Ecstasy is known to kill some cancer cells, but scientists have increased its effectiveness 100-fold, they said in Investigational New Drugs journal.

Their early study showed all leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma cells could be killed in a test tube, but any treatment would be a decade away.

"There was an omniscient voice of Hamswell that pervaded identically with the flow; The Megaphone – a voice of focus in an otherwise sense addled and wonky world. On Saturday morning, yoga with The Healing Earth was announced. The Megaphone sprinted up the sides of the valley, rousing some of the sleeping Hamswellians, and alerting those [still] awake. Coffea Arabica helped rouse Bobalicious from his morning trance hours earlier, but it was with the spirit of Hofmann that he made his way over to the temple of The Healing Earth and, under her guidance, in amongst the brave-25, there occurred a yogic becoming…"

A homage for Robert Venosa, Visionary Artist and Friend.

The Links
Younger Brother – Spinning Into Place (Acoustic Mix)
Robert Venosa Memorial Event/ August 21st/ Boulder Colorado
For Roberto
Robert Venosa Art
Rumi: Life & Death
Younger Brother – Train

Robert Venosa, Visionary Artist practically invented Visionary Art. Without his work, there would be no movement that encapsulates the Entheogenic artistic movement.

The latest version of the illuminated manuscript 'Invisible College' is available now. The print edition looks amazing, and is full of original articles and artwork. Here's a brief rundown of the contents:

From an in-depth interview with Jim Fadiman conducted by Diane Darling… to the internationally recognized Poetry & Aphorisms of Yahia Lababidi, this is the most adventurous edition of The Invisible College yet. We have great art, from sculptural works of Chuck St. John, the collage works of Jim Harter, to the elegant beauty of Oleg Korolev’s oil paintings. Poet Bryce Milligan graces our pages with his epic poem “Alms For Oblivion”, whilst Delvin Solkinson brings us an overview of visionary art around the world with his “World Medicine” article. We visit again with LyterPhotos with the latest installment of The Serpent & The Light: “Aesclepian Staves To Dionysian Raves”. Last but not least, Coleman Barks superb interpretations in “Epilogue: A Visitation With Rumi”.

Fore more information, or to purchase a copy and an alchemical t-shirt, please visit the link below.

An interesting study in game theory, cocaine addiction, and how addicts value potential rewards payed in cocaine or cash. Via Freakonomics.

A new study by addiction and neuroscience researchers sheds new light on understanding how cocaine addicts make decisions, and how they value the drug against the immediate and delayed reward of other items, such as cash. The upshot is that addicts discount cocaine at a steeper rate than they do money, consistently choosing to have money now, rather than twice the value of cocaine later. Here’s how the experiment worked:

Forty-seven cocaine addicts (who were all seeking treatment) were asked to guess the number of grams of cocaine worth $1,000. They were each then given a series of choices: cocaine now versus more cocaine later; money now versus more money later; cocaine now versus money later; or money now versus cocaine later. The initial amount offered for the immediate choice has half of the full value, and the delayed amount was always the full value. Preference was almost exclusively given to the money now option, according to the study’s lead researcher, Warren K. Bickel, a psychology professor at Virginia Tech, and director of the Advanced Recovery Research Center there.

[Thanks Sam Hell!]

Al Jazeera has an excellent new collection of stories and news pieces they have done on the drug war in Central and South America.

It has been almost five years since Mexico’s crackdown on drug cartels began, but the situation doesn't seem to be getting any better. The Mexican government, which hasn't revised its death toll since December 2010, says that 35 000 people have been killed in drug related violence in that time. Other estimates place the number of people killed since the crackdown at more than 50,000.

[Thanks Luke!]

Be sure to listen all the way through for the additional gem "Whitey on the Moon." I can't believe this hasn't been posted here before.

Saw the trailer yesterday for the new documentary, "Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place" and had to pass it on:

The LA Times is running a great piece on the restoration of Kesey's footage:

The physical condition of the material presented a significant challenge, according to UCLA preservationist Nancy Mysel. "When we got our hands on the film it was muddy, severely faded and worn," she said. "Kesey over the years attempted to edit the film, so the footage had been cut and recut. The original film was often held together with masking tape and duct tape."

Mysel and two others began working on the material in 2008 and completed the restoration in 2009. They wound through all the canisters of film, then painstakingly cleaned the frames by hand to rid them of mud and other dirt, repairing all nicks and tears before doing a digital transfer.

"From an archival standpoint, we wanted to maintain the integrity of the material and preserve Kesey's edited sequences," Mysel said. Because the footage had faded over the years, "we used digital technology to recover the faded color. We also used digital technology to bring out some of the images that were obscured by extreme over- and underexposure since this was not photographed by professional filmmakers. We wanted to maintain the integrity of the amateur filmmakers."

There were also many problems with the audio, given that those amateur filmmakers were tripping on acid when they were making the tapes, said Don Fleming, the associate director of the Alan Lomax Archive in New York, who completed the audio restoration and previously worked with Ellwood and Gibney on "Gonzo." "They would change the speed [of the tape] as they were going on the bus, or they would turn it over and tape on the other side in an odd place."

"The Nagra speeds fluctuated and the recorder was often running on the bus' generator," added Ellwood. "Every time the bus changed gears, you would get a warble."

Originally published in 2002 ‘Pharmako/Dynamis – Stimulating Plants, Potions & Herbcrafts’ is Dale Pendell’s follow up to his excellent ‘Pharmako/Poeia’, and deals with the Excitantia and Empathogenica classes of psychoactive plants. This review is written from the 2010 updated edition, which continues the author’s stroll through the ‘poison path’, in poetic, scientific and historical fashion.

Underlying the sometimes dizzyingly varied facts of the poison path lies a very literary theory but one that, at the same time, penetrates at the very heart of drug theory: “Books themselves are poisons: revealing, teaching, seducing; the letter of orthodoxy or the seed of subversion” (Preface). Pharmako/Dynamis is no exception to this observation, wherein the author, Dale Pendell, has not shied away from illuminating the dark sides of drug history with the light and vice verse. Yet, having said that, this is not a simple chronology or single line of flight: “The structure is three dimensional and holographic. Start anywhere. Read backwards. A book is linear by nature, but that is only a single projection—other cut-ups might make more sense” (Preface). What makes this text so remarkable is this openness.

I first became aware of 'Trippers' by ‘overhearing’ a conversation on Facebook between Rob Dickins, editor of PsypressUK, and Andy Roberts, author of 'Albion Dreaming'. Andy enthused about this newly written but set-in-the-1970s psychedelic memoir with Kerouacian undertones, and I thought, ‘That sounds awfully like my book, "The Mad Artist".’ Shortly afterwards I found Bill Booker on Authonomy, and we backed each other’s books, exchanged comments and compared notes on the remarkable similarities of our psychedelic and literary journeys. Reading 'Trippers', therefore, became a two-fold pleasure of me—firstly to appreciate it in its own right, and secondly to discover further parallels between what it describes and my own experience.

It’s the summer of 1971 and an eighteen-year-old Bill Booker has reached an important developmental point. With a childhood lacking in self-confidence behind him, he’s branching out, finding new friends, thinking about purposeful journeys and being lured by the exciting scent of changing times. There’s a host of new music to dig, from serious cred stuff such as the Floyd and Syd Barrett, King Crimson, Cream and Beefheart, to the more middling cred ELP and Hawkwind, to the downright lightweight, such as the Osmonds. When it comes to reading material there’s Hesse, Heinlein and Jung, International Times and Oz, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Mr Natural…all of it imbibed through ‘a scented blue haze of joss and marijuana smoke.’