Article about psychedelics and dreams

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This is a BIG THEME…
in the last decades there were many social changes… which makes it difficult for me to have a straight opinion on this.

I would say this is a REAL problem, connected to drugs and addiction:

in other words, artificial sweetness… not being present for children/people. Lack of Love and consciousness of who you really are. One of the things that changed in portuguese society is that playing in the streets is not safe anymore - because of all kinds of pollution, and social habits.

A recent study was released in Portugal stating that our youth is highly depressed and with mental illnesses… I don’t think it’s because of drugs… but I do think that alcohol has an influence… more because it’s distracting them. and also because social habits that are not healthy are still deeply entrained in our culture.

For me, this is linked to the fact that there is still no training and education on meditation, altered states of consciousness, navigating other dimensions, and so on. I have a dream that in a near future, young people will be teaching this, based in their own experience, to the 20th century generations. this could delete many times the word “dementia” in the older citizens.
But the base is that too much sugar takes your soul away.

I am very compassionate for parents who give media devices and sugar to being able of handling all the challenges of being a parent… I KNOW how hard it is to providing a good education is, and most especially to be PRESENT for them. I think Portugal is the country in Europe that has more “alternative” schools and domestic education, at the moment. Of course the Netherlands (and Germany I think) have the Waldorf education system which is amazing!
Portugal has now more and more parents who are conscious about sugar. In general, I also see more products that are sugar free, here in Portugal. And I also see that many young parents are moving into the country side so that they can give a real education to their children.
I also see better education being offered in Lisbon, Oporto, Coimbra and Algarve.

In some countries in Europe, governments are very realistic… they even make syringes available so that they are not infected. I agree with that. Being realistic.

Another BIG problem is the pharmaceutical industry and so many drugs being given to heal when in fact they do so much damage and even worse of all - they go into our water system. Of course that when someone is in pain and in direct contact with other people watching that suffering, I agree that we give drugs to them, but there’s so much being prescribed that is not helping anyone… just baffling more our human issues…

Having all this said, I would say that we need to be very patient, dream a lot, take good care of ourselves, and keep doing our work, taking on responsibility step by step, with many friends on the way. Ah! and have a lot of FUN. and always be aware of your feelings when discussing these things so that you don’t enter the drama. that these topics inspire us, not drench our energy, that they motivate, not put us down, that they call us into kind actions, not separation - accusing people to save others… we all need Love and Compassion.

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Thank you for this. Me as well, the older I get the more I understand why some laws are in place to protect people.

Join the club. A huge portion of the US economy is build around alcoholism.

I hope you are right.

AMEN

I would add that we should all work hard to wake up as much as possible and lend a helping hand to those who are trying to do the same.

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Drug Harm
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I’m going to respectfully disagree with Elton on this. The chart above from a recent lecture I attended at the Naropa Ketamine therapy training that I attended recently in California and is based on a recent study of harms of various drugs in the UK. As you can see, alcohol is by far the most harmful, way above cannabis, which is quite low on the list. Psilocybin is at the bottom as the least harmful. So if we are going to prohibit a drug, we should start with alcohol. However, the U.S. tried that back in the 20’s and it didn’t really work so well. It just drove alcohol use underground.

