Now on Netflix as a 4-part documentary series!

Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured. --New York Times

A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book

A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.

A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's mental travelogue is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

The instant New York Times bestseller A Washington Post Notable Book One of NPR's Best Books of the Year

Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways. --New York Times Book Review

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants--and the equally powerful taboos.

Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a drug? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime?

In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs--opium, caffeine, and mescaline--and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings?

In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively--as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.

A riveting look at the tremendous promise and inherent risks of the use of psychedelics in mental health treatment through the lens of a New York Times reporter whose journalistic exploration of this emerging field began with a personal crisis.

When he signed up for a psychedelic retreat run by a mysterious Argentine woman deep in Brazil's rainforest in early 2018, Ernesto Londoño, a veteran New York Times journalist, was so depressed he had come close to jumping off his terrace weeks earlier. His nine-day visit to Spirit Vine Ayahuasca Retreat Center included four nighttime ceremonies during which participants imbibed a vomit-inducing plant-based brew that contained DMT, a powerful mind-altering compound.

The ayahuasca trips provided Londoño an instant reprieve from his depression and became the genesis of a personal transformation that anchors this sweeping journalistic exploration of the booming field of medicinal psychedelics. Londoño introduces readers to a dazzling array of psychedelic enthusiasts who are upending our understanding of trauma and healing. They include Indigenous elders who regard psychedelics as portals to the spirit world; religious leaders who use mind-bending substances as sacraments; war veterans suffering from PTSD who credit psychedelics with changing their lives; and clinicians trying to resurrect a promising field of medicine hastily abandoned in the 1970s as the United States declared a War on Drugs.

Londoño's riveting personal narrative pulls the reader through a deeply researched and brilliantly reported account of a game-changing industry on the rise. Trippy is the definitive book on psychedelics and mental health today, and Londoño's in-depth and nuanced look at this shifting landscape will be pivotal in guiding policymakers and readers as they make sense of the perils, limitations, and promises of turning to psychedelics in the pursuit of healing.

You are in possession of an exquisite machine motionlessly buoyant in the softly circulating fluids of your skull. A world-building machine. And psychedelic molecules are the tools for tuning and operating this machine...

From LSD to magic mushrooms to DMT to Salvia divinorum, psychedelics are used across the globe to stimulate the brain and change the nature of the subjective world. In sufficient doses, these molecules have the potential, not only to alter the structure of the normal waking world, but to replace it entirely - to hurl the tripper into fantastical realms of immense complexity and strangeness, bursting with extraordinary ecologies of apparently intelligent and communicative beings. Whilst these effects seem almost impossible to comprehend, let alone explain, as our understanding the brain's ability to construct our model of reality in normal waking life deepens, the mechanism by which psychedelic molecules perturb its world-building machinery such that entirely novel and unimaginably bizarre worlds emerge begins to reveal itself.

Chemical pharmacologist and neurobiologist Dr. Andrew R. Gallimore (author of Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game) explains in unprecedented depth and detail how psychedelic drugs interface with the human brain, alter the structure and dynamics of the experienced world, and rapidly and efficiently switch the brain's reality channel, opening up a vast number of alternate worlds for discovery and exploration. Ultimately, using both molecular and post-molecular technologies, humans will be able to enter countless different worlds at will, to establish communication with the beings resident therein, and to engineer reality itself.

Since prehistory, humans have used a range of psychedelic drugs for communion with the gods, connection with nature, or for the pure pleasure and wonder they generate as they transform the mind and the world. But one natural psychedelic in particular towers above the rest in its astonishing power to replace the normal waking world with a bizarre alternate reality replete with a diverse panoply of intelligent alien beings. As well as being the most powerful, N, N-dimethyltryptamine, more commonly known as DMT, is also the most common naturally-occurring psychedelic and can be found in countless plant species scattered across the Earth. DMT carries a profound message embedded in our reality, a message that we are now beginning to decode.

In Alien Information Theory, neurobiologist, chemist, and pharmacologist, Dr. Andrew R. Gallimore, explains how DMT provides the secret to the very structure of our reality, and how our Universe can be likened to a cosmic game that we now find ourselves playing.

