As someone who works with children with bipolar disorder, among other psychiatric and emotional disturbances, I find your insinuation that anyone who may benefit from psychedelic therapy a "junky"...well, just damned stupid. Educate yourself before you speak; your ignorance is showing.

nibor: none of LSD, Ketamine, or psilocybin are physically addictive. No junkies.

You may be right, Walter, but my skin crawls when I think of a vulnerable person given LSD while at the mercy of a psychiatrist.

There is a huge amount of literature prior to 1969 on LSD. And there is some recent stuff. For example, a study of severe autism and LSD found good results. LSD with psychiatry/psychology has an impeccable record. It is LSD without guidance that has had some problems, and those are very rare. If it were an industrial process it would be considered as close to defect free as can be had.

The one time I tried psilocybin, I took too small of a dose to actually hallucinate. What was notable was that prior to taking it I was having a "bad day", totally unenergetic and apathetic. Afterward I felt great, sociable and mentally sharp.

The problem with several drugs is that they were originally studied for their medical potential, but the "system" overwhelmed the medical researchers.

LSD was studied quite a bit early on for depression and serious psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. The initial results were quite positive and you can still use Google Scholar to find the papers. But the anti-drug efforts assumed that this was some sort of scam for PhD researchers to get high on government grants and prevailed on the physicians who control the FDA to ban the substances. They did the same at National Institutes of Health to stop all funding for such research. And scientist have to eat, so they went elsewhere for research topics. As far as I can remember, the early efforts combined LSD with intensive talk therapies and were achieving very good results with depression. (My wife is the PhD researcher in the family, so mych of my information on the topic is secondhand.)

And this sort of thing is still going on. There is violent opposition to medical marijuana despite an incredible amount of specific amount of study data that shows that it is an excellent anti-nausea agent (the only one that works well with chemotherapy patients) and as an analgesic is the best drug after NSAIDs for relieving arthritis pain without being addictive. Marijuana is the best known pain reliever for the pain associated with MS. There is even speculative data coming out that marijuana seems to either prevent or dramatically slow the onset of Alzheimers. Yet it is extremely difficult for medical researchers to secure funding for any studies of meaningful size.

Ecstasy (MDMA) was originally developed to stop abnormal bleeding, but it wasn't that good. It had other medical properties that were also a little lukewarm. But among some psychotherapists, MDMA developed a reputation for enhancing communication during clinical sessions, reducing patients' psychological defenses, and increasing capacity for therapeutic introspection. This has proven extremely effect in, of all things, marriage counseling. But the rave culture adopted the drug and soon it was illegal and all research became so difficult to conduct that it pretty much became impossible.

I don't believe in the unrestricted use of psychotropic drugs. But I do believe that any drug is fair game for research into its medicinal properties and that such research should be embraced instead of banned because someone might get high. And if a drug has positive medicinal value, it should be legal for physicians to prescribe without restriction.

Right now we have developed a system where Perdue Pharma makes 8,000 times more oxycodone than is being prescribed by physicians. Why? The remainder ends up as street drugs "stolen" from trucks and warehouses and paid for by insurance companies. But a drug like marijuana that is not addictive, is being fought tooth and nail despite over 3,000 years of use as a medicine.

I am 66 and have pretty severe osteoarthritis. Nothing will ever make it much better. I have had one knee 'scoped and the other replaced already, but there is nothing that can be done for my hands. As the pain worsens, which it will with time, I will use whatever pain relief I can find, legal or not, if it is the most pragmatic thing available. But it is a simple fact that, while good physicians are out there, American physicians are the worst trained in pain management in the world. This is what allows such people as anti-drug folks (often backed by the liquor industry) to dictate what may and may not be used for pain relief in this country. American physicians are simply not well enough trained to sort out what is best for their patients and lack the motivation to buck the system on behalf of their patients.

The question to ask is why are these mental health problems increasing?

I suspect our modern society in which 95% of Americans are experiencing lower standards of living is a good place to start. More stress and less security for those who do have jobs. It may also because we are polluting the planet -- Thanks to the last decade of pro-Big Business, anti-labor policies.

Also, individual responsibility -- It may be because of our poor diets and unhealthy lifestyles, including less in-person interaction in favor of Twitter, etc.

Bravo!!!!!!!!!!! And - Amen Chris !!!!!!!!!

