People With Depression and Anxiety Could Benefit From Hallucinogens

Elly Belle, writing for Teen Vogue:

A growing body of evidence, which includes recently released research, suggests that there might be quite a few benefits of hallucinogens for mental health disorders including depression and anxiety.

Imagine being a teenager in today's world and seeing this article in your latest edition of Teen Vogue. The times they are a-changin.


This Week in Psychedelics - 8.10.18

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Cannabis

  • Congress Finally Can Tell Hemp From Pot (The Atlantic)
  • Neighborhood Marijuana Dispensaries Don’t Increase Teen Use, Study Shows (Marijuana Moment)
  • Colorado secretly created a way to police medical marijuana doctors, a lawsuit suppressed for years alleges (The Denver Post)
  • New Source of Cannabidiol Not Derived From Cannabis or Hemp (24/7 Wall St.)
  • Congressional Ban On D.C. Marijuana Sales Drives Arrests, New Police Data Suggests (Marijuana Moment)
  • New Federal Employment Protections Bill Introduced For Marijuana Consumers (NORML)
  • FBI, DEA orchestrate massive raid of suspected illegal marijuana grow operations across Denver metro area (The Denver Post)
  • Michigan Cop Forced an 80-Year-Old Great Grandmother To Spend a Night in Jail Over an Expired Medical Marijuana Card (Reason)
  • Lawmakers In U.S. Territory Vote To Legalize Marijuana (Forbes)
  • North Dakota Likely To Vote On Marijuana Legalization In November (Marijuana Moment)
  • Already 91 per cent of Aussies support medicinal cannabis and over the counter purchases may soon become a reality (News.com.au)
  • Oklahoma Governor Approves Less Restrictive Medical Marijuana Regulations (Marijuana Moment)
  • Nevada And Alaska Marijuana Sales Far Exceed Projections (Marijuana Moment)
  • Oak Park company designs oral, quick absorbing cannabis (Chicago Daily Herald)
  • Almost One-Fifth Of California Consumers Still Buying Illegal-Market Marijuana, Report Finds (Marijuana Moment)
  • Ohio Is Having Trouble Finding Producers for Cannabis Edibles Market (Forbes)
  • Study Finds Teens Who Vape More Likely to Consume Cannabis Later (High Times)
  • California Marijuana Products Delayed by Backlogs in Testing Labs (NBC San Diego)
  • New York Inches Towards Legalizing Recreational Marijuana (Reason)
  • Kevin Smith’s ‘Hollyweed’ TV Show Isn’t Top-Shelf Marijuana Content (Marijuana Moment)
  • Climate change is turning the Middle East's breadbasket into a cannabis farm (CNN)
  • Police chief gives green light to cannabis users to grow and sell drug in their own home (The Telegraph)
  • Cannabis Goes Universal in This Campaign Showing Pot Users From All Walks of Life (Adweek)

Psilocybin/Magic Mushrooms

  • Which U.S. state will be the first to legalize shrooms? (Big Think)
  • Psychedelic mushrooms may help smokers kick the habit (Earth.com)

MDMA/Ecstasy

  • Man Arrested After Filling Hotel Bathtub With Potatoes High On MDMA, "It Felt Like The Right Thing To Do" (Comic Sands)
  • A prescription for MDMA? We're getting closer (Big Think)
  • 'Donald Trump' MDMA pills tested at Bestival have double the dose (Bournemouth Echo)
  • When I Knew it Was Time to End My Relationship With MDMA (Tonic)

Ayahuasca/DMT/5-MeO-DMT

  • Synthetic vs Toad and Finding a 5-MeO-DMT Ceremony: A Conversation with James Oroc (Psychedelic Times)
  • Ayahuasca is the new frontier for 'psychedelic feminism' (ABC.net.au)
  • San Jose man shot in remote jungles of Peru during spiritual retreat (The Mercury News)
  • Oakland company accused of smuggling hallucinogenic toad venom from Hong Kong (East Bay Times)

Salvia Divinorum

Dissociatives

  • Everything You Should Know About Taking Ketamine (Tonic)
  • Ketamine offers lifeline for people with severe depression, suicidal thoughts (CNN)
  • Ketamine infusion well-tolerated in small sample with mood disorders (Healio)
  • KC teen’s PCP-laced shotgun spree kills Chinese missionary, a father of 4, police say (The Kansas City Star)

