Wine and wisdom Very few great works of philosophy are also great works of art. However, Plato's Symposium is both. It is a vivid invocation of the Athenian polis and its leading characters, including Alcibiades, Aristophanes and Socrates. And it is without compare as a philosophical treatment of sexual desire - a topic that philosophers down the ages have largely avoided, with only Schopenhauer and Sartre venturing the kind of comprehensive account of it that we find in Plato. Ostensibly, the work is merely a report of a drinking party, in which the characters stumble, in their cups, over ideas and emotions that lie hidden in their daily lives. In that lies its artfulness. Try publishing that in Cosmopolitan or Tatler, and see what laughs you'll get. We should recognise, however, that wine leads us to such surprising conclusions only when swallowed in the right way, and it is another great virtue of Plato's masterpiece that it tells us how to do it.
Psychedelic '60s: Home Page THE SUMMER OF 1967, with its "Love-Ins," "Be-ins," and "Flower Power," came to be known as "The Summer of Love," and was one of the seminal moments of our generation. Over thirty years later, we who came of age during the turbulent decade of the sixties are dismayed to realize that, to the young adults of today, those years are now ancient history. The "Psychedelic Sixties" broke the rules in every conceivable way from music to fashion (or lack of it), to manners and mores. Boundaries were challenged and crossed in literature and art; the government was confronted head-on for its policies in Vietnam; the cause of civil rights was embraced by the young; and mind-expanding drugs were doing just that. Were the sixties the best of times or the worst of times?
Orfeo: A Dialog between Robert Hunter and Terence McKenna This is Part OnePart TwoPart ThreePart FourPart Five (current) Terence, in reading your books I was struck with how closely your DMT experiments paralleled my own. I wasn't surprised by the confirmation, as you might guess. I considered myself a serious DMT explorer between 1967-69. Robert Hunter Greetings Bob-- I was interested in what you had to say about being an explorer of the DMT world until the management told you to stay away. I enjoy the idea of a slow moving dialog, I hope this can continue. Best, T Terence, I suppose the "facts" of DMT might as well be written in cunieform on our breastbones for all the good it does to know about it, as opposed to "dwelling in the know of it." My personal take on the "secret" of DMT: it was long, hard work making this world real. My take could be way off base but anything more Gnostic is off-putting. In saying any or all of this, it's only sane to assume I'm dead wrong since I'm speaking in polar terms. I don't want to sell this stuff, DMT. rh
Terence McKenna rotten > Library > Biographies > Mad Science > Terence McKenna Terence McKenna was the Magellan of psychedelic head space, and humanity's first ambassador to the hyperdimensional machine elves of the Eschaton. McKenna was a true child of the '60s, graduating from UC Berkeley with one of those majors you could only get in Berkeley in the '60s — Ecology, Resource Conservation and Shamanism. When he got out of school, he set off for the Amazon, where he "studied" the native hallucinogenic drugs used in various South American shamanic traditions. McKenna studied these drugs repeatedly and in large doses, along with his brother, Dennis. While pursuing these scientific studies, McKenna experienced some interesting effects on his consciousness, not surprisingly. His work has influenced a generation of writers and philosophers, and his writings have been as influential as that of better-known contemporaries like Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman. Refined sugar was a particular target of his ire.
Addict To Activist: How Elton John Found His 'Cure' hide captionSir Elton John speaks at an Elton John AIDS Foundation benefit in 2010. The organization, which John founded in 1992, provides grants to support HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment programs. Evan Agostini/AP Sir Elton John is constantly remembering his life as a drug addict, whether he wants to or not. "I still dream, twice a week at least, that I've taken cocaine and I have it up my nose," John tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. In his new memoir, Love Is the Cure, the singer-songwriter explains how he stopped using cocaine — and abusing drugs and alcohol — after he came to know Ryan White. "It got me to realize how out of whack my life was, because I was just in and out of a drug-fueled haze in the '80s. After seeking treatment for his addictions, he started the Elton John AIDS Foundation, which now gives grants to AIDS and HIV prevention and treatment programs. Interview Highlights "I was so ignorant about drugs and so naive. On what drugs did for him, and where they led him
Terence McKenna Vault Terence McKenna was a psychedelic author, explorer, and showman. He was born in 1946 and grew up in Paonia, Colorado. In high school he moved to Los Altos, California, and from there attended U.C. Berkeley for two years before setting off to see the world. He travelled widely in Europe, Asia, and South America during his college years. His first book, co-authored with his brother Dennis McKenna, was based on their 1971 investigations of Amazonian hallucinogens. In 1975, Terence graduated from Berkeley with a degree in ecology, resource conservation, and shamanism. In 1985, Terence co-founded the non-profit Botanical Dimensions, with Kathleen Harrison-McKenna, to collect and propagate medicinal and shamanic plants from around the world. He spent the last few years of his life living in Hawaii, and died of brain cancer at the age of 53.
Study: Intelligence, cognition unaffected by heavy marijuana use By William J. Cromie Gazette Staff The new study of cognitive changes caused by heavy marijuana use has found no lasting effects 28 days after quitting. Following a month of abstinence, men and women who smoked pot at least 5,000 times in their lives performed just as well on psychological tests as people who used pot sparingly or not at all, according to a report in the latest edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry. That's the good news. The bad news, not included in the study, is that most heavy users admit that pot has had a negative effect on their physical and mental health as well their functioning on the job and socially. "If there's one thing I've learned from studying marijuana for more than a decade, it's that proponents and opponents of the drug will put opposite spins on these findings," says Harrison Pope, a Harvard professor of psychiatry and leader of the research. Withdrawal produces impairment Unsatisfied lives "It's a chicken and egg situation," Pope admits.
