LSD Therapy Trials Underway in Switzerland (James Randerson, The Guardian, August 12, 2008) First test [(sic)?] of "psychedelic psychotherapy" since the 70's. Researchers hope effects will improve quality of life. . . . Scientists are exploring the use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD to treat a range of ailments from depression to cluster headaches and obsessive compulsive disorder. . . . The first clinical trial using LSD since the 1970s began in Switzerland in June. It aims to use "psychedelic psychotherapy" to help patients with terminal illnesses come to terms with their imminent mortality and so improve their quality of life. . . . Another psychedelic substance, psilocybin - the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, has shown promising results in trials for treating symptoms of terminal cancer patients. And researchers are using MDMA (ecstasy) as an experimental treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. . . . In the Swiss trial eight subjects will receive a dose of 200 microgrammes of LSD. This is enough to induce a powerful psychedelic experience and is comparable to what would be found in an "acid tab" bought from a street drug dealer. A further four subjects will receive a dose of 20 microgrammes. Every participant will know they have received some LSD, but neither the subjects nor the researchers observing them will know for certain who received the full dose. During the course of therapy researchers will assess the patients' anxiety levels, quality of life and pain levels. . . . Before hallucinogenic drugs became popular with the counter culture, they were at the forefront of brain science. They were used to help scientists understand the nature of consciousness and how the brain works and as treatments for a range of conditions including alcohol dependence. . . . Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Centre, is in the vanguard of the resurgence of scientific interest in psychedelics, having recently completed a trial that used psilocybin to help patients with terminal cancer come to terms with their illness. "I think there's a perception these compounds hold untapped potential to help us understand the human mind," he said. . . . Prof Roland Griffiths at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore Maryland recently published a study of 36 healthy volunteers who were given psilocybin and then observed in the lab. The participants' ages ranged from 24 to 64 and none had taken hallucinogens before. When the group were interviewed again 14 months later 58% said they rated the experience as being among the five most personally meaningful of their lives, 67% said it was in their top five spiritual experiences, and 64% said it had increased their well-being or life satisfaction. . . . "The working hypothesis is that if psilocybin or LSD can occasion these experiences of great personal meaning and spiritual significance ... then it would allow [patients with terminal illnesses] hopefully to face their own demise completely differently - to restructure some of the psychological angst that so often occurs concurrently with severe disease," said Griffiths. So by expanding their consciousness during a session on the drug, the patient is able to comprehend their thoughts and feelings from a new perspective. This can lead to a release of negative emotions that leaves them in a much more positive state of mind. . . . Twelve patients with terminal cancer have already helped Grob to test this idea and, although the research is not yet published, anecdotal reports from some subjects are encouraging. . . . Despite fears that psychedelic drugs can induce psychosis, they are comparatively safe when administered with the proper precautions and with trained medical professionals present, according to a manual for studying their effects, which was recently published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. . . . They do have a powerful effect on a person's perception and consciousness and cannot be considered "safe", but they are almost entirely nontoxic, they virtually never lead to addiction and they only rarely lead to long-lasting psychosis (usually in people with a family history of mental illness). . . . Read more!
A case in defense of Salvia divinorum (EROCx1, August 3, 2008) [Please Note: EROCx1 is a friend of mine, and I highly respect his opinions and judgment. ... Lorenzo] I was recently approached by some journalists who are currently performing research for a report they are producing on Salvia divinorum, with a focus on its legal status. . . . I asked the journalist interviewing me if he had tried Salvia divinorum? Unfortunately he replied with a no. I recommended that any professional investigator preparing a national story on an ineffable experience should at least invest 15 minutes and try the herb already. It's like someone reporting on a religion and the person being interviewed said, "Do you want to meet god?" And the interviewer says, "No." Why wouldn't you? It’s safe and legal. I don't believe anyone could possibly comprehend the Salvia experience without direct experience with it. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. That’s his personal and private choice, but I hope he does. He had all the scientific literature so there was really no point in repeating what he already knew. I made it clear the Salvia divinorum is NOT like any other psychedelic. . . . This includes Marijuana, LSD, Magic Mushrooms or any other of the known psychedelics. This analogy is all too commonly used by the media and is more inaccurate then claiming all food tastes the same and has the same nutritional properties or that all medicine is the same. These analogies are absurd. . . . Most legislators argue Salvia is similar to illegal substances therefore it too should be illegal. The Federal government all ready has a law that makes any substance similar to illegal substances also illegal. It’s called the Analog Act. This only further proves (as previously mentioned) that Salvia is special and is not like the other classic psychedelics. . . . Please keep in mind when these things are made illegal, they are not only restricted for use by ordinary people. They are restricted from scientific study. . . . I must make it clear for the record. I do not use or posses any illegal substances. At this phase in my life, Salvia and psychedelic thinking are more then enough to satisfy my entheogenic needs. Mostly I enjoy the philosophy and theory of it all. I like to read, participate on forums and listen to podcasts like my friend Lorenzo’s Psychedelic Salon. By doing so I am able to benefit simply by taking in other peoples reflections on their experiences. . . . The effects of Salvia range from mild to profound and last about 15 minutes. A little of the history of Salvia from the Mazatecan shamans, re-dicovery by Wasson & Hoffman. All the way up to making her emergence onto the Internet and probably on her path to extinction. But we won’t let her go with out our best effort to keep her legal. She is an intelligent plant spirit. Evading the Inquisition and all attempts to stomp out the use of Shamanic plants. We talked about the communities’ attempts to keep Salvia legal. Being that this is not currently a Federal matter. Its tuff to organize state by state, now we must even watch county and city ordinances. Just knowing the law of the Country is difficult enough, let alone fight all the smaller battles. There is presently no national organization of Salvia users taking political action. Maybe there should be, or are we too late?
