TUNE IN, TURN ON, STEP UP… ETHICS

PSYCHOLOGY

The countercultural movement’s pursuit of peace, love, and understanding was a worthy goal. This time around, let’s make sure our quests for self-transformation and world-transformation are aligned.

It is only natural – and perhaps quite sensible – that the public remain skeptical. So, those of us who see the healing potential of psychedelics must encourage our lawmakers, faith leaders, and mental health professionals to be open-minded to the healing potential that… psychedelic technologies portend.

To love truth is to recognize that truth is more important than what one may want to be true or what one may be afraid is true. The love of truth gives us something objective to strive for. When one understands the relationship between truth and sanity, it becomes natural to love truth. -Cannabis Spirituality with 13 Guidelines for Safety and Sanity by Stephen Gaskin

…[POTENTIALLY REVERSE ENGINEERABLE SYNTHETIC PSILOCYBIN “MUSHROOMS” PATENT] MADE ONE INVESTOR $316 MILLION

BIOGRAPHY

“A very special tattoo – actually my first one ever – for a very special day…” -[said Christian Angermayer]… “Palantir is going public, meaning they will be able to make money on Wall Street while working [with] ICE,” MSC wrote in a tweet.

Many of the outside backers that Angermayer brought into Compass are also investors in ATAI. Among them are Peter Thiel… Palantir Technologies Inc. is expected to be valued at nearly $22 billion in its Wall Street debut as the data-mining firm faces fresh backlash over its role in helping facilitate deportations in the U.S. The networking-savvy investor introduced Compass founders George Goldsmith and Ekaterina Malievskaia to Lars Wilde, who now serves as the company’s president. Angermayer controls his Compass stake through ATAI Life Sciences AG, a psychedelic medicine company he founded in 2018.

Societies are comprised of many different people and interests and because these interests often interconnect, we sometimes have to make compromises, to surrender part of what might otherwise be our legitimate rights in order to accommodate the legitimate rights or concerns of others. Indeed, the more diversity there is in any given society, the more it seems that individual autonomy must be hedged by effective restraints that prevent people with conflicting ideas and interests from doing things that are harmful to each other's interests and the 'common good.' Of course, this is all theoretical because it concerns principled statements about individual autonomy, sovereignty, health and safety; and balancing these interests involves judgements that money, authority, or power may influence, potentially undermining the ethical basis for such decision. -Entheogens, Society, and Law : Towards a Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy & Responsibility by Daniel Waterman, edited by Casey William Hardison 

NEVER FORGET: BEFORE THERE WAS A MUSH RUSH, THERE WAS A PLEA FOR DECENCY

Traditionally, psychedelic drugs have been used and studied in culturally-specific rituals, academic research, through nonprofit organizations, and by curious psychonauts the world over… As the psychedelic industry shifts into an aboveground, for-profit system, more straight-laced, profit-focused entities are going to come out of the corporate “psychedelic closet,” supporting and advocating for the system which will benefit them the most. It remains to be seen if players such as the institutionally-sanctioned signatories of [Open Science and Praxis] will feel comfortable enough to stand up and advocate for a system that represents the values of open science and inclusivity.

Today, millionaires and billionaires are backing for-profit psychedelic pharmaceutical start-ups and preaching that the shamans of the future will be doctors and psychotherapists. Investors are valuing psychedelic companies by how much intellectual property they have acquired and by how quickly they can turn a profit as the “psychedelic renaissance” bubble blooms larger. And, psychedelic businesses are patenting everything from psilocybin synthesis techniques to psychedelic-assisted weight loss strategies. All of these factors contribute to a competitive atmosphere in which businesses... are incentivized to wall off information and valuable insights, and venture capitalists are encouraged to view traditionally sacred substances as the new trending “cash cow.”  In a for-profit free market system, where competition is inevitable… two possible shapes this competition could take… One, in which competitors all want to be the best they can be, and in some way also want the best for everyone else involved. An example he used was the general spirit of Olympic athletes. Sportsmanship. The second form of competition he highlighted centered around becoming the best you can be through interference at the expense of others. Taking steps to slow down or interfere with people who might be eating into an organization’s potential market.

