April 2nd, 2010
Not just opium: UN says Afghanistan now world’s largest hashish producer
Mind Altering Substances
Afghanistan, the world’s biggest producer of opium, has also become a major source for cannabis, overtaking Morocco as the top producer of hashish, the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime said Wednesday.
March 28th, 2010
The Future Will Be Medicated
Mind Altering Substances
Aldous Huxley spelled it out for us in Brave New World – the future will be medicated. In 1984, Orwell described a dystopia which thrived on madness, where nervous breakdown was the watchword and citizens grew old before their time. Welcome to the future – pop a pill and have a nice day.
March 17th, 2010
Can You Alter Your Memory?
Mind Altering Substances
Is it possible to permanently change your memories? A group of scientists thinks so. And their new techniques for altering memories are raising possibilities of one day treating people who suffer from phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety-related conditions.
March 14th, 2010
French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment
Mind Altering Substances
A 50-year mystery over the 'cursed bread' of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment.
November 22nd, 2009
BUY AMERICAN POT: A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM THE AMGA
Mind Altering Substances
We all know that a lot of people are harmed by prohibition, but who benefits? Strangely enough, some of the biggest beneficiaries are the bootleggers. Sure, they take a big risk, but black marketeers don't have to pay taxes, they're protected from foreign competition, and they benefit from artificially inflated prices. Talk about protectionism.
November 11th, 2009
Michigan farm expert opens Marijuana U.
Mind Altering Substances
Nearly a year after voters in this economically disadvantaged state overwhelmingly passed a ballot initiative approving the consumption of medicinal marijuana, a new trade school has opened its doors to educate aspiring growers.
October 21st, 2009
Justice Department Tells DEA To Leave Marijuana Users Alone
Mind Altering Substances
Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law.
September 28th, 2009
Electroshock for Children and Involuntary Adults
Mind Altering Substances
Shock treatment damages the brain through a variety of mechanisms. First, it causes grand mal seizures that are much more intense and destructive than those spontaneously experienced by people with severe epilepsy. These multiple seizures (typically 3 per week for a few weeks or more) exhaust and damage neurons or brain cells. Second, the electric current by itself damages the brain by disrupting electrical function, over-heating brain tissue, stimulating massive hypertension inside the brain, breaking down the blood brain barrier, and causing tiny blood vessels to spasm shut, depriving neurons of oxygen and nutrients.
September 15th, 2009
Drug to erase bad memories could see the end of troubling flashbacks
Mind Altering Substances
Childhood teasing, the unpleasant experience of losing a pet and the upsetting memories of a failed love affair could all be wiped from people's minds...During the latest research, animals had been given a drug that dissolves a barrier around the amygdala - the almond-shaped organ in the brain where mammals store their memories of fear.
August 23rd, 2009
Cannabis chemicals stop prostate cancer growth
Mind Altering Substances
Chemicals in cannabis have been found to stop prostate cancer cells from growing in the laboratory, suggesting that cannabis-based medicines could one day help fight the disease, scientists said Wednesday.
Messing with your head: Does the man behind Neuro-Linguistic Programming want to change your life – or control your mind?
Mind Altering Substances
You got a problem? Go see Richard Bandler. As the founder of the controversial, multi-billion-dollar therapy NLP, he can get inside your head, and quick. But how did a former cocaine user and murder suspect become a guru to over 30,000 people in the UK?
July 16th, 2009
Active Ingredient In Cannabis Eliminates Morphine Dependence In Rats
Mind Altering Substances
Injections of THC, the active principle of cannabis, eliminate dependence on opiates (morphine, heroin) in rats deprived of their mothers at birth. The findings could lead to therapeutic alternatives to existing substitution treatments.
July 8th, 2009
Pro-marijuana ad pushes pot as Calif. budget fix
Mind Altering Substances
A pro-marijuana group is launching another television bid to legalize pot in California — this time with the pitch that legalizing and taxing the drug could help solve the state’s massive budget deficit.
July 5th, 2009
How computers can harm your children's future... by damaging their brains
Mind Altering Substances
If we were to scan the brains of young people who spend a lot of time playing computer games and in chatrooms, we would find that the prefrontal cortex is damaged, underdeveloped or underactive - just as it is in gamblers, schizophrenics or the obese. We would find that they become confused between reality and screen life in their virtual world. And that in this confusion, they risk losing, neurologically, the ability to think.
July 2nd, 2009
Senate commission to study marijuana decriminalization
Mind Altering Substances
Weeks after legalizing the sale of marijuana to sick people, lawmakers have voted to explore how much Rhode Island might collect in revenue if it were to make all sales of marijuana legal and impose a “sin tax” of $35 per ounce.
