This Week in Psychedelics - 8.7.15

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Cannabis

• Exclusive: Justice Department Admits Misleading Congress on Marijuana Vote (Marijuana.com)
• 2016: The Marijuana Election (Newsweek)
• Congress' Summer Fling With Marijuana: How Congress turned on the DEA and embraced weed. (Politico)
• Marijuana: From Demonization to Legalization to Celebration (Nation of Change)
• New York State Awards 5 Medical Marijuana Licenses (The New York Times)
• 1st legal medical pot sold in Nevada 15 years after approved (WBNS 10TV)
• Is it time to legalize marijuana in sports? (The San Diego Union-Tribune)
• Budding Movements in Canada and US Vow to Bring 'Sacrament' of Cannabis to the Masses (VICE)
• DEA Destroyed Medical Cannabis (Santa Fe Reporter)
• Big Pharma-Produced Cannabis Is Likely Coming To The U.S. (Huffington Post)
• Research Shows CBD Combats Social Anxiety (Collective-Evolution)
• Pot legalization defies party lines (Burlington Free Press)
• Federal bankers: No account for Colo. cannabis credit union (USA Today)
• Medicinal cannabis likely in New Zealand by 2016 (Stuff.co.nz)
• Teen Marijuana Use Not Linked to Later Depression, Lung Cancer, Other Health Problems, Research Finds (American Psychological Association)
• Massachusetts marijuana groups seek pot legalization vote (Reuters)
• Philly420: Marijuana, PTSD and Pennsylvania (Philly.com)
• Portland's World Famous Cannabis Cafe opens to packed house (Oregon Live)
• Free cannabis handed out to veterans at Denver rally (KDVR Fox 31 Denver)
• The Register's Editorial: Law creates cannabis oil craziness (The Des Moines Register)
• Michigan Medical Marijuana Panel Approves Autism, A Step Closer To Cannabis For Autistic Kids (Inquisitr)
• Experts Predict Oregon Cannabis Industry Will Be Worth Nearly $500 Million in Five Years (MarketWatch)
• Bud and Breakfasts and 420 Tours: Denver sees a cannabis 'gold rush' (The Guardian)
• Memphis Cop Was Killed After Interrupting $20 Pot Deal (Alternet)
• Woman Successfully Treats Stage 4 Kidney Cancer And Celiac Disease With Cannabis Oil (Reset.me)
• Cannabis ban bends under corporate, congressional and medicinal pressure (The Telegraph)
• Texas cannabis capitalists are ready to seed the soil (Sharon Herald)
• MP Tathagata Satpathy's pitch: Make cannabis legal, why ban porn (The Indian Express)

LSD

• Why Did My Grandmother Try LSD For Multiple Sclerosis In The 1960s? (Forbes)
• Boulder Police Fear LSD Use Rising (MSN)
• 20-year-old man fighting for life after 'accidental LSD drugs overdose' (Lancashire Telegraph)
• Young man in 'LSD coma' after being rushed to hospital suffering from hallucinations and seizures (Mirror)
• Man left fighting for life after suspected LSD overdose as popularity of hippy acid soars (Daily Star)
• Colorado man mailed LSD-infused candy to customers in N.J., cops say (NJ.com)
• Narcotics Cell baffled as LSD flows into city (The Hindu)
• Mood glasses designed by Bence Agoston simulate psychedelic hallucinations of LSD (Daily Mail)

Psilocybin/Magic Mushrooms

• Psilocybin Switches Off Part Of Brain That Causes Depression — But Current Laws Interfere With Research (Reset.me)

MDMA

• From Gary to Molly: The Feminization of Ecstasy in Popular Culture (Thump)
• The Agony Of The Ecstasy (Science 2.0)
• No place for Ecstasy at music festivals: Cops (Toronto Sun)
• Ban on Raves Proposed After Teens Die at HARD Festival (Los Angeles Weekly)
• Ban on Raves to Be Studied by L.A. County (Los Angeles Weekly)
• Top Italian nightclub closed for four months after 'ecstasy death' (The Guardian)
• Toby Fairclough, 17, dies of ecstasy overdose during exam celebrations (Daily Mail)
• The trouble with Molly: thought safe, but can be risky (Delaware Online)

