Gregory Loewen

For many years, I have aspired to be a really grounded guy. I used to muse that this new age expression was a reference to electrical physics, because an electrical current prefers to follow a pathway that leads to the ground.  If an electrical cord is grounded, then it is unable to short-circuit.  If a person is grounded, they are unlikely to short-circuit.  Grounded people are safe to be around, Another way to think about groundedness is the of the deep rootedness of certain trees. If the...

Clinical trials are the pathway of research that pharmaceutical companies take as they work to explore the risks and benefits of any new therapy. There are thousands of clinical trials that are ongoing in the world, and some of these trials are currently evaluating new psychedelic medicines.  Clinical trials are an important step that all new medicines must take in order to reach the market, and in order to become prescribable by physicians.  The purpose of a clinical trial is partly to test...

The medicine, Ketamine is classified by the FDA as an anesthetic, and is still used in many operating rooms in the USA for anesthesia.  Anesthesiologists sometimes refer to ketamine as a “dissociative anesthetic’ because of its important side effect: in most people, administration of ketamine results in a brief period of dissociation.  Dissociation is an altered state of consciousness, where a person uncouples from their sense of identity, and are then able to see themselves from the outside,...