With the vulnerability and deep traditional history of psychedelics, comes the entrenched topics of appropriate conduct and interpersonal relationships while tripping, cultural appropriation, potential risks associated with pre-existing conditions such as schizophrenia, in addition to that which may arise during the thinning of the veil between realms — all of which warrants cautious optimism before, during and after using substances that this group would agree house spirits of their own.
The annual Spirit Plant Medicine Conference returned to UBC this month, providing an in-depth experience for attendees in person and online.
Visionary artists, musicians, doctors and guides, authors, researchers and activists filled the agenda, from all walks and many regions of the globe; the common theme: working with entheogens in our complex social landscape. The guidance gifted to listeners might assist navigating other realms with safety, integrity and humble enlightenment. The notion of oneness surfaced again and again as the individual uses consciousness as a vehicle often to discover that the one is part of the larger whole.
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Mark Haden, who served as the executive director of MAPS Canada for 10 years and is currently the clinical supervisor for the Psychedelic Treatment Program at QI Integrated Health as well as the VP of business development at Clearmind Medicine, recently began a program giving psychedelics to Vancouver police officers. “I wanted to do more that reduce pain,” he says, “I wanted to enhance the benefits, and that’s psychedelics.”
Trauma treatment can increase understanding in officers, and they are excellent spokespeople for decriminalization and legalization, says Haden. Ketamine assisted therapy for first responders, not only has it made headlines, but it is the Helping Heroes protocol combined with meditation.
Haden also wrote The Manual for PsychedelicGuides designed for facilitators, highlighting some best practices he’s learned over the course of his career, while continuing to affirm that psychedelics work for some but not all of the population. “This may not work for you,” he says.
Generally speaking, the more credentials a person has, the more deprogramming they’ll need to do in order to guide, which is a profound process of both learning and unlearning according to MAPS researcher and therapist Dr. Michael Mithoefer.
What happens if the patient using MDMA falls in love with the therapist? “Remarkable transparency is a way to resolve that particular problem,” says Haden, by talking openly and establishing boundaries before embarking.
To recap some principles of Haden’s book, there are core competencies involved with guiding, including empathy, trust, spiritual intelligence and self-awareness. While the three main rules of guiding are: “No sexual touching, don’t leave the space, and no harm is done” — pretty straightforward, though always in need of repeating.
“Unconscious monsters,” says Haden, “when embraced, become dance partners.”
Transcending psychotherapy
Without hesitation, Dr. Gabor Maté finds that “most psychotherapy is next to useless.” That’s because interacting with these plants and molecules can make a person “weep with love” by transcending to places in psychedelics where there is otherwise a ceiling in talk therapy.
“The plant shows you what you’ve been running from, and it can show you you have nowhere to run because you’re already there. There’s nowhere else to go,” he says.
In his presentation ‘Psychedelics: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,’ Maté describes the good as the possibility of spontaneous remission with entheogens. Now passing it back to Haden who says the guide is not the one doing the healing, they are only there bearing witness to and facilitating the patient to heal themselves. Maté attributes this to the “mind-body connection.”
The Holocaust survivor, prolific author, addictions expert and physician who began his journey with psychedelics on that very same campus in 1966, will say that the autoimmune patient whose ailments went into remission after drinking ayahuasca is because the “experiences the plant made available to her made her realize that she could heal herself; and that’s the definition of healing.”
Maté goes on to say that “plants can teach you who you really are and why you haven’t been yourself.”
The bad, of course, is “capitalism incentivizes profit.” Often those who need the medicine most cannot afford ceremony. And the ugly can be found in the atrocities of shamanic practitioners taking advantage of and sexually abusing people during their most vulnerable states. Although not unique to psychedelics: “how many gurus ended up being exploiters?” he asks.
While our minds are “colonized by ego,” with notions of power and control, psychedelics offer a powerful alternative for greater connection, understanding and perspective. “We live in a colonized world,” he says, “where the experience of the colonized is excluded from the conversation.”
After his first psychedelic experience, Maté shares that he understood the trees for the first time. “Indigenous people don’t need to take psychedelics to understand trees,” he says. “They just do.”
SMITHS FALLS, Ont. — Canopy Growth Corp. says its net loss for the second quarter was $324.8 million, compared with $305.8 million a year earlier.
The company says its net loss from continuing operations was $148.2 million, compared with $196.5 million during the same quarter last year.
Revenues for the quarter were $82.1 million, down from $100.4 million a year earlier.
The company says its Canadian cannabis business delivered its third consecutive quarter of organic revenue growth while significantly reducing costs.
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This September, the company obtained creditor protection for BioSteel Sports Nutrition Inc. and said it intends to sell the business.
