The Importance of Indigenous Knowledge in Psychedelic Medicine

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Yeas: We have this knowledge about what some plants can do because of ancient practices an indiginous populations. But we also have this other problem at the moment, which is something called climate change. As a scientist who obviously wants to be able to find medicinal products that can be of benefit to humanity, you know, my concern is that we're going to have destroyed the very habitats that could yield those cures in the future. Yeas: I think there are obligations on the part of the pharmaceudical companies and researchers to recognize that origin when it's relevant. The way to show that respect is to leave paote alone if you are non native. And there are other ways

When you start your day with a cup of tea or coffee you are ingesting a consciousness-altering drug, which you are quite likely to be addicted to. That drug of course is caffeine, the stimulant used by 90 per cent of people on earth, and it is one of three mind-altering molecules that bestselling author Michael Pollan has been investigating for his new book This Is Your Mind on Plants, alongside morphine, produced by the opium poppy, and mescaline, found in certain cacti. In conversation with the medical doctor and broadcaster Guddi Singh, Pollan explores humanity’s longstanding and powerful attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and why do we then hedge this desire with laws, customs and fraught feelings? And why do we categorise these compounds so reductively – calling them either a licit or an illicit drug? For, as Pollan will argue, when we take these psychoactive plants into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways possible. Click here to get the Intelligence Squared discount on the book: https://www.primrosehillbooks.com/product/this-is-your-mind-on-plants-michael-pollan/

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