"Every reader will find this account fascinating. A lively and intensely personal addition to the drugs-memoir genre."-Kirkus Reviews
"You're such an important part of the psychedelic history."-Joe Rogan Experience, episode #1854
• Recounts several dozen of the author's experiences of drug and non-drug altered states of consciousness from birth to early adulthood
• Applies the lenses of four explanatory models-psychoanalysis, psychopharmacology, Zen Buddhism, and medieval Jewish metaphysics-in understanding how and why they occurred
• Demonstrates the importance of careful unflinching recollection and documentation of both heavenly and hellish altered states in one's psychological, emotional, and spiritual life
Why do we seek out altered states of consciousness, or why, in some cases, do they happen unbidden? What do we see and hear, and what happens emotionally, physically, and psychologically? How and why are these experiences different from or similar to one another? Are they meaningful? And what do we do with them after they have passed?
Addressing these questions, renowned psychedelic researcher Rick Strassman, M.D., draws upon his journals and analyses of dozens of episodes of altered consciousness that occurred during, or are intimately tied to, his life between birth and young adulthood. Just as significant as the ecstatic blissful experiences are the uncensored and, at times, painfully unvarnished narratives of less elevated ones. Visually augmenting all these accounts are the striking images of artist Merrilee Challiss.
Understanding and applying the meaning and message of any altered state-its integration-first requires a clear-eyed recollection of the actual experience in all its aspects, neither pushing away the ugly nor grasping after the beautiful. This book provides a profound example of how one might go about accomplishing this daunting task. Rick Strassman, M.D., is adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. From 1990 to 1995 he performed the first new human research with psychedelic drugs in the United States in more than 20 years, studying the powerful naturally occurring compound DMT as well as psilocybin. The author of several books, including DMT: The Spirit Molecule, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. From the Introduction
The following chapters recount several types of altered-state experiences. One category is memories of actual altered states that occurred during childhood. An example is my discovering meditation in second grade. Another type includes visions of childhood experiences that I witnessed during an altered state as an adult. These may be memories of real events. While I do not devote a chapter to this particular experience, I mentioned it in the previous chapter. In it, I relived one day on a psychedelic drug as an adult an allergic reaction I had to a chocolate cookie as a toddler. Later on, my mother verified the truth of that memory. Reexperiencing my forceps delivery in the previous chapter, however, "The Beginning," may straddle the line between real and imagined.
Some "childhood visions" I saw during an altered state in adulthood are unlikely to have occurred in real life. Rather, they are like dreams whose contents represent a condensed symbolic representation of one's mental state. A case in point is my vision of suffering sexual abuse that appeared while meditating in "Prayer Wheel." Here, the vision's contents and associated emotions corresponded to how I felt about my relationship with my parents when I was an infant. In addition, a vision may convey normally suppressed thoughts and emotions linked to being part of a larger historical and cultural universe without actually having undergone the events in question. The chapter describing past lives and deaths in "The Beginning" describes my sense of what it must have felt like for my ancestors in East
