Competitiveness amongst psychonauts exists and can take many forms. James Nolan, in a piece for Vice, reported that competitive psychedelic users are chasing the experience of ‘ego death’ – the dissolution of one’s sense of personal identity – because this is seen as the apex of tripping. Indeed, certain hierarchies of tripping may be constructed,…
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This is a guest post from Matt Zemon, MSc, author of Psychedelics for Everyone While psychedelic medicine has been a part of human history for thousands of years, the modern history of psychedelics dates back to the 1930s when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesised LSD. Following Hofmann’s discovery of LSD’s hallucinogenic properties, research continued in…
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There are innumerable ways to persuade others of an argument or point of view that don’t rely on solid reasoning and logic but instead employ persuasion tactics, either wittingly or unwittingly. This is rhetoric: the art of persuasion. Many arguments can have the appearance of being correct, but under scrutiny, the flaws start to appear.…
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As much as psychedelics hold great promise in alleviating all kinds of psychological distress, they are not a mental health panacea, which they are sometimes touted to be. Based on positive media stories surrounding psychedelic research and anecdotal reports of people being forever cured of chronic, severe mental illnesses, it’s easy to get the impression…
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The UK has decided to formally recognise non-human animals as sentient beings (this includes all vertebrates by default). Invertebrates could be included later based on new evidence, although there is already strong evidence that some invertebrates (crustaceans and cephalopods) can feel pain. This is the first contradictory aspect of the legislative decision. The introduction of…
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