Canada Creates Scary Anti Cannabis Ad, The People Call Bullshit (Video)

Canada Creates Scary Anti Cannabis Ad, The People Call Bullshit (Video) | Third Monk

Canada’s latest anti-cannabis ad says the science on the plant is clear. Yet, the people’s verdict on the ad is even clearer. It hates it.

The ad, titled “Drug Prevention — Marijuana Use,” has drawn thousands of dislikes and a flurry of negative comments on Reddit since it was first posted on Youtube.

In the ad, a narrator declares over ominous music:

“Did you know that marijuana is on average 300 to 400 per cent stronger than it was 30 years ago?”

“Smoking marijuana. It can damage a teen for life.”

And while some users were supportive, others openly mocked it.

“TIL: my parents’ age bracket smoked terrible pot,” said Reddit user Snodgrass 82.

“Thanks for wasting tax dollars on telling people that flowers are bad,” said YouTube user Voluntary Kant.

The government’s science may not even be as clear as it claims. Marijuana’s illegal status in Canada means that there have been few controlled studies to determine its benefits and damaging effects.

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Harper Government’s Marijuana Ad Is Being Disliked To Hell (VIDEO) | Huffington Post

My Experience as a Guide in the Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Research Project

My Experience as a Guide in the Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Research Project  | Third Monk image 1

JHU Session Room - Psyilocybin Research Project

Written by Mary Cosimano, M.S.W.

Johns Hopkins University initiated their psilocybin studies in the year 2000. Since that time, I have been extensively involved with the research and clinical components of all six psilocybin and other hallucinogen studies that have taken place at Johns Hopkins. I have also personally guided over 300 study sessions and have participated in over 1,000 preparatory and integration meetings.

Based on my clinical perspective, I would like to share what I personally believe to be one of the most important outcomes of this work: that psilocybin can offer a means to reconnect to our true nature—our authentic self—and thereby help find meaning in our lives. The experiences recounted to me by study participants, as well as my concurrent personal journey, together with our study results, represent a large body of data from which I derive my conclusions.

When I have difficulty expressing myself, I remember what Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast about what he did when he had a hard time getting started writing. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

What comes to me now is a very short sentence—in fact, not a sentence but a word: love. I believe that what humans really want is to receive and to give love. I believe that love is what connects us to each other and that such a connection is brought about by being intimate with each other, by sharing ourselves with others. I believe that the nature of our true self is love.

I believe this theme—love, the need to reconnect with our true selves—addresses the underlying outcome of our psilocybin studies. Yet very often we’re afraid to open ourselves to this connection so we put up barriers and wear masks. If we are able to remove the barriers, to let down our defenses, we can begin to know and accept ourselves, thus allowing ourselves to receive and to give love.

In her TED talk on “The Power of Vulnerability,” Brené Brown, Ph.D., helps us understand how important this sense of connection is on a deep level. Briefly, she states that connection is why we’re here. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The way to connect is by being vulnerable, which means having the courage to face our fears—fears that we might fail, fears that others will realize that we aren’t perfect, fears that we are somehow unworthy of connection.

Because this honesty could risk jeopardizing a connection, we shut down, cover up, or “fake it.” Dr. Brown’s answer for overcoming these fears is courage. She points out that courage comes from the Latin word cor (heart), and that the original meaning of courage was to tell your story with your whole heart.

How do we help psilocybin study participants achieve a state of mind wherein it is possible for them to reconnect to their true self and face their fears? I believe it’s a combination of our preparatory meetings with the effects of psilocybin itself.

In our preparatory meetings, we aim to create a space where participants feel secure and safe. We believe this peaceful, positive environment is necessary for them to have the courage to tell the story of who they are. We work to create a deep sense of trust so that the participants feel comfortable to share anything and everything—their fears, joys, disappointments, and shame—without fear of being rejected. Intimate conversation is one of the most important practices to assist in this self-disclosure, and some of our participants have shared that their session was the first time they felt they had been fully seen.

Once they have opened up and shared, they are much more likely to let go and progress though their psilocybin experiences, managing difficult moments with more ease, and eventually restoring their deep and intrinsic connection to their true selves.

After their story has been told and trust established, the psilocybin session follows. In order to achieve maximum benefit from the psilocybin sessions and to access these states of a deep sense of love and connectedness, I believe it is necessary to be relaxed in both body and mind. When we are stressed, anxious, or afraid, we hold ourselves in and tense our bodies.

