Literary Review: ‘Psychedelic Medicine’ Edit. Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts
Psychedelic Medicine Vol 1
Originally written by, and reproduced here with the permission of, David Luke. This literary review first appeared as: Luke, D. P. (2008). Psychedelic Medicine, by Michael Winkleman and Thomas Roberts [book review]. Drugs and Alcohol Today, 8 (2), 41-42.
Psychedelic Medicine: New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments. By Michael J. Winkelman and Thomas B. Roberts (Eds). London: Praeger. (2007). Pp. 728 pages (2 Vols.), 18 tables, 9 figures. £115. ISBN 978-0-275-99023-7
Prior to the reactionary media hysteria and the subsequent government backlash at the end of the 1960s, a wealth of serious scientific research was conducted into the therapeutic and medical benefits of powerful psychoactive drugs. By the beginning of the 1970s, however, almost all therapeutic applications and scientific human research with such drugs had been curtailed and their use criminalized. In the following years, this potentially beneficial side to hallucinogens became largely forgotten. Only during the last decade, has this research gradually been resumed to the point where we might now even speak of a renaissance of research into psychedelic medicines. As a testament to this revival this extensive two-volume tome currently serves as the authoritative reference text on psychedelic medicines, particularly with regard to the advances made in the last ten years.
Maintaining a good academic standard the work is well organised with explanatory notes and complete reference sections for each essay, and a comprehensive index for each volume. A decent-sized paragraph is also provided for the credentials of each of the contributors, who range from Harvard to Hannover Medical School, and whose expertise covers the social, clinical, medical, legal, spiritual and historical status of these substances. The editors themselves are more than qualified in this field. Associate Prof. Michael Winkelman has long been contributing important and unique anthropological perspectives to the field on the traditional use of visionary substances, and Prof. Thomas Roberts initiated the first psychedelic studies undergraduate programme in the US, which has been accredited and running since 1982. No corners have been cut with the essays either, each of which have been written specifically for this book and, collectively, they offer a comprehensive range of insights to this anthology.
Although almost wholly positive, this treatise on the possible benefits of psychedelic agents in the treatment of psychological disease still offers a reasoned and balanced approach. For instance, much of the first volume is given over to addressing the safety as well as the efficacy of these medicines, alongside a fairly thorough grounding in the general social, clinical and epidemiological context of their use, both traditional and modern. This is followed by a series of essays investigating the tangible medical applications of these substances to disorders, often treatment-resistant, such as cluster headaches, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, AIDS wasting syndrome, and cancer-related death anxiety. A whole chapter is given over to each of these health problems, all of which currently have research projects underway investigating the medical utility of various psychedelic treatments.
The final section of volume one is given over to the judicial climate surrounding the research of psychedelic substances, which largely remain illegal. This section highlights the political framework in which psychedelics have been legislated against and discusses instances where these substances have been tolerated within narrowly defined strictures. In the US, permission has primarily been given on religious grounds, as is detailed in the chapters on the use of peyote by the Native American Church and the use of ayahuasca by the União de Vegatal (UDV) religious group from Brazil. The latter of whom have recently won a lengthy series of battles against the Drug Enforcement Administration in the US Supreme Court defending their right to the sacramental use of their chosen psychoactive. Nevertheless, the DEA have been militantly pursuing a conviction despite numerous defeats and they are expected to continue attacking the UDV.
Much of the second volume is dedicated to the treatment of addiction to other drugs, such as alcohol, heroin, and cocaine, through the use of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Psychedelics, having demonstrated themselves to be non-addictive, have also displayed their potential for actually treating drug addiction, fighting fire with fire. These chapters focus on the various treatment contexts rather than the addictions themselves and include the use of ketamine, ayahuasca, iboga and peyote, drawing attention to the spiritual experience induced by these substances that can, in supportive conditions, lead to the cessation of addictive drug use.
That these substances really can occasion significant and long-lasting spiritual breakthroughs no longer appears to be so widely contested since the recent publication of a positive replication study on psilocybin and spiritual experience, also featured in this book. This paper, by a team of researchers at John Hopkins University School of Medicine lead by Prof. Roland Griffiths, was based on research led by Harvard’s Walter Pahnke, called the Good Friday experiment, which had reached the same conclusions over 40 years ago. If the prominence given over in the book to the Griffiths paper indicates anything, it is that much of the claims from psychedelic research of today regarding the beneficial and therapeutic aspects of these substances were made in the 1960s. Essentially, little of what appears in this book is actually new, save perhaps the recent advances in applications for newly recognised disorders such as cluster headaches, AIDS, and PTSD. All that has really changed is a tightened methodology and a greater readiness of the scientific community to regard psychedelics as legitimate objects of research and as potential tools of medicine.
The remaining portion of volume two is given over to the more spiritual, shamanic and transpersonal aspects of psychedelics with chapters on the psychoanalytic, psychotherapeutic and psychospiritual issues, which should not be ignored in any consideration of psychedelics. Both volumes conclude with evaluations and recommendations from the editors.
At the present time this research remains rather nascent but the promise of psychedelic medicines offered over 50 years ago now seems, once again, to be becoming a reality. Nevertheless, it is clear from the authors of the chapters that more research is needed and, with new studies into the efficacy of these drugs as treatments appearing more and more, it may soon be necessary to draft the next edition of this book. This would probably be my only concern with this text, which while it is clearly the most authoritative work on the subject in at least the last decade, new research findings and ever broadening potential applications for psychedelics are likely to make this book out of date in a few years. In the meantime, however, Psychedelic Medicine has a great deal of timely information to offer physical and mental health professionals and students, as well as all those working in recreational drug research, policy, treatment and intervention, whether involved with psychedelics or not.
Originally published in 2009 ‘From Acid to the Body of Christ’ is an autobiography written by Daxx Danzig. Set largely in Biloxi, Mississippi, the narrative charts Danzig’s life from high-school athlete, through neurotic young adult, to his eventual salvation in middle-age. The story is full of fascinating episodic tales, which at times seem fantastical, however one is reassured by an inscription on the copyright page: “Majority of this story is true with some embellishments.” This, to my mind, is the correct way to put a life into words and Danzig’s is nothing, if not entertaining.
In approaching this book as being drug-related writing, we are faced not with a series of tripping experiences but rather just a single one, which goes to frame the whole book. In the flights of hedonistic youth, having never taken psychedelics before, Danzig pops 4 squares of Purple Haze LSD (which later became the name of what I’m told is a delicious type of cannabis) into his mouth. He notes: “By the end of this night, my opinion would be that Timothy Leary and his drug countercultures from the 1960’s should have stuck their lysergic acid diethylamide right up their beatnik hippy asses.” A few chapters are dedicated to what was a horrific experience, which sent him growling loudly in his friends house all night and that eventually came to a semi-conclusion in meeting a mysterious Christian biker; who left him some money and the word of God.
This acid trip, with its neurosis and paranoia, becomes the model of his behaviour over the following years of his life; as if he is veiled in a permanent semi-psychosis. The story unfolds in episodes, in a patchwork, which appear to reflect the teetering, transient state he finds himself in. There is a circularity to his behaviour that is exemplified by his panic attacks, which cause him to worry about having panic attacks in public, which in turn cause him to have more panic attacks. He refuses to go far from his own town and, in doing so, further confines himself to the neurotic state. I shouldn’t, however, give the impression of this book as being some dark, existential exploration of a twisted mind, a twisted mind maybe (I’m sure Danzig would agree) but one that never loses sight of the comedy of life. The story-telling style is fast-paced, engaging and certainly not on some sympathy vote campaign.
Each biographical episode that Danzig recounts is peppered with attempts, on his part, to find some steady constant in his life. Whether it be in his workplace, or with the colourful characters and partners of his life, there is always a regression to being swept along, Danzig not taking charge of his life. One particularly entertaining section describes him working as a cop. He writes, unlike those who’d prepared to become a cop “I was just a guy who desperately wanted a job. The extent of my law enforcement training was derived from faithfully watching Sonny Burnett and Ricardo Tubbs without interruption Friday nights on NBC.” Danzig is rolled along on the survival treadmill, not affirming himself, yet, in the greatest psy-romantic tradition, there is a colourful and admiring tone that recognises a certain heroism in living one’s life as such; most clearly depicted in the characterisations.
At the heart of the book’s resolutions lies a spiritual and religious thread that comes to light as a buoy and security that Danzig seeks. Unlike the majority of drug-related writing, wherein spirituality and the psychedelic experience are entwined, synonymous, for Danzig, although the path to spirituality could arguably have been laid by his LSD experience, there is an intrinsic opposition. Whereas the drug represents the fantastical, the transient, God is the antithesis because He represents the constant. However, it is only when he confronts his state of mind, his past, the acid trip, the passing of his father, that he is able to come to terms with this constant and fully accept Christianity. In this sense, the book itself has the key ingredient, in that it resolves itself beautifully.
