Dr. Albert Hofmann Dies at 102 (Adam Bernstein, Washington Post,April 30, 2008) Albert Hofmann, 102, a Swiss chemist and accidental father of LSD who came to view the much-vilified and abused hallucinogen he discovered in 1938 as his "problem child," died April 29 at his home in Burg, a village near Basel, Switzerland, after a heart attack. . . . Lysergic acid diethylamide, thousands of times stronger than mescaline, can give its user an experience often described as psychedelic -- a kaleidoscopic twirling of the mind pulsating with color and movement. . . . After its discovery, LSD was viewed as a wonder drug with the potential to treat problems including schizophrenia and alcoholism. For the latter, some held the theory that chronic drinkers quit only after experiencing the hallucinations of delirium tremens. . . . LSD attracted many prominent advocates. They included Aldous Huxley, author of "Brave New World," and psychologist Timothy Leary, who saw the drug as a potent way for people to live up to his 1960s counterculture motto: "Turn on, tune in, drop out." . . . The CIA was also widely reported to have used LSD in experiments on unwitting subjects. This, and greater recreational use that caused some fatal overdoses, led to the widespread condemnation of the drug and, by the early 1970s, its criminalization. As a result, research permission and funding from state and federal agencies was terminated. . . . In Dr. Hofmann's opinion, outlawing LSD made its use even more attractive to young people and diminished any safeguards. He spoke of many hippies stopping by his home on the way to their spiritual quest, hoping to score from his "secret stash." . . . Dr. Hofmann headed the research department for natural medicines at Sandoz before retiring in 1971. At the company in the 1950s and 1960s, he discovered and named many of the active hallucinogenic ingredients in Mexican "magic mushrooms," including psilocybin and psilocin. He was credited with important developments in medications for geriatric and gynecological uses as well as drugs to control blood pressure. . . . He was a member of the Nobel Prize Committee and a fellow of the World Academy of Sciences. He was a prolific writer of scientific articles and the author of several books, many of which tried to bind the scientific with the spiritual. In particular, he denounced the demonization of LSD after hippies and societal dropouts seemed to have monopolized the media's focus. . . . In his 1989 book "Insight Outlook," he wrote that LSD taken by "mentally stable persons in the right set and setting" was suited to the Western world, which he saw rife with "materialism, estrangement from nature, . . . [and] the missing of a sense-making philosophical fundamentalness of life." . . . Read more!
Psychedelic Researcher Turns DEA Informant (JEANE MacINTOSH, New York Post, February 18, 2008) A Harvard-educated Manhattan jet-setter has been pegged as the money-laundering mastermind behind a massive LSD drug ring run out of a Kansas missile silo, The Post has learned. . . . Stefan Wathne, a 39-year-old scion of New York's socially prominent Wathne apparel family, surrendered to federal agents Jan. 7 as he stepped off a plane at Newark Airport - after three years on the lam. . . . Wathne is accused in a 2005 federal indictment of laundering as much as $3 million through Russia between 1996 and 2000 for what authorities have described as the most prolific LSD operation in US history. . . . His arrest marks the latest chapter in a bizarre federal drug case that has unfolded over five years and featured a surreal cast of characters. . . . In addition to Wathne - an erstwhile financial planner and former American Ballet Theatre trustee - the case has included a prominent Harvard psychiatrist and a deputy director of a UCLA drug-study program. . . . In another strange twist, singers Sting and Paul Simon helped pay the legal bills for a witness in the case. . . . The drug ring was cracked in November 2002, when the US Drug Enforcement Agency descended on a decommissioned military silo outside Topeka, which had been converted to a lab capable of churning out massive amounts of LSD. . . . The drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamid and originally used to study personality disorders, is the most potent hallucinogen known. The government banned it in 1966. . . . The feds arrested the Princeton- and Harvard-educated head of the operation, William Leonard Pickard, a noted chemist who at the time was deputy director of UCLA's Drug Policy Analysis program. . . . Pickard and an accomplice, California computer specialist Clyde Apperson, were charged with conspiracy and possession to distribute after agents seized enough raw material to produce 16 million doses of LSD, with an estimated street value of as much as $160 million. . . . The arrests put Wathne on the DEA's radar. . . . A Reykjavik-born Icelandic national whose family later put down roots here, Wathne was introduced to Pickard through Dr. John Halpern, a leading psychedelic researcher from Harvard's prestigious McLean Hospital. . . . Halpern, records show, was paid $319,000 by Pickard from 1996 to 1999 - the same years Wathne is charged with laundering money for Pickard. . . . Testimony at Pickard's drug trial suggested that Halpern was paid for the Wathne introduction. . . . Wathne's alleged role in the LSD ring was to take drug money, cycle it through Russia and then send it back to Pickard, partly in the form of a "donation" to his UCLA research program, according to testimony at Pickard's trial. . . . After the silo bust, Halpern made a deal with the feds and ratted out his friends. . . . He also rolled on a one-time New Mexico business partner, Alfred Savinelli, from whom Pickard had bought chemicals and glassware to make LSD.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THIS STORY PLEASE SEE:
Psilocybin & Cancer Anxiety Research Video The following two videos are from a news special by CBC in Canada and feature Dr. Charlie Grob who has also been a featured speaker in the Psychedelic Salon.
Mescaline Experiment on Human - Video by Dr. Osmond This is an extremely interesting video of a 1950s experiment by one of the world's leading psychedelic researchers of the time. Included is an interview 30 years later with the test subject who by then was a member of the UK House of Lords.