At a festival many years ago, I saw an art exhibit of visionary art. There was a painting there of the Spirit of Cannabis portrayed as a green woman. In one hand she held the cadeucus of healing and in the other hand she held poisons and hyperdermic needles of addiction and skulls. I myself am both a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Certified Substance Use Disorder Professional. I worked for many years (part time) in Kaiser Permanente in the Addiction Medicine department. I know that cannabis can be a bad addiction for many and contrary to popular belief, those who are heavily addicted go through physical withdrawal when they quit. Not as bad as opioid withdrawal but it’s still bad. At the same time cannabis has medical benefits for many folks and it can also be a mild psychedelic. It has a long history of spiritual use. Think of the chillum smoking Shiva yogis of India. The ancient Scythians were said to have ceremonies held in sweat lodge like structures in which cannabis was thrown into the hot coals of the fire and the smoke was inhaled.
Years ago, I myself discovered that it was a powerful psychedelic medicine and for me, synergized well with other psychedelics. I first discovered this one time when I was exploring the use of San Pedro cactus (a mescaline cactus used in the Andes). I choked down an aweful tasting cactus and was hanging out on a beach meditating and waiting for the effects to come on and after several hours only felt the slightest buzz. After several hours I gave up on it and decided to toke some weed. After inhaling the weed, a full on psychedelic journey came on. I realized then that cannabis for me synergized powerfully with other psychedelics and could also be a psychedelic on it’s own if used with that intention. But everyone is different in this regard. Some people say it makes them anxious and they hate it. Others just use it addictively to zone out and not feel their feelings. Some people find it helps with artistic or musical inspiration. So it depends a lot on the person and the intention. Cannabis-Assisted Therapy has also become a thing. There it is used in a body-based therapy to process and heal old traumas:

So it’s all about whether one is being intentional and mindful about cannabis use, or just using to zone out and avoid feelings. I would also recommend Ryan Sprague’s work on Conscious Cannabis:

p.s. Heavy cannabis use seems to interfere with REM sleep and dream re-call. I don’t find this to be the case with my own moderate and intentional use of cannabis as a psychedelic but I know folks who were heavily addicted and said they didn’t remember any dreams for years. When they quit, suddenly they were flooded with dreams!

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P.S. If I was King of the World, here is what I’d do. I would legalize all drugs but I would require everyone to buy a license to buy them. To get the license you would have to pay a fee and you would have to attend a drug education class and pass a basic test (similar to getting a driver’s license). You would need to do this to even buy alcohol. With the money collected I would build free drug treatment centers for anyone who wanted treatment. If the police arrested you for any drug related crime -whether it be drunk driving or drug related vagrancy, you would be given the option of free detox and treatment rather than jail or fines. Treat it as a health and education problem more than a legal problem.

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z
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yes, that’s why we are here…
and @fenwizard 's & @_Barry 's sharing is an example of that.
thank us all :infinity:

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@NightHawk999
@fenwizard
@Kalabasis
@_Barry
@mbready

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or artificial JOY :sun_with_face:
this video also fits SO WELL here :heart_eyes:

:pray:t3:

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Do you think these numbers are static?
Or would they shift with mass legalizations?
HIGHer or lower???

The highways already are a nightmare to drive, cant imagine what it would be like after mass amnesty:

“Let us hope, I was wrong”

Holiday Spirits

“This is like that little Gretta girl…”

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Yeah alcohol is by far the most dangerous drug of all!
But a lot of folks don’t even think of it as a drug, it’s been so much a part of Western culture for thousands of years. Notice how we often say “alcohol and drugs” - like alcohol is somehow in a different category from other drugs.

It reminds me of something I overheard in the UK in 2007. At that time I was traveling through the UK visiting ancient sacred sites like Stonehenge, etc, but somehow ended up at someone’s birthday party at a farm in Wales. They had set up a stage in their barn where rock bands were playing and there were big kegs of beer. There was also a rave tent with techno music going and there was MDMA and other psychedelics going around. Later in the night I saw an obviously drunk mother berating her early 20’s son because she could see from his dilated pupils that he was high on ecstasy. “You know I didn’t raise you to take drugs!” she said. But she was obviously intoxicated on her own drug of choice.

Here’s a little joke I once heard:
“Do you know the difference between a drunk driver and a stoned driver?”
“Uh, no.”
“A drunk driver comes to a stop sign, doesn’t notice it and speeds right through it. The stoned driver stops at the stop sign and waits for it to turn green.”

I’m not advocating stoned driving, it’s something I avoid. But I would take a stoned driver over a drunk driver any day.

