I was very glad to see MKUltra appear in this article. It is so easily ignored or overlooked. That is an avenue of psychological abuse that remains relevant to this day because MKUltra programs *never* ceased. They changed names and became even more secret, entrenched as methodologies of individual and mass mind control utilised by the 13 international occult societies, dozens of military-grade intelligence organisations, and organised crime syndicates. I will write more on it at a later time, but it is truly a soul-taxing topic to research.
100% agree that MK-Ultra never stopped; it just went even further underground that it was before. Aaron and Melissa Dykes' documentary The Minds of Men is one of the best entry-points to the topic that I've seen: https://youtu.be/LQucESRF3Sg
This is great. I totally agree. I know so many people that are getting high on marijuana on a regular basis now as well as searching for the next psychedelic experience. Under the guise that it’s good for mental health. Which is completely false. As a person who travels by bicycle and by foot, and I commute the same way, plus I’m a Yoga Instructor I found that exercise is the only drug. I need that good nutrition as free is, it can be from processing pesticides and insecticides as well. Thanks for your hard work on this article is excellent.
Agree that using psychedelics needs a careful hand and the medical industrial complex is not to be trusted with it. Dose, setting, preparation beforehand and integration afterwards. When done properly the potential for healing is enormous. But done properly is not a pill for your ill. It can offer insights but you have to do the work to integrate them into your own life. If we could find a place for them in our culture and use them appropriately then it could be a part of us expanding into a broader view of our place in the ecosystem. Again done properly, it can be a humbling experience which might be quite helpful with all the hubris around these days. I hope it is done in a healthy fashion and that it can help us to connect with Nature and the complex systems around us that are much smarter than any device we have created so far. Whatever we might have come to believe in our delusions we are part of a complex spiralling of systems and learning the dance would be a lot more helpful than trying to dominate and be on top.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment, which underlines the fact that one hell of a lot of WORK is required for people to benefit from the use of psychedelics. I have zero confidence that the framework that you're describing is going to be implemented in the headlong rush to popularise and commercialise the 'therapeutic' use of psychedelics.
I must admit that I don't have a lot of confidence in the current framework conducting this therapy with any kind of depth. And the pill for an ill culture is getting stronger and stronger. I went to Ayahuasca circles every month for a year or two and I was always bemused by the folk who waxed lyrical about their insights and how "amazing ' it all was without seeming to follow any of the guidance they spoke of. They became addicted to the Insights but failed to add Integration to their process as far as I could tell. You could see who was growing from the experience and who had to keep coming back for another hit. I tend to do my big learnings in intense chunks so doing it a lot for a while was turbo charging to my healing journey and it was messy at times but it worked. I met my future husband at that time and we were able to connect at a very deep level from the beginning of becoming friends. But he had been a Buddhist Monk for 6 years and I had been a Shamanic Apprentice and done a lot of studies in that area so we both had various frameworks to draw upon for our Integration. The place we went to at the time was done very well with dose, setting and preparation beforehand. But not so much with the Integration. Hard to teach what you struggle with yourself. In retrospect there was dysfunction masked by the glamour of the medicine but coming to the process as a true seeker with your own discipline means that you bring your own safety net. And if a space is created that you can surrender to and you have the correct dose for you then there is the potential for great healing. Even when I was sitting with discomfort (which happened a lot) I felt held in that sense of being part of the human community and connected to all things. You do connect to the Intelligence of the Plants. Might sound new agey but the intelligence is palpable when you experience it. It is possible to be expanded in uncomfortable places and to learn from that just as it can be done from a place of joyful transcendence. Our culture isn't very good at sitting with discomfort which is why so much conversation remains shallow I believe. Life is not always happy and that is okay and a part of the rich tapestry. This is where psychedelics could really be helpful but maybe these things need to stay small for a bit longer while we deal with the takeover of human healing which is currently reaching a crescendo it would seem. I certainly wouldn't trust the Cartels for a moment with this precious and important work. On my bucket list is a trip to Costa Rica to Rythmia to do 10 days of a program that includes 4 circles and lots of wonderful support during your stay, plus web based support for after you leave. I've seen a documentary and they do it really well and of course it is legal there. So maybe it needs to stay small like that for a bit. (-:
Thank you once again for the depth of insight you bring to this important but contentious topic. Your observations as an 'insider' confirm my impressions as an 'outsider' looking in.
I've seen the same thing you describe among the Ayahuasca circles, in Buddhist groups that I used to be involved with. These people were all up on Buddhist philosophy, they meditated daily, attended retreats every year - and yet in their private lives they were liars, cheats, neglectful parents, worked in unethical industries, conducted affairs and all manner of other bad behaviour!