Throughout the text there are musical references to songs and bands, which have the effect of historically grounding the book, however the majority of the themes explored are universal in value and scope. To say that the book is a product of a time-period, although essentially right, is far from the mark. The most endearing quality of From Acid to the Body of Christ is that, no matter your background, the personality of struggle is concurrent across the board and in delivering these themes in a comedic, entertaining fashion, the book manages to deal with seriousness in, at times, a quite surreal fashion. Aside from the fact that the book needs a thorough good edit, the content, Danzig’s life, is riveting and the book’s narrative flow is fluid. Well worth a read. You can buy a copy of From Acid to the Body of Christ here.
Inner Paths to Outer Space
This literary review was written by, and is reproduced here with the expressed permission of, Dr. David Luke. Originally appeared as: Luke, D. P. (2008). Inner paths to outer space: Journeys to alien worlds through psychedelics and other spiritual technologies, by Rick Strassman et al. [book review]. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 22 (4), 564-569.
Inner paths to outer space: Journeys to alien worlds through psychedelics and other spiritual technologies. By Rick Strassman, Slawek Wojtowicz, Luis Eduardo Luna, & Ede Frecska. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press (2008). Pp. 344 & 24 colour plates (£13.99). ISBN: 978-159477224-5
I was particularly keen to read this text having read Rick Strassman’s (2001) earlier book, DMT: The spirit molecule, in which he documented his extraordinary medical research administering the potent psychedelic neurochemical, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), to human volunteers. After receiving intravenous injections of DMT, Strassman’s participants reported a range of exceptional phenomena from entity encounters and alien abduction-like experiences to near-death like experiences. The spirit molecule documented the whole experimental process whereby over 60 participants received a combined total of 400 doses of DMT. It concluded with the theory that the near-death experience (NDE) is caused by the action of DMT in the pineal gland, where Strassman speculates it is made because DMT is known to occur naturally in the human body. The book currently under review, Inner paths to outer space, is the natural sequel to that book in that it considers the DMT-induced entity encounters and alien abduction like experiences from Strassman’s research in further depth, particularly in the contexts of quantum physics, science fiction and shamanism, proposing that access to alien worlds in outer space occurs in the inner space of the psyche.
Having four authors, three of whom hold medical degrees and one a PhD, the book could almost be an anthology but it has just enough continuity in the chapters to read like a single text, the backbone of which consists of the earlier human DMT research of Rick Strassman, who contributes four of the twelve chapters. The first three of Strassman’s chapters essentially précis The spirit molecule, though this time without detailing the lengthy beurocratic process he had to endure in attempting to conduct the research, and thankfully this time Inner paths has an index as well as a notes section and references. These three chapters map out the bizarre territory of the DMT scenario, drawing on a number of examples of entity encounter experiences, especially of the alien kind, which are loosely compared to spontaneous alien abduction experiences. As in the previous book it is pointed out that both DMT entity encounters and alleged alien abductions are experienced as being “more real than real” and, for instance, that both may feature alien operations and the insertion of probes.
Compelling as this cursory comparison is, a systematic analysis of the correspondences between these two experience syndromes would have been well received at this point in Inner paths, because a more thorough analysis is still wanting – although Hancock’s (2005) recent book made some attempt at this. Nevertheless, despite the apparent similarities, the classic “greys” themselves are absent from DMT experiences, as Barušs (2003) has pointed out. What is conspicuous from the examples of drug-induced experiences presented in Inner paths, however, is the prevalence of contact with insectoid entities, particularly praying mantis-like beings, although it is not pointed out that these also frequently occur in abduction experiences. This strange fact, had it been mentioned, alongside the rest of the similarities between DMT and abduction experiences might indicate that we are truly dealing with the same entity encounters – one spontaneous, or perhaps hypnotically-induced, and the other drug-induced. Although, alternatively, the constructivist argument would suggest that the chemically induced experiences have been influenced by the parallels drawn to alien abduction experiences extant in the public domain, especially those occurring since the most outspoken psychedelic commentator of the last 30 years, Terence McKenna, reported contact with insectoid aliens on psilocybin a few decades ago (McKenna & McKenna, 1975). Nevertheless, the universal prevalence of particularly praying mantis-like aliens in DMT and other tryptamine reports seems worthy of more detailed investigation as it seems to better support a kind of perennial philosophy rather than a constructivist argument –because this specific mantis feature appears not to have been widely popularised in the psychedelic literature and yet it has been widely reported. Unfortunately, none of this is discussed in Inner paths.
Aside from his three integral chapters, Strassman also adds a valuable chapter at the end of the book that acts as a fairly comprehensive guide on how to conduct psychedelic group experiences safely and meaningfully. This subtext of the book, as a guide to experiencing psychedelic states, happens to compose a fairly substantial theme, as the second of Luis Luna’s chapters also offers a guide to what might be expected when taking ayahuasca, the Amazonian jungle decoction that gives extended DMT experiences. The other of Luna’s chapters offers a fascinating, but condensed biography of his extensive involvement in the anthropological and ethnobotonical investigation of ayahuasca-use in South America. Both of his chapters offer wonderful insights into the indigenous use of the DMT-rich brew, such as how the shamans introduce other plants to the ayahuasca so that their visions may reveal the healing properties of the added plant. Of particular interest to parapsychology it is well known that ayahuasca was once called “telepathine” because of its apparent telepathic, precognitive and clairvoyant-inducing properties, but we also discover from Luna how shamans of the Shuar tribe take the decoction to also create the future, not just see it. Furthermore, it is described how alien abduction-like experiences also occur on ayahuasca, as we might expect, as well as out-of-body experiences, glossolalia, entity encounters and ostensible shapeshifting and past-life experiences. Given the similarities between experiences on DMT and ayahusaca it is no surprise then that the chapter by Slawek Wojtowicz on psilocybin- and psilocin-containing “magic” mushrooms also recounts NDE’s and science-fiction sounding alien entity encounter experiences with this substance too, because we learn that the active molecule in these fungal substances, psilocin (4-hydroxy-dimethyltryptamine), is a very close chemical relative of DMT.
Having laid out the basic background and phenomenology, however, it is not until we come to Ede Frecska’s three chapters about halfway into the book that we arrive at any concerted effort to account for the ontology of these exceptional tryptamine-family induced experiences. His first chapter draws the basic distinction between scientism and the culturally relativistic approach to explaining the phenomena, and while he purports to offer a neutral argument, he clearly falls on the side of the latter – but not without good argument. Offering a number of examples of shamanic divination – explained either in the consistent terms of the action of spirits, or from a number of varying sceptical perspectives – Frecska deftly demonstrates that Occam’s razor is a double edged sword for sceptics because under this rubric the consistent shamanic perspective has far greater parsimony than the numerous sceptical explanations.
Frecska then uses such further logical gymnastics to springboard into his own dichotomous conception of quantum-based psychology, in which the ordinary perceptual-cognitive-symbolic mode is contrasted with the direct-intuitive-nonlocal mode. The latter mode being one in which quantum processes supposedly occurring in the brain’s microtubule system engage a state of interconnectedness that allows for parapsychological phenomena to occur. The implication being that DMT can activate such states, and this harks back to Karl Jansen’s (1999) earlier idea that Bell’s theorem arose in synchrony with the use of the psychedelic anaesthetic, ketamine, allowing humans to directly experience nonlocal space-time through the dissociative effects of this molecule.
Frecska then dazzles us with some further intellectual back flips, such as a poetic comparison between the mediumistic effect of channelling and the tunnelling effect in physics (although itself completely unexplained), because both involve the location of information where it would not ordinarily be expected. Yet, despite his obvious depth of knowledge on the possible quantum processes of consciousness, Frecska tends to assume the poetic appeal of his notions of local and nonlocal perception at the expense of acknowledging his theory really is just that, a theory, and is not actually substantiated by either physics or psychology thus far. Nevertheless, misquoting Einstein, imagination probably is more important than truth, and the 24 beautiful, futuristic colour plates of chemically-induced sci-fi landscapes and beings, by artists Pablo Amaringo, Karl Koefed, Robert Venosa, Martina Hoffmann and the author Slawek Wojtowicz, indicate that this book is as much, if not more, for a psychedelic sci-fi audience as a scientific one.
