Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 414

Ask Rick Doblin Anything: Other Promising Psychedelics

In today’s video from drug researcher Rick Doblin, he surveys some little known but promising psychedelic treatments, including one that might dramatically improve end of life care:

Rick’s previous videos are here. From his bio:

Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He received his doctorate in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he wrote his dissertation on the regulation of the medical uses of psychedelics and marijuana and his Master’s thesis on a survey of oncologists about smoked marijuana vs. the oral THC pill in nausea control for cancer patients. His undergraduate thesis at New College of Florida was a 25-year follow-up to the classic Good Friday Experiment, which evaluated the potential of psychedelic drugs to catalyze religious experiences.

His professional goal is to help develop legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics and marijuana, primarily as prescription medicines but also for personal growth for otherwise healthy people, and eventually to become a legally licensed psychedelic therapist. He founded MAPS in 1986, and currently resides in Boston with his wife and three children.

Our extensive coverage of the spiritual and therapeutic benefits of psychedelics is here (or, in chronological order, here).

Kipling In America

Christopher Benfey explores the English writer’s “four-year sojourn in Vermont, from 1892 to 1896, [which] was a remarkably productive period for this versatile poet and short-story writer, and established patterns, aesthetic and political, for much that came later”:

During his American interlude, Kipling initiated his lifelong practice of adding verse epigraphs to stories, and sometimes verse epilogues and interludes as well, knitting whole books together with an alternating current of verse and prose. The main inspiration, as Charles Carrington, Kipling’s official biographer, pointed out long ago, was probably Emerson, an overwhelming influence on Kipling’s poetry and prose. It was in The Jungle Books, written in 1893 and 1894, that Kipling first systematically adopted a complicated mix of poetry and prose. Much of the main narrative of the book is built on a contrast between upholders of “The Law,” inculcated by Mowgli’s tutors, the kindly bear Baloo and the severe panther Bagheera, and those who undermine the Law—above all, the monkeys, or “Bandar-Log,” whose herd mentality prevents them from accomplishing anything of significance. Much has been written about The Jungle Books (with Kipling’s encouragement) as in part a political allegory, in which the monkeys figure as American populists, always promising great things and achieving nothing.

Other inspirations for The Jungle Books:

One source that Kipling is thought to have drawn on for his Mowgli narrative is titled “Wolves Nurturing Children in the Dens,” first published in 1852, and written by a British official named William Henry Sleeman. The stories are relentlessly downbeat. When the children adopted by wolves are returned to their families, they have callouses on their elbows and knees from crawling on all fours; they prefer raw to cooked meat; they feed among the dogs; they are incapable of learning human language; they die young, and so on. The responsible parties in Sleeman’s suspiciously similar stories are never the villagers, with their negligent parenting that allows wolves to “carry off” their children, but rather the British officials and those employed by them. The need for European “paternalism” is demonstrated at every turn. The local Hindus must be taught to value their children. To teach them such values, one might say, is another of the White Man’s Burdens.

How Kipling’s narrative differs:

It is a mark of Kipling’s originality that he departed from his Indian sources in several key ways. This supposed guardian of empire and the White Man’s Burden chose a native child for his hero and portrayed Mowgli’s native birth mother sympathetically. … He grows up not with callouses on his knees and elbows, cowering in the shadows, but rather as a virile and sensitive leader, powerful in mind and body, who can kill a tiger, make complicated moral choices, and right the wrongs in both human and animal communities.

Unable To Conduct Himself

Robert Gottlieb flips through a new collection of Leonard Bernstein’s letters, bringing us a portrait of the musical icon away from the bandstand:

Letters came easily to the young Bernstein—he’s as fluent a writer as he’s fluent at everything else—and he understands how self-centered he is. (To his great pal Kenny Ehrman, he once said, “Who do I think I am, everybody?” To Helen Coates, first his piano teacher, later, and for decades, his assistant, guide, life-support system: “Before I forget myself and write an ‘I’ letter, I want to wish you a very pleasant summer.” He pours out his heart to just about everybody. He’s met the perfect girl (boy). He’s written this, he’s done that. So-and-so complimented him, so-and-so is giving him a hand up. Always there’s the assumption that anyone he’s writing to wants to know everything about him—a narcissism that’s normal, even touching, in a young man, but less so in a (supposedly) mature one. Think how he would have taken to blogging! …

