The Beckley Foundation is a charitable trust that promotes the scientific investigation of consciousness and its modulation from a multidisciplinary perspective. We also seek to change global drugs policy to reflect a more rational, evidence-based approach, shifting the emphasis from criminalisation to health.
Magic mushrooms, international law and the failed ‘war on drugs’ Amanda Feilding, 7 February 2012 This article was originally published in the Guardian. Click here for full article It’s been a busy fortnight. First the publication of two major peer-reviewed research papers about magic mushrooms that attracted worldwide publicity. Then off to Prague for an [...]
The Beckley Foundation warmly welcomed the Select Committee’s inquiry into drug policy and its invitation to present submissions. Improving drug policy is one of the key policy challenges of our time. The inquiry commenced on 24th January 2012 & began with oral evidence from Sir Richard Branson and Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland, both [...]
Published in the British Journal of Psychiatry Implications for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study with psilocybin, February 2012 Background Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic drug that has a history of use in psychotherapy. One of the rationales for its use was that it aids emotional insight by lowering psychological defences. Aims To [...]
Download the complete CNA report Contraband routes in Guatemala traditionally controlled by local groups are coming ever more under the control of the Mexican cartels. Around half of the nation’s territory is believed to be under the control of criminal organizations.2 Local criminal organizations have long penetrated the Guatemalan police, army, courts and government, and [...]
TNI Series on Legislative Reform of Drug Policies Nr. 17 January 2012 By Axel Klein, Pien Metaal and Martin Jelsma Khat has been consumed for hundreds if not thousands of years in the highlands of Eastern Africa and Southern Arabia. Outside that area, khat use was first observed during the 1980s, but has only attracted [...]
In 2005, Eugene Jarecki’s documentary “Why We Fight” won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for its incisive deconstruction of the military-industrial complex. At this year’s festival, he won the award again with a follow-up of sorts, titled “The House I Live In,” which examines the unimaginable damage wrought by America’s prison-industrial system and the [...]
The Huffington Post UK, January 27 2012 There were record seizures of class A drugs in the UK last year. According to the National Treatment Agency, there are 10,000 fewer addicts seeking treatment than there were two years previously. But the fact that border officials found 2,116kg of cocaine and 773kg of heroin between April and [...]
Sam Jordison, The Guardian, Thursday 26 January 2012 Given his damaged sight, the book’s emphasis on the visual is all the more piquant, complicating the question of how much its visions reveal Disconcertingly, given the detailed discussions of art and the visual world in The Doors Of Perception, Aldous Huxley was almost blind. Or, at least, some [...]
In this popular science article published in io9, Robert T. Gonzales ties up findings from this week’s Beckley Foundation-Imperial College Psilocybin paper in the PNAS with Aldous Huxley’s ‘reducing valve’ hypothesis, initially presented in his 1954 book The Doors of Perception (http://mescaline.com/huxley.htm); also, to more recent theorising by Karl Friston of University College London (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/), [...]
Press Release 25th January 2012 The Beckley Foundation-Imperial College Psychedelic Research Programme Surprising findings of Research: Potential therapeutic applications of psychedelic drugs fMRI brain scans show that psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, lowers the activity of specific brain regions. The finding contradicts the popular belief that psychedelic drugs increase brain activity, and has [...]
