Having control of one’s body and one’s mind – also called self-ownership – is, I believe, the most basic human right anyone can have. Mill summed up it nicely in On Liberty: “Over one’s mind and over one’s body the individual is sovereign” – although he did (rightly so) allow for exceptions involving actions which…
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Peyote is a cactus which contains mescaline, one of the classic psychedelic chemicals. Native North Americans have been using peyote for religious purposes for around 5,000 years. It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico. Peyote art, art that is influenced by the visions from the peyote experience, is abundant in the Huichol culture of…
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It has come to light that one of the biggest enthusiasts of LSD since it was first synthesised in 1938, was not only the hippie counterculture but also the CIA. The first section of the book Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD (1985) details how the CIA carried out covert operations with this drug.…
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Benny Shanon is currently a professor of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, having received his PhD in experimental psychology from Stanford University. In 2002 he wrote Antipodes of the Mind, in which he details the effects of ayahuasca and recounts his several hundred trips with the hallucinogenic brew. Shanon is perhaps most well known…
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The sensory deprivation tank (also known as an isolation tank or a floatation tank) was invented in 1954 by John C. Lilly. Lilly (1915-2001), as well as being interested in the effects of sensory deprivation on consciousness, was also interested in dolphin communication and psychedelic drugs. When studying neurophysiology at the National Institute of Mental…
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