Psychedelic drugs are very much out of fashion. Illicit drug users have less interest in them now than at any time in the last fifteen years. Researchers in psychology and psychiatry are showing no interest at all, or are being allowed to show none in practice. Many people will say that this is just as well. LSD and its relatives represent nothing more than a drug abuse epidemic that has mercifully receded and an insane pseudoreligion that has ruined the lives of thousands of young people. More than enough has been said about these drugs and far too much has already been done with them. They may be useful for a few specialized experiments on animals but are otherwise best forgotten and, if necessary, suppressed.

But this ruling verdict is mistaken, and it is time to reopen the case. In the study of these most complex and fascinating of all drugs, there is unfinished business for psychological research and for psychotherapy. And we are avoiding this unfinished business by ignoring what has already been done, as forgetting follows repression in classic fashion. We need a reminder of where psychedelic drugs have taken us—as a culture, in science, in psychiatry—and where we abandoned the journey. Today the story can be organized in memory, as history, without reproducing all the tensions of a political or a religious war. The temporal and emotional distance necessary to see these issues in an appropriate context is becoming available only now.

Nevertheless, the topic remains unmanageable. It raises profound theoretical issues and at the same time excites primitive and intense feelings that are hard to separate from those issues. From the sixties psychedelic drugs have inherited an aura of provocation; even to suggest, as our title implies, that there is something worth reconsidering may be regarded as looking for trouble. The challenge we intend is mainly, but not exclusively, intellectual. Psychedelic drugs, having once received too much attention of the wrong kind (from both their advocates and their enemies), are now suffering senseless neglect. This neglect is partly a product of fear—fear of what we have already found and of what we might find. Maybe holding psychedelic experience up to the light of what has been learned and then repressed will also dispel some of that fear.

We have tried to cover all important aspects of the subject. After reviewing the chemical structures, sources, and effects of the major psychedelic drugs in summary form, we describe their use in preindustrial cultures and their history in modern American society. Then we describe and analyze psychedelic experience, or rather experiences, as reported by drug users. A discussion of their dangers and therapeutic uses follows, and then an analysis of the broader implications of psychedelic drug research for the study of the human mind. Finally, we add some historical and sociological observations on the present status and prospects of work in this field. The references are detailed and the bibliography long, because the literature on psychedelic drugs is large, and we want to convey some idea of its extent and variety. Besides, we can ourselves say only a small part of all that needs to be said, and we consider it important to supply directions to further sources of information.

Now that the world of psychedelic trips and psychedelic culture has shrunk back into a neglected corner of our minds and our social history, it is hard to remember that these drugs once seemed to provide entry into a wider social and mental universe with laws of its own. Recognizing old illusions, however, should not make us reject the possibility that some truths came with them. Our world is not a small part of the psychedelic universe (as we were sometimes told in the sixties), but the psychedelic universe is part of ours, and one that has already affected our lives more than most of us acknowledge. Heightening our consciousness of that influence, present and potential, may help to make it less haphazard and more beneficial; that is the main purpose of this book.