drugs

1. What you should know about the substances that surround you By Jordan Ben-Zion

2. Table of contents Slide 3- What non “drug addicts” are addicted to. Slide 4- Marijuana history Slide 5- Marijuana effects Slide 6- Naturally occurring psychoactives Slide 7- History of naturally occurring psychoactives Slide 8- History of LSD and other psychedelics in modern America Slide 9- Government and the War on Drugs Slide 10- DMT Slide 11- List of substances from worse side effects to less severe/no side effects (My view that I have formulated with the knowledge I have accumulated. ) Slide 12- Marijuana and Psychedelics and the creative flow Slide 13- EVOLVE YOUR BRAIN AND JOIN US IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN (utopia) Slide 14- Bibliography

3. “I would never take drugs, THEY’RE EVIL!” Wrong, you do take drugs, and they are not evil. Some will kill you instantly, some over time, and some will only help you. Just because a substance is illegal doesn’t mean its worse for you than a legal one, in a lot of cases its actually the opposite. LSD has been rumored by the government to cause flashbacks and chromosomal damage. Recently we have discovered neither of these are true, but that aspirin, and caffeine cause chromosomal damage. Aspirin doesn’t cure anything, it is made from the same plant as heroin and like heroin is a concentrated form, so all you’re doing by taking an aspirin is numbing the pain. Your body, while you work out, creates a compound called endorphins that is very molecularly similar to heroin and morphine and because of that heroin, morphine, aspirin, etc. fit into your cell receptors so perfectly This is true for psychedelics as well. The only reason LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline etc. effect you is because they molecularly look almost the same as a compound called DMT that is made by your brain in large doses every night. When these molecules that look so like DMT enter the brain they fit into mostly the same cell receptors as thc, lsd, etc. This explains the very similar effects of these substances. Nicotine is the most addictive substance known to man. FACT! Enough said. So for all you 19 year old girls holding a cigarette and a Saki bomb, saying “I would never do drugs they’re bad!” Think again, because not only do you do drugs, your drug of choice is worse for you than one of a hippies in 1962

4. Marijuana history Evidence of the inhalation of cannabis smoke can be found as far back as the 3rd millennium BC The Hindus and Muslims use Marijuana religiously and look at the plant as a relatively safe indulgence, and a gift from the gods. Cannabis is the largest cash crop of the united states, generating an estimated 36 billion dollar market, and its only legal for medical use in California, and one county in Colorado. Imagine if it were just legal. Marijuana and hemp are virtually the same plant and are the most productive plant, in a way that you can make anything with this plant much easier than others. In the constitution there is a right to grow hemp, which is what they called marijuana in those times. George Washington the first American president, was a hemp farmer, and I can bet that would come home and his wife would hand him a fat doobie to unwind with. xD Marijuana along with psychedelics at one point was categorized with heroin in the worst category, that states it has no medical uses and high addictive potentials etc. This is true for 90% of drugs out there, besides naturally occurring ones. Recently it has been moved to schedule 2 which states that its highly addictive and may cause dependence but has recognized medical use. In California today you can go to your doctor, complain about back pain, and be prescribed medical marijuana. Then you can go to local weed vending machine and make a purchase of your strain of choice, from Blueberry haze to Grandaddypurp.

5. Marijuana Effects Marijuana’s effects on the body and mind are debated widely. The best way to describe the feeling right after taking a huge rip from the bong, is reality is simply different. Another description of what it feels like would be but a medicine for the soul, its almost like a godly feeling. All of a sudden you don’t care about the homework you have to do, or whatever you have to do because you know after the high fades that you’ll deal with real life again but for now, you’re just chilling, probably listening to music, or stimulating yourself creatively. Marijuana also causes a separation from the conscious and the body, so much to the point you might stare at something for 5 minutes, and not even notice time goes by, your mind is completely blank. This is actually what meditation is, which is clearing your mind of all thoughts, and this has been said to be the only way to live in the moment. You are also in a very relaxed state, you even seem lazy. The thing is though that it effects everyone differently. Marijuana negative effects on the brain are that those thc molecules reside in the brain for up to four days after inhalation, these thc molecules slow down the speed at which the neurons interact, by an unnoticeable amount, because neuron firing rate is 200 mph, so with thc in it it might be like 199 mph for a couple days. Thc damage is done with frequent use, and not high dose, this is because your brain is cleaning itself out and you filled it back up again, so not only do you have the remaining thc in your brain but you’ve just added some more, this is what is called tolerance. So experienced marijuana smokers know, the less frequent the better the effects, and the least damage. If you smoke marijuana or thc regularly it infuses with your personality, because thc makes you more of who you are, and takes 4 days to completely leave your brain, so a chronic or daily smoker acts more himself almost, because his brain has thc in it always, and when he smokes its not getting high really, its just refilling on just another chemical out of the thousands that compose of your reality. He also becomes the lazy, forgetful , hilarious , creative etc. one ;again this is not for everyone but for a lot of stoners this is the case Marijuana’s negative effects on the lungs are only because you are smoking the herb. Marijuana is just as bad for the lungs if smoked, as any other herb, like tobacco, or eucalyptus even. There is a way to go around harming your respiratory and still getting high, and that’s using a vaporizer, which is actually good for your respiratory, and with this machine you’re getting pure hits of thc. Marijuana is said to not be a medicine for the body , as some are but a medicine for the soul.

