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Author Lewis Ungit talks about his research into the links between psychedelics and the occult and shares an excerpt from his book, "The Return of the Dragon." Although Lewis Ungit released "The Return of the Dragon" a year ago, his book examining the links between psychedelics and the supernatural is more relevant than ever. So-called secular society continues to fill the post-Christian void with transhumanist fantasies and progressive utopian visions. Bitcoin bros "jokingly" reinterpret the second coming of Christ as the advent of artificial super intelligence. And everyone from prominent podcasters to suburban moms confront their demons in harrowing, healing...

Padlocks apparently didn't stop vandals from breaking into a northwest Detroit church that was selling magic mushrooms. On Friday morning, the head of Soul Tribes Ministries, Robert Shumake "Shaman Shu," showed the Commanding Officer of Detroit Police Department's 8th precinct, Dietrich Lever, damage that was allegedly done while the property was supposed to be under lock and key by the City of Detroit. "They took the copper off the roof. They took the Sloane valves out of the toilet and left the water running, so I don't know how long it had been running; if it was a week or...

As our weekly therapy session drew to a close, my patient, a young woman in her early 20s approaching college graduation, said that she had been feeling a lack of motivation, but that it felt different from her usual depressive symptoms. A worrisome climate change report had recently been published, and she felt paralyzed by uncertainty of what the world is going to look like. She asked, “How can I decide where I want to go? Will it even be safe to live in California when I’m older?” As a psychiatrist, I have noticed a growing trend among patients in...

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she's worried that President Joe Biden may derail a bipartisan push to address psychedelics due to his past rhetoric that questioned cannabis usage. "I am concerned about the president," Ocasio-Cortez of New York told The Washington Post's Ben Terris. Ocasio-Cortez said that her fears about Biden's approach to mind-altering drugs which have been gaining broader public acceptance are rooted in how he has talked about marijuana in the past. "I believe the president has displayed a regressiveness for cannabis policy," she said. "And if there's a regressiveness toward cannabis policy, it's likely to be worse...

Sen. John Fetterman offered full-throated support for psychedelics as a form of mental health therapy, bringing the emerging drug reform movement to Capitol Hill. Fetterman, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, made the comments on Wednesday during Senate Agriculture subcommittee hearing, saying he’s “been an advocate of psychedelics in terms of magic mushrooms for PTSD and for veterans especially.” “I always thought it could be - and maybe I’m wrong - an amazing economic kind of boom for the mushroom [sector],” said Fetterman, as quoted by the website. “I think it could be a revolution in mental health.” Fetterman, a Democrat...

A group of hikers in England got so ill from taking mushrooms that a search and rescue team had to retrieve them. And they're not the first psychedelic enthusiasts to have a trip go wrong on the trail.Every hiker has had a bad trip before. But a group of hikers in England’s Lake District gave the term new meaning last week, when they got so ill from taking magic mushrooms that they needed rescue. On April 8, the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team received a number of calls from walkers who had encountered “a group of young adult males who had...

Prince Harry recently spoke openly about his recreational use of psychedelics. The Duke of Sussex, 38, revealed during an online chat with trauma expert Gabor Maté Saturday that drugs have helped him deal with his past traumas. “They’re unlocking so much of what we’ve suppressed.” Meghan Markle’s husband recently admitted to taking other drugs — such as cocaine and marijuana — as a teenager in his bombshell book, “Spare,” which was released in January.

He believes that experimental treatments like ayahuasca, psilocybin and mushrooms aided him in coming to terms with his mother’s death. "They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that…I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her," he told Cooper at the time. "When in fact, all she wanted was for me to be happy." He had also mentioned psychedelic use in Spare, writing that they allowed him to “redefine reality.” “Under the influence of these substances I was able to let go of rigid preconcepts, to see that there was another world...

Thousands of years ago, a child in Peru was sacrificed as part of an ancient ritual, their head severed at the neck and made into a type of trophy. A new analysis of a single hair plucked from the mummy’s skull reveals that the child consumed a psychoactive cactus prior to execution, as part of the ceremony. The child’s preserved head was one of 22 human remains associated with the ancient Nazca society examined in a new study; all of these individuals lived during the pre-Hispanic era (3500 B.C. to A.D. 476) and were buried near the southern coast of...

