During Prohibition, drinkers never knew what they would get when they set out to slake their thirst. Bootleggers often sold products adulterated with industrial alcohol and other toxins. Some 10,000 people were fatally poisoned before America gave up this grand experiment in suppressing vice. Fentanyl was just the beginning. The latest additive is carfentanil, a…
Within the first three months of her visit to the Peruvian jungle, [she] had “some highly questionable and sexually inappropriate incidents” with one of them. She realized that “the shamans were not enlightened beings but normal men—some abusing their powers as healers.” Sex with a shaman while under this influence, or even within a certain…
Now, physicians have a level of “assurance” that if they prescribe Epidiolex [GW Pharmaceutical’s CBD], they’re giving patients a federally-sanctioned, standardized form of medication, the CEO said. “We think it’s’ really important to distinguish between what is medicine and what is not.” “They know exactly what is in it, they understand the dosing, they understand its…
There is not one universal psychedelic experience that people from all cultures reliably and predictably have … even with the same substance, different cultures frame psychedelic experiences in different ways, leading to different experiencesDifferent cultures, then, create different psychedelic experiences, different ontological realities. But the hope of the psychedelic renaissance is that, by conducting the most…
The evidence is that, contrary to many warnings, ending the war on drugs does not lead to a spike in use. In Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in 2001, fewer young people use drugs than in Britain, where they are still illegal. The overall use in Portugal has remained roughly stable. More importantly, the harms from drug use —…
Psychedelics are, or can be at least, a doorway to a land of wonder and revelation. I’m not confident that in the hands of the medical bureaucracy and the commercial establishment they will stay unblemished. The deeper genius of psychedelics is their ability to totally undermine materialism and comfortable categories by blasting us into ridiculously…
Kratom users had the lowest likelihood of reporting negative experiences, followed by users of marijuana and oxycodone. Heroin users reported five bad experiences for every good one. For cocaine users, the ratio was seven to one. Ten percent of users reported problems with withdrawal after non-use, while close to 11 percent reported using kratom as a substitute…
On Oct. 17, 2018, Canada becomes the second and largest country with a legal national marijuana marketplace. Uruguay launched legal sales last year, after several years of planning .. It’s a profound social shift …fueled by a desire to bring the black market into a regulated, taxed system after nearly a century of prohibition.At least 109…
In the União do Vegetal (UDV), leadership is elected. UDV is organized across a four-tier hierarchical structure, the upper level is not accessible to women. In Looking Glass Peyote Church, peyote requires a DNA test previous to use.Santo Daime, political power is based on the charisma of their leaders, with the succession going to their kin. From…
One of the puzzles of climate science is the persistence of the Holocene Optimum – ten thousand years of anomalously stable climate that has allowed civilization to flourish. Science, as far as I can tell, attributes this basically to good luck. I have encountered among indigenous people a completely different explanation… …that the rituals performed…
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