These states of mind and postures keep us from being able to relax and expand our consciousness. In order to relax, a safe and trusting environment is necessary. Ideally, our preparation meetings have provided that, thus enabling participants to relax into a deeper and more expansive experience. This expansiveness often leads to a deep sense of love and connection for self and all; both this expansiveness and this sense of connection are recurrent themes in psilocybin experiences.

fb-tw-gp-tu-psychedelic-contemplation-alex-grey Psychedelic Research

After their session one participant wrote: “I was reveling in the undeniable feelings of infinite love. I said [to myself], ‘I am love, and all I ever want to be is love.’ I repeated this several times and was overwhelmed with the intensity of the love. I was aware of tears flooding my eyes at this point. All the other goals in life seemed completely stupid.”

InLove 2.0, Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., wrote: “Love is far more ubiquitous than you ever thought possible for the simple fact thatlove is connection.”

Another participant said: “Once I was past the darkness, I began to feel an increasing feeling of peace and connectedness…An intense feeling of love and joy emanated from all over my body and I can’t imagine feeling any happier. I knew that the worries of everyday life were meaningless and that all that mattered were my connections with the wonderful people who are my family and friends.”

The first two psilocybin studies conducted at Johns Hopkins (Griffiths et al. 2008, 2011) showed that psilocybin occasions personally meaningful and spiritually significant mystical experiences producing positive changes in attitudes, mood, altruism, behavior, and life satisfaction. A further analysis (MacLean et al. 2011) found significant increases in openness following a high-dose psilocybin in participants who had mystical experiences.

I believe these findings suggest that increased personal meaning, a sense of spiritual significance, and an increase in openness are what allow humans to connect to their true selves—which is, at its core, love.

I observed how participants in our study of psilocybin-assisted therapy for cancer anxiety often came into the study feeling “disconnected”—not only from their place in the world but also more importantly from themselves, due to the fact that their lives had changed dramatically since their diagnosis. Many are too weak to continue to work, and many have lost their jobs. Outward appearances may also have changed, as they lose weight, muscle tone, and often their hair. Their thoughts and feelings of what had once defined them are no longer accurate. What once gave purpose and meaning to their lives seems meaningless.

One participant said: “Once you have a cancer diagnosis you’re like the ‘walking dead.’” Another told us that she was living like she’d already died.

Our structured psychiatric interviews include two questions that target this sense of disconnection:

1. Have you all of a sudden changed your sense of who you are and where you are headed?

2. Do you often feel empty inside?

Among our cancer participants, there was a high positive response rate to both of these questions, which I believe was due to their loss of a sense of self and meaning in their lives. Our cancer study often enables our participants to get back that connection to their true self, to believing that they are worthy of love and connection. One participant wrote in her six-month report that her “depression lifted completely” and that she was “able to get out of the ‘cancer world’ and back to myself…and able to connect with others and care better for [her partner].”

Two additional quotes from our volunteers nicely summarize my thoughts about the importance of love, true self, and meaning during and after the sessions:

Everything is swept up into a climactic epiphany of love as the universal essence and meaning of all things.

The journey of spirit coming to itself, revealing to itself its own inner mystery, is nothing but the self-realization of love.

The purpose of all of us here together is to be constant reminders to each other of Who We Really Are.

It is interesting to reflect on the differences and similarities between our Johns Hopkins psilocybin studies and MAPS’ MDMA-assisted psychotherapy studies. The Johns Hopkins studies have characterized the phenomenology of psilocybin experience in healthy volunteers, and explored the therapeutic use of psilocybin in treating anxiety associated with life-threatening cancer diagnosis, and in treating cigarette smoking addiction.

Although the therapeutic endpoints differ between the psilocybin (cancer anxiety and addiction) and MDMA (posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD) studies, both approaches highlight the importance of trust and rapport between participant and guide/therapist. One notable difference is that the psilocybin studies have characterized mystical-type experiences, and have suggested that such experiences may underlie the therapeutic and other enduring positive effects of psilocybin session experiences. It would be productive and valuable to assess whether similar changes occur in response to guided MDMA sessions as well.

I’d like to acknowledge and thank the Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Research Team, our study participants, and our funders.

Hemingway, Ernest; A Moveable Feast. Scribner Classics: New York, 1996.

Fredrickson, B. L. 2013. Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become.

Brown, Brené 2010. TEDx talk: The Power of Vulnerability June 2010

Griffiths, R.R., Richards, W.A., Johnson, M.W., McCann, U.D., Jesse, R. 2008. “Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later.”Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22(6), 621-632.

