I bought the nima CDthe one with the clear lenticular case that could wiggle the cybernetic album art designed by artist Cam de Leonwhen I was 12 years old at a long-forgotten record store in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where I grew up. I was, at that time, on whatever level of consciousness is associated with being in middle school and sitting at the lunch table that hosted Magic: The Gathering gameslevel one, I guess.
Even as new GLP-1 agonists with brand names like Wegovy and Zepbound make it easier to achieve weight loss, and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors ( SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft provide a hedge against depression, there is growing interest in an old idea: psychedelics. The drugs are not being researched as a diversion from life, but instead as a therapeutic intervention to help us handle life's challenges in more creative ways.
"Part of the beauty of psychedelics is that they loosen our fixed notions of ourselves in the world," said Jae Sevelius, a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioral health researcher at Columbia University.
Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is now spending her time promoting psychedelic drugs and artificial intelligence - and touting her closeness with the Trump administration. Sinema, of Arizona, remains the first out bisexual person ever elected to Congress. She was an Arizona state legislator and then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in 2018.
The exhibition comprises original illustrated panels included in the comic book along with a few other recent drawings and excerpts from his sketchbooks. Now a widowed octogenarian based in France, his latest work demonstrates the same masterful rendering of his subjects, sans his prurient material. However, his witty humor, self-deprecation, paranoia, narcissism, anti-establishment commentary, and self-proclaimed neurosis - almost to a point of pride - have reached a new level of darkness.
Recent research suggests that consciousness can be understood as the process of experiencing information through unique filters or "lenses." This ability extends beyond humans to animals, plants, and even bacteria. The Universal Nature of Awareness This lens metaphor helps explain how different organisms perceive reality differently. Just as optical lenses bend light to create images, biological systems filter and focus information to create consciousness.
But few people know that later in life he was a secret advocate of what's widely considered the world's most potent psychedelic: 5-MeO-DMT. The hallucinogen, also called "the God molecule," is a compound found in the venomous secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad named Incilius alvarius (it's commonly called Bufo alvarius) and is known to bring about ego death, a total dissolution of the senses, and a euphoric feeling of existential connectedness, all in a roughly 20-minute trip.
Roam the wide-open halls and cavernous showrooms of the Colorado Convention Center during Psychedelic Science, the world's largest psychedelics conference, and you'll see exhibitors hawking everything from mushroom jewelry, to chewable gummies containing extracts of the psychoactive succulent plant kanna, to broad flat-brim baseball caps emblazoned with "MDMA" and "IBOGA." Booths publicize organizations such as the Ketamine Taskforce and the Psychedelic Parenthood Community, and even The Faerie Rings, a live-action feature film looking to attract investors.
"I know what it feels like to fall in love, and to feel sad, and to feel envy, and to feel joy, and to feel accomplishment, and to feel shame," Johnson said on the Core Memory podcast on Thursday. "But what else?" Johnson said he wanted to create a "map" of human consciousness to explore the convergence of mind and machine. "If you can, in fact, pair the brain with AI, what could AI do with you, in terms of exploring consciousness?" he said.
"I got into sleeping pills. Ambien, Valium, Xanax, Lorazepam - you name it, I was taking it. On top of that, I was using opiates like hydrocodone and tramadol."