Frecska’s following chapter, however, goes a complicated conceptual step further and attempts to account for the alleged interspecies communication that occurs between shaman and plant by introducing the concepts of topological geometrodynamics, a concept so complex and yet so casually introduced into the text that the reader’s understanding must, by necessity, become the hostage of their imagination. As a psychologist rather than a physicist I would have found such intellectual quantum leaps exhausting had it not been for some of the more down to earth twists and turns in this chapter as support for the possible consciousness of plants, such as Darwin’s apparent conception of the root structure of plants as a neural network. This is no doubt a thorny point of departure from Darwinism for most modern scientists but Frecska also confronts us with the fact that underground mycelia networks among single mushroom organisms can span 11,000 acres or more, and certainly have more interconnections than neurons in the human brain. Are these mushrooms in some sense conscious? Shamanic wisdom among those that consume psychedelic fungi for their input on the interspecies communication argument would say so.
Perhaps the most unsatisfying chapter of the book is Frecska’s third, which takes a perplexing tangent into the possibility of earthly paleo-contact with ancient alien entities by rummaging through a range of archaic Middle Eastern texts, including the bible. After shakily building up this rather New Age idea over nearly thirty pages, Frecska casually knocks it down again at the end of the chapter by suggesting that such antediluvian alien encounters were actually DMT-induced entities experienced “…through nonlocal, extradimensional connections within the multiverse” (p.254), whatever that means exactly.
I had mixed feelings about Frecska’s chapters, especially his last one, because on the one hand he made some observations highly contiguous with my own recent investigations into the ontology of DMT-induced entity encounters (Luke, 2008), such as the consideration of the Enochian “watchers” – the fallen angels – as possible DMT entities, and yet I feel he could have made a more concerted effort to offer some ontological speculations about the reality of these DMT entities, given that so much of the book is concerned with them.. Rather we are left with the feeling that these entities are merely drug-induced, albeit by drugs that are naturally present in our brains and which may be able to help us access nonlocal information. But, does this imply a neurotheological-like reductionism for the existence of these entities, or a support for the perennial philosophy, or something else altogether? The authors don’t really speculate much on this, unfortunately, although in their defence neither do they ever promise that they will.
Finally the last couple of chapters by Wojkowicz discuss some other related aspects of the speculated DMT-alien matrix, such as the late John Mack’s research with hypnotically recalled abduction experiences and Weiss’ past life regression therapy. Connecting the possible past with the possible future, Wojkowicz also discusses some of the apocalyptic future visions that can be found within the altered states literature, specifically that of the anthropologist Hank Wesselman and writer Gary Renard, who both foresaw a fair amount of planetary doom and gloom round the corner. Though some of it, especially that concerning the supposed “Westernercide” forthcoming from the new Iranian premier, might be best kept quiet.
In conclusion, however, I found Inner paths to be a highly stimulating and worthwhile read, even though I was a little disappointed that the reality of the aliens wasn’t probed a lot more and that the insectoids weren’t satisfactorily dissected. I also think that, without a more detailed analysis of the discussed phenomena, Strassman might seem to be trying to have it both ways by proffering DMT as the cause of both NDEs and alien abductions. He might be right of course, but what then of the differences between aliens and NDEs, or can we expect a UFO waiting for us at the end of the tunnel of light when it’s our turn to do the mortal coil shuffle? Furthermore, Frecska also throws sleep paralysis into the DMT mix but we might be more cautious of heralding DMT as the ultimate paranormal chemical catalyst, at least until further research can be done, because any one molecule that explains everything essentially explains nothing. In any event this book raises many fundamental questions about the nature of reality that have barely been asked in the scientific community, let alone answered, and I strongly urge all researchers of consciousness to read it.
References
Barušs, I. (2003). Alterations of consciousness: An empirical analysis for social scientists. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Hancock, G. (2005). Supernatural: Meetings with the ancient teachers of mankind. London: Century.
Jansen, K. L. R. (1999). Ketamine (K) and quantum psychiatry. Asylum: The Journal for Democratic Psychiatry, 11 (3), 19-21.
Luke, D. (2008). Disembodied eyes revisited. An investigation into the ontology of entheogenic entity encounters. Entheogen Review: The Journal of Unauthorized Research on Visionary Plants and Drugs, 17 (1), 1-9 & 38-40.
McKenna, T., & McKenna, D. (1975). The invisible landscape: Mind, hallucinogens and the I Ching. New York: Seabury Press.
Strassman, R. (2001). DMT: The spirit molecule: A Doctor’s revolutionary research into the biology of near-death experiences. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.
Literary Review: ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings’ by Thomas De Quincey
‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’ by Thomas De Quincey was first published, anonymously, in two parts by the London Magazine in 1821. The following year it appeared as a novel and has been regularly reprinted ever since. This literary review is written from the Penguin Classics (2003) edition; ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings’. It includes the Confessions follow up text ‘Suspiria De Profundis’ and ‘The English Mail-Coach’.
Confessions of an English opium-Eater is often described as being a minor character in English Romanticism and, in being understood as such, becomes almost a footnote to the likes of Wordsworth and Coleridge. However, as a work of Western drug-writing, it stands out as not only one of the earliest examples, but as also one of the finest of the genre. In his introduction Barry Milligan notes that De Quincey “almost singlehandedly changed opium’s popular status from the respectability of a useful medicine to the exoticism of a mind-altering drug.” And it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to recognise in De Quincey’s work many of the signifiers we find so prevalent in post-WW2 drug-writing i.e. psychedelic literature.
De Quincey begins the text by surveying how widespread opium use was at the time and the effect of which is to reasonably ground the relevance of the text in a social phenomenon. He wishes, he says, to confess not out of guilt but in order to translate something of the experience to the reader. He also addresses doctors and claims that it is only their ‘truths’ that were known of opium in the written record; how it looked, what it cost and that if you have too much you will die “and, therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward and lecture on this matter.” De Quincey believes that their knowledge is either wrong or doesn’t tell the full story, he wishes to break from the clinical descriptions of the age and, in doing so, he creates a literary phenomenology of opium.
Doctors, according to De Quincey, described opium’s effect as making the individual “inactive” and having “torpor” but, in arguing against this description, De Quincey recounts his own visits to markets and theatres whilst under the influence (albeit not in the heavy use of later years.) However, he does then concede that the opium-eater “naturally seeks solitude and silence, as indispensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consummation of what opium can do for human nature.” Throughout the text though there remains an allusion to the medicinal properties of opium. For example, he states that it isn’t simply for pleasure that he consumed it: “It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet.” Having been hit by a reoccurring illness throughout his life, at age 28 it became to unbearable and it was this sudden increase in pain that led to his daily, habitual use.
Suspiria De Profundis (meaning Sighs from the Depths) is described as an account of the third “or final stage of opium” and also as a sequel to the Confessions. In it De Quincey reasons why he has included childhood memories, he asks the question: “Was it opium, or was it opium in combination with something else, that raised these storms?” (95). This question actually underpins the content of this whole text. De Quincey, in utilising biographical stories, is eluding to the connection between memory and opium; for during the experience lost memories are recounted in his visions. By way of pointing out that this isn’t unusual, he recounts the tale of a near-death experience (a topic contemporary psychedelic literature still explores, see Strassman): “At a certain stage of this descent, a blow seemed to strike her – phosphoric radiance sprang forth from her eyeballs; and immediately a mighty theatre expanded within her brain. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, every act – every design of her past life lived again – arraying themselves not as a succession, but as parts of a coexistence.” He describes the mind, or what we today might name consciousness, as “the palimpsest of your brain.” A palimpsest being an old parchment that has been almost totally cleaned of its old text in order to be reused, but through which the markings of old can still be made out; these, in says, are our memories.
Three reasons are given in the Confessions for outlining the biographical details. Firstly, what could have led him to becoming an opium-eater? Namely, his illness, which afflicted him throughout his life. Secondly, the influence his life had on the visionary landscapes produced by opium, as discussed above. And thirdly, to create a personal interest in the “confessing subject”, which is to say he wants to produce familiarity or empathy within the reader. This style is laced with interesting literary devices that De Quincey plays wonderfully with. For example, in Suspiria De Profundis he describes his family life as being neither rich nor poor and it has the effect of beginning the narrative on a balance. As he goes onto describe the innocence of childhood disappearing, as death and cruelty become known to him, the calm balance begins to tip as the layers, or perhaps more accurately the weights, of life build up. He notes in The English Mail-Coach that these episodes “had so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams” that real life and “opium dreams” become conflated into one, which De Quincey’s free-flowing style mimics within the text.