Johnson, M.W., Garcia-Romeu, A., Cosimano, M.P., and Griffiths R.R. 2014. “Pilot study of the 5-HT2AR agonist psilocybin in the treatment of tobacco addiction.” Journal of Psychopharmacology, 28(11), 983-92.

Griffiths, R.R., Johnson, M.W., McCann, U., Richards, W.A., Richards, B.D., and Jesse, R.. 2011. “Psilocybin occasioned mystical-type experiences: immediate and persisting dose-related effects.” Psychopharmacology, 218(4), 649-665.

MacLean, K.A., Johnson, M.W., and Griffiths, R.R. 2011. “Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness.” Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(11), 1453-1461.

is currently with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has served as study guide and research coordinator for the psilocybin studies for 15 years. During that time she has served as a session guide for the six psilocybin studies and other hallucinogen studies and has conducted over 300 sessions. She has worked as a clinician teaching individual and group meditation to breast cancer patients in research at Johns Hopkins, was a behavior modification counselor for weight loss, and has 15 years of experience with direct patient care as a hospice volunteer.

> My Experience as a Guide in the John Hopkins PRP | MAPS

What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital

What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital | Third Monk

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The Shamanic View of Mental Illness

In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.

What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm.

Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field. – Dr. Somé

These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.

One of the things Dr. Somé encountered when he first came to the United States in 1980 for graduate study was how this country deals with mental illness. When a fellow student was sent to a mental institute due to “nervous depression,” Dr. Somé went to visit him.

I was so shocked. That was the first time I was brought face to face with what is done here to people exhibiting the same symptoms I’ve seen in my village. – Dr. Somé

What struck Dr. Somé was that the attention given to such symptoms was based on pathology, on the idea that the condition is something that needs to stop. This was in complete opposition to the way his culture views such a situation. As he looked around the stark ward at the patients, some in straitjackets, some zoned out on medications, others screaming, he observed to himself…

So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.

Another way to say this, which may make more sense to the Western mind, is that we in the West are not trained in how to deal or even taught to acknowledge the existence of psychic phenomena, the spiritual world. In fact, psychic abilities are denigrated. When energies from the spiritual world emerge in a Western psyche, that individual is completely unequipped to integrate them or even recognize what is happening. The result can be terrifying. Without the proper context for and assistance in dealing with the breakthrough from another level of reality, for all practical purposes, the person is insane. Heavy dosing with anti-psychotic drugs compounds the problem and prevents the integration that could lead to soul development and growth in the individual who has received these energies.

On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see. “They were causing the crisis in these people,” he says. It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients’ pain in the process. “The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people. They were really fierce about that. The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling,” he said. He couldn’t stay in that environment and had to leave.

In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds–”the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community.” That person is able then to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need. Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer.

The other world’s relationship with our world is one of sponsorship.More often than not, the knowledge and skills that arise from this kind of merger are a knowledge or a skill that is provided directly from the other world. – Dr. Somé

The beings who were increasing the pain of the inmates on the mental hospital ward were actually attempting to merge with the inmates in order to get messages through to this world. The people they had chosen to merge with were getting no assistance in learning how to be a bridge between the worlds and the beings’ attempts to merge were thwarted. The result was the sustaining of the initial disorder of energy and the aborting of the birth of a healer.

“The Western culture has consistently ignored the birth of the healer,” states Dr. Somé. “Consequently, there will be a tendency from the other world to keep trying as many people as possible in an attempt to get somebody’s attention. They have to try harder.” The spirits are drawn to people whose senses have not been anesthetized. “The sensitivity is pretty much read as an invitation to come in,” he notes.

Those who develop so-called mental disorders are those who are sensitive, which is viewed in Western culture as oversensitivity. Indigenous cultures don’t see it that way and, as a result, sensitive people don’t experience themselves as overly sensitive. In the West, “it is the overload of the culture they’re in that is just wrecking them,” observes Dr. Somé. The frenetic pace, the bombardment of the senses, and the violent energy that characterize Western culture can overwhelm sensitive people.

Schizophrenia and Foreign Energy

With schizophrenia, there is a special “receptivity to a flow of images and information, which cannot be controlled,” stated Dr. Somé. “When this kind of rush occurs at a time that is not personally chosen, and particularly when it comes with images that are scary and contradictory, the person goes into a frenzy.”

What is required in this situation is first to separate the person’s energy from the extraneous foreign energies, by using shamanic practice (what is known as a “sweep”) to clear the latter out of the individual’s aura. With the clearing of their energy field, the person no longer picks up a flood of information and so no longer has a reason to be scared and disturbed, explains Dr. Somé.

