Het
gebruik van middelen als paddo’s, MDMA (ook wel ecstacy of XTC
genaamd), LSD en cannabis geniet al jaren veel belangstelling van wetenschappers, psychiaters, artsen en psychologen, bij psychiatrie
en de wetenschap is dat zelfs al vele decennia.

Steeds
meer aandoeningen worden toegevoegd aan de lange lijst van aandoeningen (zowel geestelijk als fysiek) die met succes kunnen worden behandeld met één van de voornoemde
psychedelica.

Zo
kunnen posttraumatische stressstoornissen positief worden behandeld
met MDMA, zaken als depressies en concentratiekampsyndroom (of
KZ-syndroom) kunnen succesvol met LSD worden behandeld en dat
cannabis o.a. kan worden gebruikt als pijnstiller is intussen redelijk algemeen bekend, echter cannabis kan ook helpen als middel bij
staar, een middel om ADHD’ers beter te laten functioneren en voor het
opwekken van eetlust bij kankerpatiënten.

Hieronder opgenomen een artikel over LSD van Vikram Zutshi, waarin hij o.a. schrijft over
het gebruik van LSD als middel om tot een betere wereld te komen, een
wereld waar de hersenspoeling door onderwijs, media en religie teniet
kan worden gedaan door nieuwe netwerken in de hersenen te ontwikkelen (middels het gebruik van LSD). Daarmee zal de mens i.p.v. tegen elkaar op te staan, eerder elkaar de hand reiken om samen te zorgen dat de wereld niet ten onder
gaat aan haat, afgunst, onverantwoord gebruik van grondstoffen en ga
nog maar even door.

Niet
voor niets ook dat vele overheden zich zo afzetten tegen het gebruik
van drugs als cannabis, paddo’s, LSD en XTC. Terwijl men alcohol
gewoon blijft accepteren en zelfs pissig wordt als je deze drug een
harddrug noemt, wat het wel degelijk is……… Veronderstel dat er dagelijks 12
mensen zouden overlijden aan het gebruik van XTC, het hek zou van de
dam zijn, terwijl dit bij alcohol de dagelijkse praktijk is….. (en
daar mag gewoon reclame voor worden gemaakt; vergeet voorts niet dat
alcohol fiks kankerverwekkend is!)

Lees
het volgend artikel en geeft het door, het is de hoogste tijd dat
het verzet tegen de genoemde drugs algemeen als contraproductief wordt gezien en erkend…… Dit verzet kost ons bovendien een enorm bedrag aan
politie-inzet en het voeren van rechtszaken…… Al is de
georganiseerde misdaad uiteraard wel blij met een repressief drugsbeleid, je kan verzet
tegen deze drugs dan ook rustig aanmerken als lobby voor de drugsmaffia! Zo kan men de prijzen verhogen door te wijzen op dat repressieve beleid, bovendien: pubers vinden alles wat verboden is op dat gebied uiterst interessant en zullen proberen als met alcohol deze drugs te verkrijgen…. (zoals je weet: waar een wil is is een weg….) 

In de tijd dat Nederland als enige een gedoogbeleid voerde, op in ieder geval softdrugs, waren de problemen met andere drugs verwaarloosbaar vergeleken met de ellende waar omliggende landen mee te maken hadden……

The
Political Significance of LSD: What You’re Not Being Told

June
6, 2018 at 9:36 pm

Written
by Open
Democracy

(OD Op-ed) — “Microdosing”
on psychedelic substances like LSD—ingesting
just enough to heighten cognitive faculties, enhance creativity,
improve concentration and alleviate depression—is currently back in
vogue among people not normally associated with anything remotely
‘countercultural’ in the USA.

The
term psychedelic was
coined in 1958 by British psychiatrist Humphrey
Osmond and
is derived from the Greek words psyche (“soul,
mind”) and delein(“to
manifest”), hence “soul-manifesting,” the implication being
that psychedelics can access the soul and develop unused potentials
in the human mind. It’s a contention that’s gaining increased
acceptance in mainstream universities.

New
York University,
for example, is hosting clinical trials using psilocybin to
treat alcohol addiction. The Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
has been at the forefront of research in treating patients suffering
from chronic treatment-resistant PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder) with MDMA,
commonly known as ‘Ecstasy’. The Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) recently
designated its
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy project as a ‘breakthrough therapy.’
Apart from MDMA, MAPS also advocates the use
of Ayahuasca, Ibogaine and medical
marijuana for a
variety of conditions ranging
from bipolar syndrome and drug addiction to autism-related disorders,
ADHD and clinical depression.

