Dr. Melanie Dreher, reefer researcher

Despite political pressure to have it otherwise, Dr. Dreher’s research reveals that pot-smoking moms can have smart, healthy babies.

When Dr Melanie Dreher released solidly researched reports showing that children of ganja-using mothers were better adjusted than children born to non-using mothers, she encountered political and professional turbulence.

Dr. Melanie Dreher is one of a handful of scientists who have researched marijuana objectively and intelligently in the last three decades. She is Dean of the University of Iowa’s College of Nursing, and also holds the post of Associate Director for the University’s Department of Nursing and Patient Services. She’s a perpetual overachiever who earned honours degrees in nursing, anthropology and philosophy before being awarded a PhD in anthropology from prestigious Columbia University in 1977.

Although Dreher is a multi-faceted researcher and teacher whose expertise ranges from culture to child development to public health, she began early on to specialize in medical anthropology. After distinguishing herself as a field researcher in graduate school, Dreher was hand-picked by her professors to conduct a major study of marijuana use in Jamaica. Her doctoral dissertation was published as a book titled “Working Men and Ganja,” which stands as one of the premier cross-cultural studies of chronic marijuana use.

Along with being a widely-published researcher, writer, and college administrator, Dreher is a professor or lecturer at several institutions, including the University of the West Indies. She recently served as president of the 120,000 member Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honour Society, has been an expert witness in a religious freedom case involving ganja use by the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, and is one of the most well-respected academicians in the world.

Governmental and private organizations, including the US State Department, have funded Dreher’s many research projects, some of which focused on ganja’s role in Jamaican culture, and the effects of ganja and cocaine on Jamaican women and children.

Dreher has impeccable credentials and a wealth of proprietary information on ganja use, but when she released solidly-researched reports showing that children of ganja-using mothers were better adjusted than children born to mothers who did not use ganja, she encountered political and professional turbulence. Some observers accuse the government and anti-pot groups of working to suppress her findings, but Dreher continues to speak openly about her research.

When Dreher spoke to Cannabis Culture from her office at the University of Iowa, she was affable and intriguing, pleasantly but firmly defending her right to study ganja use and to publish valid scientific findings regardless of political pressure.

How did you first become involved in studying ganja in Jamaica?

Dr Dreher: I had already spent one summer in jamaica studying obeah, a kind of black magic, and my professor, Dr Lambros Comitas, felt that if I could study an illegal and underground practice like obeah then I could probably get information on ganja use.

This was in the 70′s, when American pundits were saying that marijuana caused people to be lazy and dysfunctional. We were especially interested in testing the notion that ganja caused an amotivational syndrome. My dissertation research studied various kinds of men’s work, primarily agricultural work, and how ganja interacted with that.

Jamaica was a great place to study because these men used ganja every day for eight to ten years, unencumbered by cocaine or other drugs, and just a little bit of tobacco or alcohol, so you could really measure how ganja affected them. After nearly two years of study in Jamaica, I’d found ganja was used to stimulate work. The amotivational syndrome, whatever it was, certainly didn’t manifest itself in the people I studied.

So you just walked up to Jamaican villagers and started asking them about ganja? Weren’t you afraid they’d think you were a police agent?

It was an interesting experience! I had never smoked anything, not even a cigarette. I’m a white woman, a former cheerleader, about as ‘American’ as you could get. I didn’t have an intermediary or liaison. I went into villages and politely introduced myself as an American student. I established trust by going to church and schools and living with these people, telling them I was there to study certain aspects of their culture, especially herbs and particularly marijuana, and people began to trust me. They gave me a few social tests to see if they could really trust me, and after I passed those tests pretty soon I was going into their fields and seeing where ganja was grown, dried, stored, processed and sold.

There is a cultural division between men and women in this culture, but even though I was a woman, as a white American researcher I had more privilege and access to men’s rituals than a Jamaican woman. I got to sit with the men surrounded by these big clouds of smoke, and as they smoked their chillums I asked questions about ganja use and took notes.

So ganja use had its own cultural identity and rules?

Yes. Ganja use is governed by customs, beliefs, and social rules. Ganja arrived in Jamaica through the Indian indentured labour; Indians brought with them this whole tradition of preparation of teas, tonics, hash, cooking ganja in food.

The Jamaican ganja-users, except for the Rastas who tend to use more ganja than the people we studied, had strict cultural contexts in which to use marijuana. It isn’t like in the US where people indiscriminately light up and walk around all day stoned. The Jamaicans prescribed certain situations and ways to use ganja.

There were people prohibited from using it. When you smoked you had to act a certain way ? serious, intelligent, reasonable. A man who used ganja and got silly or got the munchies or laughed too much or acted like a fool ? the other men stopped smoking with him because they felt the ganja was a spiritual thing. It’s to be taken seriously in a mature and responsible way.

A whole set of cultural rules guided use and made sure it was positive. The set and setting and cultural traditions in Jamaica made ganja use a positive thing. It’s useful to study ganja in a place where its use is not just a recreational activity ? its use is sacramental, medicinal and social, but it is designed to be a thoughtful activity ? not like you stop at the store and get a six pack of beer to get drunk.

Did ganja culture affect how men and women used ganja?

It did. The men believed that ganja inhaled went to the brain and had a psychoactive effect, but that ganja consumed as tea or tonic went into the blood and had a health effect rather than intoxication. They only allowed men to smoke ganja because they didn’t believe women had the right kind of brain for it.

Now there are physiological differences between men and women, and it’s also true that ganja eaten or ingested as tea follows a different route in the body than ganja smoked, but I am not expert enough in this to comment on whether the cultural tradition is supported by science.

Women were allowed to control the medicinal use of ganja. I spent lots of time with rural women, who taught me how to make ganja tonics and teas. They were the administrators of ganja, often the producers and sellers of ganja. It gave them some power and income, like a cottage industry. They gave ganja to men and children as teas, and they knew how to titrate the strength of marijuana teas so a new baby would get just a leaf’s worth but men and boys got more, so they could go and work in the fields with enough strength to survive the hard days.

So women never got to smoke ganja?

When I first started research in Jamaica in 1970, women were the ganja medicine specialists but there was a social rule that women should not smoke. The only time women were allowed to smoke was in a pre-sexual context. Everybody believed ganja was an aphrodisiac, they said it made both sexes more powerful, makes you like sex more, makes you concentrate on lovemaking more.

It was not used as a clandestine seduction tool like alcohol. That’s not to say that like at a dance if young men were smoking, a young woman wouldn’t say “Give me a draw,” but it was very innocent, I never saw an attempt to use marijuana as seduction or date rape.

Back then, women were smoking secretly. If a man didn’t finish the whole spliff then after he went to work the women might smoke a little. Women said it helped them do their housework and be good to their children. So the women had to sneak around to smoke it but they were expected to openly administer its medicinal use.

The real focus of the women was to have marijuana to prepare for tea for their children to make them healthier and smarter and help them have better school performance and help them concentrate.

Has your subsequent research found changes in the use of ganja by Jamaican women?

Yes, as the role of women has changed economically and socially, some women have been able to smoke ganja openly with the men. They’re called “roots daughters”, which is a term of respect meaning that they can smoke as hard as a man and maintain a dignity of conversation and behavior. They can smoke ganja and reason with men, have debates about serious topics like politics and religion. They are considered to be principled women who are astute and trustworthy.

Another characteristic of these women is they tend to be economically independent and resourceful. They don’t expect that men will have the sole burden of supporting households. Many of these women are working for themselves, and a significant number of them are involved in ganja sales, along with work such as farming and other commercial enterprises. They build their own houses and become less dependent on men, or on one man, for their livelihood.

Part of this change came from Rastafarianism, because Rasta women do smoke ganja chronically as part of their religious rituals. Older women have built up their roles as ganja administrators, while older men may have to decrease their ganja use once their days in the fields are over. The society is changing, experience with ganja is changing, and women smokers are becoming more visible then before.

Give us a general overview of the studies you’ve done on ganja use during pregnancy

When I noticed that increasing numbers of women were smoking marijuana, I decided to study prenatal marijuana exposure and its effects on children. Most of the studies done in North America had serious confounds and results which just did not hold up under scrutiny.

We did ethnographic studies which examined the lifestyles of mothers who used ganja and mothers who didn’t use ganja, and compared behavioral characteristics of neonates from both groups in the first month of life. We later went back and looked at the children with a five-year follow-up study.

How did your studies differ from other studies?

Up to that point, most studies which examined marijuana use during pregnancy were flawed by serious methodological problems. They couldn’t control for so many variables, and the negative effects they blamed on marijuana could well have been caused by other things.

My studies are among the few which actually measured how much ganja a woman has consumed. I wasn’t sitting in a clinic somewhere divorced from women’s lives asking them how much marijuana they’d used ? my research team is in a community and in the field where we can observe these women and check out their reports. We know how much ganja, and what type and potency, they are consuming. We had ways of verifying the amount of ganja they consume; neighbors would come and tell us what was going on, so we could compare that to what we had been told by the mother.

We had a setting in which we knew that the women were only exposed to marijuana. In most North American studies the women were using all kinds of drugs like alcohol, tobacco, speed and cocaine during prenatal studies, and there was no way for the researchers to know what or how much. We knew what our test subjects were doing and this gave extra credibility to our work.

A lot of media publicity had been given to US studies which purported to show that marijuana caused birth defects or serious developmental problems, but most of this research involved participants who were multi-drug users who had a terrible social support network that probably caused the problems. Instead, these problems were blamed on marijuana.

Is it possible that American women didn’t know how to use marijuana intelligently? Did you find that Jamaican women had more ganja wisdom?

American drug use often takes place without cultural rules and in an unsupervised context. The Jamaican women we studied had been educated in a cultural tradition of using marijuana as a medicine. They prepared it with teas, milk and spices, and thought of it as a preventive and curative substance. Smoking it during pregnancy was a way of relieving nausea, increasing appetites, combating fatigue and depression, providing rest and relaxation. Some of these women were in dire socioeconomic straits, and they found that smoking ganja helped allay feelings of worry and depression about their financial situation.

Our testing showed that the children of women who used ganja had better alertness, stability and adjustment than children of women who didn’t use ganja. This was measured at the age of one month. We measured children again at four years and at five years of age, and found that there were no apparent deficits in the children of marijuana-using mothers. In fact, in many ways, they were better off than children of non-smoking mothers. The ganja-using mothers also seemed better off than non-users.

Since these results contradicted the hysteria of drug war assertions, did you find it hard to get your studies published?

I insisted on publishing in a medical journal ? I wanted the academic community to understand that the jury was still out on marijuana and that’s why we do cross-cultural studies to determine how drugs really affect people. It isn’t logical to look just at one culture’s problems with a drug and conclude that that’s a universal situation.

The medical community needed to see that these results, which came from very solid research methods, were far different than what they are usually exposed to. They needed to see that women who smoked marijuana are not bad mothers. I am so damned sick of picking up a woman’s journal or a tabloid and seeing some article saying that if you smoke even one marijuana cigarette during pregnancy you are a bad mother and you’re doing permanent damage to your baby. There’s no evidence to back up these warnings, and in my studies the evidence points in the other direction.

It sounds like you’re frustrated about the influences of politics and inaccuracy in the reporting of marijuana research findings.

I just want researchers to use good research methods and to tell women the truth. I think these hyperbolic warnings about marijuana and pregnancy have made women absolutely nuts.

I got a call from a woman who was in tears because she and her husband had waited several years to adopt a baby and finally she had found a baby to adopt, but somebody told the couple they couldn’t adopt the baby because the baby had tested positive for marijuana. “Oh for god’s sake,” I said, “Go adopt your baby. Love your baby. Your baby is going to be just fine.”

Now they’re talking about charging women with child abuse if they test positive for drugs during pregnancy. It’s a slippery slope. Where’s it going to stop? Are we going to arrest women for sitting on the couch eating junk food watching television during pregnancy? We are on the way to the Stepford Wives.

So one of my goals with this research was to get the message to physicians: so women smoke a little marijuana ? big deal. Let women enjoy their pregnancies. If there’s something seriously wrong with their baby it would have occurred no matter what ? marijuana or not. Things have gotten so strange in regard to babies. We have to have the perfect baby and if not, well somebody or something has to be blamed. It must have been a whiff of paint she smelled, or a glass of wine, or a cigarette, or a draw of marijuana? It’s ridiculous.

Can you comment on the issue of crack babies?

I have tended to be vary skeptical of crack baby findings. I have studied cocaine use in Jamaica, and have studied children exposed to crack pre-natally who are doing fine.

I think the problem with crack is what happens after birth. The babies are often abused by mothers or others in the home; cocaine is just part of a terrible environment. Ironically, Rastas are the only group who refuse to participate in the cocaine trade. They think it’s poison. Women use ganja to kick cocaine withdrawal; they use ganja during cessation to get enough of a comfortable anti-depressant feeling so that they don’t have to use crack.

Some start using what they call a seasoned spliff, which is a marijuana cigarette seasoned with crack. Having the pot in there seems to relieve the precipitous drop from the crack high to a paranoia which would otherwise force them to smoke crack immediately again. They are high enough on the pot and the crack drop doesn’t make them crazy like it would if they were using crack by itself.

The American government’s approach to cocaine and ganja in Jamaica has been very counterproductive. The DEA finds it easy to see and go after ganja fields, but almost nothing is being done to stop cocaine, which is ravaging the country. It’s very sad.

I heard that political pressure influenced your subsequent research grants and the academic journal that you were going to publish your findings in.

It did take us a while to get published. We had to do revisions that I thought were unnecessary. It would be hard to classify the request for us to do revisions as politically motivated. I just thought that these people who wanted the changes made haven’t got a clue about Jamaica or ethnographic research. They went on vacation once to Jamaica and drew some incomplete conclusions.

I felt that the revisions suggested were often based on ignorance of Jamaican culture and prejudice against ganja. The same problems were evident in letters that the journal received after publication. The letters contained unfounded criticisms, and I had to explain that I was doing anthropological research that nobody else was doing. I wasn’t measuring physiology with test tubes. I was measuring behavior, reporting how these women and their children acted.

These babies are doing great. It wasn’t necessarily due to marijuana, but pot-smoking mothers were apparently good mothers and the marijuana didn’t appear to be hurting the babies. I have said repeatedly that I am not recommending that you smoke pot to have a healthy baby, but I am saying let’s not castigate women who use a mild substance during pregnancy.

After doing research in Jamaica funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1988 to 1991, I submitted two follow-up proposals in 1993 and 1994 and got news that never ever do they want to see those proposals again. They had done one of the worst reviews of a proposals that I had ever seen. Really weak.

I thought I should call NIDA and tell them this shows a lack of understanding of any type of unbiased research on the issues involved and what we’re trying to do. It was a damning review, misguided and misinformed. I have to think that this was due to a political consideration, not an honest review of my work.

I’m 55, in my 15th year as dean, I testified in a trial and the prosecution brought out that I was once on the board of NORML, and involved with a group called POT (Patients Out of Time) and wrote an article for a medical marijuana book. So what? I am a good researcher. Nobody knows more about marijuana use in Jamaica than I do, and I am prepared to speak about that and don’t care what people try to do against me because of it. I felt that this last denial at NIDA was motivated by anti-pot ideology, but since that time I was funded by the National Institute of Health.

Has your career suffered because you’ve objectively researched marijuana? Do you feel you’ve been persecuted because of your research?