The Peace Drug Being Used to Treat PTSD ( Tom Shroder, Washington Post, November 25, 2007) PTSD is usually triggered by combat, rape, childhood abuse, a serious accident or natural disaster -- any situation in which someone believes death is imminent, or in which a significant threat of serious injury is accompanied by an intense sense of helplessness or horror. Not all or even most trauma victims develop PTSD, but enough do so that nearly 24 million Americans, or 8 percent of the population, have suffered from it at some point in their lifetime. It is estimated that in any given year, more than 5 million Americans have active PTSD -- a costly problem in humanitarian and economic terms. Drug and alcohol abuse are all-too-frequent consequences of PTSD, as is loss of productivity and the need for expensive, long-lasting medical treatment. . . . The ever-lengthening Iraq war will count among its other costs a legacy of thousands of veterans in need of psychiatric treatment. The government estimates that already more than 50,000 soldiers -- about 4 percent of those who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan -- have been treated for symptoms of PTSD. Many more might actually have it: Military studies put the number at 12 to 20 percent of those returning from Iraq and 6 to 11 percent of those returning from Afghanistan. And the news gets worse. . . . "Vets with PTSD are particularly costly to the [Veterans Affairs] system," says Linda Bilmes, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "They constitute 8 percent of the claims, but 20 percent of the payments." Bilmes, who has studied the ongoing costs of the wars, estimates that treating Iraq vets with PTSD over the next 50 years will cost taxpayers $100 billion. This is based on findings that one-third of vets with PTSD will remain unemployable, and all suffering with PTSD will have a much higher than normal likelihood of needing treatment for physical ailments. And that's just the direct costs to the budget. "Assuming that the war continues, though with lower deployments, through 2017," she says, and assuming the rate of PTSD isn't being underreported, the cost of lost economic productivity to the U.S. economy will be in excess of $65 billion. . . . Whatever the cause, the symptoms of PTSD are fairly consistent, and Donna's -- which rated severe on a standard diagnostic test -- were typical. Her prognosis was not great. Some antidepressants can diminish symptoms, and various forms of psychotherapy can, long term, sometimes untangle the psychological knot at the root of the problem. But the nature of PTSD makes therapy problematic. The very symptoms -- acute anxiety, heightened fear, diminished trust and inability to revisit the trauma -- are a direct roadblock to healing. At least one-third of people with PTSD never fully recover. . . . Two Iraq veterans with war-related PTSD, the study's first, are cleared to begin.Close behind are similar studies in Switzerland and Israel. At Harvard's McLean Hospital, researchers are set to evaluate MDMA therapy as a way to alleviate acute anxiety in terminal cancer patients. In Vancouver, Canada, the effectiveness of an ongoing program to treat drug addiction with another potent psychedelic drug, ibogaine, is under scrutiny. There is a proposal, based on case histories, to study the ability of LSD to defuse crippling cluster headaches. . . . THE PROMISE OF A BLOCKBUSTER TREATMENT, one that doesn't just address symptoms but defuses underlying causes, is a particularly seductive vision right now. A report issued last month by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine emphasizes the uncertain effectiveness of current PTSD treatments, and the urgent need of returning soldiers who will suffer from it. . . . To a non-scientist, the very preliminary results of Mithoefer's study would suggest that MDMA might be just what the doctors ordered. Of the subjects who have been through both the MDMA-assisted therapy and the three-month post-experiment follow-up tests, Mithoefer reports, every one showed dramatic improvement. . . . It's not well understood why MDMA, or any psychedelic drug, can produce extraordinary experiences. But in MDMA's case, the crude explanation seems to involve a drug-forced rush of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin assists in the transmission of nerve impulses and plays a role in regulating a wide range of sensations and impulses, from mood, emotion, sleep and appetite to sensation, pleasure and sexuality. One recent study pointed out physiological similarities between a brain under the influence of MDMA and the post-orgasmic state, also known for producing emotional closeness and euphoria. . . . The new safety study was not testing the dangers of MDMA under the conditions of illegal use. Eighteen people were given dosages similar to those that would be used in psychotherapy sessions, and the settings were comparable to the calm of a psychiatrist's office. The gist of the findings: MDMA given under those circumstances produced no acute harm or evidence of brain impairment. These results were bolstered by a Swiss study in which people who had never before taken MDMA were given brain scans before and after being given a single therapeutic-range dose of the drug. Comparison of the before and after scans showed no damage.
Marijuana and Music...a brief history (Margaret Moser, The Austin Chronicle, May 25, 2007) Who wrote the first song about smoking pot? . . . It's been lost to history, but here's a political side note to the 4:20 generation: During the Mexican Revolution of 1910, thousands of native Mexicans moved north across the Rio Grande, many settling around San Antonio. With them came a curious song called "La Cucaracha," known perhaps apocryphally as Pancho Villa's theme song. . . . "La Cucaracha" crackled with life, a swaying Spanish-tune-turned-Mexican corrido quickly picked up by jazz bands and danced into popular music. No song better evoked the languorous image of life south of the border in vintage films, newsreels, and radio programs of the day. Few people realized the lyrics bespoke a cockroach's yearning to stay high. . . . "La cucaracha ya no puede caminar ... por que no tiene marihuana por fumar," basically translates as, "The cockroach can no longer walk because he doesn't have any marijuana to smoke." . . . There you have it. Hidden in the foreign words of a hit song, pot smoking permeated popular American culture. . . . Think Louis Armstrong burned a fatty when he played Austin's Driskill Hotel in 1931? Round his native Storyville, on Basin Street in New Orleans, marijuana had long been celebrated in music, reflecting the ancient neighborhood's Jazz Age lifestyle and red-light back streets. "Muggles" was his musical interpretation of a joint smoked in 1928, and "La Cucaracha" nested in his repertoire. He'd already been rousted for pot at least twice and spent a few days in the pokey. . . . Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon wins the prize for the oldest authenticated American song about marijuana, 1927's "Willie the Weeper." . . . "Vipers" are what the marijuana enthusiasts of the Twenties called themselves, and they wrote their anthems en masse: "Here Comes the Man With the Jive," "Viper Blues," "Jack, I'm Mellow," "Sweet Marijuana Brown," "Viper Mad," "Tea Party," "The G Man Got the T Man," "The Stuff Is Here (and It's Mellow)," "All the Jive Is Gone." . . . This exuberant musical activity was in harsh contrast to the official depiction of marijuana by the government, which had taken a dim view of Mexican immigrants. As various anti-hemp interests such as the cotton and petrochemical industries grew influential and anti-marijuana crusaders like Harry J. Anslinger gained authority, the stereotype of lily-white American teens being perverted by hopped-up, hot-blooded Mexicans was more than a mythical smokescreen. It was fantastic fodder for the Hearst press. . . . The end of Prohibition brought the Depression. The Depression brought with it a renewed campaign on the part of the United States government against marijuana. As commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger declared "reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men." Once again the suppression of marijuana was a racially motivated political tool. . . . What a contrast to the country's founding fathers, who'd opened the Colonies' doors to hemp in the 1600s! The Virginia Assembly of 1619 required all farmers to grow hemp. Its strong fibers were commonly used to make clothing and sails, and it was considered legal tender in three states. That respectable history vanished almost overnight with the appearance of anti-marijuana films, most notably the church-bankrolled Tell Your Children, better known as Reefer Madness (1936). . . . Although the portrayal of marijuana as demon weed was fed to teens, the campaign had the opposite effect. Coming from the wild days of Prohibition into the Depression offered few alternatives for youthful pleasures. Their limited world was enhanced by the suggestion of something wilder happening out there. . . . "The reefer man is here!" sang out Cab Calloway.
[NOTE: Click on the link above for more of this interesting history.] . . . Read more!
Last Objection to Medical Marijuana Removed by Volcano Vaporizer (Bruce Mirken, AlterNet, May 2, 2007) Anyone who advocates for medical marijuana sooner or later runs into arguments about smoking: "No real medicine is smoked." "Smoking is bad for the lungs; why would any doctor recommend something so harmful?" It's a line of reasoning that medical marijuana opponents have used to great effect in Congress, state legislatures, and elsewhere. Indeed, the FDA's controversial 2006 statement opposing medical marijuana was couched in repeated references to "smoked marijuana." . . . But new research demonstrates that all those fears of "smoked marijuana" as medicine are 100 percent obsolete. . . . The smoking argument was the closest thing to a scientifically meaningful objection to medical marijuana. While marijuana smoke, unlike tobacco, has never been shown to cause lung cancer Back in 1999, the Institute of Medicine's White House-commissioned report on medical marijuana conceded marijuana's medical benefits, saying that what is needed is "a nonsmoked rapid-onset cannabinoid drug delivery system." . . . The new studies -- one from the University of California, San Francisco, and the other from the University at Albany, State University of New York -- confirm that such a system is here. It's called vaporization, and has been familiar to medical marijuana patients for many years, but few outside the medical marijuana community know it exists. Unlike smoking, a vaporizer does not burn the plant material, but heats it just to the point at which the THC and the other cannabinoids vaporize. In the Volcano vaporizer tested at UCSF, the vapors are collected in a detachable plastic bag with a mouthpiece for inhalation. . . . The UCSF study, conducted by Dr. Donald Abrams and colleagues and just published online by the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (to appear in the journal's print edition on May) compared a commercially available vaporizer called the Volcano to smoking in 18 volunteers. The subjects inhaled three different strengths of marijuana either as smoked cigarettes or vaporized using the Volcano. . . . The two methods produced similar THC levels, with vaporization producing somewhat higher levels, and were judged equally efficient for administration of cannabinoids. The big difference was in expired carbon monoxide. As expected, there was a sharp increase in carbon monoxide levels after smoking, while "little if any" increase was detected after vaporization. "This indicates little or no exposure to gaseous combustion toxins," the researchers wrote. "Vaporization of marijuana does not result in exposure to combustion gases, and therefore is expected to be much safer than smoking marijuana cigarettes." . . . A second study, by Dr. Mitch Earleywine at the University at Albany, State University of New York, involved an Internet survey of nearly 7,000 marijuana users. Participants were asked to identify their primary method of using marijuana (joints, pipe, vaporizer, edibles, etc.) and were asked six questions about respiratory symptoms. After adjusting for variables such as age and cigarette use, vaporizer users were 60 percent less likely than smokers to report respiratory symptoms such as cough, chest tightness or phlegm. The effect of vaporizer use was more pronounced the larger the amount of marijuana used. . . . "Our study clearly suggests that the respiratory effects of marijuana use can be decreased by use of a vaporizer," Earleywine commented. "In fact, because we only asked participants about their primary means of using marijuana, it's likely that people who exclusively use vaporizers will get even more benefit than our results indicate, because no doubt some in our study used vaporizers most of the time but not all of the time." . . . In a rational world, the government officials objecting to medical marijuana based on the health risks of smoking would greet this research with open arms. They would join with groups like the Marijuana Policy Project in spreading the word about this important, health-enhancing technology. . . . Don't hold your breath. . . . Read more!
