Psychology

Beyond prohibition of plant medicines

The medical profession has spent many years establishing a monopoly over the right to provide medicines, wresting this power away from traditional healers, and it’s not going to hand that power back over without a struggle. Another very real danger is that the prohibition of plant medicines will end, only for them to then be…

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Psychology

Love… magic mushrooms

You don’t just feel things when you’re on mushrooms. They make you psychically [physically, and emotionally] understand and absorb your surroundings. The liberation of psilocybin is upon us. Earlier this year, Denver voted to decriminalize magic fungi and activists are now lobbying congress to do so nationally. Shrooms aren’t having a moment; they’re reclaiming their rightful place at…

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Medicine/Healing

When harm reduction expansion stifles activism: A lesson from Europe

In most of Western Europe, as across the world, drug users are still stigmatized, still criminalized, still marginalized, still considered second-class citizens. This will not change without user-led advocacy. “Harm reduction interventions in the main in Western Europe are delivered either by national health services or by non-governmental agencies that focus on health interventions,” said Niamh…

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Medicine/Healing

Oregon lawmakers… [postpone] kratom [regulation]

“This wasn’t quite ready for prime time this year, but I do hope that the advocates continue to work on this issue,” said one Oregon Senator. Kratom can act as… [both a pain reliever and a] stimulant when ingested. It’s made from the leaves of a tree native to southeast Asia, and it’s become popular…

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Medicine/Healing

CBD shows some potential for treating opioid addiction

This anti-addictive effect lasted for a week after the CBD was administered. A study in rats published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that CBD decreased heroin cravings in rats that had previously been trained to self-administer heroin. And a small study conducted in humans, published in the journal Neurotherapeutics, showed that taking CBD seemed…

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Medicine/Healing

Oakland lawmakers advance psychedelic decriminalization measure

More than 60 people signed up to testify at the well-attended Oakland hearing. The City Council’s Public Safety Committee voted—with three ayes and one abstention—to advance to the full Council a measure that would declare enforcement of laws prohibiting the possession of “entheogenic plants” among adults the “lowest priority” for police … “These medicines are safe,” said…

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Medicine/Healing

Oakland could become 2nd U.S. city to decriminalize… mushrooms

Oakland, Calif., could become the second city in the U.S. to decriminalize certain natural hallucinogenics, including “magic mushrooms. The resolution applies only to psychedelics derived from plants or fungi, not synthetic drugs like LSD or MDMA. Original Article (The Hill):Oakland could become 2nd U.S. city to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushroomsArtwork Fair Use: Bob Embleton

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Medicine/Healing

When treatment means punishment

Throughout history and to this day, treatment itself has often meant punishment. Without a careful interrogation of what we mean by “treatment” and the history of coercion, criminal justice reforms will be reforms in name only. Drug courts, which coerce people into treatment under threat of criminal punishment, continue to expand nationally. But three decades…

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