In this concise and persuasive book, Kirsch debunks what he calls the myth of antidepressants and the brain chemistry imbalance theory of depression. Kirsch. is […] an expert on placebo effects. Kirsch and colleagues found that antidepressants worked only very slightly better for treating depression than placebos did. [ read more ]
What would you say to the possibility of a riveting, yet thoroughly academic, nonfiction page-turner? Stephan V. Beyer’s tour de force, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, is nothing less! It is when talking about his teachers that Beyer is most revealed as a humble and thoughtful human being. [ read more ]
There are certain books that, once read, alter one’s mind permanently. This is such a book. Naïve readers and patriots beware: You will never think about the world in the same way after you have read just the first two chapters of American War Machine. The book’s major thesis, simply put, is that: “US backdoor covert foreign policy has been the largest single cause of the illicit drugs flooding the world today.” [ read more ]
By the 1975 publication of Realms of the Human Unconscious, Stanislav Grof was prepared to assert the existence of “a vastly extended cartography of the human psyche” including two new realms whose non-existence were central to the (even now) prevailing scientific worldview: the perinatal––relating to the experience of embryogenesis and birth––and the transpersonal––relating to experiences of the synchronistic, telepathic, karmic, or otherwise out-of-body variety. [ read more ]
A mere twenty-seven years in the future, forbidden pharmaceuticals fused with novel nanotechnology may present the post-human possibility of telepathic transcendence. But at what price? [ read more ]
Overall this was a fairly interesting but extremely unpolished piece of writing. The numerous journeys on DMT that Turner relates often expand into philosophical reflections. The book is a revision of and expansion on a series of accounts previously posted to an Internet message board. It’s an idiosyncratic and unique account, with the author’s writing style and observations consistently veering back and forth from the awkward to the insightful. I did appreciate that Turner does not proselytize, and I found his honesty to be endearing. [ read more ]
Razam does a great job detailing the myriad cast of characters involved in the ayahuasca tourism phenomenon in Peru: from native to gringo shamans, ayahuasqueros to tabaqueros to perfumeros, spiritual to hedonistic “seekers", and everyone in between. [ read more ]
Two prominent researchers argue that many European caves are linked to shamanic ritual practice and initiation. At 120 pages, this book is essentially a long essay laying the basis for the authors’ shamanic hypothesis and attempting to ground it in biological terms. While I found their central thesis to be underdeveloped, the authors do an admirable job of surveying the available evidence, providing a valuable analysis of the known art. The book is lavishly illustrated, though the pictures are rarely captioned with date information. [ read more ]
Seven’s descriptions of the effects of using mind machines while on assorted psychoactives are unique to the psychedelic literature. These alone make the book worth reading. Over the course of his tale, Seven reveals himself to be a likeable character–flawed, as we all are, but inspiring in his honest exuberance. [ read more ]
As a bright young suburban kid, Norberg held a typical anti-drug attitude until his early teenage years, when his eldest brother Dave admitted to smoking pot and dropping acid. Initially shocked, Sheldon soon starts experimenting. […] Although he goes to college, he’s more interested in partying and dealing drugs than attending classes, and he sees himself as a kind of psychedelic guru for those around him. [ read more ]