There may well be persecution, but if there is, I don’t obsess over it. I’m a very good dean and highly regarded in the nursing and academic communities. Somebody asked me if I was worried about DARE coming after me, and I thought: Isn’t that the organization that gets children to report on their parents?

I am going to continue doing good research and disseminating the results. Am I worried about persecution? Well, I have a secure academic position and could be a nurse again if I had to, but some of these researchers haven’t got something to fall back on so they have to please NIDA and find what they’re supposed to find. To a large degree, the politicization of such research has corrupted the research process. I’m never going to be a part of that.

Interview taken from http://cannabisculture.com/

When it comes to cancer, it is obvious that the need for alternative treatments is growing, and topical cannabis oil offers a much needed avenue to explore.

Throughout history hemp has been known as a medicinal plant. Yet this hasn’t been considered much in the political playground where the goal is making money. Many large pharmaceutical companies that still operate today sold cannabis based medicine in the 1800′s and early 1900′s. Hemp oil if produced properly is a cure-all that the pharmaceutical industry can’t patent. The current restrictions against cannabis were implemented, not because it is bad, but because big money needs to make more big money, even if it means we suffer and die needlessly.

If we were allowed to grow marijuana plants in our backyard and cure our own disease, where would be the money in that for the pharmaceutical industry?

Anybody with a life threatening condition or a limited time left to live should have instant access to the miraculous, therapeutic, and cancer fighting properties of cannabis.

Please help support our efforts to make edible and topical cannabis oils readily available to those with life-threatening conditions. Spread the word!

For more information, visit Phoenix Tears website, and watch this great, informative video clip.

]]> http://www.plantteacher.com/cannabis-oil-melanoma-treatment/feed/ 1 http://www.plantteacher.com/psilocybin-benefits/ http://www.plantteacher.com/psilocybin-benefits/#comments Sun, 18 Dec 2011 12:06:13 +0000 admin http://www.plantteacher.com/?p=2113

New research from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine indicates that the psychedelic drug in magic mushrooms may have lasting medical and spiritual benefits to psychological health. The mushroom-derived hallucinogen, called psilocybin, is known to cause transformative spiritual states, but at high doses it can also bring about “bad trips” marked by terror and panic. The trick is to get the dose just right, which the Johns Hopkins researchers report having accomplished.

In their study, the Hopkins scientists were able to reliably induce transcendental experiences in volunteers, which offered long-lasting psychological growth and helped people find peace in their lives — without the negative effects.

“The important point here is that we found the sweet spot where we can optimize the positive persistent effects and avoid some of the fear and anxiety that can occur and can be quite disruptive,” says lead author Roland Griffiths, professor of behavioral biology at Hopkins.

Giffiths’ study involved 18 healthy adults, average age 46, who participated in five eight-hour drug sessions with either psilocybin — at varying doses — or placebo. Nearly all the volunteers were college graduates and 78% participated regularly in religious activities; all were interested in spiritual experience.

Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% of those who received the drug said the experiment was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.

Critically, however, the participants themselves were not the only ones who saw the benefit from the insights they gained: their friends, family member and colleagues also reported that the psilocybin experience had made the participants calmer, happier and kinder.

Ultimately, Griffiths and his colleagues want to see if the same kind of psychedelic experience could help ease anxiety and fear over the long term in cancer patients or others facing death. And following up on tantalizing clues from early research on hallucinogenic drugs like LSD, mescaline and psilocybin in the 1960s (which are all now illegal), researchers are also studying whether transcendental experiences could help spur recovery from addiction and treat other psychological problems like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

For Griffiths’ current experiment, participants were housed in a living room-like setting designed to be calm, comfortable and attractive. While under the influence, they listened to classical music on headphones, wore eyeshades and were instructed to “direct their attention inward.”

Each participant was accompanied by two other research-team members: a “monitor” and an “assistant monitor,” who both had previous experience with people on psychedelic drugs and were empathetic and supportive. Before the drug sessions, the volunteers became acquainted enough with their team so that they felt familiar and safe. Although the experiments took place in the Hopkins hospital complex in order to ensure prompt medical attention in the event that it was needed, it never was.

As described by early advocates of the use of psychedelics — from ancient shamans to Timothy Leary and the Grateful Dead — the psilocybin experience typically involves a sense of oneness with the universe and with others, a feeling of transcending time, space and other limitations, coupled with a sense of holiness and sacredness. Overwhelmingly, these experiences are difficult to put into words, but many of Griffiths’ participants said they were left with the sense that they understood themselves and others better and therefore had greater compassion and patience.

“I feel that I relate better in my marriage. There is more empathy — a greater understanding of people and understanding their difficulties and less judgment,” said one participant. “Less judging of myself, too.”

Another said: “I have better interaction with close friends and family and with acquaintances and strangers. … My alcohol use has diminished dramatically.”

To find just the right “sweet spot” of dosing, Griffiths started half the volunteers on a low dose and gradually increased their doses over time (with placebo sessions randomly interspersed); the other half started on a high dose and worked their way down.

Those who started on a low dose found that their experiences tended to get better as the dose increased, probably because they learned what to expect and how to handle it. But people who started with high doses were more likely to experience anxiety and fear (though these feeling didn’t last long and sometimes resolved into euphoria or a sense of transcendence).

“If we back the dose down a little, we have just as much of the same positive effects. The properties of the mystical experience remain the same, but there’s a fivefold drop in anxiety and fearfulness,” Griffiths says.

