Mescaline

Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic by Mike Jay gives you a full history of Mescaline. It takes you on a journey through the jungles of South America, over the plains of North America, to labs around the world. It not only documents who has been involved with the early use of it, but also how it’s been taken up (and later left behind) in popular culture. A deep-dive into mescaline.

This review also appeared on Blossom.

Quick Take

A quick take summarizes key points from the book but doesn’t go as deep as our regular analyses.

• Mescaline has been used in rituals for as long as we know
• The peyote cactus is where Mescaline finds its origin from (the dried buds of the plant)
• The effects of Mescaline are comparable to LSD, but the bodily discomforts are much higher

• Aldous Huxley made mescaline popular with his book, The Doors of Perception
• Mescaline would launch the psychedelic era, but now isn’t part of the drugs people like to take
• One reason for this is that we’ve become better at isolating ‘easier’ substances like 2cb
• Alexander Shulgin was inspired to do much of his work on making new compounds by his mescaline experience

• As long as Westerns have had contact with mescaline, their governments have tried to ban its use
• This stretches from the first contact with the Spanish conquistadors to the current US government

• The rituals surrounding mescaline/peyote are part of what makes it a ‘good’ experience (e.g. rhythmic drums)
• Without it, as some of the Americans who used it at a house party discovered, it can be very unpleasant
• With it, the experience can be pleasant, transformative, mind-bending (and was used by many artists to this effect)

Back of the book

“Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-twentieth century through Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, after which the word “psychedelic” was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: the earliest Andean cultures depicted mescaline-containing cacti in their temples. Mescaline was isolated in 1897 from the peyote cactus, first encountered by Europeans during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. During the twentieth century it was used by psychologists investigating the secrets of consciousness, spiritual seekers from Aleister Crowley to the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, artists exploring the creative process, and psychiatrists looking to cure schizophrenia. Meanwhile, peyote played a vital role in preserving and shaping Native American identity. Drawing on botany, pharmacology, ethnography, and the mind sciences and examining the mescaline experiences of figures from William James to Walter Benjamin to Hunter S. Thompson, this is an enthralling narrative of mescaline’s many lives.”

Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley is another take on the psychedelic experience. It’s written by the author of Brave New World, and The Doors of Perception

It isn’t as good/interesting as The Doors of Perception, so not per se the most interesting (but also not too long) book.

I wrote a longer summary on Blossom Analysis, replicated here:

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Key Quotes

“Like the earth of a hundred years ago [1856], our mind still has its darkest Africas, its unmapped Borneos and Amazonian basins.” Huxley remarks that we first need to map/explore our minds, only then form theories, classifications, etc.

He states that he knows of two ways to reach the depth of our minds (or its far-off destination), 1) mescaline (and LSD), 2) hypnosis.

Light is an important concept in the short book. Huxley states that in 2/3rds of our dreams there is no light. Whilst in the psychedelic experience there is almost always much bright light.

Another recurring subject is the absence of language. In many contemporary theories, language (or the absence of it) is often mentioned.

The third thing experienced is ‘objects’, by this he means geometrical forms, patterns, mosaics. An example of how this looks can be found on PsychonautWiki.

“Every mescalin experience, every vision arising under hypnosis, is unique; but all recognizably belong to the same species,” Huxley states that we don’t know why, researchers now are trying to identify what changes in the brain (and what underlies the experiences, but still makes them unique for every person – for instance, see this paper).

The theme of light is continued with an observation that many people see – brightly colored – gems. But, nowadays many people see pastel colors, so have we become too familiar with bright colors (e.g. through advertisements)? “Familiarity breeds indifference. We have seen too much pure, bright colors at Woolworth’s to find it intrinsically transporting.” This is an interesting observation, but in the PsychonautWiki link, there is (still) an overwhelming amount of bright colors in the visuals.

Huxley then observes that the beings some people see “… are content merely to exist,” which reflects nicely on his observations in The Doors of Perception that he felt the same (and thus also not motivated to do much).

In art (paintings), Huxley observes that we like some types more than others, “… natural objects a very long way off, and, second those which represent them at close range.” You could argue that these are also the domains that are extraordinary, that these are ones we don’t deal with normally (the average range), so observing them is ‘special’.

“But visionary experience is not always blissful. It is sometimes terrible. There is hell as well as heaven.” Seeing the world this way, Huxley argues, can be seen in the later Van Gogh landscapes and Kafka’s stories (e.g. The Metamorphosis).

Huxley again makes the link between negative psychedelic experience and schizophrenics. He makes a good point about schizophrenics not being able to ‘exit’ the experience, whilst most people on psychedelics do know quite well that in a few hours they will be back to ‘normal’.

He also argues that “If the liver is diseased,” then this may cause the negative psychedelic experience. There seems to be little to no proof of this hypothesis.

Huxley ends the book with the following: “My own guess is that modern spiritualism and ancient tradition are both correct. There is a posthumous state of the kind described in Sir Oliver Lodge’s book Raymond; but there is also a heaven of blissful visionary experience; there is also a hell of the same kind of appalling visionary experience as is suffered here by schizophrenics and some of those who take mescalin; and there is also an experience, beyond time, of union with the divine Ground.”

Key references/mentions

There is much reference to works of art (paintings, poems). Again he mentions the following book:

• The Tibetan Book of the Dead – by/translated Graham Coleman

Referenced by

Heaven and Hell has been used as a reference book in the 1960s counter culture. After that, it has found less fame than The Doors of Perception (review).

