Oliver Sacks on drugs

Sacksssss Oliver Sacks was a 30-year-old neurology resident when he had his first psychedelic experiences. During the 1960s, Sacks explored LSD, pot, opium, morning-glory seeds, and the downer chloral hydrate. Recently, the New Yorker published a fascinating article by Sacks about his early experiences with drugs and how they informed his life and work. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall, but it was actually an excerpt from his forthcoming book Hallucinations. Below you can listen to Sacks share trip reports. (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

MORE: drugs • psychedelics

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http://www.facebook.com/cristian.g.ibanez Cristian Gutierrez Ibanez

this may help.
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****9/23/12 NOTE FROM BOING BOING:
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http://twitter.com/randywalters Randy Walters

Trails! O_o
EarthtoGeoff

“Oliver Sacks on drugs.”

… I see what you did there
- AttackHamster
  
  I see this scenario where Oliver, concerned about being a narcissist, visits his analyst and after completing quite a few sessions at considerable expense is cured and becomes a meta-narcissist. After much navel-gazing, the new Oliver realises that he has narcissistic tendencies and seeks therapy etc.
http://twitter.com/trempls tré

I was expecting an entirely different article.
drokhole

“What we ordinarily call ‘reality’ is merely that slice of total fact which our biological equipment, our linguistic heritage and our social conventions of thought and feeling make it possible for us to apprehend…LSD permits us to cut another slice.” – Aldous Huxley

“No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves those other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.” – William James
- niktemadur
  
  Love both quotes. The insight is a pearl of wisdom that can be applied in many different ways, such as reading, traveling and yes, altered states of consciousness, which is triangulation, as in, the more you triangulate, the more panoramic your view of existence will become.
  - drokhole
    
    Very well put!!! Reminds me somewhat of another quote from Alan Watts:
    
    “You don’t understand the basic assumptions of your own culture if your own culture is the only culture you know. Everybody operates on certain basic assumptions, but very few people know what they are.”