GIGANTE, Costa Rica - There was a ghostlike quality to Rudy Gonsior, an American former Special Forces sniper, on the morning he arrived at a jungle retreat to see if a vomit-inducing psychedelic brew could undo the damage years of combat had done to his mind.

Glassy-eyed and withdrawn, he barely spoke above a whisper and was much quieter than the six other veterans who had come to dredge up painful memories of comrades fallen in battle, thoughts of suicide and the scar that taking a life leaves on the psyche.

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Baba Ram Dass, who epitomized the 1960s of legend by popularizing psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary, a fellow Harvard academic, before finding spiritual inspiration in India, died on Sunday at his home on Maui, Hawaii. He was 88.

His death was announced on his official Instagram account.

Having returned from India as a bushy-bearded, barefoot, white-robed guru, Ram Dass, who was born Richard Alpert, became a peripatetic lecturer on New Age possibilities and a popular author of more than a dozen inspirational books.

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At 74, the venture capitalist George Sarlo might not have seemed an obvious candidate for an ayahuasca experience. Mr. Sarlo, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1956, has had great professional success as the co-founder of Walden Venture Capital. He lives in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood, in a large house with an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

And yet something was always lacking. Mr. Sarlo's father had disappeared from their Budapest home in 1942. He had been drafted in a forced labor battalion, an experience he did not survive. At age 4, George had told himself that it was because he was "a bad boy" that his father had left that day, early in the morning, without saying goodbye. He believes that he never recovered from that early loss.

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Since childhood, Rachael Petersen had lived with an unexplainable sense of grief that no drug or talk therapy could entirely ease. So in 2017 she volunteered for a small clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University that was testing psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, for chronic depression.

"I was so depressed," Ms. Petersen, 29, said recently. "I felt that the world had abandoned me, that I'd lost the right to exist on this planet. Really, it was like my thoughts were so stuck, I felt isolated."

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It can seem as though everyone in Silicon Valley is either heading to or coming back from a psychedelic trip, and it is probably Michael Pollan's fault.

He did after all write a best seller, "How to Change Your Mind," about how healthful psychedelics can be. His neighbor Ayelet Waldman, whose memoir "A Really Good Day" recounts how taking acid helped her mood and marriage, has something to do with it, too. And now, inspired by Pollan, the writer T.C. Boyle has a new novel, "Outside Looking In," about Timothy Leary, the charismatic Harvard professor turned psychedelics pied piper of the 1960s.

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The Oakland City Council passed a resolution Tuesday night that decriminalizes certain natural psychedelics, including mushrooms, a move that makes Oakland the second city in the nation to do so.

The resolution instructs law enforcement to stop investigating and prosecuting people using the drugs. It applies to psychedelics that come from plants or fungi, not synthetic drugs like LSD or MDMA, also known as ecstasy.

After the vote, nearly 100 supporters rose from their chairs, clapped and cheered loudly.

"I don't have words, I could cry," said Nicolle Greenheart, the co-founder of Decriminalize Nature Oakland. "I'm thrilled. I'm glad that our communities will now have access to the healing medicines and we can start working on healing our communities."

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NEW YORK - Roky Erickson, the blue-eyed, dark-haired Texan who headed the Austin-based 13th Floor Elevators, a pioneering psychedelic rock band in the 1960s that scored with "You're Gonna Miss Me," has died. He was 71.

Erickson's sinuous lead guitar and wailing vocals didn't turn him into a chart topper, but they cemented his role as a musician's musician. Fans included everyone from Lenny Kaye and the Swedish metal group Ghost - who covered his "If You Have Ghosts" - to ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons.

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UCSF psychiatrist Brian Anderson is studying an experimental therapy to help long-term AIDS survivors - people who were infected with HIV in the 1980s and never expected to live this long - who are feeling sad and demoralized.

In a clinic outfitted with a comfortable couch, soft lighting, throw pillows and blankets, the participants of his study are given psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms. They lie down for a few hours, a mask over their eyes and soothing music playing in the background, and experience a psychedelic trip.

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Dr. James S. Ketchum, an Army psychiatrist who in the 1960s conducted experiments with LSD and other powerful hallucinogens using volunteer soldiers as test subjects in secret research on chemical agents that might incapacitate the minds of battlefield adversaries, died on May 27 at his home in Peoria, Ariz. He was 87.

His wife, Judy Ketchum, confirmed the death on Monday, adding that the cause had not been determined.

Decades before a convention eventually signed by more than 190 nations outlawed chemical weapons, Dr. Ketchum argued that recreational drugs favored by the counterculture could be used humanely to befuddle small units of enemy troops, and that a psychedelic "cloud of confusion" could stupefy whole battlefield regiments more ethically than the lethal explosions and flying steel of conventional weapons.

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WASHINGTON - One airman said he felt paranoia. Another marveled at the vibrant colors. A third admitted, "I absolutely just loved altering my mind."

Meet service members entrusted with guarding nuclear missiles that are among the most powerful in America's arsenal. Air Force records obtained by The Associated Press show they bought, distributed and used the hallucinogen LSD and other mind-altering illegal drugs as part of a ring that operated undetected for months on a highly secure military base in Wyoming. After investigators closed in, one airman deserted to Mexico.

