Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
I had been a SEAL for five and a half years. After that, I worked as a contractor with the CIA. When that ended, I crashed–hard. I got into sleeping pills. I was using opiates. Eventually, I moved out of the country and started living in MedellĂn, Colombia. That's where I got really into cocaine. Eventually, I hit a point where I knew I couldn't keep going. A friend told me about psychedelic therapy, and I decided to try it. The first was Ibogaine. It's a 12-hour experience. I basically watched my entire life play out from a different perspective. After the Ibogaine effects wore off, I did another psychedelic called 5-MeO-DMT, sometimes called the "God molecule." The trip is described as an ego death, or death experience. It was the most intense, intuitive thing I've ever felt. I came out of it seeing the world differently. For the first time in my life, I realized everything is connected. That hit me in a way nothing else ever had. When I came back from that psychedelic experience, I didn't need the pills anymore. I didn't need the vodka. I quit everything. And for the first time in a long time, I was fully present with my family. That experience changed everything. It gave me a second chance. That's why I started talking about this publicly. I wanted other veterans ... to know there's a way out. A lot of them have been through the same thing – addiction, trauma, broken families, suicidal thoughts. When they hear that someone else made it through, they start to believe that maybe they can too.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on psychedelic medicine and healing the war machine.
For 13 years, the Brazilian government has offered its incarcerated citizens a simple deal: read a book, serve less time. This "Remission for Reading" program is now serving as a template to other nations, and prison populations are enjoying similar deals in countries such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. With a recidivism rate of more than 80% and the 15th highest imprisonment rate on the planet, the Brazilian criminal justice system was for decades failing its 1984 mandate which states that prisoners must have access to programs that will help prepare them to reenter society. Remission for Reading works by offering all Brazilian prisoners regardless of literacy skill or mental faculties access to the prison library, which includes books in Braille and audiobooks for those with poor eyesight. Once a book is checked out, the inmate has 21 to 30 days depending on the page count to finish it, and then 10 days to complete a written book report to demonstrate their knowledge of the text. Assistance is offered to those who speak different languages or who are intellectually impaired. For each report, the prisoner's sentence is commuted by 4 days. An inmate can submit up to 12 reviews per year, which if maxed out equates to 48 days of commuted sentence. According to a study conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics, Brazilian prisoners read nine times more than the national average of five books per year.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.
