100 books like High Weirdness

By Erik Davis,

Here are 100 books that High Weirdness fans have personally recommended if you like High Weirdness. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise

Guido Mina di Sospiro Author Of Forbidden Fruits: An Occult Novel

From my list on extra-canonical voyages that will challenge you.

Why am I passionate about this?

I learned the Western Canon at school and from various teachers during my youth; all along, I was yearning for something other, different, and, possibly, truer. Since my early twenties I've been exploring another canon, which exists in opposition to the Aristotelian-Euclidean-Cartesian-Newtonian-Darwinian/Spencerian one. While the western world in the 21st century is free from alacritous canon-enforcing enterprises such as the Holy Inquisition, it nevertheless operates by a canon that remains very much the mentioned Aristotelian-Euclidean-Cartesian-Newtonian-Darwinian/Spencerian one, inculcated into us all from kindergarten to the grave, echoed not only by schools of all levels, but by governments, the media, official institutions and nonofficial entities, and, last but not least, by the entertainment industry. 

Guido's book list on extra-canonical voyages that will challenge you

Guido Mina di Sospiro Why did Guido love this book?

More on the wacky side, and far more entertaining, is Terence McKenna’s True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise. For those who will never try “heroic doses” of psilocybin mushrooms deep in the Colombian jungle, this is a wild, vicarious ride, an amalgam of science, literature, myth, and exotica from an adventurer whose genuine inquisitiveness in things psychedelic goes hand in hand with mythomania—what an exuberant explosion of literary and philosophical high kitsch! If not persuaded, there follows the endorsement from The New York Times: “The polysyllabic sentences he lards with intellectual references are an attempt to lend credibility to the otherwise debunked subject of drugs.” Yes, a hatchet job from The New York Times could not make for a more valuable endorsement.

By Terence McKenna,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked True Hallucinations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Describes the search for a mushroom that could reveal the secrets of consciousness.


Book cover of Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond

Don Dupay Author Of Behind the Badge in River City: A Portland Police Memoir

From my list on getting people thinking about the bigger picture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a longtime writer and author, who basically learned the craft of writing from over 17 years with the Portland Police Bureau. Some of the best writers are working and retired police officers because, when you write those daily reports or detailed investigative reports, you learn how to write. I've written six books, two of which have been published by Oregon Greystone Press, the Indie Publishing company operated by my wife, Theresa. I graduated from Portland State University in 2017 and was listed in the commencement program as “the oldest PSU graduate” of that year. I was 80. I live in Portland with my wife, Theresa, also a writer and author. 

Don's book list on getting people thinking about the bigger picture

Don Dupay Why did Don love this book?

Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD, the CIA, the Sixties and Beyond is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Even though I worked in Naval intelligence while I was on active duty in Germany, during the Cold War, I was still surprised at what Acid Dreams revealed about the US government and how for example, government officials were actively searching for a drug that would make American soldiers more amenable to killing. The book details how the government set out to destroy the black culture and imprison young black leaders for mostly minor drug offenses. It further explores the ways the government secretly studied the effects of LSD on its citizens. I loved this book because it opens the reader's eyes to the radical ways some government factions tried to manipulate the masses and deceive them, using the guise of the greater good as justification.

By Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Acid Dreams as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Few events have had a more profound impact on the social and cultural upheavals of the Sixties than the psychedelic revolution spawned by the spread of LSD. This book for the first time tells the full and astounding story—part of it hidden till now in secret Government files—of the role the mind-altering drug played in our recent turbulent history and the continuing influence it has on our time.

And what a story it is, beginning with LSD’s discovery in 1943 as the most potent drug known to science until it spilled into public view some twenty years later to set…


Book cover of The Yage Letters Redux

Graham St John Author Of Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT

From my list on psychedelics and culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

The subject of psychedelics and, more generally, altered states of consciousness, has enthralled me personally and professionally since my teens. The subject grows fascinating as prohibition lifts in an era regarded as a “psychedelic renaissance.” My training as a cultural anthropologist, my interest in religion and ritual, and research focus on transformational events, movements, and figures colours this focus. Past research has included longitudinal ethnography of global psychedelic trance and festival culture. My current book project, an intellectual biography – Terence McKenna: The Strange Attractor (MIT Press, 2023) – is shaped by my interests in this area. 

Graham's book list on psychedelics and culture

Graham St John Why did Graham love this book?

When I first read the 1975 edition of the 1963 City Lights classic, The Yage Letters, it was an unaccompanied and unabridged dive into two of the best minds of the Beat Generation. There was no contextual introduction, nor appendices, just a perplexing series of epistolatory “letters” exchanged as Burroughs searched for yagé (aka ayahuasca) in the Putumayo region of the Amazon in 1953, and Ginsberg followed suit seven years later (notably the McKenna brothers followed suit ten years after that). This extraordinary little book began with Burroughs writing to Ginsberg from the Hotel Colón on January 15 (“Dear Allen, I stopped off here to have my piles out”), and ended back in Panama with the epilogue “Am I Dying, Meester?” a flickering collage of memories sampled from earlier letters.

