In this personal account, Brazilian journalist Marcelo Leite talks about his shift from being primarily a science journalist to focusing on psychedelics. He speaks on his personal psychedelic experiences, the history of psychedelics in Brazil, his educational journey over the years, the overlap between Brazilian practice and Western science surrounding psychedelics, and how all of these things have shaped his journalistic practice.

Brazilian journalist Marcelo Leite reviews Michael Pollan’s takes on mescaline, opium, and caffeine in Pollan’s new book How To Change Your Mind. Leite explores histories, controversies, and experiences surrounding these psychoactive plants stemming from Pollan’s experiences while also taking into account broader historical and contemporary issues.

This article explores the idea of the psychedelic experience as a “double-edged sword” in the way that although spiritual revelations and insights can aid in bettering mental health, these revelations and insights can also lead to further damaging the psychology of an individual. The authors explore potential causes and solutions to this dilemma.

Through this narrative fictional account, Andrew Penn offers a literary image of underground pharmaceutical practice by telling the story of the SSRI circles of 1985 in New York City. He compares this with the growing popularity of psychedelics in the mainstream and excitement for clinical trials while at the same time underground practice still exists.

In this article, Filipe Ribeiro covers the conservation challenges surrounding kambô. The kambô frog’s secretions are used in traditional practice among several Indigenous peoples in the southwest Amazon. With the growing global demand for kambô, some have suggested that the Indigenous approach to collecting the frog’s secretions is harmful to the frog. Ribeiro urges the West to not rush to hasty and superficial judgments regarding traditional practices.

The history of transforming peyote into mescaline is a story of separating plants from people. It is a story of colonialism.

Jasmine Virdi interviews Jahlani Niaah, Rastafari scholar and community member, about the little-known and often misunderstood Rastafari movement. Within the psychedelic renaissance, the sacramental use of ganja by Rastafari is often overlooked. In this interview, Niaah provides a historical overview of the origins of the Rastafari movement, explaining certain key elements of Rastafari praxis, and about the sacramental use of ganja among the Rastafari.

Alex Beiner critiques a paper called Psilocybin: From Serendipity to Credibility in the journal ‘Frontiers in Psychiatry’ which was written by two psychiatrists, James Rucker and Allan Young, about the use of psilocybin by legal retreats. He centers the philosophical question of “who has the right control access to psilocybin?“, provides counter arguments to the current power structures, and offers an opportunity to create a truly unique, multidisciplinary and ground-breaking model of healing.

This paper provides a history of the process in which mescaline was synthesized, and 100 years of research involving it. Among these researchers were Ernst Späth, Arthur Heffter, Humphrey Osmond, Aldous Huxley, and Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin. Today, there has been movement for researchers to conduct clinical studies with mescaline through the FDA.

Jasmine Virdi interviews Nidia Olvera Hernández, a Mexican ethnohistorian, specializing in the history of psychoactive substances and drug poilices. In this article, Nida shares about some of her earlier research into the history of marijuana in Mexico, detailing cannabis’ arrival with Span-ish colonizers who intended to use the plant for industrial purposes, and how the conception of the plant shifted over time, eventually coming to be referred to as “marijuana” as opposed to “hemp.”