LSD Researcher Denied U.S. Entry Under Terror Laws (Linda Solomon, The Tyee, April 25, 2007) A Canadian psychotherapist who conducted research with LSD was denied entry to the United States after a border guard Googled his work. . . . Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled "Andrew Feldmar." . . . The psychotherapist's world was about to turn upside down. The Blaine border guard explained that Feldmar had been pulled out of the line as part of a random search. He seemed friendly, even as he took away Feldmar's passport and car keys. While the contents of his car were being searched, Feldmar and the officer talked. He asked Feldmar what profession he was in. When Feldmar said he was psychologist, the official typed his name into his Internet search engine. Before long the customs guard was engrossed in an article Feldmar had published in the spring 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head. The article concerned an acid trip Feldmar had taken in London, Ontario, and another in London, England, almost forty years ago. It also alluded to the fact that he had used hallucinogenics as a "path" to understanding self and that in certain cases, he reflected, it could "be preferable to psychiatry." Everything seemed to collapse around him, as a quiet day crossing the border began to turn into a nightmare. . . . He was told to sit down on a folding chair and for hours he wondered where this was going. He checked his watch and thought hopelessly of his friend who was about to land at the Seattle airport. Three hours later, the official motioned him into a small, barren room with an American flag. He was sitting on one side and Feldmar was on the other. The official said that under the Homeland Security Act, Feldmar was being denied entry due to "narcotics" use. LSD is not a narcotic substance, Feldmar tried to explain, but an entheogen. The guard wasn't interested in technicalities. He asked for a statement from Feldmar admitting to having used LSD and he fingerprinted Feldmar for an FBI file. . . . Then Feldmar disbelievingly listened as he learned that he was being barred from ever entering the United States again. The officer told him he could apply to the Department of Homeland Security for a waiver, if he wished, and gave him a package, with the forms. . . . The border guard then escorted him to his car and made sure he did a U-turn and went back to Canada. . . . Feldmar attended the University of Toronto where he graduated with honours in mathematics, physics and chemistry. He received his M.A. in psychology from the University of Western Ontario. At University of Western Ontario, he was under supervision with Zenon Pylyshyn, who was from Saskatchewan and had participated, along with Abram Hoffer and Duncan Blewett, in the first experiments with LSD-25. . . . "Zenon told me he had had enough strange experiences, that he had gone about as far with LSD as he wished to go. He still had what was once legal. ... Looking back 33 years, I don't quite recall why I decided to accept his tentative offer. I was 27 years old and thought of myself as a rational scientist, and had no experience with delirium, hallucination, or altered mind states. I was curious. Very curious. I thought that, like Faust, I might make a pact with the devil in return for esoteric knowledge." . . . Zenon gave him 900 micrograms of acid and the surprise of his life, he wrote in the Janus Head article. "Following this initiation, I traveled to many regions many times with the help of many different substances. I took peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis, MDMA, DMT, ketamine, nitrous oxide 5-MEO-DMT, but I kept coming back to LSD.
[NOTE: This is a very long article that runs for three more pages. Please click on the link at the top of this article to read the full text of this story.]
POT vs TOBACCO (R Givens, DrugSense.org) Tobacco Contains Ionizing Radiation Prohibitionists scare people with comparisons between marijuana and tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke is bad, therefore all smoke is bad the reasoning goes. If somebody suggested that burning PCBs (dioxin), high sulphur coal, firewood, nuclear waste and natural gas all produced the same combustion products and all were equally dangerous, most people would demand proof before accepting such a ridiculous claim. But make the claim that tobacco smoke and pot smoke are equally bad and no one questions it. But what does science say? . . . There is one very important difference between marijuana smoke and tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke contains ionizing radiation and cannabis smoke does not. The tobacco plant's roots and the sticky leaf surface absorb radioactive polonium-210 and lead-210 isotopes which are inhaled with tobacco smoke. A pack and a half a day smoker receives a daily dose of radiation equal to what a person would have received standing downwind from Three Mile Island nuclear reactor during the first 21 hours after the infamous accident. Pack and a half a day smokers are exposed to the equivalent of over 300 hundred chest x-rays every year from this ionizing radiation. . . . Radioactivity in tobacco may explain why smokers of low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes have the same lung cancer rate as smokers of regular cigarettes. 50% of tobacco radiation is discharged into the air which might explain why non-smokers married to heavy smokers may have an increased risk of lung cancer. "Americans are exposed to far more radiation from tobacco smoke than from any other source," says Dr R T Ravenholt, former director of World health Surveys at the Center for Disease Control. . . . It is extremely misleading to blame tobacco risks on "carcinogens" without accounting for ionizing radiation. Some experts speculate that combining ionizing radiation with carcinogenic substances increases cancer risks a hundredfold. Vilma Hunt, who discovered radioactive polonium 210 in tobacco in 1964, recalls the day her study was released. It seemed that every chemist and physicist she knew quit smoking. "They immediately understood the implication," she recounts. "They said, 'If there's ionizing radiation in this stuff, that's it. I'm finished'." . . . Even former Surgeon General C. Everettt Koop admits that radio activity may be the primary cause of lung cancer in smokers. . . . Marijuana plants do not absorb radioactive elements. . . . Where Are The Bodies? If marijuana caused lung cancer, prohibitionists would be giving body counts on the six o'clock news instead of peddling scare stories. The truly sad aspect of this fear mongering is that the authorities KNOW marijuana is harmless. Back in the 1960s, the drug warriors got to believing their own propaganda and authorized over 10,000 government approved studies of marijuana between 1965-75. To their amazement and disgust, report after report gave cannabis a clean bill of health. Even worse from the drug crusader point of view, many studies provided preliminary evidence that cannabis compounds are effective in treating a wide range of diseases including cancer tumor suppression. . . . Anti-Cancer Compounds In Cannabis: Another reason to demand proof before accepting any assumptions about marijuana causing cancer is the fact that cannabis contains several very active anti-cancer compounds. . . . In 1976, Louis S. Harris, of the Medical College of Virginia, reported that delta-9 THC increased cancer survival time by 36% without the weight loss caused by most standard anti-tumor agents. Delta-8 THC and cannabinol were also found to be quite active in tumor suppression. No other chemotherapy agent differentiates between tumor and normal cells the way cannabis compounds do. Like all other studies showing medical potential for marijuana, Harris's funding was immediately discontinued. . . . Cannabis Receptors: The discovery of "cannabis receptors" in the human brain and other parts of the body and naturally occurring THC compounds (anandamide) in the body has ended most scientific speculation that the active ingredients in marijuana cause any kind of health damage. Previous assumptions about brain damage and other health injuries have been rejected because it is now known that cannabis is metabolized without any toxicity whatsoever. Marijuana is safer than public drinking water. . . .
