“The world was made up of jewels and I was in a dome…this most incredible luminescence that made everything even more beautiful.” She says that overall she saw “how beautiful the world could actually be.”

Many people forget that the way that Timothy Leary began his experiments with psilocybin mushrooms and LSD was as a government sanctioned researcher at Harvard. The potential for psychedelics as a psychotherapeutic aid has long been known, and there is now a resurgence in interest and subsequent research. Recent studies at Johns Hopkins affirmed the positive impact that patients reported from a single session under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms, including a closer connection to divinity and overall improved behavior even many months after having the experience.

You can read more about the positive impact of psychedelics by clicking the link below.

Therapeutic Use of Psychedelics

One way to stay on the right track is to stay informed concerning what foods are good and bad to eat. A recent study suggests that the consumption of extra virgin olive oil may play a key role in keeping inflammation at bay.

“These findings strengthen the relationship between inflammation, obesity and diet and provide evidence at the most basic level of healthy effects derived from virgin olive oil consumption in humans,” said Francisco Perez-Jimenez of the University of Cordoba in Spain, who headed up the study.

Monounsaturated fat that comes from olive oil does not raise cholesterol levels like saturated fat does. A simple act like using olive oil instead of oils and shortenings that contain hydrogenated or saturated fat can reduce your health care costs considerably over the course of your lifetime.

To learn more about oils and fats, simply click the American Heart Association link below.

Know Your Fats

Michigan legalized medical marijuana in 2008; at the time I had just been released from the Cleveland Clinic after a 45 day stay, emergency surgery, weighing only 98 lbs, and unable to walk well. I got home and the first thing I did was smoke a joint. Within two months I was up to 125 lbs and was able to walk down the aisle and stand up for my little sister at her wedding in Key West.

During Christmas 2009 we all gathered at my sister’s house in Las Vegas to celebrate the holidays. My dad had picked up a High Times magazine at a bookstore and on the back was an advertisement for the first Michigan Cannabis Cup. I grabbed my laptop and was quick to offer my story. This was something I had to be a part of and they responded on New Year’s Day, letting me know that I would be able to give a speech and be a guest judge.

As we were getting ready to leave my mom and I were packing up. She’s always been the one who never smoked or drank, and she made sure we always went to church and private schools. She had never been a supporter of marijuana and had always been opposed to it, though mostly in silence. We were discussing me standing in front of a crowd giving a speech and she said to me “Don’t back out, this is important; you have something to say that people need to hear.” As of that moment the legalization of medical marijuana, sharing my story, and trying to reach people who don’t know anything about the politics has become a mission in my life.

Due to some legal issues they were not able to have the Cup competition but they succeeded in putting on a great Expo with all kinds of educational information. I was amazed and got to meet the men who put this together. They had opened the first member dispensary in Michigan. They invited me to join and ever since my life has changed. No longer do I have to illegally search for marijuana of questionable origin and potency. I can walk into a nice building and meet privately with an expert who can advise me as to the differences in the medicine that is available. I now get my medicine that has been inspected with microscopes and is top of the line medical marijuana.

Everyone needs to stand up for decriminalization of marijuana because it can actually help to clean up the war zones of our inner cities and create jobs for the talented people in our communities. We need to have a safe environment for patients to get quality medicine. This is now a viable industry in our country which needs to be set up and organized. However, there is always going to be that opposing group that wants to stop us.

My one real hero in this fight I have to give props to Irv Rosenfeld, who is a patient that gets his medicine from the United States Federal Government! I hope some day that I can meet this man in person and thank him for coming to speak at the meetings of our Michigan State Congress. You can see his testimony on YouTube and it is educational, informative, and moving. We are the proof along with many others that marijuana is a medicine.

In the future the laws are going to be ever changing as they have been for years; such is the nature of our legal system. We have to be proactive in developing the laws supporting the use of medical marijuana. If the supporters aren’t writing the laws then they are going to be biased and unsatisfactory. We need the support of the politicians to write laws that allow for dispensaries to serve patients. It is up to us to show that medical dispensaries provide a vital and important service to the community which our politicians need to support.

A number of cities in Michigan have put moratoriums on allowing medical marijuana businesses to open. They are using the excuse of zoning issues. I grew up in Saginaw, one city that is using zoning as an excuse to stop a dispensary from opening in the city. Saginaw, once upon a time, was a great farming community, which turned into an auto industry city, but now the buildings stand vacant. Why are these factories not being used to grow quality medical marijuana? Creating factories and developing farmland where medical marijuana can be grown is a good way to consider revitalizing cities. It is important that we be involved or we will have marijuana that’s grown in houses by amateurs and not quality medical marijuana.

