Magic Mushrooms’ Can Improve Spiritual Benefits and Psychological Health

The psychedelic drug in magic mushrooms may have lasting medical and spiritual benefits, according to new research from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The mushroom-derived hallucinogen, called psilocybin, is known to trigger transformative spiritual states, but at high doses it can also result in “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 zero in on the “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?”

AFRICAN AFFAIRS : Kenya’s Somali Contradiction

The attack that killed more than 70 people at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall last week was, according to al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist militant group that carried it out, retribution for Kenya’s intervention in Somalia. That raises a simple question: What is Kenya doing in Somalia, and is it worth the price?

Since Kenya’s army invaded its northeasternneighbor two years ago, the government has told Kenyans that they were going to war against al-Shabaab. But, as with most official pronouncements in Kenya, that story was only partly true.

On the night of October 15, 2011, I lay awake listening to the Kenyan military convoys passing through the border town of Dadaab on their way to Somalia to launch the first foreign military campaign in Kenya’s history. The proximate cause was the abduction of two Spanish aid workers from the vast refugee camps that encircle Dadaab. For the Kenyan authorities, it was the final straw after a series of abductions of Westerners by al-Shabaab; to stop the incursions, they launched what military leaders believed would be a quick campaign.

Over the last two years, some progress has ostensibly been made. The two Spanish aid workers were released last July, and al-Shabaab has attempted only one abduction since. Moreover, the rebels have been dislodged from the southern Somali port of Kismayo, which was once their main base. But al-Shabaab retains control of the majority of Somalia and remains capable of striking Mogadishu, the capital, as well as Nairobi.

Given this, if the Kenyan government’s aim was, as it claimed, to destroy al-Shabaab, the intervention has been a spectacular failure. But there is much more to the story. In fact, retaliation against the militant group was little more than a convenient excuse to launch the so-called Jubaland Initiative, a plan to protect Kenya’s security and economic interests by carving out a semi-autonomous client state in southern Somalia.

While knowledge of the plan was initially confined largely to Kenyan government officials, it was not long before its contours began to be revealed. Kenya has installed a client regime in Kismayo, and has supported the new government in its quest to make Jubaland a semi-autonomous region, along the lines of Puntland, Somaliland, and the many other self-declared proto-states that have emerged as Somalia has unraveled.

Beyond preventing Somalia’s violence from spilling over into Kenya and undermining its security and its tourist-driven economy, such a buffer state could be forced to absorb the half-million Somali refugees who now live in Dadaab’s refugee camps. In this sense, the Jubaland Initiative is a policy of stunning racial profiling—and a gift to al-Shabaab recruiters in Kenya.

Furthermore, contrary to claims that securing Kismayo put al-Shabaab at a disadvantage, the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea reported in July that the Kenyan Defense Forces have actually gone into business with al-Shabaab. The group’s profits from illicit charcoal (and possibly ivory) exported from Kismayo have grown since Kenya took control.

This highlights a fundamental problem: the Kenyan state’s endemic corruption constantly undermines its policymakers’ goals. Indeed, in Kismayo, Kenyan officials have reverted to their default occupation—the pursuit of private profit. Instead of working to achieve the diplomatic objective of defeating al-Shabaab, Kenya’s military, politicians, and well-connected businessmen have been lining their own pockets.

Moreover, Kenya’s desire to carve out a buffer state conflicts with the Somali government’s goal of uniting the country. Indeed, the last thing the government in Mogadishu wants is another semi-autonomous region challenging its authority—or another country annexing southern Somalia for its own purposes.

The United States and the European Union—which are bankrolling the African Union’s intervention in Somalia to support the Mogadishu-based government—have attempted to paper over the disagreement with Kenya over the Jubaland Initiative, despite its potential to fuel further conflict. In fact, Kenya-backed Jubaland forces clashed with Somali government troops in Kismayo earlier this year.

The Westgate attack should spur Kenya’s leaders to re-think their approach toward Somalia. A more coherent strategy would involve cutting off al-Shabaab’s funding and addressing the grievances—such as human-rights abuses against Somalis, discrimination against Muslims, foreign meddling in Somalia, and corruption—that motivate its recruits. In a bizarre twist, al-Shabaab even called on Kenyans to prosecute their leaders for post-election bloodletting in 2007-2008.

Given these intractable grievances—and, more important, the weakness and corruption of the Kenyan state—the cycle of violence will be very difficult to break. That is why the attack on the Westgate mall is unlikely to be the last such tragedy.

Ben Rawlence, an Open Society Fellow, is the author of Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War 

MIND, MATTER & POLITICS : Snowden and the Pope

Pope Francis increasingly resembles a gust of fresh air blowing through the musty chambers of the Catholic Church. He looks and behaves like a normal human being. He wears shoes instead of red velvet slippers. He has good taste in books: Dostoevsky, Cervantes. And he has a more humane attitude toward homosexuals, even if he has not opposed church doctrine on sexual behavior.