Thank you for reading this. Please feel free to share this with others. I would appreciate a link back to my blog
Peace and Blessings, EROCx1
[NOTE: This is only a very short excerpt from a long and well-written essay that you will find by clicking the link above.] . . . Read more!
The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High (Jack O'Brien, Cracked.com) Francis Crick Discovers DNA Thanks to LSD For the few Cracked readers not versed in the history of human genetics, Francis Crick is the closest that field gets to a rock star, which is pretty fucking close as it turns out. In 1953 in Cambridge, Crick burst through the front door of his home spouting what his wife Odile originally thought was crazy jibberish about two spirals twisting in opposite directions from one another. Like all great rock star's wives, Odile was an artist, and drew exactly what her husband described. Then the pair and research partner James Watson all went out to a pub and got drunk.
Freud and Cocaine Invent Psychoanalysis The first ten years of Sigmund Freud's career were like a roving cocaine pep rally. He prescribed cocaine to his friends for headaches, nasal ailments or just to "give (their) cheeks a red color." After all, why whore yourself up with makeup when you can get the same effect with a little cocaine?
A Coke Addict Makes a Coke-Flavored Cola and Calls it Coke Coke has it right there in the name. When Coca Cola was created in the summer of 1885, the market was even more crowded with sodas than it is today. In addition to Coke, Pharmacists were selling thousands of sodas, including Dr. Pepper, which got its name from the Texas doctor who marketed it as a cure for impotence.
Dock Ellis Trips His Way to a No-Hitter The day of the no-hitter, Dock Ellis woke up around noon on what he thought was Friday and ate three tabs of acid, presumably because he was tired of Wheaties. But when his girlfriend arrived she was carrying Saturday's newspaper, which meant he'd slept through Friday or that his girlfriend's was a time traveler. The sports page had more bad news, he was scheduled to pitch in San Diego in six hours. . . . Ellis had pitched high before. And by that we mean he had never pitched sober. Starting with booze as a high school prodigy and moving up through amphetamines and cocaine in the MLB, his Pirate teammates often took bets on whether anyone could take as many amphetamines as Dock. . . . Unfazed despite being on enough acid to melt Jimi Hendrix's guitar, Ellis hopped a flight to San Diego, and faced down a lineup that had woken up knowing what day it was, and also had the upper hand in the "not on acid" category. Not a single one got a hit.
Moses Takes 'Shrooms, Shits Out Ten Commandments The area surrounding Mt Sinai, for example, was home to two common psychedelic drugs and, according to a 2008 Time and Mind article written by Benny Shanon, a professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, psychedelic mushrooms and other mind-altering substances played a huge role in the religious rites of Israelites during Biblical times. . . . Professor Shanon maintains that the scene described in Exodus, (involving blaring trumpets, bright lighting and thunder), fits the "classic imaginings of people on drugs" and further that "the seeing of light [that occurs in hallucinations] is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings."
Legal Prescription Drugs Most Deadly of All (Bruce Mirken, Marijuana Policy Project, July 29, 2008) A new study just published in Archives of Internal Medicine shows a 360.5% increase in the death rate from fatal medication errors (FMEs) from 1983 to 2004, vastly outstripping most other causes of death. Notably, most of the increase in deaths took place at home, not in medical settings or other locations. FMEs are defined as deaths from mistakes involving medications: accidental overdoses, the wrong drug being taken, etc. They do not include deaths from "adverse reactions" (side effects) involving drugs taken correctly. . . . While the sharpest increase was among medication errors in which alcohol and/or street drugs were also involved, this figure was still well under half the number of FME deaths without alcohol or street drug involvement. While the data analyzed by researchers do not include the exact medications or other drugs involved, the researchers note that use of illicit drugs did not rise during the period studied, and the death rate from alcohol or street drugs increased only modestly in the period studied. . . . Simply put, more patients are being sent home with powerful narcotics and other drugs to administer themselves. . . . Clearly, an important lesson here is that legal drugs can be deadly. Even if they’re prescribed. Even if they’re over-the-counter (acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is responsible for about 500 U.S. overdose deaths each year). Even if they’re legal recreational drugs like booze. . . . Marijuana is strikingly absent from this picture of deadly drugs. Unlike narcotic painkillers or alcohol, marijuana does not suppress breathing. As an editorial in the British Medical Journal noted, marijuana use has not been linked to higher death rates, and no fatal marijuana overdose has ever been documented. Indications of life-threatening interactions between marijuana and legal medicines are notably absent from the medical literature. . . . Some drugs are indeed deadlier than others, and marijuana is not among them.. . . Read more!
The Myth of Drug Addiction (Bruce K. Alexander, Simon Fraser University) Most Canadians believe that certain drugs cause catastrophic addictions in people who use them. This conventional belief is reflected in such familiar phrases as "crack cocaine is instantly addictive" or "heroin is so good, don't even try it once". It is also implied in the professional literature which routinely describes certain drugs as "addictive", "dependency producing", or "habit forming". The belief that drugs can induce addiction has shaped drug policy for more than a century. . . . However, the only actual evidence for the belief in drug-induced addiction comes 1) from the testimonials of some addicted people who believe that exposure to a drug caused them to "lose control" and 2) from some highly technical research on laboratory animals. These bits of evidence have been embellished in the news media to the point where the belief in drug-induced addiction has acquired the status of an obvious truth that requires no further testing. But the widespread acceptance of this belief is a better demonstration of the power of repetition than of the influence of empirical research, because the great bulk of empirical evidence runs against it. . . . Belief in drug-induced addiction may have deep cultural roots as well, since it is a pharmacological version of the belief in "demon possession" that has entranced western culture for centuries. . . . This is more than an academic issue. Canadian policy decisions frequently are constrained by the public’s strongly-held belief in drug-induced addiction. Draconian laws, sentencing, and even police violence have been justified by the need to keep addicting drugs out of the hands of the nation’s youth at all costs. As well, it is almost impossible to experiment with medical administration of heroin or cocaine to addicts for fear that the medical profession would be seen as dispensing an addicting drug that could find its way to the public. . . . Analysing the vast and complex literature that relates to this topic becomes simpler if the general belief that heroin and cocaine cause addiction is resolved into two more specific claims, and each is evaluated separately. The two claims are: Claim A: All or most people who use heroin or cocaine beyond a certain minimum amount become addicted. ... Claim B: No matter what proportion of the users of heroin and cocaine become addicted, their addiction is caused by exposure to the drug. . . . The two claims are rarely stated this explicitly. Usually, they are either assumed, stated in a vague way, or combined. However, every professor who teaches a course in drug addiction knows that the majority of students firmly believe both of them at the beginning of the semester. . . . Claim A is usually asserted less strongly now than it has been in the past, when claims of "instant addiction" were often made for both heroin and cocaine and, earlier, for alcohol, marijuana, and numerous other drugs. More cautious contemporary statements of Claim A state that addiction only occurs after several exposures to the drug, although the minimum amount required to produce addiction is left unspecified. . . . Here it is important to consider the meaning of the term "addiction". Some (not all) of the non-addicted users of heroin studied by Blackwell and by Zinberg were regular users of heroin. However, they did not feel out of control, the heroin habit did not consume their lives, they did not steal to obtain it, and they were not criminalized. Therefore, by all normal definitions of "addiction" and equivalent terms, these people were not addicted (for example, see definitions in Jaffe (1990) or the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association). If the term "addiction" is applied to mere occasional use or innocuous regular use the term becomes trivial--most people regularly and stubbornly use things that carry some substantial risk of harmful side effects, like automobiles, skis, computers, and birth control pills. . . . Taken together, the American and Canadian population surveys indicate that merely having used cocaine is associated with less than a 10% chance of having it as often as 100 times. Virtually all addicts use it far more than 100 times. . . . I hope that this short review is sufficient to show that the conventional belief that heroin and cocaine cause addiction is very far from an empirically supported fact. By the normal, skeptical standards of science, Claim A is false and Claim B is an unsubstantiated hypothesis. . . . Moreover, the conventional belief in drug-induced addiction appears to persist because it serves personal, social, professional, commercial, and political needs.
[NOTE: This is only a short excerpt from a very long paper containing much detail and many references. Please click the link above to read the entire paper. . . . Read more!
WHO Documents Failure of U.S. Drug Policies (Bruce Mirken, AlterNet, July 2, 2008) The United States has some of the world's most punitive drug policies and has led the cheering section for tough "war on drugs" policies worldwide, but a new international study suggests that those policies have been a crashing failure. A World Health Organization survey of 17 countries, conducted by some of the world's leading substance abuse researchers, found that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use. . . . The numbers are startling. In the United States, 42.4 percent admitted having used marijuana. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: I wonder what that number would be if all of the people surveyed felt comfortable enough to be honest. My guess is that well over half of everyone over 16 years old in this country has tried cannabis at least once.] The only other nation that came close was New Zealand, another bastion of get-tough policies, at 41.9 percent. No one else was even close. The results for cocaine use were similar, with the United States leading the world by a large margin. . . . This study is important because it's the first time a respected international group has surveyed drug use around the world, using the same questions and procedure everywhere. . . . Some of the most striking numbers are from the Netherlands, where adults are permitted to possess a small of marijuana and purchase it from regulated businesses. Some U.S. officials have claimed that these Dutch policies have created some sort of decadent cesspool of drug abuse, but the new study demolishes such assertions: In the Netherlands, only 19.8 percent have used marijuana, less than half the U.S. figure. . . . Even more striking is what the researchers found when they asked young adults when they had started using marijuana. Again, the United States led the world, with 20.2 percent trying marijuana by age 15. No other country was even close, and in the Netherlands, just 7 percent used marijuana by 15 -- roughly one-third of the U.S. figure. . . . Back in 2002, denouncing a proposed marijuana law reform in Nevada, ONDCP distributed a list of talking points to prosecutors specifically slamming the "extremely dubious" Dutch system of regulated sales, saying, "Increased availability of marijuana leads to increased use of marijuana and other drugs." . . . In fact, ONCDP's latest excuse for the failure of U.S. drug policies -- that enforcement and penalties don't really have much effect on rates of use -- is probably just about right. But it also dynamites any justification for our current marijuana laws. The WHO researchers put it this way: "The U.S., which has been driving much of the world's drug research and drug policy agenda, stands out with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies. ... The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the US, has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults. Clearly, by itself, a punitive policy towards possession and use accounts for limited variation in nation level rates of illegal drug use." . . . For this we arrest 830,000 Americans a year on marijuana charges?. . . Read more!