In terms of your question about whether drug harms from cannabis would go up with legalization, it’s a good question. Cannabis seems to cause little harm to the body compared to alcohol and many other drugs. But yes, it can be addictive to some folks and it can harm the developing brains of teenagers and early 20’s young adults. It seems to be good for older brains. The main brain cannabis researcher, Stacey Gruber has established this. I am doing another post on that topic.

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LOL! Yes, so true

Not 100% sure…

If heroin, coke, or mushrooms where ubiquitous and availavle at every city block, I think they might give booze a run for its money:
:scream:
The Christmas Spirit Returns to South Park

“Christmas snow”
:santa:

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Yeah big hypocracy

LOL, thank God for the paranoia side effects of MJ!
That being said, I do believe it impairs driving, and is dangerous for driving. I would however, far prefer a stoned Uber driver, to a drunk one.

Amen.

Bucle up Buckaroo, the next few decades are going to see an avalanche of scientific studies showing the damage long term weed use does to peoples bodies and minds:

This is one of the strongest aruguements in my opionion for why drug legalizations is so dangerous.

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@_Barry. Here’s the thing about high THC cannabis. I actually like it because I don’t need to smoke that much of it. One or two hits is enough (if you’re not addicted - if you’re addicted that’s a different story). So from a harm reduction perspective, you can get the same high that folks in the 60’s would get from having to smoke a whole joint, but only have to smoke one or two hits. And if you want to reduce harm further, you can use a dry herb vaporizer. This heats the herb to the point of releasing vapor but you don’t reach combustion, so there is no smoke. But the THC in the vapor is lower than what you get from smoke, so high THC content is not so bad (if used in this manner).

I’m not a big fan of Huberman (but his anti-cannabis video did persuade a cannabis addict that I know to quit, so that’s good). However, his field of neurological research is not drugs, it was research on the visual center of the brain. He also grew up in an alcoholic family and as a young man had addiction problems, so when he got off drugs and started excelling in the field of neurology, he took on the anti-drug zeal of a reformed addict. The premier cannabis brain researcher is Stacey Gruber from Harvard Medical School. She has a more nuanced view of cannabis. She gives people cannabis and puts them into brain scanners. She does show that it lights up the same dopamine reward centers as all addictive drugs, including SUGAR! (That one arguably causes the biggest crisis in America!) So yeah, if you’re someone who has a tendency to chase addictive highs (dopamine release), it may be good to stay away from cannabis and all other addictive drugs, including alcohol, sugar, video games, etc. (I had a former client who was addicted to playing them during almost all of his waking hours). Gruber also says that cannabis is not good for developing brains, so young folks should stay away from it into their mid-20’s. But her research also shows that it can help aging brains and may actually slow down dementia. (And so does getting off sugar - but that’s another topic). There are some interesting interviews that she did with Neil deGrasse Tysson on youtube, as well as some other videos that she did on various cannabis topics.

So long story short: I think cannabis is bad for many people and good for many other people. One person’s medicine is another person’s poison. But it should not be in Schedule I (drugs with no medical use, as it has many medical uses and was part of the pharmacopia up until the 1920’s when it was made illegal). In fact the DEA is currently working on a proposal to move it from Schedule I to Schedule III - that would put it into the same category as cough syrup with codeine and would allow doctors to write prescriptions for it.

As for cannabis as a psychedelic. I think it’s only a psychedelic if it’s used with that intention. My experience with cannabis is that it’s quite psychedelic. When I enter the cannabis field I experience it as infinite spaciousness. I often get downloads of ideas that seem to be inspirations from a Higher Source (not just a “high source” LOL). I will often write these down and many of these ideas prove to be useful in my life later on if I implement them. I often feel at One with an Infinite Mind.

A number of artists, musicians and intellectuals have this kind of relationship with cannabis. One notable example was Carl Sagan. This is an interview with Lester Grinspoon’s son. Grinspoon was the pre-eminant medical marijuana expert of the 20th Century. He was friends with Sagan, so this interview addresses Sagan’s cannabis use and how he used it for downloads of inspiration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMv5uY3a8HY
This type of use is very different than chasing the dopamine high. If you find yourself chasing the dopamine pleasure high with cannabis (or alcohol or any drug or activity) it’s time to stop!

