Books
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Mycelium Running
2011 • Paul Stamets
Mycelium Running is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how. The basic science goes like this: Microscopic cells called “mycelium”--the fruit of which are mushrooms--recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal debris in the creation of rich new soil. What Stamets has discovered is that we can capitalize on mycelium’s digestive power and target it to decompose toxic wastes and pollutants (mycoremediation), catch and reduce silt from streambeds and pathogens from agricultural watersheds (mycofiltration), control insect populations (mycopesticides), and generally enhance the health of our forests and gardens (mycoforestry and myco-gardening). In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find chapters detailing each of these four exciting branches of what Stamets has coined “mycorestoration,” as well as chapters on the medicinal and nutritional properties of mushrooms, inoculation methods, log and stump culture, and species selection for various environmental purposes. Heavily referenced and beautifully illustrated, this book is destined to be a classic reference for bemushroomed generations to come. -
The Shulgin Index
2011 • Alexander Theodore Shulgin, Tania Manning, Paul F. Daley
The Shulgin Index Vol. I is a comprehensive survey of the known psychedelic phenethylamines. This first volume presents a structure-oriented survey of psychedelic phenethylamines, amphetamines, phenylpiperazines, and other similar compounds. Treatments of 126 main compounds with detailed physical properties, synthesis and analytical chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacological properties, and legal status. Fully referenced with over 2,000 citations. Sub-tables of lesser-studied structural homologues and analogues. Over 1300 total compounds covered. Extensive cross-referencing tables for rapid location of key information.This book is an invaluable resource for researchers, physicians, chemists, and law enforcement. -
Opening the Portals of Heaven
2010 • Beatriz Caiuby Labate, Gustavo Pacheco
Ayahuasca
The book provides a concise summary of the use of music in the Santo Daime and UDV religions. Embracing the phenomenology of musical practice in broad terms, summarizing its history and treating long-awaited questions, the book touches upon crucial points regarding the power and efficacy of musical performance in religious frameworks, thus pointing towards fruitful future research in that area. It assists in understanding the relation between music and religion in broader terms, and the way that we become spiritual beings through poetry, rhythm, and melody, and communicate with realities other than the immediate. -
The Pharmacology of LSD
2010 • Annelie Hintzen, Torsten Passie
LSD
LSD has a controversial and extraordinary reputation, due to the special effects it can induce on human consciousness. Its experimental use lead to some groundbreaking discoveries about the brain and the deeper layers of the human psyche. After its application in neuroscience, and as a tool within psychotherapy, it was increasingly used by laymen for producing euphoria and religious experiences. Today, there is a resurgence of interest in LSD, including its possible uses in psychotherapy and for the treatment of some headache disorders. This book represents the first ever comprehensive review of the psychological and pharmacological effects of LSD. It draws on data from more than 3000 experimental and clinical studies. The Pharmacology of LSD provides a unique and valuable resource for anyone interested in better understanding this controversial hallucinogenic drug - including brain scientists, psychopharmacologists, addiction researchers, and psychiatrists. -
Orange Sunshine
2010 • Nicholas Schou
LSD
Few stories in the annals of American counterculture are as intriguing or dramatic as that of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.Dubbed the "Hippie Mafia," the Brotherhood began in the mid-1960s as a small band of peace-loving, adventure-seeking surfers in Southern California. After discovering LSD, they took to Timothy Leary's mantra of "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" and resolved to make that vision a reality by becoming the biggest group of acid dealers and hashish smugglers in the nation, and literally providing the fuel for the psychedelic revolution in the process.Just days after California became the first state in the union to ban LSD, the Brotherhood formed a legally registered church in its headquarters at Mystic Arts World on Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where they sold blankets and other countercultural paraphernalia retrieved through surfing safaris and road trips to exotic locales in Asia and South America. Before long, they also began to sell Afghan hashish, Hawaiian pot (the storied "Maui Wowie"), and eventually Colombian cocaine, much of which the Brotherhood smuggled to California in secret compartments inside surfboards and Volkswagen minibuses driven across the border.They also befriended Leary himself, enlisting him in the goal of buying a tropical island where they could install the former Harvard philosophy professor and acid prophet as the high priest of an experimental utopia. The Brotherhood's most legendary contribution to the drug scene was homemade: Orange Sunshine, the group's nickname for their trademark orange-colored acid tablet that happened to produce an especially powerful trip. Brotherhood foot soldiers passed out handfuls of the tablets to communes, at Grateful Dead concerts, and at love-ins up and down the coast of California and beyond. The Hell's Angels, Charles Mason and his followers, and the unruly crowd at the infamous Altamont music festival all tripped out on this acid. Jimi Hendrix even appeared in a film starring Brotherhood members and performed a private show for the fugitive band of outlaws on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano.Journalist Nicholas Schou takes us deep inside the Brotherhood, combining exclusive interviews with both the group's surviving members as well as the cops who chased them. A wide-sweeping narrative of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (and more drugs) that runs from Laguna Beach to Maui to Afghanistan, Orange Sunshine explores how America moved from the era of peace and free love into a darker time of hard drugs and paranoia. -
