Suppliers of designer psychedelic drugs who sold their wares on the internet face potential life terms in prison as their cases come up for sentencing this month.

In a sting dubbed “Operation Web Tryp” that was carried out last year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shut down five websites and arrested 10 site operators in Louisiana, New York, Virginia and California for selling lab-pure psychedelics online.

Known euphemistically as “research chemicals,” the drugs come from the same chemical families as LSD (tryptamines) and mescaline (phenethylamines), but are too new to have street names. Instead, they’re referred to by abbreviated lab names such as 5-MeO-AMT, 2-CT-7 and DiPT.

Ingestion of research chemicals results in mind-altering and emotion-amplifying effects similar to those experienced by users of more well-known psychedelics.

From BLOCKHEAD via Wired

‘In the midst of that throbbing mass of passionately entwined bodies, Thumper set foot on a path that would take him into the arms of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a legally registered nonprofit religious institution centered on Mystic Arts World, a head shop in downtown Laguna Beach. The church?s figurehead and high priest was Timothy Leary, a world-famous former Harvard psychology professor turned proselytizer of psychedelic drugs. Leary and the Brotherhood preached spiritual awakening through Buddhist meditation and drug experimentation.’

“Leary?s mantra?Tune in, turn on, drop out?had already led countless disaffected middle-class kids to quit their jobs or classes, head to California and drop acid. The Brotherhood?s bible was Leary?s Psychedelic Prayers, his idiosyncratic translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Mystic Arts sold copies of Leary?s book, along with incense, candles and imported countercultural paraphernalia. Behind a bamboo-covered wall, church members gathered in a secret meditation room decorated with a massive Taxonomic Mandala, a technicolor spiral depicting the evolution of life, from primal ooze to Homo sapiens.”

OC Weekly via Bruce Eisner’s Vision Thing

Ayahuasca is an hallucinogenic Amazonian plant concoction, that has been used by native Indian and mestizo shamans in Per?, Colombia and Ecuador for healing and divination for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. It is known by various names in the different tribes, including caapi, natema, mihi and yaj?. The name ayahuasca is from the Quechua language: huasca means “vine” or “liana” and aya means “souls” or “dead people” or “spirits”. Thus “vine of the dead”, “vine of the souls” or “vine of the spirits” would all be appropriate English translations. It is however slightly misleading as a name, since the vine Banisteriopsis caapi is only one of two essential ingredients in the hallucinogenic brew, the other one being the leafy plant Psychotria viridis, which contain the powerful psychoactive dimethyltryptamine (DMT). It is the DMT, derivatives of which are also present in various other natural hallucinogens, including the magic mushroom of Mexico, that provides visionary experiences and thus access to the realm of spirits and the souls of deceased ancestors. But DMT is not orally active, being metabolized by the stomach enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO). Certain chemicals in the vine inhibit the action of MAO and are therefore referred to as MAO-inhibitors:—their presence in the brew makes the psychoactive principle available and allows it to circulate through the bloodstream into the brain, where it triggers the visionary access to otherworldly realms and beings. The details of this remarkably sophisticated indigenous psychoactive drug-delivery system, and the history of its discovery by science, will be described and explored in this volume.

Biopark.org

Evolutionary science has amassed much evidence that the ancestors of man were primate cousins living in the forests and grasslands of Africa. Religious origins certainly grew out of primitive man?s struggle to define and control his surroundings. Prehistoric man would have respected and hailed the elements such as lighting, thunder and fire for their frightening and destructive power; and he would also have had respect for power mind altering substances found in nature, the most powerful being grassland mushrooms containing psilocybin.

Religious scriptures from several traditions mention mind-altering substances directly, and some scholars believe many other passages contain metaphors for psychedelics. If this is true for the existing scriptures, and churches historically have condemned the practices, one can only imagine what the heavily edited and suppressed scriptures may have contained on this subject. I hope to illustrate a few examples of modern scholarship and anecdotes that point to mind-altering substances that may have shaped early religious visions, religious scripture, and even our own minds.

Link

It was 62 years ago today when Albert Hofmann first deliberately ingested 250mcg of LSD. Then he and his lab assistant rode their bicycles home, thus spawning a yearly tradition practiced by psychonauts everywhere – Bicycle Day.

Here’s what he says about the experience in LSD: My Problem Child:

4/19/43 16:20: 0.5 cc of 1/2 promil aqueous solution of diethylamide tartrate orally = 0.25 mg tartrate. Taken diluted with about 10 cc
water. Tasteless.

17:00: Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh.

Supplement of 4/21: Home by bicycle. From 18:00- ca.20:00 most severe crisis.

It was 2 summers ago. Two of my friends, Bob and Brian, had recently been tripping very frequently in nature. We would drive out to a local metro park, head to the nature preserve and walk the miles of trials through the wilderness. We hadn’t come across an occasion in which all 3 of us could get out there at the same time. It was either Bob or I, or Brian and Bob, or Brian and I, but never the 3 of us at the same time. Every time we got together, the conversation would always turn to how much fun we had walking the trails and enjoying nature while tripping, and how much fun it would be if all 3 of us got out there together. We decided to set a date, take it off work, and head out to the park for a day of fun.

The day soon arrived. We planned to meet at my wife?s parent?s house early in the morning. It was a convenient staging area, because they lived only 2 miles from the park and they were off on a vacation. Brian brought 13 grams of dried Malabars with him. They weren’t cracker dry. There was still a little moisture left, but barely any. It was hard to dry them out properly in the summer months due to the humidity. Since they weren’t 100% dry, we thought we could compensate by taking a little extra. We figured that if we each took a little more then 4 grams then it would equate to around 3.5 grams. It made perfect sense at the time…

From The Shroomery

In Word War I, it was ?shell shock;? in World War II and Korea, it was ?combat fatigue.? In the aftermath of Vietnam, it got the name ?Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,? and it?s become one of the most difficult problems for veterans of the war in Iraq. Although regulations implementing the war on drugs declare Ecstasy a substance with no medical purpose, the Food and Drug Administration has approved trials of the psychedelic drug on veterans with PTSD. Do such hallucinogens have medical uses? We hear from those who’ve investigated PTSD and treated its sufferers, as well as a former director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

Listen

From KCRW: To the Point

[US News]: BELMONT, Mass.—Harvard researchers are preparing for the first time in three decades to conduct human experiments using a psychedelic drug, a study that would seek to harness the mind-altering effects of the drug Ecstasy to help ease the crushing psychic burdens faced by dying cancer patients.

In the experiment, 12 terminal cancer patients would be given MDMA, the active ingredient in Ecstasy, to determine whether the drug helps alleviate their anxiety. If the results are positive, the Harvard scientists said they will push forward with large-scale tests that could make end-of-life Ecstasy treatments generally available to terminally ill patients.

Kerala Next

While participating in a sacramental ceremony in the Amazon basin of South America during the late 1980s, Dr. Charles Grob had a moment of realization about the power of psychedelic substances used for therapeutic purposes.

UCLA Daily Bruin