INFORMATION SOURCES:
HEMP & the marijuana conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer 1995 p164-5
US Surgeon General's Reports -- 1981 - 1982
Proceedings of The National Academy of Science, Biophysics, and Biological Science, March 1983
Lancet -- September 1983
Would You Still Rather Fight Than Switch? -- Whole Life Times Mid-April/May 1985
Radioactivity: The New Found Danger in Cigarettes, by Lowell Ponte Reader's Digest -- March 1986 p 123
Analgesic & Anti-Tumor potential of The Cannabinoids Louis S. Harris, Dept of Pharmacology Medical College of Virginia Health Sciences Div. Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA (US Dept Health & Ed. partial sponsor) 1976 . . . Read more!
LSD Educational Video Thanks to our friends at DoseNation, I got to see a really great video. At least I thought it was great ... funny, educational, and what I liked best, it was really in your face. From what I understand, these guys were given a class assignment to give a presentation on LSD. Well, as you can see from their video report, these guys actually do have a very good understanding of the effects of LSD.
IMHO, if everyone involved in the War on Drugs conducted their research at a level as high as this, the WoD would soon be history.
We have at last obtained the final permissions to start the Beckley Foundation/University of California LSD Project in San Francisco. This will be the first study using LSD on human subjects since prohibition blocked all such scientific research in the 1970s. Since then, great advances have been made in neuroscience and brain-imaging techniques. The study will explore why LSD causes such profound changes in consciousness, and how it affects creativity and problem-solving.
We hope that this first study will open the door to a wider exploration of the neural processes underlying consciousness and show how LSD might be a useful tool in neuroscience, in psychotherapy, in personal development and for enhancing creativity.
Another exciting development is the recent publication in the Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, of a paper by Professors Colin Blakemore, David Nutt and others, calling for the reclassification of drugs of potential misuse according to a rational scale of harm. This new scale would be regularly revised as scientific understanding advances, and would also include such legal drugs as alcohol and tobacco (which account for about 90% of all drug-related deaths in the UK). The thinking behind this article was developed at the workshops and seminars of the Beckley Foundation, and has already been influential in persuading a House of Commons Select Committee to condemn the current government classification as "not fit for purpose.". . . Read more!
Survey of Medical Marijuana Recommending Doctors Dr. Lucido I HAVE SURVEYED THE PRACTICE STANDARDS OF ABOUT 2 DOZEN of the more visible medical cannabis physicians, and find: The MAJORITY to be knowledgeable, ethical, and credible. (Remember: according to California NORML, over 1500 doctors in California have written at least one recommendation.) Unfortunately, as in any field, whether medicine, politics, business, journalism, there are a few "LOW STANDARDS" practitioners. (As I have pointed out before, cannabis is so safe and effective that even the lowest standard doctor I have heard of has not harmed a patient, and probably never will.) In spite of that, due to the irrational drug war, we will still have inappropriate actions by law enforcement, necessitating patients, caregivers, and physicians to be MORE careful, and MORE thoughtful to patient medical-legal protection, rather then LESS. . . . Findings of my initial survey
I found a VERY wide range of services, fees, and other qualities. Qualities include: ethics, credibility, and time and effort taken by the medical consultant to establish medical-legal protection. . . . Time spent with patient: --from 3-15 minutes "fig-leaf", assembly line, minimalist standards --to those who schedule 45-60 minutes for a first appointment, and 30 minutes for yearly follow-up. . . . Fees: $100-250 (Ironically, the worst and most embarrassing minimalist work was done by those who charged $100, AND by those who charged $250!So cost didn't seem to be the best test of protection. (my sound bite for this level of garbage is "A $50 value for only $100-250!".) Avoid it as all costs, especially if you are a legitimate patient, and/or growing your own medicine for yourself or another patients) . . . Remember, not only is this consultation about your PHYSICAL HEALTH, but also about your MEDICAL-LEGAL HEALTH; that is, legal documentation that shows you havea legitimate illness should you be challenged by law enforcement. . . . Ethics in advertising, and increasing "business": The worst cases of this involve doctors working out of dispensaries. A major "no-no" that loses for physicians, and their employees, and their patients, the full protection of Conant v. Walters. The next worst are the doctors who "no longer do this", pretending they don't, but still have a cross-referring of patients. There is a reason that this is even illegal when one does it with a "legitimate" pharmacy, such as Walgreen's or Long's. . . . I encourage legitimate patients to consult with reputable doctors with good standards, and to avoid the rash of low standards "clinics" that have opened up next to many dispensaries.. . . Read more!
Terence McKenna Library Lost to Fire (Erik Davis, Techgnosis, February 14, 2007) Last Wednesday, February 7, a 5-alarm blaze erupted in an old building in downtown Monterey. The fire started in a Quinzo’s sub shop, that exemplar of tasteful dining, and went on to thoroughly destroy a number of joints, including Goomba’s Italian Restaurant, a Starbucks, and some storage offices belonging to Big Sur’s Esalen Institute—ground zero for the human potential movement and now an upscale New Age resort. Esalen lost little of their own archives, the vast bulk of their books, photos, audio and videotapes residing elsewhere. Unfortunately, the institute was also using the offices to store the amazing library of Terence McKenna, the visionary psychedelic bard who passed away in 2000. The plan was to eventually install the books at Esalen, a place that Terence loved but which is hardly associated with scholarly pursuit. That plan will never be realized. . . . For those who knew Terence or enjoyed his library, the fire is a tragedy, and not simply because it consumed his private papers. Terence's library reflected the multidimensional facets of his own mind: mysticism and history, drugs and dreams, science fiction and systems theory, natural history and art. Terence was a head who fed his head with books more than the drugs he became known for. I will never forget the sheepish look he gave me six months or so before his death, as he forked over a fistful of twenties for a copy of Empson’s Cult of the Peacock Angel, a rare book on the Yezidis that he bought from an esoteric book dealer I knew. It was a look that said, Please don’t tell my girlfriend. . . . Terence became a bookhound as a wee lad, and stumbled across amazing finds along his tangled way. One time, on the way to India, he came across a Theosophy library in the Seychelles that was closing its doors, and picked up its large collection of occult literature, all bound in red leather, for peanuts. The top floor of the home he built on the big island of Hawaii was designed partly to gather his thousands of volumes in one place. I visited there once towards the end of Terence’s life, to record his last formal interview. When he napped, I had the choice of poking through the library or exploring the gorgeous hideaways of Hawaii. I never left the lair. . . . Terence's brother Dennis owns an index of Terence’s collection, which will at least give us an overview of his library—sorta like a playlist without the MP3s. But even this valuable document will not replace the body of knowledge itself—a body that had become, in the weird ways of the memetic world, a kind of second body for Terence’s fabulous and fascinating mind. No budding head will ever be able to poke through this collection again, with its faintly perfumed volumes on Chinese alchemy and butterflies and hash. And the world has one fewer 1659 folio of Isaac Casaubon’s A True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. John Dee and some spirits, and one fewer old-school copy of Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, which Terence swapped for a pound or two of yummies back in the day. The content of these books, at least, is reproducible; Terence, of course, was one-of-a-kind. . . . Read more!
