“Three hundred and fifty years ago, Shulgin notes, the Church proclaimed, “The earth is the center of the universe, and anyone who says otherwise is a heretic.” Today, the government proclaims, “All drugs that can expand consciousness are without medical or social justification, and anyone who uses them is a criminal.” In Galileo’s time, the authorities said, “We do not need to actually look through that mysterious contraption.” Now the government says, “There is no need to actually taste those mysterious compounds.” In the past, the Church said, “How dare you claim that the earth is not the center of the universe?” Today the government says, “How dare you to claim that an understanding of God is to be found in a white powder?”(DANIEL PINCHBECK)

Psychedelics help to accelerate a maturation process, where we can see that we’re not operating within silos. Instead, we’re operating as part of a larger collective and part of a larger community. Thanks to the revival of psychedelic science, we’ve (re)discovered that psychedelic therapy can benefit sufferers of severely debilitating conditions where current treatments fail. We’ve started to develop an understanding of what psychedelics do to the brain, and how psychedelics can have such transformative power…

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LSD Impacts Brain Disorders to Heal

Researchers at Yale and the University of Zurich provide new insight into the psychedelic effects of LSD on the brain and potential therapeutic uses of the drug.
Psychedelic drug impacts human consciousness, particularly perception, and is responsible for remembrance in the future events. Researchers found the effects of psychedelic drug LSD on the brain and medicinal uses of the drug. They discovered that LSD is responsible to reduce the functional connections between regions of the brain governing cognitive processes and increases the sensory functional connections with the brain. The findings were published in the journal eLife (October 25, 2018).

Plant Hallucinogen Holds Hope for Diabetes Treatment

For centuries, some indigenous groups in South America have relied on a brew made from the parts of a local vine and a shrub. The effects of this drink, called ayahuasca, would begin with severe vomiting and diarrhea, but the real reason for drinking the tea was the hallucinating that followed. These visions were thought to uncover the secrets of the drinker’s poor health and point the way to a cure.
Modern techniques have revealed that one of the compounds underlying these mystic experiences is the psychoactive drug harmine. What these first users of ayahuasca couldn’t have known was that, one day, this ingredient in their enlightening brew would be positioned as a key to treating diabetes.

For People Battling Depression, These May Be the Treatments of the Future

Yes, ketamine--which, although an FDA-approved anesthetic, is better known for sending club kids into non­responsive and severely dissociative k-holes. But in recent years, it has earned a reputation as an effective off-label treatment for depression and suicidal thoughts. Findings from numerous studies bolster that rep--and hundreds of entrepreneurial docs have opened clinics. Like Steven L. Mandel, who founded Ketamine Clinics of Los Angeles in 2014, and who treated Dunnett. (Off-label use is legal, but insurance companies don't cover it.) "Ketamine was my hail mary," says Dunnett. "I can finally feel pleasure." Before treatment, he'd gone as far as to plan his suicide--in the garage, with his motorcycle. "This isn't hyperbole--this gives some people their lives back," says Mandel, who adds that about half of his patients are entrepreneurs.

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Psychedelics May Offer Artists a Creative Boost

This year, we’ve seen a resurgence of research on psychedelics, focused largely on the therapeutic potential of mescaline (peyote), psilocybin mushrooms, and LSD. Scientists have challenged popular assumptions on the dangers of psychedelics through new evidence of their efficacy within palliative care and in treating depression, anxiety, and PTSD. These studies have also given way to new findings on “microdosing”—the practice of taking a fractional dose of a psychedelic (small enough to avoid tripping) in order to increase brain function and creativity.

Jeff Goldblum Talks About His Experiences With Psychedelic Drugs

“My experience with psychedelics goes like this,” Goldblum told Pitchfork. “When I was 20 in 1971, I took mescaline three times. I had a grand time on that every time. I saw Fellini’s ‘Satyricon’ with a group of people. and it was a double-bill with The Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine.’ Oh, boy, I was into it.”
But it was Goldblum’s experiment with acid where he says the real fun begins. He tried LSD that same year in a Brooklyn apartment. He took it while playing conga drums as the Rolling Stones Let It Bleed LP played in the background. The effects took so long to kick in, Goldblum didn’t remember he’d taken anything.
“Maybe nothing happens [I thought.] By the end of the song, I was not like I was on the mescalin. I’d forgotten that I’d taken a substance of some kind,” Goldblum said. “Everything was just now different. I was high, very high, pathetically high.”

Octopuses High on MDMA Gave Eight-Armed Hugs

There’s a lot we don’t know about octopuses, but scientists have understood for a long time that they’re fairly antisocial creatures. Left to their own devices, octopuses are basically hermits, spending most of their time in hiding and avoiding members of the opposite sex until it’s the one time of year they have to mate. And then they retreat again into isolation. That is, unless they’re on MDMA.

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Why Santa Claus and Magic Mushrooms Have More in Common Than You Think

bout a decade ago. Almost any long story, it changes — like a game of telephone, you know? So, every culture has added their own spice. So, the story of Santa Claus, Coca-Cola, the soda Santa that we know, was propagated to actually New York .New York is the hub of Christmas in definitely the US, maybe in the world, and was brought by the Dutch. The Dutch got the story from the Germans — a lot of people think Saint Nicholas is German, but he's actually Turkish, and the Germans got it from the Italians. Saint Nicholas was a bishop, but there's no reindeers in Turkey. The Christians just adopted this pagan story from the Slavic people, and if you still today even talk to Russians or Ukrainians, they don't celebrate Santa Claus. They celebrate the guy called Ded Moroz. The Slavics took it from these indigenous people. So the story of Santa Claus, or Christmas, is like 5,000-ish years old, but because Christians adopted a lot of celebrations and a lot of things, then they kind of evolved and there's less and less documentation.