Director Quentin Tarantino brought up an unexpected subject in an interview recently. He brought up the subject of the war on drugs. But what was interesting was the comparison he made between the war and drugs and slavery as it existed in the 1800s. In his own words: This whole thing of…this ‘War on Drugs,’ and…
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According to a study titled Psychedelics and Mental Health: A Population Study (published in PLOS One), the use of LSD, magic mushrooms and peyote does not increase one’s risk of developing mental health problems. The researchers behind the paper are Teri Krebs and clinical psychologist Pal-Orjan Johansen from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.…
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Thomas Szasz was an American psychiatrist who became a controversial academic figure for his criticism of the foundations of psychiatry. He has been associated with the anti-psychiatry movement (although Szasz himself insisted he was not anti-psychiatry but anti-coercive psychiatry). In books such as The Myth of Mental Illness (1960), as the title suggests, Szasz argues that…
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The story of Santa and his flying reindeer, which we have come to associate with Christmas, may actually have its roots in Siberian shamanism and the consumption of the hallucinogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria (also known as fly agaric). This is the easily recognisable toadstool mushroom, with its white stem and red cap dotted with white…
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Allen J. Frances is an American psychiatrist who has become famous for his critique of the DSM-5, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Mental Disorders. He was also the former chair of the task force that published the DSM-IV, the fourth edition of the DSM. The DSM is published by the American…
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