The use of drugs like psilocybin, MDMA and cannabis offers a way to enhance health – particularly mental health – without the need for massive multinational pharmaceutical companies.
Eating local, ethically-raised meat from farms that use regenerative farming techniques offers a way to enhance physical health (of us and our planet) without the need for massive multinational food companies.
Buying and using bitcoin offers a way to enhance spiritual health without the need for all-powerful central banks. (Yes, money is spiritual.)
All three transfer power away from an unelected economical ‘elite’ back to the people.
You don’t need big pharmaceutical companies to grow magic mushrooms; you don’t need big food companies to buy local, grass-fed meat; and you don’t need banks to buy bitcoin.
To take control of our lives, we must remove the middlemen and go straight to the source.
Beyond social justice movements, protests and petitions, a new world is being constructed as an alternative to the current system. This new world does not represent a revolution of society, it represents a reimagining of society.
So, instead of fighting for your freedoms within the centralised old-world system, take responsibility for your life and step into the new, decentralised reality.
Psychedelics
The use of mind-altering substances goes back a very long time. In fact, at many points in time and in many cultures, psychedelic substances were highly revered. And for good reason.
They allow us to think in different ways than we usually do, allowing us to solve problems we couldn’t solve before. They allow us to think outside the box. To evolve.
If you think I’m exaggerating, read this book by Brian Muraresku. It explores the secretive use of psychedelic drugs by the brightest minds of Ancient Greece and the surrounding area.
These guys went on to establish Christianity and modern western civilisation as we know it, with their ideas on liberty and life laying the foundation for the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, scientific revolution, and the development of liberal democracy.
That’s right. The very culture you live in today was originally birthed from thinking influenced by the psychedelic experience.
Moving to current times, despite the decades-long war on drugs led by the US, they are more popular than ever. This is largely thanks to the internet, which has allowed us to share knowledge on different drugs, especially how to get them; whether it’s growing them, making them or buying them online.
In addition to a well-established ‘party drug’ scene, we now have huge Ayahuasca tourism in the Amazon, stars such as Joe Rogan and Mike Tyson regularly talking about DMT and psychedelic toad medicine, tech entrepreneurs microdosing LSD for a competitive edge, and even a ketamine-assisted therapy clinic that recently opened in Bristol.
Driving this surge in conscious drug use is modern scientific research. Many drugs – such as cannabis, psilocybin, DMT/ayahuasca, ibogaine, MDMA, ketamine and LSD – are being discovered to have profound positive effects on mental and physical health when used appropriately.
One of the most promising areas of research is on psychedelic-assisted therapy, where drugs like psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine are used alongside psychotherapy for conditions like treatment-resistant depression and end-of-life anxiety – with extraordinary results!
One study found a single dose psilocybin produces antidepressant effects by increasing the number of synapses in the brain and enhancing serotonin signalling.
Another found that just two sessions of psilocybin-assisted therapy to be approximately two-and-a-half times more effective than psychotherapy on its own, and more than four times more effective than commonly-prescribed antidepressant drugs.
And then there’s cannabis. As one of the most useful plants known to humankind and among the first to be cultivated by us, cannabis and its active compounds, notably cannabinoids (but limited to just them), have a remarkable ability to bring balance to the body.
They do this by acting on the body’s endocannabinoid system, which appears to be responsible for many bodily functions, including wake and sleep cycles, appetite, reproduction processes and cycles, digestion, mood, pain tolerance and more.
As we learn more about cannabis and how it affects us, the potential for it to replace or reduce the need for many commonly prescribed drugs such as sleeping pills, opioid pain medications, anti-anxiety medications, antipsychotics, anti-migraine medication and anti-epileptic medications grows.
Already we have seen prescriptions of pharmaceuticals drop in places where cannabis has been legalised. Like in Italy, where the widespread availability of CBD-rich cannabis led to a significant reduction in the number of prescription drugs dispensed by the country’s National Health Service.
Put simply, many drugs – some that humans have used for thousands of years and some new ones – have huge potential to enhance our mental and physical health. And you don’t need a doctor to prescribe them or a pharmacy to sell you them.