Ayahuasca/DMT

• Hebrew Professor Claims The Bible's Moses Was On DMT (Higher Perspective)

Peyote/Mescaline

• Huachuma (San Pedro Cactus) — Healing The Spirit And Body (Reset.me)
• Should inmates be allowed to use peyote for religious purposes? (Indy Star)

Salvia Divinorum

• Harper Government Moves Forward to Regulate Salvia (Pharmi Web)

Synthetic Cannabinoids/Psychoactive Research Chemicals

• At Her Majesty's pleasure: Legal highs are rife in jails; new laws won't help much (The Economist)
• New menace on campus: Cheap and 'effective' Meow Meow keeps cops on their toes (Firstpost)
• New Jersey legislator pushes to outlaw emerging synthetic drug (Newsworks)
• NYPD video on fake pot effects showed man on PCP: ex-cop (New York Daily News)

Dissociatives

• Depression researchers halt ketamine clinical trial amid funding battle (ABC.net.au)
• Protesters mass inhale nitrous oxide outside Parliament in demonstration against Psychoactive Substances Bill (International Business Times)
• Banning laughing gas is a serious matter. The balloon protest treats it as a joke (The Guardian)
• Burnt ketamine new go-to for drug-test dodgers - study (Bangkok Post)
• Lockbox Full of Drugs Missing From Irving Animal Services (NBC 5 Dallas-Fort-Worth)

Opiates

• How opium poppies process morphine revealed for the first time (Digital Journal)
• New DEA Chief: 'Heroin Is Clearly More Dangerous Than Marijuana' (Huffington Post)
• 'Fair trade' cocaine and 'conflict-free' opium: the future of online drug marketing (The Hamilton Spectator)
• Coroner warns of poppy dangers after opium tea kills Dane in Tasmania (The Guardian)
• Gov. council member proposes decriminalizing heroin (Boston Herald)
• Washington County judge says heroin addicts fare better in treatment than prison (Tribune-Review)
• Tainted heroin increasing across St. Louis area (KMOV)
• Perfect storm rains heroin, pain pills onto Mon Valley (Tribune-Review)
• Hassan, Shaheen, judges, police gather to discuss heroin issue in NH (WMUR)
• Combating the Rising Use of Heroin in City, Suburbs (WTTW Chicago Tonight)
• Portland mobilizes as opiate abuse, overdose cases grow (Portland Press Herald)
• Sandy heroine becomes latest victim of heroin overdose (USA Today)

General Psychedelics

• Brooklyn's Leading Psychonaut on Hallucinogens, Therapy, and "Glowing Orb Mounds" (Brooklyn Magazine)
• The Tempel of psychedelic trance revisited at Supersense (The Sydney Morning Herald)

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 - 8.1.15

Image by Francois de Halleux, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

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

1. California's Press Enterprise's editorial board penned an excellent editorial marking the 14th anniversary of Portugal's decision to decriminalize all drug use and possession. The article details the overwhelmingly-positive results of the country's harm reduction model. Portugal is the first nation to undergo an experiment like this. We can only hope that other nations will follow and reap the same benefits that Portugal has: declining rates of drug use, lower numbers of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV, a reduction in drug-induced deaths, etc. 

2. On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver spoke out against mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain crimes. He explains why we treat turkeys better than some low-level offenders. In a lot of these cases, the judges want to be able to hand out a softer sentence, but these laws prevent them from doing so. Definitely worth a watch.