At the height of his addiction, when it was his “daily diet”, De Quincey describes how he had no control of his visions, a “deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy” would descend upon him with the changing dreams. Space and time became distorted – “I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night” – and this profoundly disturbed him. Yet, whilst the visionary aspect distorted reality, his sense of self was generally retained: “The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities, or aspirations: he wishes and longs, as earnestly as ever, to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt.” Unlike much of the tryptamine inspired literature from the 20th century, which focussed on a transcendence of the self, he became embroiled in the depths of his experience. He later described an intellectual torpor, whereby he was unable to bring fruit to his thoughts, losing the ability to write and edit. Visually and metaphorically he lived in a different world, unable to function coherently in one, yet he, himself as a thinking body, remained.
The language and imagery is very contingent with the romantic movement. De Quincey, our humble narrator, is confronted by romantic archetypes like the ‘noble vagabond’: “Generally speaking, the few people whom I have disliked in this world were flourishing people of good repute. Whereas the knaves whom I have known, one and all, and by no means few, I think of with pleasure and kindness.” He writes about living and spending time with prostitutes, not to procure their business, but as friends and contemporaries (“partner[s] in wretchedness”,) who shared in his period of poverty in London. One, “Oh noble minded Ann”, who helped in his moment of greatest need he describes in detail. They separated for a time, whilst De Quincey went to retrieve some money and agreed to meet once more at a designated spot. When he finally returned, delayed, he waited at the spot every day and searched London for her, but she was lost to him; fleeting like his opium dreams.
The object of the confession is not the physiological, or what he calls “the ugly pole, the murderous spear, the halbert” that the doctors are so interested in but rather the psychological “those parasitical thoughts, feelings, digressions.” This approach came to be the dominating paradigm within drug writing, wherein first-person narratives became contingent with exploring the phenomenology of drug experiences and thereby eliciting meaning. Can we draw any lines of flight between the language employed in Confessions and 20th century psychedelic literature? Yes, but they do reveal different approaches: “All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in its velocity of flight toward death. But in God there is nothing finite; but in God there is nothing transitory; but in God there can be nothing that tends to death.” Here we find not an identification with God, or divinity, like in the work of Leary or Dunlap but an allusion to God, as a descriptive metaphor that certainly rings true of the romantic style.
It appears, for De Quincey, that meaning revolves around its effect on his exterior, social life and not on some revelation purportedly produced by opium. One argument for this different attractor for meaning could simply be the different nature of the drugs – chemically opiates are of course different from tryptamines – but, in psychological speak, De Quincey describes ‘repressed memory’, which is brought to light through opium use and this is also central to much of the 20th century discourse. Equally, one could argue that the approach from these two periods of drug writing were different. Opium, in Confessions, was a literary framework through which to explore De Quincey’s life, whilst for Jane Dunlap in Exploring Inner Space, she was the framework through which to explore the efficacy of LSD.
De Quincey’s writing is fluid (indeed it had to be to account for some narrative elements that are missing) and it is grandiose in the finest romantic tradition. But to what extent are his descriptions accurate accounts of both his life and experience of opium? Is there embellishment? Questions of authenticity raised by De Quincey’s work cast a long shadow over the way we ought to approach later drug writing. Unpicking texts and the motivations for their production is important in understanding the content. The degree of De Quincey’s authenticity, however, shouldn’t take away from what is an excellent book, which read alongside Suspiria De Profundis and The English Mail-Coach paints an enthralling picture of a man, his drug and his life.
This literary review was written by, and is reproduced here with the expressed permission of, Dr. David Luke. It originally appeared as: Luke, D. (2010). The archaeology of ecstasy: Review of ‘The long trip’. Network Review: Journal of the Scientific and Medical Network, 102, 58-59.
The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia (2nd edition)– Paul Devereux (2008) – Brisbane, Australia: Daily Grail Publishing. 250 pages with illustrations, references, notes, bibliography and index. ISBN-9780975720059
If you’ve ever wondered why witches used to fly around on broomsticks and what it was that Santa Claus drank that made him launch into the air with his reindeer, then this book is a must. The Long Trip is a slightly revised and updated version of Devereux’s original 1997 excursion into psychedelia’s prehistory, as well as its ancient and recent history.
The main message of this book is that psychedelic substances have been used the world over for millennia, not just recreationally but primarily for magico-spiritual and healing purposes, that is, as sacramental substances. Delving into aspects of archaeology many academics would choose to ignore, The Long Trip embarks on a journey to unearth the visionary past of our ancestors, leaving little doubt that for almost as long as human culture has been around, us humans have been using substances to alter our consciousness. Early stashes of bags containing opium poppies have been found in Neolithic burial sites in southern Europe which were likely burnt on braziers and inhaled. It’s during this Neolithic period in Europe that there began an apparent shift from a “smoking complex” to a “drinking complex” when psychoactive fumes gave way to potions and brews, as evidenced by ornate jugs shaped to resemble the heads of opium poppies.
Moving into the historical period, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus documented the outgoing smoking complex (now back in vogue, of course, across much of the globe) in noting the Scythian’s howls of pleasure from inhaling cannabis. Other ancient texts from most everywhere in the Old World testify to the cultural and spiritual importance of certain magical plants and fungi, though often researchers disagree as to which modern substances they refer to. The mysterious identity of the divine soma from the ancient Indian holy book the Rig Veda has long puzzled scholars, with almost every possible psychedelic entity from the red and white spotted Amanita muscaria mushroom to the Syrian rue bush (Peganum harmala) being proffered as the likely candidate.
A similar enigma exists with the identity of the potion called kykeon, used during the secret initiation rites of the ancient Greeks as part of the Eleusinian mysteries. Shrouded in secrecy under pain of death, this poorly-documented tradition continued for a period of some 2000 years from about 1600 BCE onwards, and included such luminaries as Plato and Cicero. As with soma we find the same scholars holding their favoured psychedelic substances responsible for the unknown sacramental. Perhaps the most compelling suggestion is Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck’s thesis that, given as the rites were made in honour of Demeter, a Goddess of grain, then the mysterious ingredients of kykeon probably contained some derivative of ergot, a grain fungus which is known to have psychedelic alkaloids and which is the basic building block for LSD. It’s extraordinary to think that some of the greatest ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and leaders were initiated into an LSD cult which lasted two millennia. The likelihood that it is true is strengthened by learning that the next most important sacred site of ancient Greece, the temples of Delphi, probably also had psychedelic origins. Woman operating there as oracles either inhaled psychoactive fumes rising up from fissures in the rocks or they partook of psychedelic plants, such as henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), sacred to the temple’s later patron, Apollo.
It’s not just in the Old World that we find such abundant psycho-spiritual use of psychedelics. The Long Trip also presents a short round-up of prehistoric ethnobotany in the Americas, where we find the ancient consumption of a dazzling array of psychedelic substances for shamanic purposes. Everything from peyote cactus (Lophophora Williamsii) to toad venom – within a psychedelic pharmacopeia including water lilies, mushrooms, vines, beans, climbers, shrubs and trees – all known to have been used by the indigenous peoples from Canada to Chili. The use of these substances for magico-religious purposes is still practiced, and in many cases goes back several thousand years according to the archeological evidence.
It is even thought that some of the oldest remnants of human culture, Paleolithic rock art, depicts the kinds of geometric visionary experiences that occur during altered states such as those induced through the ingestion of psychoactive flora and fauna. These patterns, known as form constants or (perhaps erroneously – see Luke, 2010) as entoptics, occur universally in psychedelic states and are a prominent feature of psychedelically-inspired artwork both old and modern.
The Long Trip is clearly a unique and essential investigation into the archaeology of consciousness and, as with any good insight into the extremities of the mind, it is punctuated throughout with extraordinary accounts of otherworldly experiences by ‘psychonauts’ throughout the ages. One such account is Le Club des Haschischins founder Théophile Gautier’s near-infinitely long trip on hashish, which, like this book, describes a mind blowing psychedelic journey through time. However, some of the accounts reach into the not-so-distant past and Devereux’s own epic maiden voyage on LSD in the 1960s is one of the most lucid and liquescent accounts of a psychedelic experience this side of Huxley’s Doors of Perception.
Accounts of such shamanic-like expeditions give authenticity to the book’s further explorations into psychedelic substances as inducers of interspecies communication, psychic abilities, problem solving creativity and a host of other transformative transpersonal experiences: As Devereux notes, “it is a culturally-engineered cliché to dismiss such states as somehow delusional.” So, while this second edition is a tad thinner than the original, having left behind the chapter on shamanic landscapes, it has some revisions and updates to the text and, probably more than ever in the last few thousand years, it is vitally important in situating our current drug laws as just brief modern misconceptions.
References:
Luke, D. (2010). Rock art or Rorschach. Is there more to entoptics than meets the eye? Time & Mind: Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture, 3 (1), 9-28.
