I can still remember the party almost ten years ago at which I was first introduced to the visionary art work of Alex Grey. At the time, I was just getting my feet wet with psychedelics, as were a number of my friends, and we crowded around a copy of Sacred Mirrors, Grey’s first collection, and oooohed and ahhhhed ... [ read more ]
Having read the reviews on Tatarsky’s Harm Reduction Psychotherapy, I was drawn to Denning’s book because it looked more like a “how to” text than a collection of case studies. This proved to be right, and the book is a good reference for those who need more of a “cookbook” approach. Denning’s approach, even when writing, is “clientcentered”. This book ... [ read more ]
Ecstasy: The Complete Guide is a mammoth, 400+ page anthology, whose subtitle – A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA – sets out the ambitious nature of the book’s scope. This extensive set of essays touches on nearly the gamut of issues surrounding Ecstasy in our society today, from a fundamental look at what is known ... [ read more ]
The cover of a recent Time magazine special issue features a crafty-looking yoga-babe sitting in padmasana alongside the headline: How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body. It’s just another sign of a sea change in the mainstream representations of mind, as new psychoactives, imaging technologies, and pop spirituality recontextualize the neural dance of consciousness and flesh. The boundaries between ... [ read more ]
To fully appreciate What the Dormouse Said, it helps to think back to what the world was like in 1959, when this story begins. At that time, with a few rare exceptions, the entire computing profession was focused exclusively on mainframes; even the concept of time-sharing was considered a heresy. There was no student protest movement, not a single campus ... [ read more ]
Hooked on Heroin is a reprint of the 2001 Swedish edition, translated into English, with appropriate changes. The work focuses on research Lalander did in the Swedish city, Norrköping. He interviewed and observed young heroin users with the intent of highlighting the growing use of heroin and the subculture that is created around it.
The book begins with the problematic ... [ read more ]
The subtitle of Dan Russell’s epic dissertation, Drug War: Covert Money, Power & Policy, says it all. Make no mistake, this is not a book about the so-called “war on drugs” we hear about in the newspapers, the one being fought on our streets between cops and druggies or border guards and drug smugglers. Nor is this the tale of ... [ read more ]
I was introduced to psychedelics well into graduate school in chemistry and sometime after I had already formed my present spiritual view, so it came as quite a relief to find that these substances were so well able to help me bridge the gap between the science that I’d been trained in, and my spiritual views which often resisted any ... [ read more ]
Right from the start, Stephen Harrod Buhner claims his book is heresy, “that fermentation and plant use—as medicine, as psychotropics, as teachers, as companions on our life path—are an inescapable part of what it means to be human.” It’s not exactly clear what the heresy stands against, aside from a vague notion of “popular beliefs” regarding alcohol, and undefined “politically ... [ read more ]
In Ayahuasca: The Visionary and Healing Powers of the Vine of the Soul, Joan Parisi Wilcox delivers a highly descriptive narrative of her fascination with ayahuasca’s visionary experiences. Her account offers an insider’s view of the traditional ayahuasca ritual, in which a shaman administers the drug and guides the experience of the initiate.
Wilcox’s interest in the ceremonial use of ... [ read more ]