UC Berkeley recently announced the launch of its center for psychedelic research and education, thanks to an anonymous $1.25 million donation. This follows Imperial College London's 2019 founding of The Centre for Psychedelic Research and Johns Hopkins's Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research. The U.S. company, MindMed, which is working on clinical studies on ibogaine's efficacy in treating addiction, is planning an IPO. A host of similar Canadian companies have already entered that country's stock market.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
As psychedelics are catapulted into the mainstream, the following eight books cover a range of related topics, including clinical research and anecdotal tales. Whether you're an advocate, a newbie, or just curious, these books provide a great education on the therapeutic and spiritual potential of the psychedelic ritual.
Huxley on Psychedelics
Am I Dreaming? The New Science of Consciousness and How Altered States Reboot the Brain — James Kingsland
Science journalist James Kingland takes a broad view of altered states of consciousness, including lucid dreaming, virtual reality, hypnotic trances, and microdosing (and larger doses) with psychedelics. His journeys with ayahuasca, LSD, and psilocybin recount intense personal experiences and are worthwhile for anyone interested in the science behind these substances. In the end, Kingsland reminds us the real work of any trip is done in sobriety.
"In some ways the trip is the easy bit. The hard work starts when you try to integrate the lessons you have learned into ordinary life."
Drugged: The Science and Culture Behind Psychotropic Drugs — Richard J Miller
Northwestern pharmacology professor Richard J Miller was exposed to the power of psychedelics while attending Woodstock. This "religious experience" inspired his career in pharmacology. He wanted to discover how substances can alter neurochemistry this profoundly. In "Drugged," Miller investigates a range of mind-changing substances, including coffee, opium, cannabis, and antidepressants. The chapters devoted to psychedelics provide a great overview of their clinical and spiritual applications.
"The powerful effects of natural products such as Amanita muscaria or ergot suggest that they contain important chemical substances that, if isolated and understood from the structural point of view, might provide us with new insights into disease mechanisms or potential therapeutic opportunities for treating diseases."
Hallucinogens: A Reader — Edited by Charles Grob
UCLA Medical Center professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Charles Grob, was the first researcher approved to clinically study MDMA and ayahuasca in the '90s. His pioneering (and continued) work in these fields has pushed the field of psychedelic research forward. This 2002 collection features the writings of Ralph Metzner, Terence McKenna, Huston Smith, Rick Strassman, and an interview with Dr. Andrew Weil. The book closes with three exceptional essays by Grob on the psychology of ayahuasca, the politics of MDMA research, and psychiatric research with hallucinogens.
As Weil says of his experiences with psychedelics,
"It can give you a vision of possibility, but then it doesn't show you anything about maintaining that possibility. When the vision goes, the drug wears off, you are back where you were, you haven't learned anything but you have seen that something is possible. It is then up to you to figure out how to manifest the possibility.
Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers — Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hoffman, and Christian Ratsch
This 1998 encyclopedia of psychedelic plants and fungi is the bible of cosmonauts. Everything is covered: history, culture, pharmacology, therapeutic applications, regional distinctions, chemistry, maps, and tons of photos. This resource should be in any serious cosmonaut's library. While grounded in research and respectful of the cultures that practice plant medicine, the trio of experts also understand their broader context.
"The psychic changes and unusual states of consciousness induced by hallucinogens are so far removed from similarity with ordinary life that it is scarcely possible to describe them in a language of daily living. A person under the effects of a hallucinogen forsakes his familiar world and operates under other standards, in strange dimensions and in a different time."
American writer William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997), author of the cult novel "Naked Lunch."
Credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images
Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocbyin, and Ayahuasca — Dr. Richard Louis Miller
Richard Louis Miller has been a clinical psychologist for over a half-century. He's also the host of a popular syndicated talk radio show, where he discusses health, mindfulness, and politics. This platform led him to explore psychedelics in a broad scientific and political context.
