This Week in Psychedelics - 3.27.20

Cannabis

• Coronavirus Crisis Shows Marijuana Is ‘Essential’ And Mainstream (Forbes)

• Ghana legalizes cannabis for health and industrial purposes (GhanaWeb)

• Coronavirus Is Killing Weed Legalization Bills Across the US (MERRY JANE)

• Nebraska Medical Marijuana Campaign Suspended Due To Coronavirus (Marijuana Moment)

• Mass. Gov. Closes Adult-Use Pot Shops During Virus Crisis (Law360)

• South Dakota Marijuana Legalization Campaign Urges Absentee Voting Amid Coronavirus (Marijuana Moment)

• Cannabis Industry Workers May Be at Risk of Respiratory Issues, New Study Says (MERRY JANE)

• Marijuana Businesses Are Ineligible For Coronavirus Disaster Relief, Federal Agency Confirms (Marijuana Moment)

• Mapping the cannabis genome to improve crops and health (Phys.org)

• Federal Agency Wants Help Developing A Standard THC Dose For Marijuana Products (Marijuana Moment)

• NORML Launches “Smoke the Vote” To Prepare For 2020 Election (NORML)

• Feds Prosecuted Even Fewer Marijuana Cases In 2019 As More States Legalize, New Data Shows (Marijuana Moment)

• Raleigh mayor lit up for posting a picture with a weed pen in it (The Daily Dot)

• Curbside cannabis pickup: Why it’s booming and how it works (Leafly)

• Youth Marijuana Treatment Admissions Fell After Legalization, Study Finds (Marijuana Moment)

• Cannabis sales hit new highs in US and Canada (New York Post)

• DEA Unveils New Rule To Finally Allow More Marijuana Growers For Research (Marijuana Moment)

• Coronavirus: Massachusetts marijuana dispensaries to make, donate hand sanitizer to hospitals during COVID-19 pandemic (MassLive)

• Study indicates vaporized cannabis creates drug-seeking behavior (WSU Insider)

• Arizona Marijuana Activists Have More Than Enough Signatures To Put Legalization On Ballot, They Say (Marijuana Moment)

• Exploring the 3 Different Types of Cannabinoids: Endo, Phyto, and Synthetic (CBD Testers)

• Fired NFL Players Want Their Jobs Back After the League Changed Its Drug Policy (MERRY JANE)

• Can Medical Cannabis Be Used to Treat Acute Pain? (Pain News Network)

LSD

• George Harrison discusses LSD and The Beatles on the Dick Cavett Show in 1971 (Far Out Magazine)

Magic Mushrooms

• Redesigning Psychedelic Mushrooms to Never Cause a “Bad Trip” (DoubleBlind)

• Oregon Campaign To Legalize Psilocybin Mushrooms For Therapeutic Use Hits Snag Amid Coronavirus (Marijuana Moment)

• Denver Government Psilocybin Panel Sets Criteria To Track Decriminalization’s Impact (Marijuana Moment)

MDMA

• Veterans and first responders report lasting personal benefits after MDMA-assisted psychotherapy (PsyPost)

• Healing PTSD with MDMA Therapy (Veterans News Report)

Ayahuasca

• Actress Dayle McLeod releases Memoir about An Ayahuasca Trip that sent her to the Psyche Ward and Unleashed her Creativity (PR Urgent)

Salvia Divinorum

• What Is Salvia, and Is the Psychoactive Drug Still Legal? (MERRY JANE)

Novel Psychoactive Substances

• MindMed Advances 18-MC, Potential Treatment for Opioid Addiction, Into Further Clinical Testing (PR Newswire)

Ketamine

• COVID-19 And Mental Health: How To Get Ketamine-Based Psychedelic Therapy From Home Using An App (Forbes)

• Champignon Brands Expands Alternative Medicine Ip Portfolio With Ketamine, Adaptogenic Delivery Systems/Formulations (GlobeNewswire)

Miscellaneous

• You're Socially Isolating. Is Now a Good Time to Trip on Psychedelics? (VICE)

• Psychedelics in Palliative Care (Scientific American)

• Drug Dealers Say Coronavirus Is Already Affecting Supply and Demand (VICE)

• Oregon Drug Decriminalization And Treatment Campaign Impacted By Coronavirus (Marijuana Moment)

• Cellular Receptors and Their Role in the Psychedelic Effect (Psychedelic Science Review)

• How coronavirus is changing the market for illegal drugs (The Conversation)

• What Psychedelics Told Me About The Coronavirus (Medium)

• Ayahuasca Healings’ Trinity de Guzman calls coronavirus “a necessary purge” (Psymposia)

• Urine survey reveals Europe’s favorite drugs (Big Think)

• Why Black People Should Embrace Psychedelic Healing: Reclaiming Our Cultural Birthright (Chacruna)

Think Wilder is reader-supported. If you enjoyed this week’s update, please consider helping out by becoming a patron, making a one-time donation, or sharing this post with a friend. Thank you for your support.

Disclaimer: "This Week in Psychedelics" does not censor or analyze the news links presented here. The purpose of this column is solely to catalogue how psychedelics are presented by the mass media, which includes everything from the latest scientific research to misinformation.

Film Review - DOSED

DOSED is a new documentary from director Tyler Chandler that follows his friend Adrianne, a suicidal woman who has struggled with depression, anxiety, and opioid addiction for decades, as she goes on a healing journey with magic mushrooms and iboga that is both beautiful and difficult. After spending years unsuccessfully trying to quit using street drugs by following a medication-assisted treatment program involving prescription medications, she at last turns to the psychedelic underground in a last-ditch attempt to heal herself once and for all.

The film opens with a dire update from the World Health Organization:

1.6 billion people suffer from anxiety, depression, and addiction.
Last year the opioid and fentanyl crisis claimed 118,000 lives.
While you watch this film 127 people will commit suicide.

After absorbing that depressing information the viewer is introduced to Adrianne, the film’s protagonist. She appears to be under the influence of opioids and is asked what she thinks the end of the documentary should be. After pondering the question for a long, drawn-out moment, she says she’d like to be sober by the end of the documentary. You’ll have to wait to find out if that actually ends up happening.

The film features an impressive cast of well-known folks in the psychedelic community including Rick Doblin, Paul Stamets, Gabor Maté, Mark Haden, Rosalind Watts, and Trevor Millar. It somehow achieves a rarely seen well-balanced vibe, being both professional and casual at the same time. That’s because it is shot and edited incredibly well but thankfully doesn’t come across as overproduced or mainstream.

One thing’s for sure—DOSED is unapologetically anecdotal in nature, which didn’t please reviewers at Variety and the Los Angeles Times. While they were hoping for a more scientific documentary that would shed light on existing research involving psilocybin mushrooms and iboga, the film is deliberately about one woman’s psychedelic-assisted journey to recovery, not scientific studies. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The reviewers are simply asking it to be something it wasn’t intending to be in the first place.

With all that said, I actually really enjoyed DOSED. At this point I’ve seen plenty of documentaries that do a good job of covering the history, research, and culture of psychedelics. So it is refreshing to watch a new sort of film, one that takes the viewer along for a wild ride to find out if magic mushrooms and iboga are capable of treating drug addiction.

While it doesn’t rely on scientific research to make its point, the film demonstrates that psychedelics may have the potential to interrupt opioid addiction. Peer-reviewed data may be table stakes when attempting to convince a scientific audience that a novel treatment is effective, but personal anecdotes are often exactly what is needed when trying to introduce a new idea to the general public. And DOSED has that in spades. At a time when many Americans are struggling with opioids, this film demonstrates that plant medicines like magic mushrooms and iboga might be able to help bring an end to the overdose crisis.

DOSED was released globally on Vimeo last Friday and the filmmakers have pledged 10% of each purchase of the film to be donated and matched by Facebook (for a total of 20%) towards coronavirus disaster relief.

One more thing—and this might seem random to mention in a film review—if you’re looking for some funky jewelry, DOSED is also selling necklaces that were cast from a real magic mushroom. Every order includes a free digital copy of the film and helps fund its marketing and distribution.

If you want to learn about how psychedelics can help treat drug addiction, DOSED is a great place to start. And if you know someone who might benefit from watching this film, consider buying a copy for them. It might just save their life.

Disclaimer: I received a free screening copy of this film in exchange for an honest review. However, this is not a sponsored post—all thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

Corporadelic: A Psymposia Series

A couple weeks ago Psymposia published a powerful, thought-provoking 6-part series titled Corporadelic, written by Russell Hausfeld:

A series on the intersection of psychedelics and capitalism, and the early investors
making it happen.

It took me a while to get around to reading it, but I finally just went ahead and binged the whole thing last night. It’s an impressive analysis about what those of us who are paying attention to the emerging field of psychedelic businesses should actually be paying attention to.

If you’re interested in learning about the shadow side of the psychedelic capitalism, this is a must-read.

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Think Wilder Is Going Back to Its Psychedelic Roots

For the last year or so I’ve been running an experiment on this blog and my YouTube channel by trying my damnedest to cover the hottest news about all psychoactive substances in my weekly link roundups and monthly/yearly news recaps. But that’s about to change.

