Category Archives: Psychedelics

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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings caused a flutter last year when he said that in the future, entertainment could be replaced by pharmacological substitutes (read pills). Why make visual and auditory stories when they can be generated directly in your head?

Anyone who has tuned into Silicon Valleys heartbeat wouldnt be surprised. In the recent past, the collective gaze of the Valley has fallen on a new platform to play around with: the human body and mind, and pharmacological tools are a big part of it.

Unlike Reed Hastings vision of recreation, Silicon Valleys chemical obsession is in pursuit of hacking the mind beyond its limits. Startup warriors in the Valley are wielding pharmacological weaponry in their battle for supremacy in the domain.

The newest trend, however, involves chemistry with a coloured past psychedelics. This time around, psychedelics may have less to do with astral planes and more to do with the mundanity of work. Is this the beginning of a new trip for all of us?

They call it microdosing. Reams have been written about it, but herere some basic facts:

LSD, psilocybin (street name: magic mushrooms) and marijuana are the usual weapons of choice. A microdose is about 15-20 micrograms, about a fifth of the recreational dose that causes you to trip. It doesnt stop you from engaging in your daily routine. You dont switch off from reality. Instead, you become sharper, creative and more social.

At least, thats how the anecdotes go.

A microdose is about 15-20 micrograms, about a fifth of the recreational dose that causes you to trip. It doesnt stop you from engaging in your daily routine. You dont switch off from reality. Instead, you become sharper, creative and more social

If all this sounds extremely unscientific, it is. Today, microdosing is more a fad but its fast becoming a reality. Startup founders, CEOs, programmers, designers, etc are all taking little doses of psychedelics, some daily and others once in a few days, and claiming positive results. Stories from microdosers claiming that it has helped them solve a difficult problem or crack a complex game level are common.

Interest in the trend is on the rise. The microdosing subreditt today has more than 17,000 subscribers compared to a couple of thousands back in 2015. A search for microdosing books on Amazon throws up more than 20 results with titles such as The New Psychedelic Revolution: The Genesis of the Visionary Age and A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life.

One of the more popular books is The Psychedelic Explorers Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys by James Fadiman, the man who may have laid the roots of the current microdosing trend.

Fadimans history with psychedelics is long. In 1966, he published a study linking creative thinking and hallucinogens. But what kickstarted the current trend was his microdosing cheat sheet a manual for interested users that he created in 2010. And his book documenting the benefits.

He was peeling off from the suggestion of Albert Hoffman, the father of LSD who lived to a prime age of 102 years, that small doses of the substance have a positive impact on mental health. Fadiman has since been building an informal study group and receiving user reports documenting the effects of microdosing since.

Claims such as lost my usual anxiety and more focused and in tune are common to find in forums discussing the experience of microdosing

The majority of the feedback from his study is positive. Users report an uptick in performance and mood. Blogs and tech media are filled with magical stories of improvement in mental alertness and happiness levels. Claims such as lost my usual anxiety and more focused and in tune are common to find in forums discussing the experience of microdosing.

Its part of a larger trend. A trend of using nootropics, biohacking and numerous other calibrated lifestyle hacks in an attempt to achieve an ideal physical and mental state. Can this bring psychedelics out of the shadows and into the mainstream?

Humans and psychedelics go back a long way. Our history of the last 10,000 years is dotted with close contact with psychedelics like opium, mescaline, cannabis and magic mushrooms. They were cultivated and used everywhere from South america to Europe to Asia.

Some even believe that psychedelics could have aided in some major cognitive milestones in culture, society and religion. Closer home, the Vedas contain copious references to the sacred, ritualistic soma, a potion that can provide a lightness of being, wisdom and happiness (in some cases immortality). Psychedelic-led transcendence have been part of spiritual experiences around the world.

Also read: Boheco wants to weed out the stigma around this cannabis cousin

But in the modern era, psychedelics exploded into our consciousness in the mid-nineties after Albert Hoffman synthesised LSD in his lab in 1938. After two decades of gestating in research labs and in elite homes, psychedelics flamed out into the world in the early sixties.

In the counter-culture era, psychedelics became a way of life. Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream, sang John Lennon, cajoling his listeners to cut the cord with the boring reality. Writers, singers and musicians exhorted the capability of the drug to produce revelations. Rock n roll put psychedelics on steroids.

It escalated quickly and occasionally things went wrong. The public panicked. Governments reacted with bans and strict regulations. But despite the controls, psychedelics continued influencing art and music. They became synonymous with breaking the shackles of big government, big military and big corporates.

But, they had a huge brand problem as they came to be linked with the strange, excessive culture of the 60s and 70s. That was, until, they found their way into a new cult that was (perhaps unknown then) designing more powerful addictions for the coming millennia using technology.

People are organic machines that can be fine-tuned for magical perfection. This is the thought process that drives Silicon Valleys persistent attempts at pushing the limits of its own mental prowess

Thus began the revival of brand psychedelics in the circuits of Silicon Valley.

People are organic machines that can be fine-tuned for magical perfection. This is the thought process that drives Silicon Valleys persistent attempts at pushing the limits of its own mental prowess. Its position as the dispenser of world-changing innovations has amped up the intellect as the most-valued resource of the modern era.

The rock stars of the modern age wore turtlenecks and hoodies, built personal computers and eclipsed even the Beatles in their fan following. For these demi-gods and those working with them, expanding the mind became a necessity and they turned to chemistry. Steve Jobs spoke in glowing terms about how LSD helped open up his mind and improve thinking.

Slowly, but surely, psychedelics are shuffling from the cord-cutting-with-reality recreational camp into the personal improvement camp. Theres increasing evidence that LSD and some other psychedelics may be less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol.

Over the last 20 years, the US Food and drug administration (FDA) has approved research on the medical and therapeutic effects of psychedelics with promising results. LSD could have a positive impact in treating anxiety in patients with terminal illness, post-traumatic stress disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorders. One study found that psychedelics could help reduce domestic violence among those with substance abuse problems. Another medical trial study in the UK is attempting to understand if LSD in small doses can cure depression.

Slowly, but surely, psychedelics are shuffling from the cord-cutting-with-reality recreational camp into the personal improvement camp. Theres increasing evidence that LSD and some other psychedelics may be less dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol

Yet, evidence is thin and dosing psychedelics for cognitive enhancements is even less understood. The fact that the Fadimans unscientific study based on self-reported results may be the largest body of research on this subject says something.

Governments and corporates have been largely unwilling to fund research even from a clinical benefits point of view. When the UK governments chief advisor on drugs, David Nutt, spoke positively about drugs and their clinical benefits, he was fired, leading him to claim that the way governments ban research on drugs is akin to the wrath Galileo faced from Catholic church for his research.

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But dramatics aside, theres been a steady chipping away of the taboos surrounding mind-altering substances. The legalisation and regulation of cannabis in the US is a case in point. UK, Thailand, New Zealand, Canada and more countries are soon to follow.

Could the microdosing movement reframe the world view on psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin? Will it become as common as sipping on coffee for stimulation?

When it comes to psychedelics, its the fear of the unknown that keeps us circumspect. And theres only one place thats made an attempt to imagine a future with them: science fiction.

Weve obviously got to talk about Brave New World. Aldous Huxleys nightmarish future where drugs and technology make us all sheep to be controlled by the powerful elite resonantes with possibility. Soma, the happiness drug in the story, disconnected people from reality, poisoned them and softened critical thinking.

Yet, a couple of decades after he wrote the novel, Aldous Huxley himself got sucked into the world of psychedelics (first mescaline, then LSD). He wrote about his experiences in the book The Doors of Perception where his tone had changed into one of appreciation of the ability of psychedlics to offer new insights. Huxley became such a proponent of the substance that he requested he be injected with LSD on his death bed.

Does this mean his dystopian imagination was unfounded? Or was it an ironic display of the very dystopia with Huxley becoming a slave to the drug?

The spectre of a Brave New World rises whenever we hear about using drugs for moral improvement. Prozac is known to reduce aggression and oxytocin increases empathy. If drugs could reduce deviant behaviour like violence, racism, etc, and governments get increasingly interested in them, will they be used as a tool of control? Perhaps they can start by chemically correcting those in the prison system.

Other writers have written about drugs causing altered world views. Philip K Dick, who employed psychedelics personally and as a plot device, often painted mind-bending escapes that hopped between transcendental knowledge to revelation of dark and decayed emotional states. His book, A Scanner Darkly, however, is a descend into the hell caused by drugs a dire warning on what substance abuse could cause.