A few years later, the expanded 2006 Redux edition was published, featuring an introduction by Oliver Harris which offers an…

By William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Yage Letters Redux as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In January 1953, William Burroughs began a seven-month expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his anthropological-satiric eye over the local regimes to record trademark vignettes of political and psychic malaise. From the notebooks he kept and the letters he wrote home to Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs composed a narrative of his adventures that appeared ten years later as "In Search of Yage" within The Yage Letters.

That book, published by City Lights in 1963, was completed by the addition of Ginsberg's account of his own experiences…


Book cover of PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story

Graham St John Author Of Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT

From my list on psychedelics and culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

The subject of psychedelics and, more generally, altered states of consciousness, has enthralled me personally and professionally since my teens. The subject grows fascinating as prohibition lifts in an era regarded as a “psychedelic renaissance.” My training as a cultural anthropologist, my interest in religion and ritual, and research focus on transformational events, movements, and figures colours this focus. Past research has included longitudinal ethnography of global psychedelic trance and festival culture. My current book project, an intellectual biography – Terence McKenna: The Strange Attractor (MIT Press, 2023) – is shaped by my interests in this area. 

Graham's book list on psychedelics and culture

Graham St John Why did Graham love this book?

This indispensable pair of companion volumes created by the Shulgins and known by their acronyms represent a literary and alchemical “gold mine.” Committed to the synthesis and assaying of hundreds of new compounds, chemist Alexander Shulgin dedicated his life to the public dissemination of potential psychotherapeutic aids, most notably MDMA (which he synthesized). A collaboration with his wife, Ann, these books represent Shulgins’ life achievement. They include detailed and precise reports by the Shulgins and the psychonautical group of friend-volunteers who bioassayed newly discovered molecules. PiHKAL ("Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved”) focuses on psychoactive phenethylamine chemical derivatives, and TiHKAL ("Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved”) focuses on tryptamines. The books are arranged into two parts. The first part of both volumes is fictionalized autobiography. In PiHKAL, the couple shares their accounts of their chemically augmented romance, including thoroughly endearing portraits of their experience with mescaline in Golden Gate…

By Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked PiHKAL as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved A unique document written by renowned psychopharmo -gist Shulgin and his partner which gives details of his research and investigations into the use of psychedelic drugs for the study of the human mind. Also describes in detail a wealth of phenet- hlyamines, their physical properties, dosages used and duration of effects observed, and commentary.


Book cover of Leave Society

John Pistelli Author Of The Quarantine of St. Sebastian House

From my list on ideas of the last 50 years.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by philosophical ideas, the more radical and counterintuitive the better. But as someone who’s never excelled at abstract thought, I’ve found these ideas’ expression in argumentative nonfiction both dry and unpersuasive, lacking the human context that would alone test the strength of propositions about spirituality, justice, love, education, and more. The novel of ideas brings concepts to life in the particular personalities and concrete experiences of fictional characters—a much more vivid and convincing way to explore the world of thought. Many readers will be familiar with the genre’s classics (Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Mann, Camus), so I’d like to recommend more recent instances I find personally or artistically inspiring.

John's book list on ideas of the last 50 years

John Pistelli Why did John love this book?

In 2021’s most widely-discussed literary novel, Lin, the former enfant terrible of the early 2000s alt-lit scene, rejects that movement’s terse and affectless style in favor of a more startlingly inventive prose alive to everyday experience’s strangeness. This autobiographical novel recounts its narrator’s attempt to wean himself from the toxic habits and substances of our “dominator” society and, through natural foods and psychedelic drugs, to return to a matriarchal cooperative tradition he describes at length. Whatever we think of Lin’s potentially sentimental historiography, he embeds it in a gentle family comedy that effloresces into a tender romance. I appreciate Lin’s countercultural commitment to rejecting fashionable pessimism and unthinking science-worship, and I respect his evolving ethic of personal kindness. It would be preachy if issued as a proclamation, but becomes a practice we can all learn to share when shown in a novel.

By Tao Lin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Leave Society as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the acclaimed author of Taipei, a bold portrait of a writer working to balance all his lives—artist, son, loner—as he spins the ordinary into something monumental. An engrossing, hopeful novel about life, fiction, and where the two blur together.

