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.
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.
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…
Cruel Lessons is a fast-paced, intricate tale that grabbed me from page one and never let go. With more twists and turns than a pretzel and enough red herrings to keep readers guessing, Overbeck has woven a gripping plot with a blockbuster ending that took my breath away.
On a school camping trip, fifth graders experiment with a dangerous new hallucinogen and die in a horrific accident, their deaths shattering the quiet town. Assistant Superintendent Ken Parks, hoping to redeem a fatal mistake from his past, grasps the opportunity to conduct the district investigation of how students are getting the drugs. Almost before he begins, the cops make a stunning arrest. But Parks battles on, convinced the real pusher is still out there, poisoning more kids until he receives an anonymous threat: if he continues, those close to him will pay. Is Parks willing to risk those he…
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.
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…
The Joyous Cosmology is Alan Watts’s exploration of the insight that the consciousness-changing drugs LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin can facilitate “when accompanied with sustained philosophical reflection by a person who is in search, not of kicks, but of understanding.” More than an artifact, it is both a riveting memoir of Watts’s personal experiments and a profound meditation on our perennial questions about the nature of existence and the existence of the sacred.
Includes Watts’s article “Psychedelics and Religious Experience”
I’ve always been interested in the interface of biology and the mind, and between the mind and usually invisible worlds. Both Philip K Dick and the medieval Jewish philosophers labor mightily to unpack and communicate realms of the imagination residing in science fiction as well as Hebrew Bible prophecy. Likewise, the influx of Eastern religious practices and beliefs have pointed to areas of consciousness previously unknown to the West.
“The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge” is the most horrifying and terrifying novel I’ve ever read. A terran psychedelic drug begins being supplanted by one from another star system. The latter compound never lets you come down—just when you think you have, you start tripping again. And so on…
Known in his lifetime primarily to readers of science fiction, Philip K. Dick is now seen as a uniquely visionary figure, a writer who, in editor Jonathan Lethem’s words, “wielded a sardonic yet heartbroken acuity about the plight of being alive in the twentieth century, one that makes him a lonely hero to the readers who cherish him.”
This Library of America volume brings together four of Dick’s most original novels. The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is…
I have spent my 50-year career as a writer, illustrator, and comic book artist. My comics involve surrealistic situations and alternate realities. I am best known for my strip The Bus, which appeared monthly in Heavy Metal magazine, and Dope Rider, which appeared regularly in High Times magazine. Both series have been collected in books and published internationally. I read the graphic novels of other artists whose work centers on surrealism, alternate realities, and the psychedelic experience for enjoyment and to draw inspiration for my own work. Fans of graphic novels who like trippy stories and art should enjoy the books on my list.
I treasure this book for the artwork. The rather simple story tells of Albert Hofmann’s creation of LSD 25 on April 19, 1943, in a Sandoz laboratory in Switzerland. That day is known as Bicycle Day because after accidentally ingesting the chemical, Hofmann had a powerful psychedelic experience as he rode his bicycle home.
This trip is vividly depicted in a lengthy series of full- and double-page spreads, which become increasingly bizarre and hallucinatory as they go along. Blomerth’s cartoony but precise style is warm and whimsical, and he adds striking graphic effects to it. The art is presented to its best advantage on matte ivory stock that sets off the intense colors, which include Day-Glo colors.
Illustrator, musician and self-described "comic stripper" Brian Blomerth has spent years combining classic underground art styles with his bitingly irreverent visual wit in zines, comics, and album covers. With Brian Blomerth's Bicycle Day, the artist has produced his most ambitious work to date: a historical account of the events of April 19, 1943, when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann ingested an experimental dose of a new compound known as lysergic acid diethylamide and embarked on the world's first acid trip. Combining an extraordinary true story told in journalistic detail with the artist's gritty, timelessly Technicolor comix style, Brian Blomerth's Bicycle Day…
I am an Associate Professor of political science at Colgate University. I grew up in a home with tremendous ideological diversity and rigorous political disputes, which caused my interest in learning more about why and how people become their political selves. This interest developed into an academic background in the field of political psychology, which uses psychological theories to understand the origins and nature of political attitudes. Out of this scholarship, I developed a theory about the relationship between closed minds and partisan polarization, which I examine in my book. Now I am looking for ways to create open minds and foster a less polarized community.