This book is a collection of interviews from his show, featuring David Nichols, Stanislav Grof, Charles Grob, Roland Griffiths, Amanda Feilding, and Dennis McKenna. They cover a range of issues, such as MDMA as a therapy for PTSD, the efficacy of the current psychiatric paradigm, and psilocybin in depression treatment. These invaluable conversations include this important insight from MAPS founder, Rick Doblin.
"The fundamental problem with our drug policy is that it ascribes good and bad qualities to drugs themselves—"this is a good drug, that's a bad drug"—when really it's the relationship that you have with the drug that determines the value of it and whether it's harmful or helpful."
The Doors of Perception — Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley's landmark 1954 book on mescaline remains fundamental to psychedelics advocates. Huxley wanted to experience mystic visions, a feat mescaline offered. Yet he never fell prey to the whims of useless metaphysics. This stunning essay details a political and spiritual thinker applying pragmatic as well as transcendental understandings of the psychedelic vision.
"The other word to which mescalin admitted me was not the world of visions; it existed out there, in what I could see with my eyes open. The great change was in the realm of objective fact. What had happened to my subjective universe was relatively unimportant."
The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness — Alan Watts
When you get the message, hang up the phone. That summates the British philosopher's take on psychedelics. While his lane was more meditation and philosophy than drugs—though he was known for enjoying a drink—Watts has plenty to offer on altered states. Watts applies a critical eye to the slacker looking to get off on drugs, yet also recognizes the essential need for connection to nature in an ever-speedy society—this book was published in 1962. That's the thing about reading Watts: it always catches up to you, wherever you happen to be, trademark humor and all.
"It is not really healthy for monks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic for Jesus to get himself crucified, but these are risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures."
The Yage Letters Redux — William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg
This correspondence between two of the Beat generation's top writers is a gem. Burroughs spent months traveling around South America looking for the legendary ayahuasca (yage), long before private planes shuffled Silicon Valley execs to glamping retreats. That meant purchasing bootleg ayahuasca and having colorful run-ins with locals. Many remember Burroughs as a junkie—he had his moments—but the writer also meticulously documented the pharmacology of his drugs. Kerouac owned the road, but Burroughs claimed the sky.
"Yage is not like anything else. This is not the electric euphoria of coke which activates the channels of pure pleasure in the brain, the sexless, timeless, negative pleasure of opium. It is closer to hashish than to any other drug. There are also similarities between Peyote and yage. But while hashish intensifies all sensual impressions, yage distorts or shuts down ordinary sensations, transporting you to another level of experience."
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Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter, Facebook and Substack. His next book is "Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."
Many mysteries surround Stonehenge. Who built it and what purpose did it serve? Why that arrangement of megaliths and lentels? How did Neolithic people move and erect such massive stones using 5,000-year-old technology? Because Stonehenge's builders left us no written record, historians, archaeologists, enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists, and outright cranks have tried for centuries to translate their prehistoric silence into answers.
As scientific tools and techniques have advanced, we've learned to better discern the forensic clues left behind in the megaliths, inhumed bodies, and landscape of the Salisbury Plain. Today, scientists have traced Stonehenge's "bluestones"—smaller dolerite stones found in the monument's interior—to quarries in Preseli Hills, Wales. They've also established that the bluestones likely served as grave markers for the people buried there, also from Wales.
Thanks to our scientific tools, and a reclaimed piece of history, another Stonehenge mystery has been solved. Scientists have pinpointed the source area for most of the monument's extant sarsens. And no, aliens did not carry these megaliths with tractor beams to create an interstellar landing pad. Sorry, cranks. Stonehenge's origin is far more terrestrial, found in a little spot near Marlborough Downs.
Discovering Stonehenge's signature
In 1958, engineers undertook the task of re-erecting a Stonehenge trilithon that fell in 1797. Three cores drilled into a sarsen disappeared soon after.