Some past experiments with psychedelics in the ’60s used initial high doses of the drugs — the “blast people away with a high dose” model, says Griffiths — to try to treat addiction. “Some of the early work in addictions was done with the idea of, ‘O.K., let’s model the ‘bottoming-out’ crisis and make use of the dark side of [psychedelic] compounds. That didn’t work,” Griffiths says.

It may even have backfired: other research on addictions shows that coercion, humiliation and other attempts to produce a sense of “powerlessness,” tend to increase relapse and treatment dropout, not recovery. (And the notorious naked LSD encounter sessions conducted with psychopaths made them worse, too.)

Griffiths is currently seeking patients with terminal cancer to participate in his next set of experiments (for more information on these studies, click here); because psychedelics often produce a feeling of going beyond life and death, they are thought to be especially likely to help those facing the end of life. Griffiths is also studying whether psilocybin can help smokers quit.

Griffiths and other researchers like him are hoping to bring the study of psychedelics into the future. They want to build on the promise that some of the early research showed, while avoiding the bad rep and exaggerated claims — for example, that LSD was harmless and could usher in world peace — that became associated with the drugs when people started using them recreationally in the 1960s. The resulting negative publicity helped shut down the burgeoning research.

This time around, caution may be paying off. Dr. Jerome Jaffe, America’s first drug czar, who was not involved with the research, said in a statement, “The Hopkins psilocybin studies clearly demonstrate that this route to the mystical is not to be walked alone. But they have also demonstrated significant and lasting benefits. That raises two questions: could psilocybin-occasioned experiences prove therapeutically useful, for example in dealing with the psychological distress experienced by some terminal patients?

“And should properly-informed citizens, not in distress, be allowed to receive psilocybin for its possible spiritual benefits, as we now allow them to pursue other possibly risky activities such as cosmetic surgery and mountain-climbing?”

The study was published in The Journal of Psychopharmacology.

The mandrake, according to legend, was molded out of the same clay as that from which Adam was created. It was the Devil’s favorite plant. As such it was associated with underground demons and other supernatural powers, and highly regarded as the roots were for their magical properties, their unearthing was considered to be perilous and necessitated a magical procedure.

The aphrodisiac properties of the mandrake are referred to in Genesis when Reuben, finding sweet yellow berries, each about the size of a small plum, took to his mother, Leah. Her sister, Rachel, upon seeing the fruit, said: “Give me, I pray thee, of thy son’s mandrakes”. After some bartering, Leah complied with Rachel’s request, with the gratifying result that the hitherto barren woman conceived and bore Joseph.

Although the aphrodisiac and the narcotic effects of mandrake were known in Ancient Egypt, the origin of the superstition surrounding the herb belongs to the Early Greeks.

As the magical and medicinal plant of the rural people in the Medieval Europe, it was marked Satanic by the Church. Many strange superstitions have gathered round mandrake. One cannot but marvel at the stories about the plant that were going around in the old days. For example, the story about the witch flying on her broomstick gets a whole new meaning when you trace it back to its origins. It was used by the witches in their ceremonious rituals of night traveling. The “witches” would make a magic flying ointment that contained the Mandrake plant, and they would rub it on the broomstick before using it to masturbate. The hallucinogenic substances of Mandrake would enter the body and cause one to experience astral travel.

In folklore and legend it is associated with the symbolism of fertility and wealth, provided that it is treated with care and reverence. It is a plant most prolific in superstitious and magical practices. Often it is used with other magical plants, such as Belladonna, Cinquefoil, Foxglove, Hemlock, and Hemp.

As a manikin it foretells the future. In magical practices, although the mandrake may be found in both male and female shape, it is always regarded as the male principle. In this context it esoterically signifies the consort of Artemis-Hecate, whose presence is heralded by the howling of dogs.

Its medicinal properties and spiritual virtues depend upon the extent of its tap-root. It is undoubtedly poisonous and must be carefully prescribed to be beneficial.

]]> http://www.plantteacher.com/mandrake-plant/feed/ 0 http://www.plantteacher.com/absinthe-and-art/ http://www.plantteacher.com/absinthe-and-art/#comments Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:19:53 +0000 admin http://www.plantteacher.com/?p=2079 Throughout history, absinthe has been used to stimulate mind and provide insight and inspiration.

Famous Absinthe Users

• William Blake
• Edouard Manet
• Charles Baudelaire
• Paul Verlaine
• Arthur Rimbaud
• Charles Cros
• Guy de Maupassant
• Oscar Wilde
• Ernest Dowson
• Edgar Degas
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Adolphe Monticelli
• Paul Gauguin
• Alfred Jarry
• Pablo Picasso
• Anaïs Nin
• Ernest Hemingway
• Marilyn Manson

Visual Artworks Inspired by Absinthe

• Edouard Manet’s 1859 The Absinthe Drinker

  

• Jean-Francois Raffaelli’s 1861 Absinthe Drinkers

  

• Honore Daumier’s 1863 Absinthe Lithographs

  

• Edgar Degas’ 1876 L’Absinthe

  

• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1887 Portrait of Van Gogh

  

• Vincent Van Gogh’s 1887 Still Life with Absinthe

  

• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1893 Monsieur Boileau at the Cafe

  

• Pablo Picasso 1901 Harlequin and his Companion

  

• Pablo Picasso 1901 The Poet Cornuty

  

• Pablo Picasso 1901 The Absinthe Drinker

  

• Pablo Picasso 1902 The Absinthe Drinker

  

• Pablo Picasso 1911 Glass of Absinthe

  

• Viktor Oliva 1901 Absinthe Drinker

  

Santa Ana, CA (PRWEB) October 16, 2011

In response to the Obama administration’s recent escalation of federal raids against California’s medical marijuana dispensaries, a group of retired police officers and judges will hold a press conference this Tuesday to tout a new statewide ballot initiative to regulate marijuana like wine. The law enforcers say that by passing the new voter initiative, California voters will have a strong argument that they can opt out of the Controlled Substances Act.