Michael Pollan’s scientific and personal investigations into the powers of psychedelics reveal how malleable our brains and minds are and illustrate the potential for people to change from a closed-minded way of viewing the world to one that is considerably more open-minded.
Pollan’s review of the scientific research on psychedelics shows, for instance, that the psychedelic compounds can lead to changes in the openness to experience dimension of Big Five personality traits. This and other similar findings, as well as Pollan’s narrative about his own personal experiences, are useful for suggesting another potential mechanism for changing minds.
"Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured." -New York Times
A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book
A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences
When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such…
As a historian of science and medicine, I’m fascinated by the many ways that drugs—from tea to opiates, Prozac to psychedelics—have shaped our world. After all, there are few adults on the planet today who don’t regularly consume substances that have been classified as a drug at one time or another (I’m looking at you, coffee and tea!). The books I’ve selected here have deeply influenced my own thinking on the history of drugs over the past decade, from my first book, The Age of Intoxication, to my new book on the history of psychedelic science.
Mike Jay is the best writer I know of when it comes to highlighting the human stories behind the history of drugs. He is also fabulously engaging and original.
Jay’s most recent book is a compelling history of self-experimentation with drugs, which ranges from Romantic-era opium eaters like Thomas de Quincey to pioneer neuroscientists and Siberian shamans—and, of course, the hilariously weird nitrous oxide experiments of William James, who graces the book’s cover.
"Richly detailed and frequently illuminating."-Rhys Blakely, Times (UK)
"Excellent."-Clare Bucknell, New Yorker
A New Yorker Best of the Week Pick
A provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind
Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. Accounts in journals and literary fiction inspired a fascinated public to make their own experiments-in scientific demonstrations,…
I am an animal communicator and author of many books about our deeper connections with the animal world. A powerful dream featuring an archetypal Snake ignited my curiosity about snakes and inspired me to learn more. I immersed myself into the history, biology, and incredible diversity of snakes as well as their role in art, myth, medicine, and dreams. I also lived with two rescue snakes: a shy ball python named Carl and lively corn snake named Chloe. What I found was not only fascinating but life-changing. This book celebrates the mystery of Snake and the undeniable wisdom and healing that it offers our world.
Tracing Snake back to ancient times in its role as creator god, anthropologist Jeremy Narby follows both a scientific and shamanic approach to understanding our connection with Snake in its role as healer and mentor.
Why do life-creating, knowledge-imparting snakes appear in the visions, myths, and dreams of countless humans, Narby asks. Could this mythical serpent that created life be another way of perceiving the DNA molecule, which holds the organizing principle inherent in all life?
Highly recommended for a fascinating journey into the nature of reality and ourselves!
This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences," leads the reader through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge.In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.
It expanded my understanding of both the benefits and challenges of working with psychedelics. In the new psychedelic renaissance, there is a need for comprehensive and interdisciplinary resources to integrate all forms of psychedelic experiences, especially when the focus of psychedelic usage is on psychotherapy.
Aixala's work is a foundational contribution to this field.
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.
Psychedelic literature is unquestionably dominated by the white, male author. If, like me, you yearn to hear other voices and other perspectives, then this collection of essays couldn’t be more timely. The twenty-three chapters, from academic and non-academic authors, cover a range of perspectives, and while you may not agree with all of them, they’re refreshing nonetheless. It’s hard to single out any particular essay, but it’s always a pleasure to read Kathleen Harrison. Harrison, who was once married to Terence McKenna, spent years living with the Mazatec people, and treats us to her animistic vision of the world as something that’s alive and communicative. But the whole book contains riches and paves the way to a more diverse psychedelic literature.
An exploration of the connections between feminine consciousness and altered states from ancient times to present day
Women have been shamans since time immemorial, not only because women have innate intuitive gifts, but also because the female body is wired to more easily experience altered states, such as during the process of birth. Whether female or male, the altered states produced by psychedelics and ecstatic trance expand our minds to tap into and enhance our feminine states of consciousness as well as reconnect us to the web of life.
In this book, we discover the transformative powers of feminine consciousness…