Dr. Albert Hofmann Dies at 102 (Adam Bernstein, Washington Post,April 30, 2008) Albert Hofmann, 102, a Swiss chemist and accidental father of LSD who came to view the much-vilified and abused hallucinogen he discovered in 1938 as his "problem child," died April 29 at his home in Burg, a village near Basel, Switzerland, after a heart attack. . . . Lysergic acid diethylamide, thousands of times stronger than mescaline, can give its user an experience often described as psychedelic -- a kaleidoscopic twirling of the mind pulsating with color and movement. . . . After its discovery, LSD was viewed as a wonder drug with the potential to treat problems including schizophrenia and alcoholism. For the latter, some held the theory that chronic drinkers quit only after experiencing the hallucinations of delirium tremens. . . . LSD attracted many prominent advocates. They included Aldous Huxley, author of "Brave New World," and psychologist Timothy Leary, who saw the drug as a potent way for people to live up to his 1960s counterculture motto: "Turn on, tune in, drop out." . . . The CIA was also widely reported to have used LSD in experiments on unwitting subjects. This, and greater recreational use that caused some fatal overdoses, led to the widespread condemnation of the drug and, by the early 1970s, its criminalization. As a result, research permission and funding from state and federal agencies was terminated. . . . In Dr. Hofmann's opinion, outlawing LSD made its use even more attractive to young people and diminished any safeguards. He spoke of many hippies stopping by his home on the way to their spiritual quest, hoping to score from his "secret stash." . . . Dr. Hofmann headed the research department for natural medicines at Sandoz before retiring in 1971. At the company in the 1950s and 1960s, he discovered and named many of the active hallucinogenic ingredients in Mexican "magic mushrooms," including psilocybin and psilocin. He was credited with important developments in medications for geriatric and gynecological uses as well as drugs to control blood pressure. . . . He was a member of the Nobel Prize Committee and a fellow of the World Academy of Sciences. He was a prolific writer of scientific articles and the author of several books, many of which tried to bind the scientific with the spiritual. In particular, he denounced the demonization of LSD after hippies and societal dropouts seemed to have monopolized the media's focus. . . . In his 1989 book "Insight Outlook," he wrote that LSD taken by "mentally stable persons in the right set and setting" was suited to the Western world, which he saw rife with "materialism, estrangement from nature, . . . [and] the missing of a sense-making philosophical fundamentalness of life." . . . Read more!
Psychedelic Researcher Turns DEA Informant (JEANE MacINTOSH, New York Post, February 18, 2008) A Harvard-educated Manhattan jet-setter has been pegged as the money-laundering mastermind behind a massive LSD drug ring run out of a Kansas missile silo, The Post has learned. . . . Stefan Wathne, a 39-year-old scion of New York's socially prominent Wathne apparel family, surrendered to federal agents Jan. 7 as he stepped off a plane at Newark Airport - after three years on the lam. . . . Wathne is accused in a 2005 federal indictment of laundering as much as $3 million through Russia between 1996 and 2000 for what authorities have described as the most prolific LSD operation in US history. . . . His arrest marks the latest chapter in a bizarre federal drug case that has unfolded over five years and featured a surreal cast of characters. . . . In addition to Wathne - an erstwhile financial planner and former American Ballet Theatre trustee - the case has included a prominent Harvard psychiatrist and a deputy director of a UCLA drug-study program. . . . In another strange twist, singers Sting and Paul Simon helped pay the legal bills for a witness in the case. . . . The drug ring was cracked in November 2002, when the US Drug Enforcement Agency descended on a decommissioned military silo outside Topeka, which had been converted to a lab capable of churning out massive amounts of LSD. . . . The drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamid and originally used to study personality disorders, is the most potent hallucinogen known. The government banned it in 1966. . . . The feds arrested the Princeton- and Harvard-educated head of the operation, William Leonard Pickard, a noted chemist who at the time was deputy director of UCLA's Drug Policy Analysis program. . . . Pickard and an accomplice, California computer specialist Clyde Apperson, were charged with conspiracy and possession to distribute after agents seized enough raw material to produce 16 million doses of LSD, with an estimated street value of as much as $160 million. . . . The arrests put Wathne on the DEA's radar. . . . A Reykjavik-born Icelandic national whose family later put down roots here, Wathne was introduced to Pickard through Dr. John Halpern, a leading psychedelic researcher from Harvard's prestigious McLean Hospital. . . . Halpern, records show, was paid $319,000 by Pickard from 1996 to 1999 - the same years Wathne is charged with laundering money for Pickard. . . . Testimony at Pickard's drug trial suggested that Halpern was paid for the Wathne introduction. . . . Wathne's alleged role in the LSD ring was to take drug money, cycle it through Russia and then send it back to Pickard, partly in the form of a "donation" to his UCLA research program, according to testimony at Pickard's trial. . . . After the silo bust, Halpern made a deal with the feds and ratted out his friends. . . . He also rolled on a one-time New Mexico business partner, Alfred Savinelli, from whom Pickard had bought chemicals and glassware to make LSD.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THIS STORY PLEASE SEE:
Psilocybin & Cancer Anxiety Research Video The following two videos are from a news special by CBC in Canada and feature Dr. Charlie Grob who has also been a featured speaker in the Psychedelic Salon.