WHO: Retired LAPD deputy chief of police Stephen Downing, retired superior court judge Jim Gray and retired Redondo Beach PD lieutenant commander Diane Goldstein

WHAT: Press conference on voter initiative telling the feds to back off its marijuana threats

WHEN: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 11:00 AM PT

WHERE: Plaza of the Flags, which is behind the Santa Ana Courthouse, 700 Civic Center Drive West, Santa Ana, CA 92701.

James Gray, a retired superior court judge from Orange County, says, “For the federal government to interfere with state and local implementation of California’s medical marijuana law is tantamount to a government bailout for criminal gangs and violent drug cartels. For some reason the federal government wants to force legal medical marijuana patients toward a dangerous criminal market and away from an above-ground industry that pays over $100 million per year in state taxes and provides jobs for thousands of our citizens. California voters can tell the feds to back off and let Californians implement our own laws by voting to regulate marijuana like wine next November.”

The initiative, the Regulate Marijuana Like Wine Act of 2012, which is endorsed by the Libertarian Party and medical marijuana business training professionals, 420 College, would repeal failed marijuana laws for adults aged 21 and older, strictly regulate the sale of marijuana similar to the wine industry and authorize a vibrant new economy of eco-friendly hemp agriculture and products. The initiative would not change laws regarding medical marijuana, impairment in the workplace, driving while impaired or use by persons under 21 years old.

Despite the escalation in federal threats, initiative proponents are pointing to recent legal cases as well as comments by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as an indication that the federal courts are increasingly open to seeing states take more control in setting their own drug policies. Justice Scalia recently told a U.S. Senate committee that, “it was a great mistake to put routine drug offenses into the federal courts.”

Retired LAPD deputy chief of police Stephen Downing says, “Now more than ever, it is important for Californians to stand up and tell the federal government that enough is enough when it comes to their interference with our marijuana policies. Next November, California voters have the opportunity to hurt the cartels in their pockets in a way that no level of prohibition enforcement and dedicated skill on the part of my police colleagues ever can.”

More information about the initiative is online at http://regulatemarijuanalikewine.com/opt-out-of-war-on-drugs/

Here’s an account of a Salvia Divinorum experience I had a while ago…

Biggest Secret

SESSION 7: 10x salvia extract in bong

From the middle of my vision, a swirling pattern of light intensified, creating what I could only describe as a hole in reality! Simultaneously, my mind was being flooded with forgotten memories and truths at such a pace that I was dumbfounded in awe – gasping, “Wow!.. Oh my God!.. What?” etc. Through the hole, I could see the glowing outlines of two beings made of light, and I realized they were constructing our everyday reality. I felt a new consciousness awaken within me and forgot I had inhaled salvia. I observed the Beings for a moment as they slotted large blocks of reality into place, the edges of which, ran along my arms. When I slightly moved my arms from side to side, I could feel the inside of my skin rubbing against the corners of the blocks.

A young female, human in appearance, came into sight and telepathically instructed me to remain silent. She communicated to me that I was about to be let-in on the biggest secret ever. She turned my awareness around to reveal a black curtain, not in my everyday view, but somehow always there, just behind my mind. She told me to go through the curtain to have the very rare privilege of being allowed to remember what was ‘going on’ behind everyday reality.

It was made known to me at this point, that humanity’s history on earth as we had come to believe, was not real. The passing of time was not real and all that really existed, was an eternal, timeless-now. The millions of years that had passed was just an illusion cast over the consciousness of Man.

Without hesitation, I went through the ‘secret’ black curtain and came out into a great expanse of white space.

From the outside, what I exited appeared similar to a photo booth. Either, it was a portal into our normal universe or, our entire universe was contained inside it (or the illusion of it). I remembered my real, eternal life outside, and I asked myself, ‘How did I forget this so easily?’ However, I felt ecstatic that I was fortunate enough to have made it back ‘home’ as evidently, it was all too easy to lose oneself in the illusion of life and forget the true reality.

I had remembered many things; this ‘outside’ was, is and always will be my true home and that life was just a temporary state I was going through. But there were some things I just couldn’t, or weren’t allowed to remember; why or how did I got caught under the spell of life? What is it that I’m supposed to do in life? And, how long do I have to remain here? Though the latter may be asking ‘When will I die?’ it was more a case of ‘When will I get out of this temporary hindrance (life) to resume my real life outside?’

Another strange memory was that, this wasn’t the first time I had been ‘out here’ with the help of salvia. Apparently, I had done so on a few occasions before, long ago – in previous lives, perhaps.

