This Week in Psychedelics - 7.17.15

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Note: This week's edition of This Week in Psychedelics includes some "makeup" links to articles that were published toward the end of last week. This is because I was on vacation during that time, and wanted to present the links, albeit one week late.

Cannabis

• Teenagers using less marijuana in age of legalization (Philly)
• Italy takes step toward legalizing pot (Politico)
• How medical marijuana could literally save lives (Washington Post)
• Man Cures Colon Cancer With Cannabis Oil (Reset.me)
• Church of Cannabis suit raises religious liberty issues (The Indianapolis Star)
• The New Green Building Trend is Bricks of Cannabis. Really. (Time)
• Sexxpot: Low THC Strain is Natural Viagra for Women (The Stoners Cookbook)
• Cannabis treatment teen Alex Renton 'sparked national debate' (Nelson Mail)
• Cannabis oil offers local mom, son, a new life (Gainesville Times)
• Cannabis Found To Heal Broken Bones, But Schedule 1 Status Makes Further Research Into Medical Marijuana Difficult (Medical Daily)
• The World's Largest Medical Marijuana Dispensary vs. One Rogue Prosecutor (Reason)
• On 'The Marijuana Show' It's Cannabis Companies Meet 'Shark Tank' With $10 Million At Stake (Forbes)
• Cannabis is Now a Full-Fledged Industry (Wall Street Daily)
• Legislator who pushed medical marijuana bill hired by cannabis firm (Star Tribune)
• Canadian company is developing a 'breathalyzer' for pot (Engadget)
• Cannabis conference hosted in Tampa Saturday (My Fox Tampa Bay)
• Cannabis picnic move to Portsmouth family event branded 'socially irresponsible' (Portsmouth.co.uk)

LSD

• Everyone is talking about medical marijuana, but what about LSD? (The Daily Texan)
• For Some, Tiny LSD Hits Are Like Cup Of Coffee (Newser)
• Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience (Pop Matters)
• Court documents: Teens took LSD before drowning (WISHTV)

Psilocybin/Magic Mushrooms

• Watch: Psilocybin Helps Terminal Cancer Patients Find New Ways Of Coping (Reset.me)
• Who Needs Google's Dreaming Robot? Just Eat Some Shrooms Instead (Gizmodo)

MDMA

• Could ecstasy be a potential treatment for PTSD? (Maclean's)
• Experts in Australia are calling for MDMA legalization (Dancing Astronaut)
• Utilizing MDMA to treat Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (RYOT)
• Party drug 'molly' blamed for death of Colorado Springs teen (KDVR)
• Director Of Poison Center Warns Against Drug Molly, Causes 'Total Body Breakdown' (CBS Denver)
• Molly will mess up your brain (WALB)

Ayahuasca/DMT

• Meet the Man Trying to Use Ayahuasca to Treat PTSD (attn:)
• I've found a drug so amazing I'm quitting NYC and sex to do it full time (New York Post)

Iboga

• Old Age, New Age, and the Age to come... From religious fervour to an addict's saviour, iBogaine Thailand charts the uses of iBoga and iBogaine (iBogaine Thailand)

Peyote/Mescaline

• No links this week

Salvia Divinorum

• Hallucinogenic salvia set to be banned in Canada (Global News)

Synthetic Cannabinoids/Psychoactive Research Chemicals

• Spike Nation: Cheap, unpredictable and hard to regulate, synthetic marijuana has emergency responders scrambling to save lives (NY Times)
• Lawmakers take aim at designer drugs (WRAL)

Dissociatives

• The Ketamine Connection (BBC)
• Aura Medical Corporation: Clinics offering ketamine injections to treat depression blame negative publicity for closures (ABC)
• Patient death after ketamine overdose spurs changes at UVMMC (VT Digger)

Opiates

• US Reports Surge In Heroin Use: Bumper Opium Crop In Afghanistan To Spurt Supply (International Business Times)
• Heroin Use Surges, Especially Among Women And Whites (NPR)
• Heroin use skyrockets, especially among young white men (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Researchers discover how opium poppies synthesize morphine (EurekAlert!)
• For Families Of Heroin Addicts, Comfort Comes In Sharing Their Stories (NPR)
• More deadly doses of heroin laced with fentanyl flood drug market (Capital Gazette)
• A war against opium (The Hindu)
• Obituaries Shed Euphemisms to Chronicle Toll of Heroin (NY Times)
• New CDC Report Shows Large Spikes In Heroin Abuse And Deaths (Huffington Post)
• N.J. heroin overdose death rate is triple the soaring U.S. rate (NJ.com)
• Officials warn of new flesh-eating form of heroin (WTAE)
• Heroin Deaths Jump In Connecticut; Push Past 300 In 2014 (Hartford Courant)
• Sister raises awareness at vigil for twin who died of heroin (York Daily Record)
• Investigators Warn New Additive to Heroin is Lethal (WBAY)
• Sarasota seeing sharp spike in heroin overdoses (WFLA)

