There's a new neurological case for doing hard drugs. No, this isn't Doctor Oz standing on his pseudoscientific soapbox and preaching about how opium suppositories can cure your male pattern baldness, it's a brand new study from the University of California, San Francisco in the Journal of Psychopharmacology that links ayahuasca usage to positive changes in higher-function brain networks. Journal of Psychopharmacology that links ayahuasca usage to positive changes in higher-function brain networks.
As if you needed another reason to dose up on ayahuasca today, right?
Ayahuasca is a "brew" prepared using bark from the Banisteriopsis vine and leaves from the Psychotria viridis shrub, both of which have hallucinogenic properties. It is known for pairing well with loose fabrics and the Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds. The Ayahuasca brew was used by ancient Amazonian tribes for religious purposes, and is still used in rituals by some religious communities today.
Studies researching the effects and potential psychotherapeutic use of psychedelics were halted for nearly 70 years due to the taboos surrounding it as a drug with a high potential for abuse. Now, fortunately, researchers are reviving clinical research into psychedelic drugs like ayahuasca as being potentially beneficial to people afflicted with mood disorders.
This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging, which analyzes brain activity by tracking changes in blood flow. The neural activity of their brain was analyzed one day before and one day after 50 study participants were given either a low dose of ayahuasca or a placebo substitute. The results were exciting for psychotherapeutic researchers looking into the benefits of psychedelic use and really exciting for Trent from my organic chemistry class, who skipped the final exam to do shrooms with his brother in Vermont.
It turns out ayahuasca alters two major brain networks that affect sensational, affective, and motivational functions, while not affecting primary sensory networks or motor functions after the drug has left the system. This is a huge win for the movement to decriminalize recreational and medical psychedelic use in the United States, which has seen many victories in the past decade.
Ayahuasca is only available, legally, for religious or spiritual purposes. It is not one of the DEA's many Schedule 1 Controlled Substances, although its active ingredient, Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), is a controlled scheduled drug. This means you have to go through an ayahuasca "church" to access the brew, and only two religions, União do Vegetal (UDV) and Santo Daime, have legal protection for ayahuasca use in the United States, so a large portion of ayahuasca use in the United States is going on without legal protection.
Studies like the one done at UCSF are important because they bolster both the scientific and legal cases for ayahuasca use. The UDV were granted their permission to import and partake in ayahuasca, albeit under strict DEA regulation, from the Supreme Court in 2006. They must register any shipments with more than two weeks notice and any congregation trying to cultivate plants for the ayahuasca cultivation must register with the DEA as a manufacturer of controlled substances. The restrictions on Sainto Daime are even more severe, so recognizing the potential long-term benefits of the drug is a step towards cutting through the red tape keeping a potentially life-changing treatment from people in the United States.
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.