My friend George D. told me about the deeply transformative experience his aged, raging and demented mother had in the last months of her life – after he gave her a single dose of MDMA. Neither George nor I would normally ever condone giving someone a dose of this (or any) medicine without their full knowledge and consent. It will be clear from reading this experience, that his mother would have been incapable of receiving or understanding any verbal explanations he might have given. As it was, he persuaded her to take it by telling her that it was “heart-medicine” – which turned out to be true in an unexpectedly profound and beautiful way. I’m publishing this story here with George’s permission – to offer hope that others too might find their way to a peaceful dying.
The time of this experience was November of 2007 and the setting was a traditional family home in a Greek village. This was the house my mother had grown up in before emigrating to the United States as a young lady. The room she stayed in was exactly like she had left it seventy five years previously, with the same bed and wall decorations. Along with my wife Stephanie and our three children, we had brought her back to this house when she was around 94 and were taking care of her as needed.
She was fairly well until the last year when her health deteriorated rapidly. No longer could she walk without trembling, nor do much in the way of independent action and thought. She was 99 years old and made it clear that she wanted to die here in her home and be buried with her ancestors. Yet her anger at us and the world in general continued to consume her passion.
It was on such an evening of her cursing my existence that I reflected deeply on her situation. Under normal circumstances, I would find it unethical to give someone a drug without explaining to them the purpose and its possible side effects. But in this case of her being caught in such a web of emotional pain and negativity, I decided to give her the one dose of MDMA (or Ecstasy) which I was saving for a special occasion.
As she grabbed the little white pill that I gave her, my mother hissed the question “what was I giving her,” to which I replied that it was “heart medicine”. Her retort was that I had been giving her poison to her heart all my life and here was one more intention of mine to kill her. I took a deep breath and felt the fear of a premonition that her experience could be a very very bad one. It would then be a decision that could haunt me for the rest of my life. It turned out to be true that that decision has indeed had a significant impact on my life, but with a far better outcome than even I anticipated. After giving her the “heart medicine” I said my good nights and left her alone.
Checking in half an hour later, I found her sitting on her bed gazing at an icon of the Virgin Mary. The fact that I saw her smiling was a hint that a profound event was manifesting. When I asked her how she felt, she softly said that “there were angels flying around the room.” That was a trigger for me to run upstairs, wake up our son John and tell him to come downstairs with his guitar – that we had important work to do with his grandmother.
For the next few hours we exchanged hugs with my mother and also shared her delight in listening to CDs of both Greek Orthodox religious hymns as well as her favorite Greek folk music. At times John would strum a few chords on his guitar while we sang about how much we loved her. When my wife Stephanie came downstairs to be part of the miracle, she asked my mother how she was doing – to which my mom said in a very sweet tone, “this night will never end.” My mother was no longer judgmental and mean. Her words, smiles and touch were soft and loving. It was a blessing for all of us.
There was more amazement ahead. From that night on, for the last seven months of her life, my mother dropped her fear-based masking and let her heart express itself in a very beautiful way. No longer would she judge or criticize anyone but instead say loving remarks. She would smile and ask to kiss us regularly every day. She no longer demanded I cut my beard but asked if she could stroke it. She had previously refused to let her granddaughters take her to the village in her wheelchair – now she welcomed their brushing her hair, putting a flower in back of her ear and taking her out for ice cream.
What matters most is that one experience with the “heart-medicine” brought lasting comfort in her remaining life and could well have helped her soul cross over more gently. The circle was more complete and her grandchildren will always remember her as being at peace with herself and the world. And of course, so will I.
In my blog dated Feb 12, I wrote about the film Astral City, based on the Brazilian best-selling novel Nosso Lar (Our Home), by the renowned Spiritist medium Chico Xavier (1910-2002). I have since became aware of a ground-breaking book entitled Spiritism and Mental Health (Singing Dragon Publishers, London, 2012)by Emma Bragdon, Ph.D., which contains over 25 chapters by various contributors, many of them Brazilian medical professionals, on the mental health aspects of Spiritist teachings. Here are some representative chapter titles from this superb collection, to give an idea of its range: The Relationship of Mediumship to Mental Disorder; Magnetic Healing, Prayer and Energy Passes; Psychotherapy and Reincarnation: A Necessary and Fruitful Encounter; Jung, Spirits and Madness – Lessons for Cultural Psychiatry; Spirit Attachment and Health; Soul-Centered Psychotherapy; The Positive Potential of Dissociative States of Consciousness; Contributions of Brazilian Spiritist Treatments to the Global Improvement of Mental Health Care.
Most (though not all) of the essays in this book are written by Brazilian medical doctors and healers, explaining the principles and practices of Spiritist-inspired of treating medical and psychiatric cases in the more than 50 hospitals in Brazil where these principles are used to treat acute and chronic psychiatric conditions. Emma Bragdon has been traveling to Brazil with other mental health professionals to study these practices and these integrated health care hospitals for more than ten years. She relates that researchers have shown that spiritual practice and belief have a positive influence on longevity and health – improving the survival rates after operations, ameliorating pain, improving mental acuity, lessening depression, boosting immune system functioning, reducing the incidence of smoking, alcoholism, cancer and heart disease. She call is an “accessible path for growth and well-being and a model for integrative health care.” Spiritist Centers in Brazil, of which there are more than 10,000 that serve 20-40 million people alone, do not charge for any of their services. There are numerous spiritist centers in North America and Europe as well – totally non-denomenational, free of charge, devoted to the study of spirits and mediumistic communication with them and reincarnation.
In her introductory chapter Emma Bragdon provides a historical overview of the Spiritist movement, from its origin in the writings of a 19th century French scientist-philosopher, who took on the pseudonym Allan Kardec. His writings became much more widely known in Brazil than in Europe. His main books are The Spirits’ Book, The Medium’s Book, The Gospel According to the Spirits, What is Spiritism. Emma Bragdon distinguishes spiritism from spiritualism as follows:
“In his (Kardecs) time those who were Spiritualists believed it possible to communicate with discarnate spirits, but they didn’t categorically embrace reincarnation or notions of spiritual evolution. Spiritists, on the other hand, believe that life is a continuum alternating between life in a body and life as a discarnate, ever progressing toward a spiritual destination…Kardec’s books advocate a high degree of discipline and perseverance in life – in order to effect personal transformation.”
I highly recommend this book to anyone searching for a new paradigm that integrates spiritual concerns and values with psychological and physical approaches to both health and mental health.
Philosophical books and films about life–after–death have been and continue to be published – especially in countries, like Brazil, that are not so ideologically committed to the fundamentalisms of either Big Science or Big Religion. Autobiographical accounts of near-death experiences (NDE) continue to appear and regularly land on the non-fiction best-seller lists – testifying to our unending interest in what happens, or might happen, after the end of our life here on this Earth. I want to discuss here the 2010 Brazilian film Astral City – A Spiritual Journey and the 2012 autobiographical Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, M.D., sub-titled A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.
The filmAstral City, which can be found and purchased through Amazon, is based on the Brazilian best-selling novel Nosso Lar (Our Home), by the renowned Spiritist medium Chico Xavier (1910-2002). On YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=txa_gBNkvdU) one can watch a 5-min. film about this remarkable man, with only a primary school education, who devoted his life to counseling and serving others through a process known as “automatic writing.” Through such means he also produced over 400 books, including one of poems by well-known deceased Brazilian poets. All of the proceeds from his healings, counselings and writings were devoted to charity. In the YouTube clip you can see him filling page after page of writing with his right hand while holiding his head and shielding his eyes with the other. His left hand didn’t know what his right hand was doing! The Wikipedia entry for Chico Xavier says his books sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide. “Heavily influenced by works of Allan Kardec, Xavier professed that his hand was guided by spirits. Xavier called his spiritual guide Emmanuel, who according to Xavier, lived in ancient Rome as Senator Publius Lentulus, was reincarnated in Spain as Father Damian, and later as a professor at the Sorbonne.” Chico Xavier was twice nominated for the Nobel peace prize.
Like many others I found the film-story Astral City to be remarkably authentic and convincing – meaning that it is consistent with everything else I have personally come to understand about the possibilities of communication with spirits in the hereafter. In the story, a deceased doctor gradually comes to realize he has a role to play as a healer, working with those who transition in states of severe illness or delusion – but he first has to learn the vastly expanded and deepened possibilities of the astral world. We also see and hear about the lessons human spirits have to learn when first transiting into the after-life, and the fact that choices exist even here. There is a scene, reminiscent of some of Dante’s descriptions of the hell world, where the confused ghosts of recently deceased individuals are roaming around in a desolate and dark landscape, not having accepted that they are dead. Then, as soon as the individual asks God for help of their own free will, a crew of astral paramedics arrive to escort him to the healing places for rest and recuperation. Some spirits are refusing to acknowledge that they are dead and make desperate and futile attempts to move to the earthly world they have left, but to which they cannot return – without going through the whole process until their next incarnation.
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The book Proof of Heaven, Dr. Eban Alexander’s account of his NDE, also contains a good deal of information and description about the nature of the after-death world, from which he returned. But here, the descriptions come from the pen of someone at the other end of the scale than Chico Xavier. He was a skeptical agnostic about life after death – as expected, perhaps required, from the guild of his professional peers. Dr. Alexander was a highly trained and experienced neurosurgeon, who had heard accounts of NDEs from patients he had treated, but considered them fantasies produced by the brain under stress. His nervous system had contracted a rare viral illness that attacked the two higher levels of the brain, leaving him in a comatose, vegetative state – in which he remained for seven days.
