The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lectures series presents: Ayahuasca and Degenerative Illness: A Personal and Anthropological Exploration of How One Woman Found Her Cure -- Exploring the serpent’s symbolic healing lineage from Asclepius to the Amazon, the next Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture will explore the use of psychedelics for treating degenerative illness. This month at the October Gallery in London, on Tuesday 26th July, medical anthropologist Aprile Blake, will take us on a personal journey across anthropology, acromegaly and ayahuasca

A profound story of how Ayahuasca, the entheogenic wonder of the Amazon, is healing one woman’s terminal illness. In her early 20s, Aprile Blake, was diagnosed with the rare, chronic, degenerative and deformative illness; 'Acromegaly'. Repelled by the consequences of the biomedical intervention, she delved into the surprising and expansive world of alternative and cross-cultural approaches to healing. This was the beginning of a life journey, the revealing of a dharma, as it were, which would ultimately lead to her salvation.

According to GriffCannon90: He should store that P block in a container where it’s not just loosely bumping around. If that hammer hits it, sh*t’s getting f*cked up!

Indeed.

[Thanks Seth!]

Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal's decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.

"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered "problematic" -- those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users -- had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.

Thanks shroomling!

I always wondered what this video would look like for this song (I recall it either from DJ Shadow or somewhere else). Quite psychedelic!

Doing the improbable because it feels right. And this fine piece of video has over 300 comments on LiveLeak.

[Thanks Seth!]

via Laughing Squid

It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly... Photographs of late-stage krokodil addicts are disturbing in the extreme. Flesh goes grey and peels away to leave bones exposed. People literally rot to death.

Anyone see these photos? I can't find them online. Drug scare of the week? [NOTE: See links in comments section below for photos] Here's what the DEA has to say:

"We're looking at it overseas, but we have not seen it yet in the U.S.," DEA spokesman Rusty Payne told FoxNews.com. "But we would not be surprised when that day comes."

To produce the potentially deadly drug, which has a comparable effect to heroin but is much cheaper to make, users mix codeine with gasoline, paint thinner, iodine, hydrochloric acid and red phosphorous. Codeine, a controlled substance in the United States used to treat mild to moderate pain, is widely available over the counter in Russia.

[Thanks Sam Hell!]

A South African anthropologist has asked permission to open the graves of William Shakespeare and his family to determine, among other things, what killed the Bard and whether his poems and plays may have been composed under the influence of marijuana.

But while Shakespeare's skeleton could reveal clues about his health and death, the question of the man's drug use depends on the presence of hair, fingernails or toenails in the grave, said Francis Thackeray, the director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who floated the proposal to the Church of England.

Thackeray conducted a study in 2001, which found evidence of marijuana residue on pipe fragments found in Shakespeare's garden. Cannabis was grown in England at the time and was used to make textiles and rope. Some Shakespearian allusions, including a mention of a "noted weed" in Sonnet 76, spurred Thackeray's inquiry into whether Shakespeare may have used the mind-altering drug for inspiration.

[Thanks Daniel! Via Huffington Post]

And biotechnology may lead to a new generation of hallucinogenic drugs. Edwin Wintermute and his colleagues at Harvard have engineered yeast cells to carry out two of six steps in the pathway needed to make lysergic acid, the precursor of LSD. They hope to add the other four shortly. Once the pathway has been created, it can be tweaked. That might result in LSD-like drugs that are better than the original.

Even if that does not happen, making lysergic acid in yeast is still a good idea. The chemical is used as the starting point for other drugs, including nicergoline, a treatment for senile dementia. The current process for manufacturing it is a rather messy one involving ergot, a parasite of rye.

Waveform is known and respected not only for its cutting edge dance but also being the only sustainable dance event in the UK: "We're proud of our green credentials" says Bruce Elliott-Smith (director of Waveform,) "every year we try and bring just a little more to the event. We aim to educate by example. Show people it's not hard to have a good time and become a little bit greener."