Kool-Aid Corner #19

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

Gaika, ‘Convo 2.2 Complex Confessional’

Graph of the Week

There’s no healing without clearing. Nor chanting. Spirits neither

Zuzanna Sadowska, social anthropologist and PhD candidate at the Polish Academy of Sciences speaking at Breaking Convention 2023

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. This week: The Golden Bough by James George Frazer – new full edition

It’s pretty new and I got it for Christmas but it’s £14.99 from Waterstone’s

The forst full version of the Victorian pop-anthropology classic has all the most triggering ideas in one volume. The Golden Bough continues to outrage audiences, as it pricks the Western world’s lack of humility. Not only by illustrating how indigenous customs reflect timeless values, but also by suggesting rituals we label ‘savage’ are played out in cultures who consider themselves eminently more civilised.

It’s where Robert Graves found divine inspiration for The White Goddess, René Girard gave Fraser props in Things Unsaid Since the Beginning for the World. Lovecraft seized on its air of intefatigable, ancient ambivalence his mythos. Wittgenstein wrote a book deploring its colourfully gory naturalistic nihilism, and The Golden Bough appears on Colonel Kurtz’s bedside table in Apocalypse Now.

Fraser bottled it back in the day, but this collection features his punchline – Christ’s crucifixion was basically a human sacrifice.

Editor Robert Fraser’s based at my own alma mater, University of London’s Royal Holloway College (RHC) – described as “a party university” by one of my Vital tutors (yes indeed). Despite its non-intentional reputation RHC, nestled in leafy Surrey, attracts thrusting minds like sex and drugs researcher Alex Aldrydge plus Vital lecturer Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner, joining the likes of Dystopia author Gregory Claeys (who taught me Victorian philosophy).

Kool-Aid Corner #18

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

Walter Van Beirendonck autumn/winter 23/24 collection shown at Paris Men’s Fashion Week

Graph of the Week

This is how it works apparently:

FIGURE 1: ‘Molecular, cellular, and systems support for psychedelic-induced long-term changes..’ From: Catalysts for change: the cellular neurobiology of psychedelics (Matthew I. Banks, Zarmeen Zahid, Nathan T. Jones, Ziyad W. Sultan, and Cody J. Wenthur, William Bement, Monitoring Editor) Molecular Biology of the Cell Vol. 32, No. 12

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. This week: Games People Play by Eric Berne 1968 Penguin edition!

£3 from the second hand bookstore round the back of the sea front in historic Clevedon, North Somerset UK

The first ever pop psychology book (although written for pros) debuted in 1964. In Berne’s ‘transactional analysis’ some human behaviours are learned strategies to elicit a response. (They’re mostly along the parent-child-adult drama triangle lines). Others find it exhausting, but the comfortable thing is to play along. ‘White moves first, and white usualy wins,’ writes Berne.

Both the author, and our rational grown-up instincts, offer methods to dodge white’s curved balls. But he solemnly warns that all manner of pitfalls face those who refuse to play games. For example, white will not give up. They will simply find somebody else to play with.

Kool-Aid Corner #17

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…

Figure 1: ’A model of psychedelics instrumentalisation by early humans, and of the evolutionary consequences of its intergenerational recurrence. The left side represents the process of instrumentalisation, which can occur repeatedly across the life-span of a generation of hominins. The right side represents the process of niche-construction supporting gene-culture coevolution across generations as populations construct and bequeath transformed ecological and social environments that exercise selective influences on following generations (Odling-Smee et al., 2003). The left side of the diagram portrays potential selective advantages conferred by psychedelic use under the socio-ecological conditions in which our ancestors evolved. The right side illustrates the process of selective feedback through which psychedelic instrumentalisation could have enhanced the creation and evolution of the human socio-cognitive niche. The four coloured boxes on the left represent the major aspects of the emerging human adaptive complex that created the socio-cognitive niche; these involve skills and processes potentially amplified by psychedelic instrumentalisation, with the two-directional arrows between the boxes representing the interconnectedness of these competence realms that coevolved in creating our unique adaptation mode. The emergence and persistence of this adaptive complex across human evolution permitted the progressive construction of socially modified environments (represented by the green box at the right side of the diagram) that in turn selected for enhancements in the same underlying human propensities and capabilities (represented by arrows with a plus [+] sign) that sustained the socio-cognitive niche.’

From: Psychedelics, Sociality, and Human Evolution by José Manuel Rodríguez Arce and Michael James Winkelman, published in Frontiers of Psychology, September 2021.

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

You’ll probably have to get it from/in America or off of Amazon

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.

Kool-Aid Corner #16

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

Supplemental Figure 1: Heat plot for pairwise comparisons between control, predator exposure/ psychosocial stress (PE/PSS), and PE/PSS + treatment groups. The heatmap illustrates hierarchical clustering of the scaled counts (z-scores) for a set of biologically relevant differentially expressed genes (FDR<0.1).

From: Pharmahuasca and DMT Rescue ROS Production and Differentially Expressed Genes Observed after Predator and Psychosocial Stress: Relevance to Human PTSD by D Parker Kelley, Katy Venable, Aspasia Destouni, Gerald Billac, Philip Ebenezer, Krisztian Stadler, Charles Nichols, Steven Barker, Joseph Francis. Published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience Jan 2022

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

Originally £19.99 now fetching £35-plus

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.

Kool-Aid Corner #15

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

From ‘The Creatures with the Creator’ a tribute to Glauco Vilas Boas by Adrix

Graph of the Week

Group MDMA and LSD therapy trails are underway. Put the mix CDs in the middle with the leaflets

Group MDMA and LSD therapy outline from MAPS trials recently underway

My bookshelf weighs a ton

Notable new purchases for the occult library. Strictly second hand snap-ups only. This week: The AA Atlas of Secret Britain

Easily available from WoB

Developing a personal relationship with your indegenous cosmology? Looking to trip out the glovebox in that new state of the art camper van? Then bail out the barley sugars and give thanks to the Spirit of Sediment for this round-Britain guide to the wyrd and sort-of cute but macabre at the same time.

Divided into regional sections for easy referral. Disclaimer: even indegenous British sacred groves may have purgative properties. One New Psychonaut reporter walked around Avebury stone circles and took five lengthy visits to the bathroom upon returning to his nearby bed and breakfast. Scrumpy rituals meanwhile are being colonised.

Next issue: Vital’s Space Holding module is all about the direct experience…

Kool-Aid Corner #14

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

Graph of the Week

Reactive vs sex-economic ways of working…

From: The Function of the Orgasm, Wilhelm Reich (1948)

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

Buy MAPS’ natty two-volume Way of the Psychonaut set

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

Kool-Aid Corner #13

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:

From: Ketamine and Serotonergic Psychedelics: Common Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Rapid-Acting Antidepressants, by Bashkim Kadriu, Jessica R Gilbert, Ioline D Henter, Christoph Kraus published in The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology November 2020

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

Grabbed it for £16 price now pushing £37 but bargains exist

‘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