Mescaline Experiment on Human - Video by Dr. Osmond This is an extremely interesting video of a 1950s experiment by one of the world's leading psychedelic researchers of the time. Included is an interview 30 years later with the test subject who by then was a member of the UK House of Lords.
The Peace Drug Being Used to Treat PTSD ( Tom Shroder, Washington Post, November 25, 2007) PTSD is usually triggered by combat, rape, childhood abuse, a serious accident or natural disaster -- any situation in which someone believes death is imminent, or in which a significant threat of serious injury is accompanied by an intense sense of helplessness or horror. Not all or even most trauma victims develop PTSD, but enough do so that nearly 24 million Americans, or 8 percent of the population, have suffered from it at some point in their lifetime. It is estimated that in any given year, more than 5 million Americans have active PTSD -- a costly problem in humanitarian and economic terms. Drug and alcohol abuse are all-too-frequent consequences of PTSD, as is loss of productivity and the need for expensive, long-lasting medical treatment. . . . The ever-lengthening Iraq war will count among its other costs a legacy of thousands of veterans in need of psychiatric treatment. The government estimates that already more than 50,000 soldiers -- about 4 percent of those who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan -- have been treated for symptoms of PTSD. Many more might actually have it: Military studies put the number at 12 to 20 percent of those returning from Iraq and 6 to 11 percent of those returning from Afghanistan. And the news gets worse. . . . "Vets with PTSD are particularly costly to the [Veterans Affairs] system," says Linda Bilmes, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "They constitute 8 percent of the claims, but 20 percent of the payments." Bilmes, who has studied the ongoing costs of the wars, estimates that treating Iraq vets with PTSD over the next 50 years will cost taxpayers $100 billion. This is based on findings that one-third of vets with PTSD will remain unemployable, and all suffering with PTSD will have a much higher than normal likelihood of needing treatment for physical ailments. And that's just the direct costs to the budget. "Assuming that the war continues, though with lower deployments, through 2017," she says, and assuming the rate of PTSD isn't being underreported, the cost of lost economic productivity to the U.S. economy will be in excess of $65 billion. . . . Whatever the cause, the symptoms of PTSD are fairly consistent, and Donna's -- which rated severe on a standard diagnostic test -- were typical. Her prognosis was not great. Some antidepressants can diminish symptoms, and various forms of psychotherapy can, long term, sometimes untangle the psychological knot at the root of the problem. But the nature of PTSD makes therapy problematic. The very symptoms -- acute anxiety, heightened fear, diminished trust and inability to revisit the trauma -- are a direct roadblock to healing. At least one-third of people with PTSD never fully recover. . . . Two Iraq veterans with war-related PTSD, the study's first, are cleared to begin.Close behind are similar studies in Switzerland and Israel. At Harvard's McLean Hospital, researchers are set to evaluate MDMA therapy as a way to alleviate acute anxiety in terminal cancer patients. In Vancouver, Canada, the effectiveness of an ongoing program to treat drug addiction with another potent psychedelic drug, ibogaine, is under scrutiny. There is a proposal, based on case histories, to study the ability of LSD to defuse crippling cluster headaches. . . . THE PROMISE OF A BLOCKBUSTER TREATMENT, one that doesn't just address symptoms but defuses underlying causes, is a particularly seductive vision right now. A report issued last month by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine emphasizes the uncertain effectiveness of current PTSD treatments, and the urgent need of returning soldiers who will suffer from it. . . . To a non-scientist, the very preliminary results of Mithoefer's study would suggest that MDMA might be just what the doctors ordered. Of the subjects who have been through both the MDMA-assisted therapy and the three-month post-experiment follow-up tests, Mithoefer reports, every one showed dramatic improvement. . . . It's not well understood why MDMA, or any psychedelic drug, can produce extraordinary experiences. But in MDMA's case, the crude explanation seems to involve a drug-forced rush of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin assists in the transmission of nerve impulses and plays a role in regulating a wide range of sensations and impulses, from mood, emotion, sleep and appetite to sensation, pleasure and sexuality. One recent study pointed out physiological similarities between a brain under the influence of MDMA and the post-orgasmic state, also known for producing emotional closeness and euphoria. . . . The new safety study was not testing the dangers of MDMA under the conditions of illegal use. Eighteen people were given dosages similar to those that would be used in psychotherapy sessions, and the settings were comparable to the calm of a psychiatrist's office. The gist of the findings: MDMA given under those circumstances produced no acute harm or evidence of brain impairment. These results were bolstered by a Swiss study in which people who had never before taken MDMA were given brain scans before and after being given a single therapeutic-range dose of the drug. Comparison of the before and after scans showed no damage.
