Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced psychonaut, it’s never a bad idea to look into psychedelic literature to help expand your mind before you start to explore it. Here are recommended books that everyone should have with them to help plan their next trip.
Beginner
These books are great for those who are new to psychedelics and want to learn more about the subject. Even if you’re completely green, these reads are still friendly and easy to follow.
PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story
By Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin
“An acronym for ‘Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved,’ [this book] has become a foundational work in the genre and was the first book to fully impart the how-to chemistry, and convey the effects, of many of the entheogenic drugs that are currently being studied and used to heal trauma and deal with death.”
The Botany of Desire: The Plant’s-Eye View of the World
By Michael Pollan
Who’s domesticating whom? In this book, Pollan “masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato.”
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
By Michael Pollan
“Upon discovering how [psychedelics] are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, [Pollan] 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.”
Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
By Amy Stewart
“In Wicked Plants, Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature’s most appalling creations. It’s an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend.”
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
By Tom Wolfe
“This is the seminal work on the hippie culture, a report on what it was like to follow along with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they launched the “Transcontinental Bus Tour” from the West Coast to New York, all while introducing acid (then legal) to hundreds of like-minded folks, staging impromptu jam sessions, dodging the Feds, and meeting some of the most revolutionary figures of the day.”
Fantastic Fungi: Expanding Consciousness, Alternative Healing, Environmental Impact
By Paul Stamets
The official book of the hit documentary! “Paul Stamets, the world’s preeminent mushroom and fungi expert is joined by leading ecologists, doctors, and explorers such as Michael Pollan, Dr. Andrew Weil, Eugenia Bone, Fantastic Fungi director Louie Schwartzberg, and many more. Together these luminaries show how fungi and mushrooms can restore the planet’s ecosystems, repair our physical health, and renew humanity’s symbiotic relationship with nature.”
The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys
By James Fadiman
“Psychedelics for spiritual, therapeutic, and problem-solving use… [This book] presents practices for safe and successful psychedelic voyages, including the benefits of having a guide and how to be a guide; reviews the value of psychedelics for healing and self-discovery as well as how LSD has facilitated scientific and technical problem-solving; [and] reveals how microdosing (ultra-low doses) improve cognitive functioning, emotional balance, and physical stamina.”
Intermediate
After experiencing a few trips, it’s not unusual to want to figure out how to take it to the next level and get more out of the experience. Here are a few reads to help you do just that.
TIHKAL: The Continuation
By Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin
“Where PiHKAL focuses on a class of compounds called phenethylamines, TiHKAL is written about a family of psychoactive drugs known as tryptamines with TiHKAL being an acronym for ‘Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved.’ Like its predecessor PiHKAL, it is divided into two parts.”
Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
By Ben Westhoff
“A remarkable four-year investigation into the dangerous world of synthetic drugs―from black market drug factories in China to users and dealers on the streets of the U.S. to harm reduction activists in Europe―which reveals for the first time the next wave of the opioid epidemic.”
The Drug Book: From Arsenic to Xanax, 250 Milestones in the History of Drugs
By Michael C. Gerald
“Covering everything from ancient herbs to cutting-edge chemicals, this book in the hugely popular Milestones series looks at 250 of the most important moments in the development of life-altering, life-saving, and sometimes life-endangering pharmaceuticals.”
Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide
By Paul Stamets
“Detailed descriptions and color photographs for over 100 species are provided, as well as an exploration of their long-standing (and often religious) use by ancient peoples and their continued significance to modern-day culture.”
The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America
By Don Lattin
“Journalist Don Lattin provides the funny, moving inside story of the “Cambridge Quartet,” who crossed paths with the infamous Harvard Psilocybin Project in the early ’60s, and went on to pioneer the Mind/Body/Spirit movement that would popularize yoga, vegetarianism, and Eastern mysticism in the Western world.”
Interpening: The Art and Science of the Cannabis Sommelier
By Max Montrose
“The Art and Science of the Cannabis Sommelier: evaluating flower for total quality control, psychotropic effects, and variety type designation. Interpening is a multilevel mastery certification in evaluating cannabis quality and determining psychotropic effects, regardless of strain names or hybridization.”
The Book of Highs: 255 Ways to Alter Your Consciousness without Drugs
By Edward Rosenfeld
“An encyclopedia for the curious and courageous, The Book of Highs catalogs the hundreds of ways humans can alter consciousness, minus drugs and alcohol.”
Experienced
Even experienced psychonauts can still learn a thing or two — take a look at our favorite reads on mind expansion.
The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell
By Aldous Huxley
“Among the most profound and influential explorations of mind-expanding psychedelic drugs ever written, here are two complete classic books—The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell—in which Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, reveals the mind’s remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness.”
DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences
By Rick Strassman
“A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. [It includes a] behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research [and] provides a unique scientific explanation for the phenomenon of alien abduction experiences.”
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
By Merlin Sheldrake
“In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake’s vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the ‘Wood Wide Web,’ to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.”
Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
By Terence McKenna
“Why, as a species, are humans so fascinated by altered states of consciousness? Can altered states reveal something to us about our origins and our place in nature? In Food of the Gods, ethnobotanist Terence McKenna’s research on man’s ancient relationship with chemicals opens a doorway to the divine, and perhaps a solution for saving our troubled world.”
Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
By Paul Stemets
“Mycelium Running is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. That’s right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment, and in this groundbreaking text from mushroom expert Paul Stamets, you’ll find out how.”
Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences
By William Richards
“Sacred Knowledge is the first well-documented, sophisticated account of the effect of psychedelics on biological processes, human consciousness, and revelatory religious experiences.”
Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development
By Neal M. Goldsmith
“Psychedelics as therapeutic catalysts for emotional and spiritual transformation. [This book]: explores the latest medical research on the healing powers of entheogens; reveals the crucial role of tribal and shamanic wisdom in psychedelic medicine; provides guidelines for working with psychedelics, including the author’s personal healing and recommendations for creating change on the spiritual and societal levels.”
What are your favorite psychedelic reads?!