Then it is possible to help the person align with the energy of the spirit being attempting to come through from the other world and give birth to the healer. The blockage of that emergence is what creates problems. “The energy of the healer is a high-voltage energy,” he observes. “When it is blocked, it just burns up the person. It’s like a short-circuit. Fuses are blowing. This is why it can be really scary, and I understand why this culture prefers to confine these people. Here they are yelling and screaming, and they’re put into a straitjacket. That’s a sad image.” Again, the shamanic approach is to work on aligning the energies so there is no blockage, “fuses” aren’t blowing, and the person can become the healer they are meant to be.

It needs to be noted at this point, however, that not all of the spirit beings that enter a person’s energetic field are there for the purposes of promoting healing. There are negative energies as well, which are undesirable presences in the aura. In those cases, the shamanic approach is to remove them from the aura, rather than work to align the discordant energies

Alex: Crazy in the USA, Healer in Africa

To test his belief that the shamanic view of mental illness holds true in the Western world as well as in indigenous cultures, Dr. Somé took a mental patient back to Africa with him, to his village. I was prompted by my own curiosity to find out whether there’s truth in the universality that

I was prompted by my own curiosity to find out whether there’s truth in the universality that mental illness could be connected with an alignment with a being from another world. – Dr. Somé

Alex was an 18-year-old American who had suffered a psychotic break when he was 14. He had hallucinations, was suicidal, and went through cycles of dangerously severe depression. He was in a mental hospital and had been given a lot of drugs, but nothing was helping. “The parents had done everything–unsuccessfully,” says Dr. Somé. “They didn’t know what else to do.”

With their permission, Dr. Somé took their son to Africa. “After eight months there, Alex had become quite normal, Dr. Somé reports. He was even able to participate with healers in the business of healing; sitting with them all day long and helping them, assisting them in what they were doing with their clients . . . . He spent about four years in my village.” Alex stayed by choice, not because he needed more healing. He felt, “much safer in the village than in America.”

To bring his energy and that of the being from the spiritual realm into alignment, Alex went through a shamanic ritual designed for that purpose, although it was slightly different from the one used with the Dagara people. “He wasn’t born in the village, so something else applied. But the result was similar, even though the ritual was not literally the same,” explains Dr. Somé. The fact that aligning the energy worked to heal Alex demonstrated to Dr. Somé that the connection between other beings and mental illness is indeed universal.

After the ritual, Alex began to share the messages that the spirit being had for this world. Unfortunately, the people he was talking to didn’t speak English (Dr. Somé was away at that point). The whole experience led, however, to Alex’s going to college to study psychology. He returned to the United States after four years because “he discovered that all the things that he needed to do had been done, and he could then move on with his life.”

The last that Dr. Somé heard was that Alex was in graduate school in psychology at Harvard. No one had thought he would ever be able to complete undergraduate studies, much less get an advanced degree.

Dr. Somé sums up what Alex’s mental illness was all about: “He was reaching out. It was an emergency call. His job and his purpose

He was reaching out. It was an emergency call. His job and his purpose was to be a healer. He said no one was paying attention to that.

After seeing how well the shamanic approach worked for Alex, Dr. Somé concluded that spirit beings are just as much an issue in the West as in his community in Africa. “Yet the question still remains, the answer to this problem must be found here, instead of having to go all the way overseas to seek the answer. There has to be a way in which a little bit of attention beyond the pathology of this whole experience leads to the possibility of coming up with the proper ritual to help people.

Longing for Spiritual Connection

A common thread that Dr. Somé has noticed in “mental” disorders in the West is “a very ancient ancestral energy that has been placed in stasis, that finally is coming out in the person.” His job then is to trace it back, to go back in time to discover what that spirit is. In most cases, the spirit is connected to nature, especially with mountains or big rivers, he says.

In the case of mountains, as an example to explain the phenomenon, “it’s a spirit of the mountain that is walking side by side with the person and, as a result, creating a time-space distortion that is affecting the person caught in it.” What is needed is a merger or alignment of the two energies, “so the person and the mountain spirit become one.” Again, the shaman conducts a specific ritual to bring about this alignment.

Dr. Somé believes that he encounters this situation so often in the United States because “most of the fabric of this country is made up of the energy of the machine, and the result of that is the disconnection and the severing of the past. You can run from the past, but you can’t hide from it.” The ancestral spirit of the natural world comes visiting.

