A Sense of Doubt blog post #3794 - Eliza Dushku Earns Clinical Mental Health Counseling Degree

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3794 - Eliza Dushku Earns Clinical Mental Health Counseling Degree

I have been a fan of Eliza Dushku since her role of Faith in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

This news item caught my eye as she just graduated with a Master's Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

Just like me.

I am not done yet with my degree, but I was pleased to see our similar degree plan. Sure, it's not that we are the only two people in the universe earning such degrees. And would I react the same way if I learned that some one who had not worked in Hollywood has earned such a degree? Well, I would feel that connection but probably wouldn't make a post about it.

But when I went to her Instagram and saw that she had allied with Paul Stamets, who lives in Washington, just north of me, and was the focus of one of my favorite films Fantastic Fungi.

Seemed post worthy.

Congratulations to Ms. Dushku!

Thanks for tuning in.


https://ew.com/eliza-dushku-begins-mental-health-career-8-years-after-last-role-11762253

Buffy star Eliza Dushku enters new career in mental health counseling 8 years after last role: 'True calling'

The former actress recently received a master's degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.

By Mekishana Pierre 

 

Published on June 26, 2025 06:51PM EDT

Eliza Dushku at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival.Credit: 

Nicholas Hunt/WireImage

Long after she won hearts by saving the day as a vampire slayer, Eliza Dushku is helping to save the world in a whole new way.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum is gearing up for a new career in mental health counseling after receiving her master's degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month. Dushku, 44, recently took to Instagram to celebrate her accomplishment, sharing a video of herself walking across the stage to collect her diploma.

"Graduating with my master's degree (!!) feels like more than an achievement — it feels like a deep calling realized. True growth, energy, and passion — manifested," Dushku wrote in the caption of the post, which also featured photos of her in sporting a cap and gown alongside her husband, Peter Palandjian, their two sons, and her classmates. "After nearly a decade of inner work and building a new life, I'm so grateful for this moment in time."

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She shouted out her "highest self — for taking this wild leap away from everything I knew and making it happen," as well as her boys "for the little sacrifices made & love you gave, each day to honor and support this dream."

The Bring It On star went on to express gratitude for the support she received from her community while continuing her education, writing, "And to my family, friends — new and old — my colleagues/classmates, professors/teachers, and community, I give thanks: for rooting me on, encouraging me day in and day out, and affording me the grace, strength, and space to step fully into these past years of clinical training."

She concluded the heartfelt post: "Today, I stand grounded and ready to support others on their journeys of becoming — through self-discovery, healing, and transformation. The connectedness I feel in holding safe, compassionate space for those who seek the undertaking is such lifeblood now. To possibility. hope, and healing, all."

Dushku stepped away from acting in 2017 to begin working toward her career in mental health counseling — her "true calling," according to a press release issued Thursday. She has become certified in psychedelic assisted therapy.

In a 2024 interview with Boston Magazine, she opened up about her desire to retire from acting in favor of her new career, revealing that at the time, she and her husband were funding research and clinical trials into the potential uses of psychedelics.

"I had the means to shift directions and choose a course in my life that focused on healing myself so that I could help heal others," Dushku said. "I would be remiss if I didn't now share the transformation and the peace and the passion that I have. This is just absolutely so clearly my real calling, my real purpose."

Eliza Dushku on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'.

Richard Cartwright/The WB

Dusku left behind a memorable career of acting roles, including playing the slayer Faith on Buffy and spinoff series Angel and leading Fox's Tru Calling and Dollhouse.

In 2018, Dushku wrote a 2,300-word account for the Boston Globe slamming her former Bull costar Michael Weatherly, writer-producer Glenn Gordon Caron, and CBS after news broke that she was paid $9.5 million by the network after alleging that she was sexually harassed by Weatherly during her time on the procedural. (Weatherly did not admit to sexual harassment but apologized for his behavior toward Dushku in a statement to the New York Times, characterizing it as unfunny and inappropriate attempts at humor. He also denied pushing to have her written off the show.)