Indiana Congressman Reveals His Ignorance [From Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance] What is Congressman Souder Smoking? Last week I was supposed to be on MSNBC to talk about the federal government’s stupid anti-marijuana ads. I was bumped at the last minute because the host, Tucker Carlson, wanted to interview Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) instead. I never thought I would say this, but I’m glad I got bumped. Souder made a total fool of himself.
First, he said that smoking marijuana is not that much different from doing lines of cocaine or smoking crack in terms of the dangers. This sends the wrong message to teens. By saying that marijuana, a relatively benign drug, is as dangerous as crack cocaine it minimizes the real dangers associated with cocaine use.
Then Souder went on to say that thousands of Americans die from marijuana every year and that everyone who smokes marijuana will eventually become an addict. And this is from the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee that oversees federal drug war policies. Wow. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: It is well-known by almost everyone who can read that marijuana has NEVER caused a single death by overdose in all of human history.]
You can watch him make a fool out of himself on the MSNBC website. I’ve also posted a transcript of some of what he said below.
Partial transcript of Souder’s remarks:
REP. SOUDER: Marijuana is the primary gateway drug, although tobacco and alcohol, because they're all illegal for youth, you could argue that tobacco is a gateway drug to marijuana. Smoking marijuana is then a gateway drug for others. Furthermore, the THC content of BC Bud, Quebec Gold and this marijuana that's currently on the streets isn't like the Cheech and Chong marijuana. It's more like cocaine.
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: Everyone, and I'm talking about hundreds of millions of people world-wide, who has tried both marijuana and cocaine realizes that this little man, Souder, is some kind of moralistic crackpot who doesn't have any idea whatsoever about what he's talking about.]
MR. CARLSON: How is it more like -- hold on. I'm sorry, Congressman. How is it more like coke? I don't understand what you mean by that.
REP. SOUDER: In other words, the THC of ditchweed and what was happening when I was in college in the late '60s and early '70s had a THC of 4 to 8 percent, maybe as high as 12. Now we're looking at 20, 30, 40 percent. And the kick and the addiction you get, the destruction in your brain cells, is more like coke or crack than it is like the old-time marijuana.
Rep. Souder made these comments as he was defending the Bush Administration’s request for more funding for anti-marijuana TV ads that have been shown to actually increase youth marijuana use. One of the reasons the campaign has backfired is that the ads make ridiculous statements that teens reject, such as equating marijuana use with terrorism and suggesting that smoking marijuana will lead one to kill people. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: At last, a government propaganda program that works!]
Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD when he discovered the secret of life (Alun Rees, Associated Newspapers Ltd. Mail, August 8, 2004) FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced thedouble-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago. . . . The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life. . . . Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize. . . . Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in the short stories The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws. . . . 'Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD. . . . 'It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration.' Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge. . . . He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. . . . Read more!
The Ayahuasca Effect The world’s most powerful antidepressant and psychotherapeutic agent may be a natural herbal tea.
By Kirby Surprise Psy.D
As many as 40 million Americans will suffer from some form of depression during their lifetimes. For some depression will be a mercifully short episode in their lives, for millions it becomes a chronic experience of emotional pain that devastates all areas of their lives. Depression is notoriously difficult to treat, especially in its chronic form. Talk therapy is often ineffective, and anti-depressive medications sometimes have unwanted side effects.h]è Medications such as Webutrin, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft often leave the client with sexual dysfunction, agitation, sleeplessness and alterations in their personalities. These medications can and do save lives, but for some the side effects make them less than satisfactory answers to long term clinical depression.
Ayahuasca is a tea made from a combination of legally available plants that produces a profound alteration in consciousness. It has been used for thousands of years by South American shamans, and is currently used as a sacrament in at least two Christian based religions in with world wide memberships. It is noted for the power of the experience it produces, and the tendency for it to facilitate positive personal change in those that consume it. It is non-addictive, non-toxic, and in its classical forms, produces no physical or psychological harm to the users. The primary drug involved is N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a natural substance that is in the bodies of all mammals, and one of the most powerful hallucinogens known. DMT is extracted from any one of the plant that contain it by brewing it in water that has been made slightly acidic, in effect making tea. Once the tea is made it is considered illegal in most western countries because it contains DMT, which was made illegal as a manufactured hallucinogen before it was known it existed in natural form in the plants used to make ayahuasca. Normally the DMT in the tea would be destroyed in the digestive system by a chemical called mono amine oxidase, rendering the tea completely inactive. With the addition of a second plant containing a mono amine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), either in the tea with theh]è first DMT containing plant or taken separately, The DMT survives the digestive process and reaches the brain where it alters the persons state of consciousness.
The most common anecdotal reports from use of the tea are of profound psychological and spiritual healing, accompanied by personal insight and integration. It is often reported that the tea breaks even profound depressive episodes in a single use. This positive psychological benefit is what I call the “Ayahuasca Effect.” That is, to produce an intense and positive integrative experience with lasting beneficial effects from use of the tea, with no side effects common to pharmaceutical antidepressants. The following one such personal encounter with ayahuasca;
"Sometime during graduate school, while holding two jobs and trying to raise a family, I fell into a major depression. It was the kind of illness that one could fight through to lead a normal life, but it sapped the joy and light from every experience. My wife and I fought often, the world seemed a dark and difficult place.
"There should have been the relative leisure of just work and family to enjoy, but the depression hung like a dark resentful fog on every day, coloring it with hopelessness and undeserved despair. In order to keep working I sought medical help, which came in the form of anti-depressant medications. After two years of trying different medications, Zoloft was the final choice. I was told to reconcile myself to having to take this medication every day for the rest of my life. I was grateful for having a chemical floor under my feet, it saved my life, both figuratively and literally, but there were side effects. The medication left me sleepless and mildly agitated much of the time, feeling like a constant infusion of caffeine. It made sex difficult, which played hell with my self-esteem, and it did not make me able to experience happiness or joy. I had been to years of talk therapy, taken the drugs western medicine had to offer, followed the known treatment courses, they had not restored me to wholeness.
"Finally, even with the medication, the illness was winning. My ability to make a meaningful connection with my wife was gone, my work was an endless parade of despair, my attitude was permanently dark and agitated. This was not who I wanted to be, not the life I had worked hard to live.
"I decided I was not going to be healed by taking the advice of others, I would have to do it from within, I would look for a miracle, I would go back to the study of shamanism and find a way to heal myself. After months of research on shamanic cultures and their use of native plants I learned about ayahuasca, an herbal tea made from plants native to the Amazon basin. I read everything on the web, the books, the articles I could find, and went to an Ayahuasca conference with experts from many fields from all over the world.
"What I learned was that studies had been done on members of the UDV, one of the religions that use the tea as a sacrament, which indicated ayahuasca was a powerful anti-depressant which treated the cause of the condition rather than the symptom. In short, most depression is caused by problems with the way the brain processes serotonin, which could be called the "mood" neurotransmitter. Prescription antidepressants work by various means to keep serotonin in the synapses longer. Ayahuasca contains DMT, which bonds to the 5-htp receptor sites, the same sites as serotonin. The DMT bonds at a higher rate, and the body adapts to this by increasing the number of 5-htp receptor sites, making better use of natural serotonin levels. The UDV studies stated regular drinkers of the tea were less depressed, more social and more organized than the control groups, and that there were no physical or mental side effects to long term use in healthy individuals. Ayahuasca seemed to be an anti-depressant that treated the cause, had a better psychological outcome, and no side effects. The final factor in my decision was some of the people who I met at the conference. Many of them were long term drinkers of the tea from countries where it has been legalized. h]è I found them to be some of the most grounded, sane, kind, and generally healthy people I had ever met.
