For some strange, outdated, Christianized reason, an entire class of extremely potent medical substances have gone overlooked for several decades. This class is the entheogenic, or psychedelic, class of compounds that pre-modern cultures used for healing, learning, divination, and connection to the spiritual world. These practices continued unabated, until the followers of montheistic religions, especially Christians, decided that they were satanic in quality and that users of these plant remedies must be exterminated along with their plants.
Well worn is the story of how Albert Hofmann accidentally discovered the life-changing effects of LSD in his Swiss laboratory in the 1930s; and how psilocybin, 'magic' mushrooms were 'discovered' by two Americans observing the rituals of shaman Maria Sabina in Mexico in the 1950s; and how mescaline cacti has been used for thousands of years by native Americans in current day North and South America; and how there are hundreds of these psychedelic remedies throughout the world and known to individual cultures as their primary route to psychospiritual and physiological well being.
Despite scientific research in the 1950s and 60s regarding the effective use of psychedelics for a variety of mental illnesses, all research was extinguished in the US and Europe by 1970 in order to stop the recreational use of these normally ritually used materials. Only now are more and more studies being done again in research universities, proving what was already proven before: psychedelics are potent medicines.
In the forefront of psychedelic medicine is the anesthetic compound 'ketamine', also known as 'vitamin K' or 'Special K'. For decades psychonauts like physicist John Lilly (dolphin communicator and subject of movies "Day of the Dolphin" and "Altered States") used ketamine on a regular basis in order to experience life without body awareness. Because ketamine allows the user to have an increase in brain imagery with an absence of physical sensation, it is also described as the closest mimicry of the out-of-body state sought by Yogis. It therefore also allows the user to experience what an after death state might be like, when perhaps the consciousness expands when it leaves the body behind.
As so often occurs in medicine, the quick yet long lasting anti-depressant effect of ketamine was discovered quite by accidents by researchers testing the effectiveness of ketamine on a specific pain syndrome. Simply put, some of the research patients experienced significant, long term lessening of their depression symptoms after being intermuscularly injected with ketamine. The researchers announced this anti-depressant effect with quite a bit of fanfare, but nothing approaching a ketamine anti-depressant medication has resulted.
At first, ketamine anti-depressive effects were believed to result from blocking or stimulating certain glutamate-based (versus serotonin- or epinepherine-based) brain receptors. This may be partially true, but newer evidence suggests that there may be another, more revitalizing effect: 'synaptogenesis'. Regeneration of the connections between individual neurons is termed synaptogenesis, and from the slide photo you can view here:
you can see the typical effect of ketamine on brain cells.
I don't expect that we will see any entheogen on the market anytime soon, despite ketamine and its effect on depression; MDMA (Ecstasy) and its effect on PTSD; LSD and psilocybin and their effect on the anxiety associated with terminal illness; ibogaine and its effect on seemingly intractable opiate and other addictions; and mescaline cacti; ayahuasca; and all of the above for providing the felt sense of a deep connection with the divine. What I do expect is that if enough persons speak of the importance of allowing entheogens to come out of the lab and into the lives of Everyman and Everywoman, the world will be a happier, healthier, more divinely connected place -- sooner than later.
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