In August, the company announced it had signed a deal to sell the Hershey building in Smiths Falls, Ont., back to the chocolate maker for around $53 million.
Canopy Growth brought in $39 million from its Canadian cannabis businesses in the past three months, down from $52 million in the same quarter in 2022 (July-September).
Sales from Storz & Bickel, which Canopy owns, were $12 million in the three months ending in September 2023, compared to $13.5 million in July-September 2022.
Canadian cannabis businesses delivered a net revenue of $39 million in Q2 FY2024. Canadian medical cannabis net revenue increased for Canopy by 6% compared to the prior year period, even as Canada’s overall medical cannabis market contracts.
Canopy continues to operate at a loss, although it is losing less than it was in the past. The company lost $7 million from continuing operations, which was much lower than the $149 million loss in the same period in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $12 million in Q2 2024, compared to a loss of $56 million in Q2 2023.
Canopy claims its increasing sales are due to an increase in quality, citing its Tweed Kush Mints being nominated for a 2023 Karma Cup award, as well as moving up to the top three supplier of cannabis flower in British Columbia, compared to the eleventh place slot the company held in the same time period last year.
It also plans to re-introduce its Wana brand edibles into the Canadian non-medical market, products that have remained successful for Canopy in the US. It will also ship five new SKUs to international markets in Q3 of this year, focusing on the Australian medical cannabis market.
Wana also launched 11 new products in four US markets in August 2023, while Canopy’s Jetty launched its vape products in Colorado in July 2023 and California in August, and its Acerage Superflux products were released in New Jersey in November.
Years ago Kyle did a show with the late David Dees, going through his thoughts on a number of subjects and how they relate to his art.
I dont share many beliefs with David, but he has shown how one individual with imagination and very simple tools like Photoshop can change the perception of reality and the trajectory of unwilling events… Everything matters, no matter how small it is, especially if the message is filled with goodwill and good intentions.
He was like many of us flawed man but an exceptionally brave man, who never took anything as a sure thing and was always gone where truth takes him.
Even if so-called they mess with my words and views, this page does not matter, the thought can be stopped…
This is one of the reasons why I am writing here, does really matter these days where you write, no it doesn’t…
Icelandic server or anything else…anything that you write must be backed by a physical copy of your work…all this on the internet can be erased today, tomorrow, or even yesterday so to speak.
I have, this ability if I lose all I will write 2000 more poems or stories, so if this page goes tomorrow down I am good…and I am not doing this for money…
Now is not the time to think about the money, if you do then you really don’t understand the current events…
I am not saying live in a shack with no electricity and no food, no income but the following:
All that happens here is based on money, this worship of material things, so if you want to change the current path, guiding ideas in our lives must be represented by something else…
Call this spirituality, back to roots, involution, call it what you want…I will just call it a normal state of human beings.
Humans do not to kill other humans, it is not in their nature…you need to push them to START hating each other.
Former Yugoslavia was a closet thing to a National Socialist country, nobody was homeless, and nobody was without a house(these were no small houses like in former Chehoslowakia you can even see them today, these were real houses), car, or vacation…you could walk as a 6 years old kid in the middle of Zagreb or Beograd at 3 a.m. and nothing would happen to you…crime was abysmal almost non existend.
Do you think the one-morning guy in Zagreb and Beograd just woke up and said to himself hey how about we start to kill each other, demolish our churches, and wreck all that has been built…no people dont do these things…
Yugoslavia was not a communist country it was a socialist, Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia or short: SFRJ.
Am I a Yugo nostalgic, no I am not you can’t turn back the time…
Was it the perfect country of course not, what is perfect in life…but it was far better, superior to what these 6 small countries have now. When I see how this state and that state in America will succeed I just smile and say good luck, you gonna needed.
Americans have many and I mean many delusions of they grandeur,American dream, this is America!, we are Americans!, The best country in the whole world, the land of Bravery and Free…sounds very good on paper but it is very far from the truth.
This is the sole reason for the current fall of American “values” and the fall of Western Europe…we are good, we are brave, and we are smart all others in the world are very stupid and cowardly…
The Melting Pot doesn’t work it never has…. One country, one people, one culture, and one language…is the winning recipe it always was.
If I need Italian, Greek, Black, Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese quarters…do we really live together or we are just pretending that we like each other,because of money flow and accumulated wealth?
What happens when we remove the money out of the equation…
Many Americans don’t understand that Europe is not just a Western part, Europe is East and West together including a major part of Russia.
What is coming can be stopped, the more you do these horrible acts, the more I see how in panic mode you really are to stop what is inevitable…
And you project your fear and uncertain future on unsuspecting masses…
You always have done this, but everything has its beginning and the end…
You want humanity in a state of fear, doubt, and hopelessness…but this actually you, not them… another projection.