CBS canceled Bull in 2022, after six seasons.

In Dushku's interview with Boston Magazine, she recalled feeling "feeling so wholly unwell" from her past traumas — including her alleged molestation by a film's stunt coordinator when she was 12 years old — while using psychedelics, which ultimately helped her process the past.

"I wouldn't have been able to do all of that without this psychedelic-assisted therapy and healing that showed me that I was safe in my body and in my life, naming and telling the truth about things," Dushku said. "And it's all kind of catapulted from there."

eliza dushku prp 4 Mass - psychedelics

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2507.08 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3659 days ago & DAD = 313 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3697 - A Show About a Cure-All Mushroom

Marshall (voiced by Dave King) finds the amazing Blue Angel mushroom

Warner Bros. Discovery

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3697 - A Show About a Cure-All Mushroom

I just caught up on the blog with three days of heavy writing, especially Sunday's comic book review of Hush 2.

So here's a quick share of something very interesting.

I had other plans, but I am going easy on myself for the next two days and will produce (I hope) more involved posts this weekend.

Thanks for tuning in.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26535360-600-stunning-new-animated-series-tells-the-story-of-a-cure-all-mushroom/

Stunning new animated series tells the story of a cure-all mushroom

A naturalist finds a hallucinogenic mushroom with the power to cure all ailments in the animated series Common Side Effects. Big Pharma is hot on his trail in this beautifully made show, says Bethan Ackerley

By Bethan Ackerley

26 March 2025

Common Side Effects
Joseph Bennett, Steve Hely
Channel 4 (UK); Cartoon Network, Max (US)

One of the best shows I watched last year was Scavengers Reign, a lushly animated sci-fi series about an interstellar cargo ship that crashes on a planet full of strange, dangerous life. Sadly, it was cancelled after a single season. So, I was pleased to learn that one of its creators, Joseph Bennett, had partnered with writer Steve Hely on a new animated show called Common Side Effects, all about a Big Pharma conspiracy.

At its heart is oddball naturalist Marshall (voiced by Dave King), who protests at a public meeting of Reutical Pharmaceuticals, a megacorporation that has been dumping medical waste in the Peruvian highlands. After being thrown out, he bumps into his former classmate Frances (Emily Pendergast), the harried assistant of a Reutical executive.

Unaware of who employs her, Marshall reveals he has made an extraordinary discovery: the Blue Angel mushroom, a hallucinogen with the power to cure every ailment. The US government, insurance agencies and, most of all, Big Pharma don’t want the public to know, Marshall tells her. His paranoia is justified almost immediately, with everyone from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to Reutical trying to track him down.

What’s obvious from the off is that Common Side Effects is a beautifully made show. The animation is breathtaking but frequently ugly and violent. The hallucinations – which take each patient to a mystical realm filled with ghostly babies that explode in pops of colour – are unlike anything I have seen on TV (except perhaps in Scavengers Reign).

Marshall’s flawed, fragile world view is still preferable to the unfeeling profit machine at Reutical

What isn’t clear is what the show is trying to say. It condemns the cruelty of the US healthcare system, but it isn’t a polemic. In fact, it is at its best when it’s exploring the lesser hypocrisies of its most sympathetic character. Once Marshall escapes his pursuers for a while, sick and injured people beg for help. He must make decisions he is usually shielded from. Who gets some of his limited supply of mushrooms? Why should one man control how this cure-all reaches the world?

The series doesn’t settle for easy answers or paint Marshall as a wholly benign figure. Further on, we see how corruptible any system of distributing the mushrooms could be under the wrong cultivation. The unwanted side effects of the Blue Angel also begin to complicate matters. Its visions induce epiphanies in some and abject terror in others, especially when they appear long after the first trip.

