Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Can Ecstasy Help Treat Autism? by David J Brown
Can Ecstasy Help Treat Autism?
Many people who suffer from autism have reported lasting improvements
after taking MDMA or “ecstasy,” and clinical research into MDMA as a
possible treatment for this perplexing medical disorder is now on the
horizon.
Autism is a largely mysterious neurodevelopmental disorder that
usually manifests in children before the age of 3 as delays in their
ability to socially interact and communicate.
There are actually several types of autism, which are referred to as “autism spectrum disorders.” All these disorders are characterized by varying degrees of impairment in communication skills and social interactions, and by restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior.
Autistic children usually appear to completely lack interest in other people and seem to have enormous difficulty learning basic social skills. Signs of the disorder are often apparent in the first few months of life, as many autistic children seem indifferent to other people, not making eye contact or participating in social interactions that healthy children naturally engage in.
In recent years, there has been a large increase in the number of diagnosed cases of autism throughout the world. The reasons for this are heavily debated by physicians, researchers and parents with autistic children. The U.S. Center for Disease Control estimates that the prevalence of autism disorders to be somewhere between one out of every 500 births to one out of every 166 births.
Conventional medicine has little to offer people suffering from autism, and the standard medical treatments are largely ineffective.
The standard treatment for autism generally involves a combination of therapies, including occupational and physical therapy, behavior modification, communication therapy, dietary modifications and a wide array of powerful but largely ineffective medications, including antidepressants, tranquilizers, stimulants and antipsychotic medications.
Most people with autism undergoing traditional therapies show little improvement, and new treatments are desperately needed.
One promising new avenue of research that may one day provide treatment for adult autism involves the use of the psychedelic drug MDMA, or “ecstasy,” within the context of a psychotherapeutic setting, which has been shown to produce lasting feelings of empathy in some people.
Many people who have used MDMA report increased sociability and strong feelings of empathy that last long after the psychoactive effect of the substance wears off. There has been substantial interest in using MDMA as a possible treatment for less severe cases of adult autism, because two of the hallmarks of the disorder are an inability to communicate socially and a lack of empathy.
David Jentsch at the UCLA Center for Autism found that MDMA enhanced the transmission of a key neurochemical in the brain called “vasopressin,” which is known to help mediate sociability. In another study, by G.J. Dumont and colleagues at Radboud University in the Netherlands, researchers found that MDMA increases levels of oxytocin, a hormone associated with feelings of love and bonding.
The Santa Cruz-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has also gathered together numerous anecdotal reports from people with a high-functioning form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome, who have found MDMA to be helpful in their learning to cope more effectively in social situations, and enough reports have now been compiled to warrant further investigation.
A number of people with high-functioning autism and Asperger's syndrome have reported improvements after taking MDMA outside of research contexts. MDMA shows promise for treating autism spectrum disorders, as the effects of MDMA that increase empathy and enhance communication are precisely the abilities that autism tends to degrade.
MAPS is reviewing proposals from autism researchers for a pilot study using MDMA as a possible treatment for Asperger's syndrome and autism spectrum disorders. MAPS will offer a grant of $10,000 for protocol development expenses to run this pilot study.
If you or someone you know has heard of MDMA having either positive or negative effects on symptoms of autism spectrum disorders or Asperger’s syndrome, MAPS would like to hear from you. Please contact MAPS Lead Clinical Research Associate Berra Yazar-Klosinski, Ph.D., at berra@maps.org, if you have any information about this.
To learn more about the research, go to the MAPS website.
If you enjoy my column, and want to learn more about psychedelic and cannabis culture, “like” my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.
To read more of my columns on Santa Cruz Patch, go here.
Related Topics:
Alternative Medicine, Asperger's Syndrome, Autism, Autism Research, Autism Spectrum Disorder, MDMA, MDMA Research, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Psychedelic, and Psychedelic Psychotherapy
There are actually several types of autism, which are referred to as “autism spectrum disorders.” All these disorders are characterized by varying degrees of impairment in communication skills and social interactions, and by restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior.
Autistic children usually appear to completely lack interest in other people and seem to have enormous difficulty learning basic social skills. Signs of the disorder are often apparent in the first few months of life, as many autistic children seem indifferent to other people, not making eye contact or participating in social interactions that healthy children naturally engage in.
In recent years, there has been a large increase in the number of diagnosed cases of autism throughout the world. The reasons for this are heavily debated by physicians, researchers and parents with autistic children. The U.S. Center for Disease Control estimates that the prevalence of autism disorders to be somewhere between one out of every 500 births to one out of every 166 births.
Conventional medicine has little to offer people suffering from autism, and the standard medical treatments are largely ineffective.
The standard treatment for autism generally involves a combination of therapies, including occupational and physical therapy, behavior modification, communication therapy, dietary modifications and a wide array of powerful but largely ineffective medications, including antidepressants, tranquilizers, stimulants and antipsychotic medications.
Most people with autism undergoing traditional therapies show little improvement, and new treatments are desperately needed.
One promising new avenue of research that may one day provide treatment for adult autism involves the use of the psychedelic drug MDMA, or “ecstasy,” within the context of a psychotherapeutic setting, which has been shown to produce lasting feelings of empathy in some people.
Many people who have used MDMA report increased sociability and strong feelings of empathy that last long after the psychoactive effect of the substance wears off. There has been substantial interest in using MDMA as a possible treatment for less severe cases of adult autism, because two of the hallmarks of the disorder are an inability to communicate socially and a lack of empathy.
David Jentsch at the UCLA Center for Autism found that MDMA enhanced the transmission of a key neurochemical in the brain called “vasopressin,” which is known to help mediate sociability. In another study, by G.J. Dumont and colleagues at Radboud University in the Netherlands, researchers found that MDMA increases levels of oxytocin, a hormone associated with feelings of love and bonding.
The Santa Cruz-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has also gathered together numerous anecdotal reports from people with a high-functioning form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome, who have found MDMA to be helpful in their learning to cope more effectively in social situations, and enough reports have now been compiled to warrant further investigation.
A number of people with high-functioning autism and Asperger's syndrome have reported improvements after taking MDMA outside of research contexts. MDMA shows promise for treating autism spectrum disorders, as the effects of MDMA that increase empathy and enhance communication are precisely the abilities that autism tends to degrade.
MAPS is reviewing proposals from autism researchers for a pilot study using MDMA as a possible treatment for Asperger's syndrome and autism spectrum disorders. MAPS will offer a grant of $10,000 for protocol development expenses to run this pilot study.
If you or someone you know has heard of MDMA having either positive or negative effects on symptoms of autism spectrum disorders or Asperger’s syndrome, MAPS would like to hear from you. Please contact MAPS Lead Clinical Research Associate Berra Yazar-Klosinski, Ph.D., at berra@maps.org, if you have any information about this.
To learn more about the research, go to the MAPS website.
If you enjoy my column, and want to learn more about psychedelic and cannabis culture, “like” my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.
To read more of my columns on Santa Cruz Patch, go here.
Please share any thoughts that you may have about treating autism or
about using MDMA to as a treatment for psychiatric disorders.
Tell us in the comments.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Fly Agaric in the Express.co.uk 21/12/2011
"Various species live in marriages of convenience with their hosts. The
classic red-topped toadstool of fairy tales, the poisonous fly agaric,
attaches itself to the roots of birch trees and feeds on their sugars.
In return its roots gather up minerals and pass them to the tree,
dramatically extending the reach of its own roots."
"And there are more fungi than you might think with about 14,000 species on the British list. Esher Common in Surrey is the Mecca of fungi, boasting about 3,100 species. But you can easily find 100 in an ordinary suburban garden."
"Research four years ago by Professor Alan Gange and his dad Edward suggested that the fruiting season is getting longer with many fungi now fruiting twice a year. And each year about 25 new species are found in Britain, says Kew senior researcher Dr Martyn Ainsworth, including some from the tropics."
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/287237/John-Ingham
"And there are more fungi than you might think with about 14,000 species on the British list. Esher Common in Surrey is the Mecca of fungi, boasting about 3,100 species. But you can easily find 100 in an ordinary suburban garden."
"Research four years ago by Professor Alan Gange and his dad Edward suggested that the fruiting season is getting longer with many fungi now fruiting twice a year. And each year about 25 new species are found in Britain, says Kew senior researcher Dr Martyn Ainsworth, including some from the tropics."
http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/287237/John-Ingham
Friday, August 19, 2011
MDMA interview with Dr. A. Shulgin
News has broke around the world (Aug. 19th 2011) that a new modified form of MDMA has proved helpful in fighting some forms of cancer, specifically those cancers associated with blood. Great News. But the news articles are very brief and without the depth I expected.
So here's a sober minded interview with Alexander Shulgin, a very wise and tuned in gentleman.
Love, steve fly
http://www.mdma.net/alexander-shulgin/mdma.html
Q. Is there any chance of that actually changing for MDMA?
A. Might the law change in the area of MDMA? Only with difficulty. Unfortunately, the whole legal system as it addresses the drug and drug-use situation has moved away from what originally was a medical or a public health concern. Now it embraces not only power and control, but money. I'm trying to estimate the size of the industry - that is, the 'war on drugs' industry - that has been built up, that is associated with, connected to, and benefits from this particular war. Now that we've lost communism as an enemy, what do we do with our large military? We find ways for it to be used in socially responsible enforcement of law. You have seizure laws. Property can be seized if that property is somehow associated with drug use. You have industries like the prison industry. I've heard that in California alone, four billion dollars a year is invested in the prison industry, in some 30 or 40 prisons. This is a big industry and it's growing. You have people who make spectrophotometers that are back ordered. Fifty-thousand dollar spectrophotometers are back ordered because the demand for testing urine samples is so great, that they can't supply them fast enough to the analytical laboratories where they're hiring chemists to run these assays. This is a big industry! You have the investment of the State Department which now can enter countries more and more - South American countries, European countries, because they are the sources of drugs. And therefore, it can enter and influence the politics of those countries. And the vehicle for getting into foreign politics is 'the drug' and 'the drug war'. http://www.mdma.net/alexander-shulgin/mdma.html
Friday, August 12, 2011
generation F*cked: Maria Hampton , 11 Aug 2011
The UN’s first ever report on the state of childhood in the industrialized West made unpleasant reading for many of the world’s richest nations. But none found it quite so hard to swallow as the Brits, who, old jokes about English cooking aside, discovered that they were eating their own young.
According to the Unicef report, which measured 40 indicators of quality of life – including the strength of relationships with friends and family, educational achievements and personal aspirations, and exposure to drinking, drug taking and other risky behavior – British children have the most miserable upbringing in the developed world. American children come next, second from the bottom.
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/71/generation-fcked.html#.TkUBK3x3FtB.facebook
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Double-dutch Coffeeshop news-speak and Global news ambiguity.
Double-dutch Coffeeshop news-speak and Global news ambiguity.
