#untold history

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Certainly a hot topic right now.

“The End of Policing” by Alex S. Vitale

“The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself.”

Again, hand in hand with a lot of the other books currently added to my bookshelves. The need to study intersectionality and how it affects all aspects of our lives from the way we conduct business, to the way we socialize, to the way we’ve allowed the police to evolve into a borderline military industrial complex. We border on living in a police run state.

The problem with that is the origins on the police force and basically how it never really evolved, it just learned to cover its tracks. And boy did it cover its tracks POORLY.

Another one I’m currently reading.

“How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence” by Michael Pollan

Back in the 50s and 60s psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and LSD were actually seen as helpful tools into understanding the human brain. Somewhere along the line it got a bad wrap with rumors of bad trips, people committing suicide while under the influence of these substances, and even the idea that someone would permanently lose their mind if they were to ever consume these compounds.

In recent years, starting back in the 90s, psychedelics made a come back in the mental health field. Credited with helping treat anxiety, depression, addiction and more in minuscule “micro-doses”, LSD and the active psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, have slowly regained their reputation as being something almost spiritual.

It’s gone so far as for the federal government to allow the import of foreign psychedelic compounds and substances that naturally produce said substances like “ayahuasca” from Central and South America for religious purposes. These religious ties to psychedelic compounds has opened a lot of doors for those interested in the science and spirituality of psychedelics.

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