But Common Side Effects isn’t a smugly centrist lecture on why Marshall and Big Pharma are broadly as bad as each other. Marshall’s flawed, fragile world view is still preferable to the unfeeling profit machine at Reutical. The show wonders again and again: who does such a system work for? Asking is what matters, as we realise the status quo doesn’t have to endure and ossify, even if we don’t yet have an alternative.

These ideas begin to solidify in the ninth instalment – a long time for a show to get its ducks in a row. But there is plenty to entertain us along the meandering way. It can be very funny, particularly when hapless DEA agents Copano and Harrington (Joseph Lee Anderson and Martha Kelly) are on screen.

Eventually, the messier elements of Common Side Effects do coalesce pretty much perfectly into a hopeful, humanistic show about making mistakes and how we go about healing.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2504.02 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3562 days ago & DAD = 217 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3138 - Why Psychedelics? Here's Why Mushrooms Need to Be Legalized

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3138 - Why Psychedelics? Here's Why Mushrooms Need to Be Legalized

Just this share today.

Time to legalize.

Thanks for tuning in!!

https://reason.com/2023/09/11/depressed-by-the-war-on-drugs-magic-mushrooms-may-help/


SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Depressed by the War on Drugs? Magic Mushrooms May Help.

Hello and welcome to The Rattler, a Reason newsletter from me, J.D. Tuccille. If you care about government overreach and tangible threats to everyday liberty, you’re in the right place. Did someone forward this to you? You may freely choose to subscribe right here.

https://reason.com/2023/09/11/depressed-by-the-war-on-drugs-magic-mushrooms-may-help/

Depressed by the War on Drugs? Magic Mushrooms May Help.

Research is promising, but drug warriors stand in the way.

Hallucinogenic drugs like psilocybin-containing magic mushrooms are closely linked in the public imagination with hippies and pleasure-seeking. While there's nothing inherently wrong with pleasure-seeking (we'll see about hippies), growing evidence suggests that, properly used, these drugs may be just as effective for healing minds as they are at blowing them. A recently published study reports that, among other uses, psilocybin is a very effective treatment for depression.

Positive Results, Minimal Side Effects

"In a randomized, placebo-controlled, 6-week trial in 104 adults, a 25-mg dose of psilocybin administered with psychological support was associated with a rapid and sustained antidepressant effect, measured as change in depressive symptom scores, compared with active placebo," according to the authors, led by Dr. Charles L. Raison of Wisconsin's Usona Institute, of "Single-Dose Psilocybin Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial," published in August in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "No serious treatment-emergent adverse events occurred." The trial, conducted at different locations between December 2019 and June 2022, included participants between ages 21 and 65 who had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder of at least 60 days' duration. Half of the participants were given a 25-mg dose of psilocybin and the other half were given niacin as a placebo, administered in identical capsules. The patients were assessed at eight days (the original end point of the study) and then at 43 days (the extended time frame). Over the course of the study, "a single 25-mg dose of psilocybin administered with psychosocial support was associated with clinically and statistically significant reductions in depressive symptoms and improvement in measures of functional disability compared with a 100-mg dose of niacin placebo administered under an identical protocol." The researchers also found a higher rate of sustained remission from depression symptoms among those who received psilocybin, "but the difference was not statistically significant." Adverse events potentially related to psilocybin consumption included one reported migraine, a headache, and one participant experiencing panic attack and paranoia. Nothing similar was found among the placebo group. As side effects go, that's pretty mild and comparable to those linked to commonly used antidepressant drugs. Hence the finding that the study resulted in "no serious treatment-emergent adverse events."

