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Altered States

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This Month In Sun History

Our 50th Year Of Publication

Sitting with his first wife, Judy, and a friend on a sunny beach in Algeciras, Spain, Sy Safransky embarked on a spiritual journey that ultimately led him to create the magazine you now hold in your hand. In March 1970, for the first time, he placed a tab of LSD on his tongue. He was twenty-five years old.

By The Sun February 2023
Readers Write

Drug Experiences

Mushrooms in the desert, pot on a family vacation, black hash on a nuclear submarine

By Our Readers February 2023
Poetry

Dad Calls To Tell Me

he used the Amazonian jujitsu death / grip to choke out the pharmacist / who wouldn’t give him his heart medication / until tomorrow — which, he admits, is when / it’s actually scheduled for pickup.

By Michael Mark November 2022
The Sun Interview

In Vino Veritas

Edward Slingerland On The Hidden Truths About Our Relationship With Alcohol

What if . . . our taste for alcohol has been strengthened and preserved in our gene pool for functional reasons? Then we might look at intoxication not as a side note but as part of the story of what makes us human.

By Derek Askey June 2022
The Dog-Eared Page

Four Poems From Ancient China

Call next door, ask / neighbors on the west if they can spare / any wine, and suddenly a jarful comes / across the fence — fresh, unfiltered. We / open mats beside Meandering River’s / long currents, crystalline winds arrive, / and you’re startled it’s already autumn.

Translated By David Hinton June 2022
The Dog-Eared Page

Memory: Short-Term Loss, Long-Term Gain

I am not so sure it is “we” who look back. The commemorating imagination seems to come alive on its own. We are not the sole instigators of remembering; memory seems to push itself on us.

By James Hillman January 2022
The Dog-Eared Page

Mr. X

One Scientist’s Experience With Cannabis

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

By Carl Sagan June 2021
Quotations

Sunbeams

Is marijuana addictive? Yes, in the sense that most of the really pleasant things in life are worth endlessly repeating.

Richard Neville

June 2021
The Sun Interview

Parting The Clouds

Charles Raison On New Treatments For Depression

All the data so far suggest that a single treatment, or two treatments, with psychedelics can relieve depression for an extended period, because the psychedelics cause the patient to see the world differently.

By Sarah Conover January 2021