I challenge President Obama to keep his promise of change and add medical marijuana as a patient’s right to his health care initiatives.

I have always wondered why nobody ever points this out, and I still do. But let’s take a moment to see how this reality applies to ObamaCare. A couple with two kids making a total of a mere $44,000 a year will have to pay $2,763 to a private insurance company under this government mandate.

Personally, I am 50 years old, and my ex-wife is 53, and neither of us has been to a doctor in 23 years. The only reason that number isn’t 30 years is because of our son’s birth, and we paid for that out of pocket.

So if a couple and their kids were simply healthy for 23 years like my family has been, they would pay the government over $63,000 out of their meager $11.00 an hour paychecks for something they did not need or use. This is ridiculous, and it will result in people looking for reasons to go to the doctor instead of reasons to avoid doing so, which will bog down the system and decrease the quality of care for people who really need it. Different people who oppose this tax do so for different reasons, but this is my pet peeve about it. It isn’t even something that many of us will even use, yet we have are going to be forced by the government to pay into it.

He also touches on the fact that spending nearly a trillion dollars on this bureaucratic nightmare when the country is already bankrupt is absurd, and he states that he thinks most Americans agree that it makes no sense and cannot work. He also seems to suggest that the American people may refuse to accept the contents of the bill even if it does become law. You can check out the video here:

Now that the cowardly Democratic holdouts have caved and the Obama health tax bill has passed the House, we can take heart in the actions of the states of Texas, South Carolina, Utah, Nebraska, Florida, Alabama, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington. The attorneys general of these states are going to collectively file a lawsuit against the federal government resisting this unconstitutional and unprecedented law requiring citizens to purchase a product from a private company.

The Attorney General of the State of Texas, Greb Abbott, opined:

“To protect all Texans’ constitutional rights, preserve the constitutional framework intended by our nation’s founders, and defend our state from further infringement by the federal government, the State of Texas and other states will legally challenge the federal health care legislation.”

One would be able to logically suggest that they aren’t in favor of this bill, but it just may be that the administration has the best interests of most American at heart–IF–all people weren’t required by law to buy it. This is clearly a huge step toward total government control over all segments of society, done so through hand-picked private corporations. It is soft socialist coup that is intended to look like capitalism. But who are the biggest insurers? AIG is near the top, you say…and who owns AIG? The federal government, that’s who.

“If a person decides not to buy health insurance, that person by definition is not engaging in commerce. If you are not engaging in commerce, how can the federal government regulate you?” asked Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli.

As outrageous as this intrusion into our personal liberties is, it is going to loosen the hold the the federal government has on the people as the states assert their independence as a result, so it is in fact another blessing in disguise.

The most under-reported aspect of this tax is just how much it will cost Americans who are presently not covered by health insurance. A family of four that makes $44,000 (that would be a couple who each make about $10.50 an hour) will be forced by the government to shell out $2,763 annually to private insurance companies that the government presumably will select. That’s a $230 per month tax levied on people who are hardly making a living wage who may or may not ever use the plans they will be forced to purchase.

If you and your spouse are fortunate enough to each have jobs that pay $33,000 a year, you are in for a treat! Your family of four will be paying the private insurers of Obama’s choice no less than 10% of your income per year; $9,435, or $783.25 per month. No, that’s not a misprint. You can read all about it in the Health Care 101 Primer. We can! Change we can believe in!

People who are so in favor of “health care” simply do not realize that they are going to have to PAY for it. A single-payer system like the rest of the world enjoys would be a different matter. A huge tax cut that you could use as savings toward possible future health care needs would also be an option. This 2700 page tax plan is pure idiocy, and if there is any good to it at all it is that it will finally open the eyes of the sheep when they realize the true ramifications of the tax. The same people who are supporting it will be the ones who won’t be able to pay for it.

Clearly, if you smoke a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, carry 40 or 50 extra pounds, and never exercise, that type of lifestyle will take its toll over a number of years. On the other hand, if you eat well, exercise regularly, and avoid serious health risks like cigarette smoking, you are far less likely to suffer the “ravages of aging” in any significant sense. In fact, many people tend to take health and fitness more seriously as they enter middle age and find themselves in the best condition of their lives when they are in their forties, fifties, or sixties!

