Has the War on Drugs got it all wrong? A new research study finds use of hallucinogens, including psychedelic “magic” mushrooms, mescaline, and LSD, doesn’t cause long-term psychological problems. In fact, use of psychedelics may even reduce the need for mental health treatments.

There’s a renaissance happening around hallucinogens. Westerners seeking physical and emotional healing are traveling deep into Amazon jungle territory to drink a potent plant brew called ayahuasca, rich in DMT, “the spirit molecule.” [Full disclosure: I recently traveled to the Colombian rainforest to drink ayahuasca under the supervision of shamans.] They’re also venturing into West Africa for iboga healings with the Bwiti tribe in order to cure themselves of addiction to drugs like heroine. Others are participating in studies, like those conducted by the  Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which is proving the efficacy of MDMA (the active ingredient in the street drug Ecstasy) in treating PTSD and other serious psychological issues. LSD and psilocybin mushrooms are being used to ease the anxiety experienced by cancer patients. Go to any of the myriad music, art and culture festivals or gatherings cropping up around the globe (including those focused on the use of psychedelics), and you’ll find a wide variety of people using hallucinogens in all manners of exploration, from straight up dancing and partying to the ceremonial and healing applications.

Approximately one in six Americans between the ages of 21 and 64 has tried hallucinogens. Still, the substances are highly criminalized, and, perhaps even worse, stigmatized as doorways into madness and addiction. Use of hallucinogens is a practice deemed only slightly acceptable during those experimental college years where promiscuity and binge drinking are also sloughed off as young adult rites of passage. Speaking candidly about the use of hallucinogens is akin to coming out of the closet about being a lesbian or homosexual just a half century ago. Announcing an unconventional sexual orientation would often earn you pariah status; it wasn’t something to discuss with just anybody. And the same goes for the medicinal benefits of hallucinogens. (At the very least, you don’t inhale.) In most social circles in our Western culture, using psychedelics is formidable for anyone over age 21. It’s not casual dinner conversation. Antidepressants and prescription anxiety drugs? Well, they’re the new normal. You can talk about those all you like. But tell the wrong person that you participated in an experimental MDMA trial to deal with crippling PTSD? It’s likely to be almost as mood-altering as the drugs themselves.

But could we be all wrong about psychedelic medicine?

According to researchers out of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Department of Neuroscience who published their findings in the recent issue of the journal PLOS One, there were no links that connected the use of psychedelic hallucinogens to a wide range of mental health problems including mood and anxiety disorders, psychosis and general psychological distress.

The research team reviewed survey data collected between 2001 and 2004 from more than 130,000 randomly selected Americans. More than 20,000 of the subjects admitted to using hallucinogens, and the findings were consistent among the individuals: “The lack of association between the use of psychedelics and indicators of mental health problems in this large population survey is consistent with clinical studies in which LSD or other psychedelics have been administered to healthy volunteers,” the researchers wrote.

NPR reports that the study does have some limitations, however: “It’s possible that healthier people are more likely to take psychedelics than those already struggling with mental illness, for instance.” And the study also didn’t consider dosages or quality of the drugs, nor did it look at family histories of mental health, “which could be an important factor.”

While still illegal in the U.S., the amount of research now being done to explore the potential benefits of psychedelics is increasing. Matthew W. Johnson, a psychologist in the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine told NPR that there seems to be “no evidence of overall negative impact — and even some hints of benefit — associated with the use of psychedelics.” Johnson recently explored the effects of psychedelic mushrooms on cancer patients to help them deal with the anxiety and depression around their illness.

MAPS’ groundbreaking work on MDMA and PTSD has already shown that “MDMA in conjunction with psychotherapy can help people overcome PTSD, and possibly other disorders as well.” They note that MDMA is known for “increasing feelings of trust and compassion towards others, which could make an ideal adjunct to psychotherapy for PTSD.”

And while the Norwegian researchers acknowledge their study doesn’t allow conclusions about causality, the team found that there is a lack of evidence “that psychedelics cause lasting mental health problems.”