I don't know about you dear reader, but I don't get my information (news) from the mainstream newspaper any longer, I get it from individual experienced bloggers (from many fields) from wikipedia, and mostly I get my news from my network of friends.
Friends often provide the extra turn of phrase or primary observation that make the information being communicated fluid, plus the fact that often you can smell your friends and see their facial expression, gestures and human imperfections.
During the months of May and June this year (2011) I have been repeatedly asked the question (will the coffeesshops be closing to foreign tourists?) while at work behind the 'weed counter' at coffeeshop 420, Amsterdam. My answer has always been an optimistic 'NO' due to my interpretation of events which results in the possible adoption of the 'weed pass' (private 'Dutch' members only card) in some of the Dutch boarder towns such as Mastricht, but not here in Amsterdam.
The International newswire, however, contrary to my own thoughts on the matter, tends to paint a cut and dried answer to the questions surrounding the new 'weed pass' proposal by imploying meaningless and ambiguous terminology (drug tourism, drugs, organized crime), and then repeating them over and over again across the global newswire, as if the editors at these useless 'disinformation' operations (news media corporations) are in fact nothing more than Zombie's, infected with the beaureacratic stench of the tabloid press and only capable of producing redundant predictable! communications. (see AP, Newscorp, Reuters, CNN etc,. BBC?)
I have noticed a serious inbalance and unfair interpretation in most but not all news stories concerning 'some drugs' (i.e Cannabis, LSD, magic mushrooms, DMT) but mostly surrounding Cannabis. This media imbalance strikes me between the eyes almost every day as the fact of living and working in a place where almost everybody smokes Cannabis on a regular basis and lives a trouble free and happy life, whereas if you turn to the newspapers and the Government sanctioned reports about Cannabis, especially in Europe these days (America seems to be on a somewhat upward spiral toward intelligent Cannabis liberation) then, if taken literally you may go seek immediate medical help after buying a bullet proof vest.
For me, living here in Amsterdam and working within the Cannabis culture for over four years I have grown to be very sceptical and critical of the news-media, but decided to generally ignore them and their stories and just get on with my own thing, me, my friends and the Global Village, but now I feel an urge to respond and in doing so entertain some new ideas I have about information.
Information equals surprise, predictability leads to less information. I believe this equation is the final call for the corporate controlled news media and their henchment, if they do not change their redundant methods of communication they will die a fast heat death in the entropic vapours of the digital age. Excuse me, they evapourated already, we are now living in the age of wikileaks and anonymous, upon a new playing field or battle field where surprise = information.
In the context of Dutch coffeeshops and international news then, I will simply quote some of the articles to give examples of how almost everything proposed in the 'is' state, on deeper thinking and research into the process, in fact, is not. And LO! begins the Punch and Judy show, right up front at the media circus. A RAW source once stated the fact that the 'war on drugs' cannot be a war on drugs, if it were they would be busting in the doors of every phamacy and drug store in town, therefore to remove a line of semantic distortion we should more correctly refer to 'the war on some drugs'. As simple and as easy as this seems (to just add the word 'some') hardly any news journalists pay tribute and continue with the 'cut and dry' either/or (two valued logic) that went out of style with Hitler.
There are then at least two areas of focus. The first is the actual situations and events or speech associated with the news item, the second is the language or language-trappings associated with the communication of the news item. The message and the media.
In the continued 'war on some people who use some drugs' and the 'culture wars' waged around the globe, language seems to me the first instrument of counter-attack. Artists and poets and musicians emerge for the sport of it all, to put life and love and liberty into a vortex and create something new, to help combat the redundant forces of fixed-stereotypes and the mass medicrity permeating every aspect of modern city life.
The Hermetic forces that have helped shape the modern information explosion are still with every one of us who chooses to tune them in. And since the innovation of general relativity, general semantics and information theory, (also tied to many Hermetic principles and methodologies, somewhat Pagan in spirit, if you will) the misuse and abuse of language by mediocrities and corporate fraudsters and spooks will cease to hold it's spell over the minds of a culture. The chains of law have been broken, follow the link...
So although I like to consider myself an activist for drug peace and tolerance, I am trying to distance myself here from the content or the 'message' itself, and target the corrupted 'medium' (i.e phrases like 'drugs-tourism' and 'war on drugs') and show that the whole field of 'some drugs related' journalism seems infected with a distinct lack of relative terminology and a distinct amplification of semantic distortions. If the medium is the message then the message has also been corrupted by obsolete.
--Steve 'fly agaric 23'
Amsterdam, July 2nd, 2011.
"The only solution to get rid of the cannabis tourism in our border areas would be the introduction of cannabis outlets in Germany, Belgium, France and the UK, so they do not have to come to Dutch coffeeshops any more. --http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/201106201481/green/eco-news/dutch-cannabis-exclusion-zone-doomed-says-coffee-shop-owner.html
"Dutch to ban foreigners from pot shops.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/06/07/amsterdam.pot.shops.ban/
"However the Dutch government is keen to crack down on this kind of "drugs tourism." The Dutch executive announced earlier this year that they wanted coffee shops to become private members clubs, only open to the local market. This would mean only Dutch nationals could become members and legally purchase cannabis.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15194412,00.html
I don't know about you dear reader, but I don't get my information (news) from the mainstream newspaper any longer, I get it from individual experienced bloggers (from many fields) from wikipedia, and mostly I get my news from my network of friends.
Friends often provide the extra turn of phrase or primary observation that make the information being communicated fluid, plus the fact that often you can smell your friends and see their facial expression, gestures and human imperfections.