General Psychedelics

• Is the ban on psychedelic drugs an infringement of human rights? (Tyler Daniel Black's Blog)
• How Ecstasy, Aspirin, and LSD Look Under the Microscope (Wired)
• 'Smiles': the history of the 2C designer drug class (The Verge)
• The Bunk Police Are Risking Prison to Bring Drug Testing Kits to Music Festivals (Thump)
• Abstinence-only drug education kills young people (The Branding Iron)
• "Trust" in Therapeutic Relationship Key to Moderating Psychedelic Risks (Mad in America)

Disclaimer: "This Week in Psychedelics" does not censor or analyze the news links presented here. The purpose of this column is solely to catalogue how psychedelics (and other psychoactives) are presented by the mass media, which includes everything from the latest scientific research to misinformation.

Weekend Thoughts - 7.11.15

Image by markheybo, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. A splendid article from The New York Times recapping the Grateful Dead's Fare Thee Well tour. Having live streamed all the shows from the comfort of my couch (traveling to the Santa Clara and Chicago did not work out for me), I felt like this article did the tour justice.

2. Following this week's Fare The Well theme, here is a solid article describing the demise of Shakedown Street, the area that existed in parking lots outside of venues where Deadheads tailgated, sold, and traded goods before, during, and after the shows. From my experience, Shakedown Street lives on at lots outside of certain bands' shows and music festivals. It's not gone or dead, it's just in different places. "You just gotta poke around."

3. I really enjoyed a recent piece on Reality Sandwich that discusses the American religious right to use psychedelics in an effort to "yoke" with the universe. (In this sense, "yoking" refers to becoming one with the universe, in the same way that "yoga" means "union".) It articulates some of my beliefs better than I feel I ever could, and is definitely worth a read.

4. Americans ate 400 million fewer animals in 2014. This may indicate that Americans are increasingly eating less meat and/or becoming vegetarians/vegans, which is great news.

5. Speaking of eating less meat, Arby's wants you to do exactly the opposite. The company has set up a "Vegetarian Support Hotline" for "tempted vegetarians" to call for advice on whether or not to eat its new Brown Sugar-Glazed Pepper Bacon. Supposedly there will be an option to leave a message, so please feel free to troll away!

6. In yet another example of how super awesome asset forfeiture and the DEA is, agents stole $44,000 of cash from a nail salon owner at JFK Airport. There is no evidence that the accused party ever violated the Controlled Substances Act, and now he has no recourse to recover his stolen funds.

7. In case you haven't seen it already, check out some of the psychedelic images that are being randomly generated by Google's DeepDream code.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

This Week in Psychedelics - 7.10.15

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Cannabis

• One Man's Desperate Quest to Cure His Son's Epilepsy—With Weed (Wired)
• Insurance Companies Start Noticing The Legal Cannabis Industry (Forbes)
• California's 50,000 Pot Farms Are Sucking Rivers Dry (Scientific American)
• Cannabis Construction: Entrepreneurs Use Hemp in Home Building (The New York Times)
• A Scramble Is On To Save One Of California's Iconic Medical Pot Collectives (Huffington Post)
• Chile takes step toward cannabis decriminalisation (The Guardian)
• Edibles in Schools? The Leafly Cannabis Legalization Roundup (Leafly)
• 'Legalise cannabis but ban fags and booze' under-30s tell new survey (Mirror)
• Reader: Out-of-States Should Stop Waving Their Cannabis C*ck Around (Westword)

LSD

• A Brief History of LSD in the Twenty-First Century (Psychedelic Press UK)
• James Penner on Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• University of Wyoming student died after ingesting LSD, officials say (Casper Star Tribune)

Psilocybin/Magic Mushrooms

• Psychedelic Mushroom TRIP 4K ~ Who Am I?... A Psychedelic Journey—"A beautiful one-hour video designed to accompany the first hour of a tripping experience and ease the tripper into the experience." (Daily Psychedelic Video)
• Podcast Episode #458: "Practical Mushroom Activism" (Psychedelic Salon)

MDMA

• Call to make ecstasy legal and sell it at pharmacies (The Age)
• Push for MDMA to be sold over-the-counter in Australia (Mixmag)
• Music festival is offering free drug tests to attendees to make sure their pills are pure in bid to minimize the risk of fatal overdoses (Daily Mail)
• Ecstasy use rising: UN (The Phnom Penh Post)
• Sex, Drugs, and EDM: high times and overdoses in Toronto's dance festival scene (Toronto Life)
• China: Echoes of Breaking Bad as real life Walter White caught selling ecstasy substitute (International Business Times)

Ayahuasca/DMT

• From Alabama to Colombia: Breaking Through to Yagé's Other Side (Paste Magazine)

Iboga

• Miracle drug: one man's journey, two years later (WMTV)

