Ladies and gentlemen I’m proud and brutally disgruntled to say that I’m just over six months clean and sober (yes this includes weed) after over 12 years of doing drugs.

Hold your applause, please. I’m happy about it and shit but I didn’t ever want to come to this. I love drugs like a fat kid loves cake. I just personally can’t be trusted with them anymore (if I ever could). I have kids now, I’m getting a little older and it was just time to hang up my drinking and drugging boots for a long and indefinite period of time. 

That said, sobriety is damned difficult. I got high as a kite on all kinds of shit all day every day for over a decade and it’s no easy task to change my ways after such an extended jaunt down the proverbial rabbit hole. The general state of my life is undeniably better since I got sober but as a fellow wagon rider I know likes to say: sobriety is not all rainbows and blowjobs. It sucks dirty dog ass just to get out of bed some days and I’ve had to develop little tricks to keep my head in the game.

I was in the throes of one of those no good dirty awful very bad days when the idea for this article was born. I was in a group chat with some fellow drug reporters and derelicts talking about how Hunter Biden would make a way better president than his geriatric father or that fast talking orange fellow when I lamented that I would almost certainly break sobriety to smoke crack with Hunter Biden. 

I would love to say I was joking but it’s a mortal sin to lie in print. If Hunter Biden invited me to smoke crack, ride water slides and fire off automatic weapons with Ukrainian hookers I would have absolutely no choice but to say yes. I may be trying to live a better life but I’m not fucking daft. That shit would rule.

Thus, I was reminded about the episode of Friends where Ross makes a list of all the celebrity women he’s allowed to sleep with while in a long-term relationship. A hall pass list if you will. As somebody deadlocked in a long term relationship with sobriety, I thought it might be helpful and motivating to have my own hall pass list of people I’m allowed to do drugs with should the opportunity arise. 

Obviously, smoking crack with Hunter Biden is at the top of that list and I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to ask him in writing if he would be down to get high and ride water slides with me and some of my fellow drug journalist friends. So, Hunter, if you happen to be reading this please get ahold of me. Your dad, lawyers, girlfriends and/or ranking members of The Justice Department absolutely do not have to know.

Now it is at this time I feel I should be absolutely clear for my fellow sober people, this is just to have a laugh. I’m fully committed to sobriety and better living and I really don’t want to overdose again. I’m just trying to be funny, mostly. I also don’t think I’ll ever realistically be put into any of the following situations but who knows, life is cool sometimes. The point is this is supposed to be funny and I’m only like 2 maybe 40 percent serious so don’t yell at me and don’t tell my sponsor, wife, parents or kids that I wrote this. 

Now that we got the disclaimer out of the way, here’s my sobriety hall pass list complete with the people I’m allowed to get high with and the substance we’re allowed to do together. 

1. Drinking Lean with Future

This one should be obvious. I have listened to the 56 Nights mixtape well over 10,000 times. When I found out my lady was pregnant with my first son I swear to God I put an earbud in her belly button and played Codeine Crazy at max volume. I never had enough access to lean in the mountains of NorCal to really sip like I wanted to but on the rare occasion it was around I loved me some dirty sprite. If DJ Screw or Pimp C were still alive I’d choose to sip with them instead but I’d still want to do drugs with Future even though I’m pretty sure he’s actually sober in real life. His music was the soundtrack to so many of my degenerate activities it would only be right to sip a double cup or three in the studio with the man himself. 

2. Whiskey with Johnny Depp

Hear me out on this one, I don’t want to drink with Johnny Depp just because I’m secretly a little gay for him. I want to drink with Johnny Depp because he’s one of the few remaining people walking the Earth who knew and loved the late and great Hunter S. Thompson while he was still alive. As a die-hard Thompson fanatic with a Gonzo fist tattooed on my chest, I would love nothing more than to hear some stories about him from one of his closest friends and allies. I also know Johnny appreciates great literature and writing which I can sit and nerd out about with anybody, but to toss a few back with the guy who played Hunter in real life and trade stories from the dark and bloody ground would easily be the coolest moment I’ll ever experience in this lifetime. 