Yes, I can't argue with what you have said. The only additional point I would make is that there are as many paths to good health as there are people, so it's better not to discount any treatment which has helped some. I know little about psychedelics, but would support the use of ones that occur in nature and have a long history of use by native cultures. As for Ketamine, LSD and other synthetic versions, I would put those in the same basket as other pharma drugs, use only if everything else has failed and for a short burst only.
I would phrase it differently: the requirements for good health are exactly the same for all people as they are the requirements for life: clean air, clean water, human-appropriate food, sufficient exercise, rest and sleep, adequate exposure to sunlight, and meaningful social connection which includes a sense of connection with something greater than oneself. People follow different paths to fulfilling the requirements for good health; some start with exercise, some with nutrition, and some with meditation or other spiritual exploration.
Although I was fascinated by the possibilities of psychedelics when I was a teenager (I read Timothy Leary's book Changing My Mind, Among Others), once I got into Buddhist meditation I began to form the view that taking psychedelics was an attempt to shortcut the process that meditators work through, but without building the psychological 'muscles' that a meditation practice builds.
Yes, at the physical level our bodies have similar requirements, but psychologically we are all different. Given that the subconscious mind controls much of what we do and how we experience life, the diversity approach is required for improved mental health across society.
Humans have extraordinarily different personalities, but our fundamental psychological needs are not that different, because they're a function of human nature.
I'm not clear on what you mean by 'the diversity approach'. Could you clarify?
Not yet. It's definitely on my list of topics I'd like to cover. It's shockingly under-researched, because the only metric that researchers get funding for measuring is how many cases of pertussis occur in newborns whose mothers were or were not vaccinated during pregnancy. The broader picture of whether miscarriage or birth defect rates are higher, or whether there are adverse health outcomes for the babies whose mothers got the vaccine, are not being studied (or at least aren't being published. If you have a good source on this topic, let me know.
I guess even cases of pertussis in a newborn and very young infant must be really rare, otherwise we would hear about them every day on the globalist media, just like they do with every single outbreak of measles. They cannot miss the opportunity to blame those filthy anti-vaxxers
I tried fasting for a fortnight with Hopewood Health. I felt as though I was drowning in all the mucous my lungs and sinuses were producing and afterwards took a long time to recover from a terrible weakness. Have done light fasts on vegetable juice.
That's dreadful. What a shame. I used to work at Hopewood, and since it closed I've sent numerous clients to fast with Doug Evans, who was at Hopewood for decades. It generally works wonders for RA, but there are always exceptions to the rule.
It is really sad but true that our health system is all based on money! I have really bad rheumatoid and Unfortunately I do have to take a drug to mitigate damage and pain. However exercise and a plant based diet keep the drug at a low level. Also have brochiactuses and chronic sinus and find the saline solution in the nebulisa as well as a little hydrogen peromxide works wonders for the respiratory challenges. The problem with drugs is the side effects, hence more drugs to counteract the increasing side effects. Whether the disease is mental or physical the drugs easily put us on a roller coaster.
I've never been tempted by drugs (licit or illicit) of any kind. A natural drug like opiate-mimicking endorphins, on the other hand, which you get from vigorous exercise are my real addiction but its a healthy drug dependence to have with a huge positive pay-off. If only there wasn't a downside like the odd muscle strain or some other bio-mechanical stress. Still, like love, it is much better to have exercised and lost (twinged a muscle) than never to have exercised at all.
It is probably the reason (along with a plant-based diet) that has kept me out of doctors' offices and pharmacies for much longer than my peers.
Nice to know, however, that it's not just endorphins, that are doing us exercisers so much good.
I think that many people really struggle to break free from detrimental patterns of behaviour controlled by the subconscious mind. In such cases, exercise may be very helpful but unachievable, expecially over the long-term. Psychedelics appear to have unique ability to breach or reset ingrained behaviours, unlike other psyche pharma drugs that tend to numb overall awareness and don't facilitate change. Of course the profiteers will jump on the band-wagon, but psychedelics, especially in natural form, maybe very beneficial and should be futher researched.