Peyote/Mescaline

• Cacti-cutters' suspected motivation was drug manufacturing (Stuff.co.nz)

Synthetic Cannabinoids/Psychoactive Research Chemicals

• Why banning legal highs won't work, according to the Psychedelic Society (BBC)

Dissociatives

• Report: After Patient Death, UVM Medical Center Waited Weeks To Fix Flawed Systems (VPR)

Opiates

• St. Louis heroin addicts get a shot to rebuild lives (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
• Deaths from fentanyl-laced heroin surge (The Baltimore Sun)
• Hepatitis C cases soar with Maine heroin epidemic (WCSH)
• Heroin Detox in Jail Costing Taxpayer (WHIO)
• Heroin Use in U.S. Reaches Epidemic Level (Time)
• As Heroin Use Grows in U.S., Poppy Crops Thrive in Afghanistan (NBC News)
• Heroin-Related Deaths Quadruple As Drug Epidemic Continues to Impact U.S. (ABC News)
• Heroin use on the rise among women and higher-income groups (The Boston Globe)
• Pregnant and Hooked: How One Program Helps Heroin Addicts (NBC News)

General Psychedelics

• A Psychedelic Journey to Enlightenment (San Diego Metro)
• Author And Religious Studies Professor Martin W. Ball On 5-meO-DMT And The Mystical Experience (Reset.me)
• The Electric Kool-Aid Architects: Astounding, Lysergic Iranian Temple Photography (Dangerous Minds)
• Short Trip? More People Taking 'Microdosing' on Psychedelic Drugs (Live Science)
• Personal Story: Psychedelics Are A Powerful Tool To Promote Healing (Reset.me)

Disclaimer: "This Week in Psychedelics" does not censor or analyze the news links presented here. The purpose of this column is solely to catalogue how psychedelics (and other psychoactives) are presented by the mass media, which includes everything from the latest scientific research to misinformation.

Compassion Day

Image by Christopher Michel, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Yesterday morning my girlfriend and I decided to try something new, so we visited the Kadampa Center, a Tibetan Buddhist center in Raleigh, NC. I have had an interest in learning more about meditation, spirituality, and Buddhism for quite some time now, and thought it would be a valuable learning experience and a positive way to expand our sense of community. Although I have spent many years consuming media about meditation and Buddhism, I felt like it was time to venture out into the world to see what I can learn from people who are experienced and knowledgable in these practices.

It turns out that we decided to visit the center on a very special day; the center held an event titled Happy Birthday His Holiness the Dalai Lama! The Dalai Lama is turning 80 today, and the center held an event to celebrate him and highlight July 6, Compassion Day. We honored the Dalai Lama by offering cards listing our acts of kindness and compassion and participated in singing Happy Birthday, a guided meditation, mantra recitation, and a brief prayer.

I hadn't been to a religious or spiritual center or event for over a decade now, and was very happy with the community I saw at Kadampa Center. At this time, we plan to continue going to see what there is to learn, and determine what gifts I possess that I can offer the community.

To celebrate today, I encourage you to visit the Compassion Day website linked above and find ways to engage in rejoicing, compassion in action, and meditation in your life.

Weekend Thoughts - 7.4.15

Image by Humphrey King, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Best-selling author Don Winslow purchased a full-page ad in the Washington Post as an excellent open letter to Congress and President Obama titled "It's Time to Legalize Drugs" that advises putting an end to the drug war and legalizing drugs. Well worth your time to give this one a read.

2. MAPS' Zendo Project has an Indiegogo campaign right now to raise money to further expand its psychedelic harm reduction services. The Zendo Project provides an incredibly valuable service that helps reduce potential negative incidents that can occur with the use (often irresponsible) of psychedelics.

3. My girlfriend is currently reading Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control by Holly Grigg-Spall, and I thought an article published this week on Reset.me that describes why the pill is bad medicine was timely and great information to share. The article discusses the various ways that the pill actually harms the bodies and minds of women, and may be shocking to someone who is unfamiliar with the material.

4. At last weekend's Electric Forest festival, the harm-reduction DanceSafe tent was shut down. This article explains the festival's given reasoning for shutting down the tent and expresses the need to address this issue in our community.

5. From The Conversation, an article about why meditation should be taught in schools:  

"New research in the fields of psychology, education and neuroscience shows teaching meditation in schools is having positive effects on students' well-being, social skills and academic skills."

6. A new scientific review shows that fluoridation may not prevent cavities and can actually increase the chance of developing fluorosis, which can cause white flecks, structural damage, brown stains, and mottling to the teeth. This makes me grateful for having drank well water for the vast majority of my life, unlike two-thirds of Americans who regularly drink tap water.

7. Carl Force, the undercover DEA Agent who investigated Silk Road, faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of extortion, money-laundering, and obstruction of justice, and was involved in stealing more than $700,000 in Bitcoin. First of all, shocker. Second, shouldn't this require rethinking the life sentence that Ross Ulbricht received? 

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.