High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World

For a number of complex reasons, humans are fascinated by drugs and altered states. Even if only momentarily, psychoactive substances lift people out of the ennui and pain of their everyday lives and, in some cases, introduce them to new visions of reality. It is no surprise, therefore, that the use of recreational drugs is rising. While, sadly, this also means that levels of addiction are increasing, many have used drugs as technologies to induce moments of meaning-making transcendence.

Beginning at the close of the eighteenth century, this book traces the quest for transcendence and meaning in the West through the modern period. As well as the Romantic fascination with opium, it includes the discovery of anesthetics, the psychiatric and religious interest in hashish, the bewitching power of mescaline and hallucinogenic fungi, and the more recent use of LSD. The ideas and influence of a number of key protagonists are discussed, including Thomas De Quincey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Humphry Davy, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Louis-Alphonse Cahagnet, Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Benjamin Paul Blood, William James, Aleister Crowley, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Carlos Castaneda, and Terence McKenna.

Central to the discussion is the analysis of the ways in which drugs have been used to induce mystical states, to transport users to nonordinary realities, and to access gnosis.