Image by drfranken
The following is a deconstruction of the methodology employed by Martin W. Ball Ph.D. in his essay ‘Terence on DMT: An entheological analysis of McKenna’s Experiences in the Tryptamine Mirror of the Self’. It is not intended to be reaching any particular ‘truth’ over the claims made in the essay’s conclusions, rather, it intends to be an exposition of the analytical framework that Ball names the “entheological paradigm”. The references are to a PDF copy of the essay, kindly passed onto PsypressUK by its author. All images are by drfranken.
Martin W. Ball examines three talks given by Terence McKenna (1946-2000) on the topic of DMT and 5-MEO-DMT: 5-MEO-DMT and nn-DMT, Too much DMT and The Strangest Things Happen on DMT. He chose these talks as being typical of all the available material demonstrating McKenna’s reading of, and relationship with, DMT and 5-MEO-DMT. Ball’s aim is to critically analyse McKenna’s reading and, in order to do so, he employs what he terms as the “entheological paradigm” as a form of analysis. The question concerning this essay is: How does the “entheological paradigm” function as a discourse; in both what it posits as ‘truth’ and necessarily excludes in its analysis?
The term ‘entheogen’, from which “entheological” takes its leave, was first coined by Wasson et al in the 1970s. Created from three Greek roots words; it translates to ‘becoming God within’(Wasson, 2008). Therefore, in considering the amalgamation of ‘entheo’ with ‘logical’, the “entheological paradigm” is a set of parameters formed on the basis of ‘the logic of God within’. Ball describes the entheological paradigm as being grounded in the fact that “all of reality can comprehensively be understood as a unified energetic system that is conscious and self-aware. The foundation of all of reality is the Energetic Unitary Being that functions according to fractal mathematics. All of reality is therefore an expression of fractal patterns. This is a unitary energetic system, thereby indicating that all living beings are in fact direct embodiments of One Energy Being [OEB]” (Ball, 2010, 3).
This ‘logical’ system, as quoted above, is more correctly described as a system of metaphysics; for whilst ‘energy’ does form the basis of current systems of physics, we’ve yet to identify an OEB as the unifying and self-aware embodiment of all energy – this is somewhat over-stepping the ontological boundaries of a scientific classification. Rather, this metaphysical system is more correctly described as being pantheistic, which is to say that it identifies divinity (the “self-aware” OEB) with a material universality (energetic fractal expressions). In order to correlate terminology then, and in keeping with the entheological name, the OEB will hereafter be referred to as God. The premise, then, of the “entheological paradigm” (EP) is that reality is merely “fractal expressions” of a consciously self-aware whole.
Bearing in mind that what Ball is analysing is the human relationship with DMT and 5-MEO-DMT, we need to understand what the entheological paradigm a) understands this relationship to be, and b) how God grounds the understanding of this relationship. The EP understands the relationship to have value because of its ability to occasion us (under the right conditions) the experience of Self, not as being individuated but rather as being a unitary being, which I shall term the God-self. How does this ‘truth’ function as a discourse however?
In analyzing the animism of Terence McKenna i.e. his experiences of coming across other beings whilst on DMT and his belief that they were other than himself, Ball’s main point of contention is that the experience of a duality necessarily demonstrates a failed entheological experience, in that it’s not unitary. Ball writes: “Terence, as a manifestation of the one being, is providing himself with self-validating experiences in the form of others who tell him enough to convince himself of the reality of the game he is playing” (Ball, 2010, 10). What is this individuated Self, which self-perpetuates an inauthentic experience? Ball names it as none-other than the “ego”.
By drfranken
Ball describes the “ego” as a “fractal pattern” that causes the object/subject division i.e. the problem of the other. He calls the “ego” an “illusion” that creates the sense of a “unique, separate self”. The goal of the entheological experience, then, is to overcome this pattern through “ego transcendence”. The outcome of which is the identification of Self with God i.e. God-self. Therefore, in plain terms, we have the ego-self and the God-self identified in Ball’s analysis; wherein, paradoxically, although the ego-self is “illusory” it is yet still composed of the fractals of the God-self. In regard to McKenna, Ball believes that his experiences of an other is the proof of an invalid, ego-driven and, therefore, inauthentic experience with DMT and/or 5-MEO-DMT. It is the distinguishing of inauthenticity in McKenna’s experiences that forms the central marker for the EP’s analysis, however, as we shall see, its methodology is profoundly psychological.
How does the ego-self relate to the God-self during the psychedelic experience when it would seem, on the surface, to be paradoxical? “Within this perceptual energetic space, the energy of egoic consciousness bounces off the fundamental matrix of energy, so to speak, and creates images related to the individual’s consciousness. The simplest way to put it is that when gazing into the Divine Imagination, one is looking into a mirror that expresses the fullness of one’s energetic being” (Ball, 2010, 18). Therefore, in having an authentic experience, one realizes the perceptions are the God-self; which is to say when one realizes one’s self as God, a unitary being, one realizes one perceives as/the God-self. This is the state of ego transcendence, without which the “perceptual energetic space” is reduced to chasing its tail, which is in fact an “illusory” tail.
“Ego’s however, get very confused about what is going on in this process as they perceive the contents of consciousness as being distinct from the subject experiencing it” (Ball, 2010, 18). Ball identifies one “ego-generated narrative” that McKenna is caught in as ‘language’ and further uses this to demonstrate that McKenna is describing an inauthentic experience. He argues that McKenna’s life-long belief in language as the fundamental character of being was in fact projected onto his DMT experiences; in effect making McKenna a prisoner of his own false, ego-driven beliefs, unable to realise the authenticity of God-self. Therefore the ego-self is related to the God-self as hurdle is to a hurdler; only it isn’t a physical barrier but a psychological one. As Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha said: “When someone is seeking…it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal” (Hesse, 2008 108).
In utilising terminology like “ego”, “ego transcendence”, “energy” and “game playing” Ball is employing a language and analysis that was first introduced into psychedelic culture by Timothy Leary in the early 1960s. Terms like “ego” are manifestly psychological (and indeed has a much longer history,) as was Leary’s profession pre-Millbrook and terms like “game playing” are lifted straight from the pages of Leary’s work and gospel. The following is taken from Leary’s essay The Seven Tongues of God: “But the illusory game goes on. Ego sweats to maintain a tenacious grasp of the ungraspable. And then, in moments of emotional despair, decides to hide, to quit. Hell is the conviction that the game won’t stop. Eternal game playing. No exit. Hell is the idea that the game switch won’t turn off. Suicide is the deluded attempt to escape from hell” (Leary, 1990, 41). Leary places a value on “ego transcendence” and he utilizes the language of “religion, psychiatry and psychology but also of the physical and biological process” (Leary, 1990, 22) for Ball it is, entheogen, ego and energy. However Leary’s method relies on the psychological position of an “ego” from which to take its leave and this frames his whole system, which consequentially also frames Ball’s.
Therefore, in re-employing this form of analysis the entheological paradigm is relying on psychological methodology, just as Leary’s work did, to structure its analysis. However, in doing this, we can elucidate a contradiction within the EP’s methodology. Whilst it utilizes the ontological boundary of a scientific classification (in this case the non-existence of autonomous spirit entities) to pick apart McKenna’s position; it has already transgressed the same boundary in its metaphysical premise of the One Energy Being by replacing the psychological notion of an individuated self with a God-self.
What underpins the psychological analysis of McKenna’s DMT/5-MEO-DMT experiences is an authoritative assertion that, firstly, a certain phenomenological experience under the influence of these drugs occasions a metaphysical truth i.e. the existence of the God-self. Secondly, that this occasion can only be induced and translated authentically by an individual with the knowledge of how to do so. We will now examine how these ‘positions of privilege’ manifest themselves in the analysis and function as part of the EP discourse.
It is not instantly apparent that one is confronted by the God-self during the psychedelic experience “it just becomes obvious, though admittedly, this is only for those who reach a deep level of self-acceptance and responsibility” (Ball, 2010, 18). In other words, if you’re not experienced enough you won’t realise this and you’ll be caught in playing ego-games. Ball puts himself and those other people who share his belief in the EP in a position of authority by ascribing it a privileged knowledge, which is only occasioned by an entheological experience. This privileged knowledge, however, is based on the contradiction we identified earlier i.e. the ontological boundary of scientific classification. For, those people who “reach a deep level of self-acceptance and responsibility” find that “all contents of the entheogenic experiences are projections of the self” (Ball, 2010, 17). This, as we have demonstrated, is psychological methodology onto which the EP is essentially piggy-backing by replacing the psychological position of the ego-self with the metaphysical position of the God-self; thus undermining the authority of the claim.