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@NightHawk999 To quote the video “We believe cannabis prohibition doesn’t work and cannabis should be legal, but we should treat it as what it is - a drug.” I fully agree with this.
Drug prohibition is not working. What is needed is mass education and free treatment options, similar to the proposal that I gave in another post. We certainly don’t need to go back to throwing a bunch of folks in prison (especially people of color) because they were using cannabis. Free drug treatment should given as the alternative to prison. It certainly wouldn’t be any more expensive to the taxpayer. Especially if you used cannabis tax to pay for it.

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Me as well.

Agreed, and its enriching the Cartels are Black Market. This propogates Evil, see here:

Agreed.

Easier said than done, but I also agree with this.

Much easier to fund programs like this in NYC, than it is in Montana.

Rural areas often get shafted the hardest when drug laws become more lax. The funding per capita isnt the same as big cities.

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If current trends continue, legal cannabis will eventually be in all of the States. Tax the hell out of cannabis and alcohol and create free treatment centers. Also if you moved folks who are currently in prison for drug related crimes into treatment and rehabilitation centers, you could move some of the funding from the prison system into a system of treatment and healing.

Also make ibogaine treatment legal in the U.S. In fact, the States should fund free ibogaine treatment for addiction. Kentucky almost did that but it got de-railed.
(see my next post).

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Howard Lotsof was a heroin addict who was given a dose of ibogaine by a friend, simply as a novel psychedelic to try. He discovered that it cured his heroin addiction with no withdrawal. He spent the rest of his life promoting ibogaine research and treatment as an option of opioid addiction (and other drug addictions).

“Dosed” is a documentary about a woman heroin addict in Vancouver, BC who is able to kick her habit by first using psilocybin and then ibogaine.

Kentucky recently came close to implementing a free ibogaine treatment program for opioid addicts. Unfortunately this was de-railed. This is the story:

Ibogaine appears to be a useful treatment for a wide range of addictions and there are also claims that it is useful for veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injury. It’s illegal in the U.S. but legal in most of the rest of the world. There are a number of ibogaine treatment centers (of varied quality) in Mexico and Canada.

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I am glad you brought this up, @BlessingsDeers also mentioned if a few days or weeks ago. AND it has Joe Rogan’s stamp of approval :star_struck: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :star_struck: Im Sold!!!

Amazing! Heroin addiction is killing our youth and with all the fentanyl it is laced with these days, this has become a national epidemic.

Thank you for letting me know about this. Will spread the word, and I hope others do as well.

What are the negative side effects of Ibogaine? From short term usage? Long term usage?

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Long term usage is not a thing. Typically one goes through ibogaine treatment once and then you are clean and don’t need to repeat it. However, if one relapses, one may choose to do it again. It’s a very rough long trip that can last more than 30 hours. It often involves a life review process. There are people who are not addicts who do it for personal growth or healing. I had a friend who went to an iboga center in British Columbia a few months ago and did it for personal healing for anxiety. It was a long grueling process. In this center they chew the root bark and do the traditional Bwiti African ceremony (I believe that the people who ran this center were not African but had been initiated and given permission to do this). My friend was hoping to get relief from anxiety and unfortunately it was a very long grueling ceremony and he did not experience much relief from anxiety. Different medicines for different folks and conditions. This seems to be the medicine for addiction (and possibly PTSD and traumatic brain injury - more research is needed however). The biggest danger is that a few folks have died from cardiac arrest. Anyone with arrhythmias should not do this medicine. There are a few treatment centers that use cardiac monitors. This is one of the few psychedelic medicines that I have not done, so I can’t speak from experience on this one.
Another interesting side note: The Pigmy people of the West African rainforest also use this medicine and may be the tribe that has been using this medicine the longest.

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Interesting reflections on whether DMT actually opens the doors to other dimensions, or is it just a trip within one’s own brain?

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