Originally published in 1968 'The Politics of Ecstasy' is a collection of essays by, and interviews with, psychedelic troubadour Timothy Leary. The book contains Leary’s central ideas for the Sixties psychedelic revolution; both social and scientific. Arguably less well received than 'The Psychedelic Experience', it is in fact a much more insightful perspective on both the man and his beliefs and conveys many, still important, observations on society.

The summer of love is over. Post-India visits, the Millbrook bubble has all but burst. ‘The Politics of Ecstasy’ is the product of a transient decade dominated in one respect by the psychedelic theories of one man, namely Timothy Leary. This book is the culmination of an adventure he has undergone; through the social, scientific and political elements of a decade fraught with change. There lies within the words a certain desperation to try and formulate his own methods for change; yet, not withstanding the historicism, there is cohesion in the thoughts of this book.

[Via Sleepy, who notes re part 3, "best mayan snake god costume ever."]

Dave Grohl has revealed that he was recently hospitalised because he drank too much coffee.

In Grohl's absence, his band Them Crooked Vultures - also made up of Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones - recently uploaded a video in which they seemingly joked: "Two weeks after [the] video was shot, Dave was rushed to [a] doctor due to the onset of unwanted physical effects caused by too much caffeine."

However, Grohl has now confirmed that this was in fact true.

He told Absolute Radio: "We were in the studio making a record and I was drinking a lot of coffee.

"I was doing Vultures stuff at night, Foo Fighters stuff during the day and I had a newborn at home so I was sleeping two to three hours a night on an air mattress in a guest bedroom.

"And yeah, I had too much coffee, I started to get chest pains so I went to the hospital and they told me to stop drinking the coffee."

Them Crooked Vultures are currently working on their second LP.

The government's chief drugs adviser has strongly indicated the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will recommend mephedrone be banned.

Professor Les Iversen said he expected the panel would make a recommendation to the home secretary next Monday.

He said he believed mephedrone was "harmful" and hinted that it should be categorised as a Class B drug.

His evidence to an MPs' committee comes as the deaths of a number of young people have been linked to the drug.

The drug is known by various names, including "M-Cat", "MC", "mieow", "meow", "4MMC", or simply plant fertiliser.

[Thanks James!]

Last year, bioethicist Malcolm Dando warned that calmatives are part of a paradigm shift in the biochemical-weapons world and that we shouldn't weaponize drugs, especially if we don't fully understand them.

Seems like sound advice to me.

Albarelli also introduces us to George Hunter White -- a ne'er-do-well agent for the Bureau of Narcotics, a forerunner to the current Drug Enforcement Administration, he was on "special contract" with the CIA.

It was White, Olson's colleague Eigelsbach contends, who was behind the November 1950 New York City subway test -- as well as a second test two years later, Albarelli claims.

"George White in 1952 did release a small amount of aerosol LSD in a subway car. He was pleased with the results as indicated in his diary, but his reports on the incident were destroyed by the CIA in 1973," he says.

But with the CIA's most important records on such matters destroyed or cloaked in national security claims, it remains difficult to prove whether these purported subway tests occurred.

Still, Albarelli's portrait of White -- a gruff, chain-smoking, gin-swilling reprobate with an occasional fondness for opium, hookers and Mafiosi drug-dealers -- makes it apparent that if anyone could have tested LSD on an unsuspecting public, it would be him.

White had set up a CIA safe house at 81 Bedford Street, in Greenwich Village, comprised of two apartments conjoined with a hidden two-way mirror and doorway. Posing as a seaman or artist, he would regularly recruit strangers for social gatherings there, where they would be plied with psychedelic drugs, often without their knowledge. The aim was to see if White could successfully extract information from them and to assess those results, according to one CIA document.

[Thanks Brian!]

A lecture given on March 17, 2010 to the Sydney cell of the Evolver network as part of its community "spore" discussion on the future of psychedelics. In which experiential journalist Rak Razam discusses the state of psychedelic culture, where it came from in modern times with the advent of LSD in 1943, the legacy of alchemist Albert Hofmann, and why the psychedelic movement is so important to a sustainable future. Acid opened the mind in the 60s, ecstasy opened the heart in the 80s, and in the 21st century ayahuasca and entheogenic plant sacraments are opening the soul of the West, guiding us back to a cooperative Gaian partnership. As the "second wave of ayahuasca shamanism" sweeps the world in a slo-mo r-evolution, the psychedelic movement is reaching out to the elder indigenous cultures around the world to bridge the gap of our own psychic and spiritual understanding, and is becoming a global entheogenic movement. Can this new wave reach a critical mass of its own understanding, as well as a purity of intent to truly be ready to join the galactic community? Join Razam and the Evolver community to find out...

Cary Grant married actress Dyan Cannon in 1965. Cannon took LSD with Grant while they were dating. "He once told me I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and he hoped I would have it so that the 'new me' would be a wonderful one. And he said that the 'new me' would be created through LSD." During their messy divorce proceedings two years later, Cannon brought up Grant's LSD use several times. She testified that he had "yelling and screaming fits," beat her, spanked her and used LSD for ten years. "Mr. Grant is an unfit father because of his instability," she said. She relayed an anecdote about a night he was high on acid and refused to let her leave the estate for a night out. He confiscated her keys and bolted the gates. "He locked himself in my dressing room, where he began reading poetry ... later he began to hit me ... He was laughing and screamed for the help to come and see what he was doing. I was frightened and went to call the police." Another incident she spoke of happened while Grant sat at home, tripping out during the Academy Awards as they were broadcast live on television. "He became violent and out of control. He jumped up on the bed and carried on. He yelled that everyone on the show had their faces lifted. He was spilling wine on the bed." Grant's lawyers brought a pair of psychiatrists to the stand, doctors whom had examined Cary the same month that the divorce had been filed. One of the psychiatrists, Dr. J. Marmor, testified, "I find no reason to believe that [LSD] had harmed [Cary Grant] or caused lingering negative effects ... Mr. Grant tends to be an emotional individual, but I have often seen that in actors." On March 21, 1968, Judge Robert A. Wenke ruled that Grant was to pay fifty thousand dollars a year in child support and would be restricted to visiting his daughter Jennifer for two months per year.

And jewels of wisdom:

"I learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite ... You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. In one LSD dream ... I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship."

Much more like this from the full article.

[Thanks Jonathan!]

It's perhaps the biggest threat to the nation's mental wellbeing, yet it's freely available on every street -- for pennies. The dealers claim it expands the mind and bolsters the intellect: users experience an initial rush of emotion (often euphoria or rage), followed by what they believe is a state of enhanced awareness. Tragically this "awareness" is a delusion. As they grow increasingly detached from reality, heavy users often exhibit impaired decision-making abilities, becoming paranoid, agitated and quick to anger. In extreme cases they've even been known to form mobs and attack people. Technically it's called "a newspaper", although it's better known by one of its many "street names", such as "The Currant Bun" or "The Mail" or "The Grauniad" (see me -- Ed).

In its purest form, a newspaper consists of a collection of facts which, in controlled circumstances, can actively improve knowledge. Unfortunately, facts are expensive, so to save costs and drive up sales, unscrupulous dealers often "cut" the basic contents with cheaper material, such as wild opinion, bullshit, empty hysteria, reheated press releases, advertorial padding and photographs of Lady Gaga with her bum hanging out. The hapless user has little or no concept of the toxicity of the end product: they digest the contents in good faith, only to pay the price later when they find themselves raging incoherently in pubs, or -- increasingly -- on internet messageboards.

[Thanks Mr. Tumnus!]