Author Archive
From “X” to Rx: Discussing MDMA with Rick Doblin An Excerpt from "Psychedelic Medicine" by Dr. Richard Louis Miller
The following is excerpted from Dr. Richard Louis Miller’s excellent new book, Psychedelic Medicine. MDMA: Heart Medicine Substance: MDMA (3,4- methylenedioxy-methamphetamine), aka Molly, Ecstasy, “X,” “E”, “XTC”, ADAM Schedule: I (No recognized medical use and high potential for abuse) Rick Doblin, Ph.D.: Drawing a Map from “X” to Rx March 5, 2013 (with excerpts from August 18, 2015) Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He received his doctorate in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he wrote his dissertation on the regulation of the medical uses of...
Ayahuasca: A Skeptic’s Notes (or The Shortcut to Eternity Leads Through Hell)
Eye-Uh-Waz-Kah I was drinking coffee in the courtyard of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art when I finally mastered the pronunciation of the word “ayahuasca.” Redmond Blake, who was sitting across from me in dark shades and a baby blue painter’s jacket, was explaining the Medicine to me. A few days earlier, he’d returned from a weekend-long ayahuasca ceremony in Ojai led by disciples of a powerful shaman from Peru. Under the protection of the Mother, he had taken an astonishing journey through a beautiful and frightening spirit land. As I listened to Red’s stories in the...
Microdosing LSD: Smart Drug or Placebo?
This guest post is by Marlene Rupp, whose fantastic writings and illustrations appear at Sapiensoup.com. Microdosing LSD promises to act like a mix of Adderall and Prozac but without the side effects. Sounds too good to be true; is it? Some swear by microdosing while others call it a placebo effect. We researched the scientific explanations why microdosing might actually work, the risks involved and evaluated the evidence as of today. Here is what we found. Microdosing gained currency in Silicon Valley in late 2015 and is spreading like wildfire across the rest of the world. Software developers...
Brilliant Cannabis Commercial Parodies Ridiculous Pharma Ads
We’ve all seen them: those interminable pharmaceutical ads pairing long lists of side effects with triumphant music and happy people dancing, playing sports, and doing whatever happy people do once they’ve gotten past that condition that’s been ailing you. Behind the schmaltzy veneer there’s something dystopian and manipulative about those ads, trying to sell you on pharmaceutical solutions for problems you didn’t know you had. Briteside, a cannabis delivery company, sends up the whole genre with an ad that’s guaranteed to make you laugh. The ad may be satire, but the company is very real, though they only operate in...
Watch Mormon Missionaries Try LSD for the First Time
Mormons avoid intoxicants of all kinds — alcohol, cannabis, even coffee and tea. Yet somehow, these filmmakers found three missionaries who were willing to bend the rules and give LSD a try. They play games, trip to music, and answer deep questions about God and identity. The results are hilarious and enlightening. Okay, it’s a spoof, and the “Mormon missionaries” are actors. But it’s still a great video, and very funny. Liked this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed to get much more! Or enter your email address for weekly updates: Share this:
James Fadiman Discusses the Many Benefits of Microdosing
Altered Conference (3-4 November, 2017 in Berlin) is an international gathering of consciousness explorers from all backgrounds to take part in talks, workshops and rituals on the subject of psychedelics, conscious practices, and social issues facilitated by leading experts and researchers. Interested in attending? Use code PSYCHEDELICFRONTIER which is good for a 20% discount. At the conference, Dr. James Fadiman & Dr. Sophia Korb will provide a talk called about their microdosing research project, which has enrolled over a thousand subjects around the world. I caught up with Dr. Fadiman — a leading psychedelic researcher and author of the popular trip...
Sitting, Not Guiding: The Power of Non-Directive Support
This post by Erica Zelfand, N.D. and Timothy Crespi, L.P.C., C.A.D.C was first published in the MAPS Bulletin and appears here with permission. An hour after eating psilocybin mushrooms at a festival, Olivia notices her left hand is shaking. She can stop it with effort, but prefers to just let it do its thing. She isn’t angry, yet it feels strangely good to shout fragmented thoughts and hum Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” The hand-shaking has progressed; now she’s flapping her whole left arm like a hemiplegic bird trying to take flight. The people around her have noticed and are keeping...
Video: Can Ketamine Help You Reduce Problem Drinking?
In this episode of Vice Video’s High Society series, a young man embarks on a full-blown ketamine trip in the hopes of reducing his compulsive drinking habit. It’s part of a controlled study led by Dr. Ravi Das, a psychopharmacologist at University College London, to examine whether ketamine can weaken certain memory connections — and thereby loosen the grip of addictive substances over people’s minds. From the Vice Video description: Timmy Davis is not an alcoholic. But like many twenty-something students, he’s worried he may be drinking too much. Timmy has volunteered for Dr. Das’ latest experiment, in which...
A Reverend’s Moving Sermon About Psychedelics and Religion
“If I Could Change Your Mind,” preached by Reverend Mike Young at The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu on 5 November 1995. If, on some Sunday morning, I would step up here into the pulpit and announce to you that I had an experience available to you, that you could come to the church on a given Saturday afternoon and spend with me between six and eight hours and I guarantee — virtually guaranteed at least almost guarantee; well, pretty certainly guarantee; oh, a good chance — that you would experience a total transformation of your own mind,...
Scientists Unlock the Mystery of Magic Mushrooms, Allowing for Mass Production of Psilocybin
Some sixty years ago, Albert Hofmann — the Swiss chemist better known for discovering LSD — first isolated the active components of “magic” mushrooms, psilocybin and psilocin. Yet the question of how, exactly, the mushrooms produced these unique compounds remained a mystery ever since. Until now, that is. Scientists at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany have identified the four key enzymes used by these fungal bio-factories to produce their magical ingredients. To accomplish this, Dr. Dirk Hoffmeister and his team sequenced the entire genome of two psilocybin mushroom species, Psilocybe cubensis and Psilocybe cyanescens. Even more impressive, they were...
Terence McKenna’s Little Known Ambient Album About DMT
Dream Matrix Telemetry is the name of a 1993 album by UK ambient group Zuvuya and the psychedelic bard himself, Terence McKenna. Dream Matrix Telemetry — Now where have I seen those initials before? Ah yes, dimethyltryptamine, the so-called “Spirit Molecule.” McKenna’s calm, echoing monologue — set to a backdrop of bizarre but relaxing sci-fi synths and melodies — begins like this: D.M.T. is an extraordinary hallucinogen that lasts only a few hundred seconds at the peak of the flash. It is something which is smoked. Something waxy. Orange. Smelling of camphor. You vapourise it in a small glass...
My Share of Sacramental LSD Wiccans Celebrate a Lunar Eclipse
My first experience with taking LSD in a ritual context took place in 1980 in a Wiccan community in Northern California. But the event, an observance of the eclipse of the full moon, was by no means my first experience with psychedelics. For the previous 14 years, I had used such psychedelics as LSD and psilocybin as part of a spiritual practice, often during the four years when it seemed to elevate my marriage into a cosmic union; and less often after my 1970 divorce, when I attempted — with very limited success — to reach acid light...