The tragic death from coronavirus of indigenous actor Antonio Bolivar, star of the Oscar-nominated film Embrace of the Serpent, has made me reflect back...

This essay explores the relatonship between the recent boom in DIY (do-it-yourself) mushroom growing and the use of psychedelic mushrooms as both these topics become more mainstream.

The histories of electronics and psychedelics are intertwined as Peter Sachs Collopy shows in this article about LSD and video in the mid-twentieth century. Collopy shows that both technologies were understood by their users as tools for exploring and altering consciousness.

Since their inception, international policies toward drugs have been characterized by being racist, classist, colonialist, and created by a Western elite that has failed...

The burgeoning expansion of ayahuasca around the globe has allowed for the evolution of an infinitely diverse array of ayahuasca practices and communities, spanning...

What happens when traditional knowledge is incorporated into the classroom? At the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, two Guarani shamans were given the opportunity to be lecturers as part of the Transversal Training Program in Traditional Knowledge.

When in 1967, aged sixteen, Dennis visited his older brother in Berkeley, California, Terence stated that he knew what the philosopher’s stone was. “It’s...

As ayahuasca drinking emerges as a global phenomenon beyond the Amazon, one of the more curious claims about the brew that one regularly comes across is...

Jasmine Virdi interviews Nidia Olvera Hernández, a Mexican ethnohistorian, specializing in the history of psychoactive substances and drug poilices. In this article, Nida shares about some of her earlier research into the history of marijuana in Mexico, detailing cannabis’ arrival with Span-ish colonizers who intended to use the plant for industrial purposes, and how the conception of the plant shifted over time, eventually coming to be referred to as “marijuana” as opposed to “hemp.”

Julien Bonhomme explores how Euro-American psychedelic communities have appropriated Bwiti ibogaine rituals, creating a liminal experience that incorporates from both traditions. For Western practitioners, ibogaine visions allowed individuals to see through themselves and recreate themselves as they desired in order to overcome their existential problems. While the Gabonese practitioners' visions more often reflected the images of mythical ancestors or relatives practicing witchcraft, rather than mirror-images of themselves.