The Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) held a discussion group Wednesday in the Holmes Student Center about the difference between psychedelic and psychoactive medicine and their uses. Tom Roberts, a retired professor of education of psychology, led a small group of people on a question-and-answer-based discussion on the medical uses, different types and the foundation of psychedelic drugs. This is a four-week program for the winter term. "A psychedelic drug magnifies or amplifies whatever is going on in the subconscience or conscience mind," Roberts said. "It can also stimulate mystical experiences." [continues 272 words]
Salvia divonorum, commonly known as salvia, thanks to its powerful psychedelic punch and its availability in legitimate retailers, has made a huge jump into Canada's recreational drug scene, particularly among youth. "It's a very intense hallucinogenic experience that is thankfully short-lived-usually 15 minutes, some people report five minutes and the longest would be half an hour," said Wende Wood, a psychiatric pharmacist with the Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Native to Mexico, the drug was originally used by the Mazatec culture for spiritual journeys. [continues 987 words]
Gov. Ted Strickland signed a law yesterday that will add the hallucinogen Salvia divinorum to Ohio's controlled substance list. The law, which takes effect in 90 days, classifies salvia as a Schedule I controlled substance alongside drugs like marijuana. Ohio joins at least nine other states to ban the use, possession or distribution of salvia. State Senator Jimmy Stewart, R-20, said the law will be enacted in the same way as previous additions to the Schedule I controlled substance list. [continues 123 words]
State Rep. Charles "Doc" Anderson, R-Waco, is to appear on the "Dr. Phil" show today after he filed legislation Monday that would ban the increasingly popular hallucinogenic drug Salvia. Anderson, who is on the show to discuss the drug's effects on young people and their families, has been pushing to have Salvia placed on a list of controlled substances for more than a year and a half. Also known as "Diviner's Sage" and "Magic Mint," the active ingredient in Salvia, Salvinorin-A, which is found on the leaves of the herb Salvia divinorum, produces a psychedelic high that lasts anywhere from minutes to hours after it is smoked. [continues 228 words]
Cluster Headaches Cause Such Severe Pain That Some Sufferers Are Driven to Suicide. Now One Man Believes He's Found a Surprising Cure This is the story of a man known online as Flash - a man driven to the brink of suicide by the debilitating effects of cluster headaches. After years of ineffectual treatments, Flash stumbled on what he declared was a new treatment, as controversial as it was, he claimed, effective: hallucinogenic drugs. Flash was ridiculed by the cluster headache community for his "miracle cure". But when a survey of fellow sufferers who self-medicated with hallucinogens was published in the mainstream journal Neurology, the results gave weight to his claims. The Harvard Medical School scientists who conducted the survey have now applied for a preliminary clinical trial on the subject. [continues 1791 words]
TORONTO -- The first time Ryan Fentie smoked salvia, he was overwhelmed by the sudden, intense feelings that swept over him. A huge hole opened in the ground before him, vines snaked out of the pit and encircled his feet and he felt himself become a part of them. "I had no idea what the drug was doing to me," Fentie recalled. "It feels like you entered another world." His high came from a powerful hallucinogenic drug that can be bought - -- legally -- at convenience stores and head shops across Toronto. [continues 228 words]
It might sound far-fetched, but just a decade ago it seemed unlikely that the prohibited and mildly hallucinogenic drug cannabis would become a mainstream pain-killing medicine. But it is happening: Cannabis pain-killing pills and sprays are being developed to help people with multiple sclerosis, cancer and Aids. Now some scientists and psychotherapists think more powerful psychoactive drugs like psilocybin, found in 'magic mushrooms', could have a future as medicinal agents for a number of conditions. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved, but not funded, a pilot study aiming to see if the euphoria and insight of a mild psychedelic 'trip' can ease the physical and emotional pain experienced by thousands of terminal cancer patients each year. [continues 770 words]
DALLAS -- With a friend videotaping, 27-year-old Christopher Lenzini of Dallas took a hit of Salvia divinorum, regarded as the world's most potent hallucinogenic herb, and soon began to imagine, he said, that he was in a boat with little green men. Mr. Lenzini quickly collapsed to the floor and dissolved into convulsive laughter. When he posted the video on YouTube this summer, friends could not get enough. "It's just funny to see a friend act like a total idiot," he said, "so everybody loved it." [continues 1587 words]
First Test of 'Psychedelic Psychotherapy' Since 70s Researchers Hope Effects Will Improve Quality of Life Scientists are exploring the use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD to treat a range of ailments from depression to cluster headaches and obsessive compulsive disorder. The first clinical trial using LSD since the 1970s began in Switzerland in June. It aims to use "psychedelic psychotherapy" to help patients with terminal illnesses come to terms with their imminent mortality and so improve their quality of life. [continues 1183 words]
A Watauga teen accused of delivering drug-tainted cookies to the Lake Worth police department told investigators he did not put drugs in the cookies but that friends may have been using marijuana while he baked them, police said Wednesday. Christian Phillips, 18, was delivering the cookies as part of his court-ordered community service for a previous arrest, officials said. He was arraigned Wednesday on a charge of tampering with a consumer product, a second-degree felony. Police said Phillips was arrested Tuesday when a field test on the cookies he delivered in Lake Worth indicated the presence of LSD, a hallucinogenic drug. Blue Mound police said cookies delivered to them Monday field-tested positive for marijuana. [continues 800 words]