To get some answers, I casually began talking with the Light-Being that was overseeing our reality. I felt as if we’d known each other for eons. His response, as with the cat-people, was reassuring; everything was alright and I would be free from the spell of life relatively soon. Also, should I wish, salvia was there to help me return to the ‘outside’ and remember my true being.

I could feel my consciousness slowly drifting towards consensual reality. The Light-Being appeared to be re-closing the hole – sort of weaving the edges back together. Realising I had to return to my usual self and resume my life, I cried out to the being, “How long do I have to wait?” (to get back outside). He didn’t respond so I shouted again, “Well, make my death easy!”

The sound of my voice snapped me back into my normal awareness and I realized I was shouting. I became aware of consensual reality and hoped the neighbours hadn’t heard my strange yelling.

My thoughts:

I felt very odd, having just loudly chatted to… Myself? Was this schizophrenia? For the first time in my life, I was talking to ‘someone’ that wasn’t there! A lot more was spoken with the Light-Being, and a lot of knowledge was revealed to me. I had the feeling that I would be able to retain the knowledge, but I forgot the majority of it surprisingly quickly, once I returned to normal – in less than five minutes.

I felt an unusual ‘high’ upon returning – confident and reassured, perhaps brought on by the knowledge that everything was alright and that I had remembered where I would return to when I die. I’m sure I knew at the time but, who was the Being and why did I ask him to make my death easy? What influence did he have on my life?

I remember the outside as a large, white hall and I had the distinct feeling that it was void of time. Time, it appeared, only existed whilst one was in the ‘booth’ of life. Because of this, it felt like I was talking to the Being ‘in’ infinity. A timeless-infinity.

Because I was outside the physical illusion of time, it’s effects weren’t applicable to my consciousness. I sensed a stillness in which a hundred ‘years’ could have easily passed – had time been ticking, but outside, the whole concept of time seemed irrelevant. It really did feel as if I had ‘spent’ hundreds of years talking with the Being, but on my return to consensual reality, hardly any time had passed.

From the book SALVIA DIVINORUM Reality of Life and Death by Stuart Mason

For more info, see: www.tvsuat.com

D.C. Medical Marijuana Entrepreneurs Turn to weGrow Hydroponic Store for Expertise in Permit Applications for Cultivation.

Washington, DC (PRWEB) September 07, 2011

In Washington D.C., those wishing to win a medical marijuana cultivation permit have only a few days remaining before the Sept. 16 deadline. The stringent process is causing many entrepreneurs to turn to experts for assistance, including weGrow, a national hydroponics superstore chain and dispensary permit consultant.

Medical Marijuana Entrepreneur Gar Roberts has already been granted “approval to apply” for two cultivation licenses as well as one dispensary permit in D.C. He says that it was vital for him to get application assistance from a company who had the know-how and experience in the medical marijuana industry. For him, that company is weGrow.

Dhar Mann, founder of weGrow, says that because the medical marijuana industry is so new, entrepreneurs cannot simply turn to their everyday business attorney and CPA for insight and advice.

“There is a serious lack of information available to those looking to get into the medical marijuana industry- and do it right,” said Mann.

That’s where weGrow comes in: the company best known for its national chain of hydroponics superstores also helps clients win dispensary permits. Aside from selling franchise rights to its successful medical marijuana superstores, weGrow has also helped clients write proposals in Arizona, California, New Jersey and New Mexico to apply for a permit to grow and sell medical marijuana. Now weGrow is helping clients like Roberts, in winning one of the 10 cultivation licenses and five dispensary licenses available in Washington D.C.

To assist entrepreneurs like Roberts, weGrow assembled a team of top professionals including doctors, lawyers, scientists, architects, CPAs, horticulturalists, engineers and others to create comprehensive dispensary application plans, specific to each state. Mann says that the intellectual property that weGrow has developed on medical marijuana cultivation and dispensing would easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop independently.

“We are able to pool all of our resources to create plans and applications specific to each state’s strict guidelines, and then we sell those plans to interested entrepreneurs,” said Mann. “By doing this, we save our clients the countless hours, stress and significant funds it would take to find and hire an expert in each specific area. Most people can’t call their CPA for help with projections for growing medical marijuana.”

Roberts is one of the Washington D.C. clients who hired weGrowto assist with the permit application process. A medical cannabis patient himself, Roberts decided to get into the industry when he experienced a major injury to two discs in his back that caused him massive pain. When the doctor prescribed a variety of habit-forming narcotics, he opted for cannabis over the side effects he would experience from the prescription drugs. Now Roberts is committed to helping other patients by opening a dispensary and by growing the plant himself; he is hoping that weGrow can help him obtain the permits to do both in D.C.

Additionally, a weGrowstore is set to open in Washington D.C. by the end of 2011. weGrow is a one-stop-shop for the products and services one would need to grow plants indoors. The store will feature approximately 10,000 square feet of hydroponic supplies, live grow room demonstrations with non-marijuana plants, classes to teach safe and responsible practices for cultivation as well as expert technicians for professional grow room assistance.

About weGrow

weGrow is the first honest hydroponics store, geared towards selling the products and services necessary to grow marijuana for those with medical marijuana needs. From the largest showroom of hydroponic equipment, to grow training services; weGrow is a one-stop-shop for cultivators. weGrow has several locations nationwide and has plans for continued growth. For more information, please visit http://www.weGrowStore.com.

