Weekend Thoughts - 12.17.16

Image by Mydhili Bayyapunedi, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

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

1. Disinfo dedicated an article to 2016 as the "year of disinformation". From England voting to leave the European Union to Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election, myriad global events were affected by "fake news". Influential companies like Google and Facebook are planning to develop filtering systems that will reduce or eliminate "fake news" stories, but that brings to mind many questions. Who will assess whether a story is legitimate or not? Will non-mainstream news sources be at a disadvantage? And ultimately, these companies may be more focused on making money than accurately identifying a true journalistic attempt versus clickbait. Although "fake news" has been around for a long time, it may be more prevalent than ever. That means that we must be personally accountable and stay vigilant—don't believe everything you read, see, or hear, and don't share any news without verifying its veracity first.

2. Along a similar vein, Edward Snowden was interviewed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Periscope. Their conversation covered the proliferation of "fake news", the issues with metadata surveillance, an imbalance in privacy (private citizens increasingly have no privacy while public officials have maintained their levels of privacy), and some feature suggestions for Twitter to consider implementing. It's an excellent interview and definitely worth viewing.

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

This Week in Psychedelics - 12.16.16

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Cannabis

• New DEA Rule Says CBD Oil is Really, Truly, No-Joke Illegal (Leafly)
• Federal Marijuana Protections Extended Through April, But Face an Uncertain Future (NORML)
• Marijuana Is Harder Than Ever for Younger Teens to Find (U.S. News and World Report)
• Six States That Could Legalize Marijuana Next (ATTN:)
• The Major Way Israel Is Putting America to Shame on Marijuana (ATTN:)
• Mexico's Senate Passes Medical Cannabis Bill in Landslide Vote (Leafly)
• Cannabis museum celebrates legal weed in Uruguay (AZ Central)
• Massachusetts: Over a Century Of Cannabis Criminalization Comes to an End (NORML)
• Do Animals Benefit From Medical Cannabis? (Weed News)
• How The Medical Cannabis Program Helps My PTSD (Weed News)
• What Happens When You Stop Smoking Weed (ATTN:)
• Seattle cannabis shop sells pet-friendly pot products (KOMO News)
• How Cannabis Incubators Help Budding Marijuana Startups Grow Into Booming Businesses (Los Angeles Weekly)
• Canadian Government's Legal Marijuana Task Force Releases Recommendations (NORML)
• Portland tries to make life easier for cannabis businesses (Portland Business Journal)
• Colorado Cannabis Shops Hit $1-Billion In Sales (Civilized)
• Pot task force recommends legal cannabis sales be limited to users 18 and over (CBC)
• The end of an era in cannabis prosecutions? (Arutz Sheva)
• Marijuana Side Effects: Regular Cannabis Use Affects Vision And Eye's Retina, Study Finds (Medical Daily)
• Cannabis used to alleviate pain (Isle of Man Today)

LSD

• A Productive Person's Guide to a Little Bit of LSD (Bloomberg)
• JOHN WILCOCK: The History of East Coast Academic Acid (Boing Boing)
• Listen To John Lennon Tell The Story Of His First Acid Trip (Live for Live Music)
• CIA controlling minds through drugs (DunyaNews Pakistan)
• A Naked Man on LSD Got Mauled by K-9 After Ignoring Police Orders. Now He's a Rich, Naked Man... (Independent Journal Review)
• Ranchi students run drug biz through 'acid stamps' (Times of India)

Psilocybin/Magic Mushrooms

• Renowned Clinical Pharmacologist Talks Magic Mushrooms & Their Therapeutic Value (Collective Evolution)
• Psilocybin Mushrooms Shown to Alleviate Both Depression & Anxiety in Cancer Patients (Dr. Axe)
• How Magic Mushrooms Affect Depression (ATTN:)

MDMA/Ecstasy

• The Altered State of Medicine: Pros and Cons of Treating PTSD With MDMA Psychotherapy (Psychedelic Times)
• FDA Approves Stage 3 Medical Trials For MDMA (Dance Music Northwest)
• Ecstasy sold in US is less pure and more dangerous than in Europe, experts warn (The Guardian)
• Nearly 60% of All Ecstasy Sold in the US is Not Pure (THUMP)
• MDMA criminalization delayed research on drug's benefits: Sal Rodriguez (Los Angeles Daily News)
• Number Of Ecstasy-Related Deaths In The UK At Highest Level In Ten Years (Your EDM)
• Ecstasy 'teddy bear' pills: Cops' DEADLY warning as teen dies after Warehouse Project (Daily Star)
• 'I woke up with wires and tubes everywhere' Ecstasy pill teen talks of drug hell which left her in coma (Scottish Daily Record)
• 'The world has lost one amazing girl': Rugby club boss' agony as his beautician daughter, 19, dies after taking 'teddy bear' Ecstasy pills at an all-night rave (Daily Mail)
• Teenager dies after taking ecstasy (The Independent)

