Terence McKenna at His Best: Drugs, Legality, and Love (Interview)

Terence McKenna at His Best: Drugs, Legality, and Love (Interview) | Third Monk image 1

Terence McKenna is one our favorite psychedelic luminaries. Here is a short interview of his where he talks about many ideas concerning drugs, legality, and love that are increasingly becoming commonplace among a larger and larger portion of our global populace.

Ideally, we’ll look back at this time in history and laugh at our collective foolishness and hubris.

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My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts. – Terence McKenna

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Poetry in Motion, Animated Street Art Gallery

Poetry in Motion, Animated Street Art Gallery | Third Monk image 1

Spanish photographer A.L. Crego adds life to his favorite pieces of street art murals by turning them into trippy animated street art GIFs. The street art can stand on it’s own but the messages are given an extra boost with motion.

Umbrella Only Stops the Rain, Not the Storm by Sr. X

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Fear of Thinking by Escif

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Dust in The Future, Present, Past by Pejac

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Mars Will Not Attack by Hunt Rodriguez

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Red Hole by Liqen

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Demineur by Levalet

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Sleep is the Cousin of Death by Artestenciva

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Day and Night by Sr. X

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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)

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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

Study Confirms: LSD Still Awesome

Study Confirms: LSD Still Awesome | Third Monk image 1

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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.

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How to be Ultra Spiritual – Funny Parody with JP Sears (Video)

How to be Ultra Spiritual - Funny Parody with JP Sears (Video) | Third Monk image 2

Ever wanted to be ultra spiritual? Well, look no further than JP Sears parody video that hilariously captures the essence of what it means to be spiritual today.

Perhaps it is our ability to laugh at ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously is what increases our spiritual growth.

JP Sears is an inner coach who strives to empower people to live more meaningful lives as whole individuals by guiding them to move beyond their symptoms of pain and sabotage.

Regardless of his mission statement, JP absolutely kills it in this video. It’s a well produced timely piece that is hilariously accurate.

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The Policy on Cannabis is Bad Science – Letters from Carl Sagan

The Policy on Cannabis is Bad Science - Letters from Carl Sagan | Third Monk image 6

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Carl Sagan never got to see the day when people could go to a store and purchase weed without fear of the law. But thanks to a collection of his papers recently made available by the Library of Congress, we now have Sagan’s personal writings on cannabis.

This 1988 Sagan letter shows why a government-funded scientist might be reluctant to draw too much public attention to his views about marijuana in the midst of President Reagan’s drug war.

Writing to Dr. Grinspoon (editor of Sagan’s famous essay on the benefits of cannabis), Sagan expressed outrage about language in a congressional funding bill for NASA that required contractors like him to adopt written anti-drug-use policies:

The oath required seems to smack of prior restraint and is unsymmetrical with respect to other crimes.

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Annie Druyan confirmed Sagan enjoyed marijuana “frequently.” She made it clear just how important cannabis was in their life together: “We smoked the way other American families would have wine with dinner. For us, it was our sacrament. It was something that made a great life sweeter in every possible way.”

Druyan also described how Sagan utilized marijuana’s medicinal properties to experience a measure of relief. He used cannabis to treat “not only the lack of appetite and the nausea [from chemotherapy]but to refocus on the beauty of life in the midst of such torture.”

The plant’s effects directly impacted the couple’s work over their decades of collaboration on everything from “Contact” to the 1980 PBS series “Cosmos” that Sagan hosted and that they wrote together. The 2014 Fox reboot of “Cosmos” — hosted this time by Neil deGrasse Tyson and again co-written by Druyan — not only took home four Emmys, but made mention in one episode of 17th Century scientist Robert Hooke’s use of cannabis while describing him as “possibly the most inventive person who ever lived.”

War on Drugs or War on Consciousness?

This disconnect from science was among Sagan’s chief concerns about the criminalization of marijuana. It was “something that particularly infuriated Carl as a scientist,” Druyan says. He was troubled by not only the “bad civic engineering but the very bad science behind prohibition.”

