Hallucinogenics and UFO events

Copyright 2021, InterAmerica, Inc.

A review of two books – Drug Use for Grown-Ups by Dr. Carl Hart and This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan – by Mike Jay in the September 23, 2021 New York Review of Books piqued a conversation between me and my neuroscientific son Josh this past weekend, an extension of conversations we’ve often had the past few years.

Out of conversations I’ve had with a former associate of mine, online, I’ve rebuked the use of psychelics and other mild-altering stimulants, suggesting that they interfere with the perceptive abilities of the mind (brain actually).

And I have suggested, in the past here, that no one investigates the possibility that some UFO episodes may be the result of ingested materials, some as innocuous as Tylenol or weird foods, but more likely by the ingesting of alcohol, marijuana, LSD, peyote, et al.

Such UFO incidents seem rare but the more extravagant incidents – Pascagoula? – should so be examined but haven’t been.

In the books reviewed by author Jay the plea is for an easing of penalties and opprobrium for drug use of mind-altering “medicinals.”

(My current primary care doctor told me, a few weeks ago, that he’d prefer the use of marijuana to Tramadol, an opioid, for my recurring back pain. I laughed. Weed has never touched my lips.)

Even though my son Josh insists that marijuana and psychedelics, like LSD or psilocybin (mushrooms) are being tested and re-examined across labs all over the country every day for legitimate health issues,

I still insist such psychotropics interfere with brain waves which is without question and questionable.

Most in the field of such medical research see the interference as often a boon rather than a hindrance and encourage their use for pain and serious health issues such as cancer.
  
I empathize but use by those outside health problems misuse such aids, as they did and do with opioids, often forcing maligned capitalistic enterprise – the dealing of such materials – to capture eventual addicted customers in recurring need and costs to acquire.

Okay, I've strayed beyond the UFO aspect, but so many UFO incidents have the patina of a psychedelic episode one can’t escape the idea that maybe a few significant episodes were products of a “trip” – inadvertent as it may have been.

Where’s Nick Redfern’s take on the matter? He likes bizarre explanations for obtuse UFO events – the Mothman sightings for instance.

And John Keel, who was under mental attack late in life; were some or all of his weird encounters and happenings the result of mind-altering “health-aids”?

Who knows? Who’s checked?

N.B . Image atop from The  New Yorker

RR