The reason why all Hallucinogensare illegal is because those who used them began to question Gov't authority. The Gov't noticed that and shut them down. (No, it wasn't driving safety, these were legalized before drunk driving was even a crime).

Gov't hates competition, but what would you expect from the only monopoly that can force it's "consumers" to pay for its product at the end of a gun?

Welcome to the land of the free. Where the highest percentage of any population in the world is behind bars.

It reminds me of why they say they should be illegal. They say people will rob you to pay for them. But when you get robbed, they don't even take fingerprints because manpower is too short due to the drug war.

Go after crimes that have been committed against another person, not ones where there is no victim on the basis of a crime that MAY happen in the future.

To Hestia you say

.....my skin crawls when I think of a vulnerable person given LSD while at the mercy of a psychiatrist.

as there are many drugs out there those Dr.s can and do give to their patients that have far more damaging effects than LSD. Any mind altering drug can be dangerous when being perscribed and not proberly monitored. I really dont see how LSD would be worse then the efect I had from a few bad combanations of perscribed medication that was supposed to help but instead cause me to have "waking dreams" and the inability to idedentify objects.

I suffer from a few major mental health issues (none cause by my lifestyle) and the medications have always had negative side effects. ANd long term use leads to even more health problems. Finding a way to use drugs like MJ, LSD, or shrooms to help seems a worthwhile endevor. No ones liver failed due to MJ use.

People who abuse drugs will always find a way to do so, but don'd presume that there are no medical benifits to a drug just because there are illegal ways to use it to, if thatw as the case half the perscription drugs and most cough medicine should be banned.

CORRECTING Ms.Griff's spelling issues

as there are many drugs out there those Dr.s “doctors” can and do give to their patients that have far more damaging effects than LSD. Any mind altering drug can be dangerous when being perscribed “prescribed” and not proberly “properly” monitored. I really dont “don’t” see how LSD would be worse then “than” the efect “effect” I had from a few bad combanations “combinations” of prescribed “prescribed” medication that was supposed to help but instead cause me to have "waking dreams" and the inability to idedentify “identify” objects.

I suffer from a few major mental health issues (none cause by my lifestyle) and the medications have always had negative side effects. And long term use leads to even more health problems. Finding a way to use drugs like MJ, LSD, or shrooms to help seems a worthwhile endevor. No ones “one’s” liver failed due to MJ use.

People who abuse drugs will always find a way to do so, but don'd “don’t” presume that there are no medical benifits “benefits” to a drug just because there are illegal ways to use it to, if thatw “that” as “is” the case half the perscription “prescription” drugs and most cough medicine should be banned

Couple reasons why pot is illegal despite the overwhelming amount of evidence supporting it as a better alternative to dozens and dozens of manufactured drugs -

It's natural. (Psst! That means corporate pharma-America can't patent it and charge people thousands of dollars for it when they have cancer.)

Hemp blows cotton out of the water in every category. (For this reason, the cotton industry spends hundreds of millions lobbying against even non-THC strains of the plant.)

The pharma-industry literally has hundreds of billions of R&D and patent rights tied up in manufactured drugs that, to some degree or another, attempt to replicate the effects of this drug. Legalizing pot would create an implosion within the industry (which has anywhere from 1,000-3,000 lobbyists in DC, dependent on the electoral timeline). Then we wouldnt have all nifty side effects that manufactured chemical compounds reek on the human body, like increased chance of death, diabetes, chemical dependency, bone loss, increased chance of cancer, kidney and liver disease, hardening of the heart tissue, and my personal favorite, sudden loss of bowels.

Oh, and the whole "but it's a gateway drug!" argument is so flawed. Last I checked, I didn't smoke a joint, get in a fist fight at a bar, and then crash into someone with my car going 85. I stood at my fridge and said "I think I'll mix peanut butter with that pint of Breyer's Vanilla I have..."

dtrock - there is no toxic level of THC. But take a whole bottle of Tylenol, and you liver gets shot, then you die.

There have also been some more recent studies that suggest pot use can help control epilepsy. As an epileptic and one that has experienced the awful side effects of some of those seizure-controlling drugs I'm all for a more natural solution.

Good point Ryan.

