Tag Archives | LSD

More Than 30 Million Americans Have Used Psychedelic Drugs

By on May 6, 2013 in News 0

psychedelic drugs

Is illicit use of hallucinogens in fact a part of normal behavior? Healthline reports:

A new study shows that an estimated 32 million people in the U.S. have used LSD, “magic mushrooms”, or mescaline at some point in their lives, many in the recent past.

Researchers Teri S. Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology used data from a sample of more than 57,000 individuals ages 12 and older who were questioned for the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

According to Krebs and Johansen’s study, the rate of lifetime psychedelic use was highest among people ages 30 to 34, with higher rates in men than in women. The authors also found that older adults were more likely to have used LSD and mescaline, whereas younger adults were more likely to have used “magic mushrooms.”

In our experience, people are surprised about the high rate of psychedelic use in the U.S.,” Krebs said.

… Read the rest

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Out of All Drugs Legal And Illegal, Which Ones Kill?

By on April 27, 2013 in News 0
Picture: William Rafti (CC)

Picture: William Rafti (CC)

If we were to have a sane and adult conversation about drug use and abuse in America instead of waging a war on drugs the same way we wage a war on terror, we might come to the realization that  we’re letting the bad ones in our homes freely while some of the most helpful to improving the quality of life of the average person carry some of the highest minimum prison sentences of all, while touting an infinitesimal number of related deaths.  Some of you may have read Thad McKracken’s well thought out article on the state of drugs in society today.  The numbers fall in lockstep with his thoughts.

It turns out that, aside from Alcohol, Big Pharma is the #1 killer  while drugs that have been used traditionally as entheogens hardly appear in the statistics at all.  Drugs like LSD, DMT, Marajuana, Peyote and other psychedelics are used as a religious sacrament in many belief systems around the world, but are vilified because of their tendency to provide people with what Terence McKenna simply called ‘funny ideas’.… Read the rest

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Brooklyn’s Prince Rama: The Band that Talks to Ghosts

By on April 3, 2013 in News 0

Early in 2012, Redefine proprietor Vivian Hua and I decided to do a series of interviews focusing on musicians who drew from esoteric spiritual pursuits for inspiration. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but what we ran into is that we don’t actually know of, or personally know too many of these musicians, so it didn’t get very far. The other thing we ran into was that a few people agreed to talk to us and then completely bailed when they saw the weird shit we were going to ask them. What the fuck are you going to do?

Fortunately for us, we did manage to chat with Brooklyn’s Prince Rama, whose Taraka Larson used to intern with Paul Laffoley strangely enough, and they pretty much knocked the ball out of the park. It was also another one of those odd witchery situations, because I talked to them after their show, but the recording was mysteriously inaudible.… Read the rest

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Midday Veil’s Deliciously Witchy New Video (with Interview and Tour Details)

By on March 7, 2013 in News 15

Yep, one the cooler things I’ve ever seen, and hey, I just interviewed Emily Pothast and Steven Miller who are the freakish brainchildren behind the whole thing:

Thad: I found the concept particularly fascinating, because one of the themes that has been interpenetrating my psychic life as of late has been that of female energy consuming and feeding off the masculine — as if the previous era of humanity has shifted and now it’s time for the sacred feminine to devour the dark war mongering energy that “mankind” has created. Terence Mckenna, Whitley Strieber, and others have described encountering entities that have an almost insectile-multi-eyed-telepathic-hive-mind characteristics. I don’t know if you’re up on insect sexuality, but the feminine typically reigns supreme in that micro-verse. There are no King Bees, if you catch my drift. Thoughts?

EP: Oh wow. Well, I mentioned the inspiration of mystery religions, myths that explore the inner workings of sex and death, which definitely relate to the core processes of nature. These myths are at the root of Christianity, but while the basic mechanism of the dying/resurrecting godman is alive and well in the character of Christ, the “feminine” and erotic aspects of the eternal that were also present in early versions of the myth have been considered taboo for most of Western history.