In 1983, Leary and Ram Dass shared a stage at Harvard to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their expulsion from the ivy-covered halls. Seven years later, they were at the podium at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, where they and six hundred other proponents of enlightenment through modern chemistry came together for a discussion titled "Psychedelics in the 1990's: Regulation or Prohibition." Ram Dass thought back to the early sixties and had to laugh at their naivete. "Tim and I actually had a chart on the wall about how soon everyone would be enlightened," he said. "We found out that real change is harder. We downplayed the fact that the psychedelic experience isn't for everyone." -The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin

PSILOCYBIN TREATMENT FOR MENTAL HEALTH GETS [AN EXAMPLE OF A] LEGAL FRAMEWORK
ANTHROPOLOGY

The Oregon vote is the latest step in what many see as magic mushrooms’ march to become “the next marijuana” : a natural therapeutic and mood-altering compound gaining mainstream acceptance in a regulated market.

Because psilocybin [in Oregon], [a] combination with psychotherapy, the cost (possibly involving a dozen or more hours of therapy sessions) could remain in the thousands of dollars for the near future… “In Oregon, the devil is in the details in how things will unfold,” [says Roland Griffiths, PhD].

Nevertheless, common sense tells us that, given the risks attached to certain types of goods, questions are bound to arise concerning how to manage or regulate the attached risks. This has consistently proved necessary regardless of the nature of the goods in question - firearms, medicines, tools, chemicals, matches, cars, and of course psychoactive substances like alcohol and tobacco, etc. Hence, some form of regulation of psychoactive substance use may be inevitable in the interests of public health and safety. -Entheogens, Society, and Law : Towards a Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy & Responsibility by Daniel Waterman, edited by Casey William Hardison

[PSYCHEDELIC & ENTHEOGEN] BILL CARRIES HARSH PENALTIES

POLITICS

The bill is unhinged from the reality of the… space, but in the most technical sense, it does meet its mandate from the court,” Lawrie (an attorney) said. In the meantime, the penalties and limits were both harsh and arbitrary.

“None of the restrictions on dealing and cultivation apply to persons who are permitted or authorized in terms of any other act...  to deal in or cultivate… at present only the... act does that,” he said. Although the bill did allow for subsequent acts to be brought into effect to allow for cultivation and dealing commercially, the enactment of such laws would take a long time. 

Everything in our reality is built from information. We intuitively understand information as having something to do with knowledge, perhaps defined informally as what we know about something compared to what we don't know. Information can also be defined as the opposite of uncertainty: when you gain information about something, your knowledge of the thing increases and your uncertainty about it decreases. Whilst intuitive, these definitions are rather vague, and since information is the foundation of this book, we should find a more precise definition: Information is generated when a system selects between a finite number of possible states. -Alien Information Theory : Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game by Andrew R. Gallimore 

MAGIC MUSHROOMS… NEXT
RELIGION

Psilocybin [known as psilocybe mushrooms] is following marijuana in legalization pattern, too, as more cities… move to decriminalize…

There is a massive historical precedent with a growing number of the municipalities adjusting their laws on the decriminalization… largely in recognition that prohibition does not work for a myriad of reasons – good news for proponents...

...communal shamanism was also the basis of Maenadism of the female devotees of Dionysus... similar and derivative entheogenic rituals were well established among spiritual communities like the Therapeutai, a mystical Jewish group with such pronounced similarities to Christianity that they were once thought to be the earliest documented monastic community of the sect. -Mushrooms, Myth, and Mithras : The Drug Cult the Civilized Europe by Carl A. P. Ruck, Mark A. Hoffman, Jose Alfredo González Celdráin

UNDERSTANDING THE [PSILOCYBE MUSHROOM] SUPPLY…
SCIENCE

For millennia, mushrooms were the only available source of psilocybin for human consumption. These days, they remain the most propagated way of taking psilocybin in informal circles outside of clinical trials.