Columnist Dick Dorworth dances around the true reason LSD was outlawed. Authorities were more than a little fearful of being exposed for the lying frauds they are. They knew for a fact that an LSD trip could undermine years of propaganda and opinion molding. Back in the 1960s when LSD was still legal, trippers saw Washington bigwigs thumping for the Vietnam War and instantly and without exception responded, "They're lying!" LSD enabled trippers to "see" the lies flashing out of McNamara et al like overamped strobe lights. [continues 162 words]
Alton Kelley, one of the founding members of the '60s San Francisco rock scene, died Sunday at his home in Petaluma after a long illness. He was 67. Mr. Kelley will be remembered as the creator (with his artistic partner, Stanley Mouse) of hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters, such as the famed "skull and roses" poster for a Grateful Dead show at the Avalon Ballroom. Mr. Kelley and Mouse created 26 posters for just the first year of the Avalon's operation. [continues 655 words]
Alton Kelley, a San Francisco graphic artist whose psychedelic posters and album covers captured the mood and music of the Grateful Dead, the Steve Miller Band, Journey and other top rock 'n' roll groups of the '60s and '70s, has died. He was 67. Kelley died Sunday at his home in Petaluma, Calif., according to publicist Jennifer Gross. The cause was complications from osteoporosis. With his creative partner Stanley Mouse, Kelley helped launch a poster art revolution in the mid-1960s, turning out vividly colored works for concerts at the Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore Auditorium, where Jimi Hendrix, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Quicksilver Messenger Service were among the headliners. [continues 588 words]
Prohibition of Albert Hofmann's 'problem child' failed to get it off the street -- and succeeded in killing legitimate research into its powerful potential to help people Albert Hofmann, who died last week at the age of 102, lived just long enough to see scientific research into the therapeutic value of LSD get started up again. For the first time since the 1960s, the tremendous potential of this powerful tool is being examined scientifically for therapeutic use. Millions of people have experienced transcendence through LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide). The creative energy unleashed by Mr. Hofmann's chemical catalyst has had a tremendous impact on our world. [continues 984 words]
ON the afternoon of Jan. 11, Albert Hofmann, the chemist who discovered LSD, had about a dozen friends and family up to his glass-walled home in the mountains near Basel, Switzerland, for a party. It was his 102nd birthday and, in an important sense, also a homecoming. Dr. Hofmann, who died last week, spent the latter part of his life consulting with scientists around the world who wanted to bring his "problem child," as he called the drug, back into the lab to study as a therapeutic agent. Not long before his last birthday, he learned that health officials in his native Switzerland had approved what will be the first known medical trial of LSD anywhere in more than 35 years -- to test whether the drug can help relieve distress at end of life. [continues 1009 words]
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who invented the LSD and became the first person in the world to experience a full-blown acid trip, has died. He was 102. He was working as a chemist in Basel, when he synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide. On April 19, 1943, he took the substance before cycling home. That day has become known among aficionados as "Bicycle Day" as it was while he was riding home that he experienced the most intense symptoms brought on by the drug. [continues 172 words]
His Accidental Experience of 'An Extremely Stimulated Imagination' Caused by the Drug Led to a Lifetime of Experiments and Initiated the Psychedelic Generation. Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD and thereby gave the psychedelic generation the pharmaceutical vehicle to turn on, tune in and drop out, has died. He was 102. Hofmann died Tuesday morning at his home in Basel, Switzerland, of a heart attack, according to Rick Doblin, the head of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies. [continues 1448 words]
It's the psychedelic drug that inspired Hendrix and The Beatles - and shaped the music, art and literature of a generation. As the world bids farewell to the bicycling Swiss chemist who created LSD, John Walsh explores his mind-altering legacy It was known as acid, blotter acid, window pane, dots, tickets and mellow yellow. It was sold on the street in capsules and tablets but most often in liquid form, usually absorbed on to a piece of blotting paper divided into several squares: one drop, or "dot", per square. Lysergic acid diethylamide, or C20H25N30 to give it its snappy chemical formula, derived from lysergic acid, and it introduced you to a world of cosmic harmony and all-embracing love, or a black schizoid hell of paranoia and screaming demons. [continues 2912 words]
TOPEKA - Kansas is now one of nine states in the country that have criminalized the illicit use of salvia divinorum, a hallucinogenic herb. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has signed legislation banning the possession, use or sale of the drug, which has long been legal in the U.S. and used in shamanistic rituals in southern Mexico. About 20 other states are considering making the drug illegal as well. Landscapers often use the broad leaf for ground cover. Smoking or chewing a concentrated extract of the plant produces hallucinations, a perception of overlapping realities, dizziness and impaired speech, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. [continues 216 words]
PARIS -- Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102. The cause was a heart attack, said Rick Doblin, founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a California-based group that in 2005 republished Dr. Hofmann's 1979 book "LSD: My Problem Child." Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid. [continues 989 words]