June 24th, 2009
'Stoned wallabies make crop circles'
Mind Altering Substances
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.
June 21st, 2009
Stress Testing the MOTHERS Act
Mind Altering Substances
The Mothers Act is due to be voted on soon by the U.S. Senate. This is the Big Pharma-advocated law that would require the mandatory screening of all expectant mothers for depression -- with the intent of drugging them if symptoms are present.
Antidepressant use soars as the recession bites
Mind Altering Substances
"The increase in the number of people being prescribed antidepressants is deeply disturbing," said the Liberal Democrats' health spokesman, Norman Lamb, who obtained the figures. "England has become a true Prozac nation." Lamb said it appeared the economy was a major factor in the increase.
June 12th, 2009
British Court Orders Singer Get “Medical Implant” for Drug Addiction
Mind Altering Substances
Pete Doherty, singer for the English indie rock band Babyshambles, has been ordered to have a medical implant to prevent the use of drugs, according to the Associated Press. Doherty appeared in a Stroud, western England court today where he entered a plea of guilty to heroin possession and driving without a license or insurance.
June 11th, 2009
FDA Approval of Antipsychotics for Children Mirrors Bayer, AMA Approvals of Heroin as Cough Medicine for Children
Mind Altering Substances
Today an FDA advisory panel approved the prescribing of powerful mind-altering chemicals for children. Seroquel, Zyprexa and Goedon have now been approved by the advisory panel to be prescribed to children as young as 10 years old to treat a fictitious disease invented by psychiatrists and given the name "bipolar disorder."
May 19th, 2009
U.S. military: Heavily armed and medicated
Mind Altering Substances
In deploying an all-volunteer army to fight two ongoing wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has increasingly relied on prescription drugs to keep its warriors on the front lines. In recent years, the number of military prescriptions for antidepressants, sleeping pills, and painkillers has risen as soldiers come home with battered bodies and troubled minds. And many of those service members are then sent back to war theaters in distant lands with bottles of medication to fortify them.
May 9th, 2009
Cat Parasite Affects Everything We Feel and Do
Mind Altering Substances
Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.
May 5th, 2009
Natural levels of lithium in drinking water help reduce suicides
Mind Altering Substances
The study has prompted calls for further research into the possibility of adding lithium to drinking supplies – like water fluoridation to improve dental health.
Lithium in water 'curbs suicide'
Mind Altering Substances
At least one previous study has suggested an association between lithium in tap water and suicide. That research on data collected from the 1980s also found a significantly lower rate of suicide in areas with relatively high lithium levels. The Japanese researchers called for further research in other countries but they stopped short of any suggestion that lithium be added to drinking water. The discussion around adding fluoride to water to protect dental health has proved controversial - criticised by some as mass involuntary medication.
April 30th, 2009
Cannabis - top 10 most common myths
Mind Altering Substances
Thanks to the scare-tactics of propaganda in the 1960s and 1970s, there are many myths surrounding the drug - this list intends to put things straight once and for all.
April 2nd, 2009
Active Ingredient in Marijuana Kills Brain Cancer Cells
Mind Altering Substances
New research out of Spain suggests that THC -- the active ingredient in marijuana -- appears to prompt the death of brain cancer cells.
March 30th, 2009
US vice-president's daughter 'caught on film taking cocaine'
Mind Altering Substances
The footage, taken at a party in Delaware earlier this month, allegedly shows Ashley Biden, 27, using a straw to sniff several lines of the drug.
March 28th, 2009
Depression pill OK'd for kids but probe goes on
Mind Altering Substances
Just weeks after prosecutors accused Forest Laboratories Inc. of illegally marketing its anti-depressants Celexa and Lexapro to children and paying pediatricians kickbacks, U.S. health regulators have approved Lexapro for depression in kids.
March 21st, 2009
While a shepherd watched his flock by night...
Mind Altering Substances
Medicinal purposes are one thing, but marijuana received an unexpected recreational endorsement when Italy's highest court ruled that an Italian shepherd's smoking habit could be justified because he only had sheep for company.
March 19th, 2009
When It Isn’t Really Senility
Mind Altering Substances
Reversible causes of dementia include the side effects of many medications. Ditropan is only the most recent addition to the list...“Some physical and mental changes occur with age in healthy people,” the agency writes in a publication called “Forgetfulness.” “However, much pain and suffering can be avoided if older people, their families, and their doctors recognize dementia as a disease, not part of normal aging.”
March 18th, 2009
Florida legislator wants random drug tests for the unemployed
Mind Altering Substances
A Florida legislator has proposed that random drug-testing also be applied to those receiving unemployment insurance, justifying it as a way to make state funds go further.