Marijuana and Music...a brief history (Margaret Moser, The Austin Chronicle, May 25, 2007) Who wrote the first song about smoking pot? . . . It's been lost to history, but here's a political side note to the 4:20 generation: During the Mexican Revolution of 1910, thousands of native Mexicans moved north across the Rio Grande, many settling around San Antonio. With them came a curious song called "La Cucaracha," known perhaps apocryphally as Pancho Villa's theme song. . . . "La Cucaracha" crackled with life, a swaying Spanish-tune-turned-Mexican corrido quickly picked up by jazz bands and danced into popular music. No song better evoked the languorous image of life south of the border in vintage films, newsreels, and radio programs of the day. Few people realized the lyrics bespoke a cockroach's yearning to stay high. . . . "La cucaracha ya no puede caminar ... por que no tiene marihuana por fumar," basically translates as, "The cockroach can no longer walk because he doesn't have any marijuana to smoke." . . . There you have it. Hidden in the foreign words of a hit song, pot smoking permeated popular American culture. . . . Think Louis Armstrong burned a fatty when he played Austin's Driskill Hotel in 1931? Round his native Storyville, on Basin Street in New Orleans, marijuana had long been celebrated in music, reflecting the ancient neighborhood's Jazz Age lifestyle and red-light back streets. "Muggles" was his musical interpretation of a joint smoked in 1928, and "La Cucaracha" nested in his repertoire. He'd already been rousted for pot at least twice and spent a few days in the pokey. . . . Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon wins the prize for the oldest authenticated American song about marijuana, 1927's "Willie the Weeper." . . . "Vipers" are what the marijuana enthusiasts of the Twenties called themselves, and they wrote their anthems en masse: "Here Comes the Man With the Jive," "Viper Blues," "Jack, I'm Mellow," "Sweet Marijuana Brown," "Viper Mad," "Tea Party," "The G Man Got the T Man," "The Stuff Is Here (and It's Mellow)," "All the Jive Is Gone." . . . This exuberant musical activity was in harsh contrast to the official depiction of marijuana by the government, which had taken a dim view of Mexican immigrants. As various anti-hemp interests such as the cotton and petrochemical industries grew influential and anti-marijuana crusaders like Harry J. Anslinger gained authority, the stereotype of lily-white American teens being perverted by hopped-up, hot-blooded Mexicans was more than a mythical smokescreen. It was fantastic fodder for the Hearst press. . . . The end of Prohibition brought the Depression. The Depression brought with it a renewed campaign on the part of the United States government against marijuana. As commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger declared "reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." Once again the suppression of marijuana was a racially motivated political tool. . . . What a contrast to the country's founding fathers, who'd opened the Colonies' doors to hemp in the 1600s! The Virginia Assembly of 1619 required all farmers to grow hemp. Its strong fibers were commonly used to make clothing and sails, and it was considered legal tender in three states. That respectable history vanished almost overnight with the appearance of anti-marijuana films, most notably the church-bankrolled Tell Your Children, better known as Reefer Madness (1936). . . . Although the portrayal of marijuana as demon weed was fed to teens, the campaign had the opposite effect. Coming from the wild days of Prohibition into the Depression offered few alternatives for youthful pleasures. Their limited world was enhanced by the suggestion of something wilder happening out there. . . . "The reefer man is here!" sang out Cab Calloway.
[NOTE: Click on the link above for more of this interesting history.] . . . Read more!
Last Objection to Medical Marijuana Removed by Volcano Vaporizer (Bruce Mirken, AlterNet, May 2, 2007) Anyone who advocates for medical marijuana sooner or later runs into arguments about smoking: "No real medicine is smoked." "Smoking is bad for the lungs; why would any doctor recommend something so harmful?" It's a line of reasoning that medical marijuana opponents have used to great effect in Congress, state legislatures, and elsewhere. Indeed, the FDA's controversial 2006 statement opposing medical marijuana was couched in repeated references to "smoked marijuana." . . . But new research demonstrates that all those fears of "smoked marijuana" as medicine are 100 percent obsolete. . . . The smoking argument was the closest thing to a scientifically meaningful objection to medical marijuana. While marijuana smoke, unlike tobacco, has never been shown to cause lung cancer Back in 1999, the Institute of Medicine's White House-commissioned report on medical marijuana conceded marijuana's medical benefits, saying that what is needed is "a nonsmoked rapid-onset cannabinoid drug delivery system." . . . The new studies -- one from the University of California, San Francisco, and the other from the University at Albany, State University of New York -- confirm that such a system is here. It's called vaporization, and has been familiar to medical marijuana patients for many years, but few outside the medical marijuana community know it exists. Unlike smoking, a vaporizer does not burn the plant material, but heats it just to the point at which the THC and the other cannabinoids vaporize. In the Volcano vaporizer tested at UCSF, the vapors are collected in a detachable plastic bag with a mouthpiece for inhalation. . . . The UCSF study, conducted by Dr. Donald Abrams and colleagues and just published online by the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (to appear in the journal's print edition on May) compared a commercially available vaporizer called the Volcano to smoking in 18 volunteers. The subjects inhaled three different strengths of marijuana either as smoked cigarettes or vaporized using the Volcano. . . . The two methods produced similar THC levels, with vaporization producing somewhat higher levels, and were judged equally efficient for administration of cannabinoids. The big difference was in expired carbon monoxide. As expected, there was a sharp increase in carbon monoxide levels after smoking, while "little if any" increase was detected after vaporization. "This indicates little or no exposure to gaseous combustion toxins," the researchers wrote. "Vaporization of marijuana does not result in exposure to combustion gases, and therefore is expected to be much safer than smoking marijuana cigarettes." . . . A second study, by Dr. Mitch Earleywine at the University at Albany, State University of New York, involved an Internet survey of nearly 7,000 marijuana users. Participants were asked to identify their primary method of using marijuana (joints, pipe, vaporizer, edibles, etc.) and were asked six questions about respiratory symptoms. After adjusting for variables such as age and cigarette use, vaporizer users were 60 percent less likely than smokers to report respiratory symptoms such as cough, chest tightness or phlegm. The effect of vaporizer use was more pronounced the larger the amount of marijuana used. . . . "Our study clearly suggests that the respiratory effects of marijuana use can be decreased by use of a vaporizer," Earleywine commented. "In fact, because we only asked participants about their primary means of using marijuana, it's likely that people who exclusively use vaporizers will get even more benefit than our results indicate, because no doubt some in our study used vaporizers most of the time but not all of the time." . . . In a rational world, the government officials objecting to medical marijuana based on the health risks of smoking would greet this research with open arms. They would join with groups like the Marijuana Policy Project in spreading the word about this important, health-enhancing technology. . . . Don't hold your breath. . . . Read more!
