The Psychotropic Mind

Author : Jeremy Narby
Publisher : Park Street Press
ISBN 13 : 9781594773129
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Psychotropic Mind written by Jeremy Narby and published by Park Street Press. This book was released on 2009-11-25 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conversations on shamanism and mind-altering plants by filmmaker Jan Kounen, anthropologist Jeremy Narby, and writer/filmmaker Vincent Ravalec • Explores how ayahuasca and iboga are tools for communicating with other life-forms • Offers insights into the role this indigenous knowledge can play in solving the current problems facing the world In the Amazon, shamans do not talk in terms of hallucinogens but of tools for communicating with other life-forms. Ayahuasca, for example, is first and foremost a means of breaking down the barrier that separates humans from other species, allowing us to communicate with them. The introduction of plant-centered shamanism into the Western world in the 1970s was literally the meeting of two entirely different paradigms. In The Psychotropic Mind, three of the individuals who have been at the forefront of embracing other ways of knowing look at the ramifications of the introduction into our Western culture of these shamanic practices and the psychotropic substances that support them. With rare sincerity and depth, noted anthropologist Jeremy Narby, filmmaker Jan Kounen, and writer/filmmaker Vincent Ravalec explore the questions of sacred plants, initiations, hallucinogens, and altered states of consciousness, looking at both the benefits and dangers that await those who seek to travel this path. Focusing specifically on ayahuasca and iboga, psychotropic substances with which the authors are intimately familiar, they examine how we can best learn the other ways of perceiving the world found in indigenous cultures, and how this knowledge offers immense benefits and likely solutions to some of the modern world’s most pressing problems.

Author : Richard J. Miller
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199957975
Total Pages : 375 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Drugged written by Richard J. Miller and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miller takes readers on an eye-opening tour of psychotropic drugs, describing the various kinds, how they were discovered and developed, and how they have played multiple roles in virtually every culture.

Author : Richard P Bentall
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141917830
Total Pages : 516 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Doctoring the Mind written by Richard P Bentall and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-06-25 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Towards the end of the twentieth century, the solution to mental illness seemed to be found. It lay in biological solutions, focusing on mental illness as a problem of the brain, to be managed or improved through drugs. We entered the 'Prozac Age' and believed we had moved on definitively from the time of frontal lobotomies to an age of good and successful mental healthcare. Biological psychiatry had triumphed. Except maybe it hadn't. Starting with surprising evidence from the World Health Organisation that suggests people recover better from mental illness in a developing country than in the first world, Doctoring the Mind asks the question: how good are our mental health services, really? Richard Bentall picks apart the science that underlies current psychiatric practice across the US and UK. Arguing passionately for a future of mental health treatment that focuses as much on patients as individuals as on the brain itself, this is a book set to redefine our understanding of the treatment of madness in the twenty-first century.

Author : Michael Pollan
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735224153
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How to Change Your Mind written by Michael Pollan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now on Netflix as a 4-part documentary series! “Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured.” —New York Times A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book A brilliant and brave investigation 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 such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research. A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

Author : Mike Jay
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1620553880
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book High Society written by Mike Jay and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated cultural history of drug use from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals • Featuring artwork from the upcoming High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, one of the world’s greatest medical history collections • Explores the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods • Reveals how drugs drove the global trade and cultural exchange that made the modern world • Examines the causes of drug prohibitions a century ago and the current “war on drugs” Every society is a high society. Every day people drink coffee on European terraces and kava in Pacific villages; chew betel nut in Indonesian markets and coca leaf on Andean mountainsides; swallow ecstasy tablets in the clubs of Amsterdam and opium pills in the deserts of Rajastan; smoke hashish in Himalayan temples and tobacco and marijuana in every nation on earth. Exploring the spectrum of drug use throughout history--from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals--High Society paints vivid portraits of the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods. From the botanicals of the classical world through the mind-bending self-experiments of 18th- and 19th-century scientists to the synthetic molecules that have transformed our understanding of the brain, Mike Jay reveals how drugs such as tobacco, tea, and opium drove the global trade and cultural exchange that created the modern world and examines the forces that led to the prohibition of opium and cocaine a century ago and the “war on drugs” that rages today.

