As of yesterday.

As anticipated, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration announced that five variations of synthetic marijuana - sometimes called Spice - have been added to its list of illegal drugs.

The chemicals in synthetic pot are created in laboratories to produce effects similar to marijuana plants but remain different enough on a molecular level to escape detection in urine tests.

The formulas are then sprayed on smokable, organic materials that are ultimately sold in head shops as "incense."

The DEA's emergency order makes possessing or selling products containing any of five popular chemical recipes for Spice illegal for the next 12 months.

The Glade festival was first started in 2004 by four chaps who'd previously been involved in putting on festivals all over the world, including the incredible breaks and techno Glade stage at Glastonbury music festival. Glade was a sponsorship-free space, a colourful environment that took all the paths to let you express yourself in amongst some of the greatest electronica music on Earth. Having quickly established themselves as one of the UK’s premier events, it was unfortunately cancelled last year, only for it to be bouncing back again this year in 2011, stripped back to its shiny grass roots, and as psychedelic as ever.

The crazy animators at NMA seem to have a strange obsession with weed culture. Are they trying to send a message?

From regular DoseNation contributor, Rak Razam:

'AYA: Awakenings' is a planned audiovisual documentary journey into the world and visions of ayahuasca shamanism. Your support is needed to directly fund cutting edge animators, and pay the video editor, sound designer and artists whose artwork and photos are sampled in the clips, as well as operating costs in getting these clips finished and released to the public. You can help in two ways: by financially supporting the project alongside many others who believe in it (anything from ONE dollar up!); by promoting the url and cause to your network. By drawing on the resources of the global community it means very small donations are all that's needed on a mass scale. We are all connected, and this is my little test of the network!

"Rak's book, Aya, a Shamanic Odyssey, is quite simply the best book out there on the phenomenon of ayahuasca... If Rak's video project comes anywhere close to his book, it will be worth watching, and worth supporting!" - Dennis McKenna, Feb 25, 2011 .

Razam has done the fieldwork to provide direction on such a video project, but the other key is the video production, provided by Verb, respobsible for the Fiat Lux video.

Double brain hyper-exposure. If you are down with the vine, show your support.

I just came from this scene at the capitol here where this guy climbed out on the balcony holding a sign that reads "Legalize DMT tax it for revenue". Sorry for the low-quality picture but I only had my phone camera.

Of course this has nothing whatsoever to do with the historic protests against the governor's union-busting bill going on here for the last two weeks, which just goes to show that psychedelics do not automatically cure you of being an attention whore.

I stayed long enough to hear him tell the negotiator "I was dead for millions of years before this moment, I'm sure I won't mind being dead again after this". So at least he is not a DMT poser....

I considered whether I should offer to talk to him, since no one else seemed to have any idea what he was on about, but after a while it became clear that the rally organizers were doing the right thing by ignoring him. Figure he'll get bored when he gets cold enough.

One of the most psychedelic movies of all time, the surreal Monkees/Jack Nicholson/Bob Rafelson collaboration Head, recently hit Blu-Ray as part of a Criterion Collection box set, and Richard Metzger has posted his thoughts on the new release over at Dangerous Minds:

Head’s opening moment, where Micky Dolenz runs through the dedication ceremony and jumps off the bridge, has, of course, as its soundtrack, one of the greatest numbers the Monkees ever did, “Porpoise Song.” The pristine quality of that scene’s solarized underwater footage combined with the HD DTS surround mix is nothing short of astonishing. Visually, it’s like looking at a stained-glass window. The audio is deeply immersive—like you’re standing in the midst of a strange waterlogged orchestra—and the video so vibrant that I must’ve played that one scene ten times in a row before moving on to “Circle Sky.” Again I wasn’t disappointed, the group’s presence is immediate and electrifying—Head’s performance of “Circle Sky” is the first time a “live” rock performance was used in a Hollywood film. I’ll say it again, they usually never get it this right. As far as slick audio/visual products go, Criterion’s Head deserves a special award.

Can't wait - my copy just recently arrived and based on Metzger's report here, I need to upgrade my sound system before diving into this. Head had an anniversary screening in Los Angeles a couple years ago, with Davy Jones and Peter Tork in attendance, and my wife and I flew down from Seattle for the occasion. Seeing a freshly-minted print on the big screen - after years and years relying on Rhino's craptacular DVD edition - was like the heavens opening and glorious angels rewarding us with radiant beauty. I am tickled to think that we finally have a Blu-Ray that may compare to that experience.

On a side note, the Austin Chronicle recently took a look at this film as well, and in a quote from one of the film's new special features, we see confirmed what many have long suspected:

"Before we started writing the film, Jack and I went to Ojai [Calif.] and there was this grand meeting with the Monkees," recalls one of the program's two creators, Bob Rafelson, in a documentary on the Criterion Collection's holiday DVD box America Lost and Found: The BBS Story. "And quite frankly there was a bit of acid involved, and Jack saw the movie in his mind as being structured like an acid trip."

The Austin Chronicle recently posted an interview with Mitch Schultz, the Austin-based filmmaker behind the Spirit Molecule documentary:

Austin Chronicle: How were you introduced to DMT?

Mitch Schultz: It was in New York right before my last year of grad school. A friend of mine was going back to Brazil, and they had a small group of people get together at their house and one of them brought some smokable DMT. I had never heard about it before, although I had had plenty of other psychedelic experiences to that point. I just hadn't heard anything about DMT, which surprised me. They said: "I can't tell you what's going to happen, but I can tell you it's going to come on really quick. Do you want to do it?" I thought, well, I'll give it a shot. I smoked it, and within 30 seconds it was full-on. The guy that had administered it told me later [that] "I've never seen a look of fear on somebody's face like I saw on yours for the first two minutes."

AC: That doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.

MS: I had a full dying experience. I literally felt like I was dying, but then once I settled into the experience, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. It completely changed how I look at the world, how I look at other people walking down the street, how I treat other people and the world in general. It gave me a complete sense of connectedness.

Starts off a little slowly, but picks up quite a bit as it progresses. [Via Alex.]

Australian science reporter Professor Funk has made a fantastic animated video about the science of the placebo effect that’s three minutes of sheer joy even without an active ingredient.

It takes you through the remarkable ways in which the placebo effect differs between different types of pills, perceptions and places and is highly recommended.

via MindHacks.

From the Guardian:

According to figures released by the NHS in January, based on data from the British Crime Survey, the number of adults in England and Wales who used illicit substances in 2009-10 – 8.6% – was the lowest recorded since the study began in 1996. Among 16-24-year-olds, the picture was the same, with just 20% saying they had taken drugs in the previous year – another record low, and a third lower than the proportion 15 years ago.

Cocaine use is down, speed is down, cannabis is way down (yet again). LSD use is flat, but just one fifth of what it was in 1996. Though heroin use is also stable, fewer young people are currently requesting treatment for addiction to it. Meanwhile, in the largest ever survey of drug use among British clubbers, published in this month's edition of Mixmag, there were found to be large year-on-year falls in the number of people taking cannabis (by five percentage points), ketamine (10), ecstasy (five) and cocaine (20). The British Crime Survey tends to underestimate drug use (because it does not include people who are homeless, in prison, or living in student accommodation), and these falls are not the first, but they do cement a trend that is now too solid to ignore. In this country at least, for reasons that remain mysterious, drugs seem to be going out of fashion.