Gallimore explains how our reality was constructed using a fundamental code which generated our Universe -- and countless others -- as a digital device built from pure information with the purpose of enabling conscious intelligences, such as ourselves, to emerge. You will learn how fundamental digital information self-organises and complexifies to generate the myriad complex forms and organisms that fill our world; how your brain constructs your subjective world and how psychedelic drugs alter the structure of this world; how DMT switches the reality channel by allowing the brain to access information from normally hidden orthogonal dimensions of reality. And, finally, you will learn how DMT provides the secret to exiting our Universe permanently -- to complete the cosmic game and to become interdimensional citizens of hyperspace.

Alien Information Theory is a unique account of this hidden structure of reality and our place within it, drawing on a diverse range of disciplines -- including neuroscience, computer science, physics, and pharmacology -- to carefully explain these complex ideas, which are illustrated with full-colour diagrams throughout.

A mythological journey through 10 archetypes of psychedelic healing: ancient stories, tangible tools, and depth psychology insights

Designed for a new generation of psychedelic facilitators and seekers, Psychedelics and the Soul invokes the traditions of Jungian depth psychology, mythology, and Indigenous cultural wisdom to meet a critical question of our times: How can the emerging field of psychedelic medicine heal the soul amid planetary crisis and collective opportunity?

Psychedelic therapist Simon Yugler invites the reader on a mythological journey, using depth psychology to explore 10 universal themes that transcend our individual experiences--and reveal how psychedelic medicine can heal the soul and our collective unconscious in a time of uncertainty and initiation:

• The Well: The Unconscious, Symbolism, & the Mythic Unknown
• The Temple: Beyond Set & Setting
• The Underworld: Shadow, Grief, & the Descent to Soul
• The Serpent: Psychedelic Somatics & Shedding Your Skin
• The Monstrous: Trauma, Exiles, & the Wound That Heals

• The Trickster: Marginality, the Crossroads, & the Liminal Road
• The Guide: Power, Authenticity, & Inner Authority
• The Sacred Mountain: Vision, Ecstasy, & Becoming Nobody
• The Tree of Life: Animism, Climate Change, & the Ensouled Earth
• The Journey Home: Integration, Community, & Dancing with the Village

Each archetype acts as a prism, using myth, fable, and universal wisdom to reflect back to the reader the collective experiences and unconscious truths that shape our psyches--and that are made more profound and accessible through psychedelics. Yugler shares how entheogens and plant medicine open a gateway to our understanding of our culture, selves, and interconnected reality toward wide-scale social and planetary healing.

- Shows how Amanita microdoses offered help and healing for a broad range of conditions, including hormonal dysfunction, allergies, gingivitis, heartburn, eczema, psoriasis, depression, epilepsy, hypertension, insomnia, and migraine

- Reveals how Amanita microdoses are effective for pain relief and for interrupting addictions to alcohol, opiates, nicotine, caffeine, and other narcotics

- Details how to safely identify, prepare, and preserve Amanita muscaria, including recipes for tincture, tea, oil, and ointment as well as proper microdose amounts

Exploring the results of the first international study on the medicinal effects of microdosing with Amanita muscaria, the psychoactive fly agaric mushroom, Baba Masha, M.D., documents how more than 3,000 volunteers experienced positive outcomes for a broad range of health conditions as well as enhanced creativity and sports performance. Masha discovered that Amanita microdoses offered help and healing for hormonal dysfunction, low libido, allergies, asthma, swelling, gingivitis, nail fungus, digestive issues, and skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis as well as recovery from stroke and cardiac arrest. She found beneficial effects on depression, epilepsy, hypertension, insomnia, and low appetite and shows how Amanita microdoses are quite effective for pain relief, including in cases of rheumatoid arthritis, menstrual pain, and migraine.

The author also reveals how Amanita microdoses can interrupt addictions to alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, opiates, and other narcotics. The author details how to safely identify, harvest, prepare, and preserve Amanita muscaria, and she includes recipes for tincture, tea, oil, and ointment as well as proper microdose amounts. She shares more than 780 personal Amanita microdose reports from study participants, detailing the positive, negative, and neutral effects they experienced, and she also shares some Amanita large-dose trip reports, cautioning against this practice because of the mushroom's strong dissociative properties, including amnesia.

Revealing the vast healing potential of this ancient mushroom ally, Masha's study shows not only how Amanita can help with many health conditions but also how it activates the ability to feel the value and the significance of your own life experience.

