- Psychedelic literature contains some of the richest prose and musings on the human condition.
- A great deal of these books hail from the 20th century.
- These are gateway books to a rich and other worldly adventure.
Much has been said about the psychedelic experience and its rich and thrilling history. Luckily for us, some of the greatest pioneers who pushed forward into the choppy waters of the mind wrote it all down. Packed with governmental intrigue, freak-out trips and the loving grace of human community, this breed of psychedelia literature has it all.
Split between riveting fiction, biography and beatific new age how-to manuals, these books cover much of Western culture's first foray into the star soul of mind-blowing consciousness.
There is an exhaustive amount of books pertaining to this subject and this list tries to cover at least a smidgen of these incredible visionaries.
Here are some of the best psychedelic books ever written.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Largely popularized as a cult classic movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson jumpstarted a new book and writing genre critics called Gonzo journalism. Following in the footsteps of the beatnik poets before him, Thompson penned a roman á clef novel loosely based off an excessive drug-addled trip to Las Vegas.
Delving into the savage heart of the American Dream and casualties of a failed cultural revolution, Thompson's satirical wit makes this book a staple of psychedelic literature. If you're looking for universal consciousness truths laid out nicely in a row, hang on to your hats because you won't get that in this book.
Thompson tears into reality with a dizzying array of hallucinatory scenes that wind you up and drop you down before you can figure out what's really even happening anymore. Interspersed between the crazed prose are beautiful bits of wisdom lamenting in the death of an era. Nowhere is that more potently felt than in Thompson's famed Wave Speech. By the end of the book it is clear that Thompson has left a warning sign for all those future freaks and seekers who naively believe that fundamental change in the world is just a tab away.
We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that '60s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling 'consciousness expansion' without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit.
But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force — is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
High Priest
Timothy Leary was the great proselytizer of the psychedelic revolution. From Harvard psychologist square to guru-exile, he ran the gamut on what it meant to change your mind. High Priest is taken from the early chronicles of the 1960s and written right around the time Leary was getting acquainted to the many jail and prison cells he'd been forced into by the overzealous drug czar Nixon administration and company.
This is a central book for understanding both the rich cultural history of the time and the story of a great man. Famed poet, Allen Ginsberg once remarked that Timothy Leary was a hero of consciousness. The book pays its dues to the many prophetic mystics and scientists that came before him, while also touching on some contemporaries' of the time as well, such as Aldous Huxley, Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner.
It's a thrilling journey for both the reader and Leary himself. At one point he states:
I learned more about...my brain and its possibilities... and more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than I had in the preceding 15 years of studying doing research in psychology.
Leary's High Priest is a gateway drug to opening your mind and entering into one of the most important cultural time periods in the 20th century.
The Doors of Perception
Break on through to the other side. The philosophical essay and book by Aldous Huxley that inspired The Doors' Jim Morrison. First published in 1954, the book covers Huxley's experiences while taking mescaline. It's a recollection book that's often paired with his other essay on William Blake. The title comes from a phrase in Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
The beautiful line goes like this:
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
What's even more surprising about this book was that Huxley wrote in a time that preceded the onslaught of the counterculture. But that comes as no surprise to if you've read Huxley's Brave New World, which has been eerily prescient in predicting our current future.
The Hasheesh Eater
One hundred years before the beatniks, hippies and whatever you want to call our current breed of hedonistic meanderers, Fitz Hugh Ludlow's tour de force novel, The Hasheesh Eater, influenced an entire generation in the ways of drug experimentation. Written in 1857, Ludlow's book describes his experiences of altered states of consciousness while using the cannabis extract.
He dedicates many pages to wild flights of fancy from the visions he saw while ingesting the drug. Ludlow also takes the time to talk about the perils of addiction, which some critics believe was more related to his eventual problems with opium.
In a time many people don't place with a bohemian surge of freedom and creativity, Ludlow helped to bring about a unique change of pace in mid 19th century American culture. With passages such as these:
I am borne aloft upon the glory of sound. I float in a trance among the burning choir of the seraphim. But, as I am melting through the purification of that sublime ecstasy in oneness with the Deity himself, one by one those pealing lyres faint away, and as the last throb dies down along the measureless ether, visionless arms swiftly as lightning carry me far into the profound, and set me down before another portal.
