Psychedelics

In an era of “sacred plants,” commercial formulations, and manageable microdosing, LSD the Mighty has drifted to the periphery of our consciousness. What lessons does it still hold?

"Across genres and across the globe, music became psychedelicized in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, very much including soul and R&B. Indeed, in many ways funk music begins as R&B on acid."

A look at the controversy over for-profit psychedelic pharmaceutical companies, and how the outlaw values of the underground may show a way out.

The protocols of the Experiment grew in the matrix of Jungian alchemy, Marshall McLuhan, and science fiction. This allowed Terence and Dennis McKenna to “esotericize” media theory into an occult apparatus of resonance, sympathy, and apocalyptic ontology.

In this talk, given at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in February, I tell the story of Tim Leary's influential appropriation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

A provocation for a wider discussion about the language and future of psychedelic culture(s).

A post-secular take on current psychedelic research.

I did the intro to this Arthur mag interview of the fascinating ayahausca anthropologist Dr. Narby.

My introduction to Arik Roper's fabulous new field guide

My recently published intro to a classic collection of 60s articles on psychedelics

An essay on psychedelics, Buddhism, and Tantra, American-style.

An investigation of "psychonauts": those brave, compulsive, and sometimes wacked individuals who perform neural R&D on exotic and new-fangled psychoactive drugs.

A review of drug books: Marcus Boon's The Road of Excess, Daniel Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head, and Dale Pendell's Pharmako/Dynamis.

Excerpts from private interviews with Terence McKenna a few months before his death.