Ayahuasca/DMT

• Why Ayahuasca Is a New Age Spiritual Scam (Highsnobiety)
• Sting takes powerful psychedelic to rehearse for death (New Magazine)

Dissociatives

• Party Drug/Cat Tranquilizer Ketamine Is a Great Antidepressant (Motherboard)
• Ketamine trial led by Melbourne doctors key to cut lingering pain (Herald Sun)
• PCP's powerful cousin: 3 things cops need to know about TCP (PoliceOne.com)
• Down the K-hole: How Ketamine Became Tel Aviv's Drug of Choice (Harretz)
• My Ketamine Journeys, or Ketamine and the Enchantment of Other Worlds (Reality Sandwich)
• Dr. Steven Reichbach Opens Only Ketamine Infusion Therapy Center In Sarasota-Manatee Area (Sarasota Post)
• Philadelphia Ketamine Clinic Offers New Depression Treatment That Works in Hours! (Digital Journal)
• Bridgeport man on PCP who shouted 'I love ISIS' gets prison for injuring others in crashes (The Times Herald)
• Man high on PCP punches cop: Police (PennLive)

Opiates/Opioids

• America risks losing the war on terror in Afghanistan unless it legalizes the opium trade (Quartz)
• Heroin Overdoses Now Kill More in US Than Gun Homicides, CDC Says (Voice of America)
• Heroin-Related Deaths Rise As Heroin Use Falls (Reason)
• Make heroin available on prescription, official UK drug advisers say (The Guardian)
• Fentanyl is not a problem. Drug laws are the problem. (American Thinker)
• Mexican army faces uphill battle against opium poppies (MSN)
• Naloxone is now mandatory in all B.C. rehab centres (CBC News)
• DEA: Heroin Haul Largest Ever in Afghanistan, 'if Not the World' (ABC News)
• Drug in the times of demonetisation: Chocolate spiked opium is cashless city's new high (India Today)
• Problems Associated with the Rising Costs of Naloxone and Plausible Solutions (Pharmacy Times)
• Lethal synthetic 'super heroin' triggers 1st Cook County overdose death (Chicago Tribune)
• Digging Deeper Into North Carolina's Statewide Standing Order Of Naloxone (WFMY)
• Utah pharmacists can now dispense naloxone without a prescription (Gephardt Daily)
• The rising price of naloxone -- risks to efforts to stem overdose deaths (American Pharmacists Association)
• Sharp Rise in Drug Withdrawal Symptoms in Rural-Born Babies (TIME)

Kambô

• How the Social Aspect of Traditional Kambo Ceremonies Creates Bonding and Helps Treat Addiction (Psychedelic Times)
• Kambo In the West: Balancing Western Applications With Tribal Knowledge (Psychedelic Times)

Kratom

• DEA Looks to Ban Kratom, a Drug that Could Lessen Addiction (Interesting Engineering)
• Is Kratom a Deadly Drug or a Life-Saving Medicine? (Bloomberg)

Kava

• Kava could help in cancer fight (Radio New Zealand)
• Kava maker (The Fiji Times)

Khat

• Oman crime: ROP personnel foil bid to smuggle khat (Times of Oman)
• Norwegian drug mule caught at Dublin Airport with suitcases of khat (Sunday World)

Miscellaneous Psychedelics/Psychoactives/Drug Policy

• What Are The Medical Benefits of Psychedelics? (VICE)
• For the Health Seeker, Micro-Dosing Psychedelics May be the Secret (EcoSalon)
• Cliff Roth's OG viral video: The Reagans Speak Out on Drugs (Boing Boing)
• These Harmless-Looking Patches Reveal a Problem With Our Police Culture (ATTN:)
• Colombia's President Urges Drug Peace While Accepting Nobel Peace Prize (Reason)
• This Hallucinogenic Honey from Nepal Costs Hundreds of Dollars per Pound (The Daily Meal)
• Mexico quietly marks 10 years of drug war (Inquirer.net)
• White Americans Are Twice as Likely to Take Psychiatric Drugs as Other Racial Groups (TIME)
• Ending journalism's bad trip – why it's important to communicate responsibly about the health effects of psychedelic drugs (Health News Review)
• How to Get High on the Nutmeg You Bought for Eggnog (Inverse)
• These are the European cities that use the most drugs (based on their toilet water) (TheJournal.ie)
• The psychedelic era goes modern (The Daily Aztec)
• The Fighter: How Leila de Lima Ended Up Leading the Opposition to Rodrigo Duterte's Drug War (TIME)
• Tripping the comedy fantastic this weekend (The Daily Iowan)

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 - 12.10.16

Image by Andrea Kirkby, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

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

1. Evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution was located when a fossilized dinosaur tail was found earlier this week. The 99-million-year-old dinosaur tail, which is the size of an apricot, was preserved in an amber tomb. Perhaps the most important discovery was the fact that feathers were found on the tail, which further bolsters the idea that dinosaurs had feathers instead of scales. The tail belonged to a Cretaceous-era young coelurosaurian, which was roughly the size of a modern sparrow and could easily fit in a human hand.