It was no surprise that so many wished to experience this. Not too long after the books publication, many companies began advertising "Hasheesh Candy" and private hashish clubs sprang up all over the country.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule
Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is an incredibly powerful psychedelic compound that is also endogenously produced inside the human body. After a long period of draconian drug research suppression, Rick Strassman was able to conduct a number of biomedical tests on human subjects taking DMT. In recent years there has also been many new promising studies into this wondrous substance.
Strassman conducted a series of tests in the early 1990s at the University of New Mexico. Although Strassman has a scientific background, he's very well versed in the cultural history of psychoactive drugs and never bores with the explanations of his subject's experiences. The book opens up with an unexpected hilarious account of the Kafka maze of bureaucracy he has to go through just to acquire the drug legally.
Mixed with a dash of scientific expertise and spiritual proclamations, it's a great book that, in a sense, is carrying the torch forward for future scientific exploration of these altered states.
True Hallucinations
Terence McKenna recounts his insane adventures in the Amazon Basin in the search for a mythical hallucinogenic substance called oo-koo-hé. Whether or not this was the tall tale from some sophist raconteur or a glance at the truth to the inner cosmos, McKenna knows how to tell a story.
True Hallucinations is a wonderfully erudite story that's mixed in with reams of esoteric history, metaphysical pondering and just outright hilarious situations. After their mother's untimely death in 1971, Terrence and his brother Dennis and a coterie of seeker friends set out to the Amazon to experiment with DMT and a whole lot of psilocybin mushrooms.
McKenna truly believed that the fate of humanity and the species rested on returning to the roots of shamanism — the expanding of consciousness — and what he termed the Archaic revival. At one point in the book he says:
The Archaic Revival is a clarion call to recover our birthright however uncomfortable that may make us. It is a call to realize that life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience upon which primordial shamanism is based is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego and its fear of dissolution in the mysterious matrix of feeling that is all around us. It is in the Archaic Revival that our transcendence of the historical dilemma actually lies.
Nothing is off limits for McKenna in this whirlwind paean for the search on the true ontological nature of reality itself.
LSD: My Problem Child
This is the story told by the father of the substance himself, organic chemist Albert Hoffman. Hoffman traces back LSD's humble beginnings in his chemist's lab that would go on to radically change the world, sparking hysteria and a new age.
The book follows Dr. Hoffman as he goes across Mexico searching for sacred plants and corresponding with other notable figures about his discoveries, which also included psilocybin. For the father of such far-out drugs, Dr. Hoffman grounded himself to a scientific reality with an added twist of pure mysticism. This was evident in some of his speech:
The wonder, the mystery of the divine in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula, in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people.
Hoffman focuses less on "trip reports" in this book and goes into the nitty gritty of the chemistry of LSD and other psychiatric drugs. However, the book is not bereft of some wonderful ravings and incredibly diverse citations of a mountain full of great scientists and philosophers.
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A close up of Bathynomus raksasa
Humanity knows surprisingly little about the ocean depths. An often-repeated bit of evidence for this is the fact that humanity has done a better job mapping the surface of Mars than the bottom of the sea. The creatures we find lurking in the watery abyss often surprise even the most dedicated researchers with their unique features and bizarre behavior.
A recent expedition off the coast of Java discovered a new isopod species remarkable for its size and resemblance to Darth Vader.
The ocean depths are home to many creatures that some consider to be unnatural.
Bathynomus raksasa specimen (left) next to a closely related supergiant isopod, B. giganteus (right)
Sidabalok CM, Wong HP-S, Ng PKL (ZooKeys 2020)
According to LiveScience, the Bathynomus genus is sometimes referred to as "Darth Vader of the Seas" because the crustaceans are shaped like the character's menacing helmet. Deemed Bathynomus raksasa ("raksasa" meaning "giant" in Indonesian), this cockroach-like creature can grow to over 30 cm (12 inches). It is one of several known species of giant ocean-going isopod. Like the other members of its order, it has compound eyes, seven body segments, two pairs of antennae, and four sets of jaws.
