Bluelight.org

Dear Bluelight & MAPS community,

As the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), I'm honored and excited to welcome you to the MAPS Forums on Bluelight. MAPS and Bluelight have grown together over the years and have been mutually supportive, with this new partnership signifying a new depth in our work together.

MAPS' work has two main goals, which go hand in hand: discovering ways to use psychedelics and marijuana safely and beneficially, and educating people about how to reduce the harms associated with their use. Open, scientifically-informed conversations about the risks and benefits of psychedelics and marijuana pushes back the stigma that has built up around them, and allows us to create new, more just policies and a safer, more open cultural attitude to psychedelics, marijuana, and human consciousness in general.

Science Daily

June 10, 2013 — An interesting new report of animal research published in Biological Psychiatry suggests that common antidepressant medications may impair a form of learning that is important clinically.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly called SSRIs, are a class of antidepressant widely used to treat depression, as well as a range of anxiety disorders, but the effects of these drugs on learning and memory are poorly understood.

In a previous study, Nesha Burghardt, then a graduate student at New York University, and her colleagues demonstrated that long-term SSRI treatment impairs fear conditioning in rats. As a follow-up, they have now tested the effects of antidepressant treatment on extinction learning in rats using auditory fear conditioning, a model of fear learning that involves the amygdala. The amygdala is a region of the brain vitally important for processing memory and emotion.

They found that long-term, but not short-term, SSRI treatment impairs extinction learning, which is the ability to learn that a conditioned stimulus no longer predicts an aversive event.

Last year, we asked Bluelighters to help in fund an amazing project from Oliver Hockenhull - the film Neurons to Nirvana. Unfortunately, despite achieving their 'kickstarter' targets, funding fell through. Regardless of this setback, the team at Mangusta Productions have managed to get the film to the release stage! But they still need a small fund to create a marketing and distribution plan, and allow them to spread the truth about psychedelics globally.

yeah very good article basically sums up why some humans are such pieces of shit to others. What's there to do about this though when it is intentionally set up this way by others? The drug trade, Law enforcement, big pharma, prison industry, government all have a hand in the same setup (The drug war), along with greed and capitalism, these people have tremendous power, global influence and i imagine will not be easily swayed by appeals to humanity. I'm sure some people in earnest believe in the drug war but i bet the large majority know why we keep this charade up. If those people in power have to identify with heroin addicts as human beings equal to themselves then there's no way they could keep this drug war up, of course they don't give a fuck in the first place which is the real problem IMO.

it's not going to be like Germany's destruction, this drug war can play out forever unless enough actual people put a stop to it as in some sort of revolution.

Fringe or frontier?

As many are aware, a good crop of psychedelic therapy studies are underway...if Phase I/II trials look good in terms of safety and efficacy, one can hope that NIH/NIMH will come around to the idea of funding some of these studies in the not-too-distant future.

Here's a more complete list of recent/ongoing studies:

Ayahuasca
- Depression: Brazil (upcoming)
Psilocybin
- End-of-life anxiety: UCLA (completed), NYU (ongoing), Hopkins (ongoing)
- Smoking cessation: Johns Hopkins (ongoing)
- Alcoholism: U of NM (ongoing), NYU (pending)
- Enhancing meditation/spiritual practice: Hopkins (ongoing)
- Depression: UK (pending)
MDMA
- PTSD: Switzerland (completed), Spain (completed), Israel (ongoing), University of Colorado (ongoing), South Carolina (completed and ongoing), Canada (pending)
LSD
- End-of-life anxiety: Switzerland (completed)
Ibogaine
- Addiction: Mexico, New Zealand (ongoing)

Surprisingly good article, thanks for posting.

They don't seem to mind importing cocaine and heroin.....

It is with great pride and enthusiasm that we announce today a major collaboration between Bluelight.ru and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

Through the efforts of Brad Burge, MAPS’ Director of Communications, Rick Doblin, MAPS’ Founder and Executive Director, Sebastians_Ghost and The_Love_Bandit of Bluelight.ru, we will soon undertake an exciting partnership to reinvigorate the MAPS forum and increase opportunities for public education about psychedelic science and medicine. The existing plaintext email MAPS Forum will be migrating to Bluelight.ru, the world's leading drug information website. We're aiming to unveil the new MAPS Forums on Bluelight shortly before the Psychedelic Science 2013 symposium in mid-April.

In the coming weeks, the MAPS Forum will no longer be linked from maps.org. Instead, MAPS will provide a link to the new MAPS Forum hosted at Bluelight. MAPS will work closely with Bluelight to encourage public participation in our new “home” at Bluelight.ru as the migration of the MAPS Forum topics is completed.

The National Post

Future love drugs are not fairy tale romance potions slipped to the object of your affection: These pharmaceutical concoctions would chemically alter the brain to promote intimacy, feelings of closeness and openness, and would be designed for use in a controlled, couples’ therapy setting.

They’re already being developed and tested in the form of a nasal spray, to send the drugs directly to the brain.

Oxytocin and vasopressin — both hormones secreted by the pituitary gland that play roles in sexual reproduction, social bonding and empathy building — are being studied for the production of love drugs.

Researchers in the early 1990s found oxytocin released into the brains of female prairie voles during sexual activity helped them form a monogamous bond to their sexual partners. Vasopressin appeared to bring the same result in male voles. But when those hormones are blocked, the prairie voles don’t create that bond.

In one study, Swiss researchers showed that nasally inhaled oxytocin can reduce stress levels and promote more positive communication between arguing couples.

There is also evidence from its clinical use in the 1980s that MDMA promoted “enhanced” communication during couples’ therapy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqbw4nHrHc0