A Psychedelic Renaissance Dec 20, 2019 Richard (Rick) Mills Ahead of the Herd As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information. A psychedelic renaissance Fifty-three years after LSD was banned by the FDA, psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. Only instead of being the pills, mushrooms and acid tabs that helped college students to "turn on, tune in, drop out" Timothy Leary-style, today's mind-altering substances are at the cutting edge of medical research. Researchers are experimenting with psychedelics to see if they can help people cope better with mental health problems like depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, or to loosen the hold of powerful addictions such as smoking and alcohol. And while hallucinogens like LSD were once the preserve of hippies, artists, musicians and writers, regular people with jobs and mortgages are now taking tiny amounts of hallucinogenic drugs (microdosing) on spiritual retreats, and using them to de-stress, improve mood, even boost creativity in the workplace. Are psychedelics the new meditation? It would appear so. For the first time in decades, the FDA and DEA are approving psychedelic drug studies. In 2006 researchers at John Hopkins University found that psilocybin, the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms", can induce mystical experiences having deep personal meaning and spiritual significance. A 2008 study found that psychotherapy assisted with the drug MDMA cured 80% of participants suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is spearheading a drive to have MDMA available by prescription by 2021. The association has secured FDA approval to treat veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with MDMA, as well as cancer patients and people struggling with addictions and PTSD. The FDA has also given the green light to a drug trial using psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. The nub of this "psychedelic renaissance" is a new research center at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Thanks to $17 million in private donations, the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research will investigate the use of psychedelic drugs including LSD, magic mushrooms, MDMA, ayahuasca and peyote, for treating addiction, depression, PTSD, Alzheimer's disease and more. Initial research has focused on how psilocybin affects "behavior, brain function, learning and memory, the brain's biology and mood," states a press release. Toronto-based FieldFNArena Trip Ventures aims to build the first legal cultivation facility in Jamaica, where psilocybin-producing mushrooms are legal, reports BNN Bloomberg. The company's founders include several former senior executives at major licensed pot producer Aurora Cannabis. ‘Shrooms - a history People have been smoking or ingesting plants with psychoactive properties for thousands of years. Using radiocarbon dating to analyze peyote buttons found in caves along the Rio Grande in Texas, researchers found native North Americans were using peyote, a psychoactive ingredient found in a spineless cactus, as far back as 810 AD. The indigenous peoples of South America had something similar in ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew made from the Banisteriopsis vine and other plant-based ingredients. In the 16th century, Christian missionaries encountering natives in the Amazon described it as "the work of the devil", even though its purpose was to aid in spiritual practice. Archeological evidence from the Sahara Desert shows humans have been using magic mushrooms for at least 7,000 years. Appearing in prehistoric art, the hallucinogenic fungus was thought to have been taken during religious or rite-of-passage ceremonies. The Mayan and Aztec cultures were known to use psilocybin extensively, particularly in Mexico and Guatemala. Although the Spanish conquistadors and Christian missionaries forbade them from using psychedelic mushrooms, regarding the practice as savage and uncivilized, indigenous shamans ignored them and kept administering it in secret for over 400 years. The drug was first isolated in a lab by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in 1958, using psilocybe mexicana, a species of Central American mushroom; a year later it was successfully synthesized. Hofmann was also the first to chemically combine lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known as acid. Psychedelic drug blog Third Wave tells an interesting anecdote about magic mushrooms involving a former JP Morgan executive: Gordon Wasson, former vice president of J.P. Morgan & Company, apparently had a fascination with psilocybin mushrooms that became an obsession. In 1955 he traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, to meet mushroom shaman Maria Sabina, a member of the indigenous Mazatec Indian tribe, who introduced him to psilocybin mushrooms. On his first mushroom trip, he reported feeling as if his soul had been scooped out of his body. It was Wasson's experiences in Mexico that started the psychedelic mushroom movement in the West. After Time magazine ran Wasson's photo essay ‘Seeking the Magic