Prozac is known to reduce aggression and oxytocin increases empathy. If drugs could reduce deviant behaviour like violence, racism, etc, and governments get increasingly interested in them, will they be used as a tool of control

Frank Herbert, the American science fiction writer best known for Dune, employed drugs as powerful tools that could generate prophetic visions and bend space-time in the series. He too, was not restricting psychedelics to just his novels.

Which of these worlds will psychedelics help create? A dark, dystopian one where were without control or one that provides us with elevated perceptiveness.

Stanislaw Lem, who outdoes Philip K Dick in mind-bendery in his book The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy, paints a world thats solved most of its problems with pharmacology. It feels utopian and dystopian at the same time. Which is the point Lem makes.

Imagine if someone from the past gets a glimpse of the things we do in the modern era. Theyd see us driving around poison-spewing, people-crushing metal monsters that zip on our roads. Or, look at us staring into screens all day long, lost and hooked. It may well seem like a complete dystopian nightmare. Yet, for those living it, it wouldnt nearly be as frightening.

We have some way to go before well all be shooting down smoothies laced with LSD. Could such small sub-psychoactive doses even make a difference? It is all just a placebo effect? What if we develop tolerance for small doses, leading to escalated dosing? Could we develop an addiction from prolonged use, leading to dependence?

Science needs to catch up and give answers. Given our long history with psychedelics, perhaps it is time.

Lead visual: Angela Anthony Pereira

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Is LSD the new coffee? - FactorDaily

In popular culture, LSD calls to mind stoned hippies, surrealist art and a Zen-inspired life philosophy. But for the Psychedelic Club at the University of Colorado at Boulder, psychedelics are more than just recreational drugs; they are a solution to mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and PTSD.

Through weekly meetings, the club promotes awareness about the therapeutic uses of psychedelics, which include LSD, shrooms and ecstasy. Speakers are invited to present on a variety of topics related to psychedelics, from their effects on the brains chemistry to strategies to reduce bad trips. The club also does outreach, including handing out leaflets about the positive effects of LSD.

We go up to anyone from a family with two young kids all the way up to people in their nineties, Nick Morris, founder of the group, says. We think its a universal message that shouldnt be age, race or gender discriminated. People are generally receptive, but not everyone shares the Psychedelic Clubs enthusiastic attitude towards these controversial drugs. Every once in a while you get someone who tries to argue with you, Morris says. Honestly, if you just listen to them and hear out their viewpoints, you can give them a little reassurance that [psychedelics] are not nearly as bad as they think.

Morris saw first-hand how psychedelics can change peoples lives for the better. One of his close friends, after unsuccessfully trying conventional therapies to treat his combat-induced PTSD, finally found relief in ecstasy. It basically gave him his life back, says Morris. Witnessing his friends positive experience with psychedelics, as well as wanting to dive into activism around a controversial topic, inspired Morris to start the club. Though most psychedelics are illegal in the United States, the club focuses on education and community rather than consumption. This focus has helped them avoid conflict with the administration and local law enforcement.

However, the university shut down some of the clubs initiatives, including a trip-sitting program, where people trained in psychedelic harm-reduction watched over others as they took psychedelics, and a drug testing program, which provided people with kits to test their drugs to make sure they were consuming what they thought they were. The group prohibits transactions during meetings, but, even so, it is not uncommon for students to come asking to buy or deal drugs. These students are always turned away. According to Morris, If something were to happen, we would get shut down.

The Psychedelic Club sustains interest in the group by changing up their events each year. We dont want people to think were predictable, so that keeps people coming back, Morris says. The club has gotten so popularsome meetings number over a hundred people, while the average meeting has thirtythat its leadership started a non-profit centered around psychedelic awareness, which has branches on college campuses at the University of Georgia and the University of North Dakota, as well as other non-university affiliated chapters in Denver, Chicago, Sacramento and New Mexico.

Getting a 501(c)3 status was a major achievement for the group, Morris said. Though he and the staff managing the non-profit arent paid, they believe so strongly in its mission that they do it on their own time. In Morris words, the best thing about being involved in the Psychedelic Club is the people who come up and thank them for what theyre doing. Honestly, thats what keeps us going, he says.

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Tune in, Turn on, Stay in School - Study Breaks

N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is famous for producing one of the most intense psychedelic experiences possible, catapulting users into a series of vivid, incapacitating hallucinations. But despite the kaleidoscope of variation on offer, the enduring mystery of DMT is the encounters it induces with 'entities' or 'aliens': "jewelled self-dribbling basketballs" or "machine elves", as the psychedelic missionary Terence McKenna described them.

McKenna, not really a scientist so much as a roving DMT performance poet, helped popularise the drug in the 70s, along with his own intuitive theories that the entities were evidence of alien life, or that DMT facilitated trans-dimensional travel.

Theyre really amazing, spine-tingling ideas, says Robin Carhart-Harris, head of psychedelic research at Imperial College, London. But, you know, arguably theyre bullshit.

Carhart-Harris is part of a team of researchers at Imperial College London on a mission to trap the machine elves. Two years after conducting the worlds first fMRI scan of volunteers that had ingested LSD,the results of which are still being pored over, the Imperial team is now performing a similar experiment with DMT. In the process, they are targeting the pseudoscientific ideas that envelop and overwhelm any discussion of the so-called spirit molecule.

What may be glamour for some people or may be baffling, such as 'machine elves' for us is an opportunity, said Chris Timmermann, a PhD candidate conducting the research. It wont be mundane, says Carhart-Harris. I dont think it kills the magic.

The researchers have already given 12 volunteers DMT in a pilot EEG study. In a matter of weeks, they will begin the first ever fMRI scan of DMTs effect on the brain, in research that is expected to continue for at least six months.

The primary goal is to map brain activity during the experience. But Carhart-Harris and Timmerman hope they will be able to draw some conclusions from the research one of which will rationalise psychedelic encounters with entities.

Perhaps [entity encounters] relate to the fact that, certainly throughout our lives, but especially early on in our lives, were surrounded by entities as in people, says Carhart-Harris, who has a background in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychology.

The first thing that we manage to focus our gaze on are people, and their eyes, usually. So it just follows that this will be a major part of the human psyche, and likely a major part of the unconscious.

Carhart-Harris hopes to show that an encounter with an entity may show a similar pattern of brain activity to an encounter with a person.

Its not a bulletproof approach, he says. But were working on the hypothesis that the experience of entity encounters rests on brain activity. And if it does, then why dont we look at the neural correlates of some elements of encounters [with] entities off the drug, and get a sense of where peoples brains are sensitive.

The researchers will also be paying close attention to the transcendental qualities of the DMT experience. By asking participants to rate the intensity of experience, they hope to capture, potentially, that leap into another world which characterises a trip.

The experiment is the latest from Imperial Colleges neuropsychopharmacology unit. Professor David Nutt is overseeing the study, Carhart-Harris and others designed it, and Timmerman is carrying it out.

They have a formidable record of safe experimentation with psychedelics, thanks to previous high-profile work with LSD and psilocybin. So securing permission to do the study was quite a smooth process, according to Carhart-Harris. Particularly when it came to the Ethics Review Committee.

They were quite warm really to us. We even had someone on the panel whose eyes were really lighting up, basically volunteering to be part of the study, he said. (The unnamed panel member was sadly not eligible to participate).

To make sure they get it right, the team has also called on the godfather of DMT research: Rick Strassman, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

Strassman gave advice on dosage and administration. He gave several hundred doses of the drug to volunteers between 1990-95, famously coining DMT the spirit molecule because of the wide range of mystical experiences participants reported.

Carhart-Harris is less enamoured by the use of non-secular, unscientific language to describe the DMT experience.

Its quite easy to hear a lot of pseudo-scientific musings and this idea of the spirit molecule is in that space, he said, later adding that psychedelics researchers worry that they, as individuals, will be stigmatised and thought of as not serious scientists.

DMT is best understood as a tool that can be used to understand consciousness, says Timmerman.

Its hard to find other tools out there that can alter consciousness so dramatically and so reliably, says Carhart-Harris.

The dosage the researchers have settled on is 20mg a quantity that is significantly more potent than it would be if smoked (the usual route of administration) due to its intravenous administration.

I would characterise it as a moderate-high dose of DMT, says Timmerman.

Participants will lie in the fMRI with an EEG cap on and their eyes closed. The whole experiment takes 20-30 minutes (the duration of a DMT trip), with researchers interjecting every two minutes to ask them to rate the intensity of the experience.

Were mostly looking at spontaneous brain activity, or resting brain activity, says Carhart-Harris. Because resting, especially under DMT you wouldnt really call it rest.

People are not able to do a task or engage with the external world in that state, agrees Timmerman.

Afterwards, the researchers will record the experience and how it unfolded over time from the participant in very fine detail a kind of peer-reviewed trip report.