6. Naturally occurring psychoactives A psychoactive is anything natural with an active compound that is a psychedelic. Naturally occurring means, you walk through the forest, and its just there. No extraction process, no concentration process. There are various psychedelic mushrooms, various psychedelic cacti, psychoactive plants etc. Some of the actual psychoactives are THC (chemical in Marijuana that gives you most of the high), Psilocybin (the chemical in mushrooms that makes you trip), Mescaline (the chemical in cacti that make you trip), LSD (which is semi synthetic because it’s a concentration of the chemical in ergot (a fungi that grows on wheat) that gets you high, LSA (natural less potent version of LSD coming from morning glory seeds, and others.) and last but not least DMT (the chemical in one species of plant in every ecosystem, that is the most potent psychedelic in the world, and is produced naturally by you brain) There are many more, that we have discovered and probably tons that we haven't.

7. History of naturally occurring psychoactives Psychedelic is from a Greek word meaning soul manifesting. Psychoactives were used even since the beginning of history, we see even in caves engravings of mushrooms that date even before we developed a writing system. Eventually the endogenous tribes realized these plants effects and they dedicated one person of the tribe called the shaman to ingest large doses of various psychedelics, to induce visions, and experiences. He would later tell the people of his village about his realizations. The Ancient Greek oracle was basically the same thing.

8. History of LSD, Marijuana and other psychedelics in modern America. 1950’s was when psychedelics and marijuana started to hit the scene. This started with the jazz playing African Americans, and then going into the Beatniks, which led to the hippie movement. LSD first came onto the scene as legal and entered the field of psychiatry, psychology, biology, etc. Later LSD was used for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and with some promising results, because of its psyche-enhancing properties. In the late 1950’s to early 1960’s Timothy Leary, a professor at Harvard, brought attention by the media to the chemical LSD by giving his students LSD and Psilocybin during class as a teaching drug. Leary later came up with the catchphrase Turn on, Tune in, & drop out. LSD and other psychedelics became illegal in 1970 but this did not stop the hippies from taking them, slowly restrictions and law severity increased and so did the anti psychedelic and marijuana propaganda which is now the reason why these substances are so unpopular today.

9. Government and the war on drugs The Government is actually in favor of drugs, but not the ones I’ve been discussing in this presentation. The reason for this government bias I can not tell you, maybe its because these mind expanding substances could cause you to question the government rather than your place below the government . The hippies, because of their realizations of life through the mind expanding drugs they were taking led them to lead life very differently than everyone else. They set up communes in the forest and lived independently, they were about free love, friendship, real human bonds, etc. They changed the idea of a society, and maybe even made it more enjoyable. The government in response flooded the peoples heads with propaganda, DARE just say no (dont think) campaigns, This is your brain on drugs commercials etc (then you see 2 eggs hit a pan and sizzle) They even put marijuana and psychedelics in the same category as heroin. This war on drugs reduced use of these substances but at the expense of our jails being filled halfway full with nonviolent potheads, and 430 billion dollars of taxpayers money.

