On the Cutting Edge
by Sheldon Norberg

I arrived somewhat late the first day, but in time to be thoroughly impressed with Andrew Weil. His talk on the potentials of psychedelics was wide-ranging, funny, detailed, and totally extemporaneous. His wonderment at the thin segment of research being done, primarily around treating anxiety, was eye-opening. He reported on LSD having been used to eliminate allergies, alter pigmentation, reduce inflammatory response, and trigger focused genetic change. These experiences, and other anecdotes, leave Weil thinking that we've not yet hit first gear in psychedelic research.

Dave Nichols conducted an informal poll, to see how many audience members found the latter portions of their LSD experiences to be marred by paranoia or anxiety. Having written extensively about my own travails, I was relieved to see 15-20% of the audience raise their hands. This concurred with Nichols' estimations, and his research into a liver enzyme released some time between the fourth and sixth hours of LSD digestion, which apparently causes limbic disturbance. Discussing this with a fellow attendee, it was suggested that grapefruit juice might prevent assimilation of that enzyme, which could mean a whole new perspective on LSD for perhaps 20% of its would-be consumers.

I bullied my way to the front for James Kent's eye-opening lecture "The Mechanics of Hallucinations", which (although marred by cross-platform PowerPoint difficulties) elucidated the relationship between neural network switching related to rod and cone vision, visual information processing rate, and the brain's pattern-recognition function. Apparently, when overloaded with visual information, the brain switches control of the visual input to the brain areas responsible for creating dream imagery, which can overlay directly on top of open-eye information. All this, plus the witty bravado that makes Kent who he is!

The Erowids should be mentioned for their meticulous sociological research into use patterns surrounding newly evolving substances that are based on cannabinoid analogs. Their two-headed approach allowed them to interchangeably deliver the play-by-play facts and color commentary, which in this case described the history of Spice, its user-reported effects, market size estimates, legal backlash, and the subsequent whack-a-mole explosion of imitations, all while questioning the thinking of those who've turned imitation cannabis of unknown quality or composition into a multimillion dollar industry.

Klippet fra http://www.erowid.org/general/confer...10_ps21c.shtml