12 people have already gone through the pilot, which involved just an EEG scan. A further 20 will go through the full EEG and fMRI scan.

One question that they do not expect to answer is why DMT exists in nature. The DMT question is more for DMT enthusiasts, perhaps, says Carhart-Harris.

But the question of why humans possess a specific serotonin receptor that DMT binds to is a big one, he says.

As far as we know its one particular serotonin receptor thats key to how these drugs work in the brain. Its a big curiosity and a question that is unanswered in science. What are these receptors for, and what do they do?

The answer may provide clues to the ability of psychedelic drugs to facilitate behavioural change. Studies have shown that they can be useful in the treatment of addictive or compulsive behaviours.

Finding a clinical application for DMT is not the primary outcome, however, says Timmerman. These are all completely healthy people. So its hard to draw a direct inference on mental health, because theyre all well."

But preliminary results from the pilot suggest that DMT improves mood. There is a significant drop in the depression scores, says Timmerman.

And ultimately the team at Imperial, like scientists from all over the world making discoveries in the so-called psychedelic renaissance, envision a future when psychedelics can be prescribed by doctors and made available in a therapeutic setting.

In many ways thats the ultimate aim, says Carhart-Harris.

If Imperials research already has the drug prohibitionists hyperventilating, the model Carhart-Harris proposes for the NHS will send them into an altered state of consciousness. It is the administration of psilocybin and DMT (not, it should be stated, at the same time) in a series of therapeutic treatments, for those conditions where they are shown to be effective.

People will realise that its quite expensive to develop this kind of treatment, he says. Because its a treatment model that requires some psychological preparation, quite a few hours of staff time to look after this patient, and ward space.

And how is this possible in the shell of the National Health Service that we have?

The advantage of DMT is its short acting time. Several short DMT treatments, which last under an hour, could be used to supplement psilocybin treatments, which would have effects that last for several hours.

Carhart-Harris and the rest of the team may be calling out the falsehoods people project onto the DMT experience. But they are not the only myths to ruin. He is just as comfortable providing the science that underpins the advocacy of psychedelic drugs in a therapeutic context.

Done right, with all the appropriate caveats and safeguards, it could be a revolution in psychiatry, he says. Its quite a reasonable thing to say.

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The brain on DMT: mapping the psychedelic drug's effects - Wired.co.uk

Published: Jun 30, 2017, 3:34 pm Updated: Jun 30, 2017, 3:34 pm

By The Cannabist Staff

Featured guest is hallucinogen- and psychedelics-loving comedian Shane Mauss, host of the Here We Are podcast.

LOTS TO TALK ABOUT

Mixing standup and science talks, A Good Trip brings intelligent talks about psychedelics on the road.

A hallucinogenics pro weighs in on the question: Is marijuana a gateway drug?

People are flocking to 420-friendly states and some are talking of religious experiences from cannabis. So, where is the best psychedelic tourism?

TOP MARIJUANA NEWS

Chris Christie calls legal marijuana hearing a dog-and-pony show: New Jersey lawmakers effort to legalize marijuana has failed to convince Gov. Chris Christie to get behind the change, meaning it will be on the states next governor to decide the issue. Christie ridiculed a hearing last week in the Democrat-led Senate on new legislation making its way through the statehouse to legalize marijuana as a dog-and-pony show. Im not changing my mind on that, said Christie. Report by The Associated Press Michael Catalini

Colorado Supreme Court: Man who caused explosion while making hash oil not covered by legalization: A 21-year-old Colorado Springs man who blew up his homes laundry room after brewing hash oil with a butane burner still needed a license to manufacture the oil after Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled. The Colorado Supreme Court decision reversed a district court ruling that dismissed a pot manufacturing criminal charge against Austin Joseph Lente on the basis that he was protected under Colorados Amendment 64, which legalized recreational marijuana. Report by The Denver Posts Kirk Mitchell

Special delivery: Postman allegedly delivered weed along with mail: A U.S. Postal Service mail carrier is in jail after authorities discovered he was allegedly delivering a lot more than letters and magazines on his Chicago route. Report by The Associated Press

Toby Keith gets high with Willie Nelson in new Wacky Tobaccy video: Toby Keith swore hed never smoke weed with Willie Nelson again. Back in the 2003 tribute Weed With Willie, a toke of the Red Headed Strangers top-shelf herb had Keith crooning, My partys all over before its begins Ill never smoke weed with Willie again. Fast-forward to Summer 2017, and Saudi Arabias fave country music artist is back to smoking marijuana with Willie in his new party song, Wacky Tobaccy. Report by Cannabist staff

POT OR NOT

The record before this week was 7-out-of-10 can Shane beat Amandas high score?

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Cannabist Show: He's psychedelic comedian Shane Mauss - The Cannabist

After the 1970s Controlled Substance Act criminalized all psychedelics, there was a long period of silence in US psychedelic research. That has changed in the last 20 years; since 2002, as many as 26 studies were approved, including landmark research on MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans suffering PTSD. But with President Donald Trump in office, is the resurrected research movement in danger?

The people really calling the shots are those far closer to Trump than those running the FDA.

It depends. Two agencies are crucial for the burgeoning field: the US Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Some researchers see the Trump FDA as potentially helpful, since new commissioner Scott Gottlieb has made statements in favor of scaling back regulations. Other researchers are leery of the DEA. Thats because the DEA is overseen by the Department of Justice under the supervision of Jeff Sessions, who has requested that Congress allow him to prosecute marijuana cases in states that have legalized medical marijuana. Its not yet clear which agency will set the psychedelic agenda, and increased enforcement action from the Justice Department could scare scientists away from the field.

I do feel very optimistic," says Rick Doblin, executive director of psychedelic research nonprofit MAPS, a leading funder of psychedelic research. "One of the Trump administration's main things is lower regulation. They're pro business and pro making it easier for Big Pharma to get drugs through the FDA. And that benefits us."

But the FDA isnt as far up the food chain as other influential agencies. DEA licenses are required for psychedelic research. And Trump has given Attorney General Sessions plenty of leeway in drug policy, says Erik Altieri, executive director of marijuana-focused nonprofit NORML. It seems that the people really calling the shots are those far closer to Trump than those running the FDA, says Altieri. The proof will be in the pudding here about who actually sways Trump's opinion, and what he will be willing to tolerate.

Psychedelics remain Schedule 1. They are categorized among a class of substances purported to have no medical application and high risk of abuse, and bearing the harshest penalties for recreational use. Any clinical use of psychedelics in the US must go through a rigorous DEA licensing and FDA approval process.

Many researchers hope that the FDA will maintain the framework developed by a unit called Pilot Drug Evaluation Staff, which first greenlit pilot studies with psychedelics in the early 1990s. Before, the FDA had denied approving or shelved research protocols with psychedelics. But in large part because of practices established by Pilot Drug, like expedited drug review and direct scientist-to-scientist communication between researchers and the FDA, psychedelic research restarted, and has only gained momentum since.

The FDA is fairly apolitical, says psychedelic research chemist and pharmacologist David Nichols. He is the president of the Heffter Research Institute, which has funded 12 FDA-approved clinical psychedelic studies since Pilot Drug. Congress would have to push to change that, and he doesnt believe that will happen. We're just a flea on the back of this dog.

Though the FDA is more friendly to psychedelics than ever before, getting the approval to test compounds is a long and complicated process. Doblin hopes that Trumps FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb will simplify it, thanks to a key Trump administration talking point: deregulation. Gottliebs public statements endorse cutting regulatory processes in favor of quickened drug approvals though he hasnt specifically addressed psychedelic research.

But deregulation has risks. Regulations are not arbitrary rules; each is set in place for a specific reason. They are designed to reduce risk during studies and prevent harm to patients after drugs go to market. The unintended consequences [of deregulating] would require so much wisdom on the part of the people making the changes to be staggering, says Dan Spyker, a former medical officer for the FDAs Pilot Drug and deputy division director. You can't just say, 'Well, I'm going to cut the regs.' It's complicated.

Jag Davies, director of communications strategy at Drug Policy Alliance, agrees. Overall I would be more concerned about the danger of erasing our food and drug safety standards than excited about the possibility of easier psychedelic research, says Davies. I don't think ultimately that's a good thing.

Another federal department has begun to set an increasingly conservative tone towards illicit drugs under Trump: the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions renewed drug war highlighted by his two-page memo ordering DOJ staff to pursue harsher sentences for drug offenders, and by his pitch to Congress that the DOJ should be allowed to prosecute medical marijuana providers has already given drug reform advocates new reason to worry. We've really stepped into mass mobilization of preparing for the worst, quite frankly, says NORMLs Altieri.