3. I enjoyed this positive article from High Existence on how your spiritual growth is shaping human evolution. The general argument of the piece is that the individual actions we make have a significant impact on the overall evolution of the human species. There are some references to Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance theory, which has interested me for a long time. I have been really enjoying browsing High Existence the past week or so, which is a new website to me that has a lot of articles about topics that interest me, and would most likely interest the Think Wilder audience.

4. The issue of Performance-Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) in sports and e-sports has been in the news this week, and I was interested to read an article on how research chemicals have made their way into the professional cycling world. Cyclists are purchasing PEDs from Chinese laboratories (similar to the psychoactive research chemical market) that are so new that the drug tests the World Anti-Doping Agency uses won't be able to identify them. It just goes to show that you cannot eliminate drug use—there are always going to be minor structural changes that can be made to the molecules that will produce a similar effect (or completely different effect, if that's what you're into) and won't be testable. This is a totally new application of research chemicals that is innovative and mischievous, and I am fascinated to see what happens next.

5. I never thought I would see something like the editorial arguing for cannabis legalization on the D.A.R.E. website earlier this week. It has been taken down, but here is a snapshot of the original page. The original piece talked about how criminalization has actually made it easier for children to obtain illegal substances (which has been a long-standing argument in the drug policy reform movement) and explains how a system that would actually control the substances is a better option. The tides are definitely turning.

6. Due to the recent passing of the USA Freedom Act, the NSA has agreed to no longer analyze call metadata obtained under the Patriot Act from November 29, 2015 onward. This won't prevent the agency from  continuing its mass surveillance, but it will prevent the NSA from digging through any data obtained before that date, which many critics believe should have never been collected in the first place. 

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

30-Day Challenge Report - Ukulele Challenge

Image by University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

At the beginning of the month, I announced that I was going to practice ukulele every day in an attempt to work on my technique and learn some new tunes. Today marks the end of my latest 30-Day Challenge on Think Wilder, so it is time to write a review of my challenge and share my experience.

I consider the challenge to be an overall success—I played and/or practiced ukulele nearly every day this month, with the exception of three days. I was unable to play the instrument on those days purely because of poor time management. I brought my ukulele along with me to this year's All Good Festival and played while I was there, although I have yet to build up the confidence needed to truly belt out some of the vocals of the tunes that I am practicing.

One of the main benefits that I experienced was that the challenge got me used to picking up and strumming my ukulele daily, which is similar to my experiences with other 30-Day Challenges as well—the challenge period instills a habit that often has the potential to continue beyond the original 30 days. Even if some of the days only involved 10 minutes of practice, it was still enough to feel like I was on a streak and inspire me to keep it going.

While I didn't learn as many songs as I wanted to, I was able to add a few new tunes to my repertoire: Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, Amazing Grace, Hey Jude, and What a Wonderful World. I remembered the joy of learning a new song—that feeling of personal growth that comes from fresh experiences like stretching the fingers of my left hand into foreign shapes to awkwardly hammer out a brand new chord or the excitement of belting out lyrics that I've never seen before. Learning new songs was definitely my favorite part about practicing ukulele during this challenge.

In the practice of learning new chords, I developed novel rhythm patterns to use in the little ditties that I am writing. I already have a few chord progressions put together, so now I just need to pen some lyrics and I will be able to say that I have written some of my own tunes!

The resources I used include the fake book The Daily Ukulele, chord progression websites for strumming along with music (which I did while live streaming the Grateful Dead's Fare Thee Well Tour and Phish's Summer 2015 Tour), the iPhone apps PanoTuner and Ukulele Companion, and the website Ukulele Tricks.

Because of the challenge, I am re-energized and motivated to learn even more songs on ukulele and reconnect with the act of creating and performing music. As I mentioned in the original post for this challenge, I have prolonged experience with multiple other musical instruments and definitely benefit from expressing myself through music. Another successful 30-Day Challenge completed!

