Continuing to engage in social distancing? We’re all in this together.
To help our psychedelic-curious friends get through periods of isolation—enforced or self-elected, now or in the future—we made a list of our favourite books and streaming video for expanding the mind and priming the pump for your next (or maybe first) psychedelic experience. We encourage you to bake yourself some cannabis edibles as an act of self-care and enjoy these books and movies about psychedelic drugs and the people who do them.
Think we’re missing something? Let us know and we’ll add it to the list.
Powerful biography of Dennis Peron, the LGBT and cannabis activist who organized California’s first dispensary to distribute medical cannabis to the sick and dying, including to many with HIV/AIDS.
A well-researched and visually appealing graphic novel that explores the racially tinged, xenophobic, and politically self-serving attitudes that have played critical components in America’s prohibition of cannabis._
It is our hope that the continued gains made by the cannabis reform movement are part of a larger movement towards creating a more perfect union. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of …
“For more than a decade the renaissance in psychedelics had been the center of her life. She was sure it was her calling. Ever since Learie was a little girl she felt that she lived in a troubled world. Even in her youth she was aware not just of war abroad and violence at home but apathy, disconnectedness and inequity. This is a world in pain.”
William James on Consciousness and the Four Features of Transcendent Experiences
“Our normal waking consciousness… is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different… No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.”
Maybe the most depraved collection of drug-fueled short stories you’ll read, from the author of “Transpotting.”
The novel opens in 1980, on the day that John Lennon is shot and killed, however a great deal of the story takes place in the 1960s and 1970s while an Episcopal bishop named Timothy Archer is seeking an answer to whether or not a psychotropic mushroom was associated with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Tom Wolfe’s kaleidoscopic non-fiction novel chronicles the tale of a novelist character named Ken Kesey who leads a group called Merry Pranksters around the country during the sixties in a painted bus.
The story of a girl named Alice who follows a white rabbit down a hole turns undeniably psychedelic as she comes upon surreal characters, like the Cheshire cat, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts.
Investigative journalist Michael Pollan delves into the history of psychedelic drugs and describes his own “mental travelogue” while microdosing acid.
The first publication to describe microdosing in detail. The author, James Fadiman, a psychologist who co-founded of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology Foundation, goes over his personal spat of microdosing, describing it in glorious clear-headed detail.
One of our namesakes, Aldous Huxley, writes about his psychedelic experience on a knowledge-seeking mescaline trip that begins in his study at home with his wife and a doctor. The title comes from William Blake’s poem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
An examination of the high priest of LSD Timothy Leary through the eyes of famed lover Joanna Harcourt-Smith. Was Leary’s “perfect love” a CIA plant or was she simply a rich, beautiful young woman out for the adventure of a lifetime?
Adventure Time
created by Pendleton Ward (2010)
Watch it on Youtube
Twelve- year-old Finn battles evil in the Land of Ooo. Assisted by his magical dog, Jake, Finn roams the Land of Ooo righting wrongs and battling evil. Usually that evil comes in the form of the Ice King, who is in search of a wife. He’s decided he should wed Princess Bubblegum, though she doesn’t want to marry him. Still, he persists in trying to steal her …
Trainspotting
directed by Danny Boyle, 1996
Watch the trailer
Trainspotting is known for its bleak depiction of heroin use but its four protagonists – Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud – actually do scores of different drugs from the onset of the film. If you are familiar with Irving Welsh’s other novels, you’ll know to expect hard to understand Scottish dialect, plenty of depraved criminal acts and raves every weekend. Ecstasy (MDMA, Molly, X) features in Renton and …
Midnight Gospel on Netflix
created by Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell (2020)
Watch it on Netflix
Is Netflix’s show ‘The Midnight Gospel‘ just like ‘Adventure Time’ on drugs, or is it more mind-bending?
The show itself is a beautiful, psychedelic trip into existence self-existentialism, grief, accepting death and asking big questions about life. The main character, Clancy (voiced by Duncan Trussell), is a time-and-space hopping “space caster”, zapping himself into different planets throughout the multiverse as they’re seemingly on …
Step into a dark and dystopic vision of a future where humans and androids are so enmeshed it’s uncanny.
Waking Life is a rotoscope-animated docufilm by American director, Richard Linklater. A man shuffles through a lucid dream meeting various people—Ethan Hawke, Trevor Jack Brooks, Lorelei Linklater, Wiley Wiggins—who unwind their beliefs on philosophy, the nature of reality, the meaning of our dreams and lucid dreams, human consciousness, the ultimate purpose of life, the truth about free will, and the beauty of existentialism.
Stanley Kubrick’s epic (and relatively accurate) science fiction film follows an astronaut’s voyage to Jupiter and his relationship with the sentient computer HAL after the discovery of a featureless alien monolith.
Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro play Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalist character and his wild-eyed lawyer as they pursue the American dream all the way to Las Vegas. On drugs, of course.
In part five of the Netflix series “The Mind Explained,” experts answer some important questions about psychedelic drugs, the effects of these substances on the brain, and why psychedelics are banned.
Joe Rogan, Ralph Abraham, Dennis J. McKenna, and Terence McKenna explain why DMT is one of the most powerful psychedelics known to humankind.