We are very happy to announce that we are finishing the translations of both Spanish and German!
For Spanish choose: www.magic-mushrooms-shop.com/es/
and for German choose: www.magic-mushrooms-shop.com/de/
The Magic Mushrooms Shop team
Blog over: Paddo kweekset, Paddo's kweken en magic mushroom cultivatie.
Monday, 15 February 2010
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Vroeger toen iedereen nog eens een paddo gebruikte
Onderzoek naar magische paddo's wint prijs
Beste studentenproject 'Chemie en Samenleving' TU Eindhoven
Onderzoek naar magische paddo's wint prijs
Een onderzoek naar magische paddo's heeft de 'Chemie en Samenleving'p rijs van de faculteit Scheikundige Technologie van de TU Eindhoven gewonnen. In dit onderzoek gaan de zeven eerstejaars-studenten in op de maatschappelijke aspecten, de geschiedenis van de 'magic mushrooms' en de chemische eigenschappen van de werkzame bestanddelen in deze paddestoelen. "Het gebruik van paddo's voor plezier en medische doeleinden is aan het toenemen. Daarom is het tijd dat de overheid duidelijkheid schept en goede informatie verschaft", zo concluderen de studenten scheikundige technologie in het rapport 'De magie van magic mushrooms'.
De uitreiking van de 'Chemie en Samenleving'-prijs vormt de afsluiting van het propedeuseproject van de faculteit Scheikundige Technologie. De prijs is bedoeld als studiemotivatie en bestaat uit een oorkonde en een boekenbon van honderd gulden per deelnemer. De prijs werd dinsdag 27 mei uitgereikt door prof.dr. F. van Loo, bestuurslid onderwijs van de faculteit.
Negen projecten
De eerstejaars-studenten scheikundige technologie van de TU Eindhoven zetten ieder jaar in het kader van het project Chemie en Samenleving hun eerste stappen op het gebied van onderzoek. Dit jaar waren er in totaal negen groepen, die begeleid door ouderejaars-studenten de chemische en maatschappelijke aspecten van verschillende onderwerpen onderzochten. Zij leggen hun bevindingen vast in een rapport en lichten dit ook mondeling toe. De studenten moeten voor hun onderzoek te rade gaan bij deskundigen van binnen en buiten de universiteit. Een greep uit die onderwerpen: Vet, van wikkel tot flacon; Genetische manipulatie; Chocolade, de godenspijs; Vervoer van monomeren en Op weg naar het leefbaar maken van Mars.Magische mushrooms
De zeven studenten van het beste onderzoek zijn: Ellen Donkers, Antoni van Dijnen, Michel van Horen, Pascal Jonkheijm, Tom Kemps, Ralf Knibbeler en Mark Macare. De groep studenten trok bij drie externe instituten aan de bel: het e Bureau voor Alcohol en Drugs in Eindhoven, de GG&GD in Eindhoven en het Nederlands Instituut voor Alcohol en Drugs in Utrecht. Magic mushrooms zijn paddestoelen die stoffen (met name psilocine en psilocybine) bevatten met een geestverruimende hallucinogene werking.Het rapport meldt dat er zo' 20 soorten bekend zijn met als bekendste in ons land: Mexicaanse Stropharia cubensis en de Nederlandse kaalkopjes. Magic mushrooms zijn geen harddrugs; dat wil zeggen dat er geen lichamelijke afhankelijkheid en ontwenningsverschijnselen optreden. Wel kan er bij overmatig gebruik sprake zijn van geestelijke afhankelijkheid. Het gebruik van magic mushrooms is niet iets van alleen deze tijd. De oudste verwijzingen gaan terug naar ca. 9000 jaar voor Christus. Vroeger werden paddo's voornamelijk gebruikt voor religieuze doeleinden. Ook in de rijke historie van de beschavingen van de Inca's en Maya's komt het gebruik van paddestoelen (drank en genotmiddel) voor. In ons land stak het gebruik van paddestoelen in de 60-er jaren de kop op. Volgens deskundigen zijn paddo's vanaf die tijd steeds gebruikt, zij het in mindere mate dan nu het geval is. De oorzaken hiervan kunnen zijn: veranderingen binnen de jongerencultuur, zoals de gezondleven trend (overstappen van chemische drugs naar natuurlijke drugs, bijv. paddestoelen) en sterke stijging van het aantal smartshops. De werkzame stof in hallucinogene paddestoelen, psilocybine, is volgens de Opiumwet wel een harddrug. Paddo's bevatten deze stof en zijn in hun oorspronkelijke staat natuurprodukten. Daarom is het niet zo eenvoudig om een verbod op deze paddestoelen uit te vaardigen, aldus de studenten in hun rapport.
