ISBN 1-58939-783-5
Softcover. 268 pages.
$13.95.

To change consciousness is one of man's fundamental desires. From time to time, everyone feels like modifying in one way or another, to some degree, his or her mental processes, or way of perceiving reality. The child spinning around, the old lady lost in prayer in the back of the church, the worker having a few beers at the end of the day, the music-lover listening to Beethoven, the young people gathering together to smoke marijuana, or the family leaving for holiday to "get away from it all" -- all these people are looking for something which will change, for them, the reality of their everyday existence. Where does this desire come from, this urge to transcend what the celebrated British philosopher Aldous Huxley termed "selfconscious selfhood?" In an early book written about hallucinogenic drugs, the well-known nutritionist and researcher Dr. Andrew Weil wrote: "It is my belief that the desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate, normal drive analogous to hunger or the sexual drive."1 Weil developed this hypothesis in his book The Natural Mind, and concluