Weekend Thoughts - 7.1.17

Image by Jody McIntrye, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

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

1. This week marked the 10-Year Anniversary of the release of the original iPhone, and John Gruber at Daring Fireball wrote a short piece that explored some of the various ways that the iPhone changed the world. Among some of the things to consider:

"The iPhone’s potential was obviously deep, but it was so deep as to be unfathomable at the time. The original iPhone didn’t even shoot video; today the iPhone and iPhone-like Android phones have largely killed the point-and-shoot camera industry. It has obviated portable music players, audio recorders, paper maps, GPS devices, flashlights, walkie-talkies, music radio (with streaming music), talk radio (with podcasts), and more. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft wouldn’t even make sense pre-iPhone. Social media is mobile-first, and in some cases mobile-only."

As usual, it's an extremely well-written piece and I'd like to suggest that we take some time to think about all of the things that the iPhone (and other smartphones) catalyzed over the past decade that are taken for granted nowadays.

2. Speaking of Uber and Lyft, the surge pricing model that those companies employ may start coming to your local parking meters soon. Imagine pulling up to a parking space on a Saturday night—the same one that you parked in earlier the same day for one dollar—and being charged eight dollars instead. It definitely seems like this is plausible and I wouldn't be surprised to experience this in the next few years.

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

This Week in Psychedelics - 6.30.17

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Cannabis

• Why You Can't Smoke Weed in States Where It's Legal (ATTN:)
• Study: Patients Report Substituting Cannabis For Opioids, Other Pain Medications (NORML)
• Why the cannabis industry will soon be bigger than the NFL (New York Daily News)
• Dismantling The Drug War: Is Cannabis a Gateway to Legalizing Drugs? (Dope Magazine)
• Koch Network Warns Trump Against 'Failed' Cannabis Fight (Leafly)
• Will the House of Representatives Let Jeff Sessions Shut Down Medical Marijuana? (NORML)
• DC Cannabis-Dealing Arrests Back to Pre-Legalization Levels (Leafly)
• Medical cannabis in Kansas: hope or hopeless? (The Garden City Telegram)
• Growing Demand Drives Flurry of Aussie-Israeli Cannabis Partnerships (Leafly)
• Data Dive: Cannabis Sales Keep Climbing in Washington and Colorado (Leafly)
• California Bill Would Ban Cannabis-Branded Hats, T-Shirts, Other Merchandise (Leafly)
• Detroit Police Sued Again For Shooting Dogs During a Marijuana Raid (Reason)
• Are Constitutional Challenges the Future of Canadian Cannabis Litigation? (Leafly)
• Oregon ranks low on cannabis industry transparency (Oregon Business)
• Growing Cannabis Bonsai Trees: Separating Fact From Fiction (Leafly)
• Cannabis World Congress lights up New York (CNET)
• With Emergency Rules, Vegas Gears Up for Nevada's July 1 Cannabis Launch (Leafly)
• Cannabis experts produce 'High'-way Code of 10 tips to help reduce health risks (The Independent)
• A viable cannabis industry requires strict controls (Puget Sound Business Journal)
• Maryland regulators want to deny license to medical cannabis farm (The Baltimore Sun)
• Cannabis club robbed at gunpoint (Berkeleyside)

LSD

• LSD to be used to treat people with depression for first time ever in UK (The Sun)
• Scientists are about to find out how Silicon Valley's LSD habit really affects productivity (Business Insider)
• LSD Microdosing: The New Silicon Valley Productivity Hack (Reason)

Psilocybin/Magic Mushrooms

• People's Pharmacy: Hallucinogen psilocybin may relieve cluster headaches (Online Athens)
• Police: Teen high on psychedelic mushrooms killed Northland teen by running him over with his vehicle (KXLF)

MDMA/Ecstasy

• What is MDMA? (ITV)
• Warning as four men rushed to hospital after taking 'potent' MDMA (Metro)
• High strength MDMA likely to be in circulation in Island (Isle of Man)

Ayahuasca/DMT

• DMT: Underground Research Masquerading As Science – Or Sound Science? (Collective Evolution)
• What it's like to experience ayahuasca (ABC)

Peyote/San Pedro/Mescaline

• San Pedro: One of the Most Potent Psychedelic Plants in the World (High Existence)

