A Really Good Day

Although it’s long been known that 67 percent of women’s admissions to psychiatric facilities occur during the week immediately prior to menstruation, only recently have researchers begun to consider the effect of PMS on women with mood disorders.

print out a copy of Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens and Drugs, a thoughtful, research-based harm-reduction guide for teens, parents, and educators, written by Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D., and published by the Drug Policy Alliance.*26

Conceived by the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow is the state of “intense emotional involvement” and timelessness that comes from immersive and challenging activities. Flow can happen when you are creating art or computer code or when you are scaling a mountain. It’s a gift that arrives rarely, when you are most focused and present.

“How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, told me, “The war on drugs and the war on crime are the most recent manifestation of an impulse to punish, control, and exploit poor people of color which will surface repeatedly in our country until we are willing to face our racial history.

Robin L. Carhart-Harris et al., “Psilocybin with Psychological Support for Treatment-resistant Depression: An Open-label Feasibility Study.”

*2 See American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, “Active Ingredient in Magic Mushrooms Reduces Anxiety, Depression in Cancer Patients.”

Presti said, “I really think there’s something going on with microdosing. I think when people do get around to researching it, it’s going to be relatively easy to demonstrate positive effects that are better than conventional antidepressants, which are awful.” About antidepressants Presti said, “They have all kinds of side effects, and we have no idea, really, what they’re doing. They cost a lot of money and they’re marketed with all kinds of flimflam.”
Was he actually saying that microdosing was either as safe as or perhaps even safer than conventional antidepressants? I asked him, incredulous.
“Oh, absolutely.”

Treatment with psychedelics reduces anxiety and improves the mood of patients facing death, as researchers at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and NYU have recently shown.

three institutions have been or are currently engaged in psilocybin studies on volunteers with end-stage cancer, with astonishing results.*2 Patients dosed with psilocybin in a pleasant environment accompanied by two researchers providing comfort and support underwent spiritual experiences that didn’t just make them feel better, but transformed the way they thought about their illnesses, and allowed them to confront death without fear. It gave many of them the “good death” we all hope for. Other recent research with psilocybin has shown that it relieves cluster headaches,*3 and aids in the cessation of smoking.*4