"We live in a world of insanity..."
I know you know that I used to do drugs - way, way, back when I wished that the world could be... just... like... Woodstock. I wasn't doped up all the time of course, but I did enjoy my weekends. Fortunately for me, my very best friends became all spiritual - but not religious - and because of peer pressure - Donna and Jim dissing me for being so low class as to continue using - I stopped. Kind of. I didn't do as much, and went on 'trips' by myself. But that's another post.
Anyway.
This morning I was reading an article on how researchers are testing psilocybin, the hallucinogenic ingredient in 'magic mushrooms', to help patients with severe depression. The problem for researchers is the drug is illegal...
David Nutt, (I know!) president of the British Neuroscience Association and professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said he had been granted an ethical green light and funding for the trial, but regulations were blocking it. "We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs," Nutt told a neuroscience conference in London on Sunday.No doubt it would work and not only be effective, but highly desirable as well ... the whole world is depressed, right? $$$. Wasn't there a novel about the use of Soma? Soma is like MDMA - yes, I experimented with that too. Ah, too bad. As if the world isn't prescription drugged up enough now?
[...]
Psilocybin - or "magic" - mushrooms grow naturally around the world and have been widely used since ancient times for religious rites and also for recreation.
Researchers in the United States have seen positive results in trials using MDMA, a pure form of the party drug ecstasy, in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.
"What we are trying to do is to tap into the reservoir of under-researched illegal drugs to see if we can find new and beneficial uses for them in people whose lives are often severely affected by illnesses such as depression," - Nutt said. - Read more here.
My recreational use is decades past - I don't want drugs in my life. Thanks be to God. Years ago a priest once suggested one of the reasons my conversion experience may have been so extraordinary was that Our Lord needed to overcome the effects of the drugs. He laughed when he said it, but only God knows. God's love is so much greater, deeper, and lasting than anything we can do to ourselves. And no, I was never in treatment - not that it's a bad thing, but my conversion was instantaneous, and I experienced no withdrawal from the drugs or alcohol. Praise God.
Praise His Divine Mercy!
Song for this post here.
Soma was the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. I re-read the book occasionally and am shocked at how prophetic this atheist was. Huxley embraced and defended atheism as a philosophy because it justified his behavior. "There is no valid reason why he [the atheist] personally should not do as he wants to do." Huxley also said, "For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” And so, like Francis Thompson, he fled the Hound of Heaven and immersed himself in immorality.
ReplyDeleteWhat is particularly interesting about the second quote is that in Brave New World Huxley created the meaningless dystopian society that reflected his philosophy, and it is as ugly as a Christian would expect, a culture much like our own filled with drugs, sexual depravity, virtual reality movies called "feelies," and other forms of escapism to fill up the emptiness of the meaningless life. He paints it as a reason to despair.
On this feast of Divine Mercy, I'll pray for Huxley. It's hard for me to believe that a man with that kind of honesty did not in the end accept God's mercy. I certainly pray so!
so did you find out if they're accepting trial candidates?
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