Synthetic Cannabinoids/Psychoactive Research Chemicals

• Ten people hospitalised after 'taking MDMA called Pink Champagne' had actually swallowed crystallised form of 'zombie drug' Spice (Mirror)

Dissociatives

• You May Be Eating Chicken Contaminated With a Hallucinogenic Drug (AlterNet)
• Scientists are reformulating the party drug Ketamine to remove its terrible side effects (Quartz)
• Ketamine for Mental Health Conditions: New Findings (The Fix)
• Researchers Learn How Ketamine Acts on the Brain (PsychCentral)
• Ketamine novel approach to treating depression (Toledo Blade)
• Study proves how Ketamine fails to prevent post-operative delirium (Catch News)

Opiates/Opioids

• Safe injection centers are not opium dens (Los Angeles Times)
• Why is deadly fentanyl now showing up in street drugs like MDMA and cocaine? (NOW)
• An EMT's view from the front lines of America's heroin crisis (CNN)
• Inside America's 19th Century opium dens which spread across the country creating thousands of dope addicts (The Sun)
• Fox Hosts for Legalizing Heroin (Reason)
• Let them die? A controversial proposal about heroin (Cincinnati.com)

Absinthe

• The Most Ridiculous Scenes of People Tripping on Absinthe (Supercall)
• The Best Absinthe Bars in America (Supercall)

Kratom

• Kratom: The Solution to Opioid Addiction? Why Does the FDA Want it Banned? (KVRR)

Kava

• Report reveals 171 students were drinking kava in schools in last 3 years (Fijivillage)

Khat

• High Court bars implementation of miraa task force report (KDR)
• At $240 a Pound, the World's Original Coffee Producer Is Back in Business (Bloomberg)

Miscellaneous Psychedelics/Psychoactives/Drug Policy

• The Psychedelic Revolution Is Being Led by a 74-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor (VICE)
• The war on drugs is back. Will psychedelic drug research survive? (The Verge)
• New History Channel Series Unveils Dirty Secrets of America's War on Drugs (Psychedelic Times)
• Psychedelics and Virtual Reality Make a Trendy but Illegal Therapy (Inverse)
• Majority of Americans Support Psychedelic Therapy, New Poll Shows (Merry Jane)
• Open Your Mind This Weekend at Europe's Largest Psychedelic Conference (VolteFace)
• Are Brain-Boosting Performance Enhancers Invading Silicon Valley? (Inquisitr)
• Is Microdosing Just a Placebo? (The Third Wave)
• Man Jailed for 90 Days After Police Thought Drywall in His Car Was Cocaine (TIME)
• Sally Yates Condemns Jeff Sessions for Reinstating Harsh Low-Level Drug Sentences (TIME)
• Psychedelic Drugs Could Radically Improve Asia's Mental Healthcare -- If It Wasn't For Stigma (Forbes)
• Astrophysicists Finally Wonder if the Universe is Alive – Only Trail Shamans By the Entirety of Human History on that Front (Disinfo)
• Psychedelic drugs not wonder cures: Doctors (Deccan Chronicle)

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 are presented by the mass media, which includes everything from the latest scientific research to misinformation.

Book Review - Decomposing The Shadow

After seeing James W. Jesso's byline on several articles on the web and stumbling across his podcast Adventures Through The Mind (highly recommended, by the way!), I decided to check out his book Decomposing The Shadow: Lessons from the Psilocybin Mushroom. I went into my reading experience with little understanding about what the book is all about, but from Jesso's descriptions of the book in the early podcast episodes, I knew that he considers psilocybin mushrooms to be his primary plant teacher and that the book is an attempt to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to better put into language the psychedelic experience.

The first part of the book covers his personal experiences with psychedelics, including a strong focus on the relationship that he has developed with psilocybin mushrooms. Jesso then goes into an brief explanation of magic mushrooms and a concise history of psychedelics, covering topics like Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, the Good Friday Experiment, Ram Dass, and the psychedelic sixties. The middle section of the book is titled A Conceptual Framework, and it attempts to build a vocabulary of terms that can be used to define various aspects of the psychedelic experience. This section is definitely valuable, but it was a bit too academically-oriented for me and didn't hold my interest the same way a truly captivating piece of writing does. However, I did find it to be helpful for understanding various parts of a psychedelic experience and may incorporate some of the defined terms into my own psychedelic language. Ultimately, this particular section just felt a bit too textbook-like to me. The last few sections of the book focus on obtaining value from one's experiences and miscellaneous commentary about psychedelic-related topics, including an intriguing analogy between the psychedelic experience and the Dagobah scene from Empire Strikes Back that I quite enjoyed.

