(excerpted from "Glory in the Highest," an essay in the revised and expanded edition of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia)



More than at any other time in the history of the world, we have tremendous power to expand and mutate and play with our consciousness through the availability of drugs, both legal and illegal.

In earlier centuries, the Huichol Indians of northern Mexico had peyote, the Turks of the Ottoman Empire had coffee, the practitioners of Bwii in West Central Africa had ibogaine, and the English had tobacco. But our culture is the first in which all of history's psychoactive substances can be had at once.

Adding to that generous selection, researchers in recent decades have been busy designing and discovering a wide array of new drugs that affect the mind, from antidepressants to LSD, from analgesics to Ecstasy, from sleep aids to lucid dream enhancers. The evolution of anesthesia, which didn't get fully underway until the 19th century, has continued apace as well.

On the near frontier are exotic treatments that could further expand the definition of consciousness and mutate what it means to be human. One drug shows great promise in enhancing visual memory. Another could permanently wipe away painful memories.

My personal policy is to avoid taking drugs of all kinds. (For more on that subject, read the story in the book that starts on page 228 or here on my website.) But I think it's glorious that so many psychoactive substances are available for those discriminating experimenters who dare to expand the frontiers of the human psyche.

And a new era of inner exploration is in fact in motion. Progress in the use of psychedelics had been derailed for years by government repression and the excesses of irresponsible users. But the government has begun to relax some of its prohibitions, allowing legal experiments with psilocybin.

In trials at Johns Hopkins' Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology, test subjects' use of the hallucinogen has generated spiritual realizations that yield long-term practical benefits. Other experiments have shown that psilocybin can play an important therapeutic role in reducing the suffering of terminally ill patients.

Meanwhile, the pioneers who are experimenting with psychedelics outside of the government's purview have become more disciplined in their approach, as evidenced by a wealth of smart new books and journals that investigate the phenomena for what they really are: forays into unknown realms that hold fascinating secrets, worthy of scientific rigor and brave intelligence.

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