- By drfranken
McKenna’s description of 5-MEO-DMT is as a mere “feeling” compared to the deeper visionary nature of DMT; Ball criticizes this position. Ball’s own phenomenological view is that 5-MEO-DMT is stronger than DMT. He believes that 5-MEO-DMT “is the fastest and most direct route to immediately experiencing the reality of being God” (Ball, 2010, 7). Ball also contends that there are visionary aspects of 5-MEO-DMT at higher quantities and is therefore making another privileged, authoritative claim over McKenna. This puts Ball in a position where he can analyse McKenna’s experience as “ ego game playing,” for, accordingly, without the authority his experience has afforded him, he would be unable to recognize it as such. This demonstrates that the discourse of the EP divides people on the basis of their personal experience.
Ball states the conclusions of his analysis are that “Terence’s experiences do not present us with an intrepid explorer discovering new realms. Rather, we are presented with a clear picture of an individual unable to recognize himself in the mirror of tryptamine consciousness” (Ball, 2010, 2). In coming to this conclusion, it is not only McKenna’s verbalisation that Ball investigates in order to demonstrate that he is trapped by an ego-self. He examines traits in McKenna’s talks like delivery, voice tone, “nervous laughter” and so on. In order to do this, and in line with identifying God through the “perceptual energetic space”, Ball must demonstrate how the perceived physicality of Self relates to God.
“Terence’s tone of voice and nasal timbre is uniquely telling: it shows us his energetic relationship to himself and to his subject matter, the object he is sharing with us. The energy of his voice dramatically reveals how far Terence is from his energetic center. It tells us, immediately, where he is coming from” (Ball, 2010, 5). He goes onto describe the human being in terms of 5 energy centres. Three of which, the brain, heart and sex organs, are described as being energetically generative. The other two, the throat and stomach, are transformative centres. Of the five, the heart is “the center of the total energetic system.”By speaking nasally, Ball believes this demonstrates that McKenna is not speaking from his energetic centre but rather from behind his eyes: “Wherever Terence is while creating his discourse, he is not in his centre. Rather, he is quite clearly in his head, thereby indicating that he is communicating ideas; things that he thinks, rather than things he has felt or understood in the very centre of his being” (Ball, 2010, 6). The validity of “energy centers” is beyond the scope of this essay, suffice to say that this represents in the first instance, an extension of the metaphysics and, in the second, acts as another privileged space from which the analysis can take its leave.
In conclusion, the EP analysis assumes its rationale from three positions of privilege. Firstly, from a philosophical position, a pantheistic metaphysics, which determines the scope and relationship of the psychedelic experience by grounding it in a unitary and universal system. Secondly, from an experiential position, which basically states that for one to have an authentic experience, tested against the aforementioned metaphysics, one must have reached a certain level of “self-acceptance and responsibility.” And, thirdly, one needs knowledge of the energetic centres in any given “perceptual energetic space” in order to evaluate the experiential level of the subject, as just described in point two.
These three positions of privilege correspond to three restrictions that the ‘Self’ is determined to have. Firstly, the God-self, which one identifies through the metaphysics. Secondly, the ego-self, which is confronted during the psychedelic experience and, thirdly, a body-self, which in line with the metaphysics is described as a “perceptual energetic space”. From these three identities the EP discourse functions by a) identifying phenomenological inauthenticity in the psychedelic experience, in this case McKenna’s animistic claims; thereby enabling an invalidation of McKenna’s discourse. And b) by correlating physical traits to the theory of ‘energy centres’; thus establishing a sort of self-delusion on behalf of the individual analyzed, which in effect buoys the entheological paradigm’s authority as a discourse.
The EP analysis itself, however, reveals, through the terminology it utilises, its reliance on a psychological paradigm to ground its perspective in opposition to other discourses (McKenna’s animistic for example.) This seems to demonstrate a fundamental weakness in its approach; for it necessarily draws an ontological boundary by employing psychology, one which it has already transgressed through its metaphysical position. It relies on the belief that one phenomenological experience produces a knowledge that invalidates all other value discourses.
Finally, what is the value of performing this methodological deconstruction? In elucidating the workings of a methodology we can reveal internal contradictions; either between the foundational position (in the case the pantheistic metaphysics) and the method of analysis (i.e. psychological) and/or reveal any positions that have not been logically argued and investigated; revealing a functionality based on dogmatic positions. By doing this we can further reveal the merits, or failings, of the methodology in question and whether it brings anything original to the learning space, or not.
All images are by drfranken
Bibliography & References
Ball, Martin W.: Terence on DMT. 2010. PDF.
Hesse, Hermann: Siddhartha. Penguin Classics. London. 2008. Print.
Leary, Timothy: The Politics of Ecstasy. Ronin Publishing. Berkeley. 1990. Print.
Wasson, R. Gordon, Albert Hofmann, Carl A.P. Ruck: The Road to Eleusis. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley. 2008. Print.
Literary Review: ‘Nemu’s End’ by Reverend Nemu
Originally published in 2009 ‘Nemu’s End – History, Psychology, and Poetry of the Apocalypse’ by Reverend Nemu is an exploratory work of non-fiction. The premise of the book is a deconstruction of social, historical, philosophical and scientific strata. And at the same time it posits the idea of ‘apocalypse’ as a revelatory force of change in both ourselves and society.
A book of this nature is difficult to comprehensively review. The amount of diverse ground it covers means anyone wishing to test the numerous facts would have to set aside a good deal of time to reveal and investigate all its various sources and references. Though, it should be said, the fundamental aspect of the book i.e. the message of apocalypse, the possibility of a catastrophic change in perspective for the Self, is the consistency that binds all the many fields together.
The rapid fact-weaving narrative of the book is engaging and, as the reader, you are whisked through highly diverse topics and debates, like the scientific method, Spiritualist churches, biographical details, theories on human perception and so on. The apocalyptic message is, however, always consistent – uncovering that which is hidden from us by revealing the untruth of received and untested wisdom – For example, Nemu attempts to break down the scientific method and in doing so demonstrates the possibility of multiple analytical perspectives; revealing the danger of being trapped by a single discourse.
One section that I found particularly interesting is titled ‘Neuro-Apocalypse One: The Monkey Puzzle’. In it, Nemu describes – against the backdrop of his own experiences of living in Japan – cultural, linguistic and perceptive differences between Westerners and the Japanese and does so in good humour: “We navigate through the visual cortex, and touch the world through the padded gloves of our nervous systems, which is why a kiss from a Thai princess tastes sweet like mango, until you realize this mango is a man.” He further demonstrates the relativity of perception and in doing so reiterates how one must not be mastered by these perceptions, precisely because they are relative.
I’ll now concentrate more on the sections to do with psychedelics, in order to keep this review more concise and the book within the general scope of PsypressUK. It should be noted that these constitute only a couple of the chapters of ‘Nemu’s End’. Aside from the political-historical analysis of State intervention with psychedelic drugs, which is now standard fare in demonstrating State repression and secrecy, Nemu outlines what role psychedelics can play in the apocalyptic analysis of Self.
Citing the work of Dr. Roland Fischer, who conducted experiments with Psilocybin and their effects on visual space, Nemu correlates Fischer’s findings that they improved visual acuity and revealed imbalance, to the general characteristics of psychedelics: “This capacity to reveal imbalance makes them excellent tools for learning about ourselves. Whereas we often convince ourselves that we are neither addicted nor compulsive, and that our behaviour is perfectly rational, psychedelics question these assumptions.” In giving psychedelics value as tools for “learning about ourselves” Nemu ascribes them a psychological value; very in keeping with 1950s discourse. The important difference is the way in which the psychedelic experience is mediated; by a setting rather than a psychoanalyst.
Nemu describes, very positively, his experiences and the practices of Santo Daime; a syncretic spiritual practice that uses ayahuasca as a sacrament: “In a Daime work, wandering around, eating, chatting, and the whole social game is forbidden. With the ego temporarily obliterated and nothing to do but sing, shake a maraca, and dance in formation with everyone else, you can safely follow your journey where it takes you.” Interestingly, this paints a similarly mediated psychological picture, only that the practice is mediated through song and dance. Also, it is worth noting, the identification of the “ego” with the “whole social game” is very indicative of the psychedelic conception of the ego first employed by Timothy Leary.
A major debate surrounding contemporary psychedelic culture concerns the historical, or pre-historical, use of psychedelic drugs by humanity. Nemu writes: “It is a kind of heresy to speculate that the ancients took drugs, but the opposite is just plain silly.” The ‘ancients’ refers to history, not prehistory and it essentially encompasses the pre-ecclesiastical written records. The academic argument that Nemu slyly backhands as “plain silly” is that the historical record is inconclusive; however, this doesn’t deny that it happened but rather recognizes that to say it as such is a faith-based argument. Therefore to anyone who makes this claim we must ask; why do you make this argument? ‘Historical truth’ would perhaps fly in the face of evidence so perhaps the most purposeful reasoning for making the argument is to historically pin a legal status of psychedelics and thereby adding weight to the contemporary voice for legalisation.
In the end though, Nemu’s assessment of psychedelics is very representative of the whole ‘apocalypse’ project and it seems to embody the whole process of change that underlines the book: “Psychedelics tear down constructions and wash away worlds, unleashing the raw power of consciousness.” The power of consciousness can perhaps only be measured in the way that it is exercised and ‘Nemu’s End’ is a brilliant exposition of the ways that we can utilize the consciousness tool. So in deconstructing so many threads, Nemu, simultaneously through the apocalypse, posits the possibility of a new construction of Self. To download for free, or to order a copy to buy, please visit Reverend Nemu’s website.
Interview: Roger Keen
Roger Keen is an English film-maker and writer. He spent nearly 30 years working for companies like the BBC and ITV making television dramas, documentaries, news and consumer programmes. Since 2006 he has concentrated on his writing and his novelistic memoir ‘The Mad Artist – Psychonautic Adventures from the 1970s’ was published in 2010.
Set between 1975 and 1979, The Mad Artist explores Roger’s experiences of psychedelic awakenings – the trials and tribulations – against the backdrop of his time at art college. The novel manages to combine the best elements of biography and literary flair and carves for itself an exhilarating picture of psychedelic Britain in the late 1970s. To read more about The Mad Artist please visit PsypressUK’s literary review of the book.
Understanding drug literature as a genre is important in coming to know how the spread of ideas contained within the texts has disseminated through society. With this in mind PsypressUK asked Roger what the major psy-literary influences have been on him: “As with so many other people, the first work of psy-lit to make a big impact on me was The Doors of Perception, which I read in my late teens. Aldous Huxley was already familiar to me as a novelist and his literary skill made the psychedelic experience come alive on the page and captivate my imagination.”
However, whilst The Doors of Perception is arguably the beginning of the period of drug writing known as psychedelic literature, Roger’s influences reach farther back: “I also particularly like the more flowery 19th century psy-lit, such as Gautier and Ludlow, both of whom used heroic doses of cannabis for inspiration. The Hasheesh Eater is a psy-lit masterpiece: the uncanny synergy of a young American scholarly mind, steeped in Romanticism and idealist philosophy, and massive doses of cannabis, consumed in a cultural vacuum, psychedelically speaking.” These influences are marked in some of The Mad Artist’s more psychological passages.
Roger mentions another influence on his work and it’s one which crops up numerous time in The Mad Artist; Carlos Castaneda: “Then there’s Castaneda, who played a big part in the years when I was actually doing a lot of psychedelics, and his fanciful metaphysics gave me much food for thought, some of it admittedly misguided.” Castaneda’s influence on society is undeniable and although his work has been academically debunked it has remained a icon for the esoteric and human potential movements. For the mad artist exploring psychedelics he was certainly a cultural moniker and a conversational rallying point between friends.
Another big influence on Roger was Beat literature; especially the works of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs: “Junkie and The Naked Lunch had a huge impact on me, and though the former is mainly about heroin addiction and the latter said to be mainly inspired by addiction and withdrawal, it must be stressed that Burroughs was big on psychedelics as well—peyote, ayahuasca, DMT and, of course, cannabis, and they play an important role in the content of his work.” But it was Jack Kerouac who perhaps had the greatest impact on the writing of The Mad Artist:
“It all comes from Jack Kerouac, in particular the two novels On The Road and The Dharma Bums. From there I got the idea of an autobiographical account or roman à clef, involving a narrator and his best friend as lead characters having a series of picaresque adventures. So in my trippy exploits with ‘Henry’, I began to see him as a Dean Moriarty figure and myself as a Sal Paradise figure, and when sufficient material had accrued the structure for a putative novel sprang into being.”
In coming to fruition the novel went through many revisions in regard to the structure and form it was going to take. Indeed, for a long time Roger had two memoirs in mind, both of which are referenced in The Mad Artist in a sort of post-modern reflection of the writing process. The ‘Geometric Progression’, which makes up the bulk of The Mad Artist deals more explicitly with the psychonautic adventures but the final section, named ‘The Novel’, is introduced at the end as a writing method. Roger has begun to further explore this method in what he terms as ‘The Cult of the Novel’.
“I saw myself as a ‘novelist’ writing ‘fiction’, notwithstanding its autobiographical content; but much more recently I came around to approaching the material as non-fiction and simply telling what happened rather than trying to shape it according to pre-existing novelistic structures. Applying this method to both potential memoirs, I then had the completely new idea of carving up the material in a different way—to assign the best of the psychedelic stuff to The Mad Artist, and to have the aftermath, from the 80s onwards in the next one, which also went with making TMA a nostalgic 70s product.”
Perhaps the major question facing psychedelic culture is how society as a whole could happily integrate the psychedelic experience into its framework. PsypressUK asked Roger how this might be achieved: “Stressing the medicinal, therapeutic and religious uses of psychedelics seems the most profitable way to go about getting them taken more seriously by society at large, which harks back to the original intentions of the psychedelic movement. Then, of course, there’s an ever-increasing awareness of the shamanistic or psychonautic aspects of their use, which again creates a further dimension of possible legitimacy.”
But just as the original intentions of the psychedelic movement were warped over time, Roger recognizes the fact that the “sticking point here, as ever, is that their potential for hedonistic use is just too great to contain. Some might well use substances such as DMT, ayahuasca and Salvia Divinorum in order to gain spiritual and metaphysical insight, but equally others use them just to get off their faces.” Arguably, it is this hedonistic use that has driven psychedelics underground and into alternative culture; largely, no doubt, due to the extreme drug laws that the State introduced in reaction to the psychedelic Sixties. This new spatially delineated culture has evolved and become laced with its own paradigm however.
“As far as alternative society goes, they have and always will play the role of the harbinger of Otherness in all its forms. At the higher dosage end of the spectrum, they represent a rite of passage, an initiation into something that’s potentially transcendental yet challenging and perhaps hazardous—the interior equivalent of mountain climbing perhaps. As Andy Roberts said in Albion Dreaming, acid stories became the psychedelic generation’s war stories, and that’s how it felt to me.”
Finally, PsypressUK asked Roger about why psychedelic literature has been largely the preserve of the U.S.A. and why he thinks that British culture has lagged behind in this concern:
“Regarding the lack of homegrown psy-lit—and specifically literature that puts a positive and constructive spin on psychedelics, such as The Doors of Perception—I think that has a lot to do with the constrictive nature of British society in general and publishing in particular. When I talked to an agent about The Mad Artist, she said she wouldn’t know how to go about marketing it. She went on to say that, as part of the ‘inspirational genre’ drug memoirs should be about the evils of drugs, how they ruin lives, and how one can recover and rebuild one’s life having renounced them.”
It would appear then that the publishing industry has certain preconceived ideals about what literature should be. It is certainly a sad state of affairs when this sort of prejudice – whether monetarily or culturally driven – debars writers from expressing themselves; no matter the quality and insight of their work. This is not only true of psychedelic literature but of literature in general and perhaps it is self-publications like The Mad Artist that can put an end to this narrow and short-sighted practice.
Either way, the one-sidedness of much contemporary mainstream drug writing doesn’t tell a full picture. As Roger notes: “The Mad Artist contains [a] fair amount of negative commentary concerning the ill effects of LSD and cannabis, and, through the character ‘Sean’, the very destructive effects of heavy amphetamine use. But this is only one side of the equation; any thesis or evaluation of drug experience is meaningless without a detailed analysis of the positive effects, which are the reason why people use them.”
PsypressUK would like to thank Roger for answering our questions and wish him the best of luck with all his future endeavours. To find out more about The Mad Artist and to buy a copy of the book please visit Roger’s website ‘Musings of the mad artist’.
Literary Review: ‘Miserable Miracle’ By Henri Michaux
Originally published in France in 1956 ‘Miserable Miracle’ by Henri Michaux explores the author/artist’s experiences with mescaline; an hallucinogenic drug originally derived from the Peyote cactus. Translated into English in 1963 by Louise Varèse, this review has been written from the 2002 New York Review of Books edition and contains an introduction by Octavio Paz and includes addenda.
Henri Michaux (1899-1984) was a writer and artist born in Namur, Belgium. He travelled widely, through the Americas, Africa and Asia before settling in Paris, France. After the freak death of his wife in 1948 he began devoting himself to ink calligraphy drawings and, at regular intervals, he began taking mescaline.