Marijuana is not a psychedelic, and yet its subject to even stricter research regulation. In addition to the requisite DEA and FDA sign-offs, the National Institute on Drug Abuse must supply the cannabis for all studies. Marijuana is legal in eight states and permitted for medical use in 30, so a hardline stance on marijuana is likely to chill all research on illicit drugs, says Altieri. Psychedelics arent legal anywhere, so getting approval for a drug like psilocybin might seem like a bigger ask to regulators, he says.

Historically, Health and Human Services which supervises FDA defers to the DOJ when it comes to drug policy, says Davies. For instance, during Bill Clintons presidency, HHS secretary Donna Shalala proposed federally funded needle exchanges a harm-reduction program. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey overruled her. Psychedelics researchers must obtain DEA licenses to conduct their studies; if Sessions wants to block drug research, he can make the license application process harder, Davies says.

Though researchers know more than ever about psychedelic drugs and some studies have found promising potential uses for them none of the research renaissance has translated into law enforcement policy. These laws target people of color and low-income communities, and mandate incarceration for possession. Sessions is unwilling to consider research suggesting medical marijuana may actually help some people; it is unlikely hell push for any kind of reform for psychedelics, either. And hes taken a hard line on sentencing.

MAPSs Doblin thinks MDMA will be made legal for prescription use, in tandem with psychotherapy, by 2021. But, he adds, I can feel both optimistic, and it's still a long road ahead. He views Sessions hard line on sentencing as the other sort of counterpoint to his optimism.

Despite their working relationship with the FDA, researchers are fearful that a Sessions-led Justice Department might undo all the progress made since the 90s.Its just so scary Jeff Sessions and the drug war, and that we would go backwards after all this work and money, says Ann Mithoefer, co-therapist on the ongoing MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and PTSD studies funded by MAPS, alongside her husband Michael. Even Doblin acknowledges that the overarching political climate is very negative.

Mithoefer and Doblin continue to place their trust in the FDA, even though the DOJ is becoming more hostile. A May 11th meeting with the FDA about the Mithoefers MAPS-funded MDMA Phase 3 protocol was beyond positive, Doblin says. We came to an agreement on all the elements of the studys design.

The biggest challenge for the study right now isnt federal regulation. Its fundraising. Most US voters dont support legal medical use of most illicit drugs, so funding is difficult. And thats one final place where Trump administration policy may bog down psychedelic research.

The Trump administration tends to make decisions about mental health care and substance abuse treatment without consulting the body of scientific literature thats built up over the decades. Trumpcare restricts access to mental health care and substance abuse treatment programs. Thats because the highest priority appears to be budget cuts. So Gottliebs hands-off rhetoric might not mean much, since HHS secretary Tom Price is more interested in defunding his department than deregulating it. Trumps proposed budget for 2018 has a 16.2 percent cut for HHS.

Psychedelic research has never received government grants from HHS departments, relying instead on donors to nonprofits like MAPS and Heffter. So, the current administrations intent to slash the US science budget wont matter there. But if more scientists have to find private funding to continue their work, psychedelics may no longer be a priority for donors.

Thats a setback. In fact, Heffters Nichols had hoped the recent surge in compelling clinical data would encourage HHS to lend its funding support to psychedelic research. The studies are expensive; they can cost more than a million dollars. But if independently funded work had shown enough benefits, Nichols thought, it seemed possible that government funding might be forthcoming. That hope died when Trump took office.

"The funding will be the biggest problem, Nichols says. I don't see legal problems, I don't see clinical problems so much. The real problem I see is what the proposed Trump budget would do, not just to psychedelic research, but to biomedical research in general. And it would be a real disaster."

Stephie Grob Plante is the daughter of Charles Grob, a clinical psychedelic researcher and Heffter board member. He was not consulted for this story.

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The war on drugs is back. Will psychedelic drug research survive? - The Verge

People have been altering their perceptions of reality for as long as there have been people, and in 2017, the newest and oldest tools for human transcendence are coming together: lately were eating psychedelic mushrooms to heighten or otherwise enhance our experience of virtual reality.

The relationship between people and psychedelic substances dates all the way back to prehistoric times. In his book Food of the Gods, notorious ethnobotanist and cultural critic Terence McKenna lays out his stoned ape theory of evolution, hypothesizing that hallucinogenic mushrooms were back in the day a staple food item, readily available from the ground. He suggests that these humble fungi acted as neurological lightning bolts, jumpstarting the brain development that saw Homo erectus turn into Homo sapien about 200,000 years ago.

McKennas suggestion is that psychedelics made the human mind modern. It makes at least a degree of sense: the digital, high-tech species that straps a virtual reality headset on its face was bound to first have a low-tech method for making the authentic world disappear. To put it reductively, you dont get to the Oculus Rift without going through a few magic mushrooms first.

Were alive at a time that we have access to both the new stuff and the old stuff, so what happens when these two perception-shifters tagteam each other? Whats it like to escape reality in analog and digital at the same time?

Alexandre Tomic, co-founder of Slotsmillion VR, the worlds first virtual reality casino, agreed to talk with Inverse on the record about combining psychedelics and VR.

My most recent psychedelic experience in virtual reality was about 9 months ago, says Tomic, who recalls using Tilt Brush, the virtual reality app by Google that lets users doodle in 3D space, and a horror video game.

I ordered mushrooms from a Dutch website, ate them dry, then played Tilt Brush and admired the magical colors. After that, I played Alien Isolation and screamed like a 17-year-old girl.

Tomic suggests that psychedelics work to make ones experience of virtual reality more real. The pixels are more prominent in virtual reality displays, so theres often a grid- or matrix-like effect as you play. Mushrooms make this effect stronger, resulting in more hallucinations you perceive the full environment as well as the grid that makes the environment possible. Super trippy.

Our present-day relationship with psychedelics doesnt much resemble that of our stoned ancestors. This category of drug were talking LSD, mushrooms, MDMA, and the like is federally classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, a family that includes heroin. Though psychedelics are federally criminalized, medical research professionals acknowledge them as bursting with potential for treating victims of trauma, PTSD, and other disorders.

See also: Why a soap company is investing millions to study MDMAs effects on PTSD

Psilocybin has been shown to be safe and non-addictive, George Greer, medical director of the Heffter Research Institute, the mission of which is to study psilocybin for cancer distress and addiction with the highest standards of scientific research. Greers organization has the primary funding body for psilocybin research throughout Europe and the United States for more than 20 years. Hes even done a reddit AMA about his work.

Early results indicate that, when used with medical screening and therapeutic support, it could be more effective at treating some significant psychiatric diseases than existing pharmaceutical approaches, and without having to take a medication every day, Greer tells Inverse. A single treatment has improved symptoms for months.

Virtual reality has also demonstrated therapeutic efficacy since the early 1990s. Ralph Lamson of the Kaiser Permanente Psychiatric Group cured his own acrophobia with VR technology between 1994 and 1995, then set up a scientific study to try to do the same thing with 40 study participants; 38 of them showed significant improvement.

See also: The scientific difference between LSD and mushrooms

Because this technology figuratively enables you to go anywhere and do anything, exposure therapy becomes completely safe. However real the sensation of fear and dread may be as a virtual spider crawls toward you, or as you peer over a steep ledge, nothing inside of virtual reality goggles can actually touch your body or harm you. The Heffter research team holds that psychedelics unexplored potential requires careful scientific study before they can be elevated to the status of mainstream medicine.

This careful scientific study is also being carried out by the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies, whose research focuses on MDMA, an acronym for the chemical name 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. MDMA has the greatest promise for PTSD, and we believe that it has the greatest chance to be approved by the FDA soonest among all psychedelics, Brad Burge, communications director for MAPS, a Santa Cruz, California-based non-profit, tells Inverse.

I think the use of VR to help cultivate a therapeutic setting could be quite valuable in the applications of psychedelic medicine, Merete Christiansen, executive associate at MAPS, tells Inverse.

Theres also the government: the Department of Defense has been actively funding virtual reality therapy research for soldiers returning from war, but theres no word about the DoD combining VR and MDMA, although research into using MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder has a number of backers and research is beginning.

Tomic, the virtual reality casino operator, contextualizes his VR trips as an experiment in user interfaces.

We know when applications make information visual, that information speaks more directly to your brain. Mushrooms plus VR means we can create the interface to display this information, and give our brains the ability to see patterns that you couldnt see before, Tomic tells Inverse. You become able to relate things that seems completely unrelated.

Virtual reality and psychedelic drugs both have associations with nonproductive, pleasure-seeking behavior, but Tomic says this mentality should not figure into your VR trips. He specifies that does this home alone, in a work context; Im working on myself, not doing it recreationally. When youre young, you seek pleasure. When youre old, you seek happiness.

