With Promise of Legalization, Psychedelic Companies Joust Over Future Profits
After the psychedelic drugs were legalized in five states in the US, they’re now being used by a growing number of people. But for those who seek a more spiritual high, there are now a number of companies and scientists who hope to prove that psychedelics are not as dangerous as they are sometimes made out to be.
Dylan Fuchs for NPR
Listen
Listening…
/
Originally published on December 13, 2012 8:00 pm
Saul, a young man in Jerusalem, is using a drug called DMT to connect with his subconscious, trying to figure out what he thinks, even though he has no idea what it is.
This morning, he’s on the phone with his grandmother, who’s been listening in.
Saul: How do you feel today?
Saul’s grandmother: I think that we should talk about that.
Saul: Yeah.
Saul is using DMT, or magic mushrooms, to open his mind in this way. He says he wants to find out what he thinks — not what he’s supposed to think but what he actually thinks. In other words, he wants to find out how he feels.
Why are these drugs so potent? Well, a lot of these drugs, they’re still legal. In fact, they’re very easy to try. But in recent years in the United States, they’ve also been put on the market in various states around the country.
And there are a lot of legal reasons to use them. We want to treat the brain with something that could change the world, not just with something that could alter the mood of a few people somewhere.
It’s important that we have drugs that are not controlled. We want to give people a safe place where they can experiment without having to worry about someone else setting them up.
To this day, scientists are still figuring out exactly how psychedelics produce these kind of mind-altering effects. And scientists are now having to figure out how to produce such effects at a mass-production level.
Saul knows this isn’t going to