The Golden Ratio

The end of sleep?

Since stimulants have failed to offer a biological substitute for sleep, the new watchword of sleep innovators is ‘efficiency’, which means in effect reducing the number of hours of sleep needed for full functionality. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – the research arm of the US military – leads the way in squeezing a full night’s sleep into fewer hours, by forcing sleep the moment head meets pillow, and by concentrating that sleep into only the most restorative stages. Soldiers on active duty need to function at their cognitive and physiological best, even when they are getting only a few hours sleep in a 24-hour cycle.

New research shows that the anti-drug PSAs from the 80s and 90s actually encouraged children to try drugs

via NPR

The U.S. has spent millions of dollars since the 1980s on anti-drug ads. But research shows that some of these older public service announcements might be counterproductive. Now that the ads are shifting to reach teens who want to rebel, new studies show they may actually be more effective.

Study Suggests Psychiatric Drugs In Water Supply Are Altering Fish Behavior

via Los Angeles Times

Scientists have known for years that such “micropollutants” end up in natural waterways like streams and rivers after being flushed through human systems into wastewater. But current research hasn’t really looked at whether psychotherapeutic drugs can affect the behavior of aquatic creatures.

Notorious For-Profit Prison Company Doing ‘Drug Sweeps’ Of Arizona Public School Students

Via PR Watch

Corrections Corporation of America, recently sued over its collaborating with violent gangs, is now partnering with police to conduct “lock down sweeps” in which high schoolers are locked in their classrooms while canine units search their possessions for illegal contraband. 

D.A.R.E. To Cease Teaching Middle Schoolers About The Evils Of Marijuana (because D.A.R.E. actually increases middle schoolers’ likelihood of smoking marijuana)

via Reason

An Artist’s Quest To Create Self-Portraits Under The Influence Of Every Drug

For his Drugs series, artist Bryan Lewis Saunders allegedly took a different mind-altering intoxicant daily and on each occasion drew a self-portrait. He has since dialed down the intensity of the experiment after suffering mild brain damage and being hospitalized, but it remains a noble endeavor and one which reveals a startling journey. The substances imbibed include Xanax, crystal meth, cough syrup, Klonopin,the jailhouse drink pruno, PCP, and, results seen below, mushrooms, morphine, and bath salts.

The Choom Gang: Teenage Obama’s Mastery Of Marijuana

Via Buzzfeed

Long before he was unveiling presidential decrees, young Barack Obama displayed the spark of leadership with his pot smoking initiatives. The forthcoming book Barack Obama: The Story from the Washington Post’s David Maraniss alleges that teenage Barry palled around in a smoke-filled van named the Choomwagon and invented new getting-high techniques such as “interceptions”, “roof hits”, and “total absorption”. 

A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning “to smoke marijuana.” As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called “TA,” short for “total absorption.” “Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated,” explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski.

Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted “Intercepted!,” and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.

When LSD Was Legal

In honor of the latest lysergic episode of MAD MEN, a look back at the time before LSD was outlawed, by Devin Faraci for BadAss Digest:

In the latest episode of Mad Men Roger Sterling, the silver-haired drunkard rascal of SCDP, attends a high society LSD party. For some 21st century viewers this seemed strange – wasn’t LSD a hippie drug? Wasn’t it all about long hairs and weird tribal imagery? Eventually that would be the case, but the early of history of acid – before it became illegal – was filled with trippers who were at the very top of the social order – the richest and most famous people in America.

LSD was first synthesized in 1938 by Dr. Albert Hoffman in Switzerland, but it wasn’t until five years later that anybody knew what it did to you. That’s because it wasn’t until 1943 that Hoffman accidentally took some of the drug and embarked on history’s first acid trip. While man had been tripping on hallucinogens since the dawn of time – we have receptors in our brains designed to accept psychotropic chemicals – acid is quite different. And besides, it’s unlikely that Dr. Hoffman was doing a lot of peyote, so he wasn’t very prepared. His first experience was actually fairly nice, but three days later – April 19! A day before dumb 420! – he dosed himself on purpose. That didn’t go so well; bicycling home he really fell apart, thinking his neighbor was a witch and that LSD had poisoned him. Eventually he got his shit together and had a nice finale to the trip.

Everybody knows that the CIA seized on acid as a possible mind control drug, using it in their MKULTRA experiments. They would pay prostitutes to dose unsuspecting businessmen and then watch what happened; there were deaths, including that of Frank Olson, who either freaked out and jumped from a 13th floor window or was pushed by the CIA (the reason he was pushed, perhaps: he knew that in 1951 the CIA had dosed an entire French town, Pont-Saint-Esprit, leading to 50 psychotic episodes, a number of people being institutionalized and four deaths).

But acid wasn’t just being used for sinister purposes. At the same time that the CIA was conducting MKULTRA experiments, a Los Angeles psychiatrist named Oscar Janiger began experimenting with the drug for therapy, with a special focus on how it impacted creativity. While Timothy Leary will forever be remembered as the foremost medical advocate for LSD, Janiger was the true pioneer. His patients included Aldous Huxley (who had already written The Doors of Perception about his experiments with mescaline), Anais Nin, Andre Previn, James Coburn, Billy Wilder’s writing partner Charles Brackett and Cary Grant. Grant dropped acid probably well over a hundred times, a pretty remarkable number of trips for a guy who seems like the emodiment of the squarely suave 40s.

Is This Where All The Ritalin Went?

According to an op-ed entitled “Why Are We Drugging Our Soldiers?” in the New York Times by Richard A. Friedman, “the number of Ritalin and Adderall prescriptions written for active-duty service members increased by nearly 1,000 percent in five years.” Might this explain, in part at least, the shortages of Ritalin and Adderall that have plagued students nationwide?

Since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been a large and steady rise in the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among our troops. One recent study of 289,000 Americans who served in those countries found that the rates of the disorder jumped to 22 percent in 2008 from just 0.2 percent in 2002.

Given the duration of these wars and the length and frequency of deployments, when compared with other wars, perhaps such high rates of PTSD are not so surprising. Prolonged exposure to a perilous and uncertain combat environment might…