Pleasure is for losers, says the virtual reality casino entrepreneur.

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Psychedelics and Virtual Reality Make a Trendy but Illegal Therapy - Inverse

Perhaps it is unsurprising that Ana Lily Amirpours sophomore movie, The Bad Batch, is controversialit depicts a harsh dystopian desert world in which characters are dismembered for food and society is brutally divided into the haves and the have-nots (the titular bad batch). Much of the conversation online about the movie, though, has not focused on the political allegory or graphic nature of the films violence, but whom that violence is aimed at. During a screening earlier this month at Chicagos Music Box, a woman named Bianca Xunise asked Amirpour the following questions: Was it a conscious decision to have all the black people have the most gruesome deaths on screen? And then, what was the message you were trying to convey with having this white woman kill a black mother in front of her child and then have her assume to be the mother figure for this little black girl?

Amirpour responded that another white character has her neck snapped and her ribs consumed, which is to say nothing of the brutality that the characters who survive face (it seemed fairly clear to me that one of the movies questions is whether its better to live or die in the violent world depicted). Amirpour abruptly shut Xunise down, ultimately ending with, I dont make a film to tell you a message.

Now, this filmmaking philosophy is not something the Iranian-American Amirpour invented on the spot. In 2014, when I interviewed her about her previous film, the acclaimed vampire tale A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, she wouldnt tell me whether she agreed with those who labeled that film feminist: I am afraid of categorization in general. I dont really see a usefulness to it. For me, what it does is it stops thinking. Amirpours films are provocative but in a way that shirk literal questions of intent. Nonetheless, Xunise tweeted the next day about how she felt humiliated by Amirpours response, and later shared many more thoughts on Amirpours perceived insensitivity (including casting Jason Momoa as a Cuban character despite his lack of Latin descent in his mixed-race heritage) in an interview with Affinity.

Amirpour was in New York promoting The Bad Batch yesterday, so I talked to her about her movie, some of its themes like cannibalism and psychedelic drug use, as well as her response to Xunise. An edited and condensed transcription of our discussion is below.

JEZEBEL: What do you think about the proliferation of movies and TV about cannibalism thats currently underway in pop culture?

ANA LILY AMIRPOUR: Its so weird. We did all make them simultaneously. That means three years ago, [Nicolas Winding Refn] would have been doing [his]. I remember hearing about it when I was editing. The assistant editor I got for my film was like, Im doing a cannibal movie for Refn. Its called The Neon Demon. I was like, Oh shit, awesome. I knew it would be bonkers different. So its just this interesting weird thing. I havent seen [Julia Ducournaus Raw] either.

Its so good.

Yeah, Im gonna see it. When I go back to L.A., Im gonna take Xanax for a week and just watch shit. Just sit on my couch and Netflix shit. I dont know what her film is about, but when I saw Refns and thought about my own, its like you catch onto this whiff or vibe that people are just tearing each other to pieces on this fucking planet. So you just kind of catch onto that. It becomes a shared, cumulative mindhow we feel right now.

And as the earth heats up, it seems like something that might be necessary in our not-so-distant future.

Fuck man, would you do it?

I think I would. Im enough of a pragmatist that I would if I had to.

Yeah, right? People value being alive and staying on earth. One of the things [I was thinking about] when I was making the filmand I think its movies Im attracted to in general, like Westerns or any survival movie, I love like 127 Hours or Touching the Voidis when you reduce a human to barebones survival, what are you able to do? Its like minute by minute. I always wonder what things would come out.

When I interviewed you about A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, you told me that you hate death. Its interesting, then, that you made a movie more brutal than the one we previously discussed.

I think its way more brutal. I think vampires let you off the hook. Everybody knows a vampire is a vampire and theres always rules and they get to get off the hook for killing. But its a vampire! She has to kill Theyre romantic. This is more its rough on earth. This is how I see America. Its my love letter to America.

Is this love letter a critique too?

I mean, were tearing each other to pieces, man! For reasons much harder to understand than hunger, actually. We are pretty fucking heinous to each other. Theres hermits out there. And theres also the potential for one day doing a different type of behavior, heading out of the whole wall that is around you, mentally or literally and seeing in a different way. This is just me getting way heady about it.

Do you personally feel torn apart, or is this something youre observing?

Theres times that I do. Yeah, all the time, actually, I think. Yes. All the time, now that you mention it. I look for comfort, you know, like we all do. Its a survival skill, you cant just sit here and constantly be ravaged by and overwhelmed by how crazy the chaos is. I try to find comfort but its fleeting and its constantly changing and the things that give you comfort might not a moment later.

Regarding the Q&A in Chicago, on Twitter, you said, My only mistake was not talking to [Xunise]. I dismissed her. How would you answer that question if you could go back in time?

Its hard to get basically called a racist when youre not. Thats an unpleasant thing. In the moment, I was thinking, Im not a politician. Its almost like you expect me to have no feelings when Im in this moment, like a politician has no feelings. They just say, This is what Im saying to you. Im a human being and I have feelings and what youre saying is personal and horrifying to hear. It jarred me. And she kind of kept repeating, and I was like, I dont know what to say. I thought about it. She was like, Whats your message? Whats your message? I guess I thought about that.

What I would say if I had a time machine and I could go back, first of all, is I would have made an announcement to the crowd that Im 30 percent hard of hearing, cause people dont know that and I have to get things repeated. I know she said I was being rude, but Im hard of hearing. And then I would have said, I dont have a message but I am asking questions. The question is does one violent act justify another? I dont have the answers but thats the question I want to ask. You have to go through it.

Did you read the Affinity interview?

I couldnt bear to fully read it. When I see that stuff, its horrible. I get the gist of it just from what I see. You must have read the whole thing.

I did.

The other thing I thought of is, like, Maria, Miami Mans baby mama [the black character whose child is then adopted by the films protagonist Arlen], is a deeply sympathetic character. At their [cannibal] dinner scene, shes the one person out loud calling out the world and their reality. Shes deeply sympathetic. Shes a devoted mother. Shes gonna do whatever she has to to keep getting along. She also calls out exactly their situation to Arlen. She puts it right on the table. We are the same. Are you gonna fuckin do this? The thing is everybody is the main star of the movie of their own life. So thats how we are. Im the star of the movie of my life and youre the star of the movie of yours. Everyone believes in their own movie, and they intersect and theres this conflict. [Arlen] does do this heinous, horrible thing and it is the fuckin most gruesome thing to go through.

Theres a picture of you in what appears to be blackface...

I was dressed like Weezy. Im brown!

But was it blackface?

No! Im brown. Im a fuckin Iranian girl. I did the tattoos and I put fronts in and I have a dreadlock wig and I was Lil Wayne, cause I love Lil Wayne.

I wonder if you feel that you have a disproportionate burden resulting from the expectation that what you will do will be especially politicized and meaningful because you are a woman of color whos a director, and thats so rare.

I wonder.

Is that your experience?

I dont know, Scott Derricksons a good friend of mine and he directed Doctor Strange and he got a lot of I feel like these conversations are important. People should have conversations about what theyre upset about. I guess theres this need to do that and especially now it feels like everyones upset all the time in America. And the internet definitely is the internet. Im, like, in the middle of this. Im putting my movie out. Its a crazy, fucked-up movie, its in-your-face, a visceral experience, and I know that. I wrote it three years ago, and there was no Trump. Its so fuckin trippy to me, I dont even fully know what to say. But I will say if empathy is something people are at all interested in, I do think that listening is the key, crucial thing. And what Ive noticed in the last few weeks is, like, no one listening. Theres very little listening. Thats my big observation from this moment of time on a press tour.

I think you pay for being subtle or ambiguous sometimes, as much as those sensibilities can benefit your art as well. People ask you, What is the message? A filmmaker like you isnt interested in dictating like that, but those questions are inevitable as is you being confronted by them given the state of human connectedness.

I think it was two things: Whatever happened in that room between me and her was two people in a room. And then this whole other thing that happened on the internet, I feel like if all these people have then come to a conclusion about a film or something they havent seen, what is that? Is that listening? What is that herd mentality? I dont know, I dont understand it.

This movie has a very extended trip sequence. When we last talked, you also mentioned finding psychedelic experiences valuable. How often do you have a psychedelic experience?

I need to be in a very specific environment. I dont take it lightly. I like to go to Burning Man if I get the opportunity, if Im not shooting or editing a movie. I havent been able to go since 2013, but Im going at the end of this summer, a much-needed break. But a movie can be a psychedelic experience. Love and sex can be a psychedelic experience. I go running, I ran a marathon last month, and it gives you perspective and, I guess, a feeing of freedom. Freedom, man. However you can feel free.