It’s not so much what the spirit wants as it is what the person wants. The spirit sees in us a call for something grand, something that will make life meaningful, and so the spirit is responding to that. – Dr. Somé

That call, which we don’t even know we are making, reflects “a strong longing for a profound connection, a connection that transcends materialism and possession of things and moves into a tangible cosmic dimension. Most of this longing is unconscious, but for spirits, conscious or unconscious doesn’t make any difference.” They respond to either.

As part of the ritual to merge the mountain and human energy, those who are receiving the “mountain energy” are sent to a mountain area of their choice, where they pick up a stone that calls to them. They bring that stone back for the rest of the ritual and then keep it as a companion; some even carry it around with them. “The presence of the stone does a lot in tuning the perceptive ability of the person,” notes Dr. Somé. “They receive all kinds of information that they can make use of, so it’s like they get some tangible guidance from the other world as to how to live their life.”

When it is the “river energy,” those being called go to the river and, after speaking to the river spirit, find a water stone to bring back for the same kind of ritual as with the mountain spirit.

“People think something extraordinary must be done in an extraordinary situation like this,” he says. That’s not usually the case. Sometimes it is as simple as carrying a stone.

A Sacred Ritual Approach to Mental Illness

One of the gifts a shaman can bring to the Western world is to help people rediscover ritual, which is so sadly lacking.

The abandonment of ritual can be devastating. From the spiritual view, ritual is inevitable and necessary if one is to live. To say that ritual is needed in the industrialized world is an understatement. We have seen in my own people that it is probably impossible to live a sane life without it. – Dr. Somé in Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community.

Dr. Somé did not feel that the rituals from his traditional village could simply be transferred to the West, so over his years of shamanic work here, he has designed rituals that meet the very different needs of this culture. Although the rituals change according to the individual or the group involved, he finds that there is a need for certain rituals in general.

One of these involves helping people discover that their distress is coming from the fact that they are “called by beings from the other world to cooperate with them in doing healing work.” Ritual allows them to move out of the distress and accept that calling.

Another ritual need relates to initiation. In indigenous cultures all over the world, young people are initiated into adulthood when they reach a certain age. The lack of such initiation in the West is part of the crisis that people are in here, says Dr. Somé.

He urges communities to bring together “the creative juices of people who have had this kind of experience, in an attempt to come up with some kind of an alternative ritual that would at least begin to put a dent in this kind of crisis.”

Another ritual that repeatedly speaks to the needs of those coming to him for help entails making a bonfire, and then putting into the bonfire “items that are symbolic of issues carried inside the individuals . . . It might be the issues of anger and frustration against an ancestor who has left a legacy of murder and enslavement or anything, things that the descendant has to live with,” he explains.

If these are approached as things that are blocking the human imagination, the person’s life purpose, and even the person’s view of life as something that can improve, then it makes sense to begin thinking in terms of how to turn that blockage into a roadway that can lead to something more creative and more fulfilling. – Dr. Somé

The example of issues with an ancestors touches on rituals designed by Dr. Somé that address a serious dysfunction in Western society and in the process “trigger enlightenment” in participants. These are ancestral rituals, and the dysfunction they are aimed at is the mass turning-of-the-back on ancestors. Some of the spirits trying to come through, as described earlier, may be “ancestors who want to merge with a descendant in an attempt to heal what they weren’t able to do while in their physical body.”

“Unless the relationship between the living and the dead is in balance, chaos ensues,” he says. “The Dagara believe that, if such an imbalance exists, it is the duty of the living to heal their ancestors. If these ancestors are not healed, their sick energy will haunt the souls and psyches of those who are responsible for helping them.” The rituals focus on healing the relationship with our ancestors, both specific issues of an individual ancestor and the larger cultural issues contained in our past. Dr. Somé has seen extraordinary healing occur at these rituals.

Taking a sacred ritual approach to mental illness rather than regarding the person as a pathological case gives the person affected–and indeed the community at large–the opportunity to begin looking at it from that vantage point too, which leads to “a whole plethora of opportunities and ritual initiative that can be very, very beneficial to everyone present,” states. Dr. Somé.

Excerpted from: The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia, or The Natural Medicine Guide to Bi-polar Disorder, pages 178-189, Stephanie Marohn (featuring Malidoma Patrice Somé).

> Shamanic View of Mental Illness | Waking Times

The Ecstasy of Curiosity and Insatiable Drive for Knowledge – Jason Silva (Video)

The Ecstasy of Curiosity and Insatiable Drive for Knowledge - Jason Silva (Video) | Third Monk

In this Shots of Awe episode, Jason Silva talks about the fundamentals of the cognitive ecstasy we experience from the chase of knowledge. Knowing provides closure, but the mystery of not knowing inspires curiosity, wonder and a shared quest for answers.