When my grandmother had cancer and was refusing to eat, despite the exotic cocktail of drugs she was on to make her hungry (yes, there are multiple synthetic drugs designed for this) the doctor's literally said "Try some marijuana, it might help".

At that point my family felt like they were in the episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" when Larry David is reduced to walking the streets and trying to buy a dime bag off of someone on a street corner when his dad had glaucoma. (Great episode by the way)

Matticus. You are not alone in using M.J. to help control epelipsy. It definitly helps me control the stress wich can cause me to have tonic-clonic seizures. For those of you who have never been around someone with severe epeliptic seizures you have no idea of the pain.

The average cost of being hospitalize for observation after a Tonic-Clonic seizure is $4,000 to $5,000 around here. Probably much more in other places. Excellent smoke is about $200 a month for me and my lady friend. My prescribed medications that don't always work, but cost around $800 a month. M.J. makes an excellent co-treatment for this problem.

The fight is on! Good luck taking on Big Pharma! To much money going into the pockets of the wealthy, they will fight this to the very end!

A personal anecdote a sibling had fairly severe social anxiety problems as a child/teenager. Started smoking pot and experimenting with psychedelics during undergraduate years. It transformed his personality. He is now extremely out going, loves people. Further he does not smoke or dose any more as he has two small children and prefers not to have it in the house at this stage. So no "addiction problems" and a transformed man I am completely in support of studying Marijuana and psychedelics for these types of issues!

Terrence McKenna would have been happy to see this article I think

If he could get his eyes to focus.

Besides their numerous benefits in treating PTSD, both LSD and Psylocybin are highly effective in treating migraine headaches. Unfortunately besides the obvious War on Drugs part there is also the fact that the most effective migraine medicine, Zomig, costs about $150 per dose!!! LSD on the other hand would cost less than $.50 per dose for migraine treatment so the pharmaceutical companies and the FDA have a very high interest in keeping cheaper solutions off the market.

Hestia - Do you have any personal experience with these discussed drugs? I'm just wondering where your information is coming from. Personal experience or after school specials?

Hmm. I know that LSD has an anti-inflammatory effect at active doses, but it is passing. I have never heard in my studies of LSD curing migraines. I believe you are referring to ketamine and the report of John Lilly, M.D.

Most of the problems with "LSD" have been with "street acid" which is usually cut with other things, or not even LSD at all. Pure LSD has been taken hundreds of times by at least a million people and people remember well, and have no cognitive deficits. Fake or impure "LSD" contains dangerous chemicals that cause serious problems.

Hestia,

The famous case where the LSD researcher decided that he could "fly out the window" to his death from a hotel balcony has been determined to be a murder by CIA employees who were "concerned" that the researcher was going to disclose information about LSD use on unsuspecting Army boot camp recruits and the subsequent deaths of three of them.

sorry, v, this was a swiss study, so if the big bad americans are to blame for everything, why didn't they do this earlier? let me guess, it's bush's fault.

dang, butting heads twice in one day, this could lead to a duel.

nibor

Terrence McKenna would have been happy to see this article I think

If he could get his eyes to focus.

Well he's no longer living, so that's not really an issue. However it always amazed me that he took as many "trips" as he did, and still when he wrote, his thought processes, and most notably his vocabulary were still of the highest caliber. By all counts you would have expected him to sound like your prototypical "burnout".. but he spoke with such an intelligent lucidity, that I often had to look up words he used while reading his books.

cmon-864012

sorry, v, this was a swiss study, so if the big bad americans are to blame for everything, why didn't they do this earlier?

My point was, this should have been concluded by an American study way back in the 70's... but our paranoid "reefer madness" mentality kept us from exploring it.

let me guess, it's bush's fault.

Sigh... stop playing the victim card with that whole blame Bush thing... turnabout is fair play... why don't you make a list of all the GOOD things Bush did, and counter any Bush blame you encounter with that... and try to avoid any pre-emptive Bush defensive arguments.... I think Bush's record speaks for itself, and only very rarely feel the need to illuminate his magnificent ineptitude.

And by the way... I'd sooner lay the blame on Nixon, and Reagan for this particular issue.

dang, butting heads twice in one day, this could lead to a duel.

Well then, en guard mon ami.

lando et al --

Chill, you guys. It was a joke.

Do you have any personal experience with these discussed drugs? I'm just wondering where your information is coming from. Personal experience or after school specials?

