Ayahuasca News

El pasado mes de octubre asistimos al encuentro trimestral CANNABMED sobre cannabis medicinal organizado por ICEERS en Barcelona. En el evento - cuyo objetivo era poner al centro del debate las inquietudes y reivindicaciones de aquellas personas con problemas de salud que utilizan cannabis - se ha presentado públicamente la recién creada Unión de Pacientes por la Regulación del Cannabis (UPRC). Durante la conferencia han habido varias intervenciones, entre las que destacamos las de Queralt Prat, miembro y fundadora de la UPRC, y Òscar Parés, subdirector de ICEERS, que han puesto en evidencia los efectos negativos de la prohibición y el estigma que sufren los pacientes que utilizan cannabis. Así como la charla de José Carlos Bouso, director de proyectos científicos de ICEERS, quien ha compartido con el auditorio sus conocimientos sobre los varios aspectos del cannabis medicinal. Aunque desde Dolce Vita seguiremos informando sobre las actividades y estudios de la entidad, hoy aprovechamos de la disponibilidad de Òscar Parés, Subdirector de la fundación ICEERS, para conocer mejor su trabajo y el ámbito en el que se desenvuelve.

One afternoon, while working on the oral history of the Toba people (Qom) of the Argentinean Chaco, an old man narrated to me the story of a place called Huoqauo’ lae’ (lit. “where the guaicuru bird abounds”). The story of this site was collected as part of a study of the places that constitute the old hunting territory of some Toba tribes (huaguilot, yˆolo, and no’olgaxanaq). The inquiry showed that in the names of these places was stamped the history of each tribe, including the military campaign carried out by the Argentinean army against the indigenous people of the Argentinean Chaco, during the last decade of nineteenth century into the early twentieth century.If some young Toba men considered Huoqauo’ lae’ the place where a slaughter had taken place during that campaign, the version told by an elder named Ernesto of what happened in
Huoqauo’ lae’ contained protagonists who were neither the soldiers nor other indigenous groups...

In Barcelona, a soft-spoken pharmacologist named Jordi Riba is at the forefront of a scientific vanguard exploring the medical applications of psychoactive substances. From his lab at the Sant Pau Institute of Biomedical Research, Riba has spent two decades investigating the neurochemical processes behind ayahuasca, a plant-based hallucinogen from the Amazon famous for elaborate visions and heightened emotional states. He's identified possible structural changes in the brains of long-term ayahuasca drinkers, specifically a measurable thinning of the posterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain associated with the ego.
Even more remarkably, last year, Riba discovered that ayahuasca, rich with compounds known as "harmala alkaloids," can promote the creation of new brain cells. If the potency of these alkaloids can be scaled up, he believes, they could provide breakthroughs on a range of currently untreatable neurological conditions, like Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. "I'm convinced that in 50 years we'll know a lot more than we do now about the brain," Riba says. "I don't think it will be long before we see psychedelics incorporated into the therapeutic arsenal." AZ

We three Kings of Orient are... well, maybe not meth-heads, but certainly drug-runners. Frankincense is a tranquilliser acting on the same receptors as Valium, and Myrrh works on opioid receptors. The irreverent Reverend Danny Nemu will be distributing doses to ease you into the Christmas period.

When we began our pilot study of MDMA-assisted therapy for social anxiety in autistic adults, my biggest fear was that, in desperation to mak

Apresentamos neste artigo um movimento de compreensão do cenário atual da etnologia no Brasil. Dialogando com outras caracterizações elaboradas ao longo das últimas décadas, propomos apontar para o que acreditamos ser peculiar para essa subárea da antropologia brasileira, nesse momento: a possível emergência de uma antropologia indígena. Mais do que tentar definir tal fenômeno, trata-se de se posicionar frente a ele, colocando para a etnologia problemas e perguntas apresentados nos próprios trabalhos de autoria de pesquisadores indígenas