So—should you read this book? If you're interested in learning new terms to describe your psychedelic experiences, the history of psychedelics, spiritual work, or the formative psychedelic experiences that the author had, then the answer is yes. However, if you're not into any of those things then you may not get much out of this one. Ultimately, I found it to be a really well-written book and I'll definitely be checking out the rest of the author's works.

4/5 stars. 154 pages.

Weekend Thoughts - 6.24.17

Image by Hilari, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

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

1. Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk and the co-founder of the meditation app Headspace, has explained how and why mindfulness has been thriving under President Donald Trump. For example: the day after Trump was elected, the app saw a 44% increase in SOS sessions, a feature designed to help people navigate through sudden meltdowns. Numbers like these beg the question: could Trump's reign motivate a shift of global consciousness for the better?

2. New DNA research has shown that contrary to humans' experience with domesticating wolves into dogs, cats essentially domesticated themselves by hanging around humans for thousands of years. In other words, it's not that people put cats into cages—rather, we allowed them to domesticate themselves. Cats were attracted to mice and rats that showed up after human civilizations started producing crops and other agricultural byproducts, and just stuck around. And as a cat lover, I'm really glad they did.

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

This Week in Psychedelics - 6.23.17

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Cannabis

• Philando Castile's 'Audacity To Smoke Marijuana' in Front of Child Doomed Him, Says Cop Who Killed Him (Reason)
• Air Fresheners as Probable Cause? A New Jersey Lawyer Talks Garden State Cannabis Access (Leafly)
• Study: Adult Use Marijuana Laws Do Not Adversely Impact Traffic Fatality Rates (NORML)
• Roger Stone Wants Donald Trump to Legalize Marijuana (TIME)
• Study: CBD Administration Reduces Blood Pressure (NORML)
• Vermont: House Blocks Marijuana Depenalization Bill From Further Consideration (NORML)
• The Search for a Place to Toke Up (Reason)
• Colorado County Gives High School Graduates $420K in Cannabis-Funded Scholarships (Leafly)
• Two Major Victories For Student Rights In Federal Courts (NORML)
• How Medical Marijuana Can Help Solve the Opioid Epidemic (Psychedelic Times)
• Should Alcohol and Cannabis Have Separate DUI Laws? (Leafly)
• Contaminated Cannabis Still Hitting the Shelves in Oregon, Report Finds (Leafly)
• Why Industry Reps Out For Cannabis Vs. Marijuana (KUNR)
• New Report Shows New Jersey's Cannabis Laws Failing Its People (Leafly)
• Portland Now Has a Pop-up Cannabis Dinner Series (The Potlander)
• This Meme Nails What People Don't Get About Working in the Marijuana Industry (ATTN:)
• Getting stoned with the Weed Nuns (Boing Boing)
• Medical cannabis group raises $4.75 million (St. Louis Business Journal)
• Could weed be used to treat period pain? (The Guardian)
• As Cannabis Comes Out of Black Market, Regulators Face Scrutiny (Leafly)
• Medicinal cannabis: Doctors, nurses and Nimbin 'elders' trade marijuana tips (ABC)
• Check Out These Weekly Cannabis Live Streams on YouTube (Leafly)
• Medical cannabis workshop: 'incredibly difficult' to get drugs to patients (The Guardian)
• The US weed rush and white-collar cannabis CEOs (The Sun Daily)
• The 'Green Rush' Went Next Level at Last Week's Cannabis Business Summit and Expo in Oakland (East Bay Express)
• Medical Marijuana Continues To Work Miracles (Disinfo)
• Teenagers should stop rolling their cannabis joints with tobacco if they don't want CANCER, researcher wants (Daily Mail)