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The Psychedelic 90’s—Modern Myth Making and the Music Press

By on February 27, 2013 in News 34

As an obsessive music weirdo, you start to notice some odd patterns as you get older and contemplate the way that most people contextualize music in their lives. I’m not sure how much research has been done on this, but as far as I can tell, in most cases, whatever stuff someone happened to get down to during their formative developmental ages of say, 14-24, apparently permanently burns itself into their psyche and leaves an indelible mark on their opinion as to what constitutes “good shit” for the rest of their lives. This is the sort of secret psychology you’ll never read about in text books but I’m sure sketchy uptight rich dudes talk about behind closed doors 24/7. The one thing I can say about pursuing psychology in college was that I quite quickly picked up on the fact that the real people who understand how to bend the human psyche work at PR firms and press agencies, not universities.… Read the rest

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In The Neurosoup with Krystle Cole

By on February 22, 2013 in News 1

I’ve been a fan of Krystle Cole for a while now. She’s well known for her numerous informational videos about psychedelics. Her website, Neurosoup.com, provides information for a broad spectrum of entheogens, entactogens, and other little helpers to the human pursuit for greater understanding in the bigger picture of life. We spoke about her perspective on psychedelics and life in general.

Roberts: You’re a person who has experienced a broad spectrum of psychedelics. You’re probably one of the most encyclopedic reference points for the breadth of the psychedelic experience. How has your perspective on psychedelics changed since the first time you did it?

Cole: When I started using entheogens, the first I used was MDMA — which is more of an entactogen than an entheogen — but that’s the first time I delved into the psychedelic experience. My level of understanding has really grown since then. It’s not just from the amount of other substances I’ve done that are stronger than MDMA, but also from life in general, and everything I do that doesn’t relate to psychedelics.

… Read the rest

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LSD Concentration Camps In ‘Wild In The Streets’

By on February 22, 2013 in News 4

If you’ve never seen the film Wild in the Streets, a lost classic of trashy hippie-sploitation, it’s well worth a viewing. Released in 1968, it envisions a dystopian near future in which counterculture-loving young people, fed up with the older generations, take over the government and rewrite the laws to center around youth and hedonism.

Under the new order, at age 35, all adults are permanently imprisoned in psychedelic re-education “mercy centers” where, as revolutionary leader Max Frost explains, “in groovy surroundings, we’re going to psyche ‘em all out on LSD.” Is it a nightmare, or a future model for a humane and fun form of euthanasia?

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2013 – Year of the Witch (Midday Veil Edition)

By on January 25, 2013 in News 1

As I was catching up on the always brilliant Phantasmaphile blog the other day (ran by the rather bewitching Pam Grossman), I noticed that she’d declared 2013 as the “year of the witch”. Hmmm, never occurred to me but let’s run with it. December 21, 2012 supposedly represented a shift in consciousness and I’ll be honest, I sort of feel like a psychic veil has in fact been subtly lifted. Has a new Aeon begun which will re-align us with the sacred shamanic feminine knowledge they used to build the pyramids? I think you’d have to look back on our era from at least fifty years in the future to make any sort of determination on that one. Let’s just remember that it’s fun to pretend that it did, and us doing so enriches the cosmic current of the macro-consciousness. The future already happened man.

So with this in mind, I’m gonna hopefully do a series of posts in 2013 about women artists, musicians, philosophers, etc.… Read the rest

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Heroic Doses (Volume I)

By on January 22, 2013 in News 6

Maybe it was unintentionally watching the “Sterling drops LSD” episode of Mad Men on Robert Anton Wilson’s birthday, or maybe because after watching that I stumbled upon an acid themed Politically Incorrect Timothy Leary tribute from back in the 90’s featuring R.A.W. and David Cross (no shit)—but I thought maybe this week I’d delve into just what happens when I take what Terrence Mckenna would refer to as a heroic dose of western society’s pre-eminent super hallucinogen. This is the kind of thing that got me into the occult in the first place like a lot of other people, and it’s maybe a part of the reason that if I had to put a finger on where the sixties hippie movement went wrong a bit (aside from the whole government beating them the fuck down thing), it’d be that they, you know, did waaaaaaay too much acid. Not like a little bit too much.… Read the rest

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