When you are healthy, fit and living a positive lifestyle, you genuinely feel good and you project a certain aura that is very attractive to others. But even when you do everything that is humanly possible to keep yourself in shape, there are no exercises or health foods that are proven to eliminate wrinkles, furrows, and expression lines from your face. These features can unfairly reduce that vibrant appearance that many of us work so hard to maintain. That is why Botox is so popular among so many people, including many of the world’s most beautiful and recognizable celebrities.

In a nutshell, Botox minimizes the function of the nerves that are at the root of facial expression control. Most people recognize the fact that Botox is used for facial applications, but it is also very effective when utilized to decrease problem perspiration from under the arms and even from the feet or hands.

When you do all the things that are necessary to look and feel your best, you deserve all that you have worked for, and some people feel as though Botox puts their efforts over the top. Others eschew it as something unnecessary and unnatural. The debate goes on, but in the end, it is a purely personal decision.

When I was about ten years old we moved into a house that was new to us. I was watching television at home one day, and all of a sudden my eyes got really itchy. I started rubbing them and they just got worse and worse, to the point where they were swollen and I could hardly see. I must have looked pretty bad because my mom took me to the family doctor. He said that I had allergies and recommended a certain allergy doctor.

I went to this allergy doctor and he performed tests to find out what it was that I was allergic to, and it turned out that I was allergic to several things, and one of them was dust. He told my mother to make sure that everything is the house was thoroughly dusted and to try to keep it that way. He also gave me some pharmaceutical drugs.

She did this, but I still had allergic reactions on and off. She called the doctor’s office to ask if they had any suggestions, and the woman who answered the phone asked her if she had called someone in to clean the carpet. She said that she had vacuumed regularly, but that she never thought about having the carpet professionally cleaned. The lady from the doctor’s office told her that carpets hold a lot of dust and it gets agitated and into the air as we walk around, and of course that makes total sense.

So my mom had a professional carpet cleaner come in and clean the carpets. They told her that not only is there dust in the carpet, but there can also be dust mites, and many people are allergic to them. I was just a kid, but I could really tell that they tried their best to do a really good job to get the carpet super clean knowing that I was suffering with these allergies. I have to tell you that it was really miserable when they flared up.

The whole thing must have been caused by dust mites that were in the carpet, because I never had a problem before we moved into the new house, and I had no allergic reactions after they carpets were cleaned. My mom just made sure that the carpet cleaners came out regularly, and the problem was solved. I never needed the drugs at all. I wonder how many people out there are taking pharmaceuticals, and paying good money for them, instead of addressing the root causes of simple health problems.

The court-appointed attorney who took the lead in the effort to convince the jury to spare Wood’s life, Kenneth B. Trotter, had just passed the bar at the time. He had been a practicing lawyer for less than a year when he prepared and presented the case for leniency in the Wood matter. His efforts came up just short. Holly Wood was sentenced to death by the jury, who voted 10 to 2 in favor of the execution. This was the slimmest of margins, because in the state of Alabama it takes a minimum of ten “yes” votes to sentence a convict to death.

Wood has an IQ of 64. Alabama law states that an IQ under 70 results in “significantly sub-average intellectual functioning.” His lawyer, Mr. Trotter, was in possession of a competency report that contained this information. He could have presented it to the jury and contended that Wood was for all intents and purposes mentally retarded and ask that they take that into consideration while considering the death penalty.

Wood’s case was first presented to United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, and he lost the appeal in a split decision among the three judges on the panel. The dissenting jurist, Judge Rosemary Barkett, was blunt in her assessment:

“An inexperienced and overwhelmed attorney realized too late what any reasonably prepared attorney would have known: that evidence of Wood’s mental impairments could have served as mitigating evidence and deserved investigation so that it could properly be presented before sentencing.”

The contention in some quarters is that this case will bring to light some systemic problems with the Alabama capital justice system. Alabama doesn’t have a state public defenders office and funding is sparse for indigent defense. Wood’s attorneys were given a spending limit of just $1,000 maximum to prepare their case against the death penalty.

Alabama may not be in a position to allocate unlimited funds for indigent defense, but one thing is certain, and that is the fact that Holly Wood has somehow been afforded his right to appeal after appeal, and his case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the original decision was affirmed. His lawyers have filed a petition for a rehearing.