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Director Ana Lily Amirpour on Cannibalism, Psychedelics, and 'Horrifying' Racism Allegations - Jezebel

Deep in the Mexican jungle, in a village so remote it's only accessible by boat, 74-year-old venture capitalist George Sarlo waited to meet his father.

It was the fall of 2012, and Sarlo knew his quest seemed absurd. After all, his father had been dead for decades, and he had no connection to this region of rainforests and beaches and its indigenous peoples. As the financier watched a shaman prepare a ceremonial cup of bitter brown ayahuasca, he couldn't believe that he'd agreed to swallow this nauseating psychedelic brew for a second time.

But he had traveled for 12 hoursvia plane, boat, and finally on footto this primeval place, a newly-built gazebo-like wood platform without walls. He had expressed his intentions in a group therapy session in preparation; he had eaten a special, bland diet and even halted other medications.

He also trusted his friend, Dr. Gabor Mat, a fellow Hungarian Holocaust survivor, who led the therapy and had arranged the trip. Mat is perhaps best known for his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, which explores his work with extremely traumatized injection drug users in Vancouver. He's been offering psychedelic therapy to trauma survivors since learning about the potential of ayahuasca in 2008.

A shaman had also assured Sarlo that the veil between worlds would be thinner at this time, during Mexico's Day of the Dead, which runs from Halloween through November 2. Since he had survived the past night's ordealwith all of its vomiting and visions of sepia-colored soldiershe figured he had little to lose by trying again and hoping that this time, his father would appear to him and the experience would start to make sense.

Though consuming ayahuasca in a Mexican jungle might complicate the picture, in many ways George Sarlo personifies the American Dream. In fact, his rags-to-riches refugee story is included as one of less than three-dozen examples in a new online exhibit on becoming an American at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington. As co-founder of Walden Venture Capital, which he helped start in 1974 and which currently manages some $107 million in funds, he has overseen the investment of billions of dollars.

"There are opportunities where relatively small amounts of money and energy can have a tremendous impact. So that's what I'm looking for."George Sarlo

His philanthropy has supported a humanitarian award in his name at the International Rescue Committee, two endowed chairs at the University of California, San Francisco, and funded Immigrant Point Lookout, a gorgeous spot in a beautiful public park: San Francisco's Presidio, near the Golden Gate Bridge.

Not far away, his own 1920s mansion also overlooks the bridge, taking in the entire 180-degree sweep of the bay. Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff lives next door; across the street is Robin Williams's former home.

When he sees me slack-jawed at the beauty of the place, Sarlo, who is slim with intense blue eyes, smiles impishly and says, "Not bad for a refugee, eh?"

He leads me out onto a wide terrace from which I can see cliffs, beach, surfers, and, in the misty distance, the Marin headlands and Mount Tamalpais. This is a long way from the dirt-floored home of his grandparents in jfehrt, Hungary, and from the modest apartment of his parentsa textile factory clerk and a seamstressin Budapest.

Until recently, however, Sarlo wasn't able to fully enjoy the material pleasures of his wealth, like racing sailing yachts and a country house with its own vineyard in Marin County. Nor could he appreciate the deeper comforts of friends, romance or family. "I don't have many memories of looking at him and feeling like he was in joy," says his daughter Gabrielle, now 50.

For much of his life, Sarlo suffered from one of depression's cruelest tortures: anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure. Anhedonia insidiously drains joy from formerly enjoyable social interactions and experiencesand worse, replaces it with dullness, dread, or apprehension.

In fact, Sarlo first realized that he might be depressed when both of his daughters complained about his constant dissatisfaction when they were teenagers. "They would ask, 'Dad, how come you're not having fun ever? You never laugh,'" he recalls. It wasn't until he began to find himself weeping for no discernible reason that he finally sought helpand began a journey that would ultimately take him to places he did not think it possible to reach.

These days, evidence of a psychedelic renaissance is everywhere in America. MDMAbest known as ecstasy, or, more recently, Mollyis set to begin Phase 3 clinical trials for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which means it could be FDA-approved and on the market as early as 2021. Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is at a similar stage, with research suggesting it can help with the anxiety and depression associated with cancer, and with quitting smoking.

Ketaminethe club drug, a.k.a. Special Kis already widely used for intractable depression, following a series of trials that showed it could act rapidly, unlike existing antidepressants, which often take weeks to have an effect.

Meanwhile, a YouGov poll this month found that nearly two thirds of American adults would personally be willing to try MDMA, Ketamine, or Psilocybin if it was proven safe to treat a condition they have. And in April, a scientific conference on research about drugs that produce visions, out-of-body and transcendent experiences like ayahuasca, psilocybin and LSD was attended by over 3,000 peopleincluding Tom Insel, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

Two widely-discussed recent booksAyelet Waldman's A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage and My Life and Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal's Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Worktout the benefits of these substances for everything from depression and PTSD to improved creativity and productivity.

"Microdosing," or taking such small amounts of these drugs that they don't noticeably alter consciousness, is fashionable in Silicon Valley and beyond. The psychedelic revival has such cultural currency that even the New Yorker got in on the action, running a snarky piece about ayahuasca use by Brooklyn hipsters.

Sarlo is one of the key forces behind the scenes in this revolution, funding research and connecting various experts with each other and the resources they need to advance their work. "He's a nexus," says Dr. Mat. "He's important both in the sense that he's a donor and he makes things happen, but also, his house is a bit like a clearinghouse."

According to Vicky Dulai, who runs Compassion for Addiction, one of Sarlo's charities, he has donated nearly two million dollars to psychedelic research so fara substantial sum given that neither the government nor Big Pharma is willing to fund the studies needed to get these drugs to market.

"He brings to the table a particular acumen," explains Bob Jesse, a former Oracle executive who is now a board member of the Usona Institute, a nonprofit organization that does what pharmaceutical companies usually do: in this case, funding, sponsoring, and managing trials of psilocybin, with the goal of supplying the market if a version of the drug does win approval.

Jesse explains, "There's a certain sensibility to a successful venture capitalist. You have to find good sectors and projects that are going to work, while a lot of people are pitching you ideas that probably aren't going to work. Another thing George offers is his inclination toward funding partnerships." Sarlo has given $100,000 to Usona.

Overall, Sarlo's main goal is to support research and find ways to de-stigmatize these medicines so that they can eventually be used legally, effectively, and safely, in appropriate contexts.

"For me, the most important thing is to find some of the tipping points," Sarlo says. "There are opportunities where relatively small amounts of money and energy can have a tremendous impact. So that's what I'm looking for. I hope I can spend all of my money, but I don't have enough opportunity."

The clash between science and spirituality that inevitably arises in the psychedelic worldand the politics that caused a backlash against the drugs in the 1960s and 70smakes this a difficult undertaking, even for someone with such fabulous wealth. In the age of Donald Trump and attorney general Jefferson Sessions, fear about a return to the dark ages of drug war demonization of all currently illicit psychoactive substances is palpable.

During his second ayahuasca experience, Sarlo's visions took him far away from the humid rainforest. This time, he says, he was transported to what appeared to be a snowy field at the edge of a wintry forest. Skeletal men stood like statues, frozen in marching formation. Some still wore remnants of the striped uniform of prisoners, signifying that they were Jewish men who had been conscripted to support the fascists in World War II.

"They are all covered with snow, except one skeleton is sticking out and for some reason I know it's my father," he tells me.

Inside Sarlo's brain, a drug called DMT had presumably reached the receptors it targets, which are normally occupied by the neurotransmitter serotonin, involved in regulation of mood and sensation. Like the classic psychedelics LSD and psilocybin, DMT is active at one particular serotonin receptor, known as 5HT2A, which is believed to be responsible for the drug's mind-expanding effects.

Ayahuasca is a potent mixture that includes segments of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine boiled together with either Psychotria viridis (chacruna) leaves or those from the Diplopterys cabrerana (chagropanga) plant. By itself, each ingredient isn't strongly psychoactive. But when boiled together, an enzyme inhibitor in the "vine of the soul" allows the DMT from the leaves to profoundly alter consciousness.

The brew has been used for millennia by South American peoples, and was brought to the attention of Western science by ethnobotanist Richard Schultes. American beatniks and psychedelic explorers first learned of it under its other nameYagein William Burroughs's and Allen Ginsberg's 1963 Yage Letters.