Critics of chemically-isolated psilocybin argue that psilocybin-producing mushrooms contain a number of other compounds that could contribute to their overall therapeutic effect. “The biggest advantage to naturally-occurring magic mushrooms is that [they] make sort of a cocktail of active ingredients, in that it’s not just psilocybin,” says Chadeayne. He went on to say that the overall experience of consuming Psilocybe mushrooms comes from the interaction of psilocybin with other ingredients like monoamine oxidase inhibitors and aeruginascin. “Those molecules might contribute to the overall psychedelic experience. So they might have a lot of value in their own right. And if you’re doing chemical synthesis, you don’t get any of those molecules. So you’re losing out on this sort of chemical complexity that the organisms are able to produce naturally,” adds Tyler.

We are a conscious species riding on the crest of an intelligent wave, and our collective knowledge represents a kind of growing certainty about the Universe. As this certainty (or information) continues to increase, we will gradually realize exactly why we have evolved. The intelligence of Nature is thus becoming fully reflected through human consciousness and in the knowledge systems of our culture. This really is suggestive of a kind of birth. -The Psilocybin Solution : The Role of Sacred Mushrooms and the Quest for Meaning by Simon G. Powell

…LAW ON PLANTS AND FUNGI… BETTER PATH TO REREGULATION

To recoup the tens-to-hundreds of millions of dollars invested in securing FDA approval and related patents, and then the expense of thereafter marketing their wares for a profit, the corporate owners of these future FDA-approved psychedelics are not acting out of principled charity or for the goodwill of all humankind. They are going to make their money, either in the pricing of the medicine or in the coupling of it to clinical services. 

This not a rant against pharmaceutical companies, capitalism, or therapeutic services. It’s far from such, and each plays a necessary and vital role in this story. Without pharmaceutical company efforts, there would be no story. This is simply an observation that plant and fungi medicines are nothing more than unrefined nature, metaphorically and literally as cheap as dirt. With simplicity of that sort as competition, pharmaceutical companies are going to have a tough time keeping the genie in their “bottle of exclusivity.” This is not the circumstance where a retort of, “If you don’t like our prices, try to manufacture your own ibuprofen” ends the conversation. With psychoactive plants, if you do not like industrial prices, you can easily forage or home grow for pennies or free.

When we practice entheology or when we are willing to call ourselves entheologians, we are discussing our experiences of the divine, and of the revelation of that divine source through the agency of psychoactive sacramentals... -Psychoactive Sacramentals : Essays on Entheogens and Religion edited by Thomas B. Roberts

…SHOULD ALLOW MEDICAL PATIENTS, LOW-WAGE EARNERS TO GROWN THEIR OWN…

HEALING

…one topic has received increasing public attention. Once called a “non-starter” by some legislators, the right of [people] to cultivate (or “home grow”) a limited number… has become a real possibility.

The possibility [that some legislation]… would not allow home grow is a perplexing one. Every one of the 11 states that have legalized cannabis for adult use [for example] also legalized home cultivation for medical and/or personal use… [some have] threatened to prohibit all home cultivation. There are compelling public health, personal liberty, and social justice priorities… on this issue.

There they were! A community of psychedelic women fully living the meaning of the word psychedelic, manifesting their expanded awareness in alliance with plant and spirit allies. They talked fearlessly into the evening exploring topics seldom discussed publicly at the time... if the first waves of feminism were concerned with political enfranchisement, equal pay, and reproductive rights, here certainly was the logical extension of those freedoms - a woman's right to her own cognitive liberty. And what did these women do with the insights they gained with this freedom? A great deal, as it turned out. They cultivated their spirituality. They built schools, gardens, businesses, and organizations. They grew their own food, raised gentle and intelligent children, and served their communities as healers, counselors, and teachers. They were good "psychedelic citizens". -Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine edited by Maria Papaspyrou, Chiara Baldini & David Luke