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Friday, March 25th, 2011

How Psychedelics Can Be a Path to Transformation

Author:     PHIL WOLFSON
Source:     Tikkun
Publication Date:     18-Mar-11
 Link: How Psychedelics Can Be a Path to Transformation
Stephan:   One of the many tragedies arising from America's insane drug policies has been the loss of psychoactive drugs as tools of therapy. The research is very clear that they can be extraordinarily effective in psychiatry and for problems like PTSD. Further Suggested Reading: * A lovely, illustrated history of mind-altering drug use: High Society by Mike Jay Park (Street Press, 2010). * More on the sixties, the CIA, LSD, etc.: Acid Dreams by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain (Grove Press, 1985) and Storming Heaven -- LSD and the American Dream by Jay Stevens (Grove Press, 1987). * A glorious mytho-poetic encyclopedia of psychoactive substances: the Pharmako trilogy by Dale Pendell (North Atlantic Books, updated editions 2010). * For the current state of psychedelic science, policy, and controversy, subscribe to the journal from MAPS -- the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Substances (www.maps.org).

The California ballot initiative for partial marijuana legalization (Proposition 19) may have been defeated for the moment, but nevertheless more than four million voters said ‘yes’ to it. Between the recent reduction in California’s penalties for use — now reduced to a fine for possession of under an ounce of marijuana — and the burgeoning medical marijuana industry, clearly the times are a-changin’. There are many hundreds of thousands of certified medical marijuana users in California, and twelve other states now have some reduction in marijuana criminalization as well. With scientific research into the clinical effects of psychedelics also burgeoning and a growing number of papers indicating benefit for various psychiatric conditions (post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, terminal illnesses, and drug addiction), thereby bolstering historic claims for clinical utility, and with the horrific costs of failed prohibition more and more obvious to the public, decriminalization — if not legalization — has become more of a possibility. With this as background, it is imperative to undertake a public reevaluation of where we are with respect to psychedelic use, its risks, and its potential to support personal, spiritual, and cultural transformation.

The History: Ancient and Modern

Psychoactive substance-induced alteration of consciousness is ages old, the […]

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