.
[…]
David Geary, a professor at the University of Missouri and author of The Origin of Mind, who was not involved with the study, said training in one test generally doesn’t generate gains on a different test.
“Transfer is tough to get,” Geary said. “Training in task A doesn’t typically improve performance on task B.”
But in this case, subjects trained on a complex version of the so-called “n-back task” — a difficult visual/auditory memory test — improved their scores on a set of IQ questions drawn from a German intelligence measure called the Bochumer Matrizen-Test. (The Bochumer Matrizen-Test is a harder version of the well-known Ravens Progressive Matrices).
Initially, the test subjects scored an average of 10 questions correctly on the IQ test.
But after the group trained on the n-back task for 25 minutes a day for 19 days, they averaged 14.7 correct answers, an increase of more than 40 percent. (A control group that was not trained showed only a very slight performance increase.)
Buschkuehl’s team postulates that the n-back task improves working memory — how many pieces of information subjects can keep in their head — as well as the ability to control the brain’s attention. Fluid intelligence tests require those types of thinking, and the training improved performance in these underlying skills.
A documentary based on the research of Rick Strassman is in the works, featuring interviews with Erik Davis, Alex and Allyson Grey, Dennis McKenna, Joe Rogan, Douglas Rushkoff, and, of course, Strassman himself.
The rumors have been flying all day, but Erowid and MAPS seem to have confirmed the death of Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD: “Albert Hofmann passed away at his home at 9am on Tuesday Apr 29, 2008 of a heart attack at the age of 102. He will be missed. [Yes, this is confirmed. It isn’t a rumor — earth]”
(Thanks to Bill for the original tip, and Brenden for the confirmation)
5. Harvard Scientists Build a Device to Smoke Weed During a Brain Scan
4. Stanford Chemists make THC from Scratch
3. Researchers Learn How Salvia Works
2. British Army Tests LSD on Soldiers
1. Researchers Combine Chemicals from Sea Urchin Eggs and Weed to Make Powerful Painkillers
In January, Nature launched an informal survey into readers’ use of cognition-enhancing drugs. Brendan Maher has waded through the results and found large-scale use and a mix of attitudes towards the drugs.
[…]
One in five respondents said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory. Use did not differ greatly across age-groups (see line graph, right), which will surprise some. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in Bethesda, Maryland, says that household surveys suggest that stimulant use is highest in people aged 18–25 years, and in students.
Wish they’d asked about caffeine and other non-prescription stimulants as well.
“I am deep in the Amazon rainforest, anxiously losing my mind as the world begins to disintegrate. Around me, all sense of distance is wrapping itself up like spatial origami, slowly shrinking until an entire dimension has disappeared. A moment ago, I was surrounded by 200 people dressed in white and singing like angels, but now they occupy the same space as me… if that makes any sense.
Wherever I look, that is where I am. I can see everything from every angle, all at the same time. In fact, I feel I am everywhere. Outside, in the forest, the thrum of frogs and cicadas drowns out the sound of shrieking monkeys. Below me, the floor is shimmering, vanishing in waves like a spent mirage. Behind, I feel a cold vibration on my neck and sense a growling malevolence. I turn and see a red door, bulging at the hinges. Overcome with dread, I push hard to keep it closed, and all the while I feel a horrible nausea.
When will this end, I am thinking. And, with sweat running down my forehead, how can I survive it? Welcome to the Church of Santo Daime, one of the fastest growing religions in the world. Its mixture of Christianity, South American shamanism and African animism is proving irresistible to thousands of new believers across the globe. But it is its central sacrament, ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic brew made from rainforest plants - a brew that I have just drunk - that makes the Church so appealing to some yet so controversial to others.”
“This is a transcript of a small discussion with botanist-poet Dale Pendell, a long-time practitioner of Zen Buddhism and the occult, a student of the legendary intellectual Norman O. Brown, and—as they say—a graduate of Dr. Hofmann. It took place at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, Switzerland, on 23rd March 2008 (read my review). A small group of people who’d just attended Dale’s talk on Zen and psychedelics gathered round a table in the busy foyer, and Dale created a focused bubble of attentiveness with his measured, colourful discourse.
[Question about who taught DP about the occult in Los Angeles.]
Dale Pendell: His name’s not really important. He kind of hid his traces, because he insisted on being without credentials. Anytime I would look for credentials, like, “Where did you get your Zen training, Carl?” “Why do you ask? Is that gonna make you believe something I say?” So he would never tell me. But he had a personal teacher. What he taught was the importance of a personal teacher. His personal teacher was a woman named Mary. And that’s as far back as I know the transmission. But I get a sense of high knowledge being passed on that way: through personal relationships, with some occult structure overt.
I don’t know, he was able to walk in and out of Zen temples like he belonged there. He was an artist, and sat with Suzuki, Roshi in San Francisco, and they palled around like old friends. When Trungpa came to town, they palled around like old friends—he was his driver for a while. Every place he went, he liberated people; he gave people permission. He constantly violated expected behaviour, and laughed a lot. I still consider him my true teacher. I would like to be able to give people permission the way he did.
So, I can’t speak for any occult tradition. I just know there are transmissions of higher knowledge.”
