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Saturday, March 16, 2013

Can psychedelics enhance intelligence?

What were once fringe views about the possible benefits of psychedelics appear to be edging into the mainstream. Alternet runs a review of a book by Thomas Roberts that argues that psychedelics can enhance creativity and intelligence.

Reviewer Craig Comstock writes, "In 1999, while staying on the Big Island of Hawaii for a vacation, I stopped by a conference being held in Kona, on the subject of the effect of psychedelics on the arts and sciences and more generally on creativity. Among the speakers were a novelist, a composer, a screenwriter, a film producer, and a couple of painters who described what they owed to psychedelics, along with discussion of the role of these molecules in advertising and in the computer industry. There was talk of Kary Mullis' recent crediting of LSD's role in his Nobel Prize discovery of polymerase chain reaction, as well as unsubstantiated rumors of other scientific discoveries made while high. These people were talking about the stimulation not of healing, but of creativity."

Via Dan Clore on Facebook's RAW group.



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