Link naar stuk technische universiteit eindhoven
The Magic Mushrooms Shop
Sunday, 7 February 2010
A new serie about mushrooms;The Secret Life Of mushrooms
Cant wait to see this!!
from the blog: http://www.spygirlpix.blogspot.com/
The Harvard Psychedelic Club | Reality Sandwich
The Harvard Psychedelic Club | Reality Sandwich
Huston Smith had come to MIT in 1958. He was thirty-nine years old and just hitting his stride as a scholar and commentator on the world's religions. Nearly five decades later, he sits in a sunny window in the living room of his home in Berkeley, California. He's still married to Kendra, but he's an old man now. He has trouble hearing, and with the help of a walker he can barely make it from his study to his living-room chair. But when he tells the story of that New Year's Day in Timothy Leary's living room, his eyes widen and he seems to lose ten years.
"What a way to start the sixties," he says, laughing.
Seeker: Newton, Massachusetts, February 1961
Richard Alpert would have taken the magic mushrooms in Mexico with the rest of the gang, back in the summer of 1960, but he arrived a few days after Leary's first trip. Everyone was still aglow in the aftermath of the experience, but the mushrooms were gone. Richard would have to wait nearly nine months before he got his own psychedelic baptism back home in Timothy Leary's living room. Back in Mexico in the summer of 1960, Leary was still feeling the mystic wonder of it all when he met Alpert at the Mexico City airport. Richard had quite an adventure just getting there. He'd just bought his fl ying teacher's Cessna and had decided to fly from San Francisco to Mexico City -- over the startled objections of his instructor.
"There's no way you can do that," his teacher warned. "That's a really difficult airport to fly into. Traffic control is a mess down there."
"Don't worry," Alpert said. "I'll be fine."
He bought the plane on a Saturday and flew down on Sunday. He had not told his flight teacher he was going to fly down tomorrow. If he had he probably wouldn't have gotten the keys. Alpert had already rounded up a Stanford anthropologist who needed a lift to Mexico, but he didn't tell him he had just bought the Cessna the day before. Mexico City is at a high elevation, making it a difficult place to land. His passenger sat next to Alpert with a terrified look on his face as Richard dodged other airplanes on his approach.
"Don't worry," Alpert said. "We'll be fine."
They arrived and found Leary waiting in the terminal. Richard was eager to tell Tim about the terrors of his airplane trip, but it turned out Leary had an even more amazing trip to talk about.
They stood in the lobby as Alpert told the story about buying the plane and flying down to Mexico the next day.
"That's quite a trip, Richard," Leary said. "You know, I've been doing some flying myself -- internally."
They got to the villa, and all the guests were sitting around the pool talking up the mushrooms. But the magic fungi were gone, and no one knew how to find Crazy Juana and score some more. Meanwhile, Leary was already planning his mushroom research project and wanted to begin as soon as he got back to Harvard. He and Alpert were trained clinicians, but this was not going to be like other drug tests. They were going to change the world.
"We're going to take a whole new approach with this research," Leary told Alpert. "Everyone thinks these drugs cause psychosis, but that's because they've been controlled by psychiatrists. Of course they're going to view this as psychosis. That's all they know. But there is really something deeper going on here, Richard. Wait until you try them. I learned more about psychology from these mushrooms than I did in graduate school. These drugs can revolutionize the way we conceptualize ourselves -- not to mention the rest of the world. It'll be great. We'll give them to philosophers, poets, and musicians."
Alpert had been working with Leary for about a year at Harvard. Richard might have had the bigger office at the Department of Social Relations, but Tim was clearly the mentor in their relationship. There were about ten research psychologists in the department, all of them interested in the dynamics of the human personality. As he got to know Leary, Alpert started changing the way he looked at Harvard, and the way he looked at himself. Until Tim showed up, Richard was happily playing the professor role. He'd go to faculty meetings, sit in big chairs, and have tea from a silver tea service. It was easy to let the whole experience go to your head. Alpert would walk through Harvard Yard and begin to think he really was somebody. He was a member of the Harvard faculty. But Tim wasn't like that. He was the first guy Alpert ever met who was not impressed by Harvard. It was just a job.