March 17th, 2009
GVSU student, Derek Copp, shot in chest by police for smoking marijuana: Executing children for the War on Drugs
Mind Altering Substances
The 20-year-old student was in serious condition at Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital. Copp, a Spring Arbor native, has been at GVSU since 2007, the same year he graduated from Jackson Community College, according to his page on Facebook. He identifies himself as "a left-wing hippie peace-keeping liberal," who is seeking a film and video degree.
March 13th, 2009
Sailor in herbal tea case may stay in Navy
Mind Altering Substances
A sailor convicted of using cocaine after he drank an herbal tea made from coca plant leaves may get to stay in the Navy.
'Socialize' it? Oregon may grow, tax and sell medical marijuana
Mind Altering Substances
Oregon's current medical cannabis program allows care providers and patients to grow their own supply, but both Republicans and Democrats in the state feel the system is not working. Their solution is to bankroll the bud on the public dime and charge a weighty tax -- $98 per ounce -- every time an approved patient makes a purchase.
March 12th, 2009
Wonder drug that stole my memory
Mind Altering Substances
"Did you say Simvastatin?" asked a friend. "Did you know that statins have been linked to memory loss?
Derek Copp is name of Grand Valley student shot, injured by police during drug raid
Mind Altering Substances
ALLENDALE -- Apartment neighbors of Grand Valley State University student Derek Copp say they cannot fathom what prompted police to shoot him late Wednesday in a drug-related raid.
March 7th, 2009
Ecstasy Pushed as PTSD Treatment
Mind Altering Substances
If you're a veteran, having trouble getting over your battlefield time, a South Carolina psychiatrist would like to get you really, really high.
March 1st, 2009
Ammiano wants to make marijuana legal in state
Mind Altering Substances
California would become the first state in the nation to legalize marijuana for recreational use under a bill introduced Monday by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco.
February 18th, 2009
Now Home Office drugs adviser wants to downgrade LSD from A to B
Mind Altering Substances
The news has emerged after the Professor David Nutt was ordered to apologise by the Home Secretary for saying that taking ecstasy was no worse than riding a horse.
February 10th, 2009
Marijuana grow-op discovered inside burning home
Mind Altering Substances
It took five hours to put out the two-alarm fire. At the height of the fire, 80 firefighters were on the scene. Read into that what you will.
February 8th, 2009
Whiff of change in US medical marijuana policy
Mind Altering Substances
The message is clear, said UCLA professor Mark Kleiman, a former Justice Department official and an expert on crime and drug policy. "It is no longer federal policy to beat up on hippies," said Kleiman.
January 21st, 2009
far to the left:pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian
Mind Altering Substances
Senator Robert Kennedy, in 1966 said: "Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that LSD can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly."
January 5th, 2009
Downgrade ecstasy, say Government advisers
Mind Altering Substances
Home Office sources believe The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will call for the drug to be moved to Class B, even though it was blamed for at least 30 deaths last year.
December 29th, 2008
The Bill of Rights: Killed in Action
Mind Altering Substances
Drug laws are ravaging the Constitution...
December 23rd, 2008
Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana
Mind Altering Substances
The marijuana community is guardedly optimistic. "Reformers will probably be disappointed that Obama is not going to go as far as they want, but we're probably not going to continue this mindless path of prohibition," NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre tells me.
December 13th, 2008
Ashcroft: Detaining Terror Suspects At Guantanamo Bay ‘Has Been A Humanitarian Act"
Mind Altering Substances
Ashcroft said he is “stunned” that so many Americans (and the Supreme Court it turns out) think that terror suspect detainees should have their day in court.
December 12th, 2008
Ashcroft: Maybe I make better decisions on 'morphine'
Mind Altering Substances
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, in an entirely under-reported November interview, claimed that he makes the best decisions "when I have a lot of morphine in my system."
December 9th, 2008
Your complaint will be resolved – by force-feeding you drugs
Mind Altering Substances
Authorities in Xintai, a municipal region in Shandong province, had forced at least 18 people with grievances, ranging from police brutality to property disputes, into a mental hospital, the Beijing News said.
December 8th, 2008
Scientists back brain drugs for healthy people
Mind Altering Substances
The seven authors, from the United States and Britain, include ethics experts and the editor-in-chief of Nature as well as scientists. They developed their case at a seminar funded by Nature and Rockefeller University in New York. Two authors said they consult for pharmaceutical companies; Farah said she had no such financial ties.
December 1st, 2008
Junk food 'causes dementia' in mice
Mind Altering Substances
MICE fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a researcher says.
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