The incredible size of this species is likely a result of deep-sea gigantism. This is the tendency for creatures that inhabit deeper parts of the ocean to be much larger than closely related species that live in shallower waters. B. raksasa appears to make its home between 950 and 1,260 meters (3,117 and 4,134 ft) below sea level.
Perhaps fittingly for a creature so creepy looking, that is the lower sections of what is commonly called The Twilight Zone, named for the lack of light available at such depths.
It isn't the only giant isopod, far from it. Other species of ocean-going isopod can get up to 50 cm long (20 inches) and also look like they came out of a nightmare. These are the unusual ones, though. Most of the time, isopods stay at much more reasonable sizes.
The discovery of this new species was published in ZooKeys. The remainder of the specimens from the trip are still being analyzed. The full report will be published shortly.
What benefit does this find have for science? And is it as evil as it looks?
The discovery of a new species is always a cause for celebration in zoology. That this is the discovery of an animal that inhabits the deeps of the sea, one of the least explored areas humans can get to, is the icing on the cake.
Helen Wong of the National University of Singapore, who co-authored the species' description, explained the importance of the discovery:
"The identification of this new species is an indication of just how little we know about the oceans. There is certainly more for us to explore in terms of biodiversity in the deep sea of our region."
The animal's visual similarity to Darth Vader is a result of its compound eyes and the curious shape of its head. However, given the location of its discovery, the bottom of the remote seas, it may be associated with all manner of horrifically evil Elder Things and Great Old Ones.
On May 12, 2021, the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, announced five US$1 million lottery prizes for those who are vaccinated. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, younger citizens are being enticed to get the shot with $100 savings bonds, and a state university in North Carolina is offering students who get vaccinated a chance to win the cost of housing. Many companies are paying vaccinated employees more money through bonuses or extra paid time off.
The push to get as many people vaccinated as possible is laudable and may well work. But leading behavioral scientists are worried that paying people to vaccinate could backfire if it makes people more skeptical of the shots. And ethicists have argued that it would be wrong, citing concerns over fairness and equity.
As a behavioral scientist and ethicist, I draw on an extensive body of research to help answer these questions. It suggests that incentives might work to save lives and, if properly structured, need not trample individual rights or be a huge expense for the government.
In the United States, incentives and disincentives are already used in health care. The U.S. system of privatized health insurance exposes patients to substantial deductibles and copays, not only to cover costs but to cut down on what could be deemed as wasteful health care – the thinking being that putting a cost to an emergency room visit, for example, might deter those who aren't really in need of that level of care.
In practice, this means patients are encouraged to decline both emergency and more routine care, since both are exposed to costs.
Paying for health behaviors
In the case of COVID-19, the vaccines are already free to consumers, which has undoubtedly encouraged people to be immunized. Studies have shown that reducing out-of-pocket costs can improve adherence to life-sustaining drugs, whether to prevent heart attacks or to manage diabetes.
A payment to take a drug goes one step further than simply reducing costs. And if properly designed, such incentives can change health behaviors.
Payments and cash prizes have been shown effective in encouraging blood donations, adherence to blood thinner drugs, blood glucose monitoring, physical activity and smoking cessation.
And for vaccination in particular, payments have been successful for human papillomavirus (HPV) in England; hepatitis B in the United States and the United Kingdom; and tetanus toxoid in Nigeria. The effects can be substantial: For example, for one group in the HPV study, the vaccination rate more than doubled with an incentive.
For COVID-19, there are no field studies to date, but several survey experiments, including one my group conducted with 1,000 Americans, find that incentives are likely to work. In our case, the incentive of a tax break was enough to encourage those hesitant about vaccinations to say they would take the shot.
Coercion concerns
Even if incentives will save lives by increasing vaccinations, there are still other ethical considerations. A key concern is protecting the autonomous choices of people to decide what they put into their own bodies. This may be especially important for the COVID-19 vaccines, which – although authorized as likely safe and effective – are not yet fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
But already people are often paid to participate in clinical trials for drugs that have not yet been approved by the FDA. Ethicists have worried that such payments may be “coercive" if the money is so attractive as to override a person's free choices or make them worse off overall.