3. Acid with Ralph Steadman

Could it be any more obvious that I’m a Gonzo fanatic? Not only that, Ralph Steadman is one of my favorite artists and a noted lover of psychedelics, though maybe not so much in his old age. Either way, it would be an absolute gaggle of fun to dose with Steadman, watch his process, throw some paint around a studio and hear stories from his life. Art and acid also just go hand in hand for me. I used to dose up and spray paint manic scenes of pigs, butterflies and grim reapers (oh my!) on bedsheets in my old garage, so this would be a much more well-thought out version of that with one of the true godfathers.

4. Cocaine with Grace Slick

The 60’s are, naturally, my favorite bit of American history I wasn’t around for and Jefferson Airplane is one of my all-time favorite bands. As the lead singer and mastermind behind some of my favorite tracks from that era, it would be unbelievably rad to toss back some nose-beers with Grace Slick and fast-track a conversation about the 60’s, the Vietnam War, the Chicago Seven, the original Woodstock and how shitty the weed was back then compared to now. She’s probably a little old to be railing lines now but hey, this list was never supposed to be super realistic. I actually reached out to her for an interview once but never heard back so if anyone knows Grace Slick, tell her to call me so I can pick her brain. Doing drugs together would not be required.

5. Smoking Weed with Barack Obama

I stole this one from Jon Cappetta but it was too good to leave out. I’m not the most political person in the world. Frankly, everyone who gets too into politics seems to be fighting a losing fight against what I can only assume to be a superhuman race of reptilian overlords. That said, Obama was by far the coolest lizard-person ever to grace the White House since I’ve been alive (Although Slick Willy was in office the year I was born I was just too young to remember and too young to know what a blowjob was). The Secret Service would likely have to be there which would be really, really funny to me. They might even have to test the weed first, in a highly classified fashion of course. I also want to ask the former president about the night we killed Bin Laden, what it was like in the Situation Room, etc. That seems like it would make for some fun, light weed conversation.

6. MDMA with Emma Watson

Before anyone accuses me of anything let me be clear: this is not a sexual thing. Emma Watson just seems like she’d be fun to party with and I don’t want to take Molly with dudes. Not to mention I already saw Daniel Radcliffe in person once after doing a bunch of cocaine on a sea cliff (the details of which are here) so as my other favorite character from the Harry Potter series and somebody who generally seems cool as shit, I just have a weird feeling that it would be super fun to take Ecstasy and go to a light show with the brilliant Hermione Granger. Maybe we’d fake magic fight just for fun. Miley Cyrus also seems like she’d be fun to take Molly with, for whatever that information is worth.

During the course of writing this I was surprised to find this was actually a bit of a difficult list for me because all the people that came to mind originally are dead. Mac Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Warren Zevon, Joan Didion, MF Doom, James Gandolfini, Charles Bukowski and plenty more I can’t be bothered to remember at the moment would have all made the list ahead of the rest but they tragically passed before the fateful day I sat down to write this silly little article, many of them far too young. Maybe that says something about who I choose to look up to but I think it says more about the bargain you make between heaven and hell when you decide how you want to be remembered. Greatness takes a heavy toll on the mind, body and soul after all. Live fast, die young and don’t leave enough money behind to pay for the casket.

Anyway, I won’t turn this into a philosophical diatribe. I’d have to be high for that and I am regretfully…not…. I’ll end by saying that getting sober was a smart choice for me at the time I decided to do it but I don’t regret getting after it as hard as I did, not for a second. You gotta get a little weird with it sometimes. You gotta balance out the mundane with some good old fashioned freak power. You gotta have a backup plan to get through the pain of being a well-functioning human. You don’t necessarily need drugs to do that and I would be remiss if I did not take the time to strongly recommend sobriety to anyone struggling with substance abuse. It helps, it really does. Everyone else feel free to party on for the rest of us who can’t anymore.

That said, if anyone listed above wants to get high with me you can find me on AOL Instant Messenger. My screen name is “5ubstanc3Dumpst3r143.” Until then, you can find me hanging out with my kids, fully present, telling better stories than the other parents and casting my vote for Hunter Biden this November. 

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Margaret “Peggy” Mellon Hitchcock, an ultra-wealthy heiress who grew up in the Andrew Mellon estate and its fortunes, funded LSD-fueled adventures for Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard “Ram Dass” Alpert, passed away on April 9 and an elaborate obituary was written by Penelope Green for the New York Times on May 3.

“Pretty Peggy Hitchcock was an international jet-setter, renowned as the colorful patroness of the livelier arts and confidante of jazz musicians, racecar drivers, writers, movie stars. Stylish, and with a wry sense of humor, Peggy was considered the most innovative and artistic of the Andrew Mellon family,” Leary wrote in his 1983 autobiography, Flashbacks. The debut 1974 issue of High Times and April 1978 issue contained excerpts from Leary’s writings.

Both psychedelic gurus were kicked out of Harvard: Leary was kicked out of Harvard for allegedly missing teaching responsibilities (but more likely for advocating for LSD), and Alpert was kicked out of Harvard for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate student. In Leary and Alpert’s experiments, including the Harvard Psilocybin Project, graduate students from Harvard and other schools in Boston were given psilocybin and asked to write a report about their trips. In another experiment, they offered psilocybin to prison inmates in the hope it would diminish recidivism. Both LSD and psilocybin were legal at the time, however.

They both benefited from Hitchcock’s money and ability to host psychedelic activities, where they continued for about five years. Hitchcock was remembered for being nurturing, but also being a force of nature in the fields she chose to entertain.

“She was a vibrant person, very enthusiastic,” her brother Billy Hitchcock told New York Times. “She had a completely open mind. Generous hearted to the point where people could take advantage of her. She had a lot of pain in her life, she was unlucky in love, but you would never know it. She was a real force. Whatever she did, she threw herself into.”

The documentary Dying to Know on Netflix, interviews Hitchcock, who discusses her involvement with LSD. Hitchcock tried acid when it was a legal experimental drug. “It really confirmed a lot of things that I had hoped were true, that I had sort of glimpsed at various times in my life, that there was a larger reality than what my everyday, humdrum experiences were,” she said.

The Hitchcock Estate

Hitchcock and her brothers allowed Leary to set up camp at their family estate called Daheim (German for “at home”), also known as Millbrook or the Hitchcock estate. It was built by an early 20th-century resort architect named Addison Mizner. A five-year run of psychedelic adventures ensued, attracting people like Allen Ginsberg, Charles Mingus, and R. D. Laing to join for the ride. The New York Times reports that Hitchcock was at the estate when Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters rolled up to the mansion in Furthur, their psychedelic school bus. Leary described it as “a psychedelic summer camp” and it was basically converted into a psychedelic research center as well.

Leary rented the 64-room mansion that was owned by Hitchcock’s brothers in Millbrook. He paid $1 per year in rent and turned it into a psychedelic haven and research center. You can see a giant face painted on the side of the mansion during his stay.

French Toast reports that Hitchcock also helped fuel the cannabis movement, as she frequented smoke-filled jazz club performances and the psychedelic movement often involved copious amounts of cannabis. The 1960s counterculture movement was very alive, and the mansion served as one of its headquarters.

How did she get control of this mansion? Mellow was one of the longest-serving Secretaries of the Treasury and helped shape the Industrial Revolution. In addition, Hitchcock’s grandfather was William Larimer Mellon, a founder of Gulf Oil. Peggy’s mother was a Mellon heiress and her father, Thomas Hitchcock Jr., was a leading polo player and a partner at Lehman Brothers. Standard Oil President Walter C. Teagle purchased an estate in Millbrook, New York and eventually sold it to the Hitchcock family, for whom it’s named today. Heirs to the Mellon fortune—siblings William Mellon “Billy” Hitchcock, Tommy Hitchcock III, and Margaret Mellon “Peggy” Hitchcock—opened the doors of their estate to Leary.

Hitchcock married Walter Bowart, a counterculture journalist, who was a founder of The East Village Other counterculture newspaper. In 1966, Bowart testified before the Senate Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and urged the committee members to try LSD for themselves. High Times reprinted several East Village Other articles, such as a reprint of Leary’s 1968 article, “Deal for Real.”

Hitchcock bankrolled a publishing house for her husband called Omen Press, which published books on metaphysics and spirituality. They divorced in 1980.

Without Hitchcock’s involvement, it’s unlikely Leary and Ram Dass would’ve become the household names they are today.

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MindBio Therapeutics Corp. said that “MB22001, a proprietary and self-titratable form of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) designed for safe take home microdosing” has been approved for take-home use in a pair of clinical trials.

“The trials in women’s health aim to address a huge unmet need in effectively treating Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS) and Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric disorder (PMDD) without the side effects of anti-depressants and the combined oral contraceptive pill often used in treatment,” the company said in a press release.

The company “now has in its portfolio, multiple Phase 2B clinical trials underway and in a series of world firsts,” the press release said.

“This month, MindBio aims to present secondary data relating to its recently completed Phase 2A trial of MB22001 in patients with Major Depressive Disorder. The Company has already met its primary end-point using the global standard Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) to show a 60% drop in depressive symptoms and 53% complete remission from depression by week 8 of treatment,” the company said in the release. 

“The secondary data presentation will report on post treatment effects, using the MADRS and several other vital clinical scales for measuring the effects of MB22001 on each clinical trial participant’s mental health. The readouts are important to understanding the full impact on patients of this novel medicine and if the results continue to be positive, strengthening the position of this drug as it progresses towards Phase 3 clinical trials.”

As Benzinga explains, MindBio’s thesis “is that it can be used acutely during specific periods of the menstrual cycle, with targeted dosing to treat negative mood symptoms.” 

“This thesis is based on three main facts a) The acute dose day mood-elevating effects of MB22001 have been demonstrated in MindBio’s Phase 1 trials b) MindBio’s Phase 2a open-label trial in depressed patients show long-term improvements in mood and c) reports in the grey literature of people self-medicating for PMS/PMDD using LSD microdoses,” Benzinga said. “Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is estimated to affect ~25% of all women who menstruate – equivalent to 956 million women worldwide. A particularly severe form of PMS is termed premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) which affects 3-8% of women who menstruate. Current treatments for these issues are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), given either continuously or daily during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. While SSRIs can be effective for some with PMDD approximately 40% of women with PMDD do not respond to SSRIs, and common side effects of SSRIs when used for PMDD include nausea, decreased energy, somnolence, fatigue, decreased libido and sweating.”

MindBio bills itself as a “pioneering clinical studies into the microdosing of psychedelic medicines to treat a range of medical conditions such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, panic disorder, chronic pain and opiate addictions,” and that invests in “clinical research to discover potential new treatment options and we aim to create novel medicines and treatment regimes from breakthrough microdosing studies.”

The company provides more background on this year’s clinical trials of MB22001.

“Phase 2a clinical trials completed in March 2024 using MB22001 in Major Depressive Disorder.  The Phase 2a clinical trial resulted in 53% of depressed patients entering the trial being in complete remission after 8 weeks of treatment. Overall, there was a 14.1 drop in MADRS Score (Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale). The MADRS is a global standard for measuring the severity of Clinical Depression. Overall there was an impressive 60% drop in Depressive symptoms at week 8 of the trial,” the company explains, adding that it has “just started dosing in a Phase 2b depression trial.”  

“In this randomised active placebo-controlled trial, 90 patients with Major Depressive Disorder will be given microdoses of MB22001 or an active placebo over an 8 week period.  At the end of the 8 weeks, all participants in the placebo and drug group will be offered an 8 week extension to ensure the placebo group has the opportunity to trial MB22001,” it continues. “A second Phase 2b trial in late stage cancer patients is also currently underway.  This cancer study will evaluate the feasibility of conducting a randomised controlled trial comparing psychedelic-microdose assisted Meaning-Centred Psychotherapy to standard Meaning-Centred Psychotherapy in people who have advanced cancer and anxiety or depression.”