But the most astonishing thing that Francis has said, in a recent letter to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, concerns non-believers. A non-believer is safe from the fires of Hell, the pope assures us, as long as the non-believer listens to his or her own conscience. These are his exact words: “Listening [to] and obeying [one’s conscience] means deciding about what is perceived to be good or to be evil.”

In other words, neither God nor the Church is really needed to tell us how to behave. Our conscience is enough. Even devout Protestants would not go that far. Protestants only cut out the priests as conduits between an individual and his maker. But Francis’s words suggest that it might be a legitimate option to cut out God Himself.

The Catholic Church would not have survived for as long as it has if it had not been prepared to change with the times. The Pope’s statement certainly is in accord with the extreme individualism of our age. But it is nonetheless a little puzzling. After all, a Christian believer, as the Pope must be, would have to assume that questions of good and evil, and how to behave ethically, are prescribed by church doctrine and holy texts. Christians believe that their views of right and wrong are sacred and universal, and that morality is a collective pursuit.

I do not know whether Edward J. Snowden, the American former intelligence contractor who exposed official secrets in protest against his government’s snooping on its citizens, is a Christian. Perhaps he is an atheist. Either way, he fits perfectly the new pope’s view of the moral person. Snowden claims that he acted according to his conscience, to protect “basic liberties for people around the world.” His view of the collective good was entirely individual.

Perhaps in a secular age ethical behavior has no other basis than one’s own conscience. If sacred texts can no longer tells us the difference between good and evil, we will have to decide for ourselves. Liberal democracy cannot provide the answer; nor does it pretend that it can. It is no more than a political system designed to resolve conflicts of interests lawfully and peacefully. Questions about morality and the meaning of life lie outside its scope.

But democratic politics can be, and often is, strongly influenced by religious beliefs. Most European countries have Christian-democratic political parties. Israel has its Orthodox parties. American politics is saturated by Christian doctrine and symbols, especially—but by no means exclusively—on the right. Muslims are trying to inject their faith into politics, often in illiberal ways. Then there are the secular political ideologies, such as socialism, which have a strong ethical component. Socialist and communist parties, no less than the Catholic Church, have firm views on right and wrong, and on what the collective good should be. Indeed, social democracy in many countries is rooted in Christianity.

And yet, despite the huge victory won by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in Germany’s recent election, Christianity is a fast-vanishing force in European politics. And left-wing parties’ influence is vanishing even faster. Most of what remained of socialist ideology was washed away in the late 1980’s with the collapse of the Soviet empire.

What has emerged since the social upheavals of the 1960’s and the financial “Big Bangs” of the 1980’s is a new type of liberalism that not only lacks a clear moral basis, but also regards most government restraints as attacks on individual freedom. In many respects, we are no longer citizens, but consumers. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s unrestrained behavior, both personal and financial, made him the perfect politician for the neo-liberal age.

Might there be new ways to establish a moral basis for our collective behavior? Some utopians believe that the Internet will do so by creating space for new citizen networks to transform the world. In the sense that social media can be used to mobilize people for good causes, there is some truth to this. Thousands of Chinese idealists, inspired by bloggers and social media, helped their fellow citizens after a recent earthquake, even as their government was suppressing the news.

But the Internet is, in fact, pushing us in the opposite direction. It encourages us to become narcissistic consumers, expressing our “likes” and sharing every detail of our individual lives without truly connecting with anyone. This is no basis for finding new ways to define good and evil or to establish collective meanings and purposes.

All the Internet has done is make it easier for commercial enterprises to compile huge databases on our lives, thoughts, and desires. Big business then passes this information on to big government. And that is why Snowden’s conscience drove him to share government secrets with us all.

Perhaps he did us a favor. But I cannot imagine that he is quite whom Pope Francis had in mind when he was trying to bridge the gap between his faith and our age of unbound individualism.

Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY : Problem Solving in the Anthropocene

Take a deep breath. Savor it for a moment. Now consider this: None of our modern human ancestors ever breathed anything like it—and, the way things are going, nor will our descendants.

Since the Industrial Revolution began, human activity has substantially changed the atmosphere’s composition. Carbon-dioxide levels are higher today than they have been in at least 800,000 years. The amount of nitrogen and sulfur circulating through the Earth system has doubled. The ocean’s pH is changing at an unprecedented rate, reaching levels of acidity that marine organisms have not experienced in the last 20 million years.

Clearly, humans—who now occupy almost 40% of the planet’s ice-free land surface—are shaping many of the planet’s fundamental processes. According to Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, this shift is so profound that it amounts to the beginning of a new epoch: the Anthropocene.

While some scientists believe that the Anthropocene actually began when humans started farming and domesticating animals, others (including me) consider it to be a more recent development. But, regardless of when the Anthropocene began, it is clear that humanity’s impact on the planet increased substantially after World War II’s end.

Indeed, around 1950, the world seems to have reached a tipping point, with practically every factor that heightens humanity’s impact on the planet—population, GDP, fertilizer use, the proliferation of telephones, and paper consumption, to name only a few—beginning to increase rapidly. During this period, which the scientist Will Steffen dubbed the “Great Acceleration,” the human population became sufficiently large and connected, with high enough consumption, to become a major global force.

In a 2009 study, scientists concluded that, by crossing any of nine “planetary boundaries”—climate change, biodiversity loss, disruption of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land use, freshwater extraction, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, and chemical pollution—humans would increase the risk of fundamentally changing the Earth system. Given that these boundaries are closely interlinked, allowing trends toward any of them to continue, especially at the current rate, would drive the environment into unknown territory, potentially causing serious damage to the systems that underpin human survival.

In order to cope with the unique challenges of the Anthropocene, humans need a new approach to management and strategic decision-making. Developing successful strategies will require abandoning long-held assumptions that worked in the past, but that have become counterproductive myths today.

One such myth is that it is best to tackle one problem at a time with straightforward, targeted solutions. While this approach may be appealing, it is inadequate to address today’s most pressing issues. For example, producing and delivering nutritious food consistently to upwards of nine billion people by mid-century has implications for water and energy consumption, agricultural development and land use, the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, and ocean acidification, not to mention biodiversity loss, such as through overfishing.

Given this, the Green Revolution’s narrow, production-focused approach cannot overcome food insecurity in the future, even though it produced truly impressive output increases in the past. The world needs an innovative, comprehensive strategy aimed at optimizing the entire food system—for example, by improving fertilizer and water use and food transportation and storage; by ensuring that adequate nutrition is accessible and affordable for all; and by changing communities’ eating habits to include less resource-intensive food.

The trouble is that complexity can be overwhelming, so people often prefer to break down complex systems into individual components. Rather than consider, say, eradicating extreme poverty and averting global warming in tandem—and developing mutually reinforcing strategies to achieve these goals—proposed solutions focus on one or the other, undermining their effectiveness.

Of course, addressing interconnected issues simultaneously carries its share of challenges. For one thing, no single person or group has enough knowledge or experience to solve all of the problems afflicting a complex system at once.

But a wider community—including governments, businesses, researchers, philosophers, faith communities, and even poets and artists—could devise and implement holistic strategies. Success will depend on participants’ willingness to cooperate and their commitment to put evidence before ideology. Thus, the real challenge lies in marshaling such an inclusive community—something at which global leaders have not proved adept.

A second major challenge is that resources are limited, making it impossible to solve all of the world’s problems at once. In this context, the ability to prioritize effectively is essential. But, rather than emphasizing one problem over another, the top priority should be building resilience into all global systems. Mechanisms aimed at solving a problem in one system should not be allowed to compromise another system’s resilience.

Another challenge will be to devise new metrics to replace GDP as the leading measure of human well-being. Even Simon Kuznets, the main architect of the concept of GDP, recognized that it does not account for many of the factors affecting human well-being; he argued that it should be used “only with some qualifications.” In the Anthropocene, GDP must be part of an array of metrics for assessing economic, natural, and social capital—that is, the value of the goods and services produced, as well as the dignity of the ecosystems and social structures that underpin this output.

Navigating the Anthropocene effectively and ethically is perhaps the most daunting challenge that modern humans have faced. Overcoming it will require a smarter approach to strategic decision-making and a broader understanding of innovation. It is time for us to rise to the challenge.

Kevin J. Noone is Director of the Swedish Secretariat for Environmental Earth System Sciences and Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Applied Environmental Science at Stockholm University

Bagmati river

It may be unbelievable today but this is how the Bagmati river looked in late 70ies.
The building on the left side is Prashuti Griha ( Maternity Home) Hospital, Thapathali.
This photo was probably taken during the monsoon season from the Kupandol bridge
Photo by: Judith Conant Chase .The Chobar gorge cuts through the Mahabharat Range, also called the Lesser Himalaya. This 2,000 to 3,000 meter range is the southern limit of the "middle hills" across Nepal, an important cultural boundary between distinctive Nepali and more Indian cultures and languages, as well as a major geological feature.
The basin of the Bagmati River, including the Kathmandu Valley, lies between the much larger Gandaki basin to the West and the Kosi Basin to the east. These adjacent basins extend north of the main Himalayan range and cross it in tremendous gorges, in fact the Arun tributary of the Kosi extends far into Tibet. The smaller Bagmati rises some distance south of the Himalaya. Without glacial sources, its flow is more dependent on rainfall,