(Photo: John Franks/Getty Images)
"Sarsen" is the common term for the giant sandstone—more specifically, duricrust silcrete—megaliths that enwreathe Stonehenge. Fifty-two of an estimated 80 sarsens remain today. They form both the interior horseshoe and the uprights and lintels of the outer circle, as well as peripheral stones like the Heel and Slaughter Stones. The largest sarsens stand at about 30 feet tall and weigh around 25 tons.
The immense size of these boulders sits at the center of one of Stonehenge's most enticing enigmas. How did people, using only Neolithic technology, manage to move and prop up such massive stones? A major piece to that puzzle has been their source, as the answer would inform scientists on the opportunities and challenges facing the builders as they moved the sarsens.
To find that piece, David Nash, the study's lead author and a professor at Brighton University, and his team analyzed the sarsens using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. This non-intrusive analysis allowed them to generate initial chemical characterizations for the stones' 34 chemical elements.
"Until recently we did not know it was possible to provenance a stone like sarsen," Nash said in a release. "It has been really exciting to use 21st century science to understand the Neolithic past and answer a question that archaeologists have been debating for centuries."
To further hone in on the source area, the team needed to generate high-resolution chemical signatures by analyzing a sample. Of course, the idea of tearing a sample out of this World Heritage Site would be near sacrilege. Luckily, a previously lost piece of history had recently been returned to the British people.
In 1958, a restoration program re-erected a Stonehenge trilithon that fell in 1797. After lifting the sarsens, engineers discovered cracks in one of the uprights (Stone 58). They drilled out three cores from the stone and inserted metal ties to reinforce its integrity. The holes were filled with sarsen plugs to hide the intrusion. However, the three cores disappeared.
Flash forward to 2018. Robert Phillips, an 89-year-old U.S. citizen and on-site worker during the restoration, returned one of the three cores. Nash and his team were granted permission to sample a piece from "Phillips' core." They used a plasma mass spectrometer to create a chemical signature for the monument, one they could compare to potential source sites across southern Britain.
They found a match in West Woods, Wiltshire. Fifty of Stonehenge's 52 sarsens share a chemical signature with the stones in this area, strongly suggesting they were sourced there. The area also sports a high concentration of evidence for early Neolithic activity, adding to its plausibility.
"To be able to pinpoint the area that Stonehenge's builders used to source their materials around 2,500 BC is a real thrill," Susan Greaney, senior properties historian at English Heritage, told the BBC. "While we had our suspicions that Stonehenge's sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs, we didn't know for sure, and with areas of sarsens across Wiltshire, the stones could have come from anywhere."
She added the evidence showed "how carefully considered and deliberate the building of this phase of Stonehenge was."
The study was published in Science Advances.
For every answer, another question
A view of Stonehenge during the Summer Solstice.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Thanks to Nash and his team, scientists now know the source of Stonehenge's sarsens. This clue can help them solve other Stonehenge mysteries. That most of the stones were sourced from one location, the study notes, suggests that they were erected at about the same time. It also reveals the routes the Neolithic builders had to traverse with their heavy loads.
But questions remain. Why did the builders choose West Woods when the Salisbury Plain is dense with sarsen? Why were two megaliths (Stones 26 and 160) sourced elsewhere? And were the missing stones gathered from West Woods or elsewhere?
These questions only touch on the sarsens. The question that intrigues so many of the monument's visitors remains hotly debated: Who built Stonehenge and why? Was it a burial site for the Stone age elite? A monument marking British unification? A Druid Mecca? We don't know, but as scientific tools advance, we may be able to break the prehistoric silence that has laid over Stonehenge for so long.
A group of archaeologists have discovered a remarkable trove of bone tools used roughly 48,000 years ago in a Sri Lankan cave, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances.
New discoveries
The study was led by Michelle Langley, an archaeologist at Australia's Griffith University, along with other researchers from Griffith, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH), and the Sri Lankan Government's Department of Archaeology.