Participants in the trials “will be randomised to receive psychotherapy alongside doses of either an LSD microdose or placebo,” MindBio said. 

“The feasibility, acceptability, safety and potential psychological benefits of this intervention will be assessed. Our findings will inform the development of a larger trial and provide an initial indication of the potential benefits of psychedelic microdosing in advanced cancer.”

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Researchers at a university in Sweden are using acid and ketamine to better understand the workings of the brain, which would then lead to the development of artificial intelligence.

The researchers, based at Lund University in Lund, Sweden, “have developed a technique for simultaneously measuring electrical signals from 128 areas of the brain in awake rats,” the school said in a press release earlier this year. 

The study has drawn recent media coverage from both Reuters and the British tabloid Metro.

The university said that the researchers have “then used the information to measure what happens to the neurons when the rats are given psychedelic drugs,” with the results showing “an unexpected and simultaneous synchronisation among neurons in several regions of the brain.”

Pär Halje, a researcher in neurophysiology at Lund University whose team worked on the study, conceived of the “idea that electrical oscillations in the brain could be used to teach us more about our experiences” years ago, according to the release.

Halje’s team “was studying rats with Parkinson’s disease that had problems with involuntary movements,” when the researchers “discovered a tone – an oscillation or wave in the electrical fields – of 80 hertz in the brains of the rats with Parkinson’s disease” that “turned out that the wave was closely connected to the involuntary movements.”

“A Polish researcher had observed similar waves after giving rats the anaesthetic ketamine. The ketamine was given at a low dose so that the rats were conscious, and the equivalent dose in a human causes psychedelic experiences. The waves they saw were in more cognitive regions of the brain than in the rats with Parkinson’s, and the frequency was higher, but that still made us consider whether there were links between the two phenomena. Perhaps excessive brain waves in the motor regions of the brain cause motor symptoms, while excessive waves in cognitive regions give cognitive symptoms,” Halje said in a statement.

Halje’s team, the university said, “has developed a method that uses electrodes to simultaneously measure oscillations from 128 separate areas of the brain in awake rat.” 

“For several of these areas, it is the first time anyone has successfully shown how individual neurons are affected by LSD in awake animals. When we gave the rats the psychedelic substances LSD and ketamine, the waves were clearly registered,” Halje said.

The research team’s findings were notable in that ketamine and LSD “resulted in the same wave patterns even if the signals from individual cells differed,” even though the drugs are known to affect different receptors within the brain.

“When the rats were given LSD, researchers saw that their neurons were inhibited – they signalled less – in all parts of the brain. Ketamine seemed to have a similar effect on the large neurons – pyramidal cells – which saw their expression inhibited, while interneurons, which are smaller neurons that are only collected locally in tissue, increased their signalling,” the university explained.

Halje said that activity “in the individual neurons caused by ketamine and LSD looks quite different, and as such cannot be directly linked to the psychedelic experience.” 

“Instead, it seems to be this distinctive wave phenomenon – how the neurons behave collectively – that is most strongly linked to the psychedelic experience,” he said.

“The oscillations behave in a strange way. One might think that a strong wave starts somewhere, which then spreads to other parts of the brain. But instead, we see that the neurons’ activity synchronises itself in a special way – the waves in the brain go up and down essentially simultaneously in all parts of the brain where we are able to take measurements. This suggests that there are other ways in which the waves are communicated than through chemical synapses, which are relatively slow.”

Halje is bullish on the model’s potential, saying that it could expand research into psychosis and that artificial intelligence may also unlock our understanding of consciousness.

His dream, the university said, is that the “model will help us in the hunt for the mechanisms behind consciousness and that the measurements may be a way to study how consciousness is shaped.”

“Given how drastically a psychosis manifests itself, there ought to be a common pattern that we can measure. So far, we have not had that, but we now see a very specific oscillation pattern in rats that we are able to measure,” he said.

