The last few years has seen a plethora of books that blend personal narrative with the exploration of various aspects of psychedelic drugs. Who Am I, as the title suggests, is one such book. Allowah Lani, a Generation-X yogi from the United States, shares with us a personal tale of...
Leaf Fielding, member of the legendary ‘Operation Julie’ LSD-manufacturing-and-distribution ring, was busted in 1977 and spent five years in jail, ending his sentence at Leyhill Open Prison. He published his memoir, To Live Outside the Law, in 2011 – a gripping account of the Julie bust, the events that led...
“You are the shaman,” announced Terence McKenna at the beginning of a new phase of the archaic revival. With thousands of you-shamans going to Iquitos every year to get their feathers, it may be time to unpack that idea, and for that reason the new edition of the 15-year-old classic...
The Gantry Episode (1968) by June Drummond was published by Victor Gollancz. One of a host of novels published in the late 1960s, which all had LSD being pumped into a local water supply as their major premise, this particular one manages to stay well clear of any lurid hippie...
Published in the United States in 1967, Lovemaster by Lambert Macy is a hippie exploitation novel set against the backdrop of LSD’s emergence into the youth culture of the 1960s. It is told from the point of view of protagonist Dr Victor X Storm, known by friends and enemies alike as...
At the end of September the psychedelic community gathered together in Prague, Czech Republic, for the Beyond Psychedelics conference. Over three days, numerous speakers and psychedelic enthusiasts shared their revelations, insights, hopes and beliefs in what was a brilliantly delivered event – one that expertly combined cutting-edge research and an...
As a historian of LSD culture in Britain (author of Albion Dreaming (2008) and Acid Drops: Adventures in Psychedelia (2015) with a special interest in the people and events which coalesced into what has become known in drug culture shorthand as Operation Julie, Steve was good enough to send me a...
Julian Palmer’s Articulations (2014) is a personal treatise on psychedelic plants and substances based largely on the author’s 15 years of “profound research”. Taking into account both natural and synthetic substances, the author outlines the lessons he has gleaned from his experimentation, bolstered by personal trip reports, and discusses much...
Graham St John’s Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT was first published in 2015 by Evolver Editions. The book joins other cultural histories centred on particular psychoactive substances, such as Shroom (2006) by Andy Letcher, Storming Heaven (1987) by Jay Stevens, and Albion Dreaming (2008) by Andy...
The use of entheogens, like the practice of meditation itself, requires a global vision and an ethical basis with an ultimate objective of the happiness of all beings. The entheogens can be used erroneously as mere inebriators or narcotics, in the same way that religion, be it Buddhist or...