Psychedelics for spiritual, therapeutic, and problem-solving use

- Presents practices for safe and successful psychedelic voyages, including the benefits of having a guide and how to be a guide

- Reviews the value of psychedelics for healing and self-discovery as well as how LSD has facilitated scientific and technical problem-solving

- Reveals how microdosing (ultra-low doses) improve cognitive functioning, emotional balance, and physical stamina

- This year 600,000 people in the U.S. alone will try LSD for the the first time, joining the 23 million who have already experimented with this substance

Called America's wisest and most respected authority on psychedelics and their use, James Fadiman has been involved with psychedelic research since the 1960s. In this guide to the immediate and long-term effects of psychedelic use for spiritual (high dose), therapeutic (moderate dose), and problem-solving (low dose and microdose) purposes, Fadiman outlines best practices for safe, sacred entheogenic voyages learned through his more than 40 years of experience--from the benefits of having a sensitive guide during a session (and how to be one) to the importance of the setting and pre-session intention.

Fadiman reviews the newest as well as the neglected research into the psychotherapeutic value of visionary drug use for increased personal awareness and a host of serious medical conditions, including his recent study of the reasons for and results of psychedelic use among hundreds of students and professionals. He reveals new uses for LSD and other psychedelics, including microdosing, extremely low doses for improved cognitive functioning and emotional balance. Cautioning that psychedelics are not for everyone, he dispels the myths and misperceptions about psychedelics circulating in textbooks and clinics as well as on the internet. Exploring the life-changing experiences of Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, and Huston Smith as well as Francis Crick and Steve Jobs, Fadiman shows how psychedelics, used wisely, can lead not only to healing but also to scientific breakthroughs and spiritual epiphanies.

A professor of religious studies meticulously documents his insights from 73 high-dose LSD sessions conducted over the course of 20 years

- Chronicles, with unprecedented rigor, the author's systematic journey into a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence

- Makes a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience and discusses the challenge of integrating these experiences into everyday life

- Shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation and help birth the future of humanity

On November 24, 1979, Christopher M. Bache took the first step on what would become a life-changing journey. Drawing from his training as a philosopher of religion, Bache set out to explore his mind and the mind of the universe as deeply and systematically as possible--with the help of the psychedelic drug LSD. Following protocols established by Stanislav Grof, Bache's 73 high-dose LSD sessions over the course of 20 years drew him into a deepening communion with cosmic consciousness.

Journey alongside professor Bache as he touches the living intelligence of our universe--an intelligence that both embraced and crushed him--and demonstrates how direct experience of the divine can change your perspective on core issues in philosophy and religion. Chronicling his 73 sessions, the author reveals the spiral of death and rebirth that took him through the collective unconscious into the creative intelligence of the universe. Making a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience, Bache shares his immersion in the fierce love and creative intent of the unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence. He describes the incalculable value of embracing the pain and suffering he encountered in his sessions and the challenges he faced integrating his experiences into his everyday life. His journey documents a shift from individual consciousness to collective consciousness, from archetypal reality to Divine Oneness and the Diamond Luminosity that lies outside cyclic existence.

Pushing the boundaries of theory and practice, the author shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation, beyond the present into the future, revealing spirit and matter in perfect balance.

How psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma--an Afrofuturistic take on Black psychedelia toward joy and liberation

The mainstream has long viewed psychedelic medicine as the purview of people with privilege: money to burn, time to trip, and the social safety to experiment. Though psychedelics have deep roots in Black and Indigenous cultures, Western psychedelic spaces have historically excluded People of Color--but the radical healing of psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine aren't just for a rarefied elite. And they're definitely not just for white people.

Combined with quality therapy, safe and equitable access, and full-scale societal healing, psychedelics are a shortcut to liberation, dignity, and power--the Promised Land as envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Risqué? Sure. But it's true.

In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nicholas Powers charts how psychedelics can heal racial pain passed on through generations. He shows how this medicine unlocks a return to one's self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and being-here-now otherwise disrupted by whiteness--and he explores how psychedelics can catalyze individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.

Powers unpacks how the Drug War, racist policing, mass incarceration, and community gatekeeping intersect to sideline POC--specifically Black people--from the psychedelic movement. He asserts the need for a full-stop reclamation and revolution: one that eschews psychedelic exceptionalism, breaks down raced and classed constructs of good vs. bad drugs, realizes healing, and lives into a free, strong, and independent Blackness.

