Spirituality

UNGASS 2016 came and went but prohibition seemed forever

*from ECfES April 2016 Newsletter “Fighting drugs without legalizing them is like fighting tooth decay without removing the cavity. UN drug prohibition and criminalization, indelibly written into the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, is the cavity. Drill it clean during the March 2018 CND Session.” Europe, Asia, Indonesia, Africa, Australia, and North, South and Central…

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Spirituality

Building a Modern Eleusis

I have concluded that this Second Psychedelic Revolution is instinctively creating modern mystery schools, and that these movable temples of music, dance, and art are the closest things our society has to true portals to transcendence. For most people, the more of these festivals you attend, the more this sense of community grows, along with…

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Spirituality

Messed up after ayahuasca ceremony?

I’m a massive advocate for being ridiculously picky about who you join in ceremony … Sometimes we have to visit the darkest corners of our consciousness to let go of what ails us; if that’s the case, you really want to be with someone who has done the same work on themselves.​ I work both…

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Spirituality

A new era of psychedelic policy?

…access to mental healthcare in the United States remains within the treatment-for-sale model. This means that, without efforts to build in mechanisms for equitable access, psychedelic psychotherapy will remain out of reach for many, including marginalized populations that are already less likely to be able to afford and access effective mental healthcare. This is particularly…

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Spirituality

Why it feels like you can communicate with Nature on LSD

It’s likely that, while you’ve been watering it, you have mumbled something to the cactus on your coffee table or the yucca tree by your window. But there are some people who claim to have actually communicated with plants—and nature at large—after taking acid or other psychedelics. Most pass these conversations off as mere hallucinations,…

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California’s cannabis priestess arrested on felony charge

[Reverand Heidi] Grossman-Lepp charged that the raids violated the sect’s religious freedom. The police actions, she said, were akin to sending armed agents “into a Catholic Church to smash all the wine, destroy all the communion and arrest people for worshipping.” … [Another individual] joined the church as an affiliate congregation, put in a new…

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Spirituality

Florida’s ayahuasca church wants to go legal

In the letter, the US Drug Enforcement Agency asked Young and his cohort to apply for exemption status, which would allow them to provide ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic Amazonian tea, legally. It would also make Soul Quest the first homegrown psychedelic healing center in the US, permanently altering the way the government views the intersection of…

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Spirituality

Neuroscientist explains the similarities between the brains of praying nuns and psychedelic drug users

Newberg, the director of research at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine [and] his research into how the brain responds to stimulus like prayer and drugs. Newberg explained one study that examined the brains of nuns who engaged in “centering prayer,” which is meant to create a feeling one oneness with God. The…

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Spirituality

How to begin the end of the war on drugs

Federal marijuana laws have long undermined our nation’s promise of liberty and justice for all. Our nation’s arbitrary efforts to criminalize a substance that is less dangerous than alcohol or cigarettes or fast food, has not only made our country less just, but our communities less safe. Our broken marijuana [and other drug] laws have…

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