LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
I'm glad the taboos around psychedelics research, especially as tools for therapy, are slowly falling down- there's some fascinating stuff in there.<p>To people who have never experienced drugs, grown up in a culture that demonizes them all indiscriminately, have a hard time wrapping their head around what they are/do exactly but are curious about them, I recommend this article by Sam Harris, a great neuroscientist[0]<p>For a slightly more in depth essay, Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception" [1] is a great book, albeit slightly dated.<p>There are also some extremely interesting synergies between the origins of the computer industry and the psychedelics/California counter culture era.  John Markoff's "What the Dormouse Said" [2] is a fantastic read, although it requires knowing about computer history a little bit already. I learned from it that there was scientific research on LSD conducted in Menlo Park, a few blocks away from where I used to live.<p>There's also a great essay by Timothy Leary about parallels between psychedelics as tools for expanding the human mind and the computer as a tool to enhance the human brain in Brenda Laurel's book "Art of Human Computer Interaction Design". [3]<p>There's a great essay by Carl Sagan about his experiences using marijuana creatively/intellectually [4].<p>I had never tried any drugs before moving to California in my 20s, and had grown up in a fairly standard European culture of all drugs = the devil. Some changes occurred, and it turns out there's a really fascinating history and philosophy in there (especially w/ regards to parallels with computer history, as described in the aforementioned book).<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life" rel="nofollow">http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-...</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Doors-Of-Perception-thINKing/dp/1907590099/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393956956&sr=8-1&keywords=doors+of+perception" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-Doors-Of-Perception-thINKing/dp/19...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Personal/dp/0143036769/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393956981&sr=8-1&keywords=dormouse+said" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Pers...</a><p>[3]: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Human-Computer-Interface-Design/dp/0201517973/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1393956970&sr=8-2&keywords=art+of+human+computer+interaction" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Human-Computer-Interface-Desig...</a><p>[4]: <a href="http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/" rel="nofollow">http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/</a>