In the historical records of European Witchcraft, one of the most notorious allegations against the accused was the use of a magical salve to gain the power of nocturnal flight. Rubbed on the body, it was said to be compounded of toxic herbs, animals, and noxious constituents such as human fat, and could effect 'travel' by the witch over great distances. According to legend, the ointment, or the instructions for its manufacture were given to the witch directly by the Devil himself in the midst of their frenzied Sabbats. Despite the persistence of these features of the witches' ointment in lore, actual recipes for it were rare and often speculative.

Initially the obsession of clerical and legal authorities, then of writers on Natural Magic, the ointment continued to perplex researchers well into the Age of Enlightenment. In more recent times, it has become the fascination of pharmacological speculation, psychology, entheogenic theory, and occult experiment. Despite the curiosity it has generated over the centuries, the mystery of the witches' ointment abides.

Bringing a much-needed approach of plant lore and folk magic to the subject, The Devil's Ointment examines the witches' salve against the broader historical use of magical unguents and greases, considering supernatural contexts in addition to witchcraft. This is complimented by the additional investigational viewpoint of folk medicine, which made therapeutic use of many of the toxic plants ascribed to the ointment. Rationales for use, source materials, and symbolical ingredients of the european pharmacopoeia are also examined, revealing the witches' ointments as but one small part of the essential and timeless accoutrements of European occult practices.

An exploration of the connections between feminine consciousness and altered states from ancient times to present day

- Explores the feminine qualities of the psychedelic self, ancient female roots of shamanism, and how altered states naturally tap into the female archetype

- Discusses feminist psychedelic activism, female ecstatics, goddess consciousness, the dark feminine, and embodied paths to ecstasy

- Includes contributions by Martina Hoffmann, Amanda Sage, Carl Ruck, and others

Women have been shamans since time immemorial, not only because women have innate intuitive gifts, but also because the female body is wired to more easily experience altered states, such as during the process of birth. Whether female or male, the altered states produced by psychedelics and ecstatic trance expand our minds to tap into and enhance our feminine states of consciousness as well as reconnect us to the web of life.

In this book, we discover the transformative powers of feminine consciousness and altered states as revealed by contributors both female and male, including revered scholars, visionary artists, anthropologists, modern shamans, witches, psychotherapists, and policy makers. The book begins with a deep look at the archetypal dimensions of the feminine principle and how entheogens give us open access to these ancient archetypes, including goddess consciousness and the dark feminine. The contributors examine the female roots of shamanism, including the role of women in the ancient rites of Dionysus, the Eleusinian Sacrament, and Norse witchcraft. They explore psychedelic and embodied paths to ecstasy, such as trance dance, holotropic breathwork, and the similarities of giving birth and taking mind-altering drugs. Looking at the healing potential of the feminine and altered states, they discuss the power of plant medicines, including ayahuasca, and the recasting of the medicine-woman archetype for the modern world. They explore the feminine in the creative process and discuss feminist psychedelic activism, sounding the call for more female voices in the psychedelic research community.

Sharing the power of femtheogenic wisdom to help us move beyond a patriarchal society, this book reveals how feminine consciousness, when intermingled with psychedelic knowledge, carries and imparts the essence of inclusivity, interconnectedness, and balance our world needs to heal and consciously evolve.

LSD My Problem Child is the story of LSD told by a concerned yet hopeful father and organic chemist, the late Albert Hofmann, PhD.

Credited with synthesizing and discovering the psychedelic effects of LSD, Hofmann traces the path of the drug from a promising psychiatric research medicine to a recreational drug sparking hysteria and prohibition.

In LSD: My Problem Child, Dr. Hofmann documents his trek across Mexico to discover sacred plants related to LSD and shares correspondences with notable figures including Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and Walter Vogt. The underlying current of this book is Dr. Hofmann's powerful conclusion that mystical experiences may be our planet's best hope for survival. Whether induced by LSD, meditation, or arising spontaneously, such experiences help us to comprehend, as Hofmann wrote, the wonder, the mystery of the divine, in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula, in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people.

More than sixty years after the birth of Albert Hofmann's problem child, his vision of its true potential is reaching relevancy as psychedelics enjoy a new resurgence in popular discourse. In 2022, Hofmann's pioneering work was featured in the Netflix documentary series, How to Change Your Mind.