LSD Researcher Denied U.S. Entry Under Terror Laws (Linda Solomon, The Tyee, April 25, 2007) A Canadian psychotherapist who conducted research with LSD was denied entry to the United States after a border guard Googled his work. . . . Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled "Andrew Feldmar." . . . The psychotherapist's world was about to turn upside down. The Blaine border guard explained that Feldmar had been pulled out of the line as part of a random search. He seemed friendly, even as he took away Feldmar's passport and car keys. While the contents of his car were being searched, Feldmar and the officer talked. He asked Feldmar what profession he was in. When Feldmar said he was psychologist, the official typed his name into his Internet search engine. Before long the customs guard was engrossed in an article Feldmar had published in the spring 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head. The article concerned an acid trip Feldmar had taken in London, Ontario, and another in London, England, almost forty years ago. It also alluded to the fact that he had used hallucinogenics as a "path" to understanding self and that in certain cases, he reflected, it could "be preferable to psychiatry." Everything seemed to collapse around him, as a quiet day crossing the border began to turn into a nightmare. . . . He was told to sit down on a folding chair and for hours he wondered where this was going. He checked his watch and thought hopelessly of his friend who was about to land at the Seattle airport. Three hours later, the official motioned him into a small, barren room with an American flag. He was sitting on one side and Feldmar was on the other. The official said that under the Homeland Security Act, Feldmar was being denied entry due to "narcotics" use. LSD is not a narcotic substance, Feldmar tried to explain, but an entheogen. The guard wasn't interested in technicalities. He asked for a statement from Feldmar admitting to having used LSD and he fingerprinted Feldmar for an FBI file. . . . Then Feldmar disbelievingly listened as he learned that he was being barred from ever entering the United States again. The officer told him he could apply to the Department of Homeland Security for a waiver, if he wished, and gave him a package, with the forms. . . . The border guard then escorted him to his car and made sure he did a U-turn and went back to Canada. . . . Feldmar attended the University of Toronto where he graduated with honours in mathematics, physics and chemistry. He received his M.A. in psychology from the University of Western Ontario. At University of Western Ontario, he was under supervision with Zenon Pylyshyn, who was from Saskatchewan and had participated, along with Abram Hoffer and Duncan Blewett, in the first experiments with LSD-25. . . . "Zenon told me he had had enough strange experiences, that he had gone about as far with LSD as he wished to go. He still had what was once legal. ... Looking back 33 years, I don't quite recall why I decided to accept his tentative offer. I was 27 years old and thought of myself as a rational scientist, and had no experience with delirium, hallucination, or altered mind states. I was curious. Very curious. I thought that, like Faust, I might make a pact with the devil in return for esoteric knowledge." . . . Zenon gave him 900 micrograms of acid and the surprise of his life, he wrote in the Janus Head article. "Following this initiation, I traveled to many regions many times with the help of many different substances. I took peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis, MDMA, DMT, ketamine, nitrous oxide 5-MEO-DMT, but I kept coming back to LSD.
[NOTE: This is a very long article that runs for three more pages. Please click on the link at the top of this article to read the full text of this story.]
