Psychedelic Press Blog — psychedelic literature

This article is by Robert Dickins, author of Erin, and editor of the Psychedelic Press UK Journal. INTRODUCTION: THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION In the mid-to-late 1950s, after the publication of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956), a debate ensued as to whether hallucinogens, soon to be coined ‘psychedelics’ by Dr. Humphrey Osmond in a letter to Huxley, could be used in order to facilitate a religious/mystical experience. Although Huxley did not go so far as to equate the visionary experience of mescaline with the mystical in those texts, as described in various works of scripture,...

The following article, written by Albion Dreaming author Andy Roberts, originally appeared in Psychedelic Press U.K., 2015, Volume 2. A psychedelic history that explores what Francis Crick's relationship with LSD and psychedelic substances actually was. Type ‘Francis Crick LSD’ into Google, and the result will be links to around 30,000 websites. Many of these websites make, or help support, the claim that Francis Crick (one of the two men responsible for discovering the double helix structure of DNA), was either under the influence of LSD at the time of his revelation, and/or used the drug to help with his thought processes during...

This is an extract from the novel Erin – featured in our latest journal – the book is available from both the Psychedelic Press UK bookshop and Amazon. Have I slept? I thought so, though I couldn’t be sure. My dreams had been so real; my reality seemingly but dreams. I didn’t dare open my eyes for fear of seeing Charlie; the grotesque stranded in mud. Why did I leave him in the mud? I tried to wrestle back my reasons but they eluded me. Fear, came a whisper from outside my thoughts. Fear of what? I replied. Fear of what we can turn into. I remembered an air of paranoia, waves...

Preparing the Gaia Connection An Ecological Exposition of Psychedelic Literature 1954-1963 by Robert Dickins, author of Erin   ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the extent to which psychiatrically-mediated drug texts, published in the mid-twentieth century, reveal an ecological awareness in their form and content. Primarily, this exposition extrapolates how the understanding of personal interconnectedness with wider systems—culture, nature, or the universe, for example—is provided by the ingestion of psychedelics under the auspices of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. It argues that this allowed a territory for the recognition of both the dangers that humanity pose to our ecological systems, and the understanding that...