"I took the tea at 9:10 P.M. on a Friday night. The setting was a workshop I set up as a meditative space separate from the house. An altar was created, candles lit, the area smudged and cleansed. The meditation and prayer was for relief from depression, and to help me become a better person.
"The nausea and lethargy often caused by the tea persisted for two hours, but there were no other noticeable effects. By midnight I believed the session a general failure. I went into the house, ate the dinner I had left in the fridge, having fasted since before lunch, and went to bed with my wife after talking briefly about the lack of significant results. Shortly after that I went to the bathroom and had an episode of explosive diarrhea that expelled the tea. It had passed all the way through my digestive tract with no real effect, and I thought that was the end of the experience.
"I laid down next to my wife, who objected to the whole doing ayahuasca to treat depression concept, who I was in marriage counseling with. Desh]è pite loving each other, we had not really gotten along for several years. She went to sleep, and I lay there wondering what had gone wrong with the ayahuasca and my life.
"Then, in the darkness of my inner vision, colors, in long wispy lines, like gentle rainbow vapors, began to appear. The lines moved in and out of themselves, and appeared to be lined with gear teeth moving in impossible ways. I know now that these were the classic visions of DNA reported by other drinkers. The colors became gradually brighter and the visions more intense and beautiful as I realized this was going to be far more than just some residual effect. The images became ever more beautiful and intense, surpassing any of the comparatively graceless visuals of other drugs, and I realized my body was slipping into sensations of ecstasy more sublime than anything I have ever experienced. As the experience grew ever more powerful the beauty of it became absolutely overpowering. I begged for more, became ever more immersed in indescribable gratitude and utter joy such as I had never even hoped to know. Tears began falling silently, and I remembered again asking to be relieved of my long depression and to receive help to be a better person. The euphoria was so complete it was as if I had been granted heaven itself, washing away the long years of darkness I had groped through. I was astonished that the brain was capable of experiencing such wondrous and complex imagery, of knowing such utter joy. In the midst of this my ability to think was amazingly intact. As the intensity became ever more overwhelming I realized I was losing awareness of my body altogether, into a more shamanic dimension. h]è I mentally called for more and more, and the ecstasy and gratitude that followed seemed infinite.
"Then the lessons came. They came from a hidden presence of relentless gentility I had experienced before, only now the presence had a new power and depth. I saw what could be called entities of immense beauty, but knew not to mistake images of things for the reality of something existing outside my drugged brain. Telepathically they said that I had spent most of my life running away from my own pain, manipulating, defending, sleeping, doing anything but experience the natural pain of being a human being. The gratitude I was feeling was indescribable, it filled my entire being, as the ecstasy also became absolute suffering at the same time, and I was infinitely grateful for both. The light became sacredness, pain, ecstasy and beauty as one. I found myself weeping, feeling all these emotions at once, as if I had been emotionally dead for years, and was now suddenly able to feel again. Great warm, wide rivers of tears flowed in gratitude, release and realization that I had been so cold and angry inside for so long, and was now alive and able to feel again.
"The weight of how I had treated my wife during the years of depression, , flooded over me, and I sobbed heavily for not cherishing and being grateful for her all those years. This had woken her, and I told her how very sorry I was for the way I had treated her. She told me I was hallucinating, and that it was just the h]è drug, that I didn’t really mean it. I told her I knew I was hallucinating but that it was opening my emotional centers, that this was the idea behind doing it. I tried to lie quietly through the rest of the experience so as not to worry her. I was so grateful to her that I would not dare to burden her with some request for forgiveness, I put her through enough already. We lay together quietly for the next two hours while the rest of the experience ran its course, gradually tapering off, giving ecstasy, pain and insight. Finally, when I was relatively down, we embraced and held each other until we slept. The experience lasted a bit over four hours, and felt like an eternity.
"The next day I was grateful for my life for the fist time in years , for my marriage, for my family. I enjoyed parts of my life I considered a burden. Working became easier, and enjoying simple pleasures seemed natural, instead of almost impossible. The experience of not being depressed and just about perpetually irritated, of being emotionally normal again, was beyond anything I hoped for."
Although the personal mind set and setting of the experience undoubtedly has a profound effect on the person’s experience, the “ayahuasca effect” is based not on the placebo effect, but on the neurochemistry and anatomy of the brain as it interacts with the tea. Although it is not possible to do the research needed to determine the exact cause of the “Ayahuasca effect” because of legal and practical limitah]è tions, it is possible to make an educated guess at the mechanism. This is an explanatory fiction, a story that fit’s the facts as they now appear. Let’s look at what is probably happening in the brain when a person ingests ayahuasca.
There are about a hundred billion neurons in the brain, each of these connects to as many as two hundred thousand other neurons. The cell axonal bodies of a neuron can be more than a yard long for each cell. Each neuron sends signals by generating an all or nothing pulse along the axon, which eventually branches out into thousands of dendrites that end in presynaptic membranes that release neurotransmitters that are received by receptor sites on the postsynaptic membranes of the receiving cells. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that carries messages from one cell to another, ayahuasca helps serotonin act more effectively. Substances that help a neurotransmitter act more effectively are called agonists.
There are only two major neurotransmitters in the body, glutamate and GABA. Glutamate is the "turn on" signal to the neuron, GABA is the "turn off" signal. They are essentially + and - chemical signals that pass from neuron to neuron. Each cell receives thousand of these on and off signals from thousands of other cells. When the cell has gotten enough + signals above the - signah]è ls, the cell fires and passes the electrical potential to the next cell through the axon, the "cable" it uses to connect with other cells. On and off signals, Glutamate and GABA, that is the basis of all neural activity. The natural state of the brain is not to be at rest, it is to be at full-bore, flat out, run away seizure, neurological electrical storm. GABA provides the brakes to the natural push for maximum chaotic activity.
To get more subtlety out of the system, and to produce ordered activity, there are other neurotransmitters that modulate GABA, fine tuning it up or down, to regulate the intensity of neural activity. Many of these modulating neurotransmitter receptor sites are more concentrated in some areas of the brain than others, thus some affect different areas specific functions of the brain more than others. Serotonin and dopamine are modulating neurotransmitters, they affect GABA, in most instances inhibiting it, therefore lessening the number of "off" signals it gives neurons. Serotonin therefore, in general, takes off the brakes from neural activity and lets the neurons fire more rapidly.
When someone takes ayahuasca they are taking four chemicals, harmine, harmaline, tetrehydroharmine, and DMT, all of which are serotonin agonists, substances that assist serotonin, attach to serotonin receptors, or otherwise increase its effectiveness at removing the GABA braking system. The result is neurological activity goes up in areas of the brain that use serotonin as a modulator. The altered state of consciousness that results is because of this increased activity.
Herein also lies the reason different hallucinogens produce different types of effects on consciousness. There are many types of neurotransmitter receptor sites. Each is a gateway that when fit with the right chemical keys, opens a passage into the cell through which sodium flows to change the cells electrical balance. Each receptor type and subtype asks for a different key, or set of keys to unlock it. So, one type may want just a GABA and a serotonin molecule, while another might want those, a dopamine, six other amino acids and god knows what else in a specific order before it activates.