"He felt lighter to me and in many ways, what transpired over the next few years in terms of our relationship was miraculous."Gabrielle Sarlo

Sarlo last saw his father when he was just four years old, in 1942. He remembers the last day he spent with him: He had watched his dad go pale as he read the telegram that told him he would be conscripted. But the next morning, when the elder Sarlo headed out the door, he didn't even wake his son for a farewell kiss. "I thought that he didn't come back because I was a bad boy," his son recalls. "That's what I carried with me."

Tripping in Mexico, and sensing a presence next to him on that frozen field in Europe, which he knew intuitively to be his father's spirit, Sarlo asked the questions he'd been wrestling with for years. First, "Why didn't you say goodbye?" He says that he heard a familiar voice respond: "I didn't want to wake you. I thought I would be back the same day. I was known as a pretty clever guy. I thought: I can get out of this stuff."

Then, Sarlo says, "I ask the big question: 'Did you love me?'" His father indicated the skeleton that was most clearly sticking out; its mouth was open, as if to speak. And he said, "'Look at me. That's my last breath and with my last breath I blessed you and promised to guard you all of your life.'"

Suddenly, after that "interaction," years of pain began to dissolve and ebb away. The burden of feeling fatherless, unworthy, and unlovable; the fear that had dominated his childhood as a Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied Hungary, when every day brought new restrictions, starvation, crowding. The bomb that dropped into the courtyard but didn't explode; the incident in which he'd hidden under a man's coat on a train and watched a soldier's bayonet miraculously slide past him, without injuring him or causing him to cry out.

Decades of accumulated trauma and depression started to lift. "I felt weak. I felt lighter. I felt relief. I can't say that I was happy, but I felt good," Sarlo says.

More remarkably, the transformation has persisted over the years since that initial experience. "He changed in so many ways," his daughter Gabby says. "He became kinder, more compassionate, more understanding of others, more open. He felt lighter to me and in many ways, what transpired over the next few years in terms of our relationship was miraculous He's turned into the person that I had kind of always hoped to have as my dad."

Psychedelic research is fraught with paradox: for one thing, ingesting a chemical that clearly alters specific receptors in one's very physical and material brain can produce an experience that feels as though you have transcended time, space, your bodyeven the universe. A chemical transforms not just your brain, but your mind.

Modern science can study these age-old substances with great precision. But even if you're lying in an fMRI brain imaging machine surrounded by state-of-the-art technology while tripping, the only language that begins to describe what you feel is that of mysticismand all the fuzzy spiritual stuff that hard scientists often dismiss as "woo."

That leaves people who want to blend the scientific and the shamanic facing difficult questions. For example: Did George Sarlo really meet his father? And how much does the literal truth of these experiences even matter?

For his part, Sarlo says that at first, part of him reasoned, "'OK, so this has been on your mind for many years. It accumulated all this yearning in your subconscious and when you took that medicine, something opened up and you saw and heard what you wanted to see and hear.'"

"The other part of me thought, There is some kind of a world beyond what we know."

This led him to research the history of the Hungarian slave laborers and the way they were likely to have died during the warand he found nothing that falsified the scenario he experienced. His father could have died just the way he saw in his vision; it wasn't historically incorrect. On the other hand, freezing to death in a Northern European forest when you aren't given adequate food or clothing is not especially unlikely.

"It's a great question," says Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, who heads psychedelic research at Imperial College in London and has studied psilocybin for depression. "It's poignant. It's come up in our trial and it seems to come up for everyone. These apparent recollections feel so real."

"What really happens when we die? We don't know. Don't act like you do."Roland Griffiths

But while medicine can easily incorporate new psychiatric drugs that show efficacy on validated scales, it will have a far more difficult time accommodating treatments that leave some patients believing they have communed with the dead, discovered the afterworldor even met God. Medicine and religion are already the site of many fraught interactions: to bring a treatment into the mainstream, clinical trials and clear measures of progress are needed; otherwise, insurers and politicians will dismiss psychedelic therapy as sheer quackery.

Mat, who uses ayahuasca in clinical work where it is legal, says, "People have all kinds of visions. I'm not ever concerned or engaged with their literal content, but with their emotional-spiritual message. They convey powerful truths, and my work is to help people identify and integrate those truths For the purposes of the work, it doesn't matter what I believe."

Carhart-Harris agrees that therapeutically, the reality of the content of the vision doesn't matter all that much. "Even though I don't believe that he transcended time and space, I do believe that the experience is of George's mind, and I also believe it's meaningful."

If someone forms a sincere belief about life after death in the context of healing from depression or trauma, Carhart-Harris adds, what counts most is that recovery and its robustness and longevity. He explains, "I think it has an emotional meaning and value that I wouldn't want to depreciate. But equally, I wouldn't want to lose my scientific integrity by sort of playing into the experience and saying that it's real."

Mark Kleiman, professor of public service at New York University's Marron Institute and an expert on drug policy, doesn't view psychedelic experiences as "truth," even though he says the drugs have significant potential. "I'm still stuck in the Enlightenment," he says. "It matters." In other words, if many Americans are determined to reject "fake news" and "alternative facts," we need to separate religious ideas from empirical reality.

But Roland Griffiths, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, is less certain. "You're asking the unanswerable," he tells me. In 2000, Griffiths actually won US government approval to conduct the landmark study of psilocybin experience in healthy participants, which began the research renaissance in this field.

"Encountering one's deceased relative is a variation of the mystery of what happens upon death," he says, noting how the same types of reports are common in near-death experiences. He acknowledges that reductionists interpret such an experience as a psychological response generated by the brain, but in fact, he says, the mystery of consciousness remains.

"What are we doing here, anyway? How did we come to be conscious? What really happens when we die? We don't know. Don't act like you do. So, I'm very comfortable even as a scientist to say there are things we simply don't know. I'm willing to rest in the mystery."

Another important and more practical question is raised by the visions and emotions people report while under the influence of these drugs. That is, does the psychological experience of feeling as though you have, say, healed your relationship with your father actually cause brain changes that lead to psychological recoveryor is that just a side effect of pharmacological alterations in brain receptors, which make the real difference?

The pharmaceutical industry and government agencies like the National Institute on Mental Health are betting these are mere side effects. In other words, they are trying to develop new medications that have the lasting healing effects of psychedelics without the ordeal or mystical experience recreational users have tended to seek.

For example, there is ongoing research aimed at developing a drug that would have the same depression-lifting effect of ketamine, but without the out-of-body trip. (Success here would also have the financially convenient effect of creating products thatunlike existing psychedelics could be patented.) Johnson & Johnson, Naurex, and AstraZeneca have all been testing such drugs.

Lisa Monteggia, professor of neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, has studied how ketamine works to fight depression. Based on her own research, she thinks the trippy effects can be dissociated from the therapeutic ones. The right dose of the right compound, correctly timed, could "enable the design of treatment strategies against neuropsychiatric disorders without the unwanted side effects of these drugs," she tells me.

But many of the psychedelic researchers think this quest is unlikely to bear fruit: indeed, so far, ketamine-like compounds without trippy effects haven't reliably beaten placebo.

This suggests that the emotional experience, its psychological content, and the way you make meaning out of the trip may really matter. Several studies now show that people who have the most intense elements of a "mystical" experience during psychedelic sessions are more likely to experience positive change.

These features include feeling a sense of "oneness" with others and the universe, a dissolution of the self ("nonduality"), a feeling of awe or sacredness, the sense that time and space have been transcended, an experience of great peace, bliss, and calmnessand an overwhelming sense that what has occurred is meaningful and represents a deep truth.

For example, in a study that used psilocybin to help smokers quit, success was strongly linked with having a complete mystical experience. In this research, 80 percent successfully quit smokinga rate that is far higher than seen with other methods.

Similarly, research on psilocybin use for anxiety and depression associated with terminal cancer also found a strong link between feeling these mystical emotions and long-term reduction in distress. And a study of ketamine found that greater "out of body" feelings were linked with better odds of depression relief.

"It's theoretically possible, but it strikes me as being improbable," Griffiths says of the idea of taking the "trip" out of psychedelic medicine. "Part of the nature of the experience that people have and the way people explain why they change has to do with their interpretation and the meaning of the experience so this is very much about meaning-making."

"I think it's wishful thinking," agrees Carhart-Harris. However, he notes that reports about mood lifting effects of "micro-dosing" do suggest that at least some change may be possible without a full-blown trip.

"I think the core factor here is, 'Is the mind being loosened?'" he adds. "Even with micro-dosing and with the higher doses, it's all about a loosening of mental constraintsand with that loosening an enhanced possibility for insight."

In fact, one possible explanation of how these drugs work could bridge the psychology of the experience and the neuroscience of receptor change. The idea is that the receptor changes temporarily allow conscious access to part of what you might call the brain's "operating system," (OS) which is normally inaccessible.