On the day when his doctors and family decided they were going to take him off the continuous drip-feed of antibiotics – he unexpectedly opened his eyes and announced that he had come back. He made a complete recovery of all his functions – a process that took several months, during which he also put in writing everything that he experienced during his OBE/NDE – one of the most complex, detailed and vivid accounts I have read. Raymond Moody, M.D., one of the first physicians to study and report on NDEs writes that “Dr. Eban Alexander’s near-death experience is the most astounding I have heard in more than four decades of studying this phenomenon. He is living proof of an after-life.”
Eban Alexander’s account of the after-death realms is consistent with that of Chico Xavier in several respects. He talks about the first memories he has of being in a realm he later came to call “the earthworm’s-eye view” – a dark, featureless, human-less world of clammy, mud. Reminiscent of other descriptions of the realm of those who do not yet realize they have died. In comparison to other published accounts of NDEs, Alexander’s account is distinctive in that it has no descriptions of going through a tunnel and meeting light-beings who escort him – he was just hurtled straight into a bodiless realm. He eventually learned that all he had to do to bring himself to the higher realms was to think of them (“thought directs energy”) and long for them (“longing leads to belonging”).
During my time out of my body, I accomplished the back-and-forth movement from the muddy darkness of the Realm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View to the green brilliance of the Gateway and into the black but holy darkness of the Core any number of times. …Each time I went to the Core I went deeper than before, and was taught more, in the wordless, more-than-verbal way that all things are communicated in the worlds above this one. ..One of the truths driven home to me in the Core each time I returned to it was how impossible it would be to understand all that exists – either its physical/visible side or its (much, much larger) spiritual/invisible side, not to mention the countless other universes that exist or have ever existed.
But none of that mattered, because I had already been taught the one thing – the only thing–that, in the last analysis, truly matters. I had initially received this piece of knowledge from my lovely companion on the butterfly wing upon my first entrance into the Gateway. It came in three parts, and to take one more shot at putting it into words (because of course it was delivered wordlessly), it would run something like this:
You are loved and cherished. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.
There is much more in this fascinating true-life account, which surely delivers a powerful but compassionate blow to the entrenched materialist worldview of modern science and medicine – by a highly qualified member of its intellectual elite. One of the things I appreciated especially about Dr. Alexander’s book is the Appendix in which he systematically lists and refutes nine “neuroscientific hypotheses I considered to explain my experience.” One of these was a “DMT dump from the pineal.” He refutes this explanation by saying “my cortex was off, and the DMT would have had no place in the brain to act…the hypothesis fails on the basis of the ultra-reality of the audio-visual experience, and the lack of cortex on which to act.”
Updates from the front lines of the Drug War insanity.
The number of people in prison in America declined last year for the second year in a row, according to a new report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The number of prisoners at the end of 2011 dropped to just under 1.6 million, a 0.9% decrease over the previous year. Of those 1.6 million prisoners, some 330,000 were doing time for drug offenses, including nearly 95,000 doing federal time. Drug offenders constitute 48% of all federal inmates, or some 94,600 inmates. There were 15,023 fewer inmates at the end of 2011 than a year earlier, but that number is more than accounted for by a single state, California, which reported a decline of 15,493 prisoners due primarily to an incarceration realignment program that has sent what would have been state prisoners to county jails instead. Counting just state prison populations, 2011 saw a decline of 21,164 prisoners, or 1.5%, again with California accounting for 72% of the decrease. (Source: Alternet, December 26, 2012)
From the Department of Inspiration – economic survival
On a trash dump in Paraguay, where a musical instrument costs more than a house, youngsters have made violins, cellos, flutes and other instruments from landfill cast-offs and are playing heavenly music. http://vimeo.com/52711779
Bolivian President Evo Morales on the meaning of the 2012 solstice
In a speech at the time of the Winter Solstice, Bolivian president Evo Morales said December 21 marks ‘end of an anthropocentric life and the beginning of a bio-centric life. It is the end of hatred and the beginning of love, the end of lies and beginning of truth’. In an open invitation to celebrate the day, Morales explained that “the Mayan calendar’s 21 of December is the end of the non-time and the beginning of time. It is the end of the Macha and the beginning of the Pacha, the end of selfishness and the beginning of brotherhood, it is the end of individualism and the beginning of collectivism.”