Their relationship went beyond the office -- even before they made the psychedelic bond. Tim arrived at Harvard with two children and no wife. Richard started hanging out with the kids, Susan and Jack, and began taking care of them. They started calling him "Uncle Dick," and he started acting out the role of surrogate mother. Richard was a bachelor. Tim was a bachelor with kids. Sometimes they'd find another baby sitter and go out drinking in Harvard Square. Lots of drinking, as in that 1950s kind of drinking.
Alpert had missed out on the mushrooms in Mexico and wasn't in Cambridge in the fall of 1960, when Leary started gathering together the tribe that would become the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Alpert had been teaching that semester as a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, but he was getting lots of fascinating reports about what was happening back at Harvard. He couldn't wait to get back and join the party, and his chance finally came one day in February 1961.
Alpert returned just as the biggest storm of the season dumped two feet of snow on the streets of Newton. Leary invited him over to his house for a Saturday-night initiation. By now, Leary and his growing band of graduate students had started experimenting with a new batch of drugs they'd gotten from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland. The drug was a synthesized form of psilocybin, the active ingredient in the magic mushrooms of Mexico. The psychic effects were the same, but the dose was easier to control.
While Alpert had been in California, Leary had begun to assemble an eclectic squadron of test pilots at his increasingly chaotic home. They included Beat poet Allen Ginsberg; jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson; William Burroughs, the legendary novelist and heroin addict; and Alan Watts, the popular Buddhist writer and commentator. Ginsberg was sitting at Leary's kitchen table the day Alpert burst in from the cold. Alpert joined them at the table, upon which stood a bottle of pink pills from Sandoz labs. He measured out ten milligrams of the drug and washed the pills down with a few gulps of beer.
Allen and Tim and Richard sat down in the kitchen and waited. Right away there was a bit of a melodrama. Tim's son, Jack, was upstairs when the boy's dog ran out of the house. The dog had been out galloping around in deep snow and came in panting heavily. They all started thinking, "Oh, no! The dog is dying!" Then they figured out that they really couldn't tell if the dog was dying because they were so high. Their thinking and senses were too distorted. Jack was eleven years old. He was upstairs watching television and a bit peeved that these silly adults were bothering him. He came down, assured them that the dog was fine, then marched back upstairs to the TV.
Alpert started really coming onto the psilocybin. There was too much talking in the kitchen, so he walked into the living room, a darker and more peaceful setting. He sat down on the sofa and tried to collect himself. Looking up, he saw some people over in the corner. Who were they? Were they real? Then he started to see them as images of himself in his various roles. They were hallucinations, but they seemed so real. There was the professor with a cap and gown. There was a pilot with a pilot's hat. There was the lover. At first, he was a bit amused by the vision. Those are just my roles. That role can go. That role can go. I've had it with that role. Then he saw himself as his father's son. The feeling changed. Wait a minute. This drug is giving me amnesia! I'll wake up and I won't know who I am! That was terrifying, but Alpert reminded himself that those roles weren't really important. Stop worrying. It's fine. At least I have a body. Then Alpert looked down on the couch at his body. There's no body! Where's my body? There's no-body. There's nobody. That was terrifying. He started to call out for Tim. Wait a minute. How can I call out to Tim? Who was going to call for Tim? The minder of the store, me, would be calling for Tim. But who is me? It was terrifying at first, but all of a sudden Alpert started watching the whole show with a kind of calm compassion.
At that moment, Richard Alpert met his own soul, his true soul. He jumped off the couch, ran out the door, and rolled down a snow-covered hill behind Leary's house. It was bliss. Pure bliss. At the time, Alpert's parents were also living in Newton. Their home was just five blocks from Leary's house on Homer Street. It was three in the morning, but that didn't stop a stoned Richard Alpert from storming through the snow to go see his parents. When he got to his parents' house, he saw that no one had shoveled the deep snow off their walkway. So he went into the garage and got the shovel. In his drugged state, he saw himself as a young buck coming to the rescue. He was all- powerful. He would save his parents! It all seemed so mythological. Then he looked up at the window and saw his parents standing there. They were obviously peeved, or at least confused. Then they assumed that their son must have been drinking with Leary. Alpert saw them up in the window and waved at his startled parents. Then he stuck the shovel in the snow and started dancing around it. He felt so fine, perfectly fine.
