Archives: books

True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise by Terence McKenna is a classical journey of the psychonaut, an intentional exploration of one’s conceptual understanding through a psychedelic drug that conduces radical shift in perspective through direct first-person insights into the nature of reality and one’s place within it. The most famous journey took place in the Colombian Amazon with his brother Dennis McKenna, which they referred to as the ‘La Chorrera Experiment’ that entailed a heroic dose of the psilocybin-containing mushroom — Stropharia cubensis — enhanced by MAO inhibitory effects of Banisteriopsis caapi. After re-analyzing this experience, after its first publication in ‘The Invisible Landscape’, McKenna implies that the nature of his investigation has greater philosophical implications, beyond the existentialism of one’s personal experience, that entail meaning and structure of the Self within the world at large.

The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History by Terence McKenna is a collection of articles, essays and interviews which contain a web of understanding he has gleaned from his psychedelic explorations. It was described by McKenna as “my explorer’s notepad, my journey of travel through time and ideological space”. He argues for the return of the psychedelic experience into human society via shamanism and the incorporation of shamanic techniques within a scientific paradigm that aims to transform society, starting with the individual dissolution of the ego.

The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching by Terence McKenna, Dennis J. McKenna offered the first published narrative of their famous ‘La Chorrera Experiment’ where the brothers had a paranormal and revelatory encounter occasioned by a heroic dose of the psilocybin-containing mushroom — Stropharia cubensis. They held that an “invisible landscape” lay beyond the individual mind, to which shamans, schizophrenics, and psychonauts all had access. Casting themselves as researchers, the brothers aimed to shed light on this mystical landscape and offer their self-reported explorations for the interest of empirical investigators, while offering speculative theories about subatomic particles within our DNA determining the nature of consciousness and a doomsday prophecy loosely based on the hexagrams of the I-Ching.

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.

Through the Gateway of the Heart: Accounts of Experiences with MDMA and Other Empathogenic Substances by Sophia Adamson, Ralph Metzner, and Padma Catell explores the ways in which MDMA facilitates transformative experiences when administered within a supportive therapeutic setting. Originally published in 1985 before MDMA became illegal, it entails a short story collection of first-hand MDMA experiences, as well as detailed guidelines for the set and setting in the appendix. The book demonstrates the potential of MDMA for generating insight, facilitating empathic communication, and supporting spiritual practice.

The Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens edited by Charles Grob and Jim Grigsby offers scientists an overview of our current understanding of psychedelic research. Chapters by veterans such as Dennis McKenna and David Nichols, and top researchers like Torsten Passie and Enzo Tagliazucchi intertwine to give a (near) complete overview of psychedelic research.