The Bolivian government has hailed the solstice as the start of an age in which community and collectivity will prevail over capitalism and individuality. Those themes have long been present in Morales’s discourse, especially in the idea of vivir bien, or living well. He has stressed the importance of a harmonious balance between human life and the planet, though some people question its application in Bolivia, where the economy depends heavily on mining, oil and gas industries. Source: Friday, December 21, 2012 by Common Dreams
2012: Year of Indigenous Resistance in Mexico
In a almost step-by-step replay of their New Years’ Day 1994 uprising, tens of thousands of masked and uniformed members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) marched in military formation into five Chiapas towns. A big difference between this year’s action and the one nearly 19 years ago is that the Mayan Zapatistas of 2012 did not carry guns or utter words. And according to Proceso magazine, their numbers this year- estimated between 30,000 and 50,000 people- were many-fold greater than the several thousand fighters who launched the 1994 revolt on the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect.The emblematic Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, who mysteriously vanished from the public limelight during the past four years, delivered a brief but ironic message issued by the EZLN’s Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command that declared in part, “Did your hear? This is the sound of your world being torn down, and of ours resurging…” Source: http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8769. Posted on: 27/12/2012 by Kent Paterson And: http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/8775 Posted on: 30/12/2012 by Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
From the Department of Inspiration – political
An Israeli activist produced a 2-minute video on the Internet, in which he speaks directly, heart-to-heart, to the Iranian people offering peace, love and understanding. Within days, the video peace offering produced thousands of responses with pictures, from Iranians in all walks of life, as well as citizens from other countries.
Lincoln and Django Unchained – a comparative review.
Two movies hit the big screens this year dealing with the history of slavery in the USA. Lincoln, made by Steven Stielberg, is focused on the battle Abraham Lincoln waged in Congress to pass the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery for ever. Django Unchained, made by Quentin Tarantino, situated in time two years before the start of the Civil war on a Southern Plantation, paints a vivid picture of the violence and human degradation endemic to the institution of slavery, through the eyes of an amoral bounty-hunter and a freed slave bent on revenge. Both movies could be said to be “anti-slavery,” and thus pass the basic ethics test in film criticism. Viewers and reviewers can then freely appreciate the dramatic flair, cinematic story-telling skill and acting, without any deeper reflection on what is being shown and what it means for our common humanity.
There is a world of difference however between the two films in how they present the ethical and human implications of the history of slavery in the US. Spielberg’s film is framed, at the beginning and the end, by two scenes of masses of dead soldiers in the Civil War. It is as much an anti-war movie as an anti-slavery movie. The rest of the film plays indoors, focusing on the political struggle Lincoln and his allies waged in Congress to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
Tarantino’s film is filled from beginning to end with relentless, dramatic violence – slavers against slaves, liberators against slave owners. Fountains of blood gush spectacularly, in vivid red color, as our pair of amoral heroes go from one deadly encounter with repulsive bigots to another. The two liberating heroes seem to never get hit themselves, though they regularly and casually shoot dozens of armed men. There is obvious exhilaration in the characters (and in the audience of the film) as really bad evil guys get their just deserts – and the liberated slave hero rides off into the sunset with the liberated female slave that he loves. To my mind, Tarantino’s film is a prime example of what has been called the “pornography of violence. ” Under the guise of deploring violent abuse and killing of others, it dramatizes and glorifies it, leaving viewers with a clear conscience to imagine how they too might have found satisfaction killing really bad, evil guys.
Patriotism as the propaganda mask for militaristic capitalism
In an article published January 3, 2013 by Common Dreams Michael Moore scathingly skewers the hypocrisy involved in offical claims and calls to support our troops. Moore points to the ways our government utterly fails the young men and women it solicits to join the military – issues that are finally hitting the news with increasing urgency:
One – the staggering suicide rate among vets – an estimated eighteen veterans kill themselves each day. This figure is likely an underestimate, because the VA doesn’t keep records on those who have been discharged and choose not seek contact.
Two – there are more soldiers killing themselves than soldiers being killed in combat. Military suicides jumped 50 percent between 2001 and 2008 and reached new highs this year (2012): The 26 suicides in July more than doubled the Army’s total from the previous month. Fortunately, these numbers have led to alarming reports from Department of Defense and in Congress, and new funding allocated to the VA for suicide prevention and mental health and services.
Three – A staggering number of females in the military are raped by fellow soldiers: 19,000 (mostly) female troops are raped or sexually assaulted every year , and the rapes often officially ignored and unreported. These figures too have recently become front-page news, and the services have taken some steps to ameliorate the situation.
Four – The Huffington Post reports http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/bank-of-america-illegal-foreclosures_n_1118471.html, that banks may have illegally foreclosed on nearly 5,000. This surely qualifies as a most devastating and callous blow to the soldiers and their families: go fight for your country, get killed or wounded, receive inadequate treatment, and while you’re over there, you and your family may lose their home to a bank.
The lessons from this situation are clear: One, for those young men and women who are considering joining up – think again, get informed, consult with Veterans for Peace and other groups, to find out what the wars are really like (refer to link on website). Two, as the hippies already said in the 1960s: Support the troops – bring them home! and let’s take care of the wounded and traumatized and help them re-integrate into their communities.