The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell
2009 • Aldous Huxley
LSD / Mescaline
Among the most profound and influential explorations of mind-expanding psychedelic drugs ever written, here are two complete classic books—The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell—in which Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, reveals the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. This edition also features an additional essay, "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds," now included for the first time. "A genuine spiritual quest. . . . Extraordinary." — New York Times -
LSD - The Highway to Mental Health
2009 • Milan Hausner with Erna Segal
LSD
Dr. Milan Hausner is perhaps the only psychiatrist in the world who has worked with hallucinogens in a clinical environment for as many years with so many patients on so large a scale... For 20 years, Dr. Milan Hausner treated mentally ill patients with LSD in conjunction with psychotherapy while he was Medical Director of the psychiatric clinic at Sadska near Prague in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). The psycholytic system Dr. Hausner specialized in at his 112-bed clinic used dosages of LSD ranging from 50 to 400 mcg and were administered in up to 60, sometimes 90, sessions on an outpatient--and weekend--basis, in conjunction with psychotherapy. Cure time ranged from 6 to 12 months depending on the severity of the illness. The disorders that responded favorably to psycholysis included numerous forms of neuroses, phobias and some psychotic illnesses. In the course of Dr. Milan Hausner's work, his clinic near Prague gained international recognition as the largest facility of its kind, supervising over 3,000 therapeutic sessions with LSD involving more than 300 patients. As a result, his clinic became one of the most extensive LSD centers in the world. -
The Psychedelic Journey of Marlene Dobkin de Rios
2009 • Marlene Dobkin de Rios
Ayahuasca
A look inside almost half a century of pioneering research in the Amazon and Peru by a noted anthropologist studying hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. Reveals how ayahuasca successfully treats psychological and emotional disorders. Examines adolescent drug use from a cross-cultural perspective. Discusses the deleterious effects of drug tourism in the Amazon Ayahuasca is an alkaloid-rich psychoactive concoction indigenous to South America that has been employed by shamans for millennia as a spirit drug for divinatory and healing purposes. Although the late Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes was credited in the early 1950s as being the first to document the use of ayahuasca, other researchers, such as the distinguished anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios, were responsible for furthering his findings and uncovering the curative capabilities of this amazing compound. The Psychedelic Journey of Marlene Dobkin de Rios presents the accumulated experience of de Rios’s 45 years of pioneering field studies in the area of hallucinogens in Peru and the Amazon. Her investigation into ayahuasca--which she undertook in collaboration with more than a dozen traditional Mestizo folk curanderos, shamans, and fellow ethnobotanists--focuses on the use of this revolutionary plant in the treatment of recalcitrant psychological and emotional disorders. She also shares some of her theories that prove that the ancient Maya used psychedelic plants as part of their religious rituals, thereby demonstrating the impact of plant psychedelics on human prehistory. In addition, Dobkin de Rios examines altered states of consciousness derived from the use of biofeedback and hypnosis and discusses her current work on the deleterious effects of drug tourism in the Amazon. -
A Hallucinogenic Tea, Laced with Controversy: Ayahuasca in the Amazon and the United States
2008 • Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Roger Rumrrill
Ayahuasca
One country's sacrament is another's illicit drug, as officials in South America and the United States are well aware. For centuries, a hallucinogenic tea made from a giant vine native to the Amazonian rainforest has been taken as a religious sacrament across several cultures in South America. Many spiritual leaders, shamans, and their followers consider the tea and its main component - ayahuasca - to be both enlightening and healing. In fact, ayahuasca (pronounced a-ja-was-ka) loosely translated means spirit vine. In this book, de Rios and Rumrrill take us inside the history and realm of, as well as the raging arguments about, the substance that seems a sacrament to some and a scourge to others. Their book includes text from the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances and interviews with shamans in the Amazon. -
LSD Psychotherapy
2008 • Stanislav Grof
LSD