Think Wilder is going back to its psychedelic roots. Moving forward all of my link roundups and news recaps will focus on plants, fungi, animals, and chemicals that can be reasonably classified as “psychedelic”.

Before you object, let me first clarify that this doesn’t mean that I won’t ever publish anything about non-psychedelic drugs again. You’ll still see content related to mind-altering substances like cocaine, heroin, alcohol, and nicotine from time to time—in the form of feature pieces or link posts. However, I won’t be focusing on drugs like these in my regular roundups and recaps.

The rest of this blog post explains why I’ve come to this decision, so if you’re interested in the reasons behind the change then you can keep reading. If you’re not, then at least now you know what to expect in the future from Think Wilder.

Rewinding back to the end of 2018, after 3.5 years of covering mostly psychedelic news on a weekly basis, I began to cover all psychoactive drugs. As I explained in that that year's recap:

Earlier this month I polled the Think Wilder audience on Twitter and Facebook about the overall scope of the blog, asking if I should narrow my focus to exclusively write about psychedelics or expand it to cover other psychoactive substances as well. Thank you to those of you who responded. Most people seemed to be interested in psychedelics, but a few reported that they found information about other drugs to also be valuable. After mulling it over for a few weeks, I decided to expand the scope of the blog to focus on all psychoactive substances. First of all, I wanted to avoid practicing drug chauvinism, the belief that some drugs are inherently “better” than others. I also feel like there is significantly more honest reporting about psychedelics than there is about drugs like stimulants and depressants and wanted to help balance things out. But most importantly, I realized that although I’m far more familiar with psychedelics and am by no means an expert on other drugs, I still have a healthy interest in psychoactive substances in general and want to see them fairly covered. I added a “cocaine” section to this year’s post, and you can expect to see news about other psychoactive substances like benzodiazepines and deliriants in the near future.

Many of those things remain the same today. I don’t want to participate in what I termed “drug chauvinism” at the time (although I have since come around to prefer the term “psychedelic exceptionalism”). Instead, I want to promote the ethos of drug positivity throughout my work.

I still think there is more decent reporting about psychedelics than other psychoactive substances, but have learned that I truly feel like I have more to contribute to the psychedelic niche than in the overall drug niche.

And I have maintained a strong interest in all things psychoactive and love learning more about non-psychedelic drugs. However with all of that said, I still have decided to make a change.

There are two main reasons why:

First and foremost, narrowing the scope of my regular news coverage will significantly cut down on the amount of time it takes to create link roundups and news recaps so I can focus on other projects that keep getting put on the backburner.

To give you an idea of how much time I’ve put into covering drugs over the last five years, each weekly link roundup takes anywhere from 10-20 hours to complete, while monthly recap videos take about 10 hours and monthly recap blog posts take about 20 hours. All of that work is done without any outside funding other than my Patreon patrons. (By the way, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those of you who are supporting me there and invite everyone else to become a patron to help keep my work going.)

Since covering non-psychedelic drugs takes up about half of the time it takes to produce my link roundups and news recaps, dropping them from my regular updates should enable me to spend more time covering psychedelic news as thoroughly as possible and free me up to work on other content and projects that I’ve been wanting to create for a long time.

Second, I feel like I’ve drifted away from what I want Think Wilder to be.

When I first started this blog I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do with it. But after a couple years I started to realize that I really wanted to focus on psychedelics, spirituality, and technology. Expanding my scope to cover all psychoactive drugs was a departure from my original intention and didn’t really reflect my true passions.

My initial—and most influential—experiences with drugs involved psychedelics, not uppers, downers, or other all-arounders. Although I do have limited experience with some non-psychedelic drugs, I am by no means an expert on them and have come to the realization that it’s better to leave coverage of those substances to people better equipped to discuss them.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, this news doesn’t mean that this marks the last time I’ll ever cover non-psychedelic drugs on Think Wilder. I have some ideas for psychoactive drug content that have been bouncing around in my noggin for the last few years, and hopefully some of them will come to fruition sooner or later. And I still plan to link to big news stories about non-psychedelic drugs, too.

This decision has been difficult for me to make and it feels bittersweet. On one hand, I’m fascinated by psychoactive drugs and love learning about them, but on the other hand I just don’t feel called to continue going down the path I’ve been following any longer.

These changes are effective immediately. This week’s link roundup will return to the original name that the column sported until the end of 2018 (“This Week in Psychedelics”) and the news recaps at the end of the month will be called “This Month in Psychedelics”.