From the Department of Inspiration – cosmic/historical
Click on this link and you will see an amazing 2-minute video portraying, purely in images, the history of the cosmos, evolution and humanity. It was made by a pair of French videographers and is truly awesome. http://marcbrecy.perso.neuf.fr/history.html
The only film I can compare it to is Brian Swimme’s film Journey of the Universe – Epic Story of Cosmic, Earth and Human Transformation which takes 55 minutes to tell the same story, with commentary of course. ( See review at GreenEarthFound.org)
More and more reports of the unexpected healing efficacy of cannabis are being distributed in the underground media. In a recent posting on Alternet, Laura Gottesdiener relates several stories of “miraculous” (i.e. unexplained by current science) healings with cannabis.
A six-year old boy with a rare form of epilepsy that involved daily seizures, inability to eat solid food or walk around, had 40 hospitalizations and was taking 22 pills daily – all to no effect. His parents began to treat their son with a liquid form of medical cannabis, which dramatically reduced the seizures, so he could eat, run and swim.
An 8-month old baby had a brain tumor that couldn’t be operated. Before agreeing to chemotherapy and/or radiation treatment, the parents decided to try rubbing cannabinoid oil by rubbing it into the baby’s pacifier. After two months, the reduction in tumor size was so significant, that the pediatric oncologist decided to continue that treatment rather than chemotherapy.
A two-year old boy in Montana with a brain tumor was being treated with chemotherapy that made the boy blind and too sick to eat. His father gave him cannabis oil through his feeding tube, and after two weeks he could eat solid food again.
A recent medical research study reports evidence that cannabinoid drugs (similar in structure to cannabis) not only are effective in treating the appetite loss associated with HIV infection, but may deter the HIV virus from turning into AIDS.
Two American twin girls had been raised from infancy with their mother’s hate–filled Neo-Nazi ideology and as teenagers formed and performed in a pop-band called Prussian Blue. When they were diagnosed with cancer and scoliosis, they were given a cocktail of medicines that included cannabis, which gave them “a new outlook on life.” They quit crusading for Aryan power and are now working to help legalize medical cannabis.
Cannabis can apparently have psychosomatic healing effects without being ingested in food or medicine, but simply by its aroma. In the 1990s in Switzerland, when regulatory authorities, hemp farmers and cannabis smokers were negotiating back and forth to find a suitable socio-legal framework for their interests in this ancient plant, there was a time when one could legally sell and buy little cloth bags of cannabis sativa leaves and flowers, called Duftsäckli (“aroma sachets”), to be exclusively used for “aromatizing” a room or a bed. The pot smokers of course bought these and smoked the contents – until the authorities closed the regulatory loop hole. Berlin journalist and friend Mathias Broeckers wrote to me –
An amazing story I heard during a visit to a nursing home for senior citizens. One of the hemp activists had persuaded the staff of this nursing home to distribute cannabis aroma sachets into the beds of the seniors and also to hang additional sachets in the room. The seniors did not know that it was cannabis that was making their rooms smell so sweet, but the nursing staff was asked to note whether there was any change in the sleep patterns of the residents. And this was exactly what happened – the residents slept better and requested significant less sleep medication.
An extraordinary healing transformation also happened with one of the residents of this home who suffered from a kind of Tourettes syndrome. Anyone who passed by her as she sat in her wheelchair was berated with a stream of curses and obscenities. Normally, the staff dealt with her by keeping her heavily sedated, so that she sat in a kind of permanently somnolent daze. The staff then came upon the idea of serving her breakfast toast spread with herb-butter. This herb-butter was made according to a traditional Eastern European recipe with hemp-flowers – and the effect on the old lady was dramatic: instead of bickering and cursing anyone who approached her, she became very friendly and even began to flirt with the mail-man who came daily. I was traveling once with the producer of this hemp-butter, when an urgent phone call came from the staff of the nursing home: they had run out of their hemp-butter supply and urgently requested more, since the old lady was driving everyone nuts with her cursing and berating.
Meanwhile, while the evidence accumulates of the therapeutic and psychological virtues of cannabis, the American political class at the federal level is turning ideological cart-wheels in order to somehow reconcile the irrefutable evidence of medical value and the increasing trend for states to legalize not only medical but recreational use – with the archaic prohibitionist mind-set inherited from decades of a so-called “war on drugs” which is blindly maintained by the hugely bloated and out-of-control military-industrial-medical-prison complex.
A tremendous contribution to popular education about the true potential medicinal virtues of cannabis is made in the recent film by Len RichmondWhat if Cannabis Cured Cancer? To my mind, the most significant point made by the film is the recognition and identification of the endocannabinoid system as an integral branch of our immune system, evolved over hundreds of millions of years of evolution, as far back as invertebrates. The following quote is extracted from an internet article - http://norml.org/library/item/introduction-to-the-endocannabinoid-system.
The endogenous cannabinoid system, named after the plant that led to its discovery, is perhaps the most important physiologic system involved in establishing and maintaining human health. Endocannabinoids and their receptors are found throughout the body: in the brain, organs, connective tissues, glands, and immune cells. In each tissue, the cannabinoid system performs different tasks, but the goal is always the same: homeostasis, the maintenance of a stable internal environment despite fluctuations in the external environment. Cannabinoids promote homeostasis at every level of biological life, from the sub-cellular, to the organism, and perhaps to the community and beyond.
