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The anxieties of the age shape the mindsets of people and groups, and given how sensitive a person on psychedelics is to having their internal journey branch in ways that are non-deterministic over the course of a trip, it should not be surprising to see a wide variation of expression.

One sees the Cold War influence on science fiction and I hardly think that is a special case.

Today we have the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis all rolled in with economic uncertainty and political instability. People are probably running on cortisol, and throw in all the disinformation and it is bizarre in a way that I haven’t seen in my 63 years.

We truly need effective psychedelic therapy to help people perform a “brain reset” because society will become a chaotic mass of echo-chambered conspiracy theory spouting sticks of human TNT.

Governments need to legalize and regulate these drugs, and make them available for psychotherapeutic and ritual use. They do allow a significant reset of many dysfunctionalities of mind and society.

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I think it would have been worthwhile to ask Dr. Dyck why she believes that Salvador Roquet "purposefully subjecting his patients to abuse" left "some patients [...] better off" 🚩 Indeed, Roquet was a torturer for the Dirección Federal de Seguridad wherein he (according to one source) "cured people of their subversive and antisocial behavior. The former revolutionaries were now committed to working for the betterment of Mexico [...] Having cured some of the most recalcitrant radicals, Roquet was anything but a threat to the established order"

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hygieias-workshop/202009/rethinking-bad-trips#:~:text=Roquet%20purposefully%20subjected%20his%20patients%20to%20abuse%20and%20showed%20them%20violent%20and%20pornographic%20footage%20under%20the%20influence.%20This%20may%20seem%20crude%2C%20but%20some%20patients%20were%20allegedly%20better%20off%20after%20their%20trips.

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Awesome history!

Check out the research findings from Consensus too: https://consensus.app/results/?q=Can%20psychedelic%20therapy%20improve%20depression?

"Can psychedelic therapy improve depression?"

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Nice to find you here, Erika. I've very much enjoyed your book on this hidden history (if you recall, we did a joint event at the U of S when I was touring my book, Fall in One Day.)

I just completed a conference last week on psychedelic assisted therapy. I do appreciate that you are pointing out the cautions, and how we need to learn from the past. Many of the speakers, most her were top level psychiatrists, expressed some of the same concerns - but also talked about some of the very exciting research being done right now at places like Johns Hopkins. It's quite fascinating.

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