Alpert recounts this tale of snowy bliss just a few days shy of the forty-seventh anniversary of the event, yet he remembers it like it was last night. As he tells the tale he's sitting beside a large picture window overlooking the rugged coast on the island of Maui. He says he's come here to Hawaii to die. But when he tells the story of that wondrous winter night his eyes light up like those of an excited little boy. He was twenty-nine years old then. He's seventy-six years old now. Leary is dead. Ginsberg is dead. Alpert is no longer a young buck. A nearly fatal stroke a decade earlier has left him paralyzed on his left side and confined to a wheelchair. The stroke nearly destroyed his ability to find words and speak them. He struggles mightily to tell the story, once again, of the events that changed his life.
"Until that moment I was always trying to be the good boy, looking at myself through other people's eyes," he says. "What did the mothers, fathers, teachers, colleagues want me to be? That night, for the first time, I felt good inside. It was OK to be me."
Huston Smith had come to MIT in 1958. He was thirty-nine years old and just hitting his stride as a scholar and commentator on the world's religions. Nearly five decades later, he sits in a sunny window in the living room of his home in Berkeley, California. He's still married to Kendra, but he's an old man now. He has trouble hearing, and with the help of a walker he can barely make it from his study to his living-room chair. But when he tells the story of that New Year's Day in Timothy Leary's living room, his eyes widen and he seems to lose ten years.
"What a way to start the sixties," he says, laughing.
Seeker: Newton, Massachusetts, February 1961
Richard Alpert would have taken the magic mushrooms in Mexico with the rest of the gang, back in the summer of 1960, but he arrived a few days after Leary's first trip. Everyone was still aglow in the aftermath of the experience, but the mushrooms were gone. Richard would have to wait nearly nine months before he got his own psychedelic baptism back home in Timothy Leary's living room. Back in Mexico in the summer of 1960, Leary was still feeling the mystic wonder of it all when he met Alpert at the Mexico City airport. Richard had quite an adventure just getting there. He'd just bought his fl ying teacher's Cessna and had decided to fly from San Francisco to Mexico City -- over the startled objections of his instructor.
"There's no way you can do that," his teacher warned. "That's a really difficult airport to fly into. Traffic control is a mess down there."
"Don't worry," Alpert said. "I'll be fine."
He bought the plane on a Saturday and flew down on Sunday. He had not told his flight teacher he was going to fly down tomorrow. If he had he probably wouldn't have gotten the keys. Alpert had already rounded up a Stanford anthropologist who needed a lift to Mexico, but he didn't tell him he had just bought the Cessna the day before. Mexico City is at a high elevation, making it a difficult place to land. His passenger sat next to Alpert with a terrified look on his face as Richard dodged other airplanes on his approach.
"Don't worry," Alpert said. "We'll be fine."
They arrived and found Leary waiting in the terminal. Richard was eager to tell Tim about the terrors of his airplane trip, but it turned out Leary had an even more amazing trip to talk about.
They stood in the lobby as Alpert told the story about buying the plane and flying down to Mexico the next day.
"That's quite a trip, Richard," Leary said. "You know, I've been doing some flying myself -- internally."
They got to the villa, and all the guests were sitting around the pool talking up the mushrooms. But the magic fungi were gone, and no one knew how to find Crazy Juana and score some more. Meanwhile, Leary was already planning his mushroom research project and wanted to begin as soon as he got back to Harvard. He and Alpert were trained clinicians, but this was not going to be like other drug tests. They were going to change the world.
"We're going to take a whole new approach with this research," Leary told Alpert. "Everyone thinks these drugs cause psychosis, but that's because they've been controlled by psychiatrists. Of course they're going to view this as psychosis. That's all they know. But there is really something deeper going on here, Richard. Wait until you try them. I learned more about psychology from these mushrooms than I did in graduate school. These drugs can revolutionize the way we conceptualize ourselves -- not to mention the rest of the world. It'll be great. We'll give them to philosophers, poets, and musicians."
Alpert had been working with Leary for about a year at Harvard. Richard might have had the bigger office at the Department of Social Relations, but Tim was clearly the mentor in their relationship. There were about ten research psychologists in the department, all of them interested in the dynamics of the human personality. As he got to know Leary, Alpert started changing the way he looked at Harvard, and the way he looked at himself. Until Tim showed up, Richard was happily playing the professor role. He'd go to faculty meetings, sit in big chairs, and have tea from a silver tea service. It was easy to let the whole experience go to your head. Alpert would walk through Harvard Yard and begin to think he really was somebody. He was a member of the Harvard faculty. But Tim wasn't like that. He was the first guy Alpert ever met who was not impressed by Harvard. It was just a job.