During the months of May and June this year (2011) I have been repeatedly asked the question (will the coffeesshops be closing to foreign tourists?) while at work behind the 'weed counter' at coffeeshop 420, Amsterdam. My answer has always been an optimistic 'NO' due to my interpretation of events which results in the possible adoption of the 'weed pass' (private 'Dutch' members only card) in some of the Dutch boarder towns such as Mastricht, but not here in Amsterdam.
The International newswire, however, contrary to my own thoughts on the matter, tends to paint a cut and dried answer to the questions surrounding the new 'weed pass' proposal by imploying meaningless and ambiguous terminology (drug tourism, drugs, organized crime), and then repeating them over and over again across the global newswire, as if the editors at these useless 'disinformation' operations (news media corporations) are in fact nothing more than Zombie's, infected with the beaureacratic stench of the tabloid press and only capable of producing redundant predictable! communications. (see AP, Newscorp, Reuters, CNN etc,. BBC?)
I have noticed a serious inbalance and unfair interpretation in most but not all news stories concerning 'some drugs' (i.e Cannabis, LSD, magic mushrooms, DMT) but mostly surrounding Cannabis. This media imbalance strikes me between the eyes almost every day as the fact of living and working in a place where almost everybody smokes Cannabis on a regular basis and lives a trouble free and happy life, whereas if you turn to the newspapers and the Government sanctioned reports about Cannabis, especially in Europe these days (America seems to be on a somewhat upward spiral toward intelligent Cannabis liberation) then, if taken literally you may go seek immediate medical help after buying a bullet proof vest.
For me, living here in Amsterdam and working within the Cannabis culture for over four years I have grown to be very sceptical and critical of the news-media, but decided to generally ignore them and their stories and just get on with my own thing, me, my friends and the Global Village, but now I feel an urge to respond and in doing so entertain some new ideas I have about information.
Information equals surprise, predictability leads to less information. I believe this equation is the final call for the corporate controlled news media and their henchment, if they do not change their redundant methods of communication they will die a fast heat death in the entropic vapours of the digital age. Excuse me, they evapourated already, we are now living in the age of wikileaks and anonymous, upon a new playing field or battle field where surprise = information.
In the context of Dutch coffeeshops and international news then, I will simply quote some of the articles to give examples of how almost everything proposed in the 'is' state, on deeper thinking and research into the process, in fact, is not. And LO! begins the Punch and Judy show, right up front at the media circus. A RAW source once stated the fact that the 'war on drugs' cannot be a war on drugs, if it were they would be busting in the doors of every phamacy and drug store in town, therefore to remove a line of semantic distortion we should more correctly refer to 'the war on some drugs'. As simple and as easy as this seems (to just add the word 'some') hardly any news journalists pay tribute and continue with the 'cut and dry' either/or (two valued logic) that went out of style with Hitler.
There are then at least two areas of focus. The first is the actual situations and events or speech associated with the news item, the second is the language or language-trappings associated with the communication of the news item. The message and the media.
In the continued 'war on some people who use some drugs' and the 'culture wars' waged around the globe, language seems to me the first instrument of counter-attack. Artists and poets and musicians emerge for the sport of it all, to put life and love and liberty into a vortex and create something new, to help combat the redundant forces of fixed-stereotypes and the mass medicrity permeating every aspect of modern city life.
The Hermetic forces that have helped shape the modern information explosion are still with every one of us who chooses to tune them in. And since the innovation of general relativity, general semantics and information theory, (also tied to many Hermetic principles and methodologies, somewhat Pagan in spirit, if you will) the misuse and abuse of language by mediocrities and corporate fraudsters and spooks will cease to hold it's spell over the minds of a culture. The chains of law have been broken, follow the link...
So although I like to consider myself an activist for drug peace and tolerance, I am trying to distance myself here from the content or the 'message' itself, and target the corrupted 'medium' (i.e phrases like 'drugs-tourism' and 'war on drugs') and show that the whole field of 'some drugs related' journalism seems infected with a distinct lack of relative terminology and a distinct amplification of semantic distortions. If the medium is the message then the message has also been corrupted by obsolete.
--Steve 'fly agaric 23'
Amsterdam, July 2nd, 2011.
"The only solution to get rid of the cannabis tourism in our border areas would be the introduction of cannabis outlets in Germany, Belgium, France and the UK, so they do not have to come to Dutch coffeeshops any more. --http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/201106201481/green/eco-news/dutch-cannabis-exclusion-zone-doomed-says-coffee-shop-owner.html
"Dutch to ban foreigners from pot shops.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/06/07/amsterdam.pot.shops.ban/
"However the Dutch government is keen to crack down on this kind of "drugs tourism." The Dutch executive announced earlier this year that they wanted coffee shops to become private members clubs, only open to the local market. This would mean only Dutch nationals could become members and legally purchase cannabis.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15194412,00.html
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Words of praise for marijuana's spiritual properties by John Sinclair
Higher Ground
Sacramental herb
Words of praise for marijuana's spiritual properties
Published: May 25, 2011
I'm crossing the English Channel on the Stena Line steamship as I write this, moving on from London to Amsterdam for the next 10 days, and then on to Italy. It was a rough April in the Motor City with one cold, gray day after another and the Tigers foundering until I left, but London was bright and sunny almost every day, and the weather should just get better from here.
England is a rough place to cop good medicine, and marijuana is considered illegal in every application — not at all what you'd call smoker-friendly. I ventured outside the city one day to visit my religious leader, the Rev. Ferre (as we'll call him) of the THC Ministry, and he made sure my medicinal needs were well taken care of.