You are the ones who have all to lose, humanity can only gain and there is the difference.
Please visit Labor of Love Music for more information about Mike’s music:
By Jordan Copp, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
COAST REPORTER
A new cannabis production facility could be coming to ts’ukw’um (Wilson Creek).
Sechelt’s Advisory Planning Commission recently supported a variance proposal to allow for the creation of a cannabis production facility. The municipality’s Zoning Bylaw requires a minimum lot area of 3,000 square metres for a cannabis production facility — the development variance permit application is asking for a reduction to 1,008 square metres.
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The production facility is proposed for 4352 Aqua Road, off Field Road in the ts’ukw’um area. The site is already designated as Light Industrial One(I1), which allows for cannabis production.
Sechelt senior development planner Sven Koberwitz explained that the rationale behind this large minimum required area was to ensure that the Coast’s industrial areas wouldn’t get inundated with cannabis production facilities when the federal government legalized cannabis in 2018.
Koberwitz added that since legalization, the district hasn’t been inundated with applications, and therefore they feel prepared to support this smaller production.
The report submitted by staff also stated that the lot size minimum is in place to mitigate potential impacts to adjacent properties, especially relating to odour.
The applicants’ lot is vacant and in the past was the site of a personal medical cannabis facility.
The commission asked how the district ensures that odour control is enforced and monitored.
Koberwitz explained that it is a “complaint-driven process,” and that odour is difficult to quantify.
“It would be looked into to make sure that any required conditions of the variance and any required equipment that’s needed to be installed for odour control is operating as it’s supposed to,” he said.
The APC agenda included an email from the applicant and landlord, Russel Andrews, that said, “We currently do not see any impact to our neighbors or adjacent properties. As all activities will be inside and best practices would be in place for air filtration.”
Andrews attended the meeting and said that if approved the facility could potentially be up and running in under a year.
The commission asked if the district will be in touch with adjacent property owners.
Koberwitz responded that once there is a confirmed date that the application will be considered by Sechelt council, the applicants will be notified to inform all property owners within 100 metres.
APC chair Sharif Senbel said, “I think it’s a suitable location and I also think that the requirements that are laid out by the 1/8federal government 3/8 and by the district address the issues.”
The commission unanimously moved to support the application as presented.
The next step will be for the application to be presented to Sechelt council for consideration.
Jordan Copp is the Coast Reporter’s civic and Indigenous affairs reporter. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
By Jordan Copp, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
COAST REPORTER
A new cannabis production facility could be coming to ts’ukw’um (Wilson Creek).
Sechelt’s Advisory Planning Commission recently supported a variance proposal to allow for the creation of a cannabis production facility. The municipality’s Zoning Bylaw requires a minimum lot area of 3,000 square metres for a cannabis production facility — the development variance permit application is asking for a reduction to 1,008 square metres.
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The production facility is proposed for 4352 Aqua Road, off Field Road in the ts’ukw’um area. The site is already designated as Light Industrial One(I1), which allows for cannabis production.
Sechelt senior development planner Sven Koberwitz explained that the rationale behind this large minimum required area was to ensure that the Coast’s industrial areas wouldn’t get inundated with cannabis production facilities when the federal government legalized cannabis in 2018.
Koberwitz added that since legalization, the district hasn’t been inundated with applications, and therefore they feel prepared to support this smaller production.
The report submitted by staff also stated that the lot size minimum is in place to mitigate potential impacts to adjacent properties, especially relating to odour.
The applicants’ lot is vacant and in the past was the site of a personal medical cannabis facility.
The commission asked how the district ensures that odour control is enforced and monitored.
Koberwitz explained that it is a “complaint-driven process,” and that odour is difficult to quantify.
“It would be looked into to make sure that any required conditions of the variance and any required equipment that’s needed to be installed for odour control is operating as it’s supposed to,” he said.
The APC agenda included an email from the applicant and landlord, Russel Andrews, that said, “We currently do not see any impact to our neighbors or adjacent properties. As all activities will be inside and best practices would be in place for air filtration.”
Andrews attended the meeting and said that if approved the facility could potentially be up and running in under a year.
The commission asked if the district will be in touch with adjacent property owners.
Koberwitz responded that once there is a confirmed date that the application will be considered by Sechelt council, the applicants will be notified to inform all property owners within 100 metres.
APC chair Sharif Senbel said, “I think it’s a suitable location and I also think that the requirements that are laid out by the 1/8federal government 3/8 and by the district address the issues.”
The commission unanimously moved to support the application as presented.
The next step will be for the application to be presented to Sechelt council for consideration.
Jordan Copp is the Coast Reporter’s civic and Indigenous affairs reporter. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
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