In 2014, a novelist named Li leaves Manhattan to visit his parents in Taipei for ten weeks. He doesn't know it yet, but his life will begin to deepen and complexify on this trip. As he flies between these two worlds--year by year, over four years--he will flit in and out of optimism, despair, loneliness, sanity, bouts of chronic pain,…


Book cover of Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers

Cody Johnson Author Of Magic Medicine: A Trip Through the Intoxicating History and Modern-Day Use of Psychedelic Plants and Substances

From my list on exploring psychedelics without taking any.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated by strange and “forbidden” states of consciousness. My first taste of psychedelia came in the form of cannabis—more potent and otherworldly than it gets credit for—and quickly graduated to MDMA, which blew me away. I dove head first into this new world, experimenting with psychedelics new and ancient while reading about all things psychedelic: their history, emerging science, and therapeutic and spiritual possibilities. My other great passion is books, so it was only natural that I would try to encapsulate all that I had learned in book form.

Cody's book list on exploring psychedelics without taking any

Cody Johnson Why did Cody love this book?

When I was conducting research for my own book, Plants of the Gods never left my desk and accrued an alarming number of bookmarks and footnotes. This is the reference book on nature’s extensive pharmacy of psychedelics. But don’t expect a dry textbook—this is immensely readable and bursting with color illustrations.

All three of the authors were giants in various fields psychedelic research. Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered LSD and was the first to identify the active compounds in magic mushrooms. Richard Evans Schultes, a biologist and the father of ethnobotany, was the first Westerner to study ayahuasca in the Amazon. Christian Rätsch was a world-renowned anthropologist and writer.

Their iconic collaboration transcends the genre of reference book, and brings the exciting world of natural psychedelics to life.

By Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, Christian Ratsch

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Plants of the Gods as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Three scientific titans join forces to completely revise the classic text on the ritual uses of psychoactive plants. They provide a fascinating testimony of these ""plants of the gods,"" tracing their uses throughout the world and their significance in shaping culture and history. In the traditions of every culture, plants have been highly valued for their nourishing, healing, and transformative properties. The most powerful of those plants, which are known to transport the human mind into other dimensions of consciousness, have always been regarded as sacred. The authors detail the uses of hallucinogens in sacred shamanic rites while providing lucid…


Book cover of The Way of the Psychonaut Vol. 1: Encyclopedia for Inner Journeys

Wade Richardson Author Of The Psychedelic Mindmeld: Telepathically Exploring Shared Consciousness

From my list on advanced use of psychedelics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about exploring consciousness using psychedelics, meditation, and the dreamscape because it leads us toward our greatest human potential. Psychedelics have been my main tool for exploring consciousness, and I want to share how they can be safely used to access our greatest psychic gifts and, in particular, to lovingly share consciousness telepathically with others to explore the infinite living cosmos together.

Wade's book list on advanced use of psychedelics

Wade Richardson Why did Wade love this book?

I loved how this book provided me with the most expansive maps of the territory of consciousness to be explored using psychedelics. In the two-volume set, Stanislav Grof summarizes his lifetime’s wisdom of personal discovery and working with thousands of people using high-dose psychedelics and Holotropic Breathwork.

I learned about the paramountcy of set and setting and how my biography, including prenatal and ancestral roots, can influence my psychonautical exploration. I further learned about how trauma is stored in the body as systems of condensed experience (COEXs), how it can be released when using psychedelics, other benefits and challenges of using psychedelics, and the nature of the spiritual emergency. Grof also taught me more about navigating archetypes and the cosmos and connecting to the powers of synchronicity.

By Stanislav Grof,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Way of the Psychonaut Vol. 1 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Way of the Psychonaut, Volume 1 is one of the most important books ever written about the human psyche and the spiritual quest. 

The new understandings were made possible thanks to Albert Hofmann’s discovery of LSD―the microscope and telescope of the human psyche―as well as other psychedelic substances. 

This comprehensive work is a tour de force through the worlds of psychology and psychotherapy, Holotropic Breathwork, maps of the psyche, birth, sex, and death, psychospiritual rebirth, the roots of trauma, spiritual emergency and transpersonal experiences, karma and reincarnation, higher creativity, great art, and archetypes. Written in his late eighties, at…


Book cover of Otherwhere: A Field Guide for Astral Travelers

Wade Richardson Author Of The Psychedelic Mindmeld: Telepathically Exploring Shared Consciousness

From my list on advanced use of psychedelics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about exploring consciousness using psychedelics, meditation, and the dreamscape because it leads us toward our greatest human potential. Psychedelics have been my main tool for exploring consciousness, and I want to share how they can be safely used to access our greatest psychic gifts and, in particular, to lovingly share consciousness telepathically with others to explore the infinite living cosmos together.

Wade's book list on advanced use of psychedelics

Wade Richardson Why did Wade love this book?

While this book is not about the use of psychedelics, I loved how this book on astral travel provided me with expansive maps of what realms and beings can be explored in the infinitude of consciousness when using psychedelics.

Leland provided me insights into a long list of energetically advanced beings, whom he defines by their function, who can be called into psychedelic sessions for guidance and help. He also taught me how my biography and cultural beliefs can create the visual personal experience of cosmic energies experienced during psychonautical explorations.

Learning the nuances of using thought forms to create my immediate reality and experience was of the greatest value to me: awareness follows thought, and when out of the body, thought manifests itself instantly.

By Kurt Leland,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Otherwhere as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION* I wrote Otherwhere: A Field Guide to Nonphysical Reality for the Out-of-Body Traveler in the early 1990s to sum up nearly twenty years of out-of-body adventures that began when I was fifteen years old.

These adventures took me into nonphysical realms in which time and space behaved differently, "quite other" than we normally experience them--hence the name Otherwhere. I explored the locations where our dreams occur and where we find ourselves after death. It took me nearly ten years to find a publisher, but when Otherwhere came out in 2001, it sold well and went into…


Book cover of The Museum Dose: 12 Experiments in Pharmacologically Mediated Aesthetics

Cody Johnson Author Of Magic Medicine: A Trip Through the Intoxicating History and Modern-Day Use of Psychedelic Plants and Substances

From my list on exploring psychedelics without taking any.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated by strange and “forbidden” states of consciousness. My first taste of psychedelia came in the form of cannabis—more potent and otherworldly than it gets credit for—and quickly graduated to MDMA, which blew me away. I dove head first into this new world, experimenting with psychedelics new and ancient while reading about all things psychedelic: their history, emerging science, and therapeutic and spiritual possibilities. My other great passion is books, so it was only natural that I would try to encapsulate all that I had learned in book form.

Cody's book list on exploring psychedelics without taking any

Cody Johnson Why did Cody love this book?

This little-known paperback journals the psychedelic exploits of its pseudonymous author, a young bookkeeper who is equally adept at traversing far-out realms of consciousness and, crucially, writing about them.

Each of the twelve short chapters focuses on a unique combination of an obscure “research chemical”—a designer hallucinogen that has not gone mainstream—and a public art exhibit or concert. The result is outstanding. This little volume offers a peek into the life and mind of an avid psychonaut who, thanks to his insightful, relatable tone and strong writing, should appeal equally to trippers and teetotalers alike.

By Daniel Tumbleweed,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Museum Dose as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Daniel, during the stage of his life described herein, is a young, discrete, mild-mannered bookkeeper by day but an intrepid explorer of consciousness by night and on weekends. He also possesses a highly refined sensibility and an abiding passion for art and music. In this collection of true tales, akin to prose poems, he recounts a series of experiments he undertook over a two-year period that combined his aesthetic and consciousness-modulation interests: twelve psychedelically mediated visits to a range of New York museums, galleries and concert halls to encounter specific collections, shows, installations, and musical performances. Drawing from his substantial…


Book cover of Getting Higher: The Manual of Psychedelic Ceremony

Andy Letcher Author Of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom

From my list on the riddle of psychedelics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've been fascinated by psychedelics since I was a teenager, and along with my book I’ve written a number of academic papers and book chapters on the subject. It intrigues me how subtle changes in the brain’s chemistry leads to such profound changes in perception, cognition, and feeling, including religious feeling. I want to know what those experiences mean, and what they can tell us about the world. For if all they are is some derangement of the senses, why is it that so many writers, thinkers, philosophers and artists return to the experience, again and again? There is a riddle here, a mystery, and I love that I’m able to devote my research time to trying to answer it.

Andy's book list on the riddle of psychedelics

Andy Letcher Why did Andy love this book?

If all my choices so far have been, in some way, about the psychedelic experience, this is a practical hands-on guide about how to occasion one yourself. Psychedelics can be consumed safely, but there are attendant risks, not least from their continued illegality in many parts of the world. Vayne, who has decades of experience as a psychedelic user and ritual technician, talks the reader through recommended ways to prepare for a psychedelic experience, how to navigate what subsequently unfolds, and how to integrate it afterwards. This is the indispensable guide for the psy-curious, and even better it comes with a cover designed by legendary British psychedelic comic artist, Pete Loveday. 

By Julian Vayne, Pete Loveday,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Getting Higher as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Getting Higher is a manual for exploring the use of psychedelic substances in the contexts of spirituality, self-transformation and magic. This is the psychonaut s essential guide. The techniques presented here work whether you're a scientist or a shaman; there's no requirement to believe in anything other than the wonder of your own neurochemistry and the value of the psychedelic experience. Getting Higher describes the psychedelic triangle of Set, Setting and Substance. It suggests strategies to hold and enhance the psychedelic experience; from games to play when you are high, through to complete entheogenic ceremonies. It will help you to…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in psychedelics, counterculture, and spirituality?

Psychedelics 23 books
Counterculture 37 books
Spirituality 311 books