I was surprised to learn that psychedelics are far more frightening to people than they are dangerous.

“Bad trips” are very real and can be one of “the most challenging experiences

Ergot is a fungus that can infect grain, often rye, occasionally causing those who consume bread made from it to appear mad or possessed.

But it’s also true that this man’s life—his brain!—has been utterly taken over by fungi; he has dedicated himself to their cause, speaking for the mushrooms

And then it hits me: I’m going to be struck by lightning! Every few seconds there’s another strike, here, then there, all around me. On the verge of enlightenment, I’m going to be electrocuted. This is my destiny! The whole time, I’m being washed by warm rains. I am crying now, there is liquid everywhere, but I also feel one with the universe.

use of certain plants to change the contents of the mind, whether as a matter of healing, habit, or spiritual practice.

“Until the Good Friday Experiment,” he told an interviewer in 1996, “I had had no direct personal encounter with God.”

But it’s important to distinguish what can happen when these drugs are used in uncontrolled situations, without attention to set and setting, from what happens under clinical conditions, after careful screening and under supervision.

Where did these mushrooms grow, and how? Why did they evolve the ability to produce a chemical compound so closely related to serotonin, the neurotransmitter, that it can slip across the blood-brain barrier and temporarily take charge of the mammalian brain?