For the first time in 40 years, the medical community is using psychedelic drugs such as LSD as therapeutic tools, dosing combat-addled Iraq vets and diseased patients coming to grips with their impending death. This is the story of medical adventurers and their high-flying patients.

Long article (in PDF format) about LSD, MDMA and medical research. If you already know what's going on in this space you may not learn too much that's new. But it's a great read.

'Salvia divinorum -- Doorway to thought--free awareness' was originally published in 2008 under the title 'Peopled Darkness -- Perceptual Transformation through Salvia divinorum.' Now republished in 2010 by Inner Traditions, James D. Arthur's bibliographic journey with the 'Diviner's Sage' is both engaging and informative; examining the salviaic experience with a calm voice and a detailed eye.

The book takes the form of both a chronological and experiential character development. Beginning from Arthur's "first experiences", to their "intensification," as he tries differing strengths and methods of consuming salvia, through to an "augmentation" of the experiential nature of his perceptions. Finally, he is "taken" by those which he perceives as 'personages' within the salviaic experience and relates some of the communications that took place.

The essential axiom of this biographical book is a recognition of the Self as a medium through which the subjective salviaic experience can be communicated; for although there are elements of traditional historicism, namely chronology, passages involving the 'invisible landscape' are not a party to 'consensual reality.' In this manner, one has a point -- the self -- from which to balance experiential accounts, interpretation and speculation.

In his own words:

"[My] home was completely burned, destroying everything that was most important: laboratory, hydroelectric system, custom-built and -designed electric motorcycle and, for the crowning touch, [the arsonist] tried to burn [my] library, one of the best private collections on ethnomedicine that exist[s]. Signed, personal copies of some of Albert Hofmann’s books were even used as fuel to ignite expensive laboratory equipment! While the humidity of the cloud-forest saved the books, the house was rendered uninhabitable and without power; the laboratory unusable.

It is the attempted book-burning which most outrages me and, I think, will outrage others.

For that reason, I am dedicating my full attention first to saving the books—I now have 53 boxes banded and stashed, and there will be perhaps 100 to 125 in total. This is hard and dirty work, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

So I am fucked in a major way and the rest of this year will be devoted to moving to Colombia and starting over there. I go to Colombia to lecture in May and hope to have library and lab packed up by then. I have to start over again for the 4th time, but will land on my feet and in 2 years time be better off than before.

Help out!

I'm a big fan of epic doses. Before Erowid was around I had no reliable way of knowing what a typical dose was, and in my vanished youth I tended to err on the side of intensity. Indeed, I hesitate even to report on some of my more ridiculous escapades because someone somewhere just might be stupid enough to try to imitate my folly. I've been lucky. Some of my tippy-top most memorable (if not exactly best remembered), most meaningful and most transformative experiences have occurred at dosages that rightly ought to have left me gibbering in a puddle of my own drool. My best friend Seuss Dean and I egg each other on at times, and Ever Higher has long been one of our battle cries. We've shared some doozies, to be sure. The night he took ten dried grams of mushrooms still stands as one of my most profound trips ever, and I was just the sober sitter.

That said, I think low dose experiences are underrated. If your goal has always been to get as bleeped up as possible, you've probably been blowing right past some of your favorite substance's more subtle offerings. Back when I was a little raver kid I remember always being irritated at dealers for selling such weak ecstasy pills and doses that I had to take two or three of whatever it was to really get off. I figured it was just their way of moving more product. Now something that's perhaps finally beginning to resemble mature wisdom tells me that one weaker hit was actually kind of ideal for that sort of environment. (Assuming that I planned on taking any drugs at all.) Yeah, I know, there is a weird half-ass liminal high that's just uncomfortable, but I'm talking about aiming for the state just beyond that, where it first starts to become what it actually is.

Dr. Gabor Mate is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel Society, which runs a residence/harm reduction facility and North America’s only supervised safe-injection site in Vancouver, Canada, home to one of the world’s densest areas of drug users. The bestselling author of four books, we speak to Dr. Mate about his latest, 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction', which proposes new approaches to treating addiction through an understanding of its biological and socio-economic roots. Mate also discusses his work on attention deficit disorder and the mind-body connection. [includes rush transcript]

• The US has lost the "War on Drugs"


• The losing side is usually not the one to decide when a fight is over or how it ends


• Unlike other recent defeats, this lost war is a defeat followed by an invasion


• Mexico is the natural staging area for the invasion (inconvenient though it is for the Mexicans)

"The legalization of marijuana will be the single most devastating economic event in the long boom-and-bust history of Northern California," said Anna Hamilton, 62, a Humboldt County radio host and musician who said her involvement with marijuana has mostly been limited to smoking it for the past 40 years.

Local residents are so worried that pot farmers came together with officials in Humboldt County for a standing-room-only meeting Tuesday night where civic leaders, activists and growers brainstormed ideas for dealing with the threat. Among the ideas: turning the vast pot gardens of Humboldt County into a destination for marijuana aficionados, with tours and tastings - a sort of Napa Valley of pot.

Many were also enthusiastic about promoting the Humboldt brand of pot. Some discussed forming a cooperative that would enforce high standards for marijuana and stamp the county's finest weed with an official Humboldt seal of approval.

I'm having a difficult time feeling too sympathetic to their plight, but I do admire the cojones involved in showing up to a town meeting on the topic.

In Australia it is illegal, but both police and the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre said they were aware of its presence and were monitoring its availability. Just last month, the Australian Federal Police and Customs seized 20 kilograms of the drug hidden in children's toys.

Users of the drug told the Herald that demand for mephedrone in Australia surged in November for the summer party and music festival seasons.

[Thanks Danny!]

In 1992 researchers in Israel isolated the cannabinoid anandamide in the human brain. Unlike THC, anandamide is manufactured in the brain, and is therefore an endogenous cannabinoid. This agent, anandamide, is the compound that attaches to the built-in cannabinoid receptors in our brains. The name anandamide is based on the Sanskrit word ananda, which means bliss. Anandamide is a bliss molcule, enhancing greater well being and emotional satisfaction...

Anandamide also plays a role in proper appetite, feelings of pleasure and well-being, and memory. Interestingly, cannabis also affects these same functions. Cannabis has been used successfully to treat migraine, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and glaucoma. So here is the seventy-four thousand dollar question. Does cannabis simply relieve these diseases to varying degrees, or is cannabis actually a medical replacement in cases of deficient anandamide?

At least one author, medical doctor Ethan Russo, believes in the possibility of endocanabinoid deficiency, and suggests that such a deficiency might actually be a significant cause of the types of health problems listed above. His paper "Clinical Cannabinoid Deficiency," published in Neuroendocrinology Letters in 2004, delved deeply into the various ways that cannabinoids function in the body, and how a deficiency in cannabinoids can lead to a broad range of diseases. Since the publication of that paper, a number of studies have further confirmed the effectiveness of cannabis for many health disorders.

The idea of clinical cannabinoid deficiency opens the door to cannabis consumption as an effective medical approach to relief of various types of pain, restoration of appetite in cases in which appetite is compromised, improved visual health in cases of glaucoma, and improved sense of well being among patients suffering from a broad variety of mood disorders. As state and local laws mutate and change in favor of greater tolerance, perhaps cannabis will find it’s proper place in the home medicine chest.