I have no doubt that many people struggle to break free from detrimental patterns of behaviour. But many people are now transferring those patterns to long-term use of psychedelics - this is one of the excellent points made by Joanna Moncrieff in the article that I cited in my post. Certainly, some people use psychedelics just once or twice, integrate the insights and then get on with their lives, but they are quite likely to be those with the least psychological disturbance. I have personally encountered people who claim that recurrent psychedelic use has been highly beneficial for them, and has given them great insight, but from my perspective their lives were still a complete mess and if anything, they were more psychologically disturbed after using psychedelics than before. To me, this strongly suggests that there is nothing particularly unique about psychedelics compared to other psychoactive drugs. Some people find that having a few drinks before a party helps them loosen up so they can socialise more comfortably, then they find that they're actually quite socially adept without the alcohol, so they don't really need it anymore. Others spiral into alcoholism.
On the issue of long-term exercise being necessary to achieve benefit, this isn't so, as was clearly shown by the meta-analysis. Because of the rapid resetting of the capacity to feel pleasure from enjoyable activities, short- to medium-term exercise interventions achieved the best results. This is likely to be linked to an interesting phenomenon known as reinforcement learning, which I'll be covering in an upcoming article.
I 100% agree that it's very difficult to get a deeply depressed person to exercise. Reduced activity is a diagnostic indicator of the condition. However, given the extraordinarily comprehensive array of benefits that result from exercise, I argue that investing resources into getting depressed people active is a far better use of public money (if we're going to spend any on 'health care', which I'm increasingly questioning the wisdom of) than setting up psychedelic treatment clinics.
I also agree that further research on the effects - good and bad - of psychedelics should be done. My argument is that psychedelic therapy is not ready for prime time yet.
Diversity; that there are as many ways to good health as there are people on the planet. Our fundamental psychological needs may not be that different, but our psychological situations are.
I'm all for encouraging people to meet their psychological needs in the ways that are best suited to their unique personality, but I don't see how that relates to the notion that "there are as many ways to good health as there are people on the planet".
There are as many paths to good health as there are people on the planet because we all have unique psychological needs. Each person is a unique blend of body, mind and spirit and reaching optimum health will be slightly different for each one. Is this a reason why health practitioners consult on an individual basis?
Maybe we're defining our terms somewhat differently from each other. I don't see these individual differences as requiring different paths; more that different people get onto the path at different points, for different reasons.
I was very glad to see MKUltra appear in this article. It is so easily ignored or overlooked. That is an avenue of psychological abuse that remains relevant to this day because MKUltra programs *never* ceased. They changed names and became even more secret, entrenched as methodologies of individual and mass mind control utilised by the 13 international occult societies, dozens of military-grade intelligence organisations, and organised crime syndicates. I will write more on it at a later time, but it is truly a soul-taxing topic to research.
100% agree that MK-Ultra never stopped; it just went even further underground that it was before. Aaron and Melissa Dykes' documentary The Minds of Men is one of the best entry-points to the topic that I've seen: https://youtu.be/LQucESRF3Sg
Oh I'm well past the Dykes sublime doco, but it is indeed an important perpective in the conversation.
Thank you for writing this, so refreshing to read amongst the increasing emergence of the psychedelic fanfare.
My suspicions are immediately aroused by anything that becomes 'the next big thing'. It's hard to go past 'follow the money' as a guiding principle.
This is great. I totally agree. I know so many people that are getting high on marijuana on a regular basis now as well as searching for the next psychedelic experience. Under the guise that it’s good for mental health. Which is completely false. As a person who travels by bicycle and by foot, and I commute the same way, plus I’m a Yoga Instructor I found that exercise is the only drug. I need that good nutrition as free is, it can be from processing pesticides and insecticides as well. Thanks for your hard work on this article is excellent.
Agree that using psychedelics needs a careful hand and the medical industrial complex is not to be trusted with it. Dose, setting, preparation beforehand and integration afterwards. When done properly the potential for healing is enormous. But done properly is not a pill for your ill. It can offer insights but you have to do the work to integrate them into your own life. If we could find a place for them in our culture and use them appropriately then it could be a part of us expanding into a broader view of our place in the ecosystem. Again done properly, it can be a humbling experience which might be quite helpful with all the hubris around these days. I hope it is done in a healthy fashion and that it can help us to connect with Nature and the complex systems around us that are much smarter than any device we have created so far. Whatever we might have come to believe in our delusions we are part of a complex spiralling of systems and learning the dance would be a lot more helpful than trying to dominate and be on top.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment, which underlines the fact that one hell of a lot of WORK is required for people to benefit from the use of psychedelics. I have zero confidence that the framework that you're describing is going to be implemented in the headlong rush to popularise and commercialise the 'therapeutic' use of psychedelics.
I must admit that I don't have a lot of confidence in the current framework conducting this therapy with any kind of depth. And the pill for an ill culture is getting stronger and stronger. I went to Ayahuasca circles every month for a year or two and I was always bemused by the folk who waxed lyrical about their insights and how "amazing ' it all was without seeming to follow any of the guidance they spoke of. They became addicted to the Insights but failed to add Integration to their process as far as I could tell. You could see who was growing from the experience and who had to keep coming back for another hit. I tend to do my big learnings in intense chunks so doing it a lot for a while was turbo charging to my healing journey and it was messy at times but it worked. I met my future husband at that time and we were able to connect at a very deep level from the beginning of becoming friends. But he had been a Buddhist Monk for 6 years and I had been a Shamanic Apprentice and done a lot of studies in that area so we both had various frameworks to draw upon for our Integration. The place we went to at the time was done very well with dose, setting and preparation beforehand. But not so much with the Integration. Hard to teach what you struggle with yourself. In retrospect there was dysfunction masked by the glamour of the medicine but coming to the process as a true seeker with your own discipline means that you bring your own safety net. And if a space is created that you can surrender to and you have the correct dose for you then there is the potential for great healing. Even when I was sitting with discomfort (which happened a lot) I felt held in that sense of being part of the human community and connected to all things. You do connect to the Intelligence of the Plants. Might sound new agey but the intelligence is palpable when you experience it. It is possible to be expanded in uncomfortable places and to learn from that just as it can be done from a place of joyful transcendence. Our culture isn't very good at sitting with discomfort which is why so much conversation remains shallow I believe. Life is not always happy and that is okay and a part of the rich tapestry. This is where psychedelics could really be helpful but maybe these things need to stay small for a bit longer while we deal with the takeover of human healing which is currently reaching a crescendo it would seem. I certainly wouldn't trust the Cartels for a moment with this precious and important work. On my bucket list is a trip to Costa Rica to Rythmia to do 10 days of a program that includes 4 circles and lots of wonderful support during your stay, plus web based support for after you leave. I've seen a documentary and they do it really well and of course it is legal there. So maybe it needs to stay small like that for a bit. (-:
Thank you once again for the depth of insight you bring to this important but contentious topic. Your observations as an 'insider' confirm my impressions as an 'outsider' looking in.
I've seen the same thing you describe among the Ayahuasca circles, in Buddhist groups that I used to be involved with. These people were all up on Buddhist philosophy, they meditated daily, attended retreats every year - and yet in their private lives they were liars, cheats, neglectful parents, worked in unethical industries, conducted affairs and all manner of other bad behaviour!
Yes, I can't argue with what you have said. The only additional point I would make is that there are as many paths to good health as there are people, so it's better not to discount any treatment which has helped some. I know little about psychedelics, but would support the use of ones that occur in nature and have a long history of use by native cultures. As for Ketamine, LSD and other synthetic versions, I would put those in the same basket as other pharma drugs, use only if everything else has failed and for a short burst only.
I would phrase it differently: the requirements for good health are exactly the same for all people as they are the requirements for life: clean air, clean water, human-appropriate food, sufficient exercise, rest and sleep, adequate exposure to sunlight, and meaningful social connection which includes a sense of connection with something greater than oneself. People follow different paths to fulfilling the requirements for good health; some start with exercise, some with nutrition, and some with meditation or other spiritual exploration.
Although I was fascinated by the possibilities of psychedelics when I was a teenager (I read Timothy Leary's book Changing My Mind, Among Others), once I got into Buddhist meditation I began to form the view that taking psychedelics was an attempt to shortcut the process that meditators work through, but without building the psychological 'muscles' that a meditation practice builds.
Yes, at the physical level our bodies have similar requirements, but psychologically we are all different. Given that the subconscious mind controls much of what we do and how we experience life, the diversity approach is required for improved mental health across society.
Humans have extraordinarily different personalities, but our fundamental psychological needs are not that different, because they're a function of human nature.
I'm not clear on what you mean by 'the diversity approach'. Could you clarify?
Hi Robyn. Do you have any article about the risks of the pertussis vaccine during pregnancy?
Not yet. It's definitely on my list of topics I'd like to cover. It's shockingly under-researched, because the only metric that researchers get funding for measuring is how many cases of pertussis occur in newborns whose mothers were or were not vaccinated during pregnancy. The broader picture of whether miscarriage or birth defect rates are higher, or whether there are adverse health outcomes for the babies whose mothers got the vaccine, are not being studied (or at least aren't being published. If you have a good source on this topic, let me know.
I guess even cases of pertussis in a newborn and very young infant must be really rare, otherwise we would hear about them every day on the globalist media, just like they do with every single outbreak of measles. They cannot miss the opportunity to blame those filthy anti-vaxxers
I tried fasting for a fortnight with Hopewood Health. I felt as though I was drowning in all the mucous my lungs and sinuses were producing and afterwards took a long time to recover from a terrible weakness. Have done light fasts on vegetable juice.
