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Altered States
Dad Calls To Tell Me
he used the Amazonian jujitsu death / grip to choke out the pharmacist / who wouldn’t give him his heart medication / until tomorrow — which, he admits, is when / it’s actually scheduled for pickup.
December 2022In Vino Veritas
Edward Slingerland On The Hidden Truths About Our Relationship With Alcohol
What if . . . our taste for alcohol has been strengthened and preserved in our gene pool for functional reasons? Then we might look at intoxication not as a side note but as part of the story of what makes us human.
July 2022Four Poems From Ancient China
Call next door, ask / neighbors on the west if they can spare / any wine, and suddenly a jarful comes / across the fence — fresh, unfiltered. We / open mats beside Meandering River’s / long currents, crystalline winds arrive, / and you’re startled it’s already autumn.
July 2022Memory: Short-Term Loss, Long-Term Gain
I am not so sure it is “we” who look back. The commemorating imagination seems to come alive on its own. We are not the sole instigators of remembering; memory seems to push itself on us.
February 2022Sunbeams
July 2021Is marijuana addictive? Yes, in the sense that most of the really pleasant things in life are worth endlessly repeating.
Mr. X
One Scientist’s Experience With Cannabis
The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.
July 2021Parting The Clouds
Charles Raison On New Treatments For Depression
All the data so far suggest that a single treatment, or two treatments, with psychedelics can relieve depression for an extended period, because the psychedelics cause the patient to see the world differently.
February 2021On Becoming A Cat
Please understand: the external metamorphosis comes only at the very end, after a long, sustained effort. There is a lot of inner work you have to do before then. Also there is luck involved.
December 2018Sunbeams
November 2017We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
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