This Banned TED Talk On Ayahuasca Is Mind-Altering

Scottish author Graham Hancock spent over two decades stoned, for about sixteen hours a day, by his own omission. He doesn't characterize his cannabis habit as a hard addiction, but was aware enough to seek external help when the drugs began to affect his work and family life negatively. In this 2013 TED Talk, Hancock shares his findings after turning to a natural remedy known as ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drug that includes the naturally-occurring psychedelic DMT. TED chose to censor Hancock's speech, apparently because of his endorsement of an illegal drug, removing the video from their channels.

The speech is real edge-of-the-internet stuff, a kind of dystopian, full-stop view of how fucked we all are since Western society has "distanced itself from the spirit." It's particularly damning to see Hancock compare the legislation against ayahuasca and similar hallucinogens to the corporate and cultural veneration of arguably more harmful substances like alcohol and sugar. Still, it's standard flower-grandchild propaganda with a hint of cultural tourism, arguing that the cure to all that ails you is a good, strong trip delivered by a magical shaman. We'll leave it up to you to take a stance, but it does get weird scrolling through pages of the fevered debate that followed Hancock's censorship: if this is nothing more than a whacked-out theory, *hits blunt* why'd they want it taken down so bad?

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