In fact, I just sneaked my last smoke from that stash in my little cabin on the ship so I could write this column, and soon after I arrive at the Hook of Holland in the morning I'll be back at my regular stand at the 420 Café in Amsterdam, where you can always buy your weed over the counter whether you're sick or well and the price is always the same.
The THC Ministry is based in Holland and operates under the slogan, "We use cannabis religiously — and so can you!" I'm proud to be a member of the ministry, and it takes me back before the advent of socialized medicinal marijuana, when we thought perhaps the solution was to highlight the spiritual and indeed religious aspects of the sacrament as a way to escape the heavy hand of the narcotics police.
The brilliant hallucinogen called peyote had been established as a religious sacrament used for spiritual purposes by several Southwestern Native American nations, and many beatniks, hippies and fellow seekers had gained experiential knowledge of its potency as a spiritual force.
Many of us felt the same way about marijuana: that its spiritual properties and potentialities qualified weed as a religious sacrament for ritual use and equally beneficial in navigating the vicissitudes of daily life as well, much as prayer itself seems to work for the Christians and other faithful. Our daily marijuana use went well beyond the concept of recreational drugs — it was integral to our work and play in equal measure, and helped us keep our minds to the mental grindstone at all times.
Eventually, we sought to register an entirely different definition of marijuana from the orthodoxy enshrined and promoted by the forces of law and order. Not only were marijuana and associated psychedelic or euphoriant substances neither narcotics nor "dangerous drugs," they were in fact benevolent and had manifestly evident healing powers and could serve to help bring their adherents into alignment and closer harmony with the natural forces of the universe.
I can't remember exactly when, but at some point in 1969-1972 we formed the First Zenta Church of Ann Arbor, a nonprofit ecclesiastical corporation chartered by the state of Michigan that held marijuana, hashish, peyote, psilocybin and other psychoactive natural substances as sacraments central to the church and the religious and spiritual lives of the congregation.
Now these tenets we held true, plain and simple, but the underlying social idea was that members of the Church of Zenta could thenceforth rely on the constitutional doctrine of freedom of religion as their protection against conviction for possession and use of narcotics — or later, "controlled substances" — under the state's marijuana laws. Zenta members used marijuana religiously, as the THC Ministry puts it today, and were entitled to protection as religious practitioners following the basic tenets of their creed.
There were other benefits of ecclesiastical corporation: Organized religious bodies didn't pay sales or income taxes; their real estate transactions were exempt from taxation as well; and their forms of worship, however diverse or divergent from the Christian norm, were given wide latitude by the temporal government. Churches were churches, another order of being from the rest of the social order, and our church was determined to join their number and enjoy equal protection under the law of the land.
Like our other efforts to combat the narcotics laws and the incipient War on Drugs based in their idiotic assumptions — for example, as I've said many times before, marijuana was never a narcotic — the establishment of the First Church of Zenta was meant to deny and counteract the demonization of recreational drug users by the dominant social order as the first line of offense against us.
If you can create a mythology centered on the demonization of illicit drug use and the characterization of illicit drug users as dangerous criminals and enemies of conventional society, deploying ever-increasing numbers of narcotics police to stomp out this evil seems to follow.
When this tissue of horseshit (to quote William Burroughs) is stripped away and the stigma of evilness is removed, the marijuana smoker is revealed instead as a harmless seeker of spiritual truth or a suffering patient in need of medicine. These are not reasonable targets for prosecution as criminals, and the police must move back at least a few steps and sheathe the dreaded nightstick of drug law prosecution.
Now that we have legalized medical marijuana as a potential source of relief for a whole panoply of aches and pains, both physical and mental, and recommends that the state of Michigan certify the applicant as a registered medical marijuana patient, we've taken a big first step away from the reviled War on Drugs. Perhaps it's time to renew the religious argument as well.
Briefly put, we need all the help we can get i to wrest the jackboot of the War on Drugs off the necks of marijuana smokers in our society.
In closing I'd like to point out that I've completed this column upon my arrival in Amsterdam, working my way through my various obligatory stops — the 420 Café, the Cannabis College, the Hempshopper on the Singel Canal — checking in with my peeps around the Centrum and trying to honor my commitment to the paper and my readers at the same time. At the end of the month, I'll be on my way to Florence, Italy, on a personal mission, and I'll file the next column from there. Happy trails! —420 Cafe, Amsterdam
England is a rough place to cop good medicine, and marijuana is considered illegal in every application — not at all what you'd call smoker-friendly. I ventured outside the city one day to visit my religious leader, the Rev. Ferre (as we'll call him) of the THC Ministry, and he made sure my medicinal needs were well taken care of.
In fact, I just sneaked my last smoke from that stash in my little cabin on the ship so I could write this column, and soon after I arrive at the Hook of Holland in the morning I'll be back at my regular stand at the 420 Café in Amsterdam, where you can always buy your weed over the counter whether you're sick or well and the price is always the same.
The THC Ministry is based in Holland and operates under the slogan, "We use cannabis religiously — and so can you!" I'm proud to be a member of the ministry, and it takes me back before the advent of socialized medicinal marijuana, when we thought perhaps the solution was to highlight the spiritual and indeed religious aspects of the sacrament as a way to escape the heavy hand of the narcotics police.
The brilliant hallucinogen called peyote had been established as a religious sacrament used for spiritual purposes by several Southwestern Native American nations, and many beatniks, hippies and fellow seekers had gained experiential knowledge of its potency as a spiritual force.
Many of us felt the same way about marijuana: that its spiritual properties and potentialities qualified weed as a religious sacrament for ritual use and equally beneficial in navigating the vicissitudes of daily life as well, much as prayer itself seems to work for the Christians and other faithful. Our daily marijuana use went well beyond the concept of recreational drugs — it was integral to our work and play in equal measure, and helped us keep our minds to the mental grindstone at all times.
Eventually, we sought to register an entirely different definition of marijuana from the orthodoxy enshrined and promoted by the forces of law and order. Not only were marijuana and associated psychedelic or euphoriant substances neither narcotics nor "dangerous drugs," they were in fact benevolent and had manifestly evident healing powers and could serve to help bring their adherents into alignment and closer harmony with the natural forces of the universe.
I can't remember exactly when, but at some point in 1969-1972 we formed the First Zenta Church of Ann Arbor, a nonprofit ecclesiastical corporation chartered by the state of Michigan that held marijuana, hashish, peyote, psilocybin and other psychoactive natural substances as sacraments central to the church and the religious and spiritual lives of the congregation.
Now these tenets we held true, plain and simple, but the underlying social idea was that members of the Church of Zenta could thenceforth rely on the constitutional doctrine of freedom of religion as their protection against conviction for possession and use of narcotics — or later, "controlled substances" — under the state's marijuana laws. Zenta members used marijuana religiously, as the THC Ministry puts it today, and were entitled to protection as religious practitioners following the basic tenets of their creed.
There were other benefits of ecclesiastical corporation: Organized religious bodies didn't pay sales or income taxes; their real estate transactions were exempt from taxation as well; and their forms of worship, however diverse or divergent from the Christian norm, were given wide latitude by the temporal government. Churches were churches, another order of being from the rest of the social order, and our church was determined to join their number and enjoy equal protection under the law of the land.
Like our other efforts to combat the narcotics laws and the incipient War on Drugs based in their idiotic assumptions — for example, as I've said many times before, marijuana was never a narcotic — the establishment of the First Church of Zenta was meant to deny and counteract the demonization of recreational drug users by the dominant social order as the first line of offense against us.
If you can create a mythology centered on the demonization of illicit drug use and the characterization of illicit drug users as dangerous criminals and enemies of conventional society, deploying ever-increasing numbers of narcotics police to stomp out this evil seems to follow.
When this tissue of horseshit (to quote William Burroughs) is stripped away and the stigma of evilness is removed, the marijuana smoker is revealed instead as a harmless seeker of spiritual truth or a suffering patient in need of medicine. These are not reasonable targets for prosecution as criminals, and the police must move back at least a few steps and sheathe the dreaded nightstick of drug law prosecution.
Now that we have legalized medical marijuana as a potential source of relief for a whole panoply of aches and pains, both physical and mental, and recommends that the state of Michigan certify the applicant as a registered medical marijuana patient, we've taken a big first step away from the reviled War on Drugs. Perhaps it's time to renew the religious argument as well.
Briefly put, we need all the help we can get i to wrest the jackboot of the War on Drugs off the necks of marijuana smokers in our society.
In closing I'd like to point out that I've completed this column upon my arrival in Amsterdam, working my way through my various obligatory stops — the 420 Café, the Cannabis College, the Hempshopper on the Singel Canal — checking in with my peeps around the Centrum and trying to honor my commitment to the paper and my readers at the same time. At the end of the month, I'll be on my way to Florence, Italy, on a personal mission, and I'll file the next column from there. Happy trails! —420 Cafe, Amsterdam
> Email John Sinclair
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Psychedelic 'McKenna' Adventures At the edge of the Abyss (on-line course)
The Brothers McKenna are widely known to the psychedelic community. Their ideas and adventures, explorations of inner (and perhaps outer) space, and their Amazonian odyssey in search of answers to the mysteries of time, history, and being have been well chronicled by Terence, who though he passed on in 2000, still haunts the Net as an avatar and articulator of a radical and highly unconventional perspective on humanity’s current precarious perch on the edge of the singularity. Even the most skeptical souls can no longer deny that our species is at the threshold of an enormous and irrevocable plunge into novelty; a plunge that will change forever our understanding of who we are as a species, and our place in the scheme of a universe that is marvelous, terrifying, beautiful and puzzling in ways that we cannot begin to comprehend.
Terence, not by choice, escaped to a hyperspatial redoubt, just as humanity crossed the threshold into the third millennium of its problematic career on this planet. His younger brother Dennis continues to grapple with the revelations and insights, perhaps delusions, that the two brothers confronted during their journey to the Amazonian rainforest in 1971 in search of exotic hallucinogens and high adventure. They found both, in spades, and it changed them, and perhaps the world, forever.
Now Dennis has determined that the time has come to tell his side of the story, and is proposing to write a book, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss; the title is in recognition of the name the two brothers and their intrepid band of fellow adventurers chose for themselves, partly tongue in cheek, and partly – mostly, as they discovered – deadly serious. Dennis is using Kickstarter.com to garner the resources, and time, needed to write this work, which will be both a memoir of sorts but also a fresh examination of the revelations forced onto them at the climax of that heart-of-darkness journey. Those who may be interested can find a detailed description of this proposal on the Kickstarter web site at http://www.kickstarter.com/
The Course
This course is offered as a follow-up to the launch of the writing project and an anticipation of themes that will be explored in depth in the book, slated for release in the fall of 2012. The course will consist of four sessions, with dates set for June 5th, 12th, and 25th and July 2nd. Using live video, each webinar session will be hosted by Dennis McKenna in wide-ranging conversations with key guests who are recognized leaders on the cutting edge of post-millennial thought: Daniel Pinchbeck, Ralph Abraham, Marc Pesce, Ralph Metzner, Luis Eduardo Luna and Erik Davis.
Most have also been close personal friends of Terence and Dennis over many decades; they have shared Terence and Dennis’ fascination and preoccupations with the concepts under discussion and have been key players in the development, elaboration, and expression of these ideas. Like Terence and Dennis, they lived through the social, environmental, and political changes that have characterized our ever-accelerating race toward novelty during the late 20th century and the first decade of the 21st; in many respects, they are the people who have helped to catalyze the radical changes in global consciousness that have resulted.
Each webinar will be 90 minutes in length, with the first 60 minutes devoted to a dialog between Dennis, the host, and one or more invited guests. The format will be an informal discussion, preceded by a brief exposition outlining the main themes under consideration in that session. There will be ample opportunities for the audience to interact in real time with the host and guests following the hour-long conversation. Participants from the audience will be able to ask questions and offer their own comments and insights via live video chat, text, or email. If you can watch a YouTube video, you can take part in this course.
US PRICE: $110
Early bird special, through May 20th: $90.00
To join click the image above or go to http://www.1shoppingcart.com/
or read more below...
Now Dennis has determined that the time has come to tell his side of the story, and is proposing to write a book, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss; the title is in recognition of the name the two brothers and their intrepid band of fellow adventurers chose for themselves, partly tongue in cheek, and partly – mostly, as they discovered – deadly serious. Dennis is using Kickstarter.com to garner the resources, and time, needed to write this work, which will be both a memoir of sorts but also a fresh examination of the revelations forced onto them at the climax of that heart-of-darkness journey. Those who may be interested can find a detailed description of this proposal on the Kickstarter web site at http://www.kickstarter.com/
The Course
This course is offered as a follow-up to the launch of the writing project and an anticipation of themes that will be explored in depth in the book, slated for release in the fall of 2012. The course will consist of four sessions, with dates set for June 5th, 12th, and 25th and July 2nd. Using live video, each webinar session will be hosted by Dennis McKenna in wide-ranging conversations with key guests who are recognized leaders on the cutting edge of post-millennial thought: Daniel Pinchbeck, Ralph Abraham, Marc Pesce, Ralph Metzner, Luis Eduardo Luna and Erik Davis.
Most have also been close personal friends of Terence and Dennis over many decades; they have shared Terence and Dennis’ fascination and preoccupations with the concepts under discussion and have been key players in the development, elaboration, and expression of these ideas. Like Terence and Dennis, they lived through the social, environmental, and political changes that have characterized our ever-accelerating race toward novelty during the late 20th century and the first decade of the 21st; in many respects, they are the people who have helped to catalyze the radical changes in global consciousness that have resulted.
Each webinar will be 90 minutes in length, with the first 60 minutes devoted to a dialog between Dennis, the host, and one or more invited guests. The format will be an informal discussion, preceded by a brief exposition outlining the main themes under consideration in that session. There will be ample opportunities for the audience to interact in real time with the host and guests following the hour-long conversation. Participants from the audience will be able to ask questions and offer their own comments and insights via live video chat, text, or email. If you can watch a YouTube video, you can take part in this course.
FEATURED GUESTS
Daniel Pinchbeck
Sunday, June 5, 3:00 p.m. EST
Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) and Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002). His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired
Here are some of the questions he will be asking Dennis about his early years with Terence:
- What were the personal, familial, and societal factors that led to their preoccupation with matters both arcane, and peculiar?
- What was behind their early interest in psychedelics, transdimensional realms, consciousness exploration?
- What did their baffled parents, teachers, priests and peers make of all this?
Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna
Sunday, June 12, 3:00 p.m. EST
Eduardo was there (almost) from the start. A well-educated but distinctly un-psychedelic seminary student growing up in the tiny Colombian river community of Florencia in 1971, Eduardo’s first encounter with Terence on his way back from his second visit to La Chorrera changed his life forever. Terence was fizzing with fresh revelation when they met and was literally wild-eyed, a Messiah come back from the forest. Eduardo’s exposure to the strangest ideas in the known universe drove him to abandon his dreams of the priesthood forever and to plunge headlong into the pursuit of psychedelic shamanism. Terence and his companion traveler, the legendary Kumi, lived at Eduardo’s vinca for several months while they worked out what was to become TimeWave Zero and the first draft of the Invisible Landscape.
One of the most influential anthropologists in the field of ayahuasca research, Luis was the first to study the ayahuasca shamanism practiced by mestizo (or mixed-blood) people in the Amazon. Born and raised in the Colombian Amazon, Luis was educated in Spain and Norway, and always had a foot in both worlds. His work revealed the importance of the diet that ayahuasqueros follow, and the pivotal role played by the icaros, or magic melodies, in shamanic ceremonies. Luis has also studied the Brazilian ayahuasca churches such as Santo Daime, Uniao do Vegetal and Barquinha. He is the director of Wasiwaska, a research center for the study of psychointegrator plants, visionary arts and consciousness, in Brazil, and is the author of several books, including Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (co-authored with Rick Strassman et al.), and his much loved collaboration with the painter Pablo Amaringo, Ayahuasca Visions: the Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman.During this session, Eduardo and Dennis will talk about:
- How the path of Eduardo's life was changed after meeting Terence McKenna
- How the nature of Eduardo and Dennis's collaboration has changed through the years
- The inside scoop on the psychedelic scene they were a part of--between the two of them they know where all the bodies are buried!
