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This volume stands as a mind-bending experience. Notably, it extensively chronicles all the drugs ingested by the US-raised academic specializing in history and philosophy of science has ingested. These encompass psilocybin, lysergic acid, weed; prescription drugs to ease tension; mood stabilizers, fluoxetine, modern medications and traditional treatments; stimulants (“I have drunk caffeine without interruption since September 13, 1990”); and, personally speaking, the always disappointing booze.

The Truly Trippy Element

The most fascinating part, however, is not so much the philosopher’s narratives of his drug experiences, instead that they come from a tough-minded logical thinker, one as familiar with empirical Foundations of Empirical Knowledge as mystical expansive consciousness studies. Moreover, they are offered intending to eroding the minds of his academic colleagues and the public proposing that psychedelics transcend individual identity merging us with cosmic consciousness, thereby rendering us free as defined by Baruch Spinoza’s theorist Spinoza defined it (expressed in the book through “a pleasant acquiescence regarding how the physical form functions within the inevitable cosmic structure”).

Dissolving the Western Paradigm

The dissolving comparison is appropriate, as the iconic example of Enlightenment-era rationalist tradition occurred when the French philosopher scholar the rationalist transformed a piece of wax. The lump may change its properties, scent, size, breadth, but still, Descartes supposed, we still claim that we know its identity as the same piece. The thinking mind can be wrong regarding every sensory inputs involving this wax but not, he insisted, the fact that cognition exists: this constitutes the basis of his celebrated “I think therefore I am” – through which Descartes made us reason-driven, empiricism-loving individuals we have been to this day.

The philosopher, provocatively, flips the script on Descartes’ thought experiment: suppose that, instead of transforming the object, the philosopher had “melted his mind” with acid, or through hallucinogens newly introduced across the continent across the Atlantic together with potatoes and stimulants, like sacred cactus or ayahuasca? Suppose that he had not foregrounded logic but rather extolled the imaginative powers that he argues, are unleashed through substances? The west could have become perceiving reality completely differently, and individuals instead as “boundless sources of insight and wisdom”.

Transcending Mainstream Philosophy

Further dimensions exist in Smith-Ruiu’s substance journey, as suggested, than considered in conventional academics’ philosophies. His approach bears resemblance to such contemporary, mind-blowing intellectual trends as contemporary realist new realism, and object-oriented frameworks and object-oriented philosophy. The German philosopher claimed the divine is inherently unknowable, inferable perhaps yet never experienced. One cannot through sensory experience, experience transcendence. In this work, psychedelics might help lift that veil. Because of this idea merely one is stunned – and encouraged – that he got tenure.

Lucidity Reflections

It’s worth mentioning here that this is not similar to drug-fueled memoirs written as the person is out of their gourd. The author differs from Hunter S Thompson. It is called About Psychedelics but it was not written on drugs (except, presumably, from some of the prescription meds he mentions earlier and occasional caffeine jolt). “I am as I write, clear-headed, alert, and fully engaged in the project.”

An Astonishing Revelation

The book ends with a remarkable plot twist (warning: insight ahead). In 2023, Smith-Ruiu participated in religious ceremony after many years in 40 years in the parish near his home. His claim here proposes that substance-induced states resembles the experience of spiritual practices: everyday perception is seen as a limited view, and through ritual it is possible to experience, similar to his during trips, an intimation of timelessness. A further similarity is that a person relinquishes one’s will in ritual similar to an entheogenic experience. The author states: “Substances, similar to faith, as with art are among other things a release of the will to remain separate.” Smith-Ruiu demonstrates reflexivity enough to note how strange this may seem: that entheogens are now his gateway drug to spirituality.

Accessible Consciousness Expansion

And you don’t even need to consume psychedelics from some geezer in a shop (as described) to alter perception. He points to the initial section of Proust’s novel À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, where the protagonist vividly envisions that he transforms into {some of the things