Mental health issues in the U.S. are skyrocketing, based on prescription drug sales for mood enhancers and antidepressants. As Americans struggle to handle their mental conditions, just as many struggle to get a grip on healthy eating habits, the pro-psychedelic community is hopeful that a return to more ‘natural’ treatments for mental and emotional issues may begin to become less stigmatized. And what researchers are finding supports the theories that there may not only be a reduced risk of harm from hallucinogens, but inherent mental health benefits to exploring those edge realms of consciousness as well.

Unlike pharmaceutical drugs, which require long-term usage, and can include numerous undesirable side-effects, a few “psychedelic sessions” can help individuals to acknowledge, confront and resolve certain issues, particularly those that are mental, psychological or emotional–which can often manifest as physical conditions. According to MAPS, “The deep personal and often spiritual experiences enabled by the careful use of psilocybin and LSD are well known.”

Timing of the research couldn’t be better for mood-altering substances, either. CNN’s chief medical expert, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, recently apologized for “misleading Americans” over the safety and benefits of medical marijuana. He’s released a documentary on the subject and said “sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.” Perhaps he’ll explore LSD next.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: doomz, kt lindsay

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The post Crazy? Don’t Blame the Acid: Hallucinogens Don’t Damage Mental Health, Study Finds appeared first on EcoSalon.

Panorama views of the sea floor FTW!

This, believe it or not, is an image from Google Street View.

What happened here? Appallingly bad driving? In fact it’s the result of a partnership between Street View and the Catlin Seaview Survey  – you can see the current collection here.

What’s the point of this? It’s designed to do two things – promote Google Maps, which is under pressure from its rivals (although not the beleaguered Apple Maps on iOS 6), and to promote the health of 71% of our planet. This month the Catlin Seaview Survey kicked off with two expeditions to sites along the 2,300km-long Great Barrier Reef & Coral Sea, taking images with specially designed 360-degree-view cameras to be stitched together into gorgeous Street View panoramas.

But there’s a serious side to the fun. These images are also designed to act as a snapshot record of the state of these reefs, so scientists can track changes in reef health. Those changes shouldn’t be long in coming, if studies from Brazil and the Caribbean are any indicators. Last chance to see? We sincerely hope not.

Image: jurvetson

The post Google Street View Goes Diving – And Here’s Why We Should Care appeared first on EcoSalon.

Hamburgers visualized.

There are a lot of fast food chains in the United States.

Stephen Von Worley – a master at data visualization – put together this “Beefspace” map, taking information from AggData and mapped out various fast food chains according to location. The points are color coded, black is McDonald’s, red Burger King, yellow Wendy’s, magenta Jack In The Box, periwinkle Sonic, cream Dairy Queen, green Carl’s Jr., and cyan Hardee’s.

A close-up of East Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana

What is clearly an overwhelming amount of fast food chains in a country that is facing a serious obesity problem, the result is visually stunning and mind boggling all at the same time..

See more close-ups of the map here.

The post What Does Our Fast Food Consumption Actually Look Like? appeared first on EcoSalon.

The best of EcoSalon’s stories this week.

When walking is healthy, slimming and free, why does so much of America still see it as…well, pedestrian? (Look, even our own language is prejudiced).  If you’re looking for inspiration to drag your shoes on and get rid of that roof over your head, you might find it here.

France’s farmer’s markets are a timeless feature of the country. Alas, if only that were really true, as it seems Paris’s independent open-air vendors are under siege from wholesalers and internationally-shipped organic foods. Can local farming maintain a hold on the French dinnertable?

If our walking quotes didn’t get your feet twitching, you might be in need of some map decor. Earlier in the week we directed you to some inspiring map art over at Curbly, but if you’re looking for more widespread inspiration, Pinterest is your friend here.

Get in motion, stay in motion – it’s the key to success, happiness and some really terrific photography.

Lastly, spare a thought for the inhabitants of Rome 2,000 years ago – it didn’t matter whether they got out into the fresh air or stayed at home, their environment was out to get them.

The post The Friday 5: Take To The Streets Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

An urban-planner-turned-designer explains the mapping trend.

Earlier this year, we predicted that 2012 would be the year of the urban grid. See it etched and sketched on everything from quilts to napkins, we foretold and behold:

The San Francisco quilt from Brooklyn-based Haptic Lab.

