NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY - It's on the street, it's dangerous and it's legal. It's called salvia divinorum, and comes in different strengths. There is "standardized" salvia and there is "extreme" salvia that says "horse killer" on the package. But there are many other forms. "It is called 'horse killer' because of its extra ordinary power and deep trip," it says on the back of the package. Though packages say the product is for incense only, on the street people are smoking it like marijuana. [continues 665 words]
It's on the street, it's dangerous and it's legal. It's called salvia divinorum, and comes in different strengths. There is "standardized" salvia and there is "extreme" salvia that says "horse killer" on the package. But there are many other forms. "It is called 'horse killer' because of its extraordinary power and deep trip," it says on the back of the package. Though packages say the product is for incense only, on the street people are smoking it like marijuana. [continues 647 words]
Lady Neidpath, Who Once Drilled a Hole in Her Own Head, Is Dead Serious About Drugs. Nick Curtis Hears Why Our Fear of Illegal Highs Means We Could Be Missing Out on Cures for Depression I DO NOT doubt for one moment the absolute sincerity of the drugs campaigner Amanda Feilding, aka Lady Neidpath, Countess of Wemyss and March. Nor the good sense in her argument that narcotics should be scientifically studied, decriminalised, and licensed and regulated by the state for medical or recreational use as appropriate - a "sensible" alternative to the vast waste of lives and money in the unwinnable War on Drugs. But I can see how easy it is for her opponents to demonise the 70-year-old as a batty aristo. [continues 1565 words]
With a Big Bust in January and a Major Conference This Fall, We've Been Psychedelicized IT TOOK A POLICE battering ram to bust down the door of the West Philadelphia apartment. Once inside, police discovered a colorful cache of psychedelic drugs - enough LSD to open thousands of "doors of perception" for six to eight hours at a time. The Jan. 31 raid appeared to be a true flashback to a bygone era, with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration calling the 9,500 hits of LSD on tie-dyed images of Homer Simpson and Jerry Garcia an "anomaly" in Philadelphia. And since two of the five suspects arrested were Drexel students, the raid became known as the "Drexel LSD bust" in the media, with reporters interviewing students and getting statements from university officials. [continues 1170 words]
Hallucinogen May Help Alcoholics Give Up the Drink New research analyzing data from studies conducted between 1966 and 1970 suggests LSD may help alcoholics quit and remain sober. In a study that appeared in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology took a fresh look at data from six different studies conducted in the United States and Canada, according to Health.com. The researchers concluded a single dose of the hallucinogen helped heavy alcoholics quit and reduced their risk of relapse. In addition, 59 percent of patients showed a clear improvement after receiving a full dose of LSD, compared to 38 percent of patients who did not take the drug. Study authors Teri Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen speculated the results were linked to LSD's effect on serotonin receptors in the brain. "LSD may stimulate the formation of new connections and patterns, and generally seems to open an individual to an awareness of new perspectives and opportunities for action," wrote Krebs and Johansen. [end]
Is dropping acid a reasonable way to deal with a drinking problem? Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's department of neuroscience think there's some merit to the idea. They've gone through data from experiments conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, and say there is evidence that subjects given LSD were more likely to make progress in dealing with a harmful alcohol habit. Their paper, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, took a broad look at six different experimental trials, including one in Canada in 1966, involving 536 subjects being treated for alcohol problems. [continues 288 words]
To legalize or not to legalize? The question of marijuana's safety, its impacts on society and its potential as a government revenue source has probably never been so hotly debated in the mainstream of public opinion. We've been waging war on the drug trade for decades, and what has it gotten us? Prisons full of drug users and street-corner dealers, an ever-increasing enforcement bill that cuts deeply into other services, and a murderous drug cartel to the south that threatens to turn Mexico into a full-blown narco state. Today, even "respectable" people feel the burden of those hard truths. [continues 1664 words]
A MIDDLE-AGED Shaman from Buckfastleigh faces a possible jail term after being convicted of producing and supplying a class A drug at a healing ceremony. Peter Aziz conjured up two brews of sacred drink from jungle plants for religious rituals at a disused hotel, Bristol Crown Court heard. Aziz said he didn't realise that one ingredient - the leaf of the Chakruna plant - contained controlled the drug N-dimethyltriptamene or DMT. The 51 year old denied two counts of producing a class A drug and two counts of supplying a class A drug. [continues 295 words]
To the Editor: Re "Electric Kool-Aid Marketing Trip" (Op-Ed, March 19): Michael Walker has written an encomium to Augustus Owsley Stanley III, the "LSD millionaire" who figured out how to manufacture the drug in industrial doses in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. Without question, Mr. Stanley was a key figure in the Sixties counterculture and played a large role in the music, art and "Summer of Love" ethos associated with LSD. But virtually every obituary of Mr. Stanley has romanticized his legacy. Consider how many bad trips, suicides and ruined lives that legacy was also responsible for. Cory Franklin Wilmette, Ill., March 19, 2011 [end]
Owsley (Bear) Stanley, a 1960s counter-culture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia Sunday, his family said. He was 76. The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco's Bay Area. "He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honour," former rock 'n' roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs You Can't Always Get What You Want. [continues 449 words]