Raphael Mechoulam, the Israeli scientist whose research identified tetrahydrocannabinol as the chief psychoactive ingredient in the cannabis plant, has summarized the action of cannabis in the body: stimulating the endogenous cannabinoid system, as relaxing (promoting rest and sleep), increasing appetite (countering nausea and wasting) and forgetting. He particularly emphasizes the importance of forgetting – since it is important to survival to not remember every detail of all of our daily experience.
One might say the capacity to forget is integral to the healing and stress-relieving virtues of cannabis – common observation supports the notion that evening pot-smokers feel relieved and relaxed with the forgetting of the stressors that bombard us all day long. Of course, this also means that you would not want to consume cannabis when you are a student in a learning situation, where you need to remember details of facts and figures. Whether or not cannabis suppresses actual dreaming and the REM sleep associated with dreaming has not been definitely established. It lessens dream recall, though this apparently comes back, when one stops smoking weed, as I have also confirmed. I remember Terence McKenna telling me that when he discontinued his almost daily consumption of cannabis, he would be experience a veritable barrage of remembered dreams on awakening.
From personal and shared observation I would add two further aspects to the list of cannabis actions on the human body-mind complex – sensory pleasure and humor. The enhancement of sensory enjoyment is recognized in the heightened taste pleasure with eating, and also the heightened sensual pleasure of erotic contact. The heightened auditory pleasure induced by cannabis is well known to jazz musicians, who were perhaps the first to introduce the plant into popular culture. This effect may be caused by a sense of time dilation, giving the listener seemingly more time to appreciate the subtle variations of tone and rhythm in a piece of music.
The stimulating effect of cannabis on humor and laughter is too well known to require much proof. In the film Can Cannabis Cure Cancer, some of the interview subjects can barely contain their veritable fits of laughter. Whether thus implies stimulation of a humor center in the brain, is unknown, but we can definitely assume it is connected to the stress-relieving and healing effects. “Laughter is the best medicine” as the old saying goes.
In an old R. Crumb cartoon that appeared sometime in the sixties, two very stoned-looking dudes are sitting on a porch in a small Western town, and a motorcyclist who has evidently just roared through town, is on the way out. One of the dudes turns to the other and says – “Man, I thought he’d never leave.”
Under the somewhat misleading title Drug hallucinations look real in the brain, science writer Arran Frood reported in the New Scientist on a study using the functional MRI brain scanning technique to look at the brains of users of ayahuasca. The researchers compared the brain scans of volunteers under three conditions: (1) looking at pictures of people or animals; (2) imagining and remembering looking at those images; (3) imagining and remembering the image while on ayahuasca. Here’s what the report says of the comparison between conditions (1) and (2):
Draulio de Araujo of the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, and colleagues recruited 10 frequent users of the brew – called ayahuasca. They asked the volunteers to look at images of people or animals while their brains were scanned using functional MRI, then asked the volunteers to close their eyes and imagine they were still viewing the image. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that neural activity in the primary visual cortex dropped off when volunteers imagined seeing the image rather than actually viewing it.
And here’s what the findings were comparing conditions (1) and (3) – the brain scans registered equally strong activity in the visual cortex, a finding that is indicative of the amplifying effect of entheogens.
But when the team then gave the volunteers a dose of ayahuasca and repeated the experiment, they found that the level of activity in the primary visual cortex was virtually indistinguishable when the volunteers were really viewing an image and when they were imagining it.
According to the researchers – “This means visions seen have a real, neurological basis, says de Araujo – they are not made up or imagined.” One may however question this interpretation of the findings – why should visions that have a measurable neural correlate be considered more “real” that those in the inner vision? One might instead say that the power to image or imagine is amplified by the medicine, just as it amplifies other modes of perception and cognition.
At a recent conference of the Drug Policy Alliance – a public education and advocacy group doing excellent work – I was made aware and/or reminded of some starling yetestablished facts concerning the ancient and sacred healing herb cannabis.
Prevalence and usage
# 42% of the US population age 12 and older admits to trying cannabis at least one time. This equates to about 100 million people.
# The percentage of Americans favoring cannabis legalization is the highest it has been in 40 years: 41% think it should be legal.
# 75% of Americans favor legalization of medical cannabis use.
# White people consume and sell cannabis at the same rate as African-Americans.
# Domestic production of cannabis in the US is estimated at 20 million pounds per year – higher than at any time in history.
# Mexican drug cartels make up to 80% of their profits from cannabis exported to the US.
# The value of the annual cannabis crop exceeds the value of wheat, cotton and corn combined, making cannabis by far the most valuable agricultural commodity in the US.
