Overview

Quimby and Bayer take you on a tour of psychedelics and marijuana that may well be surprising for a number of reasons. It's not well known that LSD, by far the best known, attracted a massive amount of clinical and research interest in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, in those years there were more than a thousand clinical papers published discussing over 40,000 LSD therapy patients in addition to several dozen books and six international conferences. The current awakening interest in psychedelics is a rediscovery, not something new. This work clearly established the effectiveness of LSD for treating a broad range of mental disorders as well as alcohol addiction. Those clinicians and researchers early on made another surprising discovery. One single high- dose LSD session in many cases was all that was needed to successfully treat a number of difficulties, particularly addictions and the anxiety of terminally ill patients. More surprising still, psychedelic substances were found to open vast realms of mind and spirit, known for countless centuries only by indigenous people. A large number individuals using them for personal exploration were discovering the same thing. A question soon arose in this regard. Did they actually evoke genuine religious experiences? The answer from the researchers was 'yes.'Over the next years a number of psychedelics or plant medicines became known in the Western world or were synthesized in laboratories, the best known of which are mescaline (peyote), psilocybin (magic mushrooms), DMT (ayahuasca), ibogaine, and MDMA (ecstasy). Although technically cannabis is not a psychedelic, it belongs in this story because in many respects it has a similar history and like them holds considerable potential for healing in a number of areas.The very first people to specialize in psychedelics in their healing and spiritual practice were shamans, and they also play in important role in this story. However, encounters with mental and spiritual realms, both evoked and spontaneous, occur in a range of nondrug settings as well, and a few are discussed including afterlife encounters, near-death experiences, vision quests, spirit and alien contacts, and holotropic breathwork. Several questions are addressed. Are these psychedelics safe (in this context microdosing is discussed)? Why are they illegal? Do they work solely in terms of brain mechanisms like other drugs or is something different involved? What studies are currently underway? What do they tell us about ourselves, our possibilities, our society and world, and even reality itself? What legal, social, and economic hurdles will need to be overcome before they are fully accepted by the general public? After finishing the book you will have a wealth of information, but also new questions to pursue.

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