More states legalize Pot 8) when for Oz?

[Mugwump]

^ Thanks K, Yes, that’s the case. One will never know whether the drugs brought down the schizophrenia or merely accelerated its onset and worsened its effect. It’s a good case study : drugs do not mess up everyone (though I suspect every regular user is probably damaged vs their personal innate potential, it’s hard to think how an experiment could prove that) ... but they can and do wreak havoc on the susceptible and fragile.

I should add that I’d like a more clinically-validated assessment before I took it at face value that Barrett succumbed to schizophrenia (itself a rather fluid and shape-shifting illness when I studied psychology long ago) rather than some other form of neurotransmitter disorder caused by the “shovelfuls” of drugs he was taking. The science of neurotransmitters and individual differences is far from settled, as the differing experience of those who take SSRI anti-depressants will attest.

[K]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/upshot/its-time-for-a-new-discussion-of-marijuanas-risks.html

I have not read this yet (and the author often gives the impression that he severely overestimates his own intelligence), but I intend to...


Update: some quotes from the above and links therein (with a focus on the more worrying)...

"For people who reported marijuana use, or had THC detected through testing, their odds of being involved in a motor vehicle accident increased by 20 to 30 percent, the study found."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/add.13347


"There’s moderate evidence, from many studies, that learning, memory and attention can be impaired in the 24 hours after marijuana use."

https://www.nap.edu/read/24625/chapter/13 *

"The most recent meta-analysis found that there’s a significant connection between heavy marijuana use and a diagnosis of psychosis, specifically schizophrenia. This mirrored the findings of previous reviews that sought to cover only high-quality studies. Another systematic review highlighted a potentially small but statistically significant link between marijuana use and the development of bipolar disorder. Heavy users of pot are also more likely to say they have suicidal thoughts.

What makes this complicated is that it’s hard to establish the arrow of causality."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988731/


* The whole book (The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids) is viewable and, it seems, searchable: https://www.nap.edu/read/24625/chapter/1

[Skids]

iT'S FUNNY.... well, I had caplocks on and didn't realize, I could of changed it, but I'm stoned and I don't care and this post is not subject to spell check... is that one word or 2


I digressed... as did the last 7 ... or more, there's no way I'm going back from here

WHY (yes, that's intentionaal capitalz)... because I've just got home from a few weeks away and Had a few cpnes in the back shed... Pete bit my face she was so excited when I got home.

Crazy day, crazy last swing.

Obviously, we don't/can't smoke weed in the work environment. We also can't smoke weed; much soon ever... when we're at home... It's Illegal

Where's this going you may ask..... well, i'm trying to convey how good a few cones of the evil weed now and then is and it shouldn't be illegal to partake!

I sat on a plane home just now... from Port headland, with the biggest bunch of drunks II've been on a plane with.
I had a few beers at the Pier in headland from around 5 today... after starting at 4 this morning on my 12th straght day up there.

Kelly picked me u[ just now, 9.40ish perth time.... and I knew i had weed in the shed


ToNIGHt i will have the best sleep this aching body needs and I feel greta... great

THE END

[David]

"I'll have what he's having."

[K]

[Skids]

[K]

[Skids]

[K]

Psychedelic Drugs

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/15/magazine/health-issue-my-adventures-with-hallucinogenic-drugs-medicine.html

[HAL]

Oh a web page.

[think positive]

So maybe instead of legalising drugs alcohol needs to be policed harder? In that state in the US you wouldn’t be allowed on the plane. Even hick country airports are incredibly thorough. Hubby had to let the air out of his footy at this tiny back country airport outside Toronto! Yes I know that’s Canada!

[HAL]

in the US you wouldn’t be allowed on the plane

[K]

Psychedelic Drugs

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/15/magazine/health-issue-my-adventures-with-hallucinogenic-drugs-medicine.html

[Also: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment ]

Some quotes:

"PSYCHEDELIC THERAPY, whether for the treatment of psychological problems or as a means of facilitating self-exploration and spiritual growth, is undergoing a renaissance in America. This is happening both underground, where the community of guides like Mary is thriving, and aboveground, at institutions like Johns Hopkins, New York University and U.C.L.A., where a series of drug trials have yielded notably promising results.

I call it a renaissance because much of the work represents a revival of research done in the 1950s and 1960s, when psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin were closely studied and regarded by many in the mental health community as breakthroughs in psychopharmacology. Before 1965, there were more than 1,000 published studies of psychedelics involving some 40,000 volunteers and six international conferences dedicated to the drugs. Psychiatrists were using small doses of LSD to help their patients access repressed material (Cary Grant, after 60 such sessions, famously declared himself “born again”); other therapists administered bigger so-called psychedelic doses to treat alcoholism, depression, personality disorders and the fear and anxiety of patients with life-threatening illnesses confronting their mortality.

That all changed in the mid-’60s, after Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist and lecturer turned psychedelic evangelist, began encouraging kids to “turn on, tune in and drop out.” "
...

"Yet researchers believe it is not the molecules by themselves that can help patients change their minds. The role of the guide is crucial. People under the influence of psychedelics are extraordinarily suggestible ... with the psychedelic experience profoundly affected by “set” and “setting” — that is, by the volunteer’s interior and exterior environments. For that reason, treatment sessions typically take place in a cozy room and always in the company of trained guides. The guides prepare volunteers for the journey to come, sit by them for the duration and then, usually on the day after a session, help them to “integrate,” or make sense of, the experience and put it to good use in changing their lives. The work is typically referred to as “psychedelic therapy,” but it would be more accurate to call it “psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.” "
...

"... Richards laid out what has become the standard protocol for aboveground psychedelic therapy, and the role of the guide at each of the three principal stages of “the journey.” First comes a series of preparation sessions, in which volunteers are told what to expect, asked to set an intention (to quit smoking, say, or confront their fear of death) and offered a set of “flight instructions” for the journey ahead. These generally advise surrendering to the experience, whatever it brings and however disturbing it might become. (“Trust, let go, be open” is one mantra he recommends, or, borrowing from John Lennon, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.”) If you feel as if you are “dying, melting, dissolving, exploding, going crazy, etc. — go ahead.” Richards stressed how important it is for the guide to quickly establish a rapport with volunteers, so that during the session “they can let themselves ‘die’ or go crazy — that requires an awful lot of trust!” Because the patients’ ego defenses are likely to be disabled by the drug, it’s crucial that they feel safe.

The second stage is the journey itself. ... Two guides, typically one male, the other female, sit with the volunteer for the duration but say very little, allowing the journey to unfold according to its own logic. Mostly the guide is present to offer a comforting hand if the journeyer is struggling, jot down anything she has to say and generally keep an eye on the volunteer’s physical well-being while she is roaming her psychic landscape. Because it is the drug and the mind that drive the journey and not the therapist, the guide’s role calls for an unusual degree of humility, restraint and patience — the sessions can last for hours.

The last stage is integration, which typically takes place the following day. Here the guide helps the volunteer make sense of what can be a confusing and inchoate experience, underscoring important themes and offering ideas on how to apply whatever insights may have emerged to the conduct of the volunteer’s life. The challenge, as Richards put it, is to help the volunteer transform “flashes of illumination” (he’s quoting Huston Smith, the late scholar of religion) experienced during the trip “into abiding light” — into a new, more constructive way to regard your self and situation."
...


"(Compared with other psychoactive compounds, psychedelics have low toxicity and are nonaddictive. The risks are primarily psychological: In some people, they can produce short-term anxiety and paranoia and, in rare cases, psychotic episodes. ...)"
...


"Lots of other things happened in Mary’s room, and in my head, during the course of my journey that day. I gazed into the bathroom mirror and saw the face of my dead grandfather. I trudged through a scorched desert landscape littered with bleached bones and skulls. One by one appeared the faces of the people in my life who had died, relatives and friends and colleagues whom, I was being told, I had failed properly to mourn. I beheld Mary transformed once again, this time into a ravishing young woman in the full radiance of youth; she was so beautiful I had to turn away."
...


"“These are drugs that psychotherapists unanimously feel could improve psychotherapy,” Metzner began, “but their use is illegal. What does that tell you? Something about the society we live in!” "
...


"But Big Pharma has not demonstrated significant interest in psychedelics, and it’s not hard to see why: Psychedelic therapy is a rather square peg to fit into the round hole of psychopharmacology as we now know it. Patents on the molecules in question — LSD, psilocybin and MDMA — have long since expired (psilocybin comes from a common mushroom); the drugs, if approved, don’t need to be taken more than a few times; and as the C.I.I.S. program recognizes, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is a novel hybrid of pharmacology and talk therapy, making it uncharted territory for a pharmaceutical industry organized around the selling of pills."
...


" “We don’t die well in this country,” Agrawal told me during a lunch break at the weekend course. “And we have pretty limited tools to help people deal with their fear. Prozac doesn’t work. The issue isn’t depression; it’s facing your mortality.” "

[K]

The article linked above is adapted from the book How to Change Your Mind, a review for which is available at
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/books/review-how-to-change-your-mind-psychedelics-science-michael-pollan.html

Some Quotes:

"Pollan is not the most obvious guide for such a journey. He is, to judge from his self-reporting, a giant square."

"Pollan’s initial skepticism and general lack of hipness work wonders for the material. The problem with more enthusiastic or even hallucinatory writers on the subject is that they just compound the zaniness at the heart of the thing..."

"It’s possible these effects can be chalked up, in part, to the drug’s effect on the brain’s so-called default mode network, especially the part associated with self-referential thought. Pollan grants, if briefly, that turning off the network — truly getting over yourself — might also be achieved through “certain breathing exercises,” or through “sensory deprivation, fasting, prayer, overwhelming experiences of awe, extreme sports, near-death experiences and so on.” "

[Mugwump]

^ this book was also reviewed in the Financial Times recently. It’s interesting to read, but apart from the inherent dangers of authorizing and encouraging the use of drugs that are dangerous for fragile minds, you can’t really get past the fact that the “truths” reported by those who drug themselves are nothing of the kind.

Someone, I think it was Thomas de Quincey, had a repeated vision of the profoundest truth, a revelation of the whole purpose of existence, while under opium ; but each time he had this aching vision, he found that he was too drugged to be able to record it. One night, he arranged a pencil and paper right beside his bed, and when this vision asserted itself to him, he dragged enough of his conscious mind to the surface to write it down. In a rank sweat from the enormous effort, he then sank again into the deepest sleep.

When he awoke the next morning, there, written on the paper, was this monumental insight : “the banana is great but the skin is greater”.