LSD

• Study finds LSD produces dreamlike states in awake humans by stimulating serotonin receptors (PsyPost)
• LSD to lift your mood or performance? Microdosing could become commonplace (Genetic Library Project)
• Tripping up: The real danger of microdosing with LSD (New Scientist)
• Inside the 1950s LSD Therapy That Changed Cary Grant's Life (Vulture)
• Ice Cube To Produce Movie About Dock Ellis' LSD No-Hitter; O'Shea Jackson To Star (HotNewHipHop)
• Don't Take LSD There for the First Time and Other Top Glasto Tips (Noisey)

MDMA/Ecstasy

• Carrie Fisher Had Cocaine, Heroin and Ecstasy in Her System, Autopsy Shows (TIME)
• Canadian Study Shows Psychedelic Drugs Like Ecstasy Reduce Suicide Risks, While Meth Increases Risk (Inquisitr)
• MDMA Moves Closer to Being PTSD Treatment (Vital Updates)
• Father Sues Insomniac Events After His Son's Death From Ecstasy During EDC Las Vegas (EDM Sauce)
• Jersey Police warn users over 'particularly strong' ecstasy tables (BBC)
• Teen dies after taking 'Ikea' ecstasy pills as cops warn of deadly batch (The Sun)
• Woman still in hospital after taking Ecstasy on night out in Sheffield (The Star)
• Arlington Police Seize 1,000 Ecstasy Tabs Shaped Like Flintstones Vitamins (CBS DFW)

Ayahuasca/DMT

• Ayahuasca: Coming to a Clinic Near You? (AlterNet)
• Dr. Gabor Mate: Ayahuasca Is The 'Antidote To Western Psychological Distress' (The Fix)
• Drug investigators say "dangerous drug lab" in Douglas County was making DMT (Yakima Herald-Republic)

Iboga/Ibogaine

• Vendor Letter: An alternative addiction treatment (Real Change)

Dissociatives

• Inside the Los Angeles Clinic That Uses Ketamine to Treat Depression (Los Angeles Magazine)
• Ketamine Not Effective Against Postoperative Delirium, Pain in Older Adults (Practical Pain Management)
• There Could Be Ketamine in Your 'Natural' Chicken (Bloomberg)
• Police: Wrong-way driver had PCP and 9-year-old nephew in vehicle (KVUE)

Opiates/Opioids

• Heroin Addiction Costs US More Than $50 Billion Per Year (Newsweek)
• Opium use booms in Afghanistan, creating a 'silent tsunami' of addicted women (The Washington Post)
• Former Surgeon General Says Trumpcare Will Be a Disaster for the Opioid Crisis (ATTN:)
• Veterinarians are Starting To Look for Drug-Seeking Behavior (ATTN:)
• New Resource to Help Fight Heroin, Opioid Epidemic (U.S. News & World Report)
• Why every cop should carry naloxone (Police One)
• US fentanyl crisis: It's become a relief to only find heroin, says police officer (The Independent)
• Number of women in hospital for heroin and prescription opioids spikes 75% in a decade (The Independent)

Kratom

• Supplements To Get Rid of Kratom and Opiate Withdrawal Symptoms (Kratom Guides)
• Kratom - a jolt like coffee, a painkiller like a pain pill (TG Daily)
• How I Made an Extremely Potent Sleep Cake That Could Knock Out An Elephant (Men's Health)
• Can these 8 Herbal Teas Boost your Immune System (Alverno Alpha)
• Little-known illegal drug being sold to sick, desperate Australians (The New Daily)

Kava

• Largest kava bar in the US lands a spot in Asheville (WLOS)

Khat

• Tanzania: 48 Acres of Khat Rhazed in Operation (All Africa)

Miscellaneous Psychedelics/Psychoactives/Drug Policy

• The Silk Road Is Dead, But the Internet's Illicit Drug Economy Is Alive and Well (Reason)
• Uniting Shamanic Healing and Western Medicine (Reality Sandwich)
• Read Jeff Sessions' Utterly Illogical Defense of Tough Drug Sentences (Reason)
• New Report Contradicts Jeff Sessions' Claim That 'Soft' Drug Sentences Led to More Crime (Reason)
• Q&A With Psychedelic Stand-Up and LaughFest Headliner Shane Mauss (Flagpole)
• More Evidence That Eric Holder's Charging Memo Helped Drug Offenders (Reason)
• Psychedelic Drugs Enhance Consciousness (Medical News Bulletin)

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 are presented by the mass media, which includes everything from the latest scientific research to misinformation.