liberty
Beckley Foundation: “Drugs prohibition is starting to crumble”
Amanda Feilding, director of the Beckley Foundation, has written a very encouraging article titled “At last, the edifice of drugs prohibition is starting to crumble.” The Beckley Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes drug policy reform and works to advance the scientific understanding of consciousness. Amanda Feilding and her colleagues have been on the front lines of drug policy and research since the organization’s inception in 1998. She describes the Foundation’s perspective: The Beckley Foundation has always advocated an evidence-based, health-oriented, harm-reducing, cost-effective approach that respects human rights. The mark of a successful drug policy should not be the...
Ego, Fear, and the War on Drug Users
“Over one’s mind and over one’s body, the individual is sovereign.” —John Stuart Mill From the point of view of psychedelic enthusiasts, the prohibitionist stance is farcically weak. The moral imperative could not be more obvious: stop jailing non-violent consciousness explorers and give us back our tax dollars. But let’s consider how we got here to begin with. I don’t want to talk about Nixon and the Controlled Substance Act, or the DEA, or how America has exported its neurotic drug policy to the rest of the world. I won’t even present data revealing how ineffective and dehumanizing...
Radio interview with psychedelic pioneer Jim Fadiman
Public radio show “To the Best of Our Knowledge” interviewed psychedelic pioneer Jim Fadiman. The full 45 minute interview can be downloaded or streamed from their website. Jim Fadiman is one of the original psychonauts – a friend of Richard Alpert and Ken Kesey in the Sixties – who went on to do pioneering research on psychedelics and creativity, and helped found the transpersonal psychology movement. In this EXTENDED interview, Steve Paulson talks with Fadiman about a lifetime of unconventional thinking. The interview covers a variety of topics, from Fadiman’s days as a graduate student in the psychedelic...
FDA Approves Lorcaserin, Diet Drug with Psychedelic Effects at High Doses
This is a landmark step towards sensible US drug policy. Since the Nixon Administration passed the Controlled Substance Act passed in 1970, nearly all psychedelic-style drugs have been automatically classified as Schedule I, which means absolute prohibition with no recognized medical potential. (LSA presents an exception as a Schedule III drug, and the case may be made for the “psychedelic” nature of dextromethorphan and ketamine.) Lorcaserin, a weight loss drug with euphoric, hallucinogenic, and dissociative effects at high doses, has been classified as a Schedule IV medicine. This marks the first time that the DEA has acknowledged the...
Sacredness Is in the Eye of the Beholder
There is a logical fallacy that psychonauts tend to make called the Appeal to Tradition. Just as it sounds, this is when someone describes a particular method or system as superior because it is traditional. The truth, of course, is that a solution’s stature as a tradition has no bearing on its effectiveness. A tradition may be passed on for many generations and still remain fundamentally flawed. Even psychonauts with the best of intentions commit this logical error. Having come to deeply respect a particular entheogenic tradition — for instance, the Amazonian ayahuasca ceremony — they insist that it is...
Graham Hancock: the War on Consciousness
I find Graham Hancock’s TED talk about The War on Consciousness extremely compelling. He starts the 19 minute talk by touching upon cave art and the emergence of humanity as “fully symbolic creatures” who express themselves with language and drawings. From the 2 minute to the 10 minute mark, he talks about his experience with ayahuasca and how, when he finally decided to listen to the lessons it impressed upon him, it transformed his life. But my favorite part is the last six minutes, where Hancock describes the fundamental human right to sovereign consciousness and the war being waged against...