Um... well, I'm 56 years old. Consequently, I grew up in the 60's. Does going out to walk the dog along a highway in Southern Missouri and finally remembering that one was walking the dog, not hitchhiking, somewhere near La Porte, Texas count?

But let us not discuss my misspent youth.

The famous case where the LSD researcher decided that he could "fly out the window" to his death from a hotel balcony has been determined to be a murder by CIA employees

This is probably true. However, what Olson was probably going to expose was a 1951 aerosol experiment in France. He had quite his job in biodefense over a crisis of conscience.

There have been other deaths, almost all of the suicides.

Terrence McKenna did have some funny ideas, as did John Lilly at times. As one LSD researcher quipped, "A person can, apparently, imprint on something, regardless of sense." This happens in other settings though. It's an old human tendency.

My fave Lilly story is when his graduate student was going around committing him to mental hospitals. But all the hospitals were run by friends of Lilly. So on a couple of those times, the young grad student got back to the office and there was John, twinkling at him. (This was around the time John decided to call the White House to warn him about the war between the good aliens and the bad aliens. Due to his stature at the time, he got through to the chief of staff.) I find that hilarious. Just think what Will Ferrell could do with that.

Try mescaline - my Indian chief friend and I drop some twice a month and watch insects crawl around on the canyon walls while avoiding the purple, flying dragons. No street cut in those peyote buttons.

Like Terrence McKenna said, six grams of dried mushrooms will flatten your ego.

Never mind flying dragons or spiders, those are just side effects. By the way, I've never seen them.

Man, Hestia...La Porte?!!!?!!!

The Smurfs & Fairies & Unicorns ...

Actually, it has something to do with Buddhist psychology, but that's OK ...

Anyway, I like your post about Bush.

That's shrooms!

We're in the south you must be in a different part of the country.

Shawn - no, "shrooms" is just a shortened version of "mushrooms"...get it? "Shrewns" is not a word for anything...you should get your hearing checked.

I'm in the south too, and nope, it's shrooms. short for mushrooms.

It's shrooms even in the south, I think you need to have your ears checked or cleaned out.

Shrooms is just a colloquial term, it has also been called God-flesh, caps, liberty caps, etc.

Okay, I talk to a bunch of young people(25-35) in our area they call them shrewns. I guess it has to do with the southern accent.

My husband has a southern accent and he doesn't say "shrewns"

Surprisingly, I agree with you in part. Tim Leary's testimony to congress I was very surprised to find the most sensible thing I had heard. He proposed government licensed centers run by psychologists/psychiatrists where people could go to have psychedelic trips. If we had done that, I think our generation gap would have closed. We would also have prevented a huge amount of other problems. I met Leary about 15 years before he died and was extremely unimpressed, so I dismissed him. But in his younger years, for a while, he had a lot more sense than I thought. (I avoided his history for many years.)

It was because of Timothy Leary and his big ego that ruined this research for decades. If he hadn't run around drawing so much attention to himself and making himself such a wacko LSD guru, the research world might be way ahead of this by now.

That is an accurate assessment HMM-360962. Terrence McKenna wrote about that as well. Leary hurt the cause more than helped it.

Leary overstated his case, but then the FBI went after him and put him in prison, as well.

Leary did go overboard, I agree. That was the result of Aldous Huxley losing the argument with him. Leary had taken on Aldous' revolutionary mission to prevent "Brave New World" from coming about. They disagreed about methods. Leary, with his West Point training was a guy who would keep storming that hill until he died or won. So Leary decided to go wholesale to the masses. He thought it would work. He later decided that it was a mistake.

Leary was put in jail because he ran for governor of California. Any time you involve yourself in serious politics, your opponents are going to use anything they can on you. After the Beatles wrote "Come Together" as Leary's theme song for his run for governor, the powers that be sat up and said, "Hey. This guy could even win. What can we do?" And Nixon thought Leary was dangerous too. And the rest is history.

no, no, no, no, he's outside... looking in.

What a great point. I am surprised that no one else has mentioned this yet. This is what we should be discussing... not the past, but the state of the future.

There is no money in it. It is a drug you take for an overnight experience. As opposed to meth and cocaine and heroin which you keep needing to take.

It is not addictive and mind expanding.

Not a great combo for organized crime.

Robert,

Because it's like meth --- extremely simple to make.