Many of them you can grow yourself. And it’s not difficult to use the internet to find a source for others. Lots of people are doing it. Things like psilocybin mushrooms and truffles, DMT vape pens, and underground MDMA therapist networks are more common than you think.
Whether they realise it or not, a subset of people are levelling up their health and potentially their consciousness by experimenting with substances that our government has told us are dangerous and immoral.
For decades, we have been fed lies and threatened with arrest in order to scare us off these substances and keep us hooked up to the pharmaceutical industry, which itself is in cahoots with the government.
Drugs like psilocybin mushrooms and cannabis are highly therapeutic and readily accessible to anyone, making them a threat to the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
Should word get out that cannabis can replace a wide number of commonly prescribed pharma-drugs and that two doses of psilocybin plus therapy is more effective than a subscription service to antidepressants, big pharma profits will shrink and the power of the individual will increase.
By growing your own medicine*, you take back control of your health from a corrupted, soulless industry that thrives off of sick people.
* And incorporating other decentralised health practices – like eating real food, exercising and mindfulness.
Regenerative farming
I understand vegans and vegetarians and the ethical principles they stand for. I admire their will to stand up for what they believe.
I myself have thought long and hard about my diet for years and I’ve experimented with vegetarianism and pescetarianism myself.
In fact, it’s been something of long-running conflict in my mind – vegan/veggie feels like the right thing to do, but eating animals makes more sense from a rational/scientific point of view.
However, in the last couple of years I feel I’ve come to a satisfactory conclusion that feels right AND makes sense to my rational mind: and that is that eating healthy, ethically-raised animals is best for the health of the individual and, therefore, it’s best for the health of society and, ultimately, the world.
The reasons that convinced me that eating healthy animals is good for humans are:
- If human evolution was reduced into 24 hours, we’ve been eating animals for 24 hours, grains for about 6 minutes, and ultra-processed food for mere seconds.
- Humans and our ancestors favoured eating animals (and little else for 2 million years) as it’s the most nutrient dense food around.
- Many studies show the importance of Omega 3, DHA, cholesterol, B12, and many other nutrients that are found mostly in animal foods.
- Plants are traditionally used as supplements to our diet and as medicines.
When it comes to the ethical side of the consideration, I work on a basic understanding that what is best for the individual in the long-term aligns with what is best for the whole universe in the long-term. For example, for a parent to raise happy, healthy kids, they themselves must first be healthy and happy.
An unhappy and unhealthy parent is not of great use to an infant. Similarly, the parent must enforce boundaries upon their child in order that they develop into a well-rounded adult that others like. While the child might not like this discipline at the time, it’s what’s best for them, and society, in the long term.
Therefore, it’s my opinion that because eating animals is best for human health, it’s also best for global health and the health of the universe itself.
However, the intensive factory farming of unhappy, unhealthy animals is clearly not good for humans or the Earth. This is where vegans and I agree. In order for animal products to be of benefit to humans, the animal needs to have been healthy itself.
The alternative to factory farming (and harmful mono-crop agriculture for that matter) is small-scale regenerative farming, where happy, healthy animals graze freely, eating their natural diet while fertilising and regenerating the soil.
If more people rejected industrial food products and bought the bulk of their food from local regenerative farmers, not only would their own health improve, we would also see reliance on multinational food companies fall.
The same multinational food companies that have refined, processed and packaged all sorts of cheap plant-based foods (think grain, sugar and seed oils) and poorly-raised animals in order to sell profitable, nutritionally-lacking food-like products to you and your children.
If you want to improve your health and the health of the earth, you need to be eating the food you and every one of your ancestors evolved to eat. That means mostly wild-caught seafood, grass-fed meat/organs, organic vegetables and fermented foods. Not refined carbs and highly processed, hormone-tainted meats.
If you listen to industry-funded government nutrition advice – you know, consume less meat, avoid saturated fat and cholesterol, and eat a more “balanced” diet rich in whole grains, fruit and vegetables – which has been handed down by corrupt institutions like the WHO and the WEF, your health will suffer.
Their dangerous advice reflects corporate interests rather than what’s best for your health.
The correlation between the consumption of processed foods in modern times and increases in heart disease, neurodegenerative disorders and obesity is not a coincidence.
