To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph of the Week

A model of ‘psychedelic instrumentalisation’ by early humans, and of the evolutionary consequences of its intergenerational recurrence…

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. It’s supposed to be strictly second hand snap-ups only. But I’m flagging on that to be honest. It’s now more in the spirit of a second hand bookstore. This week: The Entropy of Bones by Ayize Jama-Everett

Ayize Jama-Everett handled the psychedelic racial awareness training on Vital. There’s a bit of a syncronicity here because I came across his name before in relation to my martial arts side hustle Battles of London (‘The brand making fight clothing cool’ says Men’s Health). I was going to hassle him for a short story for our print mag. But, y’know, lockdown.

Reading the signs, I bought this one because it had a snake on it.

The cover’s actually by John Jennings, a top-flight comic artist (and more) who Jama-Everett’s created a graphic novel with. Actually, one of the things I admire about The Entropy of Bones is that Jama-Everett must get told all the time ‘Why isn’t it a graphic novel?’ and that he’s nonethless written two others in the same vein (series, in fact).

Anyway, what’s really good about The Entropy of Bones is it’s about getting into your body. Which is admittedly also in danger of bnecoming psycedelic rhetoric, one of the unofficial themes of this Unofficial Vital Student Zine.

Plus there’s lots of other five star biz too, like: super-powered martial arts, smokeable psychedelic fungi, international-level decadence, weed farming and jungle drum ‘n’ bass.

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Thumbnail image by Janjo Surace

Graph of the Week

What ‘pharmahuasca’ including DMT does to genes in rats. Positive effects were shown in the balance between reactive oxygen species cells and the anti-oxidants that keep them from becoming too ‘cytotoxic’ (damaging to other cells) and implicated in the pathogenesis of EG cancer, asthma, pulmonary hypertension, and retinopathy

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: The Science of Microdosing Psychedelics by Torsten Passie

Everything you need to know and considerably more from former Harvard lecturer Dr Passie. This is considered the definitive book on microdosing, the unexpected but rather popular trend for small regular doses of psychedelics.

Originally published by Psychedelic Press for superb UK public conference for the heads, Breaking Convention, this will cost you upwards of £35 on the second-hand market now.

Dr Passie includes previously untranslated international studies in his comprehensive round-up. He also tackles talking points like the placebo effect. Even if microdosing does not produce any significant effects and it is all placebo, the trend is a new way to introduce it into our society, he told a corresponding interview on the Psychedelics Today podcast.

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph of the Week

Reactive vs sex-economic ways of working…

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: LSD Psychotherapy by Stanislav Grof

If James Fadiman’s Psdychedelic Explorer’s Guide is the basic primer on Vital, this is the advanced text.

I was saving up for MAPS’ natty two-volume Way of the Psychonaut (WotP) set but so many clever people mentioned LSD Psychotherapy off-hand in their lectures, and implored students to read it, that I followed the signs and grabbed a copy of the general 1980 release. I wasn’t disappointed.

Within Grof’s reflections were the missing four corners of the jigsaw puzzle: LSD Therapy squared my impressions of the experience, its mystic and medicinal qualities, plus even putting on the the blindfold and ‘going under’.

LSD Therapy features illustrated plates picturing art created on LSD by Grof’s patients, including a chap who, while others are painting tableaux featuring EG a rising phoenix, daubs cartoons about his wife and his car.

I get the impression Grof books are like Smiths albums and crossover a little content-wise, so buy WotP rather than scurry around Abe Books snapping up what you can.

Next issue: Dr Eduardo de Luna, Brazil’s top expert and founder of Wasiwaka Research Centre

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph of the Week

How a glutamate ‘surge’ (it’s more of a mediation than a wave) works through the nervous system:

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy

‘The First Lady of LSD History’ Dr Erika Dyck says, “There is no other historical account that offers this degree of breadth on the topic.” Psychedelic Renaissance author and medical thought leader Dr Ben Sessa wrote in the British Journal of Psychiatry, “Shines a fascinating light on a discipline that is neither pure pharmacotherapy nor pure psychotherapy… Oram shows how LSD’s unique position has been, and still is, its potential undoing when it comes to obtaining formal licensed approval.”

Published by John Hopkins University Press during the dark days of the early 1980s, Matthew Oram’s examination was undertaken away from hype or disapproval. The writer points out that the issue with approval is not only the ‘randomised controlled trial’ process that insists on a placebo, but also statistical compromises that arise from therapy provided alongside. 