# The high monetary value of the cannabis crop is in large measure due to the high price paid for the cannabis harvest, in comparison to the other food crops. This high cost of the cannabis harvest in turn is a function of its illegal status, requiring all kinds of unusual risk-protection measures to be in place. So, if it were legalized the price of the crop is likely to decline significantly.
Prohibition and its costs, potential consequences of its repeal
# 900,000 Americans were arrested in the last year for crimes related to cannabis.
# African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested as Whites (though usage is the same).
# In California, African Americans make up less than 7% of the population but 22% of those arrested for marihuana offenses, 33% of marihuana-related felony offenses.
# Nearly one half of all prisoners in America are serving sentences for drug related offenses.
# This amounts to about half a million prisoners at an average cost of $40,000 per year per prisoner.
# There are more than 50,000 police paramilitary raids in the US every year – more than 130 every day. Virtually all are for prosecution of drug warrants, the vast majority involving marihuana.
# Many jurisdictions use heavily armed and armored SWAT teams for execution of drug search warrants. (Comment/Question: are they practicing and testing their latest equipment?)
# Legally regulated cannabis would save $7.7 billion in
government expenditures on prohibition: $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local level.
# Revenue from taxation of cannabis sales could range from an estimated $2.4 billion per year if taxed like ordinary consumer goods, to $6.2 billion if taxed like alcohol or tobacco.
Medical/clinical aspects
# A DEA Administrative Law judge declared in 1988 that “Cannabis is one of the safest therapeutically active substancs known to man…In strict medical terms, marihuan is far safer than many foods we commonly consume.
# In 2007 researchers studied the effects of THC on uses suffering from depression asnd found that moderate doses had an anti-depressant effect, but heavy doses could exacerbate depression.
# Studies in 2003 and 2007 concluded that cannabis does not appear to be causally related to schizophrenia, but that its use could precipitate psychological disorders in people vulnerable to developing psychoses.
# Cannabis smokers can have similar respiratory problems as tobacco smokers, including cough and phlegm production, more frequent acute chest illness and a heightened rist of lung infection. However, a 2006 study funded by NIDA found that smoking cannabis, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.
# Researcers at UCLA and UCSF determiend that THC.. has an anti-tumor effect.
# The FDA has found THC to be safe and effective for the treatment of nausea, vomiting
Some of the most innovative and significant research on psychedelics within the medical/psychiatric establishment has been done by Charles Grob, M.D. at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Grob also collaborated with Dennis McKenna, Ph.D., J.C. Callaway, Ph.D. and scientific researchers associated with the UDV, one of the Brazilian ayahuasca churches, on psychological and physical effects of long-term use of ayahuasca. These studies were published in the medical-scientific literature and also described in three chapters by these researchers in my edited book on Ayahuasca – Sacred Vine of Spirits.
Doing research on dying, or even speaking openly about one’s death, is generally avoided due to the unspoken taboo which obstructs a reasoned and compassionate look at the unavoidable fact that living is a terminal condition – with or without illness. Following suggestions from Aldous Huxley and pioneering research by Stanislav Grof, MD in the sixties on using psychedelics to relieve end-of-life anxiety, Charles Grob has done follow-up research on this area as well.
A study of using psilocybin to relieve anxiety in terminal patients with advanced stage cancer was published recently in the journal Archives of General Psychiatryconsidered the #1 impact publication in the field of psychiatry. (Grob, C.S, et al. A pilot study of psilocybin treatment for anxiety in advanced-stage cancer patients.)
Charles Grob and his colleague Roland Griffiths also published an overview article on this work in the prestigious Scientific American (Dec 2010) Hallucinogens as Medicine which is a major sign that scientific research on psychedelics is again entering a new phase of establishment acceptance after two decades of prohibition and neglect.
Establishment acceptance and FDA/DEA permission, though they are necessary preconditions for new research in this area, are not sufficient since such research on unpatentable substances does not attract funding from pharmaceutical companies who are primarily attentive to their bottom line.
Dr. Charles Grob has written that
My colleagues and I at have completed a landmark clinical research study using a psilocybin treatment model in patients with advanced-stage cancer anxiety. We are now confident that we will be able to extend our investigations and further contribute to this long-neglected yet now resurrected field. We are eager to implement a modified treatment protocol that will allow us to utilize a somewhat higher dosage of psilocybin as well as the option to treat the subject with a second “booster” session several weeks after the first. However, as the national granting agencies have historically declined to support psychedelic research studies, it has become essential to solicit our funding from private donors. So, I am contacting you to explore whether you might be able to help us with funding support.
To get a sense of the significance and potential impact of this work with psilocybin in alleviating anxiety around dying, below are are links to two filmed interviews with subjects who went through this program, and who have since died.