[B]y the 1970s, his life as a homosexual had become flamboyantly open, to [his wife's] increasing distress. He was now immensely famous and powerful, and he cast off all restraints—the self-regard he had always exhibited had hardened into unmitigated narcissism. Burton reports that Paul Bowles, a very old friend meeting him after many years, thought that “he had become ‘smarmy’ and ‘false’; ‘a small crumb of what he once had been.’ His success had been ‘painfully destructive’ of his personality. It was,” [biographer Humphrey] Burton remarks, “a chilling assessment,” and the letters validate it.

(Video: Bernstein rehearses with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1982)

The View From Your Window

Hong Kong, 4.30 pm

Straight, Male, And Lonely

A 2006 study found that, out of all Americans, white heterosexual men have the fewest friends. Lisa Wade blames the conditioning boys undergo in their teens:

[M]en are pressed — from the time they’re very young — to disassociate from everything feminine. This imperative is incredibly limiting for them. Paradoxically, it makes men feel good because of a social agreement that masculine things are better than feminine things, but it’s not the same thing as freedom. It’s restrictive and dehumanizing. It’s oppression all dressed up as awesomeness. And it is part of why men have a hard time being friends.

To be close friends, men need to be willing to confess their insecurities, be kind to others, have empathy and sometimes sacrifice their own self-interest. “Real men,” though, are not supposed to do these things. They are supposed to be self-interested, competitive, non-emotional, strong (with no insecurities at all), and able to deal with their emotional problems without help. Being a good friend, then, as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly.

Katy Waldman thinks it’s also about gay panic:

Wade doesn’t mention the rainbow elephant in the room, but I wonder whether men are less afraid of girliness here than homosexuality. In many ways, it’s a distinction without a difference, since homophobes tend to imagine gay men as effete. But if a man ever is allowed to relax his stone face, it’s around his romantic partner. Being open, communicative, vulnerable—all of these behaviors evoke love relationships. It makes a sad kind of sense that boys trying to assert their masculinity would steer clear of playing the “boyfriend” around other guys.

Daisy Buchanan believes one solution is to battle the stigma against boys making friends with girls:

I don’t believe men are naturally wired to be any less intimate and caring than women are. But if young boys grow up in a world where they’re mocked for pursuing friendships with girls, and don’t see enough examples of friendships between older men, it’s going to cause huge problems for men and women later in life. Without a network of friends, boys are going to grow up to feel confused, lonely and alienated. According to research from the charity Calm, suicide is now the biggest killer among young men in Britain, with a spokesperson for the charity citing “social isolation” as a major factor. If boys were explicitly encouraged to develop and invest in friendships, it could save lives. And if we tell them that it’s important to make friends with girls as well as other boys, it could change feminism for ever.

Face Of The Day

An Indian gay-rights activist takes part in a protest against the Supreme Court ruling reinstating a ban on gay sex in New Delhi on December 11, 2013.  In a major setback for civil rights in the world’s biggest democracy, the court reinstated a colonial-era ban on gay sex that could see homosexuals jailed for up to ten years. By Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images.

An End In Sight For Gitmo?

Serwer sees the new defense bill as a sign that Obama may actually be able to shut down Gitmo after all:

The defense bill would clear the way for the majority of the remaining detainees, 82 out of 162, to be transferred abroad. An earlier Senate version of the bill had also allowed Gitmo detainees to be brought to the US for trial, while the House version had preserved prior restrictions on transfers of detainees. The resulting compromise between the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate nevertheless leaves intact a ban on bringing Gitmo detainees to the US for trial, leaving a number of detainees to an uncertain fate–even as it paves the way for most of the men currently detained at the facility to leave. More could be cleared for transfer as the administration conducts its reviews of the detainees left at the facility. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to close the facility. The defense bill would make it easier to keep that promise, which has remained unfulfilled a year into his second term.

Benjamin Wittes supports the bill:

The administration will cast this as a step forward for closing Guantanamo. I don’t care a fig about whether Guantanamo stays or goes. I do care a lot, however, about holding people we don’t need or want to be holding, and this bill would go a long way to restoring the administration’s flexibility to transfer detainees it wishes to get rid of. That’s a very good thing—whatever one thinks of Guantanamo.

No Republican Is Safe

Heritage Action gives liberal John Cornyn a liberal 86%.—
Drew Brandewie (@DBrandewie) December 11, 2013

This week, Congressman Steve Stockman announced that he is going to try to primary Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). A letter Stockman wrote to his supporters calls Cornyn a traitor:

You are in a foxhole fighting to save our constitutional Republic… …and the last thing you need is a Republican bayonet in your back. But that’s what liberal John Cornyn has been doing to you every day.

Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie responds with the above tweet. Daniel Strauss adds:

Stockman’s attack is what a number of tea party challengers have been making against the Republican incumbents they’re challenging. The problem for Stockman is that Cornyn is rated as one of the most conservative lawmakers in his chamber, according to a National Review analysis of Senate voting records.

Molly Ball wonders why Cornyn is being challenged:

[I]f even staunch conservatives like Cornyn can’t satisfy the right, the Tea Party has truly entered its dada period.

Before, right-wingers were content to purge actual moderates, like former Indiana Senator Richard Lugar and Delaware Representative Mike Castle, or patrician establishmentarians like Dewhurst. Now all it takes to provoke their wrath is the belief that government ought to be allowed to function. Next, perhaps they’ll they turn on Cruz, who serves on several Senate committees and is vice chair of the senatorial committee. I asked a GOP consultant who follows Senate races what Cornyn’s supposed sin against conservatism had been—what transgression earned him the wrath of the right. “Well,” the consultant answered, “the honest answer is that he’s not crazy.”

Weigel sees Stockman as little threat to Cornyn:

Steve Stockman? He was a one-term congressman in 1995-1997, narrowly won a primary to return in a new seat in 2012, has $38,000 on hand, and was being derided by fellow Republicans for having failed to disclose a substantial amount of charity money. This should not be seen as some bellwether of Tea Party power. This will be a highly quotable but un-serious primary.

John Sides looks beyond the immediate rate:

The issue for the GOP isn’t so much the 2014 Texas Senate race.  The issue is that, in general, the party would be better off — that is, it would control more seats and be better-positioned to steer policy — if it could discourage primary challengers in races where negative consequences are more likely.  And Stockman’s example — particularly if successful — may only reinforce the desire of other conservatives in the party to mount similar challenges.   When those challenges happen in states or districts that aren’t quite as red as Texas, the party may suffer, just as it has in Nevada, Delaware, Indiana, and Missouri.

A Victory For Men’s Health

Only four years after Dan Savage proposed vaccinating boys as well as girls against HPV, the Canadian province of Alberta announced plans to do just that. (The much smaller province of Prince Edward Island pioneered the practice earlier this year.) Omar Mouallem applauds the move:

Males in any HPV-immunized community already benefit from shots administered to females. Two years after Australia introduced a national vaccination program for girls in 2007, cases of genital warts in young women and men dropped 59 and 39 percent, respectively. There, in the only country to federally fund coverage of both genders since February 2013, the conversation no longer focuses solely on cervical cancer. It’s about all of the symptoms, including warts, regardless of who is more likely to be affected.

New evidence suggests that a universal program could save more lives than anticipated. Oral HPV infections are now almost three-to-one male. Some researchers believe this is because men on average have more sexual partners, but Nigel Brockton, a Calgary oncologist who studies the relationship between HPV type 16 and oral pharyngeal cancers, links this ratio to the desquamation (shedding) of infectious cells, which occurs more readily on female genitalia. With fewer Canadians smoking than a generation ago, tonsil tumors should technically be declining, but they aren’t, perhaps because cunnilingus has become standard sexual practice. Since the lag time between infection and symptoms can be decades, HPV could become as much a men’s health issue as a women’s concern before all of the evidence is in.

Mental Health Break

A Christmas movie compilation: