"THESE ARE THE WE INSIDE OF ME"
Harvard (and now Indiana) neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor traveled the long road from a stroke to enlightenment and returned to tell the story. She was written up in Sunday's NY Times. You can listen to her tell her own story here...
Jill has been selected for TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential.
There's more little more background material at Wikipedia.
Showing posts with label consciousness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consciousness. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
CAN YOU IMAGINE?
[UPDATE: Albert Hoffmann, the father of LSD, died yesterday at age 102. Here is the obituary in the NY Times.]
Can you imagine that the History Channel has aired a new documentary for mainstream television called
"Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey"?
Can you imagine that it is narrated by my all-time favorite anthropologist-storyteller Wade Davis (books and talks)?
Can you imagine that it has commentary by Dr. Andrew Weil, Bob Weir and other luminaries?
Can you imagine music by the Grateful Dead?
Can you imagine that it travels deep into Amazônia with the historical Richard Evans Schultze to find ayahuasca?
Can can imagine that the material is presented in a thoughtful, balanced and respectful way?
The entire psychedelic movement was pinned with extremely negative views as a result of the excesses and recklessness of the 1960's. I feel gratified that now, nearly 50 years later, the media doors of perception are being opened to reveal the insights of indigenous peoples, disciplined religious movements and serious scientific research into the the visionary and therapeutic uses of sacred substances.
The History Channel's "Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey" is superb and will probably soon be known as an "instant classic." It has been placed onto YouTube in 12 parts. I don't know how long these clips will remain online but for now at least I have assembled them here for convenient viewing. You might want to consider them.
[UPDATE -- 09 May -- YouTube has removed the videos saying "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation." I imagine that means they were in copyright violation.]
[OOOOPS, THE FOLLOWING ARE GONE. IF I FIND OUT WHERE THEY WENT I"LL LET YOU KNOW IN A FUTURE POST.]
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 1 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 2 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 3 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 4 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 5 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 6 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 7 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 8 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 9 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 10 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 11 of 12)
[UPDATE: Albert Hoffmann, the father of LSD, died yesterday at age 102. Here is the obituary in the NY Times.]
Can you imagine that the History Channel has aired a new documentary for mainstream television called
"Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey"?
Can you imagine that it is narrated by my all-time favorite anthropologist-storyteller Wade Davis (books and talks)?
Can you imagine that it has commentary by Dr. Andrew Weil, Bob Weir and other luminaries?
Can you imagine music by the Grateful Dead?
Can you imagine that it travels deep into Amazônia with the historical Richard Evans Schultze to find ayahuasca?
Can can imagine that the material is presented in a thoughtful, balanced and respectful way?
The entire psychedelic movement was pinned with extremely negative views as a result of the excesses and recklessness of the 1960's. I feel gratified that now, nearly 50 years later, the media doors of perception are being opened to reveal the insights of indigenous peoples, disciplined religious movements and serious scientific research into the the visionary and therapeutic uses of sacred substances.
The History Channel's "Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey" is superb and will probably soon be known as an "instant classic." It has been placed onto YouTube in 12 parts. I don't know how long these clips will remain online but for now at least I have assembled them here for convenient viewing. You might want to consider them.
[UPDATE -- 09 May -- YouTube has removed the videos saying "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation." I imagine that means they were in copyright violation.]
[OOOOPS, THE FOLLOWING ARE GONE. IF I FIND OUT WHERE THEY WENT I"LL LET YOU KNOW IN A FUTURE POST.]
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 1 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 2 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 3 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 4 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 5 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 6 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 7 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 8 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 9 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 10 of 12)
Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey (part 11 of 12)
Saturday, May 12, 2007
TIME MAGAZINE ASKS:
Was Timothy Leary Right?
Fractal art by Jock Cooper
From TIME magazine.
Thursday, Apr. 19, 2007
By JOHN CLOUD
Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case, Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster the first time?
The answer to both questions is yes. The study of psychedelics in the '50s and '60s eventually devolved into the drug free-for-all of the '70s. But the new research is careful and promising. Last year two top journals, the Archives of General Psychiatry and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, published papers showing clear benefits from the use of psychedelics to treat mental illness. Both were small studies, just 27 subjects total. But the Archives paper--whose lead author, Dr. Carlos Zarate Jr., is chief of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Unit at NIMH--found "robust and rapid antidepressant effects" that remained for a week after depressed subjects were given ketamine (colloquial name: Special K or usually just k). In the other study, a team led by Dr. Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona gave psilocybin (the merrymaking chemical in psychedelic mushrooms) to obsessive-compulsive-disorder patients, most of whom later showed "acute reductions in core OCD symptoms." Now researchers at Harvard are studying how Ecstasy might help alleviate anxiety disorders, and the Beckley Foundation, a British trust, has received approval to begin what will be the first human studies with LSD since the 1970s.
Psychedelics chemically alter the way your brain takes in information and may cause you to lose control of typical thought patterns. The theory motivating the recent research is that if your thoughts are depressed or obsessive, the drugs may reveal a path through them. For Leary and his circle--which influenced millions of Americans to experiment with drugs--psychedelics' seemingly boundless possibilities led to terrible recklessness. There's a jaw-dropping passage in last year's authoritative Leary biography by Robert Greenfield in which Leary and two friends ingest an astonishing 31 psilocybin pills in Leary's kitchen while his 13-year-old daughter has a pajama party upstairs. Stupefied, one of the friends climbs into the girl's bed and has to be pulled from the room.
A half-century later, scientists hope to unstitch psychedelic research from their forebears' excesses. Even as the Clinical Psychiatry paper trumpets psilocybin's potential for "powerful insights," it also urges caution. The paper suggests psilocybin only for severe OCD patients who have failed standard therapies and, as a last resort, may face brain surgery. Similarly, subjects can't take part in the Ecstasy trials unless their illness has continued after ordinary treatment.
Antidrug warriors may argue that the research will lend the drugs an aura of respectability, prompting a new round of recreational use. That's possible, but today we have no priestly Leary figure spewing vertiginous pro-drug proclamations. Instead we have a Leary for a less naive age: Richard Doblin. Also a Harvard guy--his Ph.D. is in public policy--Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in 1986 to help scientists get funding and approval to study the drugs. (Doblin, 53, says he was too shy for the '60s, but he was inspired by the work of psychologist Stanislav Grof, who authored a 1975 book about promising LSD research--research that ended with antidrug crackdowns.) Doblin has painstakingly worked with intensely skeptical federal authorities to win necessary permissions. MAPS helped launch all four of the current Ecstasy studies, a process that took two decades. It's the antithesis of Leary's approach.
All drugs have benefits and risks, but in psychedelics we have been tempted to see only one or the other. Not anymore.
Some useful links:
Alto das Estrelas
MAPS
Jock Cooper Fractal Art
Was Timothy Leary Right?
Fractal art by Jock Cooper
From TIME magazine.
Thursday, Apr. 19, 2007
By JOHN CLOUD
Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case, Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster the first time?
The answer to both questions is yes. The study of psychedelics in the '50s and '60s eventually devolved into the drug free-for-all of the '70s. But the new research is careful and promising. Last year two top journals, the Archives of General Psychiatry and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, published papers showing clear benefits from the use of psychedelics to treat mental illness. Both were small studies, just 27 subjects total. But the Archives paper--whose lead author, Dr. Carlos Zarate Jr., is chief of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Unit at NIMH--found "robust and rapid antidepressant effects" that remained for a week after depressed subjects were given ketamine (colloquial name: Special K or usually just k). In the other study, a team led by Dr. Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona gave psilocybin (the merrymaking chemical in psychedelic mushrooms) to obsessive-compulsive-disorder patients, most of whom later showed "acute reductions in core OCD symptoms." Now researchers at Harvard are studying how Ecstasy might help alleviate anxiety disorders, and the Beckley Foundation, a British trust, has received approval to begin what will be the first human studies with LSD since the 1970s.
Psychedelics chemically alter the way your brain takes in information and may cause you to lose control of typical thought patterns. The theory motivating the recent research is that if your thoughts are depressed or obsessive, the drugs may reveal a path through them. For Leary and his circle--which influenced millions of Americans to experiment with drugs--psychedelics' seemingly boundless possibilities led to terrible recklessness. There's a jaw-dropping passage in last year's authoritative Leary biography by Robert Greenfield in which Leary and two friends ingest an astonishing 31 psilocybin pills in Leary's kitchen while his 13-year-old daughter has a pajama party upstairs. Stupefied, one of the friends climbs into the girl's bed and has to be pulled from the room.
A half-century later, scientists hope to unstitch psychedelic research from their forebears' excesses. Even as the Clinical Psychiatry paper trumpets psilocybin's potential for "powerful insights," it also urges caution. The paper suggests psilocybin only for severe OCD patients who have failed standard therapies and, as a last resort, may face brain surgery. Similarly, subjects can't take part in the Ecstasy trials unless their illness has continued after ordinary treatment.
Antidrug warriors may argue that the research will lend the drugs an aura of respectability, prompting a new round of recreational use. That's possible, but today we have no priestly Leary figure spewing vertiginous pro-drug proclamations. Instead we have a Leary for a less naive age: Richard Doblin. Also a Harvard guy--his Ph.D. is in public policy--Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in 1986 to help scientists get funding and approval to study the drugs. (Doblin, 53, says he was too shy for the '60s, but he was inspired by the work of psychologist Stanislav Grof, who authored a 1975 book about promising LSD research--research that ended with antidrug crackdowns.) Doblin has painstakingly worked with intensely skeptical federal authorities to win necessary permissions. MAPS helped launch all four of the current Ecstasy studies, a process that took two decades. It's the antithesis of Leary's approach.
All drugs have benefits and risks, but in psychedelics we have been tempted to see only one or the other. Not anymore.
Some useful links:
Alto das Estrelas
MAPS
Jock Cooper Fractal Art
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
