From WBUR and NPR - On Point with Tom Ashbrook.

Half a century ago this year -- fall 1960 -- psychologist Timothy Leary ate psilocybin mushrooms in Mexico and had what he would call "the deepest religious experience" of his life.

He came home to promote psychedelics as the path to revelation, revolution. Richard Nixon called him the most dangerous man in America. Much of the 1960s danced to his tune.

My guest today tells the remarkable story of how a tiny band of seekers and psychic explorers ended up changing the culture of a nation, and its very understanding of mind, body and spirit.

Click through to listen to this radio show.

[Thanks soma junkie!]

Another promising line of pharmacological research bites the dust in the wake of market fallout. Death to the anti-pot. Long live pot!

Cannabinoid Receptor, Type 1 (CB1) antagonists were supposed to be the next big thing. They're weight loss drugs, and with obesity rates rising and the diet craze showing no signs of abating, that's a large and growing market (...sorry). They worked, at least in the short term, and they were at least as effective as existing pills...

But it ended in tears, literally. Rimonabant was pulled from the European market in late 2008; it was never approved in the USA at all. After rimonabant was withdrawn, drug companies abandoned the development of other CB1 antagonists.

The problem was that they made people depressed. In several large clinical trials of rimonabant it raised the risk of suffering depression and other psychiatric problems, like anxiety and irritability, compared to placebo. The reported rates of these symptoms ranged from a few % up to over 40% depending upon the population, but there have been no trials (except very small ones) in which these effects weren't seen. This means that CB1 antagonists cause depression rather more consistently than antidepressants treat it...

There were side effects. Alongside things like nausea, vomiting, and sweating, about 35% of people taking high doses of taranabant reported "psychiatric disorders". 20% of people on placebo also did, so this is not quite as bad as it first appears, but it's still striking, especially since a number of people on high doses of taranabant reported suicidal thoughts or behaviours...

Yes, people who take the anti-pot (cannabinoid antagonists) feel depressed and want to kill themselves. But at least they lose weight; call it the anti-munchies. Designer cannabinoids may be an untapped market, but anti-cannabis just seems wrong. This smelled like a bad idea from the start.

[Thanks Jonathan!]

Even if you're not going to be attending SXSW, I'd recommend watching the trailer for Etienne Sauret's film below, as it looks to be a bittersweet examination of one man's life and work; a man who is an underground hero to an entire culture of people (some call him "The Godfather of Psychedelics") and a drug-making villain to others. What makes Dirty Pictures, which draws its title from the scientist's pet name for his molecular drawings, so appealing, though, isn't the breakdown of how the world sees Dr. Shulgin, but how he sees the world.

All about the latest K2, spice, fake weed, legal high trend.

Teens are getting high on an emerging drug called "fake weed," a concoction also known as K2 and "spice" that is also causing hallucinations, vomiting, agitation and other dangerous effects.

In the last month, Dr. Anthony Scalzo, a professor of toxicology at Saint Louis University, has seen nearly 30 cases of teenagers experiencing these adverse effects after smoking the fake weed, a legal substance that reportedly offers a marijuana-like high.

"K2 use is not limited to the Midwest; reports of its use are cropping up all over the country," Scalzo said. "I think K2 is likely a bigger problem than we're aware of at this time." For instance, Atlanta has seen about 12 cases recently.

K2 has been sold since 2006 as incense or potpourri for about $30 to $40 per three gram bag – comparable in cost to marijuana.

"K2 may be a mixture of herbal and spice plant products, but it is sprayed with a potent psychotropic drug and likely contaminated with an unknown toxic substance that is causing many adverse effects," said Scalzo, who also directs the Missouri Regional Poison Control Center.

NOTE: There have been reports of people getting sick from certain batches of k2. This article indicates that there may be an unknown contaminant in some types of spice product (any guesses?). We have no evidence to confirm this, but some batches of spice or K2 may include more than you bargained for.