To entertain such ontologies is to re-contextualize one’s self as a marvelous conduit in a timeless whole, through which molecules and meaning flow, from nebulae to neurons and back again. – Tim Doody

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Ayahuasca, The Psychedelic Reset Button (Documentary)

Ayahuasca, The Psychedelic Reset Button (Documentary) | Third Monk

Lisa Ling goes inside an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru and talks to people who are drinking this potent brew in hopes that it will alleviate their mental and emotional traumas.

Former Marine Ryan LeCompte organizes trips to Peru for war veterans, like himself, who are seeking ayahuasca as a possible treatment for PTSD and other emotional and mental trauma suffered after multiple combat deployments.

Ayahuasca is a way to give relief to those who are suffering, Many veterans are not satisfied with the PTSD treatment they receive when they return from combat.

It’s just, ‘Here’s a pill, here’s a Band-Aid.’ The ayahuasca medicine is a way to, instead of sweeping your dirt under the rug, you know, these medicines force you to take the rug outside and beat it with a stick until it’s clean, And that’s how I prefer to clean my house. – Ryan LeCompte, VETEntheogenic

Safe Use of Ayahuasca

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Through IndieGogo.com, the Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council is raising money to create a health guide for ayahuasca centers in the Amazon, so tourists know which centers are safe and harvesting the plants in a sustainable manner that supports the local communities.

The idea would be to put the ESC’s logo outside ayahuasca ceremony sites to signify those centers that meet the council’s criteria for safety and sustainability.

In addition, there are efforts to study the medicinal benefits of ayahuasca so that it can be regulated and legalized in the United States, explains Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies.

Could this be the next medicinal marijuana? | CNN Health

4 Scientifically Proven Positive Psychological Benefits of Meditation

4 Scientifically Proven Positive Psychological Benefits of Meditation  | Third Monk image 2

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Speeds Up Brain Processing Potential

According to a research journal article published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in February 2012, meditation can alter the geometry of the brain’s surface. There was a study done at UCLA involving 50 meditators and 50 controls that addressed a possible link between meditation and cortical gyrification, the pattern and degree of cortical folding that allows the brain to process faster. This study showed a positive correlation between the amount of gyrification in parts of the brain and the number of years of meditation for people, especially long-term meditators, compared to non-meditators.

This increased gyrification may reflect an integration of cognitive processes when meditating, since meditators are known to be introspective and contemplative, using certain portions of the brain in the process of meditation.

Loosens Our Neural Pathways

4 Best Scientifically Proven Benefits Of Meditation

Rebecca Gladding, M.D. explains in an article published in May 2013 Psychology Today, how the brain functions better with meditation, and the positive affects it has on the brain, the longer you meditate.

Basically, Gladding explains how the brain can be molded by meditation. Specifically, the connection to our fear center and our “Me” Center (place where the brain constantly reflects back to you) wither away by meditating on a regular basis.

This loosening up lessens our feelings of anxiety, because the neural pathways linking our Me Center to our fear decreases. The unhelpful feelings of anxiety become regulated, meaning, sufficiently ignored, which enhances better neural pathways to form. New neural pathways include improved assessment and empathetic responses. The important thing that Gladding also mentions is that to maintain the benefits of meditation, you must keep meditating because:

the brain can very easily revert back to its old ways if you are not vigilant.

Reduces the Risk of Heart Disease

4 Best Scientifically Proven Benefits Of Meditation (1)

A large cardiovascular study was done and published in November 2012, in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

There were 201 people with coronary heart disease given two choices:

(1) Take a health education class promoting improved diet and exercise.
(2) Take a class on transcendental meditation.

Researchers studied these participants for five years and discovered something interesting. Those that chose (2) the meditation class had 48% reduction to the overall risk of heart attack, stroke and death.

Meditations Improves Memory Recall

New research shows that meditation can further enhance the abilities of memory recall.

Catherine Kerr is a researcher at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and the Osher Research Center. She has found that those that practice meditation could adjust their brains waves better. They could screen out distractions and increase productivity faster than those that did not meditate. Less distractions gives room for the brain to integrate new information. This slight change in brain adjustment can dramatically aid in memory recall.