2. I found the tale of this account of a second-round interview for a job at Amazon to be rather disturbing. It certainly sounds frustrating for the interviewee, who was asked to install software that allowed the proctor to remotely control the entire machine, and repeatedly asked to use his computer's camera to show the proctor the contents of his bedroom. Even worse, when he asked to end the interview, he was kept on hold multiple times by the proctor. If anyone is interested in possibly working at Amazon in the near future, you really ought to give this interviewee's experience a read.

3. Fans of Robert Anton Wilson, rejoice! A lost 1975 book by the author titled Starseed Signals will be published next year. The book was written during a time of close collaboration with Timothy Leary and formed the basis for some of Wilson's later books, such as Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati. Clocking in at around 340 pages, the book is expected to be fairly substantial. If you haven't read any RAW yet, I would suggest starting with The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which are some of my favorite books ever written.

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

Book Review - Essence of World Religions

I was fortunate to receive a free copy of Essence of World Religions during a local all-vegan Thanksgiving Dinner that I attended this year. It piqued my interest because it appeared to be a basic introduction to many of the common world religions, some of which I had never even heard of before. A few of friends that were seated at my table mentioned that they had read the book the previous year and found it to be a good overview of the topic and a valuable resource.

The book was originally published in 1994 as part of the JAINA Education Series program, and the edition I received is the Third Edition, published in November 2004. The preface of the book stresses that it is intended to be an introductory resource, stating "The strength of this book is its simplicity." Because of that, many complex and subtle distinctions between the religions have been left out of the book. The main focus is on providing a basic comparative summary of the following religions:

• Religions of India

1. Hinduism
2. Buddhism
3. Jainism
4. Sikhism

• Religions of the Far-East

1. Confucianism
2. Taoism
3. Shintoism

• Religions of the West

1. Judaism
2. Zoroastrianism
3. Christianity
4. Islam
5. Bahä'i

Each religion's section covers the time it was founded, a description of the founder (if there was one at all), the major scriptures that are consulted, any sects that may exist, the number of current adherents, the ultimate goals and beliefs, identifying symbols, and a list of observed holidays. Some religions have additional sections added that are specific to them.

I found this book to be extremely eye-opening, because there is a lot in common between these religions. Of course, there is a lot of different between them as well, but the book primarily focuses on the similarities. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone who is interested in a primer for these religions or spirituality in general.

3/5 stars. 80 pages.

This Week in Psychedelics - 12.9.16

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Cannabis

• Congressional Republicans Vow To Block Marijuana Amendments (Marijuana.com)
• Here Is the Trouble With Legalized Cannabis (Merry Jane)
• White House Hints At Possible Marijuana Moves (Marijuana.com)
• Medical cannabis shop touts plant as alternative to opioids (Belleville News-Democrat)
• In Remote Indian Village, Cannabis Is Its Only Livelihood (The New York Times)
• 7 Reasons President Trump Is Unlikely To Fight Legal Marijuana (TIME)
• The Big Business of Making a Cannabis Surveillance State (Motherboard)
• Memory Impairment Caused By Marijuana Can Both Assist and Hinder PTSD Therapy (Psychedelic Times)
• Cannabis use spikes 70% among Americans aged 50 and above (The Independent)
• Marijuana Advocates Are Celebrating This Small Victory (ATTN:)
• Maine Marijuana Opponents Can't Get Enough Volunteers for Legalization Recount (Reason)
• Legal cannabis in NZ? Green Party offers green light to pot smokers (Stuff.co.nz)
• This Company Wants To Super-Chill Your Coffee With Cannabis (The Huffington Post)
• Cannabis Business Hype Is About to Go Up in Smoke (Fortune)
• Steve Kerr Admitted to Using Marijuana For Back Pain (ATTN:)
• 13 Chicago High School Students Hospitalized After Eating 'Laced' Gummy Bears (TIME)
• Cannabis 'affects your eyesight': Study finds regular marijuana use damages link between retina and brain (Daily Mail)