Author : Lauren Slater
Publisher : Back Bay Books
ISBN 13 : 9780316370622
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blue Dreams written by Lauren Slater and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Capacious and rigorous . . . Blue Dreams, like all good histories of medicine, reveals healing to be art as much as science." --Parul Sehgal, New York Times "Terrific." --@MichaelPollan "Ambitious...Slater's depictions of madness are terrifying and fascinating." --USA Today "A vivid and thought-provoking synthesis." --Harper's A groundbreaking and revelatory history of psychotropic drugs, from "a thoroughly exhilarating and entertaining writer" (Washington Post). Although one in five Americans now takes at least one psychotropic drug, the fact remains that nearly seventy years after doctors first began prescribing them, not even their creators understand exactly how or why these drugs work--or don't work--on what ails our brains. Blue Dreams offers the explosive story of the discovery and development of psychiatric medications, as well as the science and the people behind their invention, told by a riveting writer and psychologist who shares her own experience with the highs and lows of psychiatric drugs. Lauren Slater's revelatory account charts psychiatry's journey from its earliest drugs, Thorazine and lithium, up through Prozac and other major antidepressants of the present. Blue Dreams also chronicles experimental treatments involving Ecstasy, magic mushrooms, the most cutting-edge memory drugs, placebos, and even neural implants. In her thorough analysis of each treatment, Slater asks three fundamental questions: how was the drug born, how does it work (or fail to work), and what does it reveal about the ailments it is meant to treat? Fearlessly weaving her own intimate experiences into comprehensive and wide-ranging research, Slater narrates a personal history of psychiatry itself. In the process, her powerful and groundbreaking exploration casts modern psychiatry's ubiquitous wonder drugs in a new light, revealing their ability to heal us or hurt us, and proving an indispensable resource not only for those with a psychotropic prescription but for anyone who hopes to understand the limits of what we know about the human brain and the possibilities for future treatments.

Author : Michael Pollan
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593296915
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book This Is Your Mind on Plants written by Michael Pollan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.” —New York Times Book Review From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants—and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a “drug”? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs—opium, caffeine, and mescaline—and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings? In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively—as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.

Author : Benny Shanon
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780199252930
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Antipodes of the Mind written by Benny Shanon and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the phenomenology of the special state of mind induced by Ayahuasca, a plant-based Amazonian psychotropic brew. The author's research is based both on extensive firsthand experiences with Ayahuasca, and on interviews conducted with a large number of informants.

Author : Glen R. Elliott M.D., Ph.D.
Publisher : Harry N. Abrams
ISBN 13 : 9781584794899
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Medicating Young Minds written by Glen R. Elliott M.D., Ph.D. and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2006-05-09 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten million children are on antidepressants and another 7 million are on stimulants for attention problems. As one of the nation's leading experts on psychiatric disorders in children and the effects of psychiatric drugs on kids, Elliott tells parents what to expect, what questions to ask, and what test to demand to make sure that drugs are the best recourse.

Author : Jeremy Narby
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9781585424610
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Intelligence in Nature written by Jeremy Narby and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-03-02 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing the journey begun in his acclaimed book The Cosmic Serpent, the noted anthropologist ventures firsthand into both traditional cultures and the most up-todate discoveries of contemporary science to determine nature's secret ways of knowing. Anthropologist Jeremy Narby has altered how we understand the Shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels the globe-from the Amazon Basin to the Far East-to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers understand about the intelligence present in all forms of life. Intelligence in Nature presents overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity alone. Indeed, bacteria, plants, animals, and other forms of nonhuman life display an uncanny penchant for self-deterministic decisions, patterns, and actions. Narby presents the first in-depth anthropological study of this concept in the West. He not only uncovers a mysterious thread of intelligent behavior within the natural world but also probes the question of what humanity can learn from nature's economy and knowingness in its own search for a saner and more sustainable way of life.