More Potential Benefits

By no means is this the first study to explore potential benefits from psychedelic drugs. Johns Hopkins Medicine is looking at psilocybin mushrooms for treating tobacco addiction. A University of British Columbia study of psilocybin and LSD use published in November 2021 "identified lower levels of anxiety and depression among microdosers relative to controls." "MDMA-assisted therapy is highly efficacious in individuals with severe" post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to research published in 2021 in Nature Medicine. But while the powers-that-be have budged a little from their anti-drug mania—MDMA won designation from the Food and Drug Administration as a "breakthrough therapy" for PTSD, allowing for clinical trials—users and researchers face serious obstacles despite the drugs' promise and the right of individuals to make their own choices. "Currently, most psychedelic compounds are illegal under federal law," notes a Journal of the American Medical Assocation editorial comment published with the psilocybin study. "They were placed on the most restrictive class of drugs, Schedule I, in the 1970s as part of the 'war on drugs,' meaning that they were considered to have high potential for abuse with no accepted medical use. However, the ever-growing global mental health crisis, coupled with the shortage of effective therapeutic strategies, has given rise to a reconsideration of the therapeutic potential of these compounds in recent years." "The study by Raison et al provides an excellent example of the promise of this new approach using psilocybin therapy for patients with major depressive disorder," the journal editorial comment adds on the way to calling for greater study and exploration of such treatments. But legally studying these drugs, let alone using them as a treatment for mental woes or just for fun without running some handcuff-adjacent risks, is severely hampered so long as it's subject to draconian government restrictions.

Uphill Fight for Reform

"Psilocybin is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning that it has a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision," according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA listing for MDMA uses the same language, as does that for LSD, and for Marijuana. None of the DEA claims, aside from the drugs' legal status, are entirely true. Acknowledging that "psychedelic drugs show initial promise as potential treatments for mood, anxiety and substance use disorders," the FDA published new draft guidance in June for clinical trials. California is poised to follow Colorado and Oregon in legalizing (somewhat, subject to onerous regulations) psilocybin. Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R–Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) and Sens. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) have worked in a rare example of constructive (instead of more-common destructive) cross-aisle amity to make it slightly easier to study the medical benefits of psychedelics. They haven't had much success. "And yet, for all this agreement, it has so far proved difficult to pass any bills related to psychedelics. This is not — according to both Crenshaw's and Ocasio-Cortez's offices — because of some organized anti-psychedelics lobbying or big money lining up in opposition," The Washington Post's Ben Terris reported in July. "The psychedelics coalition is up against an even more common impediment to change: Washington's fear of something new. Some politicians can't help but tune out when it comes to drugs that have long been considered illicit in American law and culture." Medical researchers, patients, and their advocates in government see promise from psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin, in treating stubborn mental illnesses, and many Americans enjoy their use for the insights they offer or just the pleasure they give. But drug cops can still pretend these substances have "no currently accepted medical use in treatment" and lock people up for consuming them. It's a depressing situation. If only there was a safe treatment that offered "clinically and statistically significant reductions in depressive symptoms" we might get a bit of relief. If you're interested, here's a how-to guide for taking magic mushrooms.

The Psychedelic Renaissance Is Here Inside the gathering of the scientists, psychonauts, capitalists, and comedians committed to mainstreaming psychedelics without repeating the errors of the 1960s. By Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller

New from Reason: The Psychedelic Renaissance Is Here Everywhere around us, there are signs of a psychedelic renaissance: in medicine, therapy, commerce, and the arts. These drugs are getting serious, positive coverage in glossy magazines, best-selling books, literary memoirs, documentaries, and hit podcasts. Performers like Reggie Watts, Melissa Etheridge, and members of the Flaming Lips openly acknowledge the role of hallucinogens in their work. And a flourishing psychedelic comedy scene is springing out all over the place. But federal prohibition of psychedelics—a term that refers to a broad category of consciousness- and perception-altering substances—is also changing. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve therapy using psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredients in magic mushrooms, and MDMA, the drug also known as ecstasy and molly. And Oregon and Colorado have decriminalized the recreational use of plant-based psychedelics. Are psychedelics transcending their countercultural associations and moving squarely into the mainstream of science, medicine, wellness, and personal growth? In the new documentary, The Psychedelic Renaissance Is Here, Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller investigate this new, exciting cultural phenomenon.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2309.21 - 10:10

- Days ago = 3002 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.