This part of the OS includes ideas and beliefs we adopted as children to make sense of the world, which structure how we experience everything that follows. If these beliefs are harmfulperhaps shaped by trauma or otherwise distortedaccessing them during a vision might help integrate and update them in a way that leads to lasting change.

By the mid-1960s, over 1,000 papers had been published on LSD alone before increasing levels of recreational use by hippies sparked a worldwide panic and an international ban. Even though much of this data did not meet the standards used today, it did show promise, suggesting that psychedelic therapy could potentially have lasting positive results on those suffering from alcoholism and other addictions, as well as anxiety related to cancer.

Crucially, today's studies suggest fears about long-term damage from the classic hallucinogens like LSD and psilocybin are overblown, and relate to use of inappropriate doses in uncontrolled settings without careful preparation and support during and afterwards.

"There certainly are risks and it's important not to minimize those risks," says Griffiths. "But they are not as devastating or prevalent as would have been imagined based on the media coverage and the cultural impressions that emerged from the 1960s."

A common fear, for many, is that they will experience hell rather than heavencoming away not with a sense that the universe is benign and kind, but instead overwhelmed by an encounter with a howling existential void in which life is pointless and fate is cruel. Griffiths himself had concerns about inducing such experiences, particularly when treating dying people. "I had a lot of trepidation," he says, despite the positive reports in the earlier literature.

Being depressed and anxious about impending death would seem to be a set-up for such a bad tripor what researchers prefer to call a "challenging experience."

"You would think that people with life-threatening cancer would be deeply primed for that, but in fact, what frequently occurred among patients in our study were experiences of deep meaning, connection and integration," Griffiths says, adding, "That's another mystery." Although many study participants have transient fear and even terror, less than 1 percent reported any lasting issues, according to Griffithsand those problems that were reported were not severe.

Nonetheless, researchers and supporters like Sarlo recognize that it is important not to let hype and hope overrun data. After all, a massive cultural backlash like the one that ended nearly all research on these substances for decades is always a possibility, as the history of American drug policy and psychiatry makes clear.

"Every new treatment in the history of psychiatry, going back thousands of years, does very well at the beginning, then doesn't do so well," explains Dr. Allen Frances, professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the DSM-IV task force that categorized diagnoses in psychiatry in the 1990s.

"Original hype will always exaggerate the potential benefits and minimize very realistic risks," he says. "It's certainly promising enough to have careful study" of the emerging data on psychedelic medicine, he adds, before cautioning that what works well in small, selected samples can also do serious harm if misused by a larger, unscreened group. He has particular concerns about how ketamine is already being widely used for depression, without larger, longer, and higher quality trials on repeated use.

For his part, Sarlo wants to help other people find the relief he's experienced. He's realistic about the advantages he enjoys and the importance of the therapeutic context and ability to integrate insight into normal life to the effectiveness of these drugs. Still, his story raises the question: If a skeptical venture capitalist with a degree in electrical engineering can overcome decades of Holocaust-related trauma by careful use of these medicines, what else might they be able to do?

To prevent harm or backlash, careful science and caution is essential. But these days, the need for remedies that can decrease selfishness and maximize empathy and kindness is more urgent than ever.

"I think psychedelics should be seen as a kind of 'transformative medicine,'" Sarlo says. "They really do have the potential to change the world."

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The Refugee Funding America's Psychedelic Renaissance - VICE

Higher education linked to increased support of trip treatments

Several controversial psychedelic drugs now show promise as powerful therapeutic treatments for depression, anxiety, and PTSD.New data from YouGov suggests that public support for these therapies may have something to do with education level.

A studyby researchers from New York University and Johns Hopkins University showedthat a single treatment with psilocybin (the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms) reduced anxiety and depression in 80% of cancer patients. Another controlled trialshowed that on average,after threedoses of MDMA, patients experienced a 56% decrease inseverity of PTSD symptoms. More importantly, 66% no longer met the criteria for PTSD by the end of the trial. Studies at Yale, Mount Sinai and the National Institute of Mental Health suggest that ketamine relieves depressionwithin sixhours, especially in patients who were resistant to conventional antidepressant medicine.

Despite the stigma surrounding these controlled substances, new data from YouGov shows that many Americans are ready to embrace psychedelic therapies.Whats more, a relationshipappears to exist between higher levels of education and increased support for psychedelic research and treatments.At each increasing level of education, there's a corresponding increase in support for medical research into the potential benefits of psychedelic substances, such aspsilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, and ketamine. 53% of all respondents support medical research into psychedelic drugs, and this number increases to 69% for respondents with graduate degrees.

While more than half of all Americans may support research into psychedelics for therapeutic use, a 63% majority also said they would personally be open to medical treatment with psilocybin, ketamine, or MDMA if faced with a pertinent medical condition assuming the substance is proven safe. The curve of support for all three substances increased with each respondents education level. On average, respondents with a post graduate degree were 21 points more likely to try treatment with psilocybin, ketamine, or MDMA than those with a high school diploma or less.

Full survey results available here

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Majority of Americans ready to embrace psychedelic therapy - YouGov US

The pace of marijuana reform continues to accelerate, with more states approving medical programs and adult-use initiatives with every election cycle. Even at the federal level, momentum towards progressive drug policy has increased, and the War on Drugs is more unpopular than ever. What does this evolution mean for other criminalized substances? Could cannabis pave the way for the end of drug prohibition, or will the new administration stymy efforts to broaden the scope of legalization?

The cannabis movement sparked the hope that we can take a more sensible and compassionate approach to regulating substances, rather than relying on an entrenched drug war mentality that stigmatizes drug users. Were now engaging in conversations surrounding drug policy in our communities and in the halls of Congress previously unimaginable to cannabis advocates; questioning the efficacy of our current drug laws, calling out the institutional racism that drove the drug war, and pushing public support away from a system of mass incarceration and toward one that prioritizes public health.

Marijuana reform has also provided drug decriminalization advocates with a blueprint for action. The earliest cannabis activists were successful because they reframed the dialogue, focusing on the medicinal, rather than recreational, aspects of the plant. At that time, many were unconvinced of cannabis healing powers; now, the numerous potential medical benefits are more readily accepted. The progress weve seen in the past 20 years began with a commitment to bringing safe medicine to people who needed it most, and, unsurprisingly, that passion translated into the path towards legalization.

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) takes a similar approach in its work with psychedelics such as ayahuasca, LSD and psilocybin. MAPS, a research and educational organization dedicated to ensuring the right to benefit from careful use of psychedelics and marijuana, conducts research and advocacy, including clinical trials on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for anxiety-related to life-threatening illnesses, and ibogaine-assisted treatment for drug addiction. According to Natalie Ginsberg, Policy and Advocacy Manager at MAPS, Were pursuing a medical route to legalize psychedelic substances. We believe medical research can lead to greater consciousness and understanding around these substances.

Though Ginsberg acknowledges that cannabis reform has allowed us to wake up to the reality that our drug laws arent based in science, she doesnt believe that cannabis offers a direct path to legalizing all drugs: Its been a very long process, and we still have far to go with cannabis. This is such a safe substance, and its use is incredibly widespread. Its a bit different when we start talking about hard drugs.

Furthermore, legalizing psychedelics may be the next logical step, but many advocates agree theyre not the highest drug priority. There are very few people being arrested and imprisoned for psychedelics, Ginsberg says. When it comes to changing policy, we want to change the policies that do the most harm first. People who seek out the most dangerous substances, such as heroin and crack cocaine, are frequently those who have already been marginalized. Criminalizing these substances and throwing individuals into the criminal justice system only perpetuates a cycle of negative impacts. People using these substances need help, not to be sent to prison and traumatized even more, Ginsberg asserts.

This is where marijuana reform can hamper progress on other decriminalization fronts: by attempting to prove the merits and safety of cannabis use, we create a dichotomy wherein cannabis becomes labelled as a good drug, while others are bad. The cannabis industry has worked hard to cast off outdated stereotypes surrounding marijuana consumption, yet these efforts can have the unintended consequence of further stigmatizing other drug communities.

An even greater obstacle has arisen for legalization, in the form of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions has hinted at reigniting and expanding the drug war, perhaps with the intention to return to the severe policies popular at its peak, including harsher prosecution for drug offenses and enforcement of mandatory minimum sentencing.

While cannabis regulation has brought drug policy reform to the forefront and illuminated a path towards change, it hasnt necessarily set the stage for wider drug legalization. But advocates will continue to nudge the door open, even as Sessions DOJ may try to slam it shut.

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DISMANTLING THE DRUG WAR: Is Cannabis a Gateway to Legalizing Drugs? - Dope Magazine