Cannabis Newsflash

In August 2024: Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn and Hebrew University discovered that long-term, low-dose cannabis use may reverse aging in the brain. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active ingredient in cannabis, was shown to reverse conventional signs of brain aging in mice—a discovery that could help in finding ways to keep our brains healthier and sharper for longer as we get older.

THC was shown to enhance cognitive performance and restore synaptic connections by briefly boosting activity of a key protein called mTOR in brain tissue. mTOR governs energy use and cell growth, and its carefully timed activation appears to help the brain regenerate synapses, which decline with age. Surprisingly, the same THC treatment reduced mTOR activity in fat tissue and blood plasma, mimicking the metabolic effects of a low-calorie diet or intense exercise.

This dual action—revitalizing the brain while slowing aging processes in the body—suggests a novel, tissue-specific anti-aging mechanism. The findings, published in ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, open new avenues for drug development aimed at both cognitive enhancement and longevity, though human trials remain a future step. https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.4311

By the way, in around 4000 BC, cannabis was farmed as a major food crop in Pan-p’o village, China, and regarded among the “five grains.” By 2737 BC, Emperor Shen-Nung's Pen Ts’ao Ching, one of the earliest pharmacopeias, recorded cannabis treating over 100 ailments. This marks a key medicinal milestone. It was recommended for pain, constipation, gout, rheumatism and other ailments. Archaeological evidence also suggests its use in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt around 2000 BC for similar purposes. Ancient Egypt's Ebers Papyrus mentions it for inflammation, used in suppositories for hemorrhoids around 2000 BC, and treated sore eyes.

Cannabis's medicinal use spread to other ancient civilizations. In India, around 1000 BC, it was widely used in Ayurvedic medicine for conditions like epilepsy, rabies, anxiety, bronchitis and other ailments. It was described in Hindu texts like the Atharva Vedas as a “source of happiness,” “joy-giver,” and “bringer of freedom,” often smoked in religious rituals.

In the Greco-Roman world (450-200 BC), it was prescribed for toothaches, earaches, and labor pains, while in the medieval Islamic world (8th to 18th centuries), it was valued for diuretic, antiemetic, antiepileptic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and antipyretic properties

The use of cannabis continued to evolve, with notable figures like Hua T’o (207 AD) using it as an analgesic with wine for anesthesia, and William Brooke O’Shaughnessy introducing it to Western medicine in 1839 after observing its uses in India. It was made illegal in the US through a series of laws, starting with state bans in the early 20th century and culminating in federal prohibition with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. The reasons behind this prohibition are complex.

Its criminalization was heavily influenced by racism, particularly fear and prejudice against Mexican immigrants. During the early 1900s, as Mexican immigrants moved to the US following the Mexican Revolution (1910), they brought the tradition of smoking marijuana. This coincided with growing anti-immigrant sentiment, and marijuana became associated with negative stereotypes, such as being linked to crime and violence. Sensationalized media reports, often fueled by figures like Harry J. Anslinger (head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics) and media mogul William Randolph Hearst, portrayed marijuana as a dangerous drug tied to Mexican immigrants. This racialized narrative helped justify early state-level bans, starting with cities like El Paso in 1915, and later contributed to federal prohibition.

While William Randolph Hearst's newspapers did sensationalize marijuana's dangers, this was more aligned with broader cultural and political agendas rather than a direct economic motive to suppress hemp. Instead, racial prejudice, political agendas, and the broader cultural climate of the time were the dominant drivers, with economic interests playing a secondary or indirect role.

One of the funnier results of the anti-cannabis hype was cinematic propaganda, as seen in 1936’s Reefer Madness, a so-bad-it’s-good movie, as is Marihuana: The Devil’s Weed. In Reefer Madness, upon trying cannabis, some high school students become addicted, eventually leading them to become involved in various crimes such as a hit and run accident, manslaughter, murder, conspiracy to murder and attempted rape. While all this is happening, they suffer hallucinations, descend into insanity, associate with organized crime and (in one character's case) commit suicide. Originally financed by a church group under the title Tell Your Children, the film was intended to be shown to parents as a morality tale attempting to teach them about the dangers of cannabis use. After it was shot, it was purchased by producer Dwain Esper who re-cut it for distribution on the exploitation film circuit, catering to vulgar interest while escaping censorship under the guise of moral guidance, beginning in 1938–1939 through the 1940s and 1950s. See the clip here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXtumnTN6zg

Post-prohibition, enforcement of cannabis laws showed racial disparities, with African Americans nearly four times more likely than whites to be arrested on marijuana-related charges in the early 21st century, despite similar usage rates. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug, maintaining federal prohibition despite state-level legalizations starting in the late 20th century.