10. DMT DMT (Di-Methyl-Tryptamine) is called by Rick Strassman (the first person to conduct a psychedelic research on humans since 1970’s) The Spirit molecule. DMT is excreted from the pineal gland, a small gland in the center of your brain. This gland appears 49 days after conception, the same time that sex is identifiable, and the same time that the Buddhists say the soul enters the body. This chemical is also called brain food because your body does whatever it is that I can to harness it and send it to the brain. This chemical is the chemical that your brain produces when you sleep, and it causes you to dream. It is also what causes you to have a vision before you die. This chemical is endogenous to your brain and has no negative side effects. A psychedelic when it hits the brain stimulates a specific receptor that causes your brain to be able to send the messages it constantly does but at a faster pace and to neurons much farther than its normal reach. The brain under DMT is working at a more efficient and evolved level to the point that your brain experiences whatever it is that you’re tripping as if it were real, very much like a dream. After your first or second hit of DMT, The effects peak so rapidly that you must pass whatever you smoked out of to someone overlooking this experience. Then you close your eyes, lay down, and you are in another dimension, you could see ,hear, touch, smell, feel, anything and your brain acts as if it has that experience. You just lay there squirming for 20 minutes but in your mind you’re undergoing the most intense and profound experience of your life. You wake up and if you want to remember this experience you must immediately either record yourself talking about the trip, or video record it, because almost immediately you start to forget the experience, like a dream. This is because the experience is too thought provoking, too intense, that your brain shields you from that experience by erasing it from your memory.

11. My list of substances from worse side effects to less severe/no side effects DMT -No side effects THC (marijuana) Psilocybin (mushrooms) Mescaline (Cactus) LSA (Morning glory seeds) LSD (Ergot) MDMA (ecstasy) Aspirin Caffeine DXM (cough syrup) Codeine Ketamine Prescription pills Amphetamine Methamphetamine Cocaine PCP Opiates Heroin Nicotine -Most addictive substance known to mankind

12. Psychoactives and the creative flow Many musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers, etc. claim that psychoactives help them creative wise and also claim that their best work was made under the influence of psychoactives, from Jimi Hendrix to Salvador Dali. Other people who usually don’t use psychoactives say that it cant make you more creative if its external, therefore your creation is an illusion. This statement makes no sense, what makes my creation less real than anyone else? What does real even mean? Does it mean tangible? I think not, I think if you can think it or see it, it is real. Whether it is a real possibility in the world, or a real tangible object is a different story. I also have a theory that because these molecules so closely look like the one that causes dreams, that you attain a certain subconscious, dream like state on psychoactives, and subconsciously your potential is endless and so without even noticing you may unlock a hidden “power” that in actuality everyone has. There are reports that backup this theory, one of them being the fact that an acid rock guitarist would forget he was even playing the guitar at some points in this performance and that was when the best material was created. Another report is on a psychedelic someone starts running, forgets he's even running , looks down and sees his legs have been exponentially getting faster and faster and now he was running at a speed he never thought was physically possible for his body to do, and it probably is. This actually happened to a friend of mine. Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD. My theory is, that if you treated real life, with the same knowledge that anything is possible, like how you treat a lucid dream, you would be able to do anything imaginable, like in a lucid dream. The question is how do you separate yourself from everything you’ve learned, youre conditioning, the answer DMT! Lol.

13. Evolve your brain and join us in the garden of EDEN (utopia) What do I mean by this. I mean that since the beginning of time the standard of living has dropped, and dropped, and dropped. The air is more polluted, even toxic now, the water, has even changed colors, etc. Instead of living with the earth and each other, we create a system that leads us to live mundane and boring lives, as the rich feed off our resources, and our world slowly deteriorates. We feel that the further technology advances the happier we are, but that’s quite the opposite, the more technology, the more dependence on the concept of possession. What if we all agreed material things were on a level not even close to that of a humans. What is possession, why must you own things and I must own other things, why cant it be what is mine is ours and what is ours is mine. What is a government, what is a nation, instead of questioning our place in society, we must question why society is the way it is, and where do we go from here to better it. These thoughts would be more probable to have if we weren't conditioned from birth not to think this way or if some of your brain receptors were stimulated, either by something you saw, or heard, or a psychoactive. When on a psychoactive you have thoughts of inner peace, and acceptance, thought of tolerance, and friendship, love, etc. If everyone in the world experienced these thoughts and realizations the world would be a better place. Utopia is possible today, all that needs to be done is that everyone on earth must agree on a certain set of very logical statements. What if you walked up to a religious person and somehow made him agree with you that there is no heaven or hell, that you have to make your life on earth, your heaven. That person would live life completely differently after that day. Religion is a thought that is very primitive and stands in the way of progressive , psychedelic thinkers, who are wanting to reach this place of happiness.

14. Have a little trip of your own http://www.neave.com/strobe/

15. Bibliography Erowid.org The book Trips by Cheryl Pellerin The book DMT: the spirit molecule by Rick Strassman The book Tikhal- Alexander Shulgin My Brain Other sources I cant remember