My definition of 'organization' covers the Lexington - SFO & wine country interdimensional transport 1969 to 1978.

"quis custodiet ipsos custodes..."

If I ever finish the "One Hundred Hour Minimum", it will at least be fun to read.

It can be made, cheaply and sold cheaply and was done so by Mr Owsley Stanley, who made millions of hits and gave away many for free, fueling the hippie movement during the "Summer of Love", in Haight-Ashbury.

Because it's like meth --- extremely simple to make.

It can be made, cheaply and sold cheaply and was done so by Mr Owsley Stanley,

Very important - NO!
LSD is hard to make. The process requires steps that are spontaneously explosive in oxygen. (Owlesey had some incidents with explosions.) Albert Hofman, it should be remembered, was one of the top organic chemists in the world. The reason it can be so cheap, is that if a successful batch is made, the dosage is so ridiculously low. Make 5 grams and you have 100,000 hits.

It is easy to make a mistake manufacturing LSD. If a mistake is made, the result can be dangerous to ingest. There was a fair amount of that back in the late 1960's.

Dear Loki0124:

I'm glad you liked the @!$%#! Sounds like you have a lot of anecdotal information yourself!

Dear Loki0124:

You've never taken it? Well, you don't know what your missing then. You must be too young to remember the 60s. I don't care about your scientific study. You don't know about LSD.

Red Wolf - There was a lot of bad LSD that was made back then...remember Woodstock? Don't eat the brown acid? When LSD is in it's purest form and not cut with other drugs (as it often was back then), it can be safe when used for medicinal purposes. Having a bad experience on LSD that you bought as a teenager on the street from a relative stranger is not a true litmus test. If Timothy Leary hadn't hijacked this research experiment and take it to the dangerous extremes he did and create such controversy over it, the science would have made tremendous leaps for good by now.

You don't know about LSD either, Red Wolf. One bad trip does not make a drug bad. You have to understand that psychedelic trips are influenced by a great many things. The most important thing is atmosphere, which is why this sort of thing has always been proposed to be used in a controlled enviornment.

The way your trip goes is directly influenced by your emotions at the time, by the people around you, by the location that you're in, even the music that you're listening to. If you have anything negative around you, you will pull it into your trip and increase your chances of having a bad one.

A person who is in a controlled enviornment, with specially selected music and/or companions is highly unlikely to experience a bad trip.

I speak not only from a researcher's point of view, but also from experience with both LSD and "magic mushrooms." I experienced one bad trip (the one which caused me to cease using either drug) out of 2 years of tripping. One. Because I knew to surround myself with good friends in a closed environment with happy thoughts. The one time I did not do that, I had a bad trip.

Please don't be close minded about things. Once I ate a plate of spaghetti and then ended up in the hospital with my face swollen to 3 times its normal size and my tongue blocking my airway while hives erupted all over my body and itched uncontrollably. Should I therefore tell the entire world that tomatoes are bad and nobody should eat them, simply because I had an adverse reaction to them?

The current drugs marketed by big Pharma can lead to suicidal depression, thoughts, and behaviors...that's why Psychiatrists are advocating the use of other alternatives, in the most difficult to treat, cases.

Dear Loki0124:

I have nothing against doing research on these drugs. In the United States even that has been illegal which was wrong. What I hope never happens is that these drugs are administered to people involuntarily.

I'm so sorry you had a bad trip. I've always enjoyed altered states of mind weather assisted by an alkaloid plant substance or deep meditation.

Alkaloid plant substances are not a bad thing. They help keep us from being sheep led by the nose with the governmental parent pulling the leash on the nose ring.-----I guess that would be cows not sheep but you get the idea.

Red Wolf - Absolutely, people should not be given psychedelics involuntarily. The only plausible break with that is that concentrated hash oil was experimented with for prisoner interrogations and found to work perfectly. I would support that over all of the interrogation methods used. But for citizens? Absolutely not.

I've never met anyone that had a bad trip who wasn't already a bit screwy in the head

Charles Nichols, the foremost psychedelic researcher today has identified 3 different types of trips and he thinks it is because of metabolic differences. Most people can have bad trips sometimes. That is why Leo Zeff formulated his rules of psychedelic use (and therapy). Number one rule was that it should not be done without a trusted guide who knows what they were doing, able to guide people through bad spaces. Generally, that person should be stone cold sober, but some researchers accepted the guide having a low dose themselves to help the guide relate to the group, but more for helping the group relate to the guide.