John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon, in a 1992 interview, finally published by Harper’s Magazine in 2016: “You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Journalist Dan Baum interviewed Ehrlichman and others for his 1996 book “Smoke and Mirrors,” but said he left out the Ehrlichman comment from the book because it did not fit the narrative style focused on putting the readers in the middle of the backroom discussions themselves, so the comments did not surface until 2016, after Baum remembered them while going back through old notes for the Harper’s story. Baum said he had no reason to believe Ehrlichman was being dishonest and viewed them as “atonement” from a man long after his tumultuous run in the White House ended. “I think Ehrlichman was waiting for someone to come and ask him. I think he felt bad about it. I think he had a lot to feel bad about, same with Egil Krogh, who was another Watergate guy.” said Baum.

When I was in high school 1979-82, the story went around that smoking cannabis shrank the testicles, among other worrisome effects. Many years later, it was revealed that the animals used for such drug tests were, essentially, put in boxes that were flooded with cannabis smoke, and the various negative effects they experienced were a result of oxygen deprivation as much as anything else. This lends credence to the idea that the results of scientific studies are primarily determined by the ideology of the people funding them.

The 1980s also saw TV ads such as Nancy Reagan's wholly ineffectual "Just Say No" campaign, and the "This is your brain [an egg] on drugs [in a frying pan]," as if all drugs had the same effect, not to mention that many of BigPharma's legal drugs have much worse side effects than those of some illegal drugs.

As I was and am a believer in healthy foods and fitness, I never tried any drugs (not counting caffeine) until I was nearly 17, when I purposefully got drunk at a high school pal's graduation party, which featured free drinks. I tried cannabis for the first time at age 20, about six years later than most of my peers in high school. I had read about it, and heard about it from peers at high school. A couple of them started smoking too much, which had negative effects on their high school academic careers, although the people I'm thinking of went on to brilliant careers in college and beyond. The idea that cannabis was, for them, a "gateway" to harmful drugs and personal ruin was bullshit, more lies from our government.

When I finally smoked it, I found that what I'd read and heard was true: my brain was connecting ideas that normally would not have been connected. As the recent study shows, my brain's synapses were positively affected. Then there was the euphoria--it was a happily enlightening experience. 

Having gotten high once, I spent the next year in Japan where, following America's lead, the penalty for smoking cannabis was no different from that of using cocaine or heroin--jail. But the Japanese sure loved to get drunk, many of them on a nightly basis. I sure did a lot of drinking that year, but I didn't smoke cannabis again until I was back in the US, at the start of my senior year of college, during which I was a weekend smoker.

After reading Be Here Now and The Doors of Perception, I took LSD and psilocybin mushrooms a few times each during that year. All of my trips were positively enlightening experiences, as Ram Dass and Aldous Huxley had primed me for how to interpret the effects of these drugs—as psycho-spiritual entheogens, from ἐν (en, "within"), θεός (theos, "god"), and γεννάω (gennao, "to generate"), meaning "generating the divine within" (The Road to Eleusis, 1978), a more accurate term than hallucinogen or psychedelic...as is cannabis, when taken by a person so oriented, or religiously Rastafarian. In fact…

Entheogens such as the psilocybin found in magic mushrooms have been used in sacred contexts since ancient times. They have been used in various ways, including as part of established religious rituals and as aids for personal spiritual development…are used for religious, magical, shamanic, or spiritual purposes in many parts of the world. Civilizations such as the Maya and Aztecs used psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, and morning glory seeds in ceremonies meant to connect with deities and perform healing. They have traditionally been used to supplement many diverse practices geared towards achieving transcendence, including healing, divination, meditation, yoga, sensory deprivation, asceticism, prayer, trance, rituals, chanting, imitation of sounds, hymns like peyote songs, drumming, and ecstatic dance.

In recent decades, entheogens have experienced a resurgence in academic and clinical research, particularly in psychiatry and psychotherapy. Clinical studies suggest that substances such as psilocybin and MDMA may assist in treating mental health conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety, especially in end-of-life care. These developments reflect a broader reevaluation of entheogens not only as sacred tools but also as potentially transformative therapeutic agents.

