65 books like The Harvard Psychedelic Club

When I first dipped my toes in the psychedelic pool, I was motivated by curiosity—I just wanted to experience new “flavors” of consciousness. I had no need of healing (or so I thought), and as a science-minded skeptic I certainly was not hunting spiritual experiences.

Two things changed my mind. The first was psychedelics themselves, which upon the first dose proved to be powerful agents of transformation. The second was this insightful gem of a book, which made me realize that “spirituality” need not conflict with science or rationality. Indeed, one of the great values of psychedelics is to provide irrational experiences that transcend our limited notions of what is true, possible, or real.

Alan Watts was a brilliant speaker and philosophical entertainer whose talks about spiritual topics have inspired millions. In The Joyous Cosmology, published at the beginning of the psychedelic Sixties, he distilled the psychedelic experience down to… show more.

There are plenty of academic tomes about psychedelics—their chemistry, their medical applications, their cultural impact, and so on. I was hunting for something more personal: stories of people’s experiences while zonked out of their gourds. What I found was this aptly named collection of tripping stories, with chapters submitted by writers from all walks of life.

It's a sipping book—at over 500 pages, it’s one you take a chapter at a time, not devour cover to cover. What makes the book special is its remarkable curation: the stories are diverse, covering the full gamut of psychedelic experiences from spiritual nirvana to hellish ordeals. Some stories struck me as stronger than others, but thanks to the editor’s deft hand, the prose always sparkles.

Like a good acid trip, the overall effect is stimulating and emotionally satisfying. But unlike a real trip, this vicarious ride is one you can pause and resume… show more.

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.

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.

The book pushed all my buttons. Marlowe has brief-ish relationship with heroin in NYC in the ’90s and apparently, can “just stop.” Her studied reflections on heroin and its culture are cemented in absolute resistance to the idea that addiction is a disease. For me, this is a dangerous concept that makes me cringe, as much of her book did. But her resolute intelligence and ego make for fascinating reading. With a frown, I reflected on phrases like, “Living in an eternal present is not good for us, no matter how much we want it.” Her book reminded me of the many ways people define addiction. It inspired me to get crystal clear on my viewpoint before I took pen to page.

This is the best book on medical botany. The authors are both top experts on biology and botany, and among his peers in biology, Walter H. Lewis is known as the medical botanist. Just packed with interesting, useful information not found anywhere else. Widely used as a university textbook for medical botany…but extremely readable. Highly recommended!

Davis’ style is analytical swank and this excavation of the 1970s is his odyssean opus. High Weirdness is a fascinating trip of a book in which the psychedelic epiphanies and freak experiences of Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick are each explored and compared for their extraordinary contributions to “consciousness culture,” and for their entrees on the radical form of realism Davis calls “weird naturalism.” The book serves as a remarkable introduction to each of the trio upon whom Davis has made extensive study, from the epicenter of the weird that was the 1971 Experiment at La Chorrera, to the origins and impact of the Discordian “mindfuck,” to Dick’s “perturbations in the reality field,” notably the 1974 events he named “2-3-74.” In the literature, philosophy, and practice of each we see “freak bricoleurs cobbling together their own technologies of the self.” Across this extensive freakography, we have… show more.

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… show more.

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. 

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.