The sensationalism surrounding the widespread use of LSD in the late 1960s and the subsequent legislative overkill virtually ended psychotherapeutic LSD research. Much of what had been learned over thirty years of scientific medical study was so distorted or suppressed that no objective overview was available to the general reader except for this book. LSD Psychotherapy is a complete account of a remarkable chapter in the ever-continuing inquiry into our transpersonal nature and origins. The controlled studies described in this book reveal exciting and challenging data about the nature of human consciousness, perception, and reality itself. Drawing on this work, Stanislav Grof outlines a new cartography of the human mind, one which accounts for experiences such as shamanic trances, near-death experiences and altered states of consciousness. This vision is also the foundation for Dr. Grof's revolutionary Holotropic Breathwork techniques. This book is also a visual feast, with numerous color drawings and paintings created by research participants (see featured artist Sherana Harriette Frances' book, Drawing It Out: Befriending the Unconscious. Many of these depict archetypal images from the collective human consciousness, forming a powerful addition to the text. LSD Psychotherapy is a valuable source of information for those who are involved with LSD in any way, whether as parents, teachers, researchers, legislators, or students of the human psyche. The approach to healing described in this book is inspired by the eternal desire of humankind for wholeness and an enduring grasp of reality. -
Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide
2006 • O.T. Oss & O.N. Oeric, Terence McKenna
Psilocybin
In the 1970s two of the most influential thinkers of the psychedelic era gathered what was then known about psilocybin botany and culture and presented it in Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide. Writing under pseudonyms, the McKenna brothers provided simple, reliable, and productive methods for magic mushroom propagation, including black-and-white photographs that showed the techniques of the time. The development of more modern cultivation techniques does not eclipse the cultural contributions of this book. Philosophical asides, whimsical illustrations evoking the mystical nature of mushrooms, and speculations about the relationship of these organisms to humankind provide a lasting legacy. Truly the classic manual on home cultivation, the wisdom of Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide continues to inspire new students of psycho-mycology—and refreshes psychedelic memories for others. -
The Antipodes of the Mind
2003 • Benny Shanon
Ayahuasca
This is a pioneering cognitive psychological study of Ayahuasca, a plant-based Amazonian psychotropic brew. Benny Shanon presents a comprehensive charting of the various facets of the special state of mind induced by Ayahuasca, and analyzes them from a cognitive psychological perspective. Healso presents some philosophical reflections. Empirically, the research presented in this book is based on the systematic recording of the author's extensive experiences with the brew and on the interviewing of a large number of informants: indigenous people, shamans, members of different religioussects using Ayahuasca, and travellers. In addition to its being the most thorough study of the Ayahuasca experience to date, the book lays the theoretical foundations for the psychological study of non-ordinary states of consciousness in general. -
Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past
2002 • Betty Eisner
LSD
Remembrances of LSD therapy past by Betty Grover Eisner is a memoir that draws on her experiences as a psychotherapist who had fostered the first written attempt to integrate the notion of the ‘set and setting’ within the framework of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. In 1957, she had worked with the psychiatrist Sidney Cohen to investigate the techniques for creating the optimal conditions for integrative psychedelic experiences, and continued to investigate how the set and setting shape the outcome of psychedelic experiences. Her interests were also informed by personal contact with Humphrey Osmond and Aldous Huxley amongst others and entailed a principled approach for the selection of LSD patients for therapy, the preparation process, as well as the use of music, photographs, mirrors, and post-session activities in the hospital’s art clinic. Her book conveys the importance of creating better conditions to enable subjects to receive the full benefits of LSD psychotherapy. -
Ecstasy: The Complete Guide
2001 • Julie Holland
MDMA
Use of the drug Ecstasy, once confined to the teen rave scene and college campuses, is exploding across America, from high schools to upscale clubs. Described by users as the most intense euphoria they know and by detractors as a cause of brain damage and even death, Ecstasy has generated unprecedented levels of interest-and misinformation. Written by the world's leading experts on MDMA, Ecstasy: The Complete Guide takes the first unbiased look at the risks and the benefits of this unique drug, including the science of how it works; its promise as a treatment for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, and other illnesses; and how to minimize the risk of illicit use. Whether you are a raver, a concerned parent, or a professional wanting the most recent reports on MDMA research, Ecstasy: The Complete Guide provides the answers you need. -
DMT: The Spirit Molecule
2000 • Rick Strassman, M.D.
DMT
A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. • A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research. • Provides a unique scientific explanation for the phenomenon of alien abduction experiences. From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected sixty volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. In Strassman's volunteers, it consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, aliens, angels, and spirits. Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives. Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by Rene Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the bold case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that "alien abduction experiences" are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul.