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Psilocybin could help people suffering from a mental health problem that can lead to eating disorders, a new study suggests. Psilocybin, the active chemical in "magic" mushrooms, significantly reduced symptoms in people with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), researchers reported Tuesday in the journal Psychedelics. BDD causes an obsessive preoccupation with perceived flaws in one's physical appearance, and is frequently tied to eating disorders and other unhealthy behaviors, researchers said. For this pilot trial, eight people with hard-to-treat BDD received a single 25-milligram dose of psilocybin. Brain scans showed that the psilocybin treatment increased levels in connectivity between different brain regions...

In a world where boundaries and definitions are stretched to unrecognizable limits, a congregation of ex-Mormons has outdone itself in an unprecedented display of spiritual anarchy. Stepping far away from previously blasphemous Mormon roots, they’ve founded a “church” where their sacrament is not the bread and wine symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice, but psychedelic mushrooms. Yes, you read that correctly. They call themselves the “Divine Assembly,” trading in pews and hymnals for bean bags and trip guides. These spiritual “adventurers” claim they are communing directly with the divine while they’re tripping, but the only thing they are communing with is the surreal...

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfYSB9z746o I was raised in Hollywood, although I looked Chinese, I'm really not. I'm actually a Hollywoodite. My parents were both motion picture actors. My father, you know, was a motion picture actor, and my mother, raised in a Hollywood family, grew up around Hollywood and Beverly Hills with all the movie stars. I sat on the knee of most of the biggest movie stars that have lived, people like Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck, June Allyson, and Fred Astaire. Those are people that I grew up with at our house parties and hanging around my dad's restaurants. But I...

The human brain is a remarkable thing; our most complex machines are not even close to competing with our powers of higher consciousness and ingenuity. And yet, those 80 billion or so neurons are also incredibly fragile. If the tiniest thing goes wrong with a particular connection - maybe something misfires, or a certain neural pathway is blocked - things can fall apart very quickly. And, oddly enough, even without any injuries or structural malfunctions, the human brain can get weird all by itself - turns out, it's surprisingly easy to trick it into seeing and hearing things that aren't...

As primaries proceed — or are pushed back — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is no doubt weighing his options. It may well be time for the senator, whose formative political experience came in the 1960s, to follow the advice of Timothy Leary: turn on, tune in, drop out.

If there is an enduring figure emblematic of the consciousness revolution of the 1960s and 70s, it is arguably the Harvard professor and LSD researcher-turned-spiritual leader born Richard Alpert but known the world over as Ram Dass. With Timothy Leary, his colleague in the Harvard psychology department, he forever changed a generation of Americans through his explorations with psilocybin, LSD-75, and other psychedelics before reinventing himself as a spiritual teacher and humanitarian—a bhakti yogi with love as his path. When Ram Dass died on Sunday evening, one of the most beloved voices of the counterculture fell silent. He was 88...

A decision to affix an American flag graphic to the side of freshly painted Laguna Beach police cars is dividing residents who are alternately praising the image as patriotic or panning it as too aggressive. After hearing the criticism and acknowledging that the image they approved didn’t quite match the final results, officials agreed to reconsider their February decision to paint the Laguna Beach Police Department’s fleet of 11 squad cars. The City Council will take up the issue again at its Tuesday meeting. “People are screaming that the American flag on a police car is somehow or another …...

“Dear Mother, I meant to write you before this and I hope you haven't been worried.... I have met some Beautiful People and...” ― Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Many mothers across America got some version of this letter during the 1960’s-70’s as their sons and daughters were tuning in, turning on and dropping out. The drug of choice at the time, along with the perennial favorite, marijuana, was LSD. And while Timothy Leary’s name is most often cited as it’s leading proponent the de facto leader of the of mind-expanding, transcendental LSD cult was Ken Kesey,...

It can be easy to be jaded about the Beat writers in San Francisco, but even the most indifferent literary snob would be hard-pressed to walk away from "Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum without feeling fuzzy inside. Organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and running through September, "Beat Memories" is a collection of about 80 photos taken by Ginsberg and his friends in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. Nearly every image is notated with the wobbly handwriting of Ginsberg, who added paragraph-length captions to the images in the 1980s...

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver(8/31/1935 to 5/1/1998) Remembering Eldridge Cleaver* By: Larry Walker, Jr. *"Right-wing conservatives and left-wing radicals here in the U.S. must be willing and able to sit down at the same table, look across the table at each other and see not an enemy, a target or a statistic, but a brother, a sister, a fellow American, another child of God. We must expand our hearts and enlarge our identity beyond ‘my people’ to include and embrace all of Creation." ~ Eldridge CleaverIn the late 1960’s, after leading a troubled youth, Leroy Eldridge Cleaver became a prominent member...

April 24, 2012. Des Moines. Two networks yesterday, CNBC and MSNBC, broadcast a little known fact – Ron Paul appears to be winning the Republican nomination for President. When the popular Texas Congressman repeatedly assured supporters that the race was about delegates, not beauty contests, he apparently knew what he was talking about. Now, after three more states locked in delegates to the GOP nominating convention – CO, MN and IA – indicators point to a brokered convention with a possible, even probable, Ron Paul victory.

A 50-year mystery over the 'cursed bread' of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment. In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted. For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with...

In my last post I referenced the Days of Rage - put on by the Weathermen AKA Weather Underground in Chicago, October, 1969. I was in Chicago a few days later with my 2 little kids to get visas to travel to Korea for a year with the US Army. This was not fun & games like Woodstock. It was scarey as hell. This is Barak Obama's buddy Ayer's group. His lovely wife Bernadine Dohrn was also a part of it. They were rich, white kids playing revolutionaries. Whether Barak was 8 or not back then, does not take away...

Coming Soon To The Stern Show Beetlejuice, G. Gordon Liddy, Donald Trump, Joan Rivers, Andrew Dice Clay, Lisa Lampanelli, Joanie Laurer, Anna Benson, Jon Stewart, Roger Ebert, Gilbert Gottfried, Bernie Mac - and more! Not a prank call... Tune in at Sirius Channel 100After seeing a notice at Mark's Friggin that Liddy was on the "Howard Stern 'Coming Soon'" list, I e-mailed LiddyShow Producer, Diana. She e-mailed back. Liddy is expected to be on Howard's show, Thursday, 2/16, between 7:30 and 8AM. She said it was OK to pass the word. That's one soundbyte I hope I can get.

An American Traitor: Guilty As Charged By Henry Mark Holzer and Erika HolzerFrontPageMagazine.com | June 10, 2005For three decades Jane Fonda obfuscated, distorted and lied about virtually everything connected with her wartime trip to North Vietnam: her motive, her acts, her intent, and her contribution to the Communists’ war effort.  With the aid of clever handlers, she so successfully suppressed and spun her conduct in Hanoi that many Americans didn’t know what she had done there, and, more important, the legal significance. Three years ago, our book, “Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam (McFarland & Co.), laid bare...

Arriving home from the hospital after being treated for a heart attack, 84-year-old Carol Barnes inched up the steps into her Sunset District home and headed straight for her absentee ballot. "She said, 'That ... Bush, I can't allow him to be president again,' " said her son, Bo Barnes. " 'I want to vote for Kerry to make the world safe.' " Too exhausted to do more than cast votes for president and two propositions, the widow of an Army major signed the ballot and told her son they'd complete the rest later. Three days later, on Oct. 17,...