I had the world by the balls when I graduated high school (I snorted meth every day during my junior and senior year). My SAT and AZVAB (the test the military administered to high schoolers to find the next Oppenheimer) scores were among the top 99.5% in the nation. I scoffed at the Navy recruiter even though I was offered the opportunity to enlist straight into the nuclear sub program, which only 1 in every 40,000 enlistees is offered. Instead I chose to take a scholarship at one of the West Coast's top three technical colleges. I majored in Vascular Imagery and was poised for great things. Between graduation and the fall term of my freshman year, I started smoking crank instead of snorting it. The high was very nice and the addiction was extreme. Anyway, my addiction path led me to drop out of college after only 2 terms. I worked in my family's businesses and sold drugs steadily for the next four years. The longer you use meth, the more accustomed you become to its high. In other words, you still stay up and endless energy, you just don't have the euphoria you once did. Life becomes very dull and unrewarding during abstinence periods.

Since I was 16yrs old (18 yrs ago) I haven't been off meth more than 6 months at a time, and maybe only three times have I quit for that long. Long time addicts are extremely dependent on meth to function. I honestly think the addiction is much stronger and the withdrawals last much longer than heroin. I would tell anyone considering meth to first ask yourself what your reasonable expectations from life are. If you are not too bright, or have little aspiration to accomplish goals which require you be mentally and physically at your peak on most days, I would say give it a try and see what you think. But if you have reason to expect or extreme determination to achieve more from your future than the majority of our population, then stay the fuck away from it! People make decisions early in life (16-17) that will effect the rest of their lives. And nobody that age is far enough along in their self control and discipline to fuck around with meth. Sadly to say, if your parents are addicts and you've been around it most of your life, you will be either very against it and do your all to stay away from it, or you will be an addict at an early age and probably end up in the joint. I was smart enough to learn after my second meth case (PCS and DCS of 35 grams) to be careful and be smart. Back then, in early '98, everyone wasn't hellbent on locking up every addict out there.

Originally published in 2000 'Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century' by Mike Jay is an extraordinary examination of the proliferation of various drugs during an enlightenment fueled Victorian age. Drawing on meticulous research, the book manages to combine elements of scientific, medical, literary and social history, in a manner befitting such a complex topic and the execution is highly readable, insightful and very entertaining.

The goal of this review is to examine the content and at the same time to draw lines of flight to twentieth century drug writing. Indeed, Mike draws his own conclusions between the differing attitudes of the centuries, socially, but we'll return to this at the end. Suffice to say it is the changing attitude of both the culture and the establishment that forms the crux of this differing perspective. The text itself is partitioned via the drugs; namely with chapters on nitrous oxide, opium, cannabis, ether, cocaine and mescaline. And is concluded with a look at the Temperance movement and alcohol prohibition. In many respects The Emperors of Dreams is a culmination narrative of the revisionist history of drugs, which took place at the end of last century but is also notable for taking into account the subjective efficacy of these substances as well.

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that -- for reasons that aren't entirely clear -- abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

Smoking marijuana does help relieve a certain amount of pain, a small but well-designed Canadian study has found.

People who suffer chronic neuropathic or nerve pain from damage or dysfunction of the nervous system have few treatment options with varying degrees of effectiveness and side-effects.

Neuropathic pain is caused by damage to nerves that don't repair, which can make the skin sensitive to a light touch.

Cannabis pills have been shown to help treat some types of pain but the effects and risks from smoked cannabis were unclear.

To find out more, Dr. Mark Ware, an assistant professor in family medicine and anesthesia at Montreal's McGill University, and his colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial -- the gold standard of medical research -- of inhaled cannabis in 21 adults with chronic neuropathic pain.

Investigators used three different strengths of the active drug -- THC levels of 2.5 per cent, six per cent and 9.4 per cent, as well as a zero per cent placebo.

"We found that 25 mg herbal cannabis with 9.4 per cent THC, administered as a single smoked inhalation three times daily for five days, significantly reduces average pain intensity compared with a zero per cent THC cannabis placebo in adult subjects with chronic post traumatic/post surgical neuropathic pain," the study's authors concluded in Monday's online issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

[Thanks Jim!]

[Thanks Jim!]

Today marks the beginning of the Burning Man Festival in the wastelands of Nevada. Thousands of people will pour out into the desert, abandoning day jobs, relationships and social norms to dance around in one hundred degree heat wearing capes and glitter. For anyone unfamiliar with Burning Man, it's a weeklong event dedicated to self-expression, community reliance and sexual contact under the guise of spirituality. I know this because I went last year for the first and last time. I went seeking a utopian enclave of open-minded and accepting brothers and sisters, I followed rumors of a culture rising from the desert clay and supporting itself for seven days on nothing but love, understanding, and a little pharmaceutically induced introspection. Instead I found misguided, fat men in tie-died t-shirts with exposed genitals caked in dust. Suffice it to say, Burning Man let me down.

[Thanks Sam Hell!]

Distorted perceptions and an altered state of mind: two reasons why psychedelics have always attracted not only fascination, but also controversy for decades. A recent Perspective in Nature Reviews Neuroscience entitled "The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders", by Franz Vollenweider & Michael Kometer explores why there is a renewed interest in the clinical potential of psychedelics for treating mental disorders, after nearly a 40 year gap in clinical experimentation. Anticipating a significant interest in this topic, Nature Publishing Group has made this manuscript freely accessible for 1 month. In addition, we offer a four-part series of essays by some of the best neuroscience bloggers to help you explore the literature and discuss the most important aspects:

1.) The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry by Moheb Costandi
2.) Serotonin, Psychedelics and Depression by Neuroskeptic
3.) Ketamine for Depression: Yea or Neigh? by The Neurocritic
4.) Visions of a psychedelic future by Vaughan Bell

[Thanks Mo!]

The victims have died after falling into rocky crevasses and gorges or from similar physical mishaps, rather than from inadvertently eating poisonous fungi.

Authorities said an early and bountiful mushroom harvest in the Alpine valleys of northern Italy had attracted more people than usual to scour the woods and forests in search of succulent funghi to bring to the dinner table.

Many of them were unfit and ill-equipped, venturing into remote areas without proper footwear or rainproof clothing, and without checking weather forecasts.

Collecting wild mushrooms as autumn approaches is an extremely popular pastime in Italy.

[Thanks Dropper!]

At a time when we're being encouraged to have our say politically, it seems appropriate to have a little Magic Mushroom flashback. The active ingredients of Psilocybe mushrooms (psilocybin and psilocin) were made schedule 1 drugs in the UK, in 1971, meaning possession and supply could land you a very long prison sentence, on a par with cocaine and heroin. Due to a legal loophole however, possession of the fresh mushroom remained legal and soon after the turn of the millennia head shops across the UK had begun selling them in earnest.

Picking the native UK shroom, the Psilocybe semilanceata (better known as the Liberty Cap), largely remained the preserve of the aficionado, and it was the Psilocybe cubensis species (Mexican, Thai and Colombian strains amongst others) that took pride of place in the fridges of the head shops. It was estimated that the annual turnover of this legal trade was 1,000,000 pounds sterling per annum, raking in a cool 175,000 pounds over the same period in VAT for the government (RAND, 53).

Experiential journalist Rak Razam is interviewed by anthropologist Robin Rodd from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, on all things ayahuasca, Down Under. What are the cultural uses of ayahuasca in Australia and how does it relate to other entheo cultures in South America and elsewhere in the world? Without an unbroken shamanic lineage, Aussiehuasqueros have had to stitch their shamanic practice from multiple sources, sometimes united in a cultural synergy for group shamanizing. The hybridization of not just ayahuasca, but of Amazonian shamanism itself is potent in the Australian counterculture as it births a new hybrid modality suited to the conditions on the land. But what of the cultural archetypes, do they remain the same? How do Australian aboriginal spirits and energies affect the mix? Is there something activating in the vibrational frequency of the Australian Land itself, its songlines and energetic grid, and how does all of this tie into other indigenous prophecies of these changing times? A personal exposition from Razam on his own journey and collective journey in the culture...