He continued: “In light of the development of AI, it is becoming increasingly important to clarify what we mean by intelligence and what we mean by consciousness. Can self-awareness occur spontaneously, or is it something that needs to be built in? We do not know this today, because we do not know what the required ingredients for consciousness in our brains are. This is where it is exciting, the synchronised pattern we see, and whether this can help us to track down the neural foundations of consciousness.”

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Infamous (and now deceased) El Paso drug trafficker Jimmy Chagra’s son, 44-year-old Jamiel Alexander Chagra Nichols, was arrested for allegedly selling cocaine, fentanyl, and LSD. Some of his clients included Fort Bliss soldiers, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officials said. 

The El Paso Times reports that the special agents arrested Nichols on Friday, August 18. It’s currently estimated that five Texans die every day, on average, from a fentanyl overdose. In April of this year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott launched a $10 million effort, the “One Pill Kills” campaign, to combat the fentanyl crisis, including sending overdose-reversing meds (Narcan) to all 254 counties. 

The news of Nichols’ arrest comes after authorities allegedly found over 21,900 dosages of LSD at his El Paso home during a multi-agency drug investigation, DPS officials said. The search warrant that led to the drug seizure and Nichols’s arrest was carried out by the Fentanyl Overdose Response Team of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in El Paso, who paired up with Texas DPS special agents. His arrest was a long time in the making, resulting from a six-month-long investigation, although due to his ancestry, it’s safe to assume that Nichols has been on the government’s list for some time. 

According to El Paso County Jail records, Nichols now faces four state counts of manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance. Nichols was released from jail Monday on a total surety bond of $28,000.  

Nichols’s notorious father is Jamiel Alexander “Jimmy” Chagra, who made a name for himself as El Paso’s most wanted drug trafficker of the 1970s. Las Vegas City Life once described him as “the undisputed marijuana kingpin of the Western world” (he also dealt heavily in cocaine). 

The son of a rug merchant family, Chagra originally worked as a carpet salesman before breaking into the drug smuggling trade in 1969. He trafficked drugs from both Mexico and Columbia using planes and boats (which still happens; recently, the feds seized 223 pounds of cocaine and arrested two people headed toward Long Beach from Columbia). 

Chagra was also known for his epic, high-stakes gambling, which, by all accounts, he not only loved but used to launder money earned through drug trafficking. Before his arrest, he was estimated to be worth approximately $100 million ($500 million today). Charga’s downfall can be marked to November 21, 1978, when Assistant U.S. Attorney James Kerr was shot near his home by two men who fired 19 bullets at his car. Kerr lived; his only injuries sustained were some minor glass cuts, but law enforcement was officially ready to get Chagra senior. 

In February 1979, the OG Chagra was arrested on trafficking charges. He’d appear before Judge John Wood, nicknamed “Maximum John” due to his reputation for giving out the maximum sentence on drug crimes. Chagra faced a possible life sentence. He attempted to bribe Maximum John. It didn’t work. So, he arranged to have him assassinated, eventually admitting to hiring, of all people, hitman Charles Harrelson, who, in this ongoing father-son story, is dad to actor and cannabis lover Woody Harrelson (whose new cannabis lounge, The Woods, located in West Hollywood, California, is now open for business).

On May 29, 1979, Wood was murdered. He was shot in the back outside his home and died as a result, making him the first federal judge to die from an assassination in more than a century. Chagra went to court on his drug charges and was found guilty in August 1979 and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Harrelson (senior) was also eventually caught and convicted of being the gunman, thanks to Chagra talking about the assassination when his brother, Joe Chagra, visited him in prison after the feds bugged the rooms of the Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, where Chagra resided. 

Joe Chagra allegedly tried for a plea deal for his involvement and served six and a half years in prison of his ten-year sentence. He was released but died from injuries sustained in a car accident in 1996. 

Jimmy Chagra’s wife, Elizabeth, also went to prison for 30 years for delivering the payout money. Charles Harrelson was slapped with two consecutive life terms plus five more years. And Chagra was acquitted of Wood’s murder but found guilty of obstructing justice and conspiring to smuggle drugs. Due to health reasons, he was released on December 9, 2003, with rumors circulating that he was placed in the Witness Protection Program. He died from cancer on July 25, 2008, in a trailer camp in Mesa, Arizona.

