Modern Culture

Building a psychedelic community during the war on drugs

Red flags we look for are indications that someone intends to exploit the vulnerabilities in our community in some way. Such exploitations may come in the form of police or informants trying to prey upon and bust people by soliciting drugs from the community, and others, such as pseudo-shamans or other entrepreneurs, trying to profit…

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Politics

British police are raising their voices against the drug war

He points out that policing incentivizes the recruitment of children into drugs gangs to act as a buffer between police and adult dealers, reducing dealers’ risks. Very few communities anywhere in the world are untouched by the ravages of the drug war—and the millions of casualties include drug users whose health is threatened by unregulated…

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Psychology

Why faking positive emotions at work can lead to heavier alcohol consumption

Such is life for millions of service workers, from baristas to customer service reps. Personally, I’ll never forget how frustrating it was to smile and say “sure!”  Significant patterns arose confirming that employees who more frequently reported surface acting/concept creep [the emotional weight carried by service-industry workers, like bank tellers and flight attendants, who are…

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Science

30 years after Prozac arrived, we still buy the [theory] that chemical imbalances cause depression

This doesn’t mean that antidepressants that affect levels of serotonin definitively don’t work—it simply means that we don’t know if they’re affecting the root cause of depression. A drug’s effect on serotonin could be a relatively inconsequential side effect, rather than the crucial treatment. A conglomeration of factors, beginning in the 1960s but having the…

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Science

Baeocystin: an ignored magic mushroom compound

Baeocystin was first isolated by Leung and Paul in 1968 from the mushroom Psilocybe baeocystis (hence the name). Other researchers later isolated it from Psilocybe semilanceata, Panaeolus renenosus, Panaeolus subbalteatus, and Copelandia chlorocystis. Jochen Gartz refers to a report that “10 mg of baeocystin were found to be about as psychoactive as a similar amount of psilocybin.” Although the presence…

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Science

The ensemble/entourage effect in magic mushrooms

In a 1989 paper, the German scientist, researcher, and author Jochen Gartz used keen insight to analyze the data from 24 cases of accidental ingestion of the magic mushroom Inocybe aeruginascens. He also examined data on the effects of ingesting species with high psilocybin and psilocin content. From his analysis, he proposed an entourage effect in magic…

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Science

Phenylethylamine: an… active compound in magic mushrooms

Consider these facts about phenethylamine … [Love-related chemical. Carbon = black hydrogen = white nitrogen = blue] … [The brain’s best known love chemical is phenylethylamine, or PEA. It is a naturally occurring amphetamine. “Love is a drug,” says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and author of Anatomy of Love.] It acts as…

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Science

Ketamine: can it really be an antidepressant?

Experts warn that it isn’t necessarily a “miracle cure” – it can come with side-effects and nothing is known about the risks of using it long term. [Afterall], the [patient outcome] results were decidedly mixed and some scientists have pointed out that the FDA relaxed its usual rules for accepting drugs, in order to let…

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