This Week in Psychedelics

"This Week in Psychedelics" is a Reality Sandwich column that follows the multifaceted media appearances of this class of chemicals and their effects in popular culture.

• Fox News Medicine Hunter Chris Kilham suggests that natural and psychedelic medicines might have saved soul diva Amy Winehouse from her untimely death. Kilham writes that "Combined with other lifestyle approaches including counseling, detox, diet and exercise, the psychedelic drugs may eventually occupy a distinguished spot in the full pharmacy of addiction treatment options." (Fox News)
• Dennis McKenna argues that plants possess a sophisticated consciousness that has co-evolved with other lifeforms, "virtuoso chemists that use messenger molecules as territorial signals, speaking to fungi, insects, and herbivores." (Common Ground)
• B.C. Police suspect native communities of using peyote and ayahuasca in healing ceremonies. (CBC)
• 12 doctors on Haida Gwaii are warning residents about the danger of using psychedelic drugs during aboriginal healing ceremonies. (CBC)
• In Magic Trip, filmmakers Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney craft a documentary from the unedited byproducts of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' long, strange trip. (New York Times; Wall Street Journal)
• A federal appeals court agreed to hear a legal challenge by the U.S. attorney general over the Santo Daime church's right to use a hallucinogen as part of its service. (Mail Tribune)
• Shaman Peter Aziz is tried at the Bristol Crown Court for using ayahuasca, a "mind-altering brew straight from the Amazon," for spiritual ceremonies. (This is Bristol)
• Discussion of the term "entheogen" as "a substance used in a ritualistic, religious context to bring about a connection to the divine within an individual or group of individuals," and how this term applies to the use of tabacco by the aborigines of Connecticut. (Stratford, CT Patch)
• Reason Magazine reports on how MAPS and the ACLU used scientific evidence to successfully challenge harsh federal Ecstasy sentencing guidelines. (Reason)
• The Educational & Industrial Film Festival featured kitschy classroom educational films on psychedelics and other topics from the '40s, '50s, and '60s. (Chicago Tribune)
• Marijuana supporters get approval to put another recreational legalization measure before California voters. (AP; CBS News)
• Oil extracted from the marijuana plant has been shown to have extraordinary cancer-fighting properties. (Santa Cruz Patch)
  
• Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military's independent news source, features an article about MAPS' proposal to treat chronic PTSD with marijuana. (Stars and Stripes)
• Veterans speak out about the urgent need for research into the therapeutic benefits of marijuana. (Maine Morning Sentinel)
  
• Director John Michael McDonagh describes his "LSD-Fueled Art-House Irish Western" film The Guard. (Artinfo)
• UMD's Tweed Museum of Art features a collection of psychedelic posters. (WDIO)
• A New Zealand "drug lord" is sentenced to 11.5 years in prison for, among other things, couriering a Harry Potter book from Spain with 35 tabs of LSD hidden in the spine. (New Zealand Hearald)
• In honor of chemistry day at Scientific American, one writer discusses the mysterious science behind LSD. (Scientific American)
• Police eventually subdue three men fighting naked on LSD after using stun guns "without any apparent effect." (KTVZ)
• Doctor Who star Matt Smith describes an upcoming episode as "trippy and psychedelic." (Digital Spy)
• A list of "addictives" in Hyderabad ranges from cocaine to the "easily available" weed to the "more potent and expensive" ecstasy and LSD. (The Times of India)
• One author describes the debt ceiling debate "as if Washington's leading political players...had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage...to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline." (Huffington Post)
• Ken Burns' documentary on prohibition is described as a "distant mirror on [the] 'War on Drugs' debacle." (Seattle Pi)
• Margaret Boise, a health care administrator, describes the effects of "bath salts" to be "a combination of someone using a lot of cocaine and LSD." (Chronicle-Telegram)
• An article examines the link between musicians and drugs in India. (Business Standard)