Psychonauts

“Fascinating.”-Thomas W. Hodgkinson, The Guardian “Richly detailed and frequently illuminating.”-Rhys Blakely, Times (UK) “Excellent.”-Clare Bucknell, New Yorker A New Yorker Best of the Week PickA provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves.Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy.Accounts in journals and literary fiction inspired a fascinated public to make their own experiments-in scientific demonstrations, on exotic travels, at literary salons, and in occult rituals. But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear. From Sigmund Freud’s experiments with cocaine to William James’s epiphany on nitrou