There is something a little bit scary about reading The Road of Excess -– this meticulous exploration of the influence of narcotics on literature is like a late night literary overdose.
The author, Marcus Boon, is Assistant Professor of English at York University in Toronto, and his academic background shines through without bogging down this intriguing subject.
Where it becomes scary ... [ read more ]
Antero Alli’s Towards an Archaeology of the Soul is not an easy book to read, and this is perhaps best explained by the book’s subtitle: A Paratheatrical Workbook. Every page of this book asks you to get up and do, which can be quite a challenge to take sitting down.
Inspired by the groundbreaking laboratory theatre approach of Jerzy Grotowski, ... [ read more ]
In his recent book, The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place, Buddhist seeker and explorer Ian Baker delivers 500+ pages of well-researched background and detailed travelogues recounting his quest for Shangri-La. We follow Baker and his companions on three separate journeys into Pemako, a perilous and isolated region of Tibet. Baker’s major geographical discovery ... [ read more ]
Did you know that heroin was once legally sold as a cough syrup, that lithium (the same thing I put in my watch?) is the magical drug for bi-polar disorders though no one can explain how it works? That cocaine, after being advocated by Freud, was as popular then in the pharmacies as Valium is today? That the ... [ read more ]
The first half of Digital Mantras creates an historical backdrop upon which the author splashes his vision of the next wave of art and knowledge and, in the end, of reality. It weaves together discussions of language, philosophy, music, and visual art, both in theory and in practice. The second half of the book delves into the present ... [ read more ]
There are two dominant attitudes toward modernity inside contemporary drug culture, and both of them, in almost diametrically opposed ways, attempt to slip outside of our history, that engulfing tsunami of politics and commodities, technology and cultural memes that make up the West. On the one hand you have the romantic turn ... [ read more ]
A cursory glance at the areas of inquiry of researcher Rupert Sheldrake might set off some skepticism alarms: paranormal events, morphogenetic fields, psychic phenomenon involving pets. But Sheldrake is careful to not sound like a quack in a book that asks to be taken seriously by both scientists and inquisitive laymen. In Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, ... [ read more ]
I remember being surprised when I first encountered resistance after bringing up the Grateful Dead in conversation among younger members of the psychedelic community. Even in light of some annoying public perceptions shaped by the embarrassing behavior of part of their audience and their own personal disintegration towards the end, I always assumed that their crucial contributions to the tapestry ... [ read more ]
The Heroin User’s Handbook, by Francis Moraes, bills itself as neither “glorifying nor demonizing the drug.” The words “Don’t Try Heroin” are printed in bold across the middle of the very first page. But the last page of the book lists the “Ten Commandments of Responsible Heroin Use” and the pages in between are completely crammed with ... [ read more ]
The Food and Drug Administration continues to maintain that a patient has a better chance of being struck by lightning than of taking bad medicine. But Eban makes a convincing case that while Bush and Co. keep talking about the hazards of U.S. citizens’ buying prescription drugs at cheaper prices from foreign markets, such as Canada, the FDA can’t credibly guarantee the safety of the U.S. drug supply. [ read more ]