That's dreadful. What a shame. I used to work at Hopewood, and since it closed I've sent numerous clients to fast with Doug Evans, who was at Hopewood for decades. It generally works wonders for RA, but there are always exceptions to the rule.
It is really sad but true that our health system is all based on money! I have really bad rheumatoid and Unfortunately I do have to take a drug to mitigate damage and pain. However exercise and a plant based diet keep the drug at a low level. Also have brochiactuses and chronic sinus and find the saline solution in the nebulisa as well as a little hydrogen peromxide works wonders for the respiratory challenges. The problem with drugs is the side effects, hence more drugs to counteract the increasing side effects. Whether the disease is mental or physical the drugs easily put us on a roller coaster.
Good to hear you've found non-toxic and health-promoting strategies for keeping your RA under control. Have you looked into water-only fasting for RA?
I've never been tempted by drugs (licit or illicit) of any kind. A natural drug like opiate-mimicking endorphins, on the other hand, which you get from vigorous exercise are my real addiction but its a healthy drug dependence to have with a huge positive pay-off. If only there wasn't a downside like the odd muscle strain or some other bio-mechanical stress. Still, like love, it is much better to have exercised and lost (twinged a muscle) than never to have exercised at all.
It is probably the reason (along with a plant-based diet) that has kept me out of doctors' offices and pharmacies for much longer than my peers.
Nice to know, however, that it's not just endorphins, that are doing us exercisers so much good.
Exercise and love - the ultimate healthy highs... and even better when fuelled by a plant-based diet 🥦🍌 🌾.
I think that many people really struggle to break free from detrimental patterns of behaviour controlled by the subconscious mind. In such cases, exercise may be very helpful but unachievable, expecially over the long-term. Psychedelics appear to have unique ability to breach or reset ingrained behaviours, unlike other psyche pharma drugs that tend to numb overall awareness and don't facilitate change. Of course the profiteers will jump on the band-wagon, but psychedelics, especially in natural form, maybe very beneficial and should be futher researched.
I have no doubt that many people struggle to break free from detrimental patterns of behaviour. But many people are now transferring those patterns to long-term use of psychedelics - this is one of the excellent points made by Joanna Moncrieff in the article that I cited in my post. Certainly, some people use psychedelics just once or twice, integrate the insights and then get on with their lives, but they are quite likely to be those with the least psychological disturbance. I have personally encountered people who claim that recurrent psychedelic use has been highly beneficial for them, and has given them great insight, but from my perspective their lives were still a complete mess and if anything, they were more psychologically disturbed after using psychedelics than before. To me, this strongly suggests that there is nothing particularly unique about psychedelics compared to other psychoactive drugs. Some people find that having a few drinks before a party helps them loosen up so they can socialise more comfortably, then they find that they're actually quite socially adept without the alcohol, so they don't really need it anymore. Others spiral into alcoholism.
On the issue of long-term exercise being necessary to achieve benefit, this isn't so, as was clearly shown by the meta-analysis. Because of the rapid resetting of the capacity to feel pleasure from enjoyable activities, short- to medium-term exercise interventions achieved the best results. This is likely to be linked to an interesting phenomenon known as reinforcement learning, which I'll be covering in an upcoming article.
I 100% agree that it's very difficult to get a deeply depressed person to exercise. Reduced activity is a diagnostic indicator of the condition. However, given the extraordinarily comprehensive array of benefits that result from exercise, I argue that investing resources into getting depressed people active is a far better use of public money (if we're going to spend any on 'health care', which I'm increasingly questioning the wisdom of) than setting up psychedelic treatment clinics.
I also agree that further research on the effects - good and bad - of psychedelics should be done. My argument is that psychedelic therapy is not ready for prime time yet.
Diversity; that there are as many ways to good health as there are people on the planet. Our fundamental psychological needs may not be that different, but our psychological situations are.
I'm all for encouraging people to meet their psychological needs in the ways that are best suited to their unique personality, but I don't see how that relates to the notion that "there are as many ways to good health as there are people on the planet".
There are as many paths to good health as there are people on the planet because we all have unique psychological needs. Each person is a unique blend of body, mind and spirit and reaching optimum health will be slightly different for each one. Is this a reason why health practitioners consult on an individual basis?
Maybe we're defining our terms somewhat differently from each other. I don't see these individual differences as requiring different paths; more that different people get onto the path at different points, for different reasons.