I endeavor to read a wide variety of authors, genres, topics, and media types. I recently subscribed to Double Blind Magazine and received their #7 issue.
Double Blind sends out a magazine two times per year and also has a website full of articles, research, and stories relating to psychedelics.
From their website:
With an open mind and a commitment to fact-checking, we provide nuance to the reporting on alternative healing modalities and mindfulness movements. Psychedelics aren’t just about the 1960s cultural revolution—or the research renaissance that has followed it in recent decades. They’re a jumping off point for exploring what it means to be well as individuals and a collective: we invite you to contemplate that with us.
This was my first time reading their magazine and I found it thought provoking for many ways. Unrelated to the actual content, I have begun to appreciate more niche magazines (Double Blind, Kinfolk) that stray from the stereotypical image of a magazine (People, Sports Illustrated, Time). Every magazine can have great writing and there is a reason that magazines like Time, The Economist, National Geographic and more have been around for so long with such a strong readership.
I have found magazines like Double Blind and Kinfolk to offer a more artistic version of a magazine. Something that you can revisit over and over again to get more value.
In Issue No 7 of the Double Blind magazine they had articles like: Grief Rituals, Coca vs. Cocaine, The Summer of Love – In Yiddish, among many more.
Grief Rituals discussed the need to move towards acceptance of grief as a place of comfort. Grief is a tricky subject. At times it can seem like the grieving person needs to hold space for the person providing some type of sympathy. The advice we many times receive is to “stay busy” and “move on“. When in reality moving on is not what is needed. We need to embrace and grow. If you were to break your leg while riding your bike, staying busy and moving on might not always be the best decision when getting a cast might be needed. Why is grief any different. Time to heal and change is needed to improve our future outcomes and become better connected to the new normal or whatever the change is that we experience.
Somewhere in the magazine I came across the idea of “Maintain the soul”. I can’t remember where it was written or if the next three sentences are from an article, or my own writing. It feels a bit too well written to be my own ha!
Without a soul you are just an individual in the service of an insatiable entity. Why can it not ever be full. Embrace fullness.
I liked this idea because our soul is everything that we are. We are a being that has desires and needs and each person is different. If we are just following the crowd and neglecting our own desires and needs then we really are not feeding our soul, we are feeding another “insatiable entity”.
One more quote thought that I wrote down in my notes is below. Next time I need to do a better job of documenting where I actually got these quotes so I can attribute them more fully.
“A community that does not have ritual cannot exist.”
There were many more valuable pieces in this magazine filled with insightful, humorous, and adventurous stories. I would recommend that magazine and hope to read more issues in the future. For now this will be on my coffee table for future revisiting.
love you. Quinn 