‘The Higgs boson of neuroscience’… Not all drugs are created equal, and I would never encourage anyone to soothe their existential discomfort with heroin or amphetamine, both of which I have taken. But psychedelics have a value I can’t help but admire. And now we understand more about how they do what they do. A…
The UK charity Combat Stress, which provides support for British military personnel, lists alcohol abuse, panic attacks and PTSD as among the most common mental illnesses seen in returning soldiers. Unlike physical illness, for which we have the language to be more nuanced (from feeling “a bit poorly” to lying critical in an ICU), mental…
J. Hamilton Hudson, a lawyer based in the US, and ayahuasca advocate which is dedicated to protecting those who use the drug for religious reasons, and counsels those who are concerned about crackdowns. Ayahuasca can be used positively when it is used as a sacrament. That is, used for divine communion within the context of…
Evidence that psychedelic drugs may offer some benefit has caused some psychiatrists to call for a reclassification of the drugs. A reclassification would make it easier to research potential benefits of these drugs. The role of psychedelic drugs in mental health, and especially in mental health treatment, continues to be controversial. Previous research suggests some…
During… [the] tragic opioid crisis, many have written some variation of the sentence, “The war on drugs has failed.” It’s true. Decriminalizing drug use is required to solve this problem. But accompanying a policy shift will need to be a major attitude adjustment, including among us bleeding hearts…. In other words, our imposition of “help”…
Harmful drug use is certainly a public health problem, but in many countries, drug control policies lean too heavily towards limiting access to medicines for which patients have a legitimate and urgent need. Drug policy can undermine research that could uncover the medical value of many substances. For example, cannabis and related compounds known as…
“It’s only in recent years that studying the positive effects of psychedelics has gained traction in mainstream media after several well-known studies emerged following a decades’ long ban of its use in labs and clinical trials since 1970.” “He’s been one of the most intelligent champions for psychedelics as medicine,” says Alex Grey, a visionary…
*Blue: LegalOrange: Illegal but decriminalizedPink: Illegal but often unenforcedRed: IllegalGrey: No information “It is widely regarded that the opioid crisis was spurred by big pharmaceutical companies that liberally prescribed the addictive drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin, not marijuana consumers.” A 2014 report from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that in states…
Just this month, scientists applied cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques to find out what exactly LSD does to the human brain, in hopes that research on the drug will regain credence in the scientific community that Hofmann himself proudly represented. The stigma leftover from the 1960s remains hard to shake, but LSD has slowly been undergoing a…
The principle stumbling block to getting ibogaine everywhere is getting local approval to be administered as a medicine…ibogaine is 10 times safer than continuing to use, and 5 times safer than lifetime methadone. Unfortunately the bureaucratic imperative of the DEA is to extend US style prohibition everywhere, so we’re in danger of one country after…
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