While the family’s story is already juicy enough for a major studio to turn it into a mini-series, as for how the current generation’s stories end, we’ll have to continue covering the Nichols case for the latest in the Chagra epic drama. 

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Those who have used psilocybin or LSD may be familiar with the experience: The day following your trip, it’s back to reality, yet there are still glimmers of your previous day’s journey, a fleeting visual cue borrowing from the more intense hallucinogenic effects you just experienced.

These spontaneously recurring, drug-like effects following hallucinogenic exposure are referred to as flashback phenomena; symptoms can include vision changes, mood changes and derealization/depersonalization. Those with persistent recurring flashbacks causing significant distress or impairment may have hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which is considered extremely rare.

New research published in the journal Psychopharmacology further explores psychedelic flashbacks, with results from six placebo-controlled studies revealing that the phenomena occurred for up to 9.2% of participants after LSD or psilocybin exposure.

The authors note that data and current knowledge on both flashbacks and HPPD is “very limited,” even though they are assumed to be among “the most relevant side effects of hallucinogenic drugs.” For the study, researchers analyzed data pulled from multiple clinical trials in order to better describe flashback phenomena and HPPD.

Researchers used data from six double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies with a total of 142 participants aged 25 to 65. In total, 90 participants received LSD, 24 received psilocybin and 28 received both substances. The doses varied depending on the trial; participants received one to five LSD doses ranging from 0.025 and 0.2mg, and/or between one to two doses of psilocybin ranging from 15 to 30mg.

Subjects were asked at each study session to report any adverse events since their last contact with the study team, and any event, including flashbacks, was recorded. All studies also included an end-of-study visit after the last study session, where all subjects were asked for the occurrence of flashback phenomena throughout the entire course of the study. Those who reported flashbacks were asked to describe the phenomenon, specifically the quality, quantity, impairment level and time of occurrence.

Those who reported flashbacks at the end of the study were then conducted via email for follow-up, specifically to assess the occurrence of continued flashbacks of HPPD. Those who reported further flashbacks were again asked to describe them (with the terms of the end-of-study visit) along with any potential triggers to the flashbacks.

During the final study visit, 13 participants (9.2%) described a flashback experience; seven instances occurred after taking LSD, two after psilocybin and four after taking both substances. Most of the flashbacks were visual alterations (for 11 of the 13 participants), and three participants experienced other phenomena (such as auditory/cognitive effects or a feeling of disintegration). Two participants exclusively reported emotional alterations. 

Researchers also noted that flashbacks were limited to the week after the last drug administration in all but two cases.

For most subjects, the flashbacks lasted for seconds (69.2%) to minutes (23.1%), though one case (7.7%) reported alterations persisting for hours. The subject specified that this involved intensified perception of colors and slowed thinking the day following three study sessions. 

For most of these cases (53.8%), the phenomena only occurred once. In two cases (15.4%), symptoms persisted more than five times. One of these subjects reported around 20 visual flashbacks within a short period roughly 24 hours after drug administration. The other subject experienced approximately 30 visual flashbacks within a seven-month period after drug administration. This was the only patient who clearly reported flashbacks after the end-of-study visit. Though, researchers noted that flashbacks lasted just seconds, were experienced as benign and did not impair daily life in both cases. 

More than 50% of participants said the flashbacks occurred while relaxing or shortly before sleep (meaning 1.4% of all 142 subjects reported distressing flashback experiences). While two participants said the flashbacks were experienced as unpleasant, 10 cases said they were neutral or positive. The remaining case was not sufficiently documented.  In all, none of the subjects reported impairment in their daily life due to these symptoms.

Researchers also determined that none of the participants met the criteria for HPPD at any time point, though they noted the rarity of the disorder and the small sample size as factors.