This Week in Psychedelics - 7.31.15

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Cannabis

• 10 Reasons Why Federal Medical Marijuana Prohibition Is About To Go Up In Smoke (Alternet)
• Almost Half Of The U.S. Has Smoked Cannabis (Reset.me)
• Here's What Marijuana Does To Your Bladder (attn:)
• PotBotics: better cannabis recommendations through science (Engadget)
• Debunking One of the Most Pernicious Pot Myths (Alternet)
• Banking for Pot Industry Hits a Roadblock (The New York Times)
• Australia may legalize medical marijuana in August (RT)
• Marijuana Legalization In Italy: 250 Italian Lawmakers Support Cannabis Decriminalization Proposal (International Business Times)
• Turnaround in Health Ministry will allow sales of medical cannabis in pharmacies (The Jerusalem Post)
• Medical marijuana one step closer in Queensland (The Age)
• Cannabis decriminalized in Delaware (Culture Magazine)
• Cannabis petition forces MPs to consider debating legalisation (The Guardian)
• Durham has 'decriminalised' cannabis. About time too (The Guardian)
• New DEA Leader: Pot Probably Not as Bad as Heroin (US News)
• iPhone app helps weed smokers know if they're too high to drive (Business Insider)
• Olympia Hempfest offers high times for legal-cannabis crowd (The Seattle Times)
• The burning conservative case for legalising cannabis (The Guardian)
• Medical cannabis trial: First details revealed (The Sydney Morning Herald)
• Cannabis industry insiders talk to their kids about pot (Columbia Daily Tribune)
• UK: Legalise cannabis petition reaches 150,000 signatures (International Business Times)
• Edgbaston turns to their cannabis lamps (ESPNcricinfo)
• Holy smoke: cannabis churches extol 'sacrament' of marijuana (The Guardian)
• Drone Delivers Bitcoin-Purchased Cannabis in California (Coindesk)
• For cannabis apps, the road to the app store is paved with rejection (Yahoo Finance)
• World Famous Cannabis Cafe to reopen Friday in Portland (Oregon Live)
• Cannabis: Derbyshire, Dorset and Surrey police will no longer seek to arrest pot growers and smokers (International Business Times UK)

LSD

• Why Young Brits Are Taking So Much LSD and Ecstasy (VICE)
• Microdosing: Is LSD the Shortcut to a Good Day at Work? (Inverse)
• LSD: The Opera: Psychedelics Hit the Stage (Alternet)
• LSD played role in Boulder student's deathly confrontation with police (Fox31 Denver)
• Police: 'Bad batch' of LSD could be going around Boulder County (Boulder Daily Camera)

Psilocybin/Magic Mushrooms

• David Nutt: Why Banning LSD and Magic Mushrooms is the Worst Censorship of Medicine in World History (Psychedelic Press UK)
• Psilocybin Mushrooms — Healing From Childhood Trauma And My Spiritual Rebirth (Reset.me)

MDMA

• Psychedelics changed the way a mother and daughter experienced death (Boston.com)
• Molly, a form of MDMA or ecstasy, can cause fatal reactions (The Washington Post)
• Ecstasy is back - how will Cameron's creaking drug policy cope? (The Guardian)
• Mother of university student who died after trying ecstasy for the first time blames 'peer pressure' for his death (Mirror)
• Molly in the news: Details about the EDC death, and a new report on ecstasy (Las Vegas Weekly)

Ayahuasca/DMT

• How DMT May Be Related To Psychic Phenomena (Collective-Evolution)
• Ayahuasca Healing Surgeries (Qhispikay Kawsay Ayahuasca Retreats)

Iboga

• Information Update - Unauthorized natural health product "Remogen" containing ibogaine and the risk of abnormal heart rhythms (Newswire)

Peyote/Mescaline

• Utah tribal church cites 'religious liberty' in fight against ban on using peyote in ceremonies (Raw Story)

Synthetic Cannabinoids/Psychoactive Research Chemicals

• A Drug Hits Cycling Before It Hits The Market (The New York Times)
• Family member of teen who died from taking N-bomb discusses dealer's sentencing (Daily Journal)