The psychedelic experience is often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as those experienced in meditation, near-death experiences, and mystical experiences. Ego dissolution is often described as a key feature of the psychedelic state often resulting in perceived personal insight spiritual awakening, or a reorientation of values.

Although it seems unlikely that this name entheogen will ever be accepted in formal scientific circles, its use has dramatically increased in popular media and internet sites. Indeed, in much of the counterculture that uses these substances, entheogen has replaced psychedelic as the name of choice, and we may expect to see this trend continue.

Entheogens have been used in various cultures worldwide, primarily in religious or healing ceremonies. R. Gordon Wasson and Giorgio Samorini have proposed several examples of the cultural use of entheogens that are found in the archaeological record. Hemp seeds discovered by archaeologists at Pazyryk suggest early ceremonial practices by the Scythians occurred during the 5th to 2nd century BC, confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus. As detailed in Ott's Pharmacotheon (1993), substances such as ayahuasca in South America, psilocybin mushrooms in Mesoamerica, and peyote in North America have long-standing traditional uses for spiritual communication, healing, and ritual.

These traditional uses often involve carefully controlled ceremonial contexts that emphasize the sacred and transformative nature of the entheogenic experience. For example, the Native American Church incorporates peyote in its religious ceremonies, while indigenous Amazonian cultures use ayahuasca in shamanic rituals.

Most of the well-known modern examples of entheogens, such as Ayahuasca, peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, and morning glories are from the native cultures of the Americas. However, it has also been suggested that entheogens played an important role in ancient Indo-European culture, for example by inclusion in the ritual preparations of the Soma, the "pressed juice" that is the subject of Book 9 of the Rigveda. Soma was ritually prepared and drunk by priests and initiates and elicited a paean in the Rigveda that embodies the nature of an entheogen: “Splendid by Law! declaring Law, truth speaking, truthful in thy works, Enouncing faith, King Soma!... O [Soma] Pavāmana (mind clarifying), place me in that deathless, undecaying world wherein the light of heaven is set, and everlasting lustre shines.... Make me immortal in that realm where happiness and transports, where joy and felicities combine...”

I’ve written before of Brian Muraresku’s The Immortality Key, about the world’s first religion, with no name (the Clint-Eastwood-in-a-Western of religions), about the Indo-Europeans and rye they cultivated growing making homes for ergot fungus—the lsd stuff. To recap, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (2020) goes on to hypothesize and present evidence that the communion wine in early Christianity contained entheogens. Muraresku explores a little-known connection between the best-kept secret in Ancient Greece and Christianity. “Before Jerusalem, before Rome, before Mecca—there was Eleusis: the spiritual capital of the ancient world. It promised immortality to Plato and the rest of Athens's greatest minds with a very simple formula: drink this potion (the kykeon), and see God. Shrouded in secrecy for millennia, the Ancient Greek sacrament was buried when the newly Christianized Roman Empire obliterated Eleusis in the fourth century AD. Other entheogens in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean include the opium poppy, datura, and the unidentified ‘lotus (likely the sacred blue lily) eaten by the Lotus-Eaters in the Odyssey and Narcissus.”

Muraresku “presents the pagan continuity hypothesis with a psychedelic twist,” and addresses two fundamental questions: “Before the rise of Christianity, did the Ancient Greeks consume a secret psychedelic sacrament during their most famous and well-attended religious rituals? Did the Ancient Greeks pass a version of their sacrament along to the earliest, Greek-speaking Christians, for whom the original Holy Communion or Eucharist was, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist?”

“This book is audacious because it tackles and purports to resolve some of the most controversial questions in Catholic Church history and Indo-European archeology. Does Christianity have a psychedelic history? Who were the ancient Indo-Europeans and were their soma/haoma rituals the inspiration for the kykeon potion in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries and the Eucharist in early Christianity? These Ancient Greek Mysteries are a landmark in the psychedelic study of world religions because they were practiced annually for nearly 2,000 years, from about 1500 BC to 380 AD when the Catholic Church became the official religion of the Roman Empire, after which Eleusis was destroyed as a pagan temple.”

“Archaeochemists at the University of Pennsylvania and MIT found the first direct chemical evidence of entheogen use in the Eleusinian Mysteries, in chalices from early Spanish churches. In the process, The Immortality Key resurrected and rescued the life work of Carl A.P. Ruck, a Classics professor expert in the rites of Dionysus and Catholic Church history, from four decades of academic exile.