The
therapeutic use of psychedelics isn’t new. Between 1953 and 1973,
the US
federal government funded over a hundred studies on
LSD with more than 1,700 subjects participating.

Psychedelics
were tested on convicts, substance abusers, people suffering from
chronic depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenics
and terminal cancer patients. LSD was also tested on artists and
scientists to explore its effects on creativity, and on divinity
students to examine spirituality from a neuroscientific perspective.
The empirical data gathered from these tests was
largely positive.

LSD
“truly was an acid, dissolving almost everything with which it came
into contact, beginning with the hierarchies of the mind… and going
on from there to society’s various structures of authority” says
author Michael
Pollan in
his book How
To Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics. And
that’s what makes this subject socially
and politically interesting.

“It
is curious to me that what I see as the two greatest
threats—environmental crisis and [political] tribalism—these
drugs directly address both those mindsets” Pollan
told the Guardian in
a recent interview. “They undermine our tendency to objectify
nature, to think of ourselves as separate from it. They undermine
tribalism in that people tend to emerge from these experiences
thinking that we are all more alike, all more connected.”

If
this is true, then those of us committed to social transformation
must start to take the use of psychedelics much more seriously. But
what’s the actual or potential connection between LSD and politics?

It
was a Swiss chemist called Albert
Hoffman who
discovered the drug by accident in 1938. While conducting research on
another pharmaceutical compound he absorbed the drug through his skin
and staggered home to lie down on his sofa, where, “in a dreamlike
state, with eyes closed”, he wrote later, “I perceived an
uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with
intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours.” Hoffman felt he had been
given the keys to unlocking the mysteries of the universe, “the
mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality.”

A
few decades later in August 1960, Timothy
Leary,
a clinical psychologist from Harvard University, traveled to
Cuernavaca in Mexico and ingested psilocybin
(‘magic’) mushrooms for
the first time, an experience that radically altered the course of
his life. In 1965, Leary
commented  that
he had “learned more about … (his) brain and its
possibilities…[and] more about psychology in the five hours after
taking these mushrooms than…in the preceding 15 years of studying
and doing research in psychology.” Leary became a lifelong
evangelist for the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics.

Theoretical
physicist Carlos
Rovelli,
author of The
Order of Time, says
his romance with quantum theory and the mysteries of the space-time
continuum were sparked by his LSD trips as a student radical at the
University of Bologna. “It was an extraordinarily strong experience
that touched me also intellectually,” he
told the Guardian.
“Among the strange phenomena was the sense of time stopping. Things
were happening in my mind but the clock was not going ahead; the flow
of time was not passing any more. It was a total subversion of the
structure of reality. How do I know that the usual perception is
right, and this is wrong?”

Rovelli
has spent the better part of his life grappling with the relationship
between space, time and consciousness, fundamental concepts that
underlie existence and how we simultaneously perceive the world and
shape it. “If I observe the microscopic state of things,” he
writes,
“then the difference between past and future vanishes … in the
elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between ‘cause’
and ‘effect.’” The concept of time, he says, “has lost layers
one after another, piece by piece.” We are left with “an empty
windswept landscape almost devoid of all trace of temporality…a
world stripped to its essence, glittering with an arid and troubling
beauty.”

Large
parts of the world are being polarized at a rate rarely seen before,
helped in no small measure by social media ‘filter bubbles’ and
algorithms that divide people sharply along the lines of nationality
or ideology, their underlying human connections rendered increasingly
irrelevant.

Perhaps
such deep hatred and suspicion of the other was always there, but now
it has taken center stage and is being used as a potent election
strategy by populist and hyper-nationalist leaders the world over.
Like herds of cattle, large numbers of people are being programmed
and deployed as pawns for a larger agenda.

Therefore,
perhaps real change begins with rewiring our perceptual framework.
Psychedelic substances have been ingested sacramentally by indigenous
cultures to achieve this goal since the dawn of time, and now they’re
being validated by the scientific and medical communities.

The
shifts in consciousness that can be brought about by psychedelics can
help in dissolving the man-made boundaries or fear of the other that
are implanted in our collective psyche.

While
Silicon Valley bio-hackers microdosing on LSD to enhance their
workplace performance may not be looking to bring about tectonic
shifts in collective consciousness, there’s no reason to restrict
the use of psychedelics to these groups and purposes. They could also
work as a potent catalyst to awaken humankind to the dangers of toxic
nationalism and rabid nativism that threaten to engulf us.

Op-ed
by Vikram
Zutshi / Creative
Commons / Open
Democracy / Report
a typo