Dude you need to tune in, turn on, and drop out. It's all mood set and setting.

BS been there done that more than once ,would not do LSD again. Was interesting though to see what it's hallucinatory effects were. ANY suggestion became reality at least while you were peaking. You could make time march backward if you choosed to do so. Or use telepathy. At least in your own mind it was as real and certain as could be - but in reality mere illusion

you don't know what you are talking about...

LSD does not induce temporary schitzophrenia where did you get this idea. Not from anyone with schitzophrenia. Please try it.

That was David's experience. He is correct about how during the peak of a trip a person becomes very vulnerable to any suggestion. This is the "imprinting" phenomenon. It is one of the reasons that LSD can be so useful therapeutically. It is also one of the reasons why guides are so important. People can self-suggest things and come out thinking all kinds of things.

LSD and similar drugs provide access to the unconscious. They also provide a means for changing the unconscious' basic programming to some degree. Most of this change is unpredictable.

A reason the CIA was so interested in LSD was that they thought it might be possible to create manchurian candidate assassins. (A guy named Bourne, by the way, was involved.) That didn't work. Like hypnosis, it isn't possible to get people to do things they were not already willing to do. They can be influenced, but they can't be changed completely. There is good evidence that this was even tried on children, together with methods that amount to torture. It was indefensible, outrageous, evil. But a result that came from that work is that it never worked.

So, influence yes, but that's it, and the influence is quite limited.

I think you have your facts backward. Yes, LSD was researched by the CIA as a mind-controlling drug but they discovered that it was rather useless because it caused mind expansion instead. They aborted the study on LSD for those reasons and that's how Leary got a hold of it because he was part of the government research...I believe it was done at Harvard.

GooberPeas - as repulsive as your comment is, you're correct...if you want to control and manipulate a person, the easiest and fastest way to do it is with alcohol...an automatic dumbing down and lack of control, which often leads to violence and death has been made legal to our entire country.

Leary and the CIA experiments were in the same period - in parallel.

Charlie Manson and the CIA both had success

The CIA did not have success. Period. MKULTRA and ARTICHOKE were failures. The only success was prior to the start of those projects when the OSS tested concentrated hash oil for interrogations.

Charlie Manson's use of LSD was examined in detail by Vincent Bugliosi and examined at trial. That examination concluded that everyone who killed was already willing and wanting to kill before they met Manson, or had already killed. And members of the "Family" like Linda Kasabian, who had gone through the same thing told Charlie no, and did not kill. Linda was horrified and went to close friends as soon as she could and told them everything. She didn't go to the police right away because Charlie had her daughter. This rejection of murder happened quite often, despite Charlie's best efforts. The "Manson Family" killers represented a group of people who were already there. (Example: Susan Atkins told an arresting policeman before she met Manson, that if she had the chance she would have shot him with the gun she was carrying.) According to the psychiatrists who examined Manson, his primary methods were simple. He gave people sex rewards for doing what he wanted, he got people to break down their inhibitions by demanding they do things they had been taught not to do, and peer pressure. Charlie is an expert at manipulation, at conning people. The use of LSD may have helped, but it well may not have helped.

No wonder my head is so heavy - I forgot that I stashed 2000 hits of acid in my ears in 1992 when the cops were shaking down the crowd at a Dead show.

CatTrax, please stop spouting propaganda that has been around since the 1940's and has long since been proven untrue. Please do some research and read studies that were not paid for by the US government (who has an agenda).

There is absolutely no reported case of marijuana causing cancer, anywhere, anytime...period, ever!!! It more than likely prevents cancer. The research is out there, stop believing and reading bullchit

I dare and challenge you to produce one incidence of anyone being diagnosed with cancer related to smoking marijuana...please don't use "in fact" when "in fact" you are selecting your facts...I won't waste my time pointing you to web sites which present scientific proof, demonstrating my point. Marijuana does not cause cancer and that is a fact.

I think marajuana is really good on pizza---and no smoking to boot!

cat do you also believe that Reefer Madness was the truth? Please take time to look at the newest studies and lit. You don't have to smoke the stuff. And the only trouble like drinking or any other drug especially those now in use for mental health patients would be for pregnant and nursing mothers. Marajuana probably has fewer fetal effects than say paxil, zoloft, haldol, lithium, etc.