Cooking with cannabis is an art. One must take into consideration a lot of variables. So many things, from heating temperature to solvent can affect the way cannabis will cook, and how it will affect the body. However, to understand the science behind the process of cooking with marijuana, here we will cover the basics of the chemical compounds that make up the marijuana plant, as well as the ways in which these (and other) compounds are metabolized and digested by the human body when combined with foods.

As we all know, THC is the main psychoactive chemical compound in cannabis. However, when ingested orally, THC is not well digested by our body. It must be extracted into complementary compounds that the body can metabolize.

Cannabinoids are a group of compounds present in the cannabis plant, which also occur naturally in our nervous and immune systems. In our body, these naturally occurring chemicals help control mental and physical processes. In the cannabis plant, they are the compounds responsible for extracting and dispersing THC’s unique physiological properties.

The natural cannabinoids produced in our bodies bind with specifically designed nervous-system receptors which are responsible for regulating our nervous-system responses such as: mood, appetite, pain sensation, inflammation response and memory. Because of the way THC affects the nervous system, there are many health benefits to cooking with cannabis – it can be used to reduce pain, stimulate appetite and reduce anxiety.

In other words, the cannabinoid receptors found naturally in our bodies are recognized and targeted by the cannabinoids in cooked marijuana. When properly extracted, the cannabinoids bind, and THC’s psychoactive effects are brought out.

How to Properly Extract THC

THC is a hydrophobic oil and, as such, is insoluble in water. In order to be properly converted, it must be extracted into fats, oils, or alcohol, all of which can bind with the cannabinoids to properly deliver the compound to the body.

To better understand the science of cannabis effects, I recommend this book: Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence.

Cook Cannabis Slowly! Since THC is such a delicate compound it must be gradually combined with butter or oil over low heat (210 degrees Celsius, 401 degrees Fahrenheit) so that it does not break down and vaporize. This is why cannaoils and cannabutters must be cooked for a long period of time. The solvent must slowly absorb the cannabinoids into the fat molecules which will then act as a medium for the THC. These fats also increase absorption in the gut. When digested, the cannabinoid-infused fat molecules concoct with human cannabinoid receptors to distribute the infused THC.

Infused oil and butter are the most common ways to cook with cannabis. Once you’ve mastered the art of making a great marijuana butter or oil, you can cook marijuana into anything. You simply use them instead of regular oil or butter. And remember, it is an urban myth that low quality marijuana is good for cooking. If you want your meals to be delicious, you will want to use good stuff. Cannabis, even after strained from the extraction, can leave a taste. The quality and flavor of the marijuana will be felt in the food.

Make sure you know where the plant came from, and most importantly, that it is organic. Marijuana can carry pathogens and dangerous chemicals. If you are cooking with the cannabis most pathogens will be destroyed, but the extraction will likely still contain pesticides and other nasty chemicals. For medical use especially, you should use pure, organic cannabis.

Finally, don’t eat too much too fast! Some people can tolerate more cannabis food than others. Depending on your tolerance level and your metabolism, digested marijuana could take anywhere between 20 minutes and 2 hours to fully kick in. Digesting marijuana also makes the high last much longer then if you were smoking, so take this into consideration when making plans. Make sure you experiment a bit and get to know your tolerance level before doing anything important!

A good online source for marijuana recipes is Green Grandma’s Cooking website.

For those who prefer to smoke marijuana, here’s a goodbye pic.

Hundreds of herbal medicinal products are being banned from sale in Britain this year under what campaigners say is a “discriminatory and disproportionate” European law.

With just days to go before the EU-wide ban is implemented, thousands of patients face the loss of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades.

From 1 May 2011, traditional herbal medicinal products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner to comply with an EU directive passed in 2004. The directive was introduced in response to rising concern over adverse effects caused by herbal medicines.

Herbal practitioners say it is impossible for most herbal medicines to meet the licensing requirements for safety and quality, which are intended to be similar to those for pharmaceutical drugs, because of the cost of testing.

According to the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), which represents herbal practitioners, not a single product used in traditional Chinese medicine or ayurvedic medicine has been licensed. In Europe, around 200 products from 27 plant species have been licensed but there are 300 plant species in use in the UK alone.

The ANH estimates the cost of obtaining a licence at between £80,000 and £120,000 per herb. They say this is affordable for single herbal products with big markets, such as echinacea, a remedy for colds and flu, but will drive small producers of medicines containing multiple herbs out of business.

Under EU law, statutorily regulated herbal practitioners will be permitted to continue prescribing unlicensed products. But the Coalition Government and the previous Labour administration have delayed plans to introduce a statutory herbal practitioner register.

This means thousands of patients who rely on herbal treatments face being denied access to them. Medical organizations, including the MHRA, have warned the measures may drive patients to obtain herbal medicines over the internet – where risks are much greater.

Dr Rob Verkerk, of the ANH, said: “Thousands of people across Europe rely on herbal medicines to improve their quality of life. They don’t take them because they are sick – they take them to keep healthy. If these medicines are taken off the market, people will try and find them elsewhere, such as from the internet, where there is a genuine risk they will get low quality products, that either don’t work or are adulterated.”

Source: The Independent UK