Bicycle Day and other Psychedelic Essays by Alan Piper

Hardback | 126pp | 2023 | ISBN: 9781916266759

What are the roots of psychedelic culture? Why are psychedelics seen as transgressive? How was Albert Hofmann’s discovery of LSD’s effects entwined with a world at war? In Bicycle Day and other Psychedelic Essays, Alan Piper explores the often forgotten or ignored early histories of psychoactive drugs that helped shape psychedelia.

From the literature of Hope Mirrlees, David Lindsay and Ernst Jünger, to Harvard peyote experiments, Hofmann's occultic circles, and the relationship of Sandoz pharmaceuticals with Nazi Germany, Alan Piper’s collection is a rich tapestry of literary and social drug history that demonstrates the intimate connection between drugs and modernism.

Includes a Foreword by Mike Jay

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Alan Piper is a graduate of the psychedelic sixties and seventies. After attending Kingston Polytechnic (BA in The History of Ideas), he has since applied himself to investigating the literary and social history of drug-induced altered mind states, with a focus on the interwar period in Europe and North America. He lives in London.