The only psilocybin-focussed cookbook on the market.

If you've mastered the art of growing mushrooms at home and have your growing method tuned in perfectly, or you've just got very good at foraging and have a reliable patch, you'll have an endless stream of psilocybin-containing mushrooms. But where do you go from here? What's the best method of extraction to minimize loss, and how can you stave off the dreaded nausea every time you dose? What's the deal with microdosing, and how do you do it safely? And if you want to put on a three-course dosed dinner for a few of your best friends, what are the best dishes to cook? All these questions are answered, deliciously, in The Psilocybin Chef Cookbook.

Containing fifty recipes, eight different extraction methods, cocktails, drinks and more, The Psilocybin Chef Cookbook is the only psilocybin extraction and consumption guide you'll ever need. With photo-essays to illustrate each step of the extraction processes, largely vegan recipes and many that cater for gluten-free and sugar-free diets, this cookbook will be the staple of every psychonaut's kitchen.

From the best-selling authors of the The Psilocybin Mushroom Bible: The Definitive Guide to Growing and Using Magic Mushrooms, this cookbook offers sound, evidence-based methods for psilocybin extraction as well as recipes honed from the author's years of working in professional kitchens, food writing and consulting in test kitchens--as well as their years of psilocybin experimentation.

This indispensible guide is fully illustrated, with mouth watering full-color photos throughout. With eight easy-to-follow photo-essays showing you exactly how to master each extraction process, and an entire chapter dedicated to microdosing and how to do it safely and sanely, The Psilocybin Chef Cookbook teaches you how to be the psychedelic cordon bleu icon you've always wanted to be. Don't settle for choking down tea or munching down on dry shrooms; make every trip delicious!

Since prehistory, humans have used a range of psychedelic drugs for communion with the gods, connection with nature, or for the pure pleasure and wonder they generate as they transform the mind and the world. But one natural psychedelic in particular towers above the rest in its astonishing power to replace the normal waking world with a bizarre alternate reality replete with a diverse panoply of intelligent alien beings. As well as being the most powerful, N, N-dimethyltryptamine, more commonly known as DMT, is also the most common naturally-occurring psychedelic and can be found in countless plant species scattered across the Earth. DMT carries a profound message embedded in our reality, a message that we are now beginning to decode.

In Alien Information Theory, neurobiologist, chemist, and pharmacologist, Dr. Andrew R. Gallimore, explains how DMT provides the secret to the very structure of our reality, and how our Universe can be likened to a cosmic game that we now find ourselves playing.

Gallimore explains how our reality was constructed using a fundamental code which generated our Universe -- and countless others -- as a digital device built from pure information with the purpose of enabling conscious intelligences, such as ourselves, to emerge. You will learn how fundamental digital information self-organises and complexifies to generate the myriad complex forms and organisms that fill our world; how your brain constructs your subjective world and how psychedelic drugs alter the structure of this world; how DMT switches the reality channel by allowing the brain to access information from normally hidden orthogonal dimensions of reality. And, finally, you will learn how DMT provides the secret to exiting our Universe permanently -- to complete the cosmic game and to become interdimensional citizens of hyperspace.

Alien Information Theory is a unique account of this hidden structure of reality and our place within it, drawing on a diverse range of disciplines -- including neuroscience, computer science, physics, and pharmacology -- to carefully explain these complex ideas, which are illustrated with full-colour diagrams throughout.

The Way of the Psychonaut, Volume 1 is one of the most important books ever written about the human psyche and the spiritual quest.

The new understandings were made possible thanks to Albert Hofmann's discovery of LSD―the microscope and telescope of the human psyche―as well as other psychedelic substances.

This comprehensive work is a tour de force through the worlds of psychology and psychotherapy, Holotropic Breathwork, maps of the psyche, birth, sex, and death, psychospiritual rebirth, the roots of trauma, spiritual emergency and transpersonal experiences, karma and reincarnation, higher creativity, great art, and archetypes. Written in his late eighties, at the height of his magnificent career, The Way of the Psychonaut is possibly Grof's greatest contribution. The commanding breadth and depth of his knowledge is astounding, the tone of his writing easy and accessible, and his narratives brightened with amusing anecdotes, intriguing personal accounts, and brilliant case studies. Grof reviews the history of depth psychotherapy, the important revisions that are needed to make it more effective, and why the inner quest is such an essential pursuit.

