This Week in Psychoactives - 9.27.19

CANNABIS

• Canberra becomes the first city in Australia to legalize marijuana (CNN)

• House Passes Cannabis Banking Bill in Historic Vote (Leafly)

• Cannabis Delivery Wins Final Approval in Massachusetts (Leafly)

• Twice as Many Americans Use Cannabis for Medicine Over Recreation, Study Says (MERRY JANE)

• Cannabis-based drug for childhood epilepsy approved for use in UK (The Guardian)

• Brain activity 'dampened' by vaped THC, similar to those with schizophrenia: study (CBC)

• Lower Doses Of Marijuana May Be More Effective For Improving Libido, Review Finds (Marijuana Moment)

• New Washington DC Law Allows Students to Use Medical Marijuana in Schools (MERRY JANE)

• Marijuana use higher among white New Yorkers, though 94% of pot busts are people of color (Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

• The DEA Joins the FDA in THC Vapes Crackdown (Filter)

• Illinois Governor Will Pardon Thousands of Former Cannabis Offenders (MERRY JANE)

• Wisconsin and South Dakota Are Preparing 2020 Legalization Measures (Leafly)

• Senior Marijuana Use Increases, But Where Is The Research? (The Fix)

LSD

• The FBI Just Arrested a 'Psychedelic Nazi' on LSD After Tapping His Wild Text Chats (VICE)

• Disneyland Paris visitor on bad LSD trip falls into Adventureland lake, turns up naked after 130-person search (The Orange County Register)

• Syracuse Man Arrested After Punching Officer While On Apparent LSD Trip (Times-Union Newspaper)

MAGIC MUSHROOMS

• Why the Magic Mushroom Story Could be as Big as the Cannabis Boom (PR Newswire)

• Mixing Meditation and Magic Mushrooms? (Mindful)

MDMA

• New research shows MDMA can be comedown-free (Mixmag)

AYAHUASCA

• My 30 Years of Providing Shamanic Healing with Ayahuasca (Kahpi)

• Stopping Veteran Suicide with Ayahuasca: Interview with Wyly Gray of Veterans of War (Psychedelic Times)

• Ayahuasca Has a Special Connection with My People, the Shipibo (Kahpi)

• One man’s journey with ayahuasca (GQ)

• Ayahuasca: tradition versus tourism (The Mancunion)

IBOGA

• Opioid addicts seek alternative treatment in Mexico (10News)

NOVEL PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES

• Ben Westhoff on the Origins of Deadly Party Drugs in Fentanyl, Inc. (Westword)

SYNTHETIC CANNABINOIDS

• Older adults with COPD more likely to use synthetic cannabinoids, study finds (Medical Xpress)

OPIOIDS

• Pennsylvania Giving Away Free Naloxone To Combat Overdoses (The Fix)

• Should Heroin Be Used to Treat Addiction? (Pain News Network)

• The White Van Prescribing Buprenorphine Outside a Baltimore Jail (Filter)

METHAMPHETAMINE

• SAMHSA’s “Meth Monster” Video Is Pure Fear-Mongering Propaganda (Filter)

• Their unborn baby tested positive for meth. Then they learned their house was once a meth lab. (CBS News)

• Mexican drug cartels fueling meth comeback in US, with seizures at 'historically high levels' (Fox News)

CAFFEINE

• Study says too much caffeine can trigger migraines (WKRC)

• Coffee May Lower Risk of Gallstones (The New York Times)

TOBACCO

• Walmart to Stop Selling E-Cigarettes in Stores (TIME)

• Vape brand Juul is reportedly at the center of a criminal probe (Engadget)

• Juul hires former tobacco exec as CEO and ceases all US marketing (Engadget)

• Survey Suggests Lung Disease Misinformation Has Compounded Confusion About the Hazards of E-Cigarettes (Reason)

• Big Tobacco Will Take Advantage of the Mysterious Vaping Illness (VICE)

• LA Board Of Supervisors Votes To Ban Flavored Tobacco (CBS Los Angeles)

• Plan To Raise Age To Buy Tobacco To 21 In Denver Moves Ahead (CBS Denver)

ALCOHOL

• Why alcohol remains a big threat to unborn babies in South Africa (The Conversation)

KRATOM

• Florida man with Down syndrome died in hot car as caretaker slept off kratom overdose: sheriff (Fox News)

• How Kratom can be beneficial for sports athletes? (GHANAsoccernet.com)

• What Type Of Kratom Information Will You Find On Reddit? (Kratom Guides)

• Kratom In Michigan: Legal or Regulated? (Kratom Guides)

• Meet the Plant That Is In the News For All the Wrong Reasons (Grit Daily)