LSD

• Wildlife cameras unexpectedly snap naked man high on LSD who thought he was a Siberian tiger (Mirror)
• Did HALLUCINOGENS spark the Salem witch trials? Experts say locals may have eaten bread contaminated with a fungus found in LSD (Daily Mail)
• And You're Making Me Feel Like I've Never Been Born: The Beatles' Second Acid Trip (VICE)

Psilocybin/Magic Mushrooms

• Psilocybin, the Active Ingredient in 'Shrooms, Is Looking More and More Like a Potential Wonder Drug (New York Magazine)
• How A Psychedelic Drug Helps Cancer Patients Overcome Anxiety (NPR)

MDMA/Ecstasy

• MDMA Is Now One Step Away From Being a Prescription for PTSD (New York Magazine)
• UK nightclubs will offer free cocaine and MDMA booths to test Class A's are safe to take (The Sun)
• The MDMA being used to treat trauma is different from the street drug Ecstasy (The Conversation)
• MDMA for PTSD? How Ecstasy Ingredient Works in the Brain (Live Science)
• Teenager battling depression took potentially fatal dose of ecstasy before she killed herself at a beauty spot (Mirror)
• Heartbroken mum of ecstasy death victim begs teens not to 'play Russian roulette' with drugs (Mirror)

Ayahuasca/DMT

• Study: Single Session of Ayahuasca Can Defeat Depression (Collective Evolution)
• Silicon Valley's new craze is flying to Peru to take a psychedelic you can't legally get in America (Business Insider)
• Hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca 'stimulates the brain to fight Alzheimer's, study claims (Daily Mail)

Iboga/Ibogaine

• A Drug for All Ailments (Roads and Kingdoms)
• A Long Strange Trip to Gabon (Slate)

Synthetic Cannabinoids/Psychoactive Research Chemicals

• Deadly designer drugs now in the workplace (SafeToWork)

Dissociatives

• Anaesthetists to study ketamine for post-surgery pain (Newstalk ZB)
• For one NC veteran, ketamine offers a treatment breakthrough (WNCN)
• 'My wonk addiction is destroying my bladder': Ketamine dealer knows he has a problem (Gloucestershire Live)
• Man Sentenced for Conspiring with Postal Carrier to Distribute PCP (Kansas City infoZine)
• 1-year-old poisoned by PCP recovering (The Port Arthur News)

Opiates/Opioids

• "I am a human being:" Heroin user speaks out after overdose streamed on Facebook Live (FOX 6 Now)
• Heroin deaths exceeded gun murders for 1st time last year – CDC (RT)
• Heroin overtakes cocaine as the biggest concern for local cops (VICE News)
• Mexican cartels are expanding their control over the US heroin market (Business Insider)
• Why all the opium in the world won't make America happy (The Hill)
• Utah pharmacists can now dispense naloxone without a prescription (Deseret News)

Kratom

• DEA refuses to release evidence backing Kratom ban (MuckRock)
• Kratom and Cannabis Combination – The Medicinal and Psychological Effects (Kratom Guides)
• Drug policy experts and advocates implore DEA to keep opiate-like plant legal (The Washington Post)
• Kratom Mixed with Coffee (Kratom Guides)
• Kratom & Yerba Mate Tea—Is It A Safe Combination? (Kratom Guides)
• Kratom and Chamomile - A Great Combination to Potentiate the Effects (Kratom Guides)

Kava

• Study probes kava effectiveness on anxiety (Radio New Zealand)

Miscellaneous Psychedelics/Psychoactives/Drug Policy

• Integrating Your Experience: Why You May Question Your Sexuality After Using Psychedelics (Psychedelic Times)
• How Donald Trump's Cabinet Could Affect Executive Polices on Psychedelics (Psychedelic Times)
• Why Psychedelic History Matters (VolteFace)
• The Different Approaches to Appropriate Dosage Amounts In Psychedelic Therapy (Psychedelic Times)
• Rodrigo Duterte: Donald Trump Endorsed Deadly War on Drugs as 'The Right Way' (TIME)
• Microsoft says virtual reality could make you HALLUCINATE in the same way as LSD (Daily Mail)
• VR Isn't Going To Be Like LSD – It's Going To Be Much Better (Inverse)
• Can Psychedelics Make You Smarter and More Creative? (TalkingDrugs)
• Blue Lotus: The Ancient Egyptian Dream Flower (World of Lucid Dreaming)
• China's 'Walter White' Sold $600,000 Worth of Illegal Drugs Every Month to U.S. and Europe (TIME)
• Psychedelic War Stories & Cosmic Flights: An interview with Andy Roberts (Psychedelic Press UK)
• This Is the Latest Chilling Statistic to Emerge From the Philippine War on Drugs (TIME)

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.