The scientists examined tools and artifacts used between 48,000 and 4,000 years ago that were discovered in the Fa-Hien Lena cave site located in Sri Lanka's southwest tropical forests, an area that has become one of the most important archaeological sites in South Asia since the 1980s. The assemblage of artifacts included 130 of the earliest known bone-arrow tips found out of Africa along with 29 utensils likely used to make clothing or bags. Also excavated were decorative beads chiseled from the tips of marine snail shells and the world's oldest known beads made of red ochre — an ancient pigment used for a variety of things from body paint to sunscreen.
Archaeologists believe that these tools correspond to four phases of ancient human habitation of the site. Using radiocarbon technology to date thirty items from the site, researchers were able to create a timeline detailing how the tools evolved to become more sophisticated over time.
"Most of these tools were made out of monkey bone, and many of them appear to have been carefully shaped into arrowheads," Langley told Tim Vernimmen of National Geographic. "They are too small and light to have been spearheads, which need some weight to gain force, and too heavy and blunt to have been blow darts."
On close inspection, the size, forms and fractures found on many of the bone points led the researchers to believe that they were used as arrow tips for bow-and-arrow hunting to catch swift and nimble rainforest prey like monkeys and other tree-dwelling creatures. The arrow points increased in length over time for the purpose of hunting larger mammals like deer. If the researcher's conclusions are correct, this finding marks the earliest definitive proof of high-powered projectile hunting in a tropical rainforest environment.
Additionally, the team uncovered a range of other bone and tooth tools used for scraping and piercing. They were likely used for making nets and working animal skins or plant fibers in the tropical environment.
"Evidence for the construction of nets is extremely scarce in artifacts many thousands of years old, making this aspect of the Fa-Hien Lena assemblage a startling find," Langley said in a Griffith University press release. Because this wasn't a cold region, the authors opine that the clothing made with the assemblage of tools may have been used for protection from insect-borne diseases.
Other tools discovered at the site were identified as implements probably associated with freshwater fishing.
Out of Africa and into the rainforest
"Bone projectile points (A to H) and scrapers (I to K) from Fa-Hien Lena. (A and B) Geometric bipoints, with (B) coming from phase D context 146; (C and F) hilted bipoint, red arrows indicate cut notches; (D and E) hilted unipoints, red arrows and red circle indicate wear indicating fixed hafting; (G and H) symmetrical bipoints"
Langley et al., 2020
Before the great migration out of Africa, smaller groups of humans began to leave the continent between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago eventually migrating into South Asia. These findings offer clues as to how our ancient ancestors adapted to diverse, precarious environments during their global expansion, such as the tropical rainforest. Though the early humans of South Asia likely didn't make their abode in the densely vegetated forest right away, opting instead for the coast, their decedents eventually would. And that move required some nifty new survival technology.
The researchers pointed out that their discoveries of these ancient tools underline the necessity of looking for early Homo sapien innovation in regions outside of the grasslands and coasts of Africa, or Europe where much of the research has been focused.
"[T]his traditional focus has meant that other parts of Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas have often been sidelined in discussions of the origins of material culture, such as novel projectile hunting methods or cultural innovations associated with our species," said Patrick Roberts from MPI-SHH.
Complex human societies
The shell beads that the team found indicate that the ancient forest dwellers traded with the populations that stayed along the coast. The beads were rounded and pierced, suggesting that they were strung. Earlier dated beads (around 8,700 years old) were made from red ochre nodules. The ancient jewelry is gauged to be similar in age to other "social signaling" materials found in Eurasia and Southeast Asia, according to the authors, which was around 45,000 years ago. This highlights the importance of establishing social connections for these early people through trade and symbol.
"Together, these artifacts reveal a rich human culture in the tropics of South Asia which was creating and utilizing complex hunting and social technologies to not only survive, but thrive, in demanding rainforest environments," concluded study co-author Patrick Roberts, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Queensland.
