The Horror of Eternal Isolation: Apeirophobia in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Pulse’ (2001)

Pulse (Kairo) is a 2001 Japanese techno-horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After having watched Kurosawa’s 1997 psychological thriller Cure (Kyua), widely regarded as a masterpiece, I was keen to check out more of his work. (Cure was inspired by David Fincher’s crime film Se7en; it likewise follows a series of gruesome murders and detectives…

View Post

How Young is Too Young to Use Psychedelics?

For those who want to join a psychedelic clinical trial, psychedelic therapy session, or psychedelic retreat, you have to be a legal adult. For many clinicians, therapists, and retreat organisers, this means you have to be at least 18, although a small number of retreats restrict their services only to those 25 years and older.…

View Post

Can Psychedelics Help Heal Intergenerational Trauma?

Intergenerational trauma (also known as generational trauma or ancestral trauma) refers to the idea that trauma can be passed down through the generations, affecting those who didn’t directly experience it. It is the notion that unresolved traumas, pain, and suffering experienced by past generations influence the emotional well-being of those who exist today. Examples of…

View Post

Fear of the Void: Cosmic Anxiety in ‘Aniara’ (2018)

Aniara (2018) is a Swedish sci-fi film written and directed by Hugo Lilja and Pella Kågerman. It is an adaptation of the 1956 Swedish epic poem of the same name by Harry Martinson. It depicts a dystopian, distant future in which extreme climate change, war, famine, disease, social collapse, pollution, and lawlessness force humans to…

View Post

On the Stigma Against Antidepressants in the Psychedelic Community

On his site Ecstatic Integration, the writer Jules Evans published a post titled ‘Are you a psychedelic cultist?’ It features a ‘Psychedelic Cultism Questionnaire’ to help readers assess how ‘culty’ they are when it comes to psychedelics. It consists of eight statements – all in the vein of a rosy, utopian, ‘no bad vibes allowed’…

View Post