As one of the fathers of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, its most experienced practitioner, and deeply deserving of a Nobel Prize in medicine, in these two volumes Grof has successfully unveiled a new and sweeping paradigm in self-exploration and healing.

The vast and practical knowledge in this book is sure to be an invaluable and treasured resource for all serious seekers.

In this monograph, I relate findings from more than 30 years of experiences and observations with this substance, in various user groups and individuals, both in the US and in Europe. I use the term underground in referring to the explorations with these substances, in the sense that they were hidden - out of respect for the restrictions and prohibitions of mainstream culture.

These are ethnographic field reports: first-hand observations from an underground sub-culture, accompanied by the experiences of a selected number of participant-observers. It is important to recognize that in research with these and other so-called psychedelic or entheogenic substances, one cannot limit the observations and reflections solely to their physical and psychological effects. As most of the people cited here emphasize, the experiences with these substances at times can go far beyond their physical and psychological effects into the deepest and highest dimensions of our existence, both the cosmic and the spiritual.

A full-color exploration of DMT beings and Ayahuasca spirits

- Examines 25 of the most commonly encountered DMT entities, from machine elves and fairies to insectoids, Reptilians, and divine beings such as Grandmother Ayahuasca

- Discusses each entity in depth, including people's encounters with them from trip reports and scientific studies, descriptions of how the entities appear and behave, and communications or teachings they impart

- Features visionary art by Sara Phinn Huntley and other artists, including Alex Grey, Andrew Jones, Luke Brown, Juliana Garces, Erial Ali, and Harry Pack

One of the features consistently noted by visitors to the hyperspace realm invoked by DMT is the existence of many different entities. In this full-color illustrated handbook for understanding the intelligent alien species of hyperspace, psychedelic explorer David Jay Brown and visionary artist Sara Phinn Huntley explore 25 of the most commonly encountered DMT beings and ayahuasca spirits, from self-transforming machine elves, ancestor spirits, tricksters, and metallic spheres to insectoid mantis beings, reptilians, gray aliens, nature spirits, and divine beings, such as the Virgin Mary, Gaia, angels, Grandmother Ayahuasca, and deities from Hindu, Egyptian, and South American spiritual traditions.

Profiling the DMT entities in the style of a naturalistic field guide, complete with evocative illustrations by Huntley and other artists such as Alex Grey, Andrew Jones, Luke Brown, Juliana Garces, Erial Ali, and Harry Pack, the authors discuss the entities in depth, including people's encounters with them, descriptions of how they appear, and summaries of the communications they impart. They explore whether these beings are generated by our minds or if they exist independently of the DMT trip.

Providing a comprehensive exploration of this world, this guide seeks to describe the alien residents of interdimensional space and help people who have encountered DMT beings integrate their experiences.

Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured. --New York Times

A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book

A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.

A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's mental travelogue is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

In many esoteric traditions, there exists an iconic or linguistic corollary between the concepts of 'poisoner' and 'sorcerer', suggesting a sinistral magical kinship. Indeed, the use of plant, animal and mineral toxins is a strand of magic originating in remotest antiquity and reaching the present day. Beyond its mundane function as an agent of corporeal harm, poisons have also served as gateways of religious ecstasy, occult knowledge, and sensorial aberration, as well as the basis of cures. Allied with Samael, the fallen serpent-angel of first transgression whose Hebrew name in some translations is 'Venom of God', this facet of magic wends through the rites of ancient Sumer and Egypt, penetrating European Necromancy, Alchemy, the arcane the rites of the Witches' Sabbath, and modern-day folk magic. VENEFICIUM concerns the intersection of magic and poison. Of particular note to this study are the herbs of the so-called 'Devil's Garden', which bear relation to the allied witchcraft concepts of the Graal of Midnight, the Witches' Supper, and the flying ointment of the witches which has exerted fascination over scholars, historians, and practitioners alike. Beyond consideration of the toxicological dimensions of magical power, the related threads of astral and philosophical poisons are also examined, and their resonance and dissonance with magical practice explored. VENEFICIUM will be of interest to students of magic, witchcraft, alchemy, botanical folklore, medicine, and occult pharmacology.