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Microdosing is hot. If you haven't heard - but you probably have, from reports of its use at Silicon Valley workplaces, from Ayelet Waldman's memoir "A Really Good Day," from dozens of news stories - to microdose is to take small amounts of LSD, which generate "subperceptual" effects that can improve mood, productivity and creativity.

Michael Pollan's new book, "How to Change Your Mind," is not about that. It's about macro-dosing. It's about taking enough LSD or psilocybin (mushrooms) to feel the colors and smell the sounds, to let the magic happen, to chase the juju. And it's about how mainstream science ceded the ground of psychedelics decades ago, and how it's trying to get it back.

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Decades after Canada abandoned the field, the B.C. Centre on Substance Use is investigating the benefits of drugs like MDMA and psilocybin

In 2011, Gerald Thomas was invited to an Indigenous community in a remote area of British Columbia. Working for the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., he was one of a small team of scientists who observed 12 people take ayahuasca, an Amazonian mixture that induces vivid visual and auditory hallucinations as well as deep emotional and intellectual reflection.

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In the hope of spreading awareness of the therapeutic benefits of MDMA, commonly known as ecstacy, one local psychotherapist is encouraging Kingstonians to explore and discuss the opportunities of psychedelic drugs.

"MDMA is an empathogen, it gives you more empathy and self-compassion, and so when you're in therapy with it you can look at your trauma with a little bit more openness," Richard Tyo, a registered psychotherapist and member of the Kingston Psychedelic Society, said on Wednesday. "It can really accelerate a lot of therapy."

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LSD, MARIJUANA HITS CITY IN 1966

City, police freak out over 'berserk' man

On Jan. 17, 1966, The Vancouver Sun published a small story with an alarming headline, Man Goes Berserk While Using Drug. LSD had hit the city. "Police said they found the man, clad only in his pants, running around the 1600-block Yew shortly after 3 a.m., screaming that he was God," said the story.

"The man, aged 36, was frothing at the mouth, had a wild-eyed appearance and was completely devoid of reason, police said.

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One day in 1964, Nicholas Sand, a Brooklyn-born son of a spy for the Soviet Union, took his first acid trip. He had been fascinated by psychedelic drugs since reading about them as a student at Brooklyn College and had experimented with mescaline and peyote. Now, at a retreat run by friends in Putnam County, N.Y., he took his first dose of LSD, still legal at the time.

Sitting naked in the lotus position, before a crackling fire, he surrendered to the experience. A sensation of peace and joy washed over him. Then he felt himself transported to the far reaches of the cosmos.

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Psychedelics, the fabled enlightenment drugs of the '60s, are making a comeback - this time as medical treatment.

A recent study claimed that psilocybin, a mushroom-derived hallucinogenic, relieves anxiety and depression in people with life-threatening cancer. Anecdotal reports have said similar things about so-called microdoses of LSD.

The allure is understandable, given the limits of our treatments for depression and anxiety. About a third of patients with major depression don't get better, even after several trials of different antidepressants. But I fear that in our desire to combat suffering, we will ignore the potential risks of these drugs, or be seduced by preliminary research that seems promising.

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[photo] Tim Scully, left, and Nick Sand pictured in a graphic from the documentary "The Sunshine Makers." (Nick Sand / Tim Scully / Passion Pictures / FilmRise)

As its title suggests, "The Sunshine Makers" is probably the happiest, most carefree drug documentary you're likely to see. The film explores the people behind the most well-known strain of LSD, who produced millions of doses in a single, sleep-deprived month. Their goal wasn't money, but instead they wanted to save the world: If everyone took LSD, they would experience the feelings of love and connectedness the hallucinogen promises.

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Mom guilt is here to stay. The stress of trying to be a calm, nurturing parent while also trying to keep our jobs, stay on top of school notices and remain married isn't going away. Not to mention the feeling that we're doing none of them particularly well.

But that won't stop some people from trying anything. Author Ayelet Waldman, for instance, tried LSD. In her new book, "A Really Good Day," she documents her experiment with "microdosing," taking very small quantities of LSD -- enough to make you calmer, more aware of your environment, more able to focus on your work, but without all those wacky hallucinations.

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Whether it's LSD or magic mushrooms, psychedelic drugs have long been a point of contention. An upcoming event hopes to educate Saskatoon residents on their medical uses and their potentially research-rich future.

Organized by Erika Dyck, a University of Saskatchewan history professor and the Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine, the event is called An Evening of Psychedelics and takes place at the Underground Cafe on Nov. 23.

"Over the last few years there's been some real interest in what people are starting to call a psychedelic renaissance, where we're looking at psychedelics for their therapeutic potential today," she said.

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BALTIMORE - Gordon McGlothlin, who took his first puff at age 12 behind his family's garage, tried to quit smoking for years, but no cessation technique worked until he used a psychedelic drug.

Researchers with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine gave the 69-year-old a derivative of psychedelic mushrooms similar to LSD and watched him "trip" in a therapy room during six-hour sessions.

McGlothlin experienced wild hallucinations, including watching his body slowly unraveling until it disappeared into a puff of smoke. After researchers took his blood pressure, he imagined a red, bloodlike fluid covering him from head to toe.

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