Mephedrone isn't just another obscure research chemical. Everyone's at it, all the time. Despite the media scare stories, over 20% of mephedrone users polled on Drugs Forum take more than 10g each month, with just under half of those consuming over 20g. A lot of replies to that thread also reveal how quickly usage can escalate, meaning those results are probably on the conservative side. "More acceptable than weed", some have been saying. "Even my non-druggie friends are doing it!"

Mephedrone Cat knows when enough is enough, and so should you!

[Thanks John]

Everyone's so impressed with the new OK Go video (which I admit is nifty), but let's be clear - if your Rube Goldberg contraption can pour you a drink, you win.

As Cocktailians notes, "Extra points for... not emptying the vodka bottle in the process."

At the risk of becoming a Mostly Forbidden Zone rebroadcaster, I can't help but post this - who among us hasn't wanted such an apparatus for parties, bus stops, and trips to the Sunday market?

I was browsing another blog and found this entry with some cool videos. The first is a studio virtual backlot reel, helping you question your perceptions of reality by showing how many ordinary, non-FX-seeming scenes in movies are actually computer generated:

Follow the link for a few more, including how sound editors come up with just the right "whoosh"; a Nickelodeon pilot for a new cartoon whose style is '60s-psychedelia meets Hanna-Barbera meets Steampunk; and a time-lapse video of heavy snow falling in a forest.

A translation from a 2008 Spanish research study from the journal "Adicciones", which includes some very exciting findings.

Many people associate the use of alcohol and other drugs with sexuality. It is common to find that each drug is associated with a specific effect on sexuality. Weekend recreational nightlife settings are increasingly important places for the young, and frequented by them more and more in search of sex and drug-taking opportunities. In this research we are interested in the role the young attribute to recreational drugs with regard to their sexual practices. We interviewed a sample of 100 young people from four Spanish cities, using a questionnaire with both open and closed questions. Snowball sampling was used to find those who had had sexual experience, who had taken recreational drugs and who liked going to discos, bars, etc. at the weekend. We found that these young people have a very precise idea of how each drug functions within sexuality. Considering all four parameters analysed, alcohol is by far the most popular (to initiate the sexual encounter, for more unusual or the "hottest" experiences, to increase arousal, and to prolong sex), though in the last case in particular the preferred drug was cocaine. Cannabis does not interest them because of its relaxing effects, while ecstasy is chosen more for remaining active and enjoying oneself than for its sexual effects. Women use alcohol more than men (mainly to increase arousal, when they want unusual sex or to prolong sex) and use cocaine less.

Is it just me or is the scientific phrase "unusual sex" just totally hilarious? Honey, let's get drunk and have some "unusual sex" tonight. Damn!

Thanks Johnathan!

Festival darling and documentary filmmaker Etienne Sauret came to discover the subject of his latest documentary through complete happenstance. While filming Dr. Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin - one of the rogue chemists who discovered the effects of Ecstasy at a routine press conference, Sauret became fascinated with Shulgin, the man.

"Dirty Pictures" is a documentary about Dr. Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin. Shulgin’s alchemy has earned him the title 'The Godfather of Psychedelics,' and a reputation as one of the great chemists of the 20th century. Working from a lab in his home, and using himself and his wife Ann as test subjects, Shulgin's discoveries have brought him into conflict with the law but made him a worldwide underground hero. The two books Sasha and Ann co-authored, 'Pihkal' and 'Tihkal', have built a foundation for cutting-edge neuroscience and medical research. "Dirty Pictures" examines the impact of Dr. Shulgin’s lifelong quest to unlock the complexities of the human mind.

From an interview snippet with director Sauret:

SXSW prides itself on its 'Tomorrow Happens Here' attitude, as does its audience. That’s the perfect place for a film like this to debut, because Dr. Shulgin was very much a frontier person who went out and did the psychedelics research that nobody else was daring to do. He decided to forgo convention, walk away from a lucrative corporate job and go out on his own to fulfill his destiny, and I think that the audience will very much be able to appreciate his Man Against the Machine attitude.