That’s still causing issues to this day. Imperial College’s PsiloDep 2 is criticised because 35-plus hours of therapy were provided alongside the psilocybin. Oram writes that researchers were concerned about this in the early 1960s, when treatments combined physical, psychological and psychiatric methods as a matter of course. 

That didn’t last. Speaking in an interview for historian Andy Roberts’ book Acid Drops, 1950s British LSD researcher Dr Ronnie Sandison says, “When I started using LSD in therapy over 40 years ago the split had already started between general psychiatry and psychotherapy, and that divide has gradually widened into psychotherapists and psychoanalysts and an increasing number of lay-psychotherapists, all doing very good work. And then you have the general psychiatrists who have become more and more a victim of the drug companies. I really believe you can be a psychiatrist these days without having much knowledge of the mind, if you hand out the right pill to a patient.”

Maybe he’s right. But psychedelic evangelists in the therapeutic frontlines are also better off considering why psychotherapy might not appeal to the customer, at least initially. I’d posit that expense and time off work are the main reasons, followed closely by disappointment in non-psychedelic assisted talk therapy sessions, where narrative psychoanalysis insists on a universal worldview that contradicts a patient’s lived experience. 

Next issue: Psychedelic Renaissance author Dr Ben Sessa of Awakn Life Sciences speaks, and we listen

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph (or Fig.) of the Week

Comparison of calcified pineal glands with ossified compact bones:

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: The Process by Brion Gysin

Naked Lunch author William Burroughs called his best friend and Dream Machine co-inventor Gysin “the only man I ever respected.” Gysin might be best known for ‘cut up technique’ a writing method used by David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Jello Biafra, much loved by English teachers. 

The Process is a dreamlike, luscious ‘spiritual novel’ like Dune. It’s set in the desert too (sync). and a tableaux of his own soul’s development. His groovy mates have affectionate cameos in it. Gysin is said to have tutored Genesis P Orridge of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth in the mystic arts. ‘I could easily blast so much keef night and day I become a bouhali,’ his alter ego Ulysses O Hanson, a real-gone crazy, a holy untouchable madman unto whom everything is permitted, nothing is true.”

Next issue: MDMA therapy with the dyad who wrote the MAPS program, Annie and Dr Michael Mithoefer

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph of the Week

Panic over, someone’s sorted the whole ‘fly agaric is stronger once it’s gone through someone else’s bladder’ question

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: Shroom by Andy Letcher

It’s a lecture circuit gag that one of the best books on the history of psilocybin has a really crappy cover.

Andy Letcher, writer of Shroom, is a high-level druid here in Britain. His rigorous taxonomy of magic mushrooms within society comes with shadow work: it debunks myths and sacred cows, in particular the stoned ape theory, left and centre. This paraphrase from author will Self, in his review of Terrence McKenna’s Food of the Gods is possibly the shadowiest bit: “he compares McKenna’s [worldview] to Marxist dialectical materialism, where the type of drugs you take determines the society you live in: mushrooms good, alcohol bad.” Want more? “Indegenous communities are rarely harmonious, and use ayahuasca to curse as much as cure.” Essential.

Next issue: MDMA therapy with the dyad who wrote the MAPS program

To finish: trippy clippings, merry pranks, and psychedelic student life

Graph of the Week

“There are many other ways of acheiving altered states,” says Kylea Taylor, Grof Foundation therapist and psychedelic ethics expert. Here’s trip playlist maetsro, Guided Imagery and Music therapy inventor Helen Bonny’s handy guide to them:

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: Slaine: The Horned God by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley

Celtic myth reinterpreted by one of UK comics’ greatest minds, illustrated by future fanboy favourite Simon Bisley.

This has just been re-released. But don’t be fooled, the new one’s got crappy matt pages. The 2011 original dust jacket edition and the 2014 second printing have gloss pages. It’s chock-full of inspiration for young fellows growing up, like this one direct from the lips of the Goddess herself: “The Horned God is nor afraid of death, of losing control… he sees the ridiculousness of taking the wheel of life seriously. The humour of death is his.” A bit much to take in aged 16 during the late 80s but it put a generation on the right track.

Next issue: Core module two Psychedelic Therapies continues with ethics training on the edge of reality