MindMed is one of those companies. The Toronto-based firm is led by JR Rahn, a former Uber executive whose cocaine addiction led him to try psychedelics as a treatment—an experience he credits with saving his life. Rahn believes drugs like LSD could hold the key to helping the millions of people who have been driven to despair by the pandemic.
Researchers found that “their experience with psychedelic drugs was so powerful that they could recall and report on changes in symptoms from racial trauma that they had experienced in their lives, and they remembered it having a significant reduction in their mental health problems afterward,” said Davis.
Far from being harmful, they found, hallucinogens can help sick people: They helped alcoholics drink less; terminal patients eased more gently into death. And it’s not just the infirm who are helped by the drugs. Psychedelics can make the healthy healthier, too.
Today marks the 53rd anniversary of the first time the Grateful Dead, still known as The Warlocks, attended one of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters‘ Acid Tests, where like-minded individuals would take LSD and enjoy “permissive bedlam” and untethered visual and, eventually, musical displays.
Acid used to be about turning on, tuning in and [...]