One can quibble about whether the term “coercion" applies to offers of payment. But even if offers were coercive, payments may still be reasonable to save lives in a pandemic if they succeed in greater levels of immunization.
During the smallpox epidemic nearly 100 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the power of states to mandate vaccines. Compared with mandating vaccination, the incentives to encourage vaccines seem innocuous.
Exploitation and paternalism
Yet some still worry. Bioethicists Emily Largent and Franklin Miller wrote in a recent paper that a payment might “unfairly" exploit “those U.S. residents who have lost jobs … or slipped into poverty during the pandemic," which could leave them feeling as if they have “no choice but to be vaccinated for cash." Others have noted that vaccine hesitancy is higher in nonwhite communities, where incomes tend to be lower, as is trust in the medical establishment.
Ethicists and policymakers should indeed focus on the poorest members of our community and seek to minimize racial disparities in both health outcomes and wealth. But there is no evidence that offering money is actually detrimental to such populations. Receiving money is a good thing. To suggest that we have to protect adults by denying them offers of money may come across as paternalism.
Some ethicists also argue that the money is better spent elsewhere to increase participation. States could spend the money making sure vaccines are convenient to everyone, for example, by bringing them to community events and churches. Money could also support various efforts to fight misinformation and communicate the importance of getting the shot.
The cost of incentives
Financial incentives could be expensive as a policy solution. As in Ohio, lottery drawings are one way to cap the overall cost of incentives while giving millions of people an additional reason to get their shot.
The tax code could also allow for a no-cost incentive for vaccination. Tax deductions and credits are often designed to encourage behaviors, such as savings or home ownership. Some states now have big budget surpluses and are considering tax relief measures. If a state announced now that such payments would be conditional on being vaccinated, then each person declining the shot would save the government money.
Ultimately, a well-designed vaccination incentive can help save lives and need not keep the ethicists up at night.
Christopher Robertson, Professor of Law, Boston University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Our hearts beat at a resting rate of 60 to 100 beats per minute. Lots of other things pulse, too. The colors we see and the pitches we hear, for example, are due to the different wave frequencies ("pulses") of light and sound waves.
Now, a study in the journal Geoscience Frontiers finds that Earth itself has a pulse, with one "beat" every 27.5 million years. That's the rate at which major geological events have been occurring as far back as geologists can tell.
A planetary calendar has 10 dates in red
Credit: Jagoush / Adobe Stock
According to lead author and geologist Michael Rampino of New York University's Department of Biology, "Many geologists believe that geological events are random over time. But our study provides statistical evidence for a common cycle, suggesting that these geologic events are correlated and not random."
The new study is not the first time that there's been a suggestion of a planetary geologic cycle, but it's only with recent refinements in radioisotopic dating techniques that there's evidence supporting the theory. The authors of the study collected the latest, best dating for 89 known geologic events over the last 260 million years:
- 29 sea level fluctuations
- 12 marine extinctions
- 9 land-based extinctions
- 10 periods of low ocean oxygenation
- 13 gigantic flood basalt volcanic eruptions
- 8 changes in the rate of seafloor spread
- 8 times there were global pulsations in interplate magmatism
The dates provided the scientists a new timetable of Earth's geologic history.
Tick, tick, boom
Credit: New York University
Putting all the events together, the scientists performed a series of statistical analyses that revealed that events tend to cluster around 10 different dates, with peak activity occurring every 27.5 million years. Between the ten busy periods, the number of events dropped sharply, approaching zero.
Perhaps the most fascinating question that remains unanswered for now is exactly why this is happening. The authors of the study suggest two possibilities:
"The correlations and cyclicity seen in the geologic episodes may be entirely a function of global internal Earth dynamics affecting global tectonics and climate, but similar cycles in the Earth's orbit in the Solar System and in the Galaxy might be pacing these events. Whatever the origins of these cyclical episodes, their occurrences support the case for a largely periodic, coordinated, and intermittently catastrophic geologic record, which is quite different from the views held by most geologists."
Assuming the researchers' calculations are at least roughly correct — the authors note that different statistical formulas may result in further refinement of their conclusions — there's no need to worry that we're about to be thumped by another planetary heartbeat. The last occurred some seven million years ago, meaning the next won't happen for about another 20 million years.
