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‘the power and promise of psychedelics’..

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Can psychedelic drugs improve our lives?

Michael Pollan thinks so and he makes a pretty persuasive case in his latest book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

This is good stuff.

Pollan elegantly blends science – medicine – memoir – travel writing and history in a dazzlingly authoritative dive into his subject matter.

If you want to read only one book on psychedelics – make it this one.

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Source: The Power and Promise of Psychedelics: Michael Pollan Show Us How to Change Our Minds | Alternet

‘can psychedelics help cancer survivors shake death anxiety?’.. 

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Image result for free to use image of psilocybin

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In early 2007 Gus and his colleagues at NYU received an investigational drug license from the FDA and the DEA as well as approval from the university to start the study.

As part of the research they administered to cancer survivors the drug psilocybin – which is the technical term for the active ingredient found in what’s commonly known as magic mushrooms.

‘When people came to our study and they took psilocybin’ said Gus ‘it was such a vastly different experience than a 22 year old who took mushrooms to go to a rave.

The sense of being assaulted by noise and loudness and people versus being quiet and the expectation of reviewing your life to find meaning.

Same medicine right?

Same molecule.

But a very very different meaning – context and intention’.

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Source: Can psychedelics help cancer survivors shake death anxiety? – Salon.com

‘can psychedelics prove a biological basis for spirituality?’..

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For a long time in western culture transcendent consciousness was tightly linked with characters on the spiritual fringe: visionary prophets – ascetic sages and ecstatic poets.

Mystical states were like lightning bolts in the days before Ben Franklin’s kite—fleeting – unpredictable and impossible to harness or measure.

They were divine bolts that hit during the frenzies of ecstatic creation and desert wanderings.

They were the ultimate mystery.

Then came psychedelics.

In the 1950s a small but significant coterie of researchers and artists used LSD – mescaline and psilocybin to achieve the states of consciousness described in the literature of ecstatic mysticism.

It was an incredible discovery.

By swallowing a pill in their living room they could reliably reproduce the once-exotic case studies collected in books like Richard Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness – William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience and Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy.

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Source: The God Capsule: Can Psychedelics Prove a Biological Basis for Spirituality? | Alternet

‘want to cut crime? – hand out psychedelics’..

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New research suggests that psychedelic use is associated with a lesser likelihood of criminal behavior.

The finding opens the door to further research on the use of classical psychedelics such as psilocybin (magic mushrooms) – LSD and mescaline (peyote) – in treatments aimed at reducing such behavior.

The research was done by a team of investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham led by Peter Hendricks – associate professor in of the Department of Health Behavior in the UAB School of Public Health.

The results were published online last month by the Journal of Psychopharmacology

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Source: Want to Cut Crime? Hand Out Psychedelics | Alternet

‘making way for psychedelics’..

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Psychedelics – hidden for decades in the shadows – are back in the light.

Research studies at universities like UCLA and NYU have ushered in a new era not seen since the 1950s and ’60s – when psychedelics were a common psychotherapy tool for psychiatrists like Humphry Osmond, who gave psychonaut Aldous Huxley – author of The Doors of Perception – a dose of mescaline in 1953.

Since psychedelics were officially declared illegal in 1967 marijuana – a Schedule I substance along with psychedelics – is legal in some form in 29 states and the District of Columbia.

The federal legality of psychedelics hasn’t changed but societal perception and use has.

The microdosing trend has been driven by the Silicon Valley crowd in particular – who have reported that psychedelics spike creativity and productivity and reduce depression and anxiety.

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Source: Making Way for Psychedelics: 5 Paths Going Forward | Alternet