If you are currently trying to eat more of a plant-based diet because governments and billionaires like Bill Gates tell you it will save the planet, you’ve been hoodwinked.
We must live in alignment with nature in order to save the world – and that means re-learning how our ancestors lived in a naturally regenerative symbiosis with their environment.
For more information on what your ancestors ate and what your genes need in order to be healthy, read this book.
Bitcoin
Now I’m no crypto expert or anything, but there are a few properties to Bitcoin that make it very interesting to me.
First, for those that don’t know, Bitcoin is a digital currency with no central control. Unlike pounds and dollars, there are no bankers or governing body that has the ability to create more or change anything about how it functions.
It’s been around for 12 years and is steadily growing in popularity. Some believe it will one day be the universal currency of the internet. Others believe it’s a scam/worthless.
Now I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. However, I do believe there is a chance that Bitcoin may dramatically change civilisation for the better. In fact, it may be the best chance we have to turn things around.
That’s because, due to its predetermined scarcity (only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist), so long as demand keeps growing, its value will continue to grow. This is unlike current currencies, which inherently lose value over time.
You see, when central banks and governments decide to print a load of new pounds or dollars to stimulate the economy or whatever, the introduction of that new money dilutes the value of all the existing money already in circulation.
This is because scarcity is needed for something to be valuable – the less scarce something is, the less valuable it becomes to us, and the more scarce something is, the more valuable it is to us. Scarcity is part of the reason why gold has value, why original paintings are worth more than replicas, and why Cali weed sells for £100 an eighth.
When more money is printed, the value of all money decreases. We, the consumer, notice this in the form of inflation. Inflation isn’t because of goods increasing in value, it’s because money is decreasing in value. Things aren’t getting more expensive, you’re getting poorer.
Inflation is currently on the rise, worsened by the recent massive monetary input to deal with the pandemic.
Bitcoin, which looks likely to continue growing in value for a long time, represents a deflationary monetary system.
Now consider this: if your money is going to be worth more next year than this year, there is incentive not to spend it right away, right?
If your money is going to be less valuable this time next year, however, you’re more likely to spend it while it’s valuable and to then concern yourself with continually making more.
Put simply, an inflationary monetary system incentivises short term thinking. A deflationary monetary system incentivises long-term thinking.
Therefore, money can either encourage people to chase short-term profits or long-term health. Play this out on a civilisation-wide scale and you start to see why almost every institution on the earth has been corrupted by the lure of short-term profits.
In a world where you’re always losing money, people grab as much as they can, as quick as they can, because they don’t know if they will ever get the chance again.
Now imagine that your savings are growing each year. You’d be more inclined to hold on to it than spend it. You’d be wise to only buy what’s necessary. Suddenly, you’re considering your future self and making sacrifices in the present in order to secure a better future.
This delayed gratification is positively associated with higher intelligence, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures.
Now, think how the world would change if our money was deflationary and all people and organisations were incentivised to delay gratification for a better future.
The pharmaceutical industry, for example, with its business model focused on short-term profits, would no longer be viable. Demand would shift from pharmaceutical drug products that treat symptoms, to treatments and products that treat the cause and promote long-term health.
Rather than antidepressants and pain-killers, patients would be prescribed time in the sun, meditation and plant medicines.
The food industry would be incentivised to produce healthy, natural and ethical foods in a manner that supports regeneration of the environment.
The war on drugs would be seen as a huge waste of resources because it clearly produces a negative long-term effects on individuals and society.
The implications are vast. They are also hard to truly believe are possible because we have never known any different.
However, humanity has never had money like bitcoin. Not only is its scarcity guaranteed, it is also decentralised (meaning the rules can’t be changed by any group or person), easy to divide, easy to move across the globe, easy to authenticate, and impossible to forge.
From shells to gold to government-backed paper IOUs, the money we use has never had all these qualities.
As adoption increases and the new bitcoin economy grows, the very fabric of society may be changed forever. For the good. The old guard won’t give it up easy though, so expect some bumps along the road.
Thanks to Saifedean Ammous and his book The Bitcoin Standard for the education on Bitcoin.