“Drug-like experiences after the administration of LSD and psilocybin seem to be a relatively common phenomenon in clinical trials with healthy participants,” the authors concluded, clarifying that those flashbacks that occurred were mostly benign and didn’t impair daily life. “Overall, our data suggests that flashbacks are not a clinically relevant problem in controlled studies with healthy participants.”

Could honing in on flashback symptoms hold greater potential in a therapeutic setting? While the study reveals new insights that could help to inform further research on the topic, especially as the West continues to embrace psychedelic medicine, there’s still a lot more to uncover.

The study, “Flashback phenomena after administration of LSD and psilocybin in controlled studies with healthy participants,” was authored by Felix Müller, Elias Kraus, Friederike Holze, Anna Becker, Laura Ley, Yasmin Schmid, Patrick Vizeli, Matthias E. Liechti and Stefan Borgwardt.

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Victor Kwesi Mensah, 28, was arrested at Washington Dulles International Airport on Saturday after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers discovered a stash of psychedelic narcotics in his baggage including psilocybin and LSD. Mensah is better known by his stage name as a rapper, Vic Mensa.

According to a CBP press release, Mensah arrived on board a flight from Ghana early on Saturday morning. For reasons unexplained, his baggage was examined a second time. During a secondary baggage examination, CBP officers discovered about 41 grams of liquid lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), about 124 grams of psilocybin capsules, 178 grams of psilocybin gummies, and six grams of psilocybin mushrooms concealed inside Mensah’s luggage.

Mensah’s father and extended family are from Ghana, and the artist frequently zig-zags between Africa and Chicago, among other places.

Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority (MWAA) Police officers were alerted and charged Mensah with felony narcotics possession charges. MWAA officers took custody of Mensah and seized the drugs.

CBP leaders urged flyers to throw away their drugs before entering the airport. “Travelers can save themselves time and potential criminal charges during their international arrivals inspection if they took a few minutes to ensure that their luggage is drug free,” said Daniel Escobedo, who serves as Area Port Director for CBP’s Area Port of Washington, D.C. “Narcotics interdiction remains a Customs and Border Protection enforcement priority and we remain committed to working closely with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to ensure that those who transport illegal narcotics into the United States are investigated and prosecuted.”

While traveling with cannabis on domestic flights is one thing—carrying any sort of drugs on an international flight is a more serious matter. Let it be known, however, that the Psilo psilocybin mushroom cubes found in Mensah’s stash contain only microdoses of psilocybin with 0.14g of psilocybin per piece—which isn’t exactly enough to send a person into a trip. At that small of doses, the psilocybin gummies probably cause no more than a mood change. The other products he was in possession also come in microdoses.

Given that he was caught with the drugs in microdoses, it’s quite possible he was using psychedelics for medical reasons. In one study published months ago in the journal Nature, people who microdosed psilocybin exhibited lower levels of depression, anxiety and stress across gender. As it turns out, Mensah himself opened up about his battles with depression and drug addiction in his 2018 song “10K Problems.” 

Mensah recently branched out from his hip-hop roots to form a punk rock and rap band named 93Punx, which released an ICE protest song as well as another single with Travis Barker. The price tag from his recent legal woes might hit his pocket soon. But recently, he enlisted Chance the Rapper and Wyclef Jean for the track “Shelter.”

Don’t test the CBP when it comes to drugs, especially if it’s an international flight.

CBP officers processed more than 650,000 travelers on average last year, who arrived at airports, seaports and land border crossings. CBP officers and agents arrested an average of 25 wanted criminals every day at ports of entry located across the U.S. See what else CBP accomplished during a typical day in 2021.

Visit CBP Ports of Entry to learn more about what types of items were seized by CBP’s Office of Field Operations.

Psilocybin is legal for medical use decriminalized in the state of Oregon—the first state to legalize the psychedelic for medical purposes when voters approved Measure 109 in 2020. Cities in an additional six other states decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms at the city level.

Decriminalization efforts going on around the country would also decriminalize LSD and other psychedelics. Several major cities across the U.S. have moved forward already. California Senate Bill 519, for instance, would decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms and LSD—as well as DMT, mescaline and MDMA.

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