Owsley Stanley, the grandson of a former Kentucky governor, made and supplied the LSD that fueled acid rock and California's hallucinogenic culture in the 1960s. Mr. Stanley died Sunday at age 76 after an automobile accident in Queensland, Australia, where he had emigrated in the 1980s. An early patron and sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, Mr. Stanley was memorialized in the band's song "Alice D. Millionaire," named after a newspaper headline about his arrest for dealing LSD. Mr. Stanley was credited with distributing thousands-some say millions-of doses of high-purity LSD, often for free at concerts and "acid tests" run by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. [continues 564 words]
OTTAWA (CUP) - The federal government has announced their plans to ban salvia, a hallucinogenic herb that has recently enjoyed a surge in popularity among young people in North America. In a Feb. 21 release, the government indicated it intends to add salvia to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA), thereby making it illegal to possess, sell, import, export and grow the plant. Christian Paradis, Minister of Natural Resources, described salvia in the release as having the "potential for abuse, especially among young people". Otherwise known as Salvia divinorum and salvinorin A, and colloquially as "magic mint" or "diviner's sage", salvia is a plant in the mint family and is normally smoked to experience "mild hallucinogenic sensations," as described by a fourth-year University of Ottawa student. [continues 433 words]
Your Feb. 22 article Feds eye ban on obscure herb indicates a dangerous disconnect with reality and perception. Bart Stras, owner of the head shop The Joint, clearly has been smoking too much of his own product when he says "salvia has never had any issues as a herbal incense product." Of course it hasn't, because he knows that people who buy salvia want a hallucinogenic high and aren't looking to have their boudoir smell minty fresh. If it weren't so pathetic, it would be almost comical that salvia is sold as a so-called natural health product. I believe that poisonous mushrooms are also a 100 per cent natural product. Paul Doyle Winnipeg [end]
We would like to respond to the Feb. 23 editorial No need to ban salvia on the Government of Canada's recent proposal to control salvia divinorum and salvinorin A. We want to eliminate the misconception that salvia is a safer alternative to street drugs. It is not. Salvia divinorum, and its active ingredient salvinorin A, can produce powerful hallucinations similar to those associated with the use of the well-known hallucinogen LSD, which is a controlled substance. Other effects include confusion, disorientation and anxiety. [continues 115 words]
TUCSON - No one has suggested that his use of a hallucinogenic herb or any other drugs contributed to Jared L. Loughner's apparent mental unraveling that culminated with his being charged in a devastating outburst of violence here. Yet it is striking how closely the typical effects of smoking the herb, Salvia divinorum - which federal drug officials warn can closely mimic psychosis - matched Mr. Loughner's own comments about how he saw the world, like his often-repeated assertion that he spent most of his waking hours in a dream world that he had learned to control. [continues 784 words]
Online video of Miley Cyrus smoking the plant in a bong has peaked interest in the legal psychoactive, which is sold locally Health Canada is warning people to avoid using the Mexican herb Salvia divinorum until its effects are better understood. Native to Oaxaca, Mexico, the plant known as Magic Mint or Seer's Sage has been used for centuries by Mazatec Indian shamans for medicinal purposes and to induce visions, but also has gained a foothold in Canada and United States as a recreational drug. [continues 771 words]
By Vincent Walsh and Signe Hoover The essay below derives from recent discussions in my English 1 class, otherwise known as "The Fam Jam," about the unfortunate incident on campus several weeks ago when a male student, tripping on LSD, burst into a dorm room and allegedly engaged in extremely offensive, highly aggressive behavior, which resulted in his being arrested and confined in a local jail on half a million dollars bond. I went through college during the psychedelic frenzy of the '60s. I witnessed the deterioration of several truly great minds among my peers, brilliant young people who fell unwitting victim to contaminated versions of this brain-bending substance; the fact is, one never really knows the actual ingredients or size of dose with any street drug. Such ignorance can lead to tragedy, as I believe it has with this recent event in our community: a young man's promising future in ruins, several young women badly traumatized, all of us left deeply troubled - and, yes, profoundly embarrassed by having a story like this splashed all over local news outlets. This is not the image of Lehigh any of us wants to convey. [continues 1191 words]
Ron Price needs his milkshake. It's 10 o'clock on a Monday morning and the baldheaded, barrel-chested former bodybuilder is shuffling around the kitchen of a posh rehab clinic in Tijuana, wearing slippers and a blue Gold's Gym T-shirt. Price had been employed as a stockbroker in New Mexico, but his training regimen left him with debilitating injuries that forced him to undergo 33 surgeries in less than a decade. His doctor prescribed Oxycontin, and Price quickly became dependent on the potent painkiller. More recently, he started snorting cocaine and chugging booze to numb the pain. Now, 53 years old and three weeks into rehab, all he wants is a milkshake and to crawl back into bed. [continues 5641 words]
An Archive, of Sorts, of the 1960s Psychedelic Experience Made Visual Preserves an Era Seated around an ash-stained coffee table below a glowing chandelier in Mark McCloud's dusky parlor on a rainy Saturday morning in October, four friends passed around a joint, trying to define in simple terms the three-story Victorian on 20th Street. "It's an archival museum of psychedelic art. Our friend here is the curator," proffered Arthur Round, an older man cross-legged in a wicker chair. The parlor is plastered with approximately 350 pieces of framed blotter art and guarded from prying eyes by heavy black curtains, making the space feel like a vault or secret subterranean headquarters. [continues 929 words]
Researchers see hope for PTSD, other ills in LSD, other drugs On Sunday, Nov. 7, an eclectic group of students, therapists, artists and health care practitioners gathered at the Draft House in downtown Boulder for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) fall gala. The crowd of roughly 100 people listened as Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS, discussed the potential of psychedelic drugs to treat conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), drug dependence, and anxiety and depression associated with chronic disease and end-of-life issues. [continues 469 words]