“According to Ruck, Eyan, and Staples, the familiar shamanic entheogen that the Indo-Europeans brought knowledge of was Amanita muscaria. It could not be cultivated; thus it had to be found, which suited it to a nomadic lifestyle. When they reached the world of the Caucasus and the Aegean, the Indo-Europeans encountered wine, the entheogen of Dionysus, who brought it with him from his birthplace in the mythical Nysa, when he returned to claim his Olympian birthright. The Indo-European proto-Greeks "recognized it as the entheogen of Zeus, and their own traditions of shamanism, the Amanita and the 'pressed juice' of Soma – but better, since no longer unpredictable and wild, the way it was found among the Hyperboreans: as befit their own assimilation of agrarian modes of life, the entheogen was now cultivable." Robert Graves, in his foreword to The Greek Myths, hypothesises that the ambrosia of various pre-Hellenic tribes was Amanita muscaria (which, based on the morphological similarity of the words amanita, amrita and ambrosia, is entirely plausible) and perhaps psilocybin mushrooms of the genus Panaeolus. Amanita muscaria was regarded as divine food, according to Ruck and Staples, not something to be indulged in, sampled lightly, or profaned. It was seen as the food of the gods, their ambrosia, and as mediating between the two realms.” https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/5/1/article-p5.xml

Tantalus's crime was inviting commoners to share his ambrosia—food of the gods for thought. Heh. Did I ever tell you about when I met Ayahuasca herself? (a story for another essay)

But there’s more: The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secrets of the Mysteries says that the kykeon, the secret potion consumed by initiates at Eleusis, contained a hallucinogenic ergot. The book presents evidence, analyzed by Hoffman at Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland, that ergots of wheat and barley contain alkaloids of the ergonovine group and traces of lysergic acid amide (a less potent relative of LSD), both psychoactive. The Homeric “Hymn to Demeter,” the Greek goddess who gifted mortals the Eleusinian Mysteries, states that the kykeon was prepared from barley, water and mint. Based on this information, the researchers presumed that the wild barley found on the Rarian plains surrounding Eleusis in the second millennium BC was host to an ergot-containing, water-soluble entheogenic alkaloid–the purple sclerotia of Claviceps purpurea, a parasitic fungal growth found on rye, barley, wheat and wild grasses.

So, imagine being a neolithic hunter-gatherer 11,700 years ago, and becoming a part-time farmer; then (one fine day, while harvesting) tripping balls off of some barley grains, seeing all life’s interconnections as your own sense of indivuality dissolves; then using the barley to brew ego-dissolving entheogenic beer, so everyone could participate in sacred ceremonies of oneness and communion with spirits; the first raves, but with divine intervention, visitation from ancestors, high-level ESP. It must have been quite an inspiration to the Indo-Europeans, leading to exponential developments in thought, imagination, manifestation…not to mention realization. Half of The Language Tree was invented by them.

Then there’s the fact that, as Wikipedia so concisely covers, “during the next millennia, [the revolution] transformed the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had hitherto dominated human prehistory into sedentary (non-nomadic) societies based in built-up villages and towns. These societies radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation, with activities such as irrigation and deforestation which allowed the production of surplus food. Other developments that are found very widely during this era are the domestication of animals, pottery, polished stone tools, and rectangular houses. In many regions, the adoption of agriculture by prehistoric societies caused episodes of rapid population growth, a phenomenon known as the Neolithic demographic transition.

“These developments, sometimes called the Neolithic package, provided the basis for centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies, depersonalized systems of knowledge (e.g. writing), densely populated settlements, specialization and division of labour, more trade, the development of non-portable art and architecture, and greater property ownership. The earliest known civilization developed in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (c. 4,500 BC); its emergence also heralded the beginning of the Bronze Age.

“The relationship of the aforementioned Neolithic characteristics to the onset of agriculture, their sequence of emergence, and their empirical relation to each other at various Neolithic sites remains the subject of academic debate. It is usually understood to vary from place to place, rather than being the outcome of universal laws of social evolution.” Yes, and I think Yuval Harari writes of tribes that went back to being hunter-gatherers after giving agriculture a try. Maybe their barley got the ergot fungus that kills you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind

But look at that tree, and imagine being the first humans to take (all-natural) LSD and, over time, build a language (descendents of which are now spoken by 3.2 billion people, 46% of the global population), as you built a culture and civilization. Then imagine the government of the most powerful country in history banning cannabis and other drugs with healthy effects, 11,700 years later, so it could suppress peace activists and continue waging a war against one of the world’s poorest countries, fucking itself up in the process.