Gateway Drugs

I was musing this morning about the fear mongering regarding entheogens.

Alternatively known as psychedelics. 

The government has this line of how any illegal drug can lead to taking the hard drugs, heroin in particular.  And there is a growing epidemic of opiate addiction. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/philip-seymour-hoffman-heroin-death-points-to-broader-opioid-drug-epidemic/2014/02/07/42dbbc5a-8e61-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html

Interesting that newer data are showing that these entheogens can be used as medications to treat addictive disorders.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dimitri-mugianis/ibogaine-treatment-heroin-addiction_b_3287873.html

http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/09/lsd-may-help-treat-alcoholism/

And they may be of use for end of life anxiety.

http://www.noetic.org/noetic/issue-fifteen-october/psilocybin-at-end-of-life/

This is not recreational use. 

This is use as a medication with the proper set and setting for treatment (Heretic!). 

http://csp.org/practices/entheogens/docs/roberts-immune.html

Set and setting is important even if you are using these drugs illegally (remember never do anything illegal!).

http://csp.org/nicholas/Settings.html

I hope that the already documented medical use of entheogens will bring these medications out of the ridiculous DEA Schedule 1 category of “no medical use.” 

The evidence is clear.  There is legitimate medical use for these medications. 

We wasted 40 years of lost research time that we could have used to find where these medications can be best used to help addictions, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. 

These are not gateway drugs to hard drug use. 

These medications are possible gateways to healing and the evolution of human consciousness. 

Oh, that’s right.  That is why the government banned them in the first place. 

I hope we are a bit smarter now, 40 years later. 

We shall see…