Ralph Abraham
Saturday, June 25, 3:00 p.m. EST
This is the ‘teaching’ that two bemushroomed, raving wild men walked out of the jungle proclaiming?? Dennis is not so sure, and in recent years has begun to publicly question whether it means anything, or whether it means what Terence believed it to mean. No one knows the answer, but many very intelligent people have been both baffled and fascinated by Time Wave Zero.
Ralph Abraham has been involved in the research frontier and the development of dynamical systems theory in the 1960s and 1970s. He has been a consultant on chaos theory and its applications in numerous fields, such as medical physiology, ecology, mathematical economics, and psychotherapy. He is the author of Foundations of Mechanics with Jerrold Marsden, Dynamics, the Geometry of Behavior with Christopher Shaw, Chaos, Gaia, Eros, and Chaos, Cosmos, and Creativity with Rupert Sheldrake and Terence McKenna.
Ralph Abraham will join Mark Pesce and Dennis McKenna in a lively debate about the validity of the Time Wave, which Dennis has become more skeptical about in recent years. They will discuss:
- Is the TWO real?
- What is the proof in favor of its existence?
- Is there something about it we need to understand before 2012, in order to avert or prepare for global catastrophe?
Mark Pesce
Saturday, June 25, 3:00 p.m. EST
Mark Pesce is an inventor, writer, entrepreneur, educator and broadcaster. In 1994 Pesce co-invented VRML, a 3D interface to the World Wide Web. Pesce founded graduate programs in interactive media at both the University of Southern California’s world-famous Cinema School and the Australian Film, Radio and Television School. In 2006 Pesce founded FutureSt, a Sydney consultancy dedicated to helping clients negotiate the challenges presented by our ‘hyperconnected’ future.
In this session, Mark Pesce will discuss all things Time Wave with Ralph Abraham and Dennis:
- What is TW0? And does it really describe anything?
- Does it really hide the answer to our current ontological and historical dilemma?
- Why does its interpretation coincide so closely with the apocalyptarian predictions of so many other cultures?
Erik Davis
Saturday, July 2nd, 3:00 P.M., EST
Erik Davis is a North American writer, social historian, cultural critic and lecturer. He is noted for his study of the history of technology and society and his essays about the fate of the individual in the dawning posthuman era. Although significant aspects of his work include media criticism and technology criticism, his works span across other disciplines to include a larger social history of art, religion, and science, technology, and politics. His books include TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape, and Led Zeppelin IV.
Erik will be talking to Ralph Metzner and Dennis about the following:
- Is there an impending historical singularity on the horizon?
- What are the possibilities for trans-human metamorphosis and plant-human symbiosis?
- Has alien contact already taken place and what is the likelihood of humanity migrating into space?
Ralph Metzner
Saturday, July 2nd, 3:00 p.m.
This final session, hosted by Dennis with guests psychedelic pioneer Ralph Metzner and techno-guru Erik Davis, will explore the ways in which many of Terence's predictions about the changing nature of the world have become true.
Ralph Metzner's work has been focused on the transformations of consciousness, and as a graduate student, he worked with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) on the Harvard Psilocybin Projects. He co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience, and was editor of The Psychedelic Review. He is founder of the Green Earth Foundation and His books include The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, Green Psychology, and two edited collections on the science and the phenomenology of Ayahuasca and Teonanácatl.
The discussion will cover various topics including:
- How have Terence's ideas permeated culture?
- Do psychedelics have an evolutionary function?
- Can psychedelics help us transition into ahistorical time?
ABOUT OUR HOST
By participating in this online course, you will receive:
- Four 90-minute live video seminars with Dennis McKenna and his featured guests
- 30 minutes of question and answer time in each seminar
- Breakout sessions for student discussion following each seminar
- Participation in a private online community with other students
- Unlimited online access to videos of all seminars
- PDF articles about course topics from Dennis and each of the guests
PRICE: $110
Early bird special, through May 20th: $90.00
To join click http://www.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
fly agaric, flies, Mushrooms, Reindeer and Urine: a world piss paradise
An art show with live animals where visitors can sleep over and take drugs is all about changing perceptions.
WHAT could be more festive than spending a night in an art gallery with a dozen reindeer and a fridge full of psychedelic drugs? Soma, Carsten Holler's installation in a former railway station in Berlin, purports to offer exactly that. A pen running the length of the Hamburger Bahnhof, the city's contemporary art museum, contains 12 reindeer, 24 canaries, eight mice and two flies. Giant toadstool sculptures are planted on a mushroom clock that the reindeer can turn with their antlers, and at the centre is a mushroom-shaped ''floating hotel'' - a bed on a platform complete with minibar, yours for €1000 ($A1320) a night. (There's also a raffle for free places.)
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/science-v-art-mustwee-event-20101222-195jr.html
The point of all this, beyond a theme park experience, is 'soma'. Höller has explored the history of this mythical narcotic, which apparently contained the secret to happiness, knowledge and wealth. Poets waxed lyrical about it in Hindu verse written 4,000 years ago. But the recipe has been lost. It is believed to derive from a mushroom (the fly agoria) and was at its most potent when consumed via the urine of a creature, which had eaten the mushrooms. Reindeer ate the mushrooms in their Siberian habitat, and hence their urine was prized. It induced a trance of extraordinary power and insight. Soma was liberation, and maybe it was escape.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/seductive-lure-of-carsten-hllers-living-wonderland-2171904.html
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