GSAPS Psychedelic Book Club – Friday, March 17th @ 5pm-6:30pm PST

Welcome to the GSAPS Psychedelic Book Club 2023!

Please join us on Friday, March 17th, from 5pm-6:30pm Pacific Standard Time (PST) | 8pm – 9:30pm Eastern Standard Time (EST).

THIS IS A VIRTUAL MEETING – DETAILS ARE LOCATED IN THE BOOK CLUB GROUP.

Can You Pass the ACID READING Test?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read one psychedelic book monthly with us every month throughout 2023.

March Book Club Reading

Hatsis, Thomas. LSD—The Wonder Child: The Golden Age of Psychedelic Research in the 1950s. Simon and Schuster, 2021. (Amazon) (Audible)

A detailed history of the blossoming of psychedelic research in the 1950s

• Explores the different groups–from research labs to the military–who were seeking how best to utilize LSD and other promising psychedelics like mescaline

• Reintroduces forgotten scientists like Robert Hyde and Rosalind Heywood

• Looks at the CIA’s notorious top-secret mind-control program MKUltra

• Reveals how intellectuals, philosophers, artists, and mystics of the 1950s used LSD to bring ancient rites into the modern ageExploring the initial stages of psychedelic study in Europe and America, Thomas Hatsis offers a full history of the psychedelic-fueled revolution in healing and consciousness expansion that blossomed in the 1950s–the first “golden age” of psychedelic research.

Revealing LSD as a “wonder child” rather than Albert Hofmann’s infamous “problem child,” the author focuses on the extensive studies with LSD that took place in the ’50s. He explores the different groups–from research labs to the military to bohemian art circles–who were seeking how best to utilize LSD and other promising psychedelics like mescaline. Sharing the details of many primary source medical reports, the author examines how doctors saw LSD as a tool to gain access to the minds of schizophrenics and thus better understand the causes of mental illness. The author also looks at how the CIA believed LSD could be turned into a powerful mind-control weapon, including a full account of the notorious top-secret program MKUltra.

Reintroducing forgotten scientists like Robert Hyde, the first American to take LSD, and parapsychologist Rosalind Heywood, who believed LSD and mescaline opened doors to mystical and psychic abilities, the author also discusses how the influences of Central American mushroom ceremonies and peyote rites crossbred with experimental Western mysticism during the 1950s, turning LSD from a possible madness mimicker or mind weapon into a sacramental medicine. Finally, he explores how philosophers, parapsychologists, and mystics sought to use LSD to usher in a new age of human awareness.

Upcoming Reading

April 2023

• Hofmann, Albert. LSD: my problem child. Oxford University Press, 2013. (Amazon) (Audible)

May 2023

• Minutaglio, Bill, and Steven L. Davis. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD. Twelve, 2018. (Amazon) (Audible)

June 2023

• Grey, Allyson. Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine: Creativity, Ecstasy, and Healing. Simon and Schuster, 2019. (Amazon) (Audible)

July 2023

• Jarnow, Jesse. Heads: A biography of psychedelic America. Hachette UK, 2016. (Amazon) (Audible)

August 2023

• McKenna, Terence. True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise. Harper Collins, 1994. (Amazon) (Audible)

September 2023

• Davis, Erik. High weirdness: Drugs, esoterica, and visionary experience in the seventies. MIT Press, 2019. (Amazon) (Audible)

October 2023

• Hatsis, Thomas. The Witches’ Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic. Simon and Schuster, 2015. (Amazon) (Audible)

November 2023

• Holland, Julie. Good chemistry: the science of connection, from soul to psychedelics. HarperCollins, 2020 (Amazon) (Audible)

December 2023

• Muraresku, Brian C. The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name. St. Martin’s Press, 2020. (Amazon) (Audible)

January 2024

• Leary, Timothy, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner. The psychedelic experience: A manual based on the Tibetan book of the dead. Citadel, 2022. (Amazon) (Audible)

February 2024

• Shulgin, Alexander Theodore, and Ann Shulgin. PIHKAL: a chemical love story. Berkeley: Transform Press, 1995. (Amazon) (Audible)