Daily events that boost the immune system (as indicated by levels of salivary immunoglobulin A), some instances of spontaneous remission, and mystical experiences seem to share a similar cluster of thoughts, feelings, moods, perceptions, and behaviors. Entheogens -psychedelic drugs used in a religious context- can also produce mystical experiences (peak experiences, states of unitive consciousness, intense primary religious experiences) with the same cluster of effects. When this happens, is it also possible that such entheogen-induced mystical experiences strengthen the immune system? Might spontaneous remissions occur more frequently under such conditions? This article advances the so called "Emxis hypothesis" -that entheogen-induced mystical experiences influence the immune system

Aunque no se sospechase, La Emboscadura ya estaba en acción este verano, cuando propuso grabar y publicar la reunión de Escohotado con Daniel Lacalle -único español en el top 20 de economistas influyentes a nivel mundial según el estudio elaborado en 2016 por Richtopia- en la que compartieron sus conocimientos sobre economía y sociedad.

Expanding our Understanding of Health Modern Spirit seeks to demonstrate the value of spiritual healing in modern healthcare. Modern Spirit works to provide educational programs that will promote the sharing and integration of knowledge drawn from scientific research, clinical experience, and spiritual practice to the community and healthcare providers. Modern Spirit is a 501(c)3 tax... [Read More]

O Man, to whatever country you belong and whatever your opinions, listen: here is your history as I believe I have read it, not in the books of your fellow men who are liars but in Nature which never lies. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality In 1966, at the ‘Man the Hunter’ symposium held at the University of Chicago, anthropologist Richard B. Lee presented a paper that would radically rewrite how academics and the public at large interpret life in hunter-gatherer societies. Questioning the notion that the hunter-gatherer way of life is a “precarious and arduous struggle for existence,” Lee instead described a society of relative comfort and abundance. Lee studied the !Kung of the Dobe area in the Kalahari Desert (also known variously as Bushmen, the San people, or the Ju/’hoansi) and noted that they required only 12 to 19 hours a week to collect all the food they needed. Lee further criticized the notion that hunter-gatherers have a low life expectancy, arguing that the proportion of individuals older than 60 among the …

The philosopher Democritus once said: “A life without festivals is like a road without inns”(B 230), but there can be little doubt that among all the Greek festivals it is the Eleusinian Mysteries that most intrigues the modern public. It is the aim of this contribution to take afresh look at this festival during the height of the Athenian empire, the later fifth century B.C. Unlike older studies, the most recent detailed analyses, those by Walter Burkert and Robert Parker, have given up on a linear reconstruction of the ritual. Yet there is something unsatisfactory in such an approach, as it prevents us from having a proper view of the course of the ritual and appreciating its logic. Ideally, we should reconstruct a linear “thick description” (to use the famous term of the late Clifford Geertz [1926-2006]) of the experience of the average initiate, mystês, but we are prevented from doing so by the fact that our main and rather scanty literary information is from Christian authors, who often wanted to defame the ritual, and, in some cases, lived 600-700 hundred years after Athens’ heyday.

Reza el dicho que nadie es profeta en su tierra. Y muchas veces es verdad. Es algo que conoce muy bien Jordi Riba, un farmacólogo catalán que acaba de ser incluido por la revist

Los desórdenes alimenticios afectan a millones de gente en el mundo y el mayor problema es que son difíciles de tratar, pero se descubrió una posible cura.

Learn 6 things you need to know about microdosing LSD (Acid) in this article, including the protocol you should follow, and how to source the substance.

Recently, the concept of integration has become a hot topic in the context of the use of psychedelic substances, and particularly in the Western ayahuasca-drinking circles. Emphasis is placed on the need for integration; new professionals are emerging who offer integration services, and many people request integration of their psychedelic experiences. However, if we ask what integration is, what it consists of and how it is done, the answers are unclear.

Since 2013, the ICEERS Integration and Support Service has supported hundreds of people who have had difficult experiences with psychoactive substances. Through this experience, we’ve gained a deeper understanding of the meaning of, and factors that contribute to, integration.

This paper considers the question of antiquity of shamanism in Central Asia and out-  lines several lines of enquiry into the issue. It analyses both linguistic and archaeological data with particular emphasis on ancient rock art. In the sphere of rock art studies it focuses on methodolo-  gical questions connected with identifying shamanism in visual arts. It concludes that most convin- cing traits of shamanic symbolism, which characterizes Central Asian tradition, can be deciphered in the art dated to four thousand years