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New VR Tech Emulates Psychedelic Experience
A recent study in Nature Scientific Reports found that the VR experience, Isness-D, showed the same effect as a medium dose of LSD or psilocybin on four key indicators.
The psychedelic renaissance is upon us, with myriad research showing how substances like psilocybin, LSD, and more aid in mental health conditions like treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. More and more, the curiosity around psychedelics is increasing, with individuals seeing the potential of these mind-bending medicines to overcome perceived limits of the self.
At the same time, technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, posing the question: Could tech like virtual reality provide comparable benefits that psychedelics offer? Evidently the answer is yes, according to a recent study of a new VR experience, Isness-D, made to mirror specific transcendent psychedelic effects.
It all started with creator David Glowacki, who took a steep fall while walking in the mountains 15 years ago. After hitting the ground, he laid there suffocating as blood began leaking into his lungs. During this experience, Glowacki’s field of perception began to shift, peering down at his own body and finding he was made up of balled-up light, MIT Technology Review reports.
He said the intensity of the light was related to the extent in which he inhabited his body, though watching the light slowly dim wasn’t frightening—It was transformative, leaking out of his body and around his environment. He took the experience as a signal that his awareness could outlast and transcend his physical body, ultimately bringing him peace.
The Nature study introduction brings up similar sensations from brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor following a left-hemisphere stroke. Taylor said, “I could no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and molecules of my arm blend with the atoms and molecules of the wall, and all I could detect was this energy… I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful.”
After his accident, Glowacki approached the experience, which he related to death, with curiosity, attempting to recapture that transcendence.
The new technology is designed for groups of four to five, based anywhere in the world. The participants are represented as a cloud of smoke with a ball of light around the location of their heart. The experience features energetic coalescence, meaning that participants can gather in the same VR landscape and overlap their bodies, making it impossible to tell where one starts and another ends, contributing to a sense of connectedness and ego reduction that psychedelic experiences commonly bring.
In real life, the study notes that humans often default to conceptual relationships of ourselves and others and separate objects, rather than connected or coupled concepts. Authors define the term “self-transcendent experiences,” or the transient mental states in which “the subjective sense of one’s self as an isolated entity can temporarily fade into an experience of unity with other people or one’s surroundings, involving the dissolution of boundaries between the sense of self and ‘other,’” essentially what Glowacki is chasing with this new VR technology.
So, can people really achieve some of these same breakthroughs psychedelics, or intense life experiences can provide, simply with the help of VR?
Researchers in the study carried out 29 Isness sessions with 109 total participants from August-September 2020; the results ended up analyzing a total of 75 participants. After their experiences, participants scored the level of intensity with which they experienced 30 items (i.e. mood, mystical experiences), answered pre and post questionnaires around their connectedness with the other participants and scored their level of ego dissolution.
In the study discussion, authors note that the experiences of participants in the study, based on the questionnaires, are comparable to psychedelic experiences, in both naturalistic and laboratory settings. The qualitative analysis also indicated similarities, with participants observing how the VR program was “similar to experiences that I have had as somatic visions through medicine plants. The interconnective nature of energy/intention and the ‘strings’ that appear to interconnect us with all living matter [is] also related to childhood dreams I had prior to any ‘psychedelic experience.’”
Others similarly noted that Isness-D left them with a sense of interconnectedness that they had only previously experienced with the help of psychedelic use in the proper setting. Others attributed a spiritual significance to the experience, but the strongest qualitative theme for Isness-D participants was connectedness.
“I felt connected with myself but also with everyone else here… I think ‘connected’ is the word for me for the end of this session,” one participant said. Others said that Isness-D offered “a completely other way of connecting that I’m not familiar with, [where] all the usual stuff disappears.”
Researchers conclude saying that the study affirmed their speculation that multi-person VR experiences like Isness-D offers comparable self-transcendent experiences that psychedelics can offer. They suggest this technology could play a role in easing feelings of isolation and loneliness, especially in wake of the continuous COVID-19 pandemic.
While there is still more research to be done, namely on the long-term effects of these experiences and what specifically about Isness-D offers these reported outcomes, we could very well see a future where seeking psychedelic-adjacent, self-transcendent experiences is as simple as popping on a VR headset.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/new-vr-tech-emulates-psychedelic-experience/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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