All of these receptor sites are distributed unevenly in the brain, therefore there effect onh]è he GABA system in each part of the brain is highly variable. The exact "flavor" of a substance depends on what combination of brain areas are having their neural activity raised by having the GABA braking system inhibited.
Ayahuasca is both a serotonin and dopamine agonist at the same time. The other visionary substances are generally one or the other, ayahuasca is both at the same time. It activates more areas of the brain at once by Affecting GABA through more than one modulating neurotransmitter. The result is more of the brain becomes activated in a better balance than if just one or the other of the modulating neurotransmitters was activated by another single channel GABA inhibiting hallucinogen. In fact, PET scans show neurological activity during ayahuasca experiences raised up to 90% above normal over a wide area of the brain.
Here is the oversimplified short form of what ayahuasca does neurologically, which leads to the explanation of its work as a psychotherapeutic agent and the cause of the “Ayahuasca effect.”
After taking the tea the areas of your brain with the most serotonin and dopamine receptors become uninhibited by GABA and their nuro activity goes up drastically. Think about the word uninhibited fir a moment. What do you normally think of when you say that about someone in a psychological sense? It has connotations of being less in control, freer in actions, of not thinking as much before acting. Being uninhibited in this way, and in the neurological sense, is the exact same phenomena.
The frontal cortex of the brain is where most of what you think of as "you" is located. That is, the parts of the personality that makes the executive decisions on what to do in the world, both internal and external, with the thoughts, information and sensation we are presented with. This area of the brain is heavily wired with axons that run directly from the cells that produce serotonin in the brain stem. The prefrontal cortex’s major GABA inhibitor and modulator is serotonin. Ayahuasca therefore dis-inhibits this area of the brain responsible for judgment and decisions. A decision about anything is made by inhibiting the neural patterns of all other possibilities until the one neural pattern remains. If that area of the brain is disinhibited and neural activity remains high, judgments and evaluations become more difficult to make.
In short, you tend to just accept the information and experience you are having without as much filtration and evaluation. It's a hypnotic state that renders you more open to suggestion and less likely to critically evaluate the experience and information being received by the frontal cortex.
But there is more to the story than just frontal lobe suggestibility. The effects caused by the tea's actions on dopamine also play an important role in its potential action as a therapeutic agent. Dopamine modulates GABA in much the same way that serotonin does. Two systems in the brain that use dopamine heavily for GABA regulation are the middle brain limbic system and areas of the brain that control fine motor functions that allow us to control smooth motor motions. The limbic system is a central controller and processor of both emotion and memory. In fact, it appears that emotion and the limbic system are key in forming most lasting memories.
One theory of trauma and repression states that when the brain can not assimilate an experience because it is too foreign to its schema, it's sense of the way things should be, it represses that experience by sending chemical signals that tell the brain not to use those neural pathways. It h]è stores the experience in pieces all over the brain, but does not complete the integration into memory. Since the instructions not to process, not to be neurologically active, can only be given as GABA signals to keep neurons in the "off" state, this repression of neurological signals must be maintained by modulating neurotransmitters . The presence of elevated levels of dopamine during the ayahuasca experience inhibit GABA in the limbic system, increasing activity there and overriding nurochemical processes that would limit the processing of experiences.
This means that the increase in neural activity in those areas of the brain tends to bring up repressed experiences and start the process of re-integrating them. As these memories and experiences are being once again brought into current processing memory in the mid brain they encounter a brain state profoundly different than the previous state that they were not processed during initially. For one thing, the elevated serotonin levels in the prefrontal cortex have disinhibited executive functioning due to the increase in overall neural activity. The part of the personality that would previously have passed judgment on the incoming experience is no longer as able to perform it's limiting function. The re-emerging experiences are no longer filtered, no longer repressed out of ongoing processing. So, the higher levels of dopamine cause GABA inhibition and therefore higher activity in the limbic and midbrain systems that bring unprocessed experiences back into activity. Higher serotonin levels cause GABA inhibition and therefore higher activity levels in the prefrontal cortex that hinder the experience being re-rh]è epressed.
It is significant that ayahuasca acts on more than one modulating neurotransmitter, that it increases neural activity in a more even and coordinated way than other hallucinogens. Because of this there is far less disturbance of the intricate processing and transfers of information between different areas of the brain. The rising tide of neural activity raises all boats, brain systems as it were. The result is all systems continue to function together in much the same way they normally would. The person hallucinates and has a disinhibited thought process, but that process remains internally coherent without serious delusional processes or breakdown of the personality. Thought and cognition of the internal and external environments remains essentially intact. With other hallucinogens the imbalances brought about by less even regulation of the GABA system produce conditions where some areas of the brain are out of processing sync with others, resulting in more common instances of delusional thinking and loss of touch with reality, which rarely occurs with ayahuasca.
The condition brought in the brain by the tea is therefore ideal for the recalling of repressed experiences and emotions into conscious processing, lessening the chances the experiences will be re-repressed by executive functioning, andh]è having the neural resources available to complete the processing and integration of those experiences.
Even with these advantages for personal integration brought about by high levels of the modulating neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine affecting the GABA system, there is yet another significant advantage ayahuasca gives to this psychotherapeutic process.
One reason experiences remain repressed is people become behaviorally conditioned to avoiding re-experiencing them. If the brain starts to re-integrate an anxiety producing memory the person naturally begins to experience some symptomatic form of anxiety. This often is experienced as sensations within the body such as tension in the muscles, sensations in the gut, changes in breathing, ect. The person literally "feels" anxious. If they then withdraw from the anxiety, by whatever means, they cease to process the experience and send it back to memory storage. The lessening of anxiety is experienced as a reward, it feels good to not be anxious. The person can become behaviorally self-conditioned by this reward effect not to integrate the past experience that causes the anxiety.
Ayahuasca offers a way to break this cycle. All sensations, therefore all anxiety, ultimately are brain states. Dopamine is the primary modulator of activity in the pleasure centers of the brain. Almost all addictive drugs act to produce dopamine-like substances that turn on the reward and pleasure centers. Ayahuasca is a dopamine agonist that increases activity in the pleasure centers. The result is a lessening of the ability to respond with physical sensations of anxiety during the same period that the brain in it's GABA inhibited higher activity level is trying to process and integrate stored experiences. The higher activity levels in the pleasure centers help eliminate the anxiety that caused the person to become behaviorally conditioned . Ayahuasca interrupts the anxiety feedback loop and lessens the chance that the person will enter into the same avoidant conditioned response again. This is in contrast to addictive substances such as the opiates which lessen anxiety by affecting dopamine, but lower serotonin and decrease the brains ability to process and integrate experience, leaving the user worse off than before in terms of their ability to cope with experiences.
There is one last neurotransmitter to add to this mix, acetocholine. ACH is the neurotransmitter the nerves use to tell the muscles to contract. It is the transmitter that allows us to move voluntarily. The increased dopamine and serotonin levels of the ayahuasca effect also cross-regulate ACH. This means the h]è levels of ACH go down. The less ACH available, the harder it is to voluntarily make the muscles move. The result is often a profound lethargy during the ayahuasca experience at the same time the anesthetic effect of dopamine is in play. The result is the person has a lessened ability to create anxiety feedback in the musculature because it is less able to respond. This further interrupts the conditioned anxiety feedback systems that can condition the person to not integrate experiences.