POT vs TOBACCO (R Givens, DrugSense.org) Tobacco Contains Ionizing Radiation Prohibitionists scare people with comparisons between marijuana and tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke is bad, therefore all smoke is bad the reasoning goes. If somebody suggested that burning PCBs (dioxin), high sulphur coal, firewood, nuclear waste and natural gas all produced the same combustion products and all were equally dangerous, most people would demand proof before accepting such a ridiculous claim. But make the claim that tobacco smoke and pot smoke are equally bad and no one questions it. But what does science say? . . . There is one very important difference between marijuana smoke and tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke contains ionizing radiation and cannabis smoke does not. The tobacco plant's roots and the sticky leaf surface absorb radioactive polonium-210 and lead-210 isotopes which are inhaled with tobacco smoke. A pack and a half a day smoker receives a daily dose of radiation equal to what a person would have received standing downwind from Three Mile Island nuclear reactor during the first 21 hours after the infamous accident. Pack and a half a day smokers are exposed to the equivalent of over 300 hundred chest x-rays every year from this ionizing radiation. . . . Radioactivity in tobacco may explain why smokers of low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes have the same lung cancer rate as smokers of regular cigarettes. 50% of tobacco radiation is discharged into the air which might explain why non-smokers married to heavy smokers may have an increased risk of lung cancer. "Americans are exposed to far more radiation from tobacco smoke than from any other source," says Dr R T Ravenholt, former director of World health Surveys at the Center for Disease Control. . . . It is extremely misleading to blame tobacco risks on "carcinogens" without accounting for ionizing radiation. Some experts speculate that combining ionizing radiation with carcinogenic substances increases cancer risks a hundredfold. Vilma Hunt, who discovered radioactive polonium 210 in tobacco in 1964, recalls the day her study was released. It seemed that every chemist and physicist she knew quit smoking. "They immediately understood the implication," she recounts. "They said, 'If there's ionizing radiation in this stuff, that's it. I'm finished'." . . . Even former Surgeon General C. Everettt Koop admits that radio activity may be the primary cause of lung cancer in smokers. . . . Marijuana plants do not absorb radioactive elements. . . . Where Are The Bodies? If marijuana caused lung cancer, prohibitionists would be giving body counts on the six o'clock news instead of peddling scare stories. The truly sad aspect of this fear mongering is that the authorities KNOW marijuana is harmless. Back in the 1960s, the drug warriors got to believing their own propaganda and authorized over 10,000 government approved studies of marijuana between 1965-75. To their amazement and disgust, report after report gave cannabis a clean bill of health. Even worse from the drug crusader point of view, many studies provided preliminary evidence that cannabis compounds are effective in treating a wide range of diseases including cancer tumor suppression. . . . Anti-Cancer Compounds In Cannabis: Another reason to demand proof before accepting any assumptions about marijuana causing cancer is the fact that cannabis contains several very active anti-cancer compounds. . . . In 1976, Louis S. Harris, of the Medical College of Virginia, reported that delta-9 THC increased cancer survival time by 36% without the weight loss caused by most standard anti-tumor agents. Delta-8 THC and cannabinol were also found to be quite active in tumor suppression. No other chemotherapy agent differentiates between tumor and normal cells the way cannabis compounds do. Like all other studies showing medical potential for marijuana, Harris's funding was immediately discontinued. . . . Cannabis Receptors: The discovery of "cannabis receptors" in the human brain and other parts of the body and naturally occurring THC compounds (anandamide) in the body has ended most scientific speculation that the active ingredients in marijuana cause any kind of health damage. Previous assumptions about brain damage and other health injuries have been rejected because it is now known that cannabis is metabolized without any toxicity whatsoever. Marijuana is safer than public drinking water. . . .
INFORMATION SOURCES:
HEMP & the marijuana conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer 1995 p164-5
US Surgeon General's Reports -- 1981 - 1982
Proceedings of The National Academy of Science, Biophysics, and Biological Science, March 1983
Lancet -- September 1983
Would You Still Rather Fight Than Switch? -- Whole Life Times Mid-April/May 1985
Radioactivity: The New Found Danger in Cigarettes, by Lowell Ponte Reader's Digest -- March 1986 p 123
Analgesic & Anti-Tumor potential of The Cannabinoids Louis S. Harris, Dept of Pharmacology Medical College of Virginia Health Sciences Div. Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA (US Dept Health & Ed. partial sponsor) 1976 . . . Read more!
LSD Educational Video Thanks to our friends at DoseNation, I got to see a really great video. At least I thought it was great ... funny, educational, and what I liked best, it was really in your face. From what I understand, these guys were given a class assignment to give a presentation on LSD. Well, as you can see from their video report, these guys actually do have a very good understanding of the effects of LSD.
IMHO, if everyone involved in the War on Drugs conducted their research at a level as high as this, the WoD would soon be history.
We have at last obtained the final permissions to start the Beckley Foundation/University of California LSD Project in San Francisco. This will be the first study using LSD on human subjects since prohibition blocked all such scientific research in the 1970s. Since then, great advances have been made in neuroscience and brain-imaging techniques. The study will explore why LSD causes such profound changes in consciousness, and how it affects creativity and problem-solving.
We hope that this first study will open the door to a wider exploration of the neural processes underlying consciousness and show how LSD might be a useful tool in neuroscience, in psychotherapy, in personal development and for enhancing creativity.
Another exciting development is the recent publication in the Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, of a paper by Professors Colin Blakemore, David Nutt and others, calling for the reclassification of drugs of potential misuse according to a rational scale of harm. This new scale would be regularly revised as scientific understanding advances, and would also include such legal drugs as alcohol and tobacco (which account for about 90% of all drug-related deaths in the UK). The thinking behind this article was developed at the workshops and seminars of the Beckley Foundation, and has already been influential in persuading a House of Commons Select Committee to condemn the current government classification as "not fit for purpose.". . . Read more!
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Albert Hofmann, 102, a Swiss chemist and accidental father of LSD who came to view the much-vilified and abused hallucinogen he discovered in 1938 as his "problem child," died April 29 at his home in Burg, a village near Basel, Switzerland, after a heart attack. . . . Lysergic acid diethylamide, thousands of times stronger than mescaline, can give its user an experience often described as psychedelic -- a kaleidoscopic twirling of the mind pulsating with color and movement. 