I hope that everyone who was tuning in for psychedelic content is excited about this news and that those of you who come here for news about all psychoactives understand where I’m coming from. Obviously I can’t please everyone and I just have to listen to what I feel is right for me. Thank you for your understanding and feel free to contact me to let you know what you think about this announcement.

This Week in Psychoactives - 3.20.20

Cannabis

• Amid Coronavirus, San Francisco, New York, Deem Marijuana Businesses 'Essential' (NPR)

• Dutch queue for cannabis as coronavirus closes cafes (FRANCE 24)

• Cannabis cafes can offer takeaways to head off the return of street dealers (DutchNews.nl)

• 'The legal stuff is garbage': why Canada's cannabis black market keeps thriving (The Guardian)

• Colorado Just Issued The First Marijuana Delivery License In The State (Marijuana Moment)

• Medical Marijuana Doctors Can't Use Telemedicine During Virus Outbreak (Westword)

• Legalizing Marijuana Increases Housing Prices, Study Finds (Marijuana Moment)

• CBD Alone Can Treat Depression and Break Drug Addictions, Case Study Shows (MERRY JANE)

• Connecticut Residents Strongly Support Legalizing Marijuana, Poll Shows (Marijuana Moment)

Magic Mushrooms

• California Psilocybin Legalization Activists Request Online Signature Gathering Amid Coronavirus (Marijuana Moment)

• Study Indicates the Magic Mushroom Compound Baeocystin is Not Psychedelic (Psychedelic Science Review)

• Hawaii Lawmakers Introduce Plan To Study Psychedelic Mushrooms With Goal Of Legalizing Access (Marijuana Moment)

• Scientists Solve Another Crystal Structure of the Psilocybin Analog Miprocin, 4-HO-MiPT (Psychedelic Science Review)

• Study Shows Norpsilocin is More Potent Than Psilocin at 5-HT2A (Psychedelic Science Review)

• A Hockey Player Blamed Shrooms for His Brutal Attack on a Woman. It Worked (VICE)

Ayahuasca

• What Are the Coronavirus Risks with Ayahuasca Ceremonies? (EntheoNation)

Peyote

• Native American Churches Request that Peyote Not Be Included in Decriminalization Initiatives (Psymposia)

Opioids

• Coronavirus Is Leading to Shortages of Fentanyl And Meth (VICE)

Cocaine

• Fiona Apple quit cocaine after ‘excruciating’ night with Quentin Tarantino (Page Six)

Nicotine

• JUUL Tricks Its Customers Into Advocating for the Florida Flavor Ban (Vaping360)

• A Scientist Persuaded Italy to Exempt Vape Shops From COVID-19 Lockdown (Filter)

• Ireland bans menthol cigarettes and rolling tobacco starting May 20 (Euronews)

• Young adults don't know what's in nicotine products they vape, study finds (Medical Xpress)

• Minimum price for tobacco could boost health of poorer people, study suggests (BT)

• British American Tobacco circumventing ad ban, experts say (The Guardian)

Alcohol

• States Boost Hospitality Industry With Booze Delivery and Takeout Sales (U.S. News and World Report)

• So Alcoholics Anonymous Is “Proven” to Work After All? Not So Fast (Filter)

Kratom

• Kentucky Poison Control Center Officials Call Kratom A Drug of Concern (Kratom Guides)

Kava

• Kava consumption banned in all police premises (The Fiji Times)

Khat

• Governor Bans Sale of Miraa Over Coronavirus Fears (Kenyans.co.ke)

Miscellaneous

• Harm Reduction in the Time of Coronavirus (Medium)

• Baltimore To End Most Drug Prosecutions Amid Coronavirus Outbreak (Marijuana Moment)

• ‘Business Is Booming’ for Drug Dealers Who Deliver (The Daily Beast)

• 'Dosed' Review: The Case for Plant-Based Recovery (The New York Times)

• Myths and Realities About the Decriminalization of Psychedelics in the US (Chacruna)

• Safe injection sites: Coronavirus underlines why they make sense (New York Daily News)

• Microdosing or Using Psychedelics? How to Support Academic Research (Medium)

• Prohibition Partners Releases PSYCH: The Psychedelics as Medicine Report (Prohibition Partners)

Think Wilder is reader-supported. If you enjoyed this week’s update, please consider helping out by becoming a patron, making a one-time donation, or sharing this post with a friend. Thank you for your support.

Disclaimer: "This Week in Psychoactives" does not censor or analyze the news links presented here. The purpose of this column is solely to catalogue how psychedelics are presented by the mass media, which includes everything from the latest scientific research to misinformation.

Image by Psychedelic Astronaut.