Dissociatives

• Antigonish ER doc doubts Evolve patrons drugged with PCP-laced glove (The Chronicle Herald)
• Could 'horse tranquiliser' be a rapid treatment for depression? (Health24)
• Allergan To Buy Antidepressant Maker For $560 Million With Hopes Of Preventing Suicides (Forbes)
• South Africa: Could Ketamine Be a Rapid Treatment for Depression? (All Africa)
• Woman high on PCP, choked by police, settles with Chicopee (WWLP)
• Brit feeds Ibiza seagull Ketamine-laced chip (Olive Press)

Opiates

• The DEA chief said heroin is "probably" more dangerous than pot. Drop the probably, dude. (Vox)
• Afghanistan: Still the King of Opium (Foreign Policy)
• Digital eyes to watch over Asia's biggest opium processing plant in Neemuch (Hindustan Times)
• In Myanmar, Replacing Poppy Plants with Coffee (VOA Learning English)
• A heroin addict takes a long path to sobriety (Capital Gazette)
• State program to fight heroin crisis (The Columbus Dispatch)
• Heroin infiltrating new portion of Bear County population (KSAT)
• Ohio county hit by heroin gets $100,000 to fight problem (WLWT)
• Despite strategies, heroin deaths up (Journal-News)
• A poor man's heroin (Fosters)
• Heroin use on the rise in Lynchburg area, throughout Virginia (The News & Advance)
• Falmouth family suffers heroin's tragic toll (Portland Press Herald)
• Heroin use soars in the suburbs (WKBW)
• Lawmakers consider how to stem heroin epidemic at its source (CBS News)
• Authorities investigating four heroin overdoses that killed three in past week (Lebanon Daily News)
• Efforts To Curb The Nation's Deadly Heroin Epidemic (The Diane Rehm Show)
• Cortisol a Treatment for Heroin Addiction (Medscape)
• People looking to score heroin, interrupt police raid of house suspected of drug dealing (Fox 2 Now)
• Taunton son and mother facing charges they ran heroin distribution ring, federal officials say (Boston Globe)

General Psychedelics

• The most convincing argument for legalizing LSD, shrooms, and other psychedelics (Vox)
• Psychedelic Drugs Linked to Reduction in Psychological Distress, Suicide Attempts (MD Magazine)
• How do you know you're going to have a bad trip? (Hopes and Fears)
• Psychedelia in Film & TV #1: INtrospeC(EP)TION (The Psychosis of a Seventeen Year Old)

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.

Book Review - Tibetan Peach Pie

This book contains a collection of stories about the American icon and bestselling novelist Tom Robbins. Having spent the past few years reading through Robbins' fictive works, I was excited when I heard that he was releasing a somewhat-less-fictive account of his life in autobiographical/anecdotal form.

Fortunately, I was not let down! This book has some great stories about what it was like to grow up in the first half of the 20th century, just a few hours away from where I was born and raised. For those unfamiliar with Robbins' prior works, they can be described as intellectual, hilarious, confusing, psychedelic, weird, wild, philosophical, and unusual tales that include outrageous characters like a hitchhiking cowgirl with enormous thumbs, a conscious and mobile can of beans, and a former football star turned drug dealer who stumbles upon and infiltrates a group of Catholic monks working as hired assassins for the Vatican.

Robbins' own life, detailed in these pages, is oddly similar to some of the more eye-opening portions of the his novels. He weaves together the most entertaining accounts of his life, including his boyhood and adolescence in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, all the way through to his globe-trotting adventures and wicked events from his adult life.

If you have read any Robbins, be it Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, or my personal favorite, Still Life with Woodpecker, you owe it to yourself to check out Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life. Even folks who aren't privy to Robbins' former works would love this set of raucous tales. I sincerely enjoyed getting a sneak peak into this literary legend's life, and I am confident that you will too.

4/5 stars. 384 pages.