About the author

(from the back of the book) “Poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, travel writer, essayist, critic, philosopher, mystic, and social prophet, Aldous Huxley was one of the most accomplished and influential English literary figures of the mid-twentieth century.”

His best-known work is the dystopian novel Brave New World.

His other work on the psychedelic experience is The Doors of Perception (review).

The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley is a very interesting take on the psychedelic experience. It’s written by the author of Brave New World, a very interesting book too.

I’m reading it for my new venture, and it’s a fun read. Not per se necessary to understand psychedelics. Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind might be a better (and longer) intro.

I wrote a longer summary on Blossom Analysis, replicated here:

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The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley is a vivid first-person description of the psychedelic experience. It details a trip on mescaline (peyote, similar to LSD). His superior skill in writing makes the experience come to life. Huxley wonders about many aspects of life, describes his visual experience, and his interactions with a guide and his wife. A good, and short, introduction to the psychedelic experience.

Key Quotes

“Is the mental disorder due to a chemical disorder?” Throughout the book, Huxley asks if – at a level – it’s just a chemical imbalance. This matches our current understanding and hypothesis of what is going on in the brain. Nor he or scientists ignore the broader scope of interpersonal relationships (i.e. he isn’t preaching or arguing for a behaviorist interpretation of the mind).

“I swallowed four-tenths of a gram of mescalin …” This is on the high-end of a normal dose (PsychonautWiki).

“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.” This follows a part where he talks about our subjective experience/sensation (qualia) and how it’s difficult to (perfectly) understand others.

At various moments he talks about “Istigkeit” or “Is-ness“. He compares this to Being-Awareness-Bliss, and I think you can also understand it as a form of ego dissolution.

“When I got up and walked about, I could do so quite normally, without misjudging the whereabouts of objects.” The influence of psychedelics seems to be confined mostly to our ‘higher-level’ aspects of our brain, all – if not most – bodily functions and capabilities are not affected. Further on, Huxley remarks “… the body seemed perfectly well able to look after itself.”

“The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.” This is a quote by Dr. C.D. Broad and highlights the ‘Mind at Large’ hypothesis. This seems like a top-down model and reminiscent of Plato (and that we have to go ‘back’ to this ideal state), and opposed to other ideas like those of Popper.

But there is logic and science to the “reducing valve”, the REBUS model and our, limited, understand of consciousness does say that there might be more criticality when under the influence of psychedelics.

Huxley also observed the following:

1. The ability to remember and to “think straight” is little if at all reduced
2. Visual impressions are greatly intensified
3. Though the intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is enormously improved, the will suffers a profound change for the worse
   • (later on, he mentions again no will to do anything productive/work) “And yet there were reservations. For if one always saw like this, one would never want to do anything else.”
4. These better things may be experienced “out there,” or “in here,” or in both worlds, the inner and the outer, simultaneously or successively.

“In the final stage of egolessness there is an “obscure knowledge” that All is in all – that All is actually each.”

“… when the cerebral sugar shortage … “ We now understand better how the brain works and that a sugar shortage is not how mescalin works. But that it binds to and activates the serotonin 5-HT_2A receptor with a high affinity.

“What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful.” A great way of describing what artists (he mentions some painters and musicians throughout) might be able to perceive over ‘the rest’ of us.

“How could one reconcile this timeless bliss of seeing as one ought to see with the temporal duties of doing what one ought to do and feeling as one ought to feel?” This speaks to the ‘importance’ or euphoria that one experiences on psychedelics. The here and now feels as important is anything in the world. “This participation in the manifest glory of things left no room, so to speak, for the ordinary, the necessary concerns of human existence, above all for concerns involving persons.”

“Mescalin opens the way of Mary, but shuts the door on that of Martha. It gives access to contemplation – but to a contemplation that is incompatible with action and even with the will to action, the very thought of action. In the intervals between his revelations, the mescalin taker is apt to feel that, though in one way everything is supremely as it should be, in another there is something wrong. His problem is essentially the same as that which confronts the quietist, the arhat and, on another level, the landscape painter and the painter of human still lives. Mescalin can never solve that problem; it can only pose it, apocalyptically, for those to whom it had never before presented itself.”

What a wonderful reflection of your mind under the influence of psychedelics.

“The Highest Order prevails even in the disintegration. The totality is present even in the broken pieces.” This again refers to the Higher Mind.

“Most takers of mescaline experience only the heavenly part of schizophrenia.” This refers to a moment of terror he experienced and which brought him more empathy for those who are suffering from mental illness.

Alas the trip has to end somewhere, “… I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as “being in one’s right mind.” “

Huxley laments that only alcohol and tobacco are available without restriction. He mentions that we use them to escape daily life and its drudgeries. Prohibition is not what will prevent this, “The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducting men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones.”

But, he is not advocating that we all should start using mescalin, “… there is a minority that finds in the drug only hell or purgatory.” The effects of mescaline (8 hours on average) are also much too long for most situations.

In the final parts of the book, Huxley comments on the “foppish” nature of speech, on how it isn’t everything that consciousness is.

Key references/mentions

Although the book is mostly his first-person experience, some other works are mentioned:

• The Tibetan Book of the Dead – by/translated Graham Coleman

Referenced by

The Doors of Perception are mentioned in many works and scientific papers. If particular ones spring to mind, they will be added here.

About the author

(from the back of the book) “Poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, travel writer, essayist, critic, philosopher, mystic, and social prophet, Aldous Huxley was one of the most accomplished and influential English literary figures of the mid-twentieth century.”

His best-known work is the dystopian novel Brave New World.