Timothy Leary Vault Timothy Francis Leary was born is Springfield, Massachusetts in 1920. He attended West Point in the early '40s (where he didn't exactly fit in) and then served in the military during WWII. He earned his PhD in psychology from U.C. Berkeley and taught there briefly but moved to Harvard after his first wife's death. In 1962 Leary was introduced to LSD for the first time by Michael Hollingshead. In 1965, while crossing into the U.S. from Mexico, Leary's daughter was caught with marijuana. In 1970, Leary was convicted once again of marijuana possession and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Leary became interested in virtual reality and cyberculture and spent the last twenty years of his life writing and lecturing.
Doctors consider using street drugs to ease suffering of dying patients Recent studies at Harvard, U.C.L.A. and my alma mater John Hopkins have now made it plain that doctors should—as soon as proper safeguards can be put in place—be free to offer illicit drugs to patients who are terminally ill, in order to ease their emotional suffering and potentially offer them new perspectives—fueled by drug-induced insights—into issues like their own mortality. At Harvard, Dr. John Halpern (as reported in the New York Times) tested MDMA (the street drug Ecstasy) to determine if it would ease the anxieties in two patients with terminal cancer. The results are reportedly consistently good. The truth is that the likelihood of creating an MDMA or psilocybin addict out of a terminal cancer patient is exactly zero. Not long ago, I debated with former talk show host and motivational speaker Montel Williams. Terminal conditions and final days are, in fact, but one of the settings in which chemicals considered “street” drugs may be Godsends. Dr. Dr.
Timothy Leary rotten > Library > Biographies > Mad Science > Timothy Leary Timothy Leary (October 22, 1920 - May 31, 1996) "Six words: drop out, turn on, then come back and tune it in... and then drop out again, and turn on, and tune it back in... it's a rhythm... most of us think God made this universe in nature-subject object-predicate sentences... turn on, tune in, drop out... period, end of paragraph. Okay, so it's a little over six words, but it's the debut pop-culture rap delivered by counterculture guru Dr. The government was indeed alarmed by how quickly teenagers flocked to Leary in the sixties and seventies. Timothy Leary was a professor at Harvard University when he began experimenting with psilocybin, acid, and other hallucinogens. In 1944, while training in Pennsylvania, he met a woman named Marianne. Meanwhile, Marianne had been suffering from post partum depression, and she began to drink heavily. A trial in the most conservative county in California (and home of Richard M. Dr.
10 Scientific and Technological Visionaries Who Experimented With Drugs Same here. We evolved along with, and because of, our diet. There weren't any classifications of "illegal drugs" back then, and these things flourish in all sorts of conditions in the wild - it's hard not to imagine at least occasional consumption. Considering mankind's predilection to experimenting with consciousness, along with the unique effects of these substances (including euphoria), it was probably more than occasional. If these fungi were part of a diet over time, they'd likely have some effect on our development. At the very least, to assume that these type of natural and prolific plants/substances had no part in our evolution would seem foolish. I just love the idea of psychoactive botanicals spurring hominid consciousness to a higher quantum state — the booster shot needed to make that leap forward in intelligence. SExpand Exactly!
Albert Hofmann Vault Albert Hofmann was born in Baden, Switzerland in 1906. He graduated from the University of Zürich with a degree in chemistry in 1929 and went to work for Sandoz Pharmaceutical in Basel, Switzerland. With the laboratory goal of working towards isolation of the active principles of known medicinal plants, Hofmann worked with Mediterranean squill (Scilla maritima) for several years, before moving on to the study of Claviceps purpurea (ergot) and ergot alkaloids. Over the next few years, he worked his way through the lysergic acid derivatives, eventually synthesizing LSD-25 for the first time in 1938. In addition to his discovery of LSD, he was also the first to synthesize psilocybin (the active constituent of 'magic mushrooms') in 1958.
The Narco State - By Charles Kenny America's longest running war -- the one against drugs -- came in for abuse this weekend at the Summit of the Americas. The abuse is deserved. Forty years of increasingly violent efforts to stamp out the drug trade haven't worked. And the blood and treasure lost is on a scale with America's more conventional wars. On the upside, we know that an approach based around treating drugs as a public health issue reaps benefits to both users and the rest of us. President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala opened the rhetorical offensive against the drug war last week when he wrote that "decades of big arrests and the seizure of tons of drugs" have not stopped "booming" production and consumption. But it isn't just in Latin America that the winds of change are blowing when it comes to drugs policy. As a domestic policy, a harsh enforcement approach has done little to control drug use, but has done a lot to lock up a growing portion of the U.S. population.
Should the U.S. legalize hard drugs? Consider current policy concerning the only addictive intoxicant currently available as a consumer good — alcohol. America’s alcohol industry, which is as dependent on the 20 percent of heavy drinkers as they are on alcohol, markets its products aggressively and effectively. Because marketing can drive consumption, America’s distillers, brewers and vintners spend $6 billion on advertising and promoting their products. Americans’ experience with marketing’s power inclines them to favor prohibition and enforcement over legalization and marketing of drugs. But this choice has consequences: More Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses or drug-related probation and parole violations than for property crimes. And although America spends five times more jailing drug dealers than it did 30 years ago, the prices of cocaine and heroin are 80 to 90 percent lower than 30 years ago. Dealers, a.k.a. Marijuana probably provides less than 25 percent of the cartels’ revenue. georgewill@washpost.com