With the psychedelic renaissance in full swing, and an explosion of interest in plant medicine around the world, there has never been a better time to learn more about entheogens. As we continue to celebrate the launch of our brand new website, we’ve curated 15 of the best new books on psychedelics – and we’re giving them away!
Once you register, you’ll be in the running to win every week, not just the week you signed up!
Week 1:
- Your Psilocybin Companion by Michelle Janikian
- Magic Mushroom Explorer by Simon G Powell
- Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience by David Luke
Week 2:
- Psychedelics & Spirituality by Thomas B. Roberts
- Mescaline by Mike Jay
- The Psychedelic Renaissance by Ben Sessa
Week 3:
- The Psychedelic Future of the Mind by Thomas Roberts
- Listening to Ayahuasca by Rachel Harris
- The Psychedelic Renaissance by Ben Sessa
Week 4:
- Consciousness Medicine by Francoise Bourzat
- MindApps by Thomas B. Roberts
- The Psychedelic Renaissance by Ben Sessa
Week 5:
- Taking My Mind Back by Gerardo Urias – signed copy
- Trip by Tao Lin (+ free cover artwork print!)
- The Psychedelic Renaissance by Ben Sessa
Week 6:
- Confrontation with the Unconscious: Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychedelic Experience by Scott J. Hill
- The Psychedelic Renaissance by Ben Sessa
- Out of the Shadows: A Cornucopia from the Psychedelic Press by Robert Dickins, Tim Read
Good Luck! Find out more about each of these amazing books below!
The Psychedelic Renaissance
By Ben Sessa
This book is a succinct, entertaining overview of the emerging “Psychedelic Renaissance” written by an insider, and one of the brightest young architects of this new emerging paradigm. With intelligence, fact-based optimism and compassion Sessa throws open the doors of perception and guides the reader through the complexities of the history, pharmacology, legality and potential of these miraculous molecules.
Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience
By David Luke
Scientist and psychonaut David Luke weaves personal experience and scientific research in this comprehensive exploration of chemically mediated extraordinary human experiences. In his fascinating book David plunges into the controversial topic of psychedelics and gives the backstory, the front story, and possible ways forward to bring paranormal and psychedelic research together, and further our understanding of both.
Your Psilocybin Companion
By Michelle Janikan
In this book, you’ll find a comprehensive yet friendly guide to everything there is to know about magic mushrooms.
Learn how to plan safe, effective trips with easy-to-follow step-by-step advice. Discover how to train a guide to take care of those on psychedelic voyages, as well as how to access the transformative nature of these experiences. Even learn how microdosing can improve your mood, cognitive functioning, creativity, physical stamina, and more.
Magic Mushroom Explorer
By Simon G Powell
Interweaving the most recent scientific studies in the United States and Britain, more than 25 years of sacred mushroom exploration, and behind-the-scenes details on the political wars against psychedelics, Simon G. Powell offers a guide to safely navigating and maximizing the healing and spiritual potential of psilocybin.
Powell explores the ecopsychological effects of wild psychedelic mushrooms, including enhanced biophilia, expanded awareness, mystical visions, and eco-shamanic encounters. He reveals how the beings and otherworldly teachers common in psilocybin experiences are actually emissaries from our higher consciousness that emerge when the floodgates of perception have been opened.
Psychedelics & Spirituality
By Thomas Roberts
In this book, more than 25 spiritual leaders, scientists, and psychedelic visionaries examine how we can return to the primary spiritual encounters at the basis of all religions through the guided use of psychedelics. With contributions by Albert Hofmann, Huston Smith, Stanislav Grof, Charles Tart, Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Myron Stolaroff, and many others, this book explores protocols for ceremonial and spiritual use of psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and MDMA, and the challenges of transforming entheogenic insights into enduring change.
Mescaline
By Mike Jay
Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-twentieth century through Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, after which the word ‘psychedelic’ was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: the earliest Andean cultures depicted mescaline-containing cacti in their temples.
Mescaline was isolated in 1897 from the peyote cactus, first encountered by Europeans during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. During the twentieth century it was used by psychologists investigating the secrets of consciousness, spiritual seekers from Aleister Crowley to the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, artists exploring the creative process, and psychiatrists looking to cure schizophrenia. Meanwhile peyote played a vital role in preserving and shaping Native American identity. Drawing on botany, pharmacology, ethnography, and the mind sciences and examining the mescaline experiences of figures from William James to Walter Benjamin to Hunter S. Thompson, this is an enthralling narrative of mescaline’s many lives.
Consciousness Medicine
By Francoise Bourzat
Written equally for counselors and for clients, Consciousness Medicine provides a therapeutic framework that author Françoise Bourzat developed combining psychotherapy with 35 years of fieldwork among the Mazatec people of Mexico, who have a long tradition of taking psychedelics as medicine. The book guides the reader through preparation, setting intentions and goals, and the different types of experience one may have in an expanded state of consciousness, as well as guidance on how a trained counselor can best support someone through these states. The book then explores the art of integration–the application of the wisdom gained from such experiences into daily life–and how a guide or therapist can support the full integration of a journey after it is over. Enhanced by Françoise’s personal stories along with accounts of clients, the book builds a powerful case for a holistic view of non-ordinary reality and concludes with a heartfelt argument that modern psychotherapy include expanded states of consciousness in earnest.
The Psychedelic Future of the Mind
By Thomas B. Roberts
Exploring the bright future of psychedelics, Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., reveals how new uses for entheogens will enrich individuals as well as society as a whole. With contributions from Charles Grob, M.D., and Roger N. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., the book explains how psychedelics can raise individual and business attitudes away from selfcentredness, improve daily life with strengthened feelings of meaningfulness and spirituality, and help us understand and redesign the human mind, leading to the possibility of a neurosingularity a time when future brains surpass our current ones. Roberts envisions a future where you will seek psychedelic therapy not only for psychological reasons but also for personal growth, creative problem solving, improved brain function, and heightened spiritual awareness.
Listening to Ayahuasca
By Rachel Harris
When National Geographic Adventure published an article in 2006 about the powerful antidepressant effects of ayahuasca, the piece received a phenomenal reader response. That article struck a chord with psychotherapist Rachel Harris, who had encountered many clients unresponsive to traditional therapy and antidepressant protocols. Used for more than 8,000 years in the Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca is a powerful and illegal psychedelic that has distressing gastrointestinal side effects. Yet Harris found many willing to try it, so deep was their suffering. Harris here shares her original research into its effects on depression, anxiety, and PTSD, along with her own personal experiences. By detailing ayahuasca’s risks and benefits, she aims to help those driven to investigate ayahuasca to do so safely and to give their psychological caregivers a template for transformative caring and healing.”
Confrontation with the Unconscious: Jungian Depth Psychology and Psychedelic Experience
By Scott J. Hill
Confrontation with the Unconscious intertwines psychedelic research, personal accounts of psychedelic experiences, and C. G. Jung’s work on trauma, the shadow, psychosis, and psychospiritual transformation – including Jung’s own confrontation with the unconscious – to show the relevance of Jung’s penetrating insights to the work of Stanislav Grof, Ann Shulgin, Ronald Sandison, Margot Cutner, among other psychedelic and transpersonal researchers, and to demonstrate the great value of Jung’s penetrating insights for understanding difficult psychedelic experiences and promoting safe and effective psychedelic exploration and psychotherapy.
Out of the Shadows: A Cornucopia from the Psychedelic Press
By Robert Dickins & Tim Read
This collection of original papers from the Psychedelic Press UK journal takes us on a fascinating journey through topics such as the use of psychedelics in medicine and psychotherapy, archetypal psychology and spiritual awakenings, and creative surges in literature, myth, and visionary art.
MindApps
By Thomas B. Roberts
Just as we can write and install apps in our electronic devices, we can construct “mindapps” and install them in our brain-mind complex, and just as digital apps add capabilities to our devices, mindapps can expand our mental powers and creative abilities, allowing us to intentionally redesign our minds.
MindApps shows students and scholars how psychedelics provide insightful nuggets into the sciences, humanities, philosophy, literary criticism, religion, social relations, and even for inventing new paradigms and designing new ways to use our minds. He also looks at the future of mindapps, the potential for new mindapps yet to be invented, and how installing multiple mindapps can produce new, yet to be explored mind states. Drawing on decades of research, he shows how psychedelics in particular are “ideagens”–powerful tools for generating new ideas and new ways of thinking.
Taking My Mind Back
By Gerardo Urias
Taking Back My Mind details Gerardo’s journey overcoming severe clinical depression with the use of psilocybin mushrooms, commonly known as “magic mushrooms.” His story begins in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, where divorce, his dad’s death, and several major health issues plunged him down the dark rabbit hole of depression. After ten months of intense suffering, and falling victim to pharmaceutical drugs, Gerardo reached the brink of suicide. Then, on December 22, 2017, he ate a handful of psilocybin mushrooms, and took a walk on the beach with his brother. This experience jolted him out of the deadly downward spiral he was on, literally overnight, sparking his rapid, magical, and transformative two year journey that eventually led him to the majestic mountains of southern Oaxaca in Mexico to shoot a documentary about his journey, and his experience with the local indigenous Mazatec, who continue to use these plant medicines and fungi for their own mental, emotional, and spiritual well being, like they have done for thousands of years. This adventure turned into the most important, educational, and enlightening trip of his life, learning things about Mexico, and about his own family even, that he could have never imagined. By sharing his story, Gerardo hopes to raise awareness for these life saving plant medicines, practices, and philosophies that keep him thriving every day.
Trip
By Tao Lin
While reeling from one of the most creative–but at times self-destructive–outpourings of his life, Tao Lin discovered the strange and exciting work of Terence McKenna. McKenna, the leading advocate of psychedelic drugs since Timothy Leary, became for Lin both an obsession and a revitalizing force. In Trip, Lin’s first book-length work of nonfiction, he charts his recovery from pharmaceutical drugs, his surprising and positive change in worldview, and his four-year engagement with some of the hardest questions: Why do we make art? Is the world made of language? What happens when we die? And is the imagination more real than the universe?
In exploring these ideas and detailing his experiences with psilocybin, DMT, salvia, and cannabis, Lin takes readers on a trip through nature, his own past, psychedelic culture, and the unknown.
Altered States
By Ben Sessa
What actually happens to you when you drink a cup of coffee? Is chocolate really an aphrodisiac? How do drugs like alcohol and cannabis work? Did psychedelics play a part in human evolution? In this fascinating little book, leading psychopharmacologist Dr. Ben Sessa describes the drugs, legal and illegal, natural and synthesised, from nicotine to endorphins, sugar to antidepressants, that humans all over the world take every day to change their state of mind.