Kerr explained more in an article called, Meditation’s Effects on Emotion Shown to Persist, published in June 2013 at Psych Central

Mindfulness meditation has been reported to enhance numerous mental abilities, including rapid memory recall. Our discovery that mindfulness meditators more quickly adjusted the brain wave that screens out distraction could explain their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts. – Catherine Kerr

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> Proven Benefits of Meditating | Thinking Humanity

Brain on Weed – Less Gray Matter But Increased Connections? (Video)

Brain on Weed - Less Gray Matter But Increased Connections? (Video) | Third Monk

Using the above video as a quick reference to how cannabis may affect the brain let us move now to the present study at hand. Researchers state that they find a decrease in gray brain matter in the orbitofrontal cortex in chronic cannabis users, users who medicate at least 3 times a day, versus non cannabis users.

These same cannabis users also show more connections in the same region of the brain. What does this mean really? The results are basically (SPOILER ALERT) inconclusive in the way they describe it’s affect on the test subjects.

Although the above is true, neither the users or non users show a decreased quality of life or an inability to perform daily functions. Francesca Filbey, the author of this study, speculates that the increased connections may be the way cannabis users adapt to having less gray brain matter so that they may function with no issues in their daily lives.

I’m happy to find that we are diving deeper into how marijuana affects the human body. Some of the other findings, such as lower IQs for the marijuana users is also inconclusive because there is no correlation between IQ and the function of the orbitofrontal cortex.

This study was funded by Parternship for a Drug Free America. Even with their hopes to find a way to bury cannabis through science, no conclusive negatives were found through this study.

Regardless of the motive, I hope studies like this continue to pop up for cannabis and psychedelics so that we may learn more about how these substances affect us and how we may use them to our advantage.

Check out the source article below, the article contains plenty of sources to feed your need for scientifically generated cannabis info.

brain on weed

Chronic Pot Smoking Associated With Reduced Gray Matter, But Increased Connections | I Fucking Love Science

Stoner Wisdom – Famous Quotes From High Times

Stoner Wisdom - Famous Quotes From High Times | Third Monk image 1

Since 1974, High Times magazine has served as a safe platform for public figures and celebrities to express their love for Mary Jane.

The movement to legalize cannabis is picking up momentum, these classic quotes from High Times shows that famous stoners always believed in a green future:

Bob Marley (Sept. ‘76)

Bob Marley Smoking Marijuana

It’s time to let de people get good herbs and smoke. Government’s a joke. All dey wan’ is ya smoke cigarettes and cigar. Some cigar wickeder den herb.

Mick Jagger (June ‘80)

Cocaine is a very bad, habit-forming bore. I can’t understand the fashion for it. Sitting and smoking grass is different.

Stephen King (Jan. ‘81)

I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There’s some pretty good homegrown dope.

Jack Herer (Feb. ‘89)

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I didn’t discover marijuana until 1969, when I was 30 years old. At the time, I was a successful businessman and a Nixon supporter.

Pot changed my life. I began to hear my own words back to me as judgments. I put on earphones and heard music in color for the first time.

Jello Biafra (Aug. ‘91)

You don’t have to smoke pot to realize that the real drug problem is not the drugs, and that we can help solve our drug problem and a hell of a lot of our crime problems, environmental problems and racial problems if we’d all do our patriotic duty as Earth Patriots and GROW MORE POT!

Redman (Mar. ‘93)

I treat my music as an individual, you know, as a person, a human life. You gotta puff weed to get really deep like that.

Tom Robbins (May ‘94)

Marijuana seems to possess all of the benevolence, grace, clarity, insightfulness and calm that the state-sanctioned drug — booze — so sadly lacks.

Hunter S. Thompson (May ‘94)

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I have always loved marijuana. It has been a source of joy and comfort to me for many years. And I still think of it as a staple of basic life, along with beer and ice and grapefruits — and millions of Americans agree with me.

Ken Kesey (May ‘94)

That old 1960s consciousness coming out of the beatnik years is the only path I see that is going to get us out of the mess that we’re in. And our gospel is that joint –That joint won’t lie to you. One joint will give you a different high than another joint, but they’ll be straight with you. Marijuana works.

Woody Harrelson (Nov. ‘00)

Everybody has their drug. The real hypocrisy of the Drug War is that it’s not simply a War on Drugs.

You can go to a drugstore in any city in the nation and you’ll find any drug you want, and they’ll be more addictive and worse for you than grass.

And there will be a smiling man there sanctioned by the government who’s allowed to give them to you.

Bryan Cranston (Sept. ‘12)

Marijuana started out with a bad connotation, as you know — but to me, marijuana is no different than wine. It’s a drug of choice. It’s meant to alter your current state — and that’s not a bad thing.