Opiates/Opioids

  • Touching Fentanyl Is Not Dangerous. Will This Video Finally Prove That? (Slate)
  • Police to use heroin antidote naloxone in cells as drugs death rise (Chronicle Live)
  • Officials Are Trying to Block a Needle Exchange Program From Operating in Orange County (TIME)
  • Months of U.S. Strikes Have Failed to Curtail Taliban Opium Trade (The Wall Street Journal)
  • Dr. Robert Newman, Apostle of Methadone Treatment, Dies at 80 (The New York Times)
  • Oregon K-9 saved by Narcan after exposure to contraband heroin in jail (KIRO)
  • Naloxone Saved Demi Lovato and Thousands More. Why is it Controversial? (RealClearLife)

Kratom

  • Kratom – Can it benefit MMA fighters and combat athletes? (My MMA News)
  • How Kratom Relieves Different Types of Pain? “Kratom for Pain” (Kratom Guides)

Miscellaneous Psychedelics/Psychoactives/Drug Policy

  • A push for drug decriminalization surges in countries around the world — could the US be next? (The Hill)
  • Indian State Moves To Decriminalize Drugs (Marijuana Moment)
  • Tories pile pressure on Theresa May to allow safe injection room for drug users (The Independent)
  • How and why people 'microdose' tiny hits of psychedelic drugs (CBC)
  • How the US drug war fuels migration, violence and trauma (Salon)
  • LGBQ teens more likely to use illegal street drugs (KFGO)
  • Why GDP includes the illegal drugs trade (BBC)
  • Britain has more drug deaths per head than any other country in Europe, research claims (The Sun)
  • Eating this fish could give you three days of nasty, LSD-like hallucinations (ZME Science)
  • The Detroit Psychedelic Conference brings the international science of consciousness home (Detroit Metro Times)

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.

Image by Dahtamnay, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Mapping the Mind with Mushrooms 2018

The Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) of Toronto are going to be holding their fourth annual Mapping the Mind with Mushrooms conference on September 22.

Mapping the Mind with Mushrooms returns to Toronto for its fourth year! This annual conference aims to bring the ongoing psychedelic research renaissance to the general public. Over the last 20 years, psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, and more have returned to scientific laboratories and have been informing neuroscience and therapeutic practice at an unprecedented rate. Hosted at the University of Toronto Earth Science Centre, we will bring together psychologists, philosophers and mycologists to address the current findings and implications of psychedelic mushrooms and more.

Be sure to add it to your calendar!


Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Near: Meet the Teen Who Rides One Every Day

Tom Randall and Mark Bergen, writing for Bloomberg:

The Jackson family, along with some 400 neighbors in their Phoenix suburb, are volunteers in an ongoing test of Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing business, which is expected to launch for paying passengers in the area by the end of the year. The Jacksons, who Waymo made available for this story, have largely ditched their own cars and now use self-driving vehicles to go almost everywhere within the 100 square-mile operating area: track practice, grocery shopping, movies, the train station.

Kyla acts like a diva with a private chauffeur, laughs her mom, Samantha Jackson, in an interview in Chandler last week. Access to robotaxis has even managed to convince this 17-year-old to put off an American rite of passage: getting her driver’s license. As Kyla puts it, “What’s the point?”

What's the point, indeed. I'm almost twice as old as Kyla, but I have felt the same way for a long time. This comprehensive update on autonomous vehicles is well worth a read.


Magic Mushrooms: New Research on Psilocybin and Its Benefits

Marco, writing for Green Camp:

Much like the carefully orchestrated de-legalization of cannabis during the 1930’s, there was a powerful decades-long misleading campaign against psilocybin mushrooms which caused a deep-rooted fear and a subsequent public rejection of this substance. [...]

In the following section we will acquaint ourselves with psilocybin mushrooms a bit better, before moving on to the studies which demonstrate their extensive therapeutic potential.

This is an excellent resource for information about magic mushrooms, including a unique (and evidence-based) infographic titled "4 Medical Benefits of Psilocybin Mushrooms." And if you enjoy a good trip report, it's worth checking out the section about Marco's experiences with psilocybin mushrooms toward the bottom of the piece.