Their relationship went beyond the office -- even before they made the psychedelic bond. Tim arrived at Harvard with two children and no wife. Richard started hanging out with the kids, Susan and Jack, and began taking care of them. They started calling him "Uncle Dick," and he started acting out the role of surrogate mother. Richard was a bachelor. Tim was a bachelor with kids. Sometimes they'd find another baby sitter and go out drinking in Harvard Square. Lots of drinking, as in that 1950s kind of drinking.
Alpert had missed out on the mushrooms in Mexico and wasn't in Cambridge in the fall of 1960, when Leary started gathering together the tribe that would become the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Alpert had been teaching that semester as a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, but he was getting lots of fascinating reports about what was happening back at Harvard. He couldn't wait to get back and join the party, and his chance finally came one day in February 1961.
Alpert returned just as the biggest storm of the season dumped two feet of snow on the streets of Newton. Leary invited him over to his house for a Saturday-night initiation. By now, Leary and his growing band of graduate students had started experimenting with a new batch of drugs they'd gotten from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland. The drug was a synthesized form of psilocybin, the active ingredient in the magic mushrooms of Mexico. The psychic effects were the same, but the dose was easier to control.
While Alpert had been in California, Leary had begun to assemble an eclectic squadron of test pilots at his increasingly chaotic home. They included Beat poet Allen Ginsberg; jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson; William Burroughs, the legendary novelist and heroin addict; and Alan Watts, the popular Buddhist writer and commentator. Ginsberg was sitting at Leary's kitchen table the day Alpert burst in from the cold. Alpert joined them at the table, upon which stood a bottle of pink pills from Sandoz labs. He measured out ten milligrams of the drug and washed the pills down with a few gulps of beer.
Allen and Tim and Richard sat down in the kitchen and waited. Right away there was a bit of a melodrama. Tim's son, Jack, was upstairs when the boy's dog ran out of the house. The dog had been out galloping around in deep snow and came in panting heavily. They all started thinking, "Oh, no! The dog is dying!" Then they figured out that they really couldn't tell if the dog was dying because they were so high. Their thinking and senses were too distorted. Jack was eleven years old. He was upstairs watching television and a bit peeved that these silly adults were bothering him. He came down, assured them that the dog was fine, then marched back upstairs to the TV.
Alpert started really coming onto the psilocybin. There was too much talking in the kitchen, so he walked into the living room, a darker and more peaceful setting. He sat down on the sofa and tried to collect himself. Looking up, he saw some people over in the corner. Who were they? Were they real? Then he started to see them as images of himself in his various roles. They were hallucinations, but they seemed so real. There was the professor with a cap and gown. There was a pilot with a pilot's hat. There was the lover. At first, he was a bit amused by the vision. Those are just my roles. That role can go. That role can go. I've had it with that role. Then he saw himself as his father's son. The feeling changed. Wait a minute. This drug is giving me amnesia! I'll wake up and I won't know who I am! That was terrifying, but Alpert reminded himself that those roles weren't really important. Stop worrying. It's fine. At least I have a body. Then Alpert looked down on the couch at his body. There's no body! Where's my body? There's no-body. There's nobody. That was terrifying. He started to call out for Tim. Wait a minute. How can I call out to Tim? Who was going to call for Tim? The minder of the store, me, would be calling for Tim. But who is me? It was terrifying at first, but all of a sudden Alpert started watching the whole show with a kind of calm compassion.
At that moment, Richard Alpert met his own soul, his true soul. He jumped off the couch, ran out the door, and rolled down a snow-covered hill behind Leary's house. It was bliss. Pure bliss. At the time, Alpert's parents were also living in Newton. Their home was just five blocks from Leary's house on Homer Street. It was three in the morning, but that didn't stop a stoned Richard Alpert from storming through the snow to go see his parents. When he got to his parents' house, he saw that no one had shoveled the deep snow off their walkway. So he went into the garage and got the shovel. In his drugged state, he saw himself as a young buck coming to the rescue. He was all- powerful. He would save his parents! It all seemed so mythological. Then he looked up at the window and saw his parents standing there. They were obviously peeved, or at least confused. Then they assumed that their son must have been drinking with Leary. Alpert saw them up in the window and waved at his startled parents. Then he stuck the shovel in the snow and started dancing around it. He felt so fine, perfectly fine.
