21–30 of 98 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better late than never?
Not much comfort to the thousands (millions?) of people that may have found some comfort in these drugs.
Our nation has been in a fully impaired state since fearmongering the 70s caused LSD to become a Schedule 1 substance, more illegal than Cocaine. Hopefully meaningful research will result in legislative changes allowing more people access to beneficial and potentially lifechanging medicines and experiences. It seems that the cat is out of the proverbial petri dish compared to that era, and now it's only a matter of t…
Bit of a contrarian take here, but this is the first step towards capitalism getting its grip on a transformative and disruptive thing and coopting it for its purposes. I'm all for decriminalization, but I get nervous when something subversive becomes just another commodity.
If you are curious about the topic, I couldn't recommend the Psychedelic Salon podcast enough.
Bit of a contrarian take here, but this is the first step towards capitalism getting its grip on a transformative and disruptive thing and coopting it for its purposes. I'm all for decriminalization, but I get nervous when something subversive becomes just another commodity.
I don't know if that's contrarian really. It's just your basic "My Favorite Band was way better before they got super popular had to go mainstream". And my take is that that argument should probably stick to fashion and cultural issues and stay out of medical discussions.
So exciting to see. What does society look like when science starts investigating consciousness with a more eastern philosophy lens?
I doubt that will happen to any effective or substantial degree, "science" is concerned with the quantitative and objective reproducibility. It is impossible for a scientist to fully assimilate the state of someone who is experiencing a "satori", without them either being that person or also experiencing a satori themselves. And if they achieve that, which is unlikely, they are back at square one: how are they going to relay the satori to other scientists for documentation and further research: what is there to research with regards to inner experience when the only known modes of knowledge in science are all outward?
Rather, scientists look for effects with whatever physical tools are available to them, such as changes in brain center blood flow; and then they tend to conflate the effects as the causes. IE. it's the changes in the brain causing the satori, not the satori causing the changes in the brain!
A thunderclap under the clear blue sky
All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.
Wumen Huikai
Lots of revived interest in psychedelics that is finally coming front and center in no small part due to Michael Pollan's recent book "How to Change Your Mind". Rolland Griffiths plays a pivotal role in the book (and in the real life advocacy and study of psychedelics) and Pollan probably seeded the ideas of psilocybin's potential into the right ears around Berkeley and on his book tour [1]. Think there's a ton of po…
Suspect Joe Rogan has also been a fair influence too. His podcast has a massive and varied fan base, and he's a pretty consistent promoter of the benefits of psychedelics.
50 years too late. Of course, 50+ years ago, it was the hippies doing the experimentation. As The Man hated the hippies and the youth culture of the time, they instituted these draconian drug laws we've lived under since making it impossible to determine whether drugs like LSD or psilocybin or cannabis might have beneficial therapeutic effects.