So, with all of this said, lets run through the ayahuasca effect from beginning to end to complete this explanatory fiction. Soon after the tea is ingested the harmine, harmaline and tetrehydroharmine cause monoamine oxidase inhibition in the digestive tract, allowing the DMT, harmine, harmaline and tetrehydroharmine to pass into the blood stream and eventually into the brain. Once there all four act as serotonin agonists to increase the effect of serotonin inhibition of the GABA systems in the brain. Dopamine is elevated as well.
GABA in the prefrontal cortex in inhibited, and as a result prefrontal cortex activity rises. The person's thought processes become dish]è inhibited, and the ability to judge and repress is inhibited as a direct result. At the same time elevated dopamine levels have inhibited GABA in the limbic and midbrain, causing increased neural activity in the areas of the brain responsible for integration of memory and experiencing emotion.
Experiences comes to conscious awareness because of the disinhabition in the limbic system, which then presents the experiences to the executive functions in the prefrontal cortex for a decision on whether or not to proceed with processing and integration. Normally this area of the brain would look at it's self concept and view of the world and decide not to proceed because the experience was to discordant and produced unacceptable levels of anxiety as read from the somatic reactions from lower brain function. But now the prefrontal cortex is less able to limit those decisions because GABA has been inhibited, and the processing is not stopped.
In addition, the body is not getting the same somatic anxiety response because the elevated dopamine levels have the pleasure centers more active, and the musculature is somewhat unresponsive due to decreased levels of ACH. The result is the integration and processing goes forward this time, and the person experiences the full emotional experience without the somatic feedback h]è and inhibition that previously stopped the process. Because the level of neurological activity is uniformly higher than normal, the experience is conscious rather than unconscious, allowing full memories to be integrated into present moment conscious experience. Because the person has elevated dopamine and ACH levels, they are not re-traumatized by the experience and the cycle of conditioned avoidance is interrupted. Both personal integration of experience and the making of the unconscious conscious are in this way achieved with the aid of the “ayahuasca effect.”
Anecdotal evidence from users of the tea treating depression suggest it can be effective in treating serotonin based depression, but it is not a magic bullet or cure-all. The tea tends to lift depression, but does not change the underlying personality. If the user was depressed because of trauma or had other personality issues before the depression, these issues will still be present if the tea lifts the depression. I have known people who were depressed with many somatic symptoms, took the tea, and had their aliments and depression replaced by anger. The anger was what the depression was keeping repressed, in some cases the anger was over incest or other traumatic abuses. The people were generally then able to move on into doing the work of healing and restructuring the way they think about their experiences. Ayahuasca gave them the opportunity and ability to do the work, but did not do it for them. My personal experience was the tea broke h]è the cycle of depression and medications that prevented me from moving on to actual healing. Ayahuasca is potentially one of the most powerful antidepressant and psychotherapeutic therapies ever seen. At present the legal issues and lack of medical support and understanding around its use leave much of that potential unexplored. It is my hope that an understanding of the “ayahuasca effect” may someday allow direct research studies to be done of it’s effectiveness as an antidepressant treatment and tool of self awareness.
Here is a quote from Graham Hancock's great new book, "Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind"
Arguably, art and religion are our two most prized cultural institutions, the saving human graces from which have arisen many of the most noble virtues and glorious achievements of our species. But if Lewis-Williams is right, we need to be brutally honest about where the first incarnations of these institutions came from. Their birth was not assisted by the operation of any of the faculties that we admire in the twenty-first century -- such as reason, intelligence, the scientific applicaton of logic, sensitivity to nature, or even consciously driven creativity. Instead, it seems that art and religion were bestowed upon us like secret and invisible powers, by inner mental realms that our societies now despise and legislate against -- the realms of altered states of consciousness, most commonly entered (by us as by our predecessors) through the consumption of potent hallucinogenic drugs. (page 212) . . . Read more!
Marijuana in Urine Gets Life in Prison! (Drug War Chronicles, December 15, 2006) n 1990, Tyrone Brown, then 17 years old, took part in a $2 Dallas stickup in which no one was hurt. He got caught, pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery, and received a sentence of 10 years probation. A few weeks later, he was in court again -- because a drug test detected the presence of marijuana in his urine. For still unexplained reasons, his sentencing judge, Keith Dean, threw the book at him. The 17-year-old was resentenced to life in prison, where he remains to this day. . . . Despite his efforts to seek redress and freedom, Brown sat unnoticed in the burgeoning Texas prison system for year after year. In desperation, in 2004 Brown sent a letter detailing his plight to The November Coalition, a national drug reform organization that concentrates on drug war prisoners. A few months after that -- after verifying Brown's information -- the November Coalition added Brown to the list of drug prisoners on its The Wall web pages, and a few months after that, they got a call from Dallas Morning News reporter Brooks Egerton. . . . "We posted his story on The Wall in March 2005, and I heard from Brooks Egerton that fall," said November's Chuck Armsbury. "He couldn't believe this business about getting a life sentence for smoking a joint on probation." . . . Last April, Egerton published a story, "Scales of Justice Can Swing Wildly," contrasting Judge Dean's treatment of Brown -- a poor, black teenager -- and John Alexander Wood -- a wealthy, well-connected white man. While Brown got 10-year suspended sentence for the robbery, Wood got a 10-year suspended sentence for murdering a prostitute. When Brown tested positive for pot, Judge Dean sent him to prison for life. When Wood repeatedly tested positive for cocaine and got arrested for cocaine possession, Judge Dean didn't jail him for life. Instead, he let Wood stay a free man and even exempted him from having to take drug tests or meet a probation officer. . . . In that article, Judge Dean refused to discuss the two cases, saying he might have to rule on them again. But he told the Morning News that he generally tried to evaluate "the potential danger to the community" and "what, in the long run, is going to be in the best interest of the community and the person themselves." . . . According to courthouse observers cited by Egerton, Judge Dean typically let defendants like Brown off with a warning for a positive marijuana test and gave them a couple days in jail for a second violation. "Life in prison for smoking a joint -- that's harsh in any case," said former probation officer Don Ford. . . . Egerton's April story not only outraged readers in Texas, it caught the eye of ABC News' 20-20, which aired a program on Brown's case in early November and ran an update on Thanksgiving Day. With the airing of the 20-20 pieces, the outrage went national. . . . "After the 20-20 piece aired, a wonderful group of citizens coalesced around justice for Tyrone," said November Coalition executive director Nora Callahan. "People began discussing this on the 20-20 message boards, then they found our web site. We worked with those people to form the group Good Luck, Mr. Brown -- those were Judge Dean's parting words to him -- and now we are working to get his sentence commuted," she told Drug War Chronicle. . . . College students and housewives came together to work to free Brown, and so did lawyers. One of them was Florida attorney Charley Douglas. "I saw the ABC 20-20 special and I was stunned by the utter injustice of what occurred in that Texas courtroom," he told the Chronicle. "I knew something had to be done to bring justice to a man who has been denied justice for so many years. . . . Douglas was careful to stay on point. "This is about unequal justice, not a campaign against the drug laws," he said. "We have a lot of people interested in drug reform, but we are trying to stay focused on the goal of getting Tyrone out. How does a rich white guy get a slap on the wrist and poor black guy get life in prison for smoking marijuana? It's a tragedy of the American justice system and we are bound and determined to right that wrong.". . . Read more!
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Albert Hofmann, 102, a Swiss chemist and accidental father of LSD who came to view the much-vilified and abused hallucinogen he discovered in 1938 as his "problem child," died April 29 at his home in Burg, a village near Basel, Switzerland, after a heart attack. . . . Lysergic acid diethylamide, thousands of times stronger than mescaline, can give its user an experience often described as psychedelic -- a kaleidoscopic twirling of the mind pulsating with color and movement. 