Alpert recounts this tale of snowy bliss just a few days shy of the forty-seventh anniversary of the event, yet he remembers it like it was last night. As he tells the tale he's sitting beside a large picture window overlooking the rugged coast on the island of Maui. He says he's come here to Hawaii to die. But when he tells the story of that wondrous winter night his eyes light up like those of an excited little boy. He was twenty-nine years old then. He's seventy-six years old now. Leary is dead. Ginsberg is dead. Alpert is no longer a young buck. A nearly fatal stroke a decade earlier has left him paralyzed on his left side and confined to a wheelchair. The stroke nearly destroyed his ability to find words and speak them. He struggles mightily to tell the story, once again, of the events that changed his life.
"Until that moment I was always trying to be the good boy, looking at myself through other people's eyes," he says. "What did the mothers, fathers, teachers, colleagues want me to be? That night, for the first time, I felt good inside. It was OK to be me."
A very good review of the book: Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom by Andy Lechter
A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom
Andy Lechter has written an essential book on shrooms, and taken a key step in the evolution of how we talk about the history of entheogens.
August 19, 2008 |
Editor's note: This article was originally published in Erowid.
Reviewed: Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom by Andy Lechter
In Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, Andy Letcher has given us a thorough and rigorous study of mushroom culture. Among books on psychoactive mushrooms, Shroom is unprecedented in the degree to which the author demands that arguments be supported by evidence. Anyone familiar with the voluminous literature on this topic will immediately recognize this as a revolutionary step; the genre is crowded with speculation ranging from cautious (The Road to Eleusis) to extravagant (Food of the Gods).
A scholar boasting PhDs in both ecology and religious studies, Letcher is also no stranger to the psychedelic underground. In this book he painstakingly reconstructs mushroom theories ranging from Eleusis to Santa Claus. Letcher is highly critical of most of these theories, which he sometimes characterizes in sardonic terms that border on contemptuous. Although his tone can be caustic, he pays mushroom enthusiasts the compliment of taking their arguments seriously and analyzing them as such.
Shroom opens with a serviceable overview of the biology and chemistry of psychoactive mushrooms. The book then moves into the cultural history of mushrooms, including a valuable review of pre-1950s reports of mushroom use. Letcher documents and analyzes nearly every major argument written about psychoactive mushrooms in the last century. He chronicles the channels by which a cloudy mix of science and speculation has flowed into the collective reservoir of the psychedelic underground.
The basic argument that Letcher critiques looks something like this: For thousands of years, humans have had an important relationship with psychoactive mushrooms. After stumbling upon them unawares, our ancestors grasped the power of the psychedelic experience they provide. It may be that the spiritual insights which inspired the major world religions were based on entheogenic mushroom sacraments. The druids of pre-Roman Europe, the ancient Greeks of Eleusis, and perhaps even our early ancestors on the African savanna knew that one could contact the spirit world or commune with the gods under the influence of psychoactive fungi.
read more on the erowid website
or for more mushroom information go to www.magic-mushrooms-shop.com
Andy Lechter has written an essential book on shrooms, and taken a key step in the evolution of how we talk about the history of entheogens.
August 19, 2008 |
Editor's note: This article was originally published in Erowid.
Reviewed: Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom by Andy Lechter
In Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, Andy Letcher has given us a thorough and rigorous study of mushroom culture. Among books on psychoactive mushrooms, Shroom is unprecedented in the degree to which the author demands that arguments be supported by evidence. Anyone familiar with the voluminous literature on this topic will immediately recognize this as a revolutionary step; the genre is crowded with speculation ranging from cautious (The Road to Eleusis) to extravagant (Food of the Gods).
A scholar boasting PhDs in both ecology and religious studies, Letcher is also no stranger to the psychedelic underground. In this book he painstakingly reconstructs mushroom theories ranging from Eleusis to Santa Claus. Letcher is highly critical of most of these theories, which he sometimes characterizes in sardonic terms that border on contemptuous. Although his tone can be caustic, he pays mushroom enthusiasts the compliment of taking their arguments seriously and analyzing them as such.
Shroom opens with a serviceable overview of the biology and chemistry of psychoactive mushrooms. The book then moves into the cultural history of mushrooms, including a valuable review of pre-1950s reports of mushroom use. Letcher documents and analyzes nearly every major argument written about psychoactive mushrooms in the last century. He chronicles the channels by which a cloudy mix of science and speculation has flowed into the collective reservoir of the psychedelic underground.