MISCELLANEOUS

• Dr. Bronner’s Donates $150k to Legalize Medical Psilocybin in Oregon (DoubleBlind)

• Massachusetts Implements Emergency Ban on All Cannabis and Nicotine Vapes (MERRY JANE)

• Over 800 cases of vaping illnesses reported to CDC (The Hill)

• Psychedelics Can Help Treat a Variety of Psychiatric Disorders, New Review Says (MERRY JANE)

• ‘Vaper’s lung’ likely to enter the medical lexicon (The Irish Times)

• The Truth About Looking in the Mirror on Psychedelics (VICE)

• Can microdosing psychedelics take the edge off a first date? (Mic)

• Enough evidence to support introduction of pill testing in NSW, inquiry told (The Sydney Morning Herald)

• Inside the centre exploring the effect of psychedelic drugs on mental health (The Independent)

• Psychedelic Therapy Advocate Recalls Coming Of Age In The 1960s (High Times)

• Alan Watts and Psychedelic Christianity (The Institute for the Advancement of Psychedelic Christianity)

• How to Do Psychedelics Without Killing Yourself (The Stranger)

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Disclaimer: "This Week in Psychoactives" does not censor or analyze the news links presented here. The purpose of this column is solely to catalogue how psychedelics are presented by the mass media, which includes everything from the latest scientific research to misinformation.

Image by Psychedelic Astronaut.

Book Review - The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Although I'd first heard of Alan Watts' The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are several years ago, it wasn't until I watched Dakota Wint's YouTube video Top 5 Books Every New Spiritual Seeker Needs that I was motivated enough to actually check it out. First things first—I know that I will benefit a lot from re-reading this book several times. It's extremely dense and packed with a lot of valuable information, a lot of which I likely didn't absorb during my first reading of the book.

The basic premise of the book is that we have been told that we are isolated beings, "unconnected to the rest of the universe", which has led to our viewing the "outside" world with hostility and "has fueled our misuse of technology and our violent and hostile subjugation of the natural world". However, Watts asserts that this belief is mistaken and that we are in fact directly connected to everything else there is. In the beginning of the book, Watts discusses the concept of cultural taboos—things like making direct eye contact with another person or performing an act that is against one's religion. This leads him to make the following point:

"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."

The concept of "I" is extremely powerful and commonplace in most societies on Earth, and it is so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, as well as our laws and social institutions. Watts spends many words of this book arguing against the concept of personal selfhood in favor of a more universal concept of identity—one that includes the rest of reality in addition to the components that we would normally judge as "ourselves".

One of the other things I found interesting was Watts' definition of "attention" as "narrowed perception"—because when we attend to one thing, we ignore everything else. In Watts' own words: "conscious attention is at the same time ignore-ance (i.e., ignorance) despite the fact that it gives us a vividly clear picture of whatever we choose to notice."

These are just some of the concepts that Watts describes in The Book. If either of these ideas sound interesting to you, I would definitely give this a read. I wish that this review was able to more fully show how wonderful this book is, but since this is only my first read-through, I feel like I was only able to skim the surface of its ideas and therefore will likely have more to say about it upon successive readings. I definitely give this one two thumbs up though!

5/5 stars. 178 pages.

Weekend Thoughts - 3.5.16

Image by Stanley Zimny, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Do you like TED Talks? How about procrastination? Here is an excellent story about one man's personal experience of procrastinating to prepare for a TED Talk on the topic of procrastination. It's humorous, educational, and a bit of a nail-biter. I think you will probably really enjoy it!

2. A piece published on WIRED dives into the nefarious business side of ad blocker companies. I find it incredibly ironic that the piece was published on WIRED, considering the site recently stopped displaying content for those of us who choose to run ad blockers in our web browsers. Not to say the publication is inherently on the wrong side of the battle, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth every time I load an article on the site and find that I am unable to read it unless I load it in another browser or whitelist the site. It's been, and will likely continue to be, very interesting to see how the publishing industry as a whole alters its business models to sustain profits without alienating its audiences.

3. Alan Watts was one of the most innovative philosophers, writers, and speakers in recent history. One could do no wrong by pursuing his work. He liked to ask thought-provoking questions, like what would you do if money was no object? How would you determine the meaning of your life if that was the case?

4. I found xkcd's infographic showing the "size of the U.S.'s pipelines if each fluid produced or consumed in the U.S. had to be carried by a single pipe" to be really interesting. Different substances, from tea to blood to toothpaste, are depicted with different sized pipes. It's more of a thought experiment than real-world example, but it's fascinating to check out!

5. It turns out that Ben Franklin wasn't always a great writer. He put in a lot of work during his formative years to hone his craft, and I found this account of the steps that he took to become a better writer to be both fascinating and helpful for a aspiring writer such as myself.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.