In 1990, Sagan wrote to leading drug policy reform campaigners suggesting they organize a rebuttal to the propaganda being spread by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America:

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In another letter from 1990 Sagan laid out these fundamental philosophical questions underpinning America’s drug war:

Why are all “drugs” lumped together in American rhetoric and public policy questions?

Why are hallucinogenic drugs so widely distributed among the cultures of the Earth?

Do research findings that indicate a given drug to be safe get as much public attention as those that indicate it to be dangerous?

How do social and economic inequities drive the underprivileged to drug use?

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With the success the Cosmos reboot and with more states voting on legalizing marijuana in November, the newly unearthed Sagan documents add to the growing consensus that marijuana prohibition is not grounded in science and is not supported by leading thinkers and prominent people.

“We are going at warp speed toward getting rid of that prohibition now,” says Grinspoon.

Carl Sagan’s Long Lost Deep Thoughts On The War on Drugs | Marijuana News

Calvin and Hobbes – The Existential Buddhist (Comic Strip)

Calvin and Hobbes - The Existential Buddhist (Comic Strip) | Third Monk

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We last left Calvin and Hobbes as they contemplated the stars.

Now, they question existence itself.

Calvin and Hobbes Contemplate Existence.

Calvin: Let’s say life is this square of the sidewalk. We’re born at this crack and we die at that crack.

Calvin: Now we find ourselves somewhere inside the square, and in the process of walking out of it. Suddenly we realize our time in here is fleeting.

Calvin: Is our quick experience here pointless? Does anything we say or do in here really matter? Have we done anything important? Have we been happy? Have we made the most of these precious few footsteps?

Donating Big Money to Keep Cannabis Illegal – CVS Pharmacy and Pushers of Mind Numbing Pills

Donating Big Money to Keep Cannabis Illegal - CVS Pharmacy and Pushers of Mind Numbing Pills | Third Monk image 2

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Behind the legal battle for cannabis — both medical and recreational — are deep-pocketed entities who have a stake in the outcome. 

One of the largest anti Cannabis groups is the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, best known for its long-running ad campaign “This is Your Brain on Drugs,” featuring young people cooking eggs and smashing things. While most kids found the message inaccurate, the advertising and anti-drug communities lauded the campaign as one of the most effective PSAs in history.

The PDFK is funded by special interest groups, which means corporations. By law, the organization must make public its donor list. At the top tier, donations of $250,000 or more, there are eight benefactors, here are six of them:

AbbVie

A biotechnology company responsible for Humira, a drug that treats rheumatoid arthritis and has earned the company more than $10 billion.

 

Purdue Pharmaceuticals

Maker of OxyContin

 

Consumer Healthcare Products Association

The leading trade and lobbying organization for makers and sellers of over-the-counter drugs and nutritional supplements.

 

CVS

The drug store chain with more than 7,700 locations in the United States. In 2010, a single location in Sanford, Florida, (population 53,000) ordered more than 1.8 million Oxy-Codone pills.

 

Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals

The largest U.S. supplier, by prescription, of opioid pain-killer medications.

 

Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America

One of the biggest and most influential lobbying groups in the United States, representing the interests of 48 pharmaceutical companies.

 

Hmmmm, why would these companies want to prevent access to a natural and medicinal plant?

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Here’s a List of the Biggest Donors to the Anti-Pot Lobby | Marijuana News

Generators of Imagination, The Historical Purpose of Human Beings – Terence McKenna (Video)

Generators of Imagination, The Historical Purpose of Human Beings - Terence McKenna (Video) | Third Monk

From a 1991 lecture entitled Where Does Reality Begin and End?, Terence McKenna talks about the role of human beings in nature and reality.

We can become a highly evolved and aware species that acts as the voice of nature but artificial conflicts are holding us back.

We are energy storage and release mechanisms, sanctioned by nature for some purpose which will be visible somewhere downstream in the flow of time but which is opaque to us now.

– Terence McKenna

Soundtrack: DJ Shadow – Transmission 2

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