The basic argument that Letcher critiques looks something like this: For thousands of years, humans have had an important relationship with psychoactive mushrooms. After stumbling upon them unawares, our ancestors grasped the power of the psychedelic experience they provide. It may be that the spiritual insights which inspired the major world religions were based on entheogenic mushroom sacraments. The druids of pre-Roman Europe, the ancient Greeks of Eleusis, and perhaps even our early ancestors on the African savanna knew that one could contact the spirit world or commune with the gods under the influence of psychoactive fungi.
read more on the erowid website
or for more mushroom information go to www.magic-mushrooms-shop.com
Ranking van drugs. Een vergelijking van de schadelijkheid van drugs - RIVM rapport 340001001
Ranking van drugs. Een vergelijking van de schadelijkheid van drugs - RIVM rapport 340001001
Ranking van drugs. Een vergelijking van de schadelijkheid van drugs
Rapport in het kort
Alcohol en tabak scoren hoog op de schaal van schadelijkheid voor de volksgezondheid en zijn daarmee relatief schadelijker dan veel andere soorten drugs. Dit blijkt uit een nieuwe risico-evaluatie van het RIVM, waarin 19 genotmiddelen zijn gerangschikt naar hun schadelijke karakter. Heroine en crack blijken samen met alcohol en tabak relatief het meest schadelijk te zijn. Paddo's, LSD en khat scoren relatief laag op deze lijst. Het gebruik van cannabis en ecstasy valt in deze rangschikking op individueel niveau in de middencategorie, maar scoren vanwege de omvang van het gebruik hoger als je naar de schadelijkheid voor de gehele bevolking kijkt.
De rangschikking is bepaald op basis van de driedeling: hoe giftig is het middel (op korte en lange termijn), hoe verslavend is het, en wat is de maatschappelijke schade. Voorbeelden van de laatste factor zijn agressie, verkeersonveiligheid, arbeidsverzuim en zijn zowel op individueel niveau gemeten als op het niveau van de samenleving in zijn geheel. Bezien vanuit de gehele samenleving stijgt de schadelijkheid van deze middelen als ze veel worden gebruikt. De maatschappelijke schade gaat dan zwaarder wegen.
De evaluatie is uitgevoerd door een panel van 19 experts, die de schadelijkheid beoordeelden op basis van hun eigen wetenschappelijke expertise en de beschikbare literatuur over de middelen. Deze onderzoekswijze is in Nederland voor het eerst op drugs en genotsmiddelen toegepast; internationaal gezien was het de tweede keer. De bevindingen van deze onderzoeken komen overeen. Dit RIVM-onderzoek is uitgevoerd in opdracht van het ministerie van VWS. Mede aan de hand van deze beoordeling kan het huidige Nederlandse drugsbeleid op een rationele wijze worden geevalueerd.
Ranking van drugs. Een vergelijking van de schadelijkheid van drugs
Rapport in het kort
Alcohol en tabak scoren hoog op de schaal van schadelijkheid voor de volksgezondheid en zijn daarmee relatief schadelijker dan veel andere soorten drugs. Dit blijkt uit een nieuwe risico-evaluatie van het RIVM, waarin 19 genotmiddelen zijn gerangschikt naar hun schadelijke karakter. Heroine en crack blijken samen met alcohol en tabak relatief het meest schadelijk te zijn. Paddo's, LSD en khat scoren relatief laag op deze lijst. Het gebruik van cannabis en ecstasy valt in deze rangschikking op individueel niveau in de middencategorie, maar scoren vanwege de omvang van het gebruik hoger als je naar de schadelijkheid voor de gehele bevolking kijkt.
De rangschikking is bepaald op basis van de driedeling: hoe giftig is het middel (op korte en lange termijn), hoe verslavend is het, en wat is de maatschappelijke schade. Voorbeelden van de laatste factor zijn agressie, verkeersonveiligheid, arbeidsverzuim en zijn zowel op individueel niveau gemeten als op het niveau van de samenleving in zijn geheel. Bezien vanuit de gehele samenleving stijgt de schadelijkheid van deze middelen als ze veel worden gebruikt. De maatschappelijke schade gaat dan zwaarder wegen.
De evaluatie is uitgevoerd door een panel van 19 experts, die de schadelijkheid beoordeelden op basis van hun eigen wetenschappelijke expertise en de beschikbare literatuur over de middelen. Deze onderzoekswijze is in Nederland voor het eerst op drugs en genotsmiddelen toegepast; internationaal gezien was het de tweede keer. De bevindingen van deze onderzoeken komen overeen. Dit RIVM-onderzoek is uitgevoerd in opdracht van het ministerie van VWS. Mede aan de hand van deze beoordeling kan het huidige Nederlandse drugsbeleid op een rationele wijze worden geevalueerd.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
MykoWeb -- The Mechanisms of Mind-Manifesting Mushrooms
An inside of how the magic mushroom work on your neurotransmitters.