Mushroom', Harvard University researchers Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert traveled to Oaxaca,FNArena Mexico to try the mushrooms themselves. After Leary and Alpert were fired from Harvard for conducting research into LSD, banned in 1966, and magic mushrooms, made illegal in 1971, ‘shrooms and acid were quickly adopted by the counter-culture movement of the 1960s - popularized by psychedelic gurus Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson. LSD Timothy Leary will be forever associated with the main streaming of LSD. A psychologist at Harvard, in 1960 Leary was sent LSD samples by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, the company Albert Hofmann was working for when in 1938 he accidentally absorbed a small dose of LSD on his fingertips while trying to create a new stimulant, eliciting a psychotropic experience. Later eyeing the drug for psychotherapy, and no doubt its revenue potential, the Sandoz company began sending samples of LSD, and psilocybin, to clinics and universities around the world including Harvard. The drugs were initially well received. Between 1950 and 1965 over 40,000 patients were administered LSD alongside therapy, and more than 1,000 scientific papers were published. Psychedelics were found to be useful in treating depression, addiction and traumas, but the unpredictable nature of the psychedelic experience and the stigma of recreational drug use have made incorporating them into Western medicine problematic, according to an article in Timeline. That didn't stop the US Military from experimenting with LSD. It's well known that during the 1950s, the Military and the CIA researched LSD as a possible "truth serum" that could be used to brainwash prisoners or get them to talk. Other drugs however proved more effective so the Military abandoned the project. Leary on the other hand saw great potential in psychedelics and started the Harvard Psilocybin Project to study magic mushrooms. He was fired in 1962 after the university discovered he had given the drug to his students. Leary's reaction was to go on a psychedelic crusade urging Americans to try LSD. At first restricted to medical professionals who could get access to it, LSD soon found its way into unpredictable environments like rock concerts and college campuses where some people reported experiencing psychosis or "bad trips". In 1962 the Food and Drug Administration made it an illegal drug under Schedule 1 of the Controlled Drug and Substances Act, and the FDA shut down all research. Leary however wasn't deterred and kept distributing LSD to whomever he could interest. Members of Leary's ‘Merry Band of Pranksters', known for their LSD use, included writers Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey. Indelibly linked to the 1967 "Summer of Love" in San Francisco and the Woodstock Festival in 1969, the Pranksters rode across the country in ‘Furthur', the school bus Leary had converted and painted in wild psychedelic colors. Their counter-culture adventures were documented in the 2011 road movie ‘Magic Trip'. Although LSD use declined in the 1970s and ‘80s, it made a resurgence in the 1990s, particularly in the new-at-the-time rave subculture. According to the PBS documentary Frontline, the drug is typically manufactured in clandestine labs in northern California by a limited number of chemists. Legality A legal loophole has made psilocybin research possible even though it's been banned in the US since the early 1970s. While psilocybin was listedFNArena in the UN's Convention on Psychotropic Substances, mushrooms weren't, allowing countries that signed the convention to regulate magic mushrooms as they see fit. However psilocybin is illegal in most countries except for Brazil, the British Virgin Islands, Jamaica and the Netherlands. A few years ago in the US, the DEA and FDA began loosening rules about using psilocybin, more so than any other psychedelic due to new findings about its use in mental health and addiction therapies. As with marijuana, LSD and MDMA, psilocybin as a Schedule 1 drug is illegal on the federal level, but certain states have passed laws regulating its use. In 1978 the Florida Supreme Court ruled that harvesting wild magic mushrooms is legal until the state legislature says otherwise. This past May, Denver citizens voted in a plebiscite to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. The ordinance means that charging people for possession and use of mushrooms is to be the city's lowest enforcement priority, and it can't spend resources on penalizing usage. Growing and selling ‘shrooms however is still technically illegal. A month later, the municipal government of Oakland, CA voted to decriminalize not only magic mushrooms but all "entheogenic plants" containing psychoactive indoleamines, tryptamines and phenethylamines. The law goes further than Denver in decriminalizing both the cultivation and sale of psychedelic plants. A campaign in Oregon gathering signatures for a ballot measure in the 2020 election would legalize mushrooms for medicinal use. California failed to get enough signatures to qualify for a ballot measure in 2018 but will try again in 2020.