"A brilliant and brave investigation by Michael Pollan, author of five New York Times best sellers, 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...

In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes, the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present...

Hallucinogenic drugs?popularly called psychedelics?have been used by human societies for thousands of years. Today, scientists are taking a second look at many of these mind-altering substances?both natural and synthetic?and discovering that they can have profoundly positive clinical impacts, helping patients struggling with a range of afflictions from addiction to depression and PTSD.

Don Juan concludes Castaneda's lessons in the sorcerer's art with a dazzling series of visions.

In 1960 Timothy Leary was not yet famous—or infamous—and Allen Ginsberg was both. Leary, eager to expand his psychedelic experiments at Harvard to include accomplished artists and writers, knew that Ginsberg held the key to bohemia’s elite. “America’s most conspicuous beatnik” was recruited as Ambassador of Psilocybin under the auspices of an Ivy League professor, and together they launched the psychedelic revolution and turned on the...

A revealing, courageous, fascinating, and funny account of the author's experiment with microdoses of LSD in an effort to treat a debilitating mood disorder, of her quest to understand a misunderstood drug, and of her search for a really good day. When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from "Lewis Carroll," Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband...

Presents the lessons of Yaqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan Matus on how to "stop the world," his term for achieving certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered.

At the center of the book is a new and formidable figure, dona Soledad, a woman whose powers are turned against Castaneda in a struggle that almost consumes him. Dona Soledad has been taught by don Juan, transformed by his teachings from a bent and gray-haired old woman into a sensual, lithe, deeply sexual figure of awesome and mysterious power, a sorceress whose mission is to test Castaneda by a series of terrifying tricks. Castaneda's combat with...

This book is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in the early sixties at a Harvard-sponsored psychedelic-drug research project, transforming their lives and American culture and launching the mind/body/spirit movement that inspired the explosion of yoga classes, organic produce, and alternative medicine. The four men came together in a time of upheaval and experimentation, and their exploration of an...

The bestselling author of All the Shah's Men and The Brothers tells the astonishing story of the man who oversaw the CIA's secret drug and mind-control experiments of the 1950s and 1960s.