Globally, around 47% of pregnancies are unintended, and of these, 43% occur in countries where abortion is illegal or severely restricted. …

A little under two months ago, the Guttmacher Institute and WHO released first-ever country-level estimates of unintended pregnancy and abortion (see here). Their study analyzed data for 150 countries for the period 2015–2019 and found that almost half of the 220 million pregnancies globally per year are unintended. Six in…

A year and a half ago, I volunteered to participate in a research study on psilocybin-caused mystical experiences. I completed an online survey and later was interviewed by the principal researcher in a more than hour long semi-structured zoom interview. …

In mathematics, its entirely OK to take a set of axioms which are not internally inconsistent and assume they are true. Then work out the characteristics of the abstract "space" defined by those axioms. However, your example of a set of creationist axioms from which a "rational" conclusion can be…

My experience at a psychedelic retreat. I was in high school during the 1960s and psychedelics were illegal by the time I started university in 1971. Although I was fascinated by writings on psychedelics by Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts and others, and the experiences recounted by various friends, my fear of adverse outcomes led me to…

The psychedelic state between wakefulness and sleep — During a lengthy Covid lockdown last year, I decided to see whether I could achieve a wake-induced lucid dream (WILD). This involves transitioning directly from the hypnagogic state into the dream state while maintaining awareness throughout. The hypnagogic state is the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, during which images…

I had tried kava many years ago when I was in Fiji at a holiday resort. There was a bowl of what looked like (and tasted like) muddy tea. I had a cup of it, and did not notice anything much. And then some years later my sister Irene and…