The Great Lakes Quilt, also by Haptic Lab.

Vintage map keychain from dlk designs.

“Maps on a cotton candy sugar rush,” from SoftCities. These reusable, toxin-free napkins are replete with pink terrain, purple highways and rainbow rivers.

We reached out to Matt Tomasulo, founder of CityFabric, Inc. (the company’s tagline is “Wear You Live”) to get his perspective on the gridding and mapping trend in fashion and interior design. Is it a natural meshing of techniques or indicative of a larger community context? The context being: a burgeoning sensibility of civic pride permeating the fabric of America’s urban centers.

We’re seeing so much of this gridding and mapping trend this year. As an urban planner and designer, what do you make of it?

I think the trend is great. The more people value and support their [city] the better. With greater access to information, particularly spatial data, the doors are opening for many more people to create cartographic designs who might not necessarily have a background in cities or mapping.

Is the trend indicative of a bigger social movement or increase in community activism? 

Where we live is becoming more and more important, so it’s only fitting that place-based goods are becoming more and more appealing. It will be interesting to see if cartographic products go deeper and tell a story that will outlast products that are simply beautiful graphic map[s].

Tomasulo has a valid point. In the meantime, there’s always the Museum of the City of New York. On now through July 15th are two exhibits called The Greatest Grid: The Masterplan of Manhattan and The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan. The exhibitions celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which transformed New York City into the gridded masterpiece that it is today.

The post On The Grid: Mapped Out Urban Textiles in Interior Design appeared first on EcoSalon.

Eyes on the prize: Google announces ‘Earth Engine’

Offering scientists and conservationists a better look-see at Mama Earth, Google Labs unveiled its Google Earth Engine yesterday at the International Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico. The product puts an “unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data – current and historical – online for the first time,” says Google, allowing for monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s environment. The images are designed specifically for environmental protection use, providing information on the “locations and extent of global forests, detecting how our forests are changing over time, directing resources for disaster response or water resource mapping,” among other data. One important value of the system is that it will function like a watchdog camera, supporting the development of “monitor, report and verify” (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation. The company released an example image, generated in collaboration with Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, of a forest cover and water map of Mexico which is the finest-scale to date. The company says the map required 15,000 hours of computation, but was completed in less than a day on Google Earth Engine using 1,000 computers.

Happy birthday EPA!

Now more than ever is a good time to celebrate the Environmental Protection Agency. As the mostly on-our-side government agency is turning 40, it’s coming under severe attacks from a hostile new (corporate-sponsored) Congress, and other science and climate-change deniers around the the world. GreenBiz has it right when it says: “a testament to the scale and scope of the EPA’s successes over the past 40 years that they’ve faded into the background, or been woven into the fabric of daily life.” However, any take-it-for-granted attitude would be a grave mistake right now given the current political climate, and it’s good that sites like Green For All (ThankYouEPA.com), are out there helping to get the word out. There’s an informative quick take, too, from the Aspen Institute in a 10 reasons we love ’em format. Among the highlights from the agency’s 40 years are banning the widespread use of DDT, addressing the acid rain problem, championing the reuse of waste, taking the lead on reducing vehicle emissions, cleaning up our water supply and being a  general conduit for public information.

Strange life forms found in (where else?) California!

While you would figure NASA would spend a lot time looking up, the organization just announced that one of its astrobiology research efforts that’s focused way down under one of California’s weirdest lakes has led to discovery that folks are saying will fundamentally shift the way we define life – and vastly expand the playing field in terms of how we look for life on other planets. These researchers have discovered the first known microorganism able to “thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism, which lives in Mono Lake, substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in the backbone of its DNA and other cellular components.” Quoted in the NY Daily News, Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s astrobiology program, says, “It’s terrestrial life – but not life as we know it.” The story adds that “all life discovered so far, from teeny amoebas to enormous elephants, are composed of combinations of the same six elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus,” but the new bacteria (its catchy name is GFAJ-1) can live without any phosphorus and instead uses arsenic to build cells. Why do we care? “The implication is that we still don’t know everything there is to know about what might make a planet habitable,” says another NASA scientist. “Maybe we’ll be able to find ET now.”

