Biography/Memoir

Psychedelics inc

A dozen or more startup companies are developing medicines from psilocybin, MDMA, ibogaine and LSD, all of which are illegal in the US, as well as from ketamine, a legal anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties… …[like] a former managing director at Goldman Sachs who is the founder of… yet another startup… “There’s a lot of strong…

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Biography/Memoir

Psilocybin is headed for the mainstream… it’s bringing the problems of Big Pharma with it

“That’s the case with the pharmaceutical industry time and time again: good intentions are marred by the drive to maximize revenue.” -Adam Winstock, MD (University College London, an addiction medicine specialist and founder of the Global Drug Survey.) While psilocybin is a naturally occurring molecule, the chemistry to develop a standardized synthetic version deemed safe…

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Spirituality

…why moms are talking about marijuana more than dads

Over half (54%) of cannabis-using moms recently surveyed… agree with providing children – those who are under 17, at least – cannabis for pain relief and other medical treatments so long as they’re being monitored. “It’s interesting to note that dads are the least likely to support the usage of either cannabis or hemp CBD to children,”…

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Biography/Memoir

[US marshals office] incinerates 28 tons of kratom

The U.S. Marshals Office paid a hazardous waste company… to transport the kratom from South Carolina to Florida, where it was incinerated at an energy-from-waste facility… Scott Gottlieb resigned as FDA commissioner in March 2019 and weeks later joined the board of directors at Pfizer. Over 28 tons of the herbal supplement kratom were recently…

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Biography/Memoir

…psilocybin retreat[s]…

Yang advocates for a far less regulated approach to psilocybin, however, than that envisioned by the Oregon statewide initiative, which would legalize only medical access to psilocybin. He says his company believes that decriminalization, deregulation, and legalization are the path forward. “…do not require government intervention to work, and psilocybin is safer than any other controlled…

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Anthropology

The secret lives of fungi

Psilocybin [containing mushrooms have] already been decriminalized in Santa Cruz, Oakland, and Denver [including the right to grow at home for personal consumption in Denver and human/ecological rights-centric non-commodified sharing models, such as “grow, gather, gift”, in Santa Cruz and Oakland (with at least one of those cities developing a community-based [city-level] framework for local…

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Anthropology

…perspectives on the globalization of psilocybin mushrooms

The situation was further complicated when Huautla was included in a government program of “Magical Towns,” as the Mexican state attempted to appropriate local cultures to promote tourism. This commodification of sacred heritage resulted in the rise of autonomous neoshamans who worked for tourists, and sacred mushrooms gaining a monetary value for foreign tourists as…

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Politics

Ayahuasca [& entheogens]… grief and hope

No matter who or where we are, we are witnessing something no one has ever seen. The first topic of conversation everywhere on the planet seems to be that no one knows what’s going to happen… surety and predictability have vanished into thin air. We are being asked to make sacrifices: to isolate ourselves, to…

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Science

Marijuana may not lower your IQ [while possibly enhancing your EQ?]

In Jackson and Iacono’s analysis, marijuana use and IQ were completely uncorrelated, and IQ measures fell equally in both the users and abstainers. Subsequent twin studies, including one performed with U.K. data by the Dunedin team, corroborated these findings of no relationship between marijuana use and a falling IQ. Next, investigators uncovered shared underlying vulnerability factors that explained…

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