Psychotoxic or Psychedelic?

Psychotoxic or Psychedelic

A Psychedelic Experience - Fact or Fantasy

Since at least 1500 B.C. men have, from time to time, held the view that our normal vision of the world is a hallucination—a dream, a figment of the mind, or, to use the Hindu word which means both art and illusion, a maya. The implication is that, if this is so, life need never be taken seriously. It is a fantasy, a play, a drama to be enjoyed. It does not really matter, for one day (perhaps i...

Salem Witch Trials: The Fungus Theory Witch or Psychedelic Trip?

During the winter of 1692 eight girls came down with a mysterious and terrifying illness in the colonial town of Salem, Massachusetts. They vomited, screamed incomprehensibly, claimed to see things that weren’t there, felt the crawling and pricking of invisible needles against their skin, and convulsed and contorted into impossible positions. Physicians were called to examine the girls, but the...

Psychedelic States and Schizophrenia

As long as a man can talk to himself about himself, he retains some sense of personal identity and separateness. Once he stops talking (self-reflective thinking) and begins to listen "to the song going on within him," all boundaries, internal and external, cease to exist—including the internal-external boundary itself. In some cases, this state is experienced or interpreted as psychotic death; ...

Therapeutic potential of psychedelic agents

Amphetamine, methylphenidate, morphine, heroin and ketamine are all drugs that can potentially be used clinically but, whenever we hear the word MDMA, the first thoughts that come to mind are of ecstasy, rave parties and people behaving in an odd manner and experiencing hallucinations, paranoia and disinhibition. Recently, there has been a lot of discussion on the use of MDMA for treatment-resi...