I love how you guys just completely blasted this ignorant person. Keep up the good work.

@Jim A-371003 Marihuana definitely causes lung cancer. That's how Bob Marley died. All smoke is bad for you. Also, when you smoke marihuana, the combustion of the material actually produces non-THC chemicals that are harmful and affect the 'high'. Vaporizers are best because only pure THC is extracted. Vaporizers produce clean, therapeutic highs and eliminate the harmful effects of smoke. Used correctly, vaporizers will produce as strong or stronger effect than smoking a spleaf.

@stevelnyc, you ignorant slut! Everyone knows Bob Marley was murdered by a burglar, and I don't believe his name was Mary Jane. So get effing real!

Sandung, you r an idiot. what elementary school did you drop out of?

San-dung, I'd love to meet you in person to stuff that non-cancerous speef up you a*s. I'd also stuff that dung down your throat.

i mean spleef. You are still an idiot!

I'm with you, Snorlax.

Snorlax --

"Sitting there on that sack of seeds." LOL

Thanks for the memory.

I know that you want to appear intelligent, CatTrax, and you and I both know that you are making these claims to be a lab tech and do drug testing because its the internet and nobody can prove that you are lying, but the truth is that it's quite obvious because you are spouting falsehoods. So stop lying, and actually do real research instead of fake research you made up for the internet.

Cat, I'm concerned your "research papers" may have been provided by some folks with an agenda. I could be wrong, but, according to sources acting of their own God given(Ooops, another can of worms...which happen to be good protien) free will, have witnessed marijuana extract, when applied atopically, eliminate carcinoma on humans and more. I personally feel that the "powers that be have" divided the plant kingdoms into angels and demons to herd us since the dark ages. But, hey...I work in a warehouse, I need fantasy too.

It always seems to take the longest for positive changes to come through. Negativity is so much more human nature, apparently.

Well said !!

Funny how you keep bringing up schizophrenia. What really amuses me is that people are pretty quick to throw that term around nowadays.

Kinda makes me laugh, a lot, when I think about the fact that if say, Jesus (who I don't believe in) were to show up in the world right now, he'd be locked away and called a schizophrenic. So would, say, Joan of Arc.

You say you did a term paper "once" on LSD. My guess is it was quite a few years ago when government propaganda was pretty much the only available "research" (and I use the term loosely) for you to base your paper on.

The term "schizophrenia" is a term used to categorize a set of behaviors, where human beings hear voices and experience hallucinations, seperate from reality, as most people experience it. There are 4 types; simple, hebephrenic, catatonic and paranoia. However, you will not fine 2 people, who demonstrate the same behaviors, out of the millions, who have suffer from this disease. Each "so-called", "schizophrenic", displays symptoms, unigue to him or herself.

CatTrax you may want to look in the mirror sometime. Blatantly disregarding facts, spouting propaganda, calling people who don't agree with you "pathetic", "rude", and "unhappy" when you don't know them or have any real knowledge of them.

Seems to me you're the one being pathetic, rude, unpleasant, and you're probably also very unhappy.

Enlighten yourself, you'll find that it really does make life better.

Interesting.

"Meat Is Murder" by The Smiths is a great record.

Bullsh*t

No, that's not true David. But people who take LSD in circumstances that are "not optimum" tend to have problems that don't resolve when they come up. Your accounts are from entertainment drug use, a kick. If you had done it somewhere else, with a guide that understood and knew how to help you through it, the bad trip would not have been like that.

Drug therapy is about facing your inner demons not seeing them as an external problem. We seem to be conditioned to externalize all the bad stuff. First of all psychedelics are not toys they are tools like fire or a knife. If you fool with these things you can get hurt. If you have guidance and a proper setting you can build, for youself, a foundation beneath all the crap you've been handed since you were born.

Back to demons, or dragons if you prefer; under the influence of these agents you can experience many things from your past that give you an opportunity to reconcile if you have the means and the courage. This, I think, is the crux of the biscuit we chew upon.

Many cultures have rights of passage involving like substances when the "GREATEST NATION IN THE HISTORY OF THE PLANET" endorses Bud Lite...and...Jesus wept.