Many journalists in Washington, D.C. are taking small doses of psychedelic mushrooms to improve their performance, according to Politico.A 2020 D.C. ballot initiative made enforcement of bans on the purchase and distribution of psychedelic mushrooms the lowest priority of law enforcement, making the substance “basically legal,” according to Politico. The substance is used recreationally in full doses as well as in smaller “microdoses,” which some believe can improve brain function.“Microdosing mushrooms as a kind of performance-enhancing brain boost — already wildly popular among the California tech set — is now fairly common in Washington, especially in media circles,” the Politico...

A Pennsylvania mom admitted giving her teen daughter psychedelic mushrooms and marijuana during a “bonding experience,” authorities said. Brandy Lee Betz, 42, was charged with felony child endangerment after she was reported to cops in June regarding her drug use earlier this year with her 14-year-old daughter, according to an affidavit obtained by the Patriot-News. The referral indicated Betz gave the teen “shrooms” and marijuana while in her Middletown home. Dauphin County child welfare officials conducted a parallel probe and Betz confessed to smoking pot with the girl, according to the affidavit.

In 1967, ex-Harvard professor Timothy Leary famously coined one of the slogans of 60’s counter culture when he told hippies to “turn on, tune in, [and] drop out.” Psychedelics like LSD became a vital part of what Leary would later call the “graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments.” Advocating for psychedelics made Leary an academic pariah and a target of the FBI. Had he come along fifty years later, he may have landed a lucrative consulting gig with venture capitalists. On November 3, Oregon became the first U. S. state to legalize “magic mushrooms” for therapeutic use,...

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / June 13, 2020 / Mota Ventures Corp. (CSE:MOTA)(FSE:1WZ1)(OTC:PEMTF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Roger C. Clinton, to the Advisory Board for its wholly owned subsidiary, Verrian GmbH. Clinton is active within the addiction treatment and specifically opiate addiction research sector, seeking to bring attention to the issue and enhance promising treatment options using psychedelics in conjunction with behavioral therapy through his global network. "I'm honored to be working with the team at Mota in a patient first approach. We believe the work that we're doing can be transformative in people's lives...

EVeryone knows the standard explanation of evolution but the rapid jump from Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens has no satisfactory answers. A more radical interpretation of these events involves the same animals, dung, and plants but also includes psychedelic drugs. In 1992, ethnobotanist and psychedelics advocate Terence McKenna argued in the book Food of the Gods that what enabled Homo erectus to evolve into Homo sapiens was its encounter with magic mushrooms and psilocybin, the psychedelic compound within them, on that evolutionary journey. He called this the Stoned Ape Hypothesis. McKenna posited that psilocybin caused the primitive brain’s information-processing capabilities...

California would become the first state in the nation to legalize psychedelic mushrooms if a long-shot ballot initiative passes muster with voters next year. The measure is backed by a legalization activist who says he kicked his heroin habit with the help of a mushroom trip in Death Valley. It would exempt Californians over the age of 21 from a state law that criminalizes mushrooms containing psilocybin, the compound that gives some mushrooms psychedelic properties. […] … California is one of eight states where voters have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and Saunders said legalizing psilocybin-bearing mushrooms is the logical...

Huston Smith, a renowned scholar of religion who pursued his own enlightenment in Methodist churches, Zen monasteries and even Timothy Leary’s living room, died on Friday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 97. His wife, Kendra, confirmed his death. Professor Smith was best known for “The Religions of Man” (1958), which has been a standard textbook in college-level comparative religion classes for half a century. In 1991, it was abridged and given the gender-neutral title “The World’s Religions.” The two versions together have sold more than three million copies.

(CNN)Scientists have for the first time visualized the effects of LSD on the human brain. Using brain scanning and other techniques, researchers at Imperial College London were able to show what happens when someone takes the popular (and illegal) psychedelic, scientific-name Lysergic acid diethylamide. The findings may indicate how the drug produces the complex visual hallucinations often associated with its use.

LONDON — The brains of people tripping on magic mushrooms have given the best picture yet of how psychedelic drugs work and British scientists say the findings suggest such drugs could be used to treat depression. Two separate studies into the effects of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, showed that contrary to scientists' expectations, it does not increase but rather suppresses activity in areas of the brain that are also dampened with other anti-depressant treatments. "Psychedelics are thought of as 'mind-expanding' drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity," said David Nutt...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God. Justices, in their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. Federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church, Roberts wrote in the decision. The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, which has...