Images: Google, jessica.diamond, NASA

The post Ecosalon News: Quick Takes appeared first on EcoSalon.

I feel deceived, and you should too. Are you aware we have been lied to about the world by the world? I have always been an advocate of wall maps and the illusive idea that cartographic art pieces provide a sense of global awareness. Apparently we are victims of skewed scale and mediocre map projections (read more about this diagrammatic deception here). Take the two-dimensional lie off your wall and replace it with honest metallic seas and accurate gradient color.

The Future Mapping Company has redefined wall maps by infusing precise proportions (using an equal-area projection technique) along with brilliant gradient colors (to reduce the illusion of abrupt country and continent borders).  The result? Alternative and thought-provoking visions of our planet.  Oh, and they are gorgeous!

These global depictions are available in three different lithographic color prints on silk-finish paper.  Each Future Map is unexpectedly affordable at £25 ($39) each.  If you have an entire wall pleading for cartographic metallic, how about custom wallpaper?  Don’t miss the charismatic London Street Maps either.

(My endless gratitude to Stephmodo for the introduction to these graphic maps.)

The post Skewed Seas of Deceit appeared first on EcoSalon.

Google Maps released a feature that gives turn-by-turn biking directions in 150 American cities this week, as it has previously for driving, public transportation and walking routes.

According to the company’s own blog, bike directions were the most requested feature by Google Maps users. Pro-bicyclist, and environmentalist groups like Austin’s GoogleMapsBikeThere.org had created petitions and lobbied Google to develop this tool as early as 2007. Their petition scored more than 51,000 signatures.

Others, like RideTheCity in New York, worked to develop their own bike route mapping tools online, with specific, insider knowledge of each metro area.

The new Google feature delivers information about bike trails that have no motor vehicles, and the streets and routes recommended for cyclists, avoiding motor vehicle traffic, and steep hills. So far, the green and bike loving blogosphere has reacted with mixed reviews, deeming Google Maps for Bikes a good start, but not quite there yet.

We hope that Google’s Bike Maps feature will encourage car commuters to go green and get fit. Biking where you might have driven before can prevent tons of carbon emissions each year, while burning hundreds of calories an hour.

Basic Reading:

“Motor vehicle emissions represent 31 percent of total carbon dioxide, 81 percent of carbon monoxide, and 49 percent of nitrogen oxides released in the U.S. A short, four-mile round trip by bicycle keeps about 15 pounds of pollutants out of the air we breathe.” – Top environmental reasons to bike not drive from BikeLeague.org

“Google worked with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, which advocates for the creation of biking and walking paths throughout the United States, to gather trail-map data. “˜The demand for trail maps and information has never been higher, especially as more people recognize biking as a viable, inexpensive and healthy alternative to driving,’ Rails-to-Trails President Keith Laughlin said in a statement.” – A news item ‘Google Maps Your Way to the Bicycle Path,’ via Silicon Valley Mercury News

“Avid bicyclists, who have long demanded they be treated as equals on the city’s streets, suddenly felt the pain of every driver who has taken a wrong turn after getting glitchy Google Maps directions… Some [cyclists] said the site wanted them to backpedal away from official city bike routes, often adding 10 or 15 minutes to their usual commutes. One regular rider said Google was trying to kill her – directing her to get on Interstate 5.” – A mixed review for Google’s Bike Maps feature by Portland, Oregon cyclists via Oregon Live

“My guess: Google’s bike maps feature will be mostly neglected until they are vastly improved. One suggestion, Google needs a better system to accept crowdsourced input. If cyclists get behind the project, however, Google’s bike maps could become really helpful.” A tough review of Google Bike Maps, by David Coursey for PC World

Further Resources:

“I burn about 66 carolies per mile on my bicycle. My car emits .932 pounds of CO2 per mile”¦” – A by-the-numbers post at CarFree blog

Wired’s Autopia blog seeks readers’ opinion for a “crowdsourced” review of Google Maps new bike feature

A post by Jason St. Amand about the most affordable and best bikes via WalletPop

The website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which tracks safety issues around driving, mostly, with some cycling and walking studies too

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by columnist Lora Kolodny.

Image: Pixel Addict

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