A second research project that Dr. Charles Grob is initiating involves using a novel phenethylamine analog in treating autism. This area was also pioneered in the 1960s (and subsequently dropped) when psychologist Gary Fisher, Ph.D. working at Fairview State Hospital in Orange County, gave small doses of LSD to hospitalized autistic children – with some remarkable results. Charles Grob writes as follows about this project:
I also wanted to alert you to a second study for which we are in the early planning stages and that we believe may have great potential for further development and application in the future. This is a study using a psychedelic phenethylamine analogue to treat individuals who are considered to have Asperger’s Disorder, also known as Autism Spectrum Disorder. Given the serious lack of effective treatment, and the growing numbers of young people identified with this developmental delay condition, there is no doubt a compelling need for a new therapeutic approach. Unlike our psilocybin treatment of anxiety in individuals with advanced medical illness, for which we have demonstrated feasibility and safety and have already completed our pilot clinical study, the psychedelic phenethylamine analogue study will need to be developed in its entirety, from drug preparation to pre-clinical toxicology studies to Phase 1 human investigations. Obviously, this will require greater time and expense to develop, yet we believe that this project has great potential for the vast numbers of individuals with this condition.
I’ve had a compelling interest in the potential of psychedelics to impact our culture and medical practice for more than forty years and believe that the obstacles that held the field back in the past have lifted, making it possible to explore this fascinating and potentially valuable area of research. The rate limiting factor no longer appears to be government regulators, but rather the financing of the actual studies. We have made enormous progress over the last few decades to get to this point, and are now poised to extend our work to a substantive degree. We hope you will be able to help us in this endeavor.
Dr. Grob has told me that they are seeking to raise about $150,000 for an extended follow-up study on psilocybin and end-of-life anxiety; and another $300,000 for the phenethylamine analogue autism study – more expensive since the researchers need to begin with pilot and feasibility studies in this area. The research facility where the work would be carried is a non-profit institution and can accept tax-deductible donations. It would also be possible to channel funds for these projects through the non-profit Green Earth Foundation. To learn more about these research projects and how to support them please contact Dr. Charles Grob at cgrob@labiomed.org
In an article in The Nation Michael Pollan looks at the question of how and when the unhealthy and environmentally disastrous American agriculture and food system is going to change. Recognizing the present political obstacles in the way of reform is discouraging. Congress is stacked with hard-core supporters of the present system industrial agriculture system.
In the forty years since the publication of Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, a movement dedicated to the reform of the food system has taken root in America. …To date, however, the food movement can claim more success in changing popular consciousness than in shifting, in any fundamental way, the political and economic forces shaping the food system or, for that matter, in changing the “standard American diet”—which has only gotten worse since the 1970s.
A prime obstacle to change is the relatively low cost of the food mass-produced by the system.
Whatever its cost to public health and the environment, cheap food has become a pillar of the modern economy that few in government dare to question. And many of the reforms we need—such as improving conditions in the meat industry and cleaning up feedlot agriculture—stand to make meat more expensive. That might be a good thing for public health, but it will never be popular.
Pollan points to the fact that grassroots activism, though essential, is maddeningly slow in bringing about changes at the governmental and congressional level. A comparison to the anti-smoking campaign by public health interest groups is encouraging.
The most promising food activism is taking place at the grassroots: local policy initiatives are popping up in municipalities across the country, alongside urban agriculture ventures in underserved areas and farm-to-school programs. Changing the way America feeds itself has become the galvanizing issue for a generation now coming of age. …It’s worth remembering that it took decades before the campaign against the tobacco industry could point to any concrete accomplishments. By the 1930s, the scientific case against smoking had been made, yet it wasn’t until 1964 that the surgeon general was willing to declare smoking a threat to health, and another two decades after that before the industry’s seemingly unshakable hold on Congress finally crumbled. By this standard, the food movement is making swift progress.
And he points to another factor, which may turn out to be an unexpected political trump card in favor of the food reform movement – the staggering public health consequences and costs of the present food system. This is likely to bring the healthcare industry to the table in favor of changing the way we eat.
When change depends on overcoming the influence of an entrenched power, it helps to have another powerful interest in your corner—an interest that stands to gain from reform. In the case of the tobacco industry, that turned out to be the states, which found themselves on the hook (largely because of Medicaid) for the soaring costs of smoking-related illnesses. … Indeed, as soon as the healthcare industry begins to focus on the fact that the government is subsidizing precisely the sort of meal for which the industry (and the government) will have to pick up the long-term tab, eloquent advocates of food system reform will suddenly appear in the unlikeliest places.—like the agriculture committees of Congress.
Pollan’s conclusions are hopeful.
For the past forty years, food reform activists like Frances Moore Lappé have been saying that the American way of growing and eating food is “unsustainable.”… Continuing to eat in a way that undermines health, soil, energy resources and social justice cannot be sustained without eventually leading to a breakdown. …We simply can’t afford the healthcare costs incurred by the current system of cheap food—which is why, sooner or later, we will find the political will to change it.