During the post-war years, before the popularization of LSD, mescaline was being used as an experimental drug in clinical, artistic and intellectual circles. Its use spawned several literary explorations, most notably Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, a book that Michaux had already read before embarking on the publication his own book Miserable Miracle. He wrote three books about the mescaline experience of which this offering was the first.
Octavio Paz, in his introduction to the book, notes: “Michaux’s painting has never been a mere adjunct to his poetry: the two are at once autonomous and complementary worlds. In the case of the ‘mescaline experience,’ lines and words form a whole almost impossible to break down into component elements.” The book is interlaced with several series of his drawings, the main body of the text is also supplemented by side notes and together the reader is confronted by a woven pattern of understanding. The style itself – this multiplicity of artistic perspectives – is extremely self-reflexive and has the effect of underpinning the very nature of Michaux’s experiences.
Historically speaking, Miserable Miracle is a bridge, of sorts, between the drug literature of the nineteenth century and the explosion of psychedelic literature in the 1960s. Whilst the language (in translation) bears many of the literary fruits of Baudelaire and De Quincey, its drug in question – mescaline – is phenomenologically closer to psychedelics than opiates and hashish. Indeed, to highlight this difference Michaux, in chapter IV, writes on Indian Hemp as “notes to serve as a comparison between two hallucinogens.” His use of ‘hallucinogen’ and references toward “experimental psychosis” is telling of a pre-psychedelic discourse; one that is more akin to psychology and of this transitional period.
Still, there are many phenomenological devices that can be found in both ancient drug texts, psychedelic texts and in Michaux’s writing. For example, the idea of precious stones and their bold colours: “Strident reds pass next to emphatic greens. It is an optical melodrama. The repulsive ones next. Precious stones in quantities, patently false, are an inexhaustible offering.” However, whereas writers like Jane Dunlap might perceive these objects to be highly representative of God, for example, Michaux retains a scepticism for at base his experience is of ‘hallucinations’. This why he can write “the state of schizophrenics should also be examined from this point of view.”
The mescaline-human experience is described as a transience through visual vibrations, fleeting transformations and a kaleidoscope of changing images. This is explicitly stated in many works of drug writing and, although Michaux himself ponders these ideas, it is in the rhythm of his writing that he ultimately best reflects it; with a high use of commas bringing in many ideas into a single sentence and the aforementioned combination of art and writing disseminating the transience into form.
“As for the Westerner today, so long an unbeliever in the gods and now incapable of imagining a form in which they might appear to him, what his mind grasps, the only god he can still conceive, a god it would be vain to worship, is infinite relativity, the unending cascade, the cascade of cause and effect, or rather of what goes before and of what comes after, where everything is driving wheel and follower wheel.”
One can see, from the above quote, how Michaux identifies the difference between Western and, what might be best described as, the shamanic understanding of visions. It was known at the time how Native Americans utilized Peyote animistically but, for Michaux, the psychologically different make-up of the Westerner’s mind proved a force for separation in the experience. For him, it was not about seeing the personification of the drug, or of nature, but rather the knowledge of process, of energy and of empiricism.
What of Michaux himself within the text? The destruction of one’s ego, the empathetic identification with nature and with totality are all important pointers in later psychedelic texts. For Michaux his Self was certainly shattered from its exterior consensual conception, for after three months: “Little by little I am finding myself again. Though not yet fully recuperated, I am getting farther from this drug which is not the drug for me. My drug is myself, which mescaline banishes.”
There are indicators, however, that this ego-shaking is not simply a destruction of Self, per se, and neither simply a literary construct, for the framework retains a point-of-leave. After one high dose, in conversation with ‘S’, he wrote “during our conversation I again noticed my fits of inattention.” To notice your own inattention is slightly paradoxical but it does pin-point the Self as being apart from the ego-shattering from which Michaux slowly finds himself again. Perhaps, speculatively, in an investigation into consciousness, here is identified a literary zone from which to explore it.
Miserable Miracle is beautifully written; its style is engaging and enlightening and coupled with the visual artwork it provides a brilliant insight into Michaux’s experiences with mescaline. The prose reveals a talent for communicating emotion and for revealing some of the phenomenology of the drug experience. Positioned between the drug writing of the nineteenth century and the psychedelic texts of the 1960s means Miserable Miracle is a vital work in understanding the evolution of the literary movement; for knowing its inspirations and its conceptual threads. Top class in every sense.
Literary Review: ‘Storming Heaven’ by Jay Stevens
Originally published in 1987 ‘Storming Heaven – LSD and the American Dream’ by Jay Stevens is one of a number of heavyweight histories of LSD and American culture. The narrative non-fiction format makes the text very entertaining and, whilst not stinting on the details, it provides the reader with a simple and accessible presentation of what was a many-threaded and complex historical period.
Like all historical books that have LSD at their heart ‘Storming Heaven’ begins in Switzerland where in 1943, 5 years after the semi-synthetic was first developed, Albert Hofmann discovered its hallucinogenic properties. It was on the 19th of April that Hofmann became the first individual to intentionally consume LSD and the repercussions of this event are still being felt today. However, its most intense period of being a widespread social phenomena occurred in the U.S.A during the 1960s and it is this period the text concentrates on.
Bearing in mind the great division the drug caused in society between those who believed it a menace and those who deemed LSD to have value, Stevens mentions an anecdote well worth repeating. During animal testing of LSD-25 by Sandoz the following occurred: “One day Rothlin injected LSD into a lab chimp and then reintroduced the animal to its colony. Within minutes the place was in uproar. The chimp hadn’t acted crazy or strange, per se; instead it had blithely ignored all the little social niceties and regulations that govern chimp colony life.”
In compiling the history Stevens certainly did his homework. He spoke to various key figures including Myron Stolaroff, Frank Barron, Gunther Weil, the Shulgins, Tim Scully and had such texts to work from as Ralph Metzner’s uncompleted autobiography and Oscar Janiger’s “astonishing archives.” Aside from the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program (which looked at LSD’s possible use as a mind-control drug and chemical weapon) it was through psychology and individuals like Janiger that LSD first started making its way into the popular consciousness.
Al Hubbard had introduced Janiger, along with Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley, to LSD and it is astonishing to think that “while Heard and Huxley had been searching for a substance that would open the door of the mind’s higher power, the Central Intelligence Agency had been looking for a mind control drug…” There began a widespread investigation, from many fields and people, to discover the value of the human-LSD relationship. One psychologist who had been working with psilocybin (the hallucinogenic ingredient in ‘magic mushrooms’) was Harvard professor Timothy Leary who was introduced to LSD in 1961.
Whilst Huxley and Heard were advocating a top-to-bottom introduction of LSD into society, turning on those in positions of power, Leary was to become the first popular evangelist. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg believed this newly discovered powerful tool, utilized as a method of spiritual awakening, could transform society and he laid this vision on Leary: “Sipping his hot milk, Leary realized that Huxley’s way was not his. ‘It was at this moment,’ he later wrote, ‘that we rejected Huxley’s elitist perspective and adopted the American open-to-the-public approach,; Ginsberg had awakened the rebel in Tim.” Leary turned from the medical to the spiritual and went on a crusade that many argue helped cause the outlawing of LSD.
However, the popular psychedelic movement was also coming from a different direction, one outside the confines of the intellectual circles. Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and a crew of other individuals drove across America in a psychedelically decorated bus named ‘Further’, turning on the nation. As Stevens notes: “In a sense, Kesey stood in relation to Leary as Leary did to Huxley; each represented a radicalization of the other’s perspective.” Through this combination of proselytizing from top and bottom American society gradually developed its psychedelic counterculture.
Stevens is very frank about how the new social phenomena, which had become a popular movement by the end of the 1960s, wasn’t the hippy love-in it is so often painted as. Haight-Ashbury, the central hippy community, during the summer of love: “Malnutrition, overcrowding, a few bad apples, paranoia, bad drugs, big egos, the absence of any leaders who were willing to call themselves leaders, the constant police harassment – there were dozens of reasons why it was going bad.” With Leary facing criminal charges, the death of Huxley, the banning of LSD and the media’s vilification thereof, the popular tide began to recede.
In conclusion Stevens pictures the counterculture as a will-to-change, and which was as dominating to the later half of the 20th century as the will-to-power was for the first half. He believes, that when everything is stripped back, it is this will-to-change that still remained and which came to categorize the period that gave birth to better civil rights, the environmental movement and an increasing social conscience – even if LSD itself had had its legal status removed.
‘Storming Heaven’ is a story of how LSD, a simple chemical when not consumed by a human, came to symbolize post-war America’s most active period of social change. The text is engagingly written, well-researched and an invaluable tool for understanding some of the the mechanisms of this will-to-change; not mention just being a thoroughly engaging story. Well worth the read.
