Spirituality

Mental illness is something else entirely [says Dr.]

“So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.” Dr. Somé proposes that what we call depression, bi-polar, psychosis and schizophrenia may perhaps…

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Politics

…USDA hemp rules announcement

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), another vocal advocate for hemp, also weighed in on USDA’s interim rule. “I’ve long said that if you can make and sell hemp products in America, you should be able to grow hemp in America,” he said in a statement. “Congress passed my bipartisan Hemp Farming Act, and now federal regulations must…

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Politics

Chicago… [beginning the first step in the process of decriminalizing] psychedelic plants [and fungi]

As the third-largest city in the United States… …the resolution in Chicago will likely be viewed as a major milestone to scientists, drug policy reformers, and psychedelic and entheogenic plant… [decriminalization] advocates. Original Article (Psychedelic Review):Chicago follows Oakland, decriminalizes psychedelic plants Artwork Fair Use: Ruth Hartnup

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Biography/Memoir

Former FDA chief wants federal government to regulate state marijuana markets

Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb [Pfizer Board Member] said… that the federal government should regulate state marijuana programs. He provided some clarification—hinting that federal drug scheduling laws should be reformed for cannabis — he is beginning to lay out specific details of a regulatory agenda. Gottlieb said during the TV interview that…

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Science

Misreporting and confirmation bias in psychedelic research

Let us be clear: we are not suggesting malicious intent. Our point is that paradigmatic expectations can make it all too easy to cherry-pick, misunderstand and then misrepresent results so as to render them consistent with the reigning worldview. And because the community at large shares the same expectations, such errors easily go unnoticed. Perhaps more worryingly, paradigmatic expectations…

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Science

What psychedelic research can and cannot tell us about consciousness

Our study, like all other studies that explore relations between experiential states and brain states (whether about psychedelics or not), is entirely irrelevant to this metaphysical question [about materialism]. …by misrepresenting the explanatory reach of our findings in order to motivate metaphysical discussions irrelevant to our study, they risk undermining the hard-won legitimacy of a neuroscience…

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Science

Scientists want to try using… [synthetic psilocybin] to revive people in vegetative states

Do [synthetic] psychedelics raise any ethical issues that are unique? Andrew Peterson, an assistant professor at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University, said his gut reaction was “‘Are you tripping!?’—pun intended.” But later, he felt it was worth consideration. In the new work, Peterson and his co-author, neuroscientist Enzo Tagliazucchi,…

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Biography/Memoir

Meet the Sacklers

What some call philanthropy, others, such as Stanford University ethics professor Rob Reich, call “reputation laundering”. But what’s less well known, though increasingly being exposed, is that much of their wealth comes from one product – OxyContin, the blockbuster prescription painkiller first launched in 1996. “Greed is the main thing. The market for OxyContin should have been much,…

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Biography/Memoir

Oligarch of the month: the Sacklers

Joss Sackler, the entrepreneurial force behind a $2,500 per year social club and an allied clothing line, charged The New York Times to stop covering “the men in my life” and “review the fucking neon hoodies.” …are queasy about associating with the country’s most notorious limited liability cartel. The Guggenheim, for example, has stopped accepting donations from the Sackler…

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