It’s ridiculous that marijuana is still illegal. We’re still fighting for it… There are millions of people who smoke pot on a social basis and don’t become criminals. So stop with that argument — it doesn’t work.

Roseanne (July ‘13)

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The first time I smoked, I was 17. I was with my sister, and we were sleeping out on our porch. I remember sitting on the porch with my mouth hanging open, looking at a tree and going, Jesus Christ, is that a tree? I couldn’t stop staring at it — the complexity of it, the patterning.

It opened up my mind to whole other conscious rhythms.

35 Celebs Sound Off on Marijuana | High Times

Power of Meditation Can Alter Human Cells (Video)

Power of Meditation Can Alter Human Cells (Video) | Third Monk image 1

Recent studies in Canada are showing hard evidence that the power of meditation can change the body on a cellular level.

Scientist found that the protein caps at the end of our chromosomes that denote cellular aging had not diminished in cancer survivors that meditate. The mind-body connection is becoming more apparent with each study.

Scientist already know that meditation can help you strengthen connections in the brain; but this evidence takes us a step further, suggesting that meditation may be useful when treating terminal illnesses.

The Power of Meditation

power of meditation 1

Study Confirms: LSD Still Awesome

Study Confirms: LSD Still Awesome | Third Monk image 1

LSD

The incredible therapeutic properties of LSD have once again been confirmed in a recent Swiss study.

The first therapeutic study on LSD to take place in 40 years specifically focused on treating anxiety associated with life-threatening illnesses. Psychotherapy was also used in conjunction with LSD to treat participants’ anxiety.

Amazingly, every single participant (out of 12) reported experiencing major decreases in anxiety levels due to the LSD-assisted psychotherapy. These decreases in anxiety persisted even 12 months after being administered the LSD. Furthermore, no negative effects were reported by any of the participants. The study was led by Peter Gasser, M.D., who stated:

…we had in 30 sessions (22 with full dose 200 μg LSD and 8 with placebo dose 20 μg LSD) no severe side effects such as psychotic experiences or suicidal crisis or flashbacks or severe anxieties (bad trips)…That means that we can show that LSD treatment can be safe when it is done in a carefully controlled clinical setting.

Subjects receiving 200 µg LSD and psychotherapy, compared to an active placebo of 20 µg LSD, experienced a reduction in anxiety. Because the reduction in anxiety was still present at a 12-month follow up, Gasser believes that LSD has incredible potential for treating a whole array of psychological conditions.

Researchers noted that one of the most important aspects of the study was that the participants were able to freely contemplate and discuss their experiences while under the effects of LSD, as well as after the trip had ended.

Psychedelics such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin do not cause brain damage and are considered by medical professionals to be non-addictive.  Over 30 million people currently living in the US have used LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline.

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was discovered accidentally by Albert Hofmann on April 16, 1943. He had actually unintentionally created it 5 years prior while attempting to synthesize potentially medicinal active constituents from ergot fungus, a fungus that grows on rye. For 5 years the synthesis collected dust until he decided to reexamine it. While reexamining the LSD a small amount was absorbed into Hofmann’s fingertip.

Last Friday, April 16,1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away. – Albert Hofmann

Hofmann was intrigued, and three days later he tried it again, marking April 19, 1943 as the first day a human being ever intentionally consumed LSD.

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This day is now known as “Bicycle Day,” because Hofmann rode his bike home while he was tripping. Hofmann and his wife spent the rest of their lives advocating the use of LSD, psilocybin, and other psychedelics in the field of psychotherapy.

Below is a documentary on LSD which focuses on Albert Hofmann.

Hofmann’s Potion – Albert Hofmann LSD Documentary

By the mid-1950s, LSD-research was being published in medical and academic journals all over the world. It showed potential benefits in the treatment of alcoholism, drug addiction, and other mental illnesses. This film explores those potential benefits, and the researchers who explored them.

> Effects of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide 100% Positive | Wonder Gressive

The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicine – Dr. Sanjay Gupta (Video)

The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicine - Dr. Sanjay Gupta (Video) | Third Monk image 2

I have tons of respect for Dr. Sanjay Gupta, especially for admitting he was wrong on the cannabis issue. Now Dr. Gupta dives into the world of psychedelic medicine.

Gupta speaks with Rick Doblin and Tom Shroder, the author to Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy and The Power to Heal. They discuss psychedelics’ place in assisted psycho therapy, the challenges associated with using psychedelics as medicine and how the social stigmas have slowed the progress in this field of study.

The beauty of psychedelics is not that it heals you, instead it puts you in the optimum state of being so that you may heal yourself.

psychedelic medicine