MykoWeb -- The Mechanisms of Mind-Manifesting Mushrooms
The Mechanisms of Mind-Manifesting Mushrooms
Psychedelic mushrooms, such as the blue-staining Psilocybe species and Amanita muscaria, have been of enormous cultural and religious importance for many thousands of years, continuing to the present day. Most people have a vague idea that these mushrooms have neurologically active compounds that affect the central nervous system, but are less clear on exactly how these compounds act to alter consciousness.
To understand how psychoactive drugs work, one must first understand the role of neurotransmitters. The brain and the larger nervous system are made up a complex series of specialized nervous pathways. The individual neurons that make up these pathways communicate with other neurons at sites called synapses. Synapses are pairs of projections, an axon and a dendrite, each from a different neuron; between the two is a gap called the synaptic cleft. Transmission of a signal from one nerve to another involves the release of a neurotransmitter from the axon, which then disperses across the synaptic cleft and binds to receptors on the surface of the dendrite. The binding of the neurotransmitter to a receptor causes the neuron to either release or take up calcium ions, altering the neuron's electrical potential and either stimulating or inhibiting the movement of electrical pulses along the neuron to axons elsewhere on the neuron. Once an axon receives an electrical impulse, it releases neurotransmitters, continuing the chain of nervous signals.
There are many different neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine, GABA, and many others. Different neural centers and pathways in the brain use different arrays of neurotransmitters to transmit nervous signals. The actions and processes of the brain are determined by which of these centers and pathways are stimulated and which are inhibited.
Neuroactive compounds function by mimicking the action of specific neurotransmitters; they bind to the same receptors, where they act as either antagonists, agonists, or reuptake inhibitors. Agonists and antagonists both bind to the receptor sites of an analogous neurotransmitter, however, they differ in how they act once they bind to these sites. Agonists cause the neuron to transmit or inhibit a nerve impulse just like the actual neurotransmitter would, while antagonists simply block the binding of neurotransmitters without stimulating the neuron. A reuptake inhibitor slows the axon's reabsorption of a neurotransmitter, making the neurotransmitter available to the receptors for longer, hence prolonging an incoming nervous signal.
Read full story
MykoWeb -- The Mechanisms of Mind-Manifesting Mushrooms
MykoWeb -- The Mechanisms of Mind-Manifesting Mushrooms
The Mechanisms of Mind-Manifesting Mushrooms
Psychedelic mushrooms, such as the blue-staining Psilocybe species and Amanita muscaria, have been of enormous cultural and religious importance for many thousands of years, continuing to the present day. Most people have a vague idea that these mushrooms have neurologically active compounds that affect the central nervous system, but are less clear on exactly how these compounds act to alter consciousness.
To understand how psychoactive drugs work, one must first understand the role of neurotransmitters. The brain and the larger nervous system are made up a complex series of specialized nervous pathways. The individual neurons that make up these pathways communicate with other neurons at sites called synapses. Synapses are pairs of projections, an axon and a dendrite, each from a different neuron; between the two is a gap called the synaptic cleft. Transmission of a signal from one nerve to another involves the release of a neurotransmitter from the axon, which then disperses across the synaptic cleft and binds to receptors on the surface of the dendrite. The binding of the neurotransmitter to a receptor causes the neuron to either release or take up calcium ions, altering the neuron's electrical potential and either stimulating or inhibiting the movement of electrical pulses along the neuron to axons elsewhere on the neuron. Once an axon receives an electrical impulse, it releases neurotransmitters, continuing the chain of nervous signals.
There are many different neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine, GABA, and many others. Different neural centers and pathways in the brain use different arrays of neurotransmitters to transmit nervous signals. The actions and processes of the brain are determined by which of these centers and pathways are stimulated and which are inhibited.
Neuroactive compounds function by mimicking the action of specific neurotransmitters; they bind to the same receptors, where they act as either antagonists, agonists, or reuptake inhibitors. Agonists and antagonists both bind to the receptor sites of an analogous neurotransmitter, however, they differ in how they act once they bind to these sites. Agonists cause the neuron to transmit or inhibit a nerve impulse just like the actual neurotransmitter would, while antagonists simply block the binding of neurotransmitters without stimulating the neuron. A reuptake inhibitor slows the axon's reabsorption of a neurotransmitter, making the neurotransmitter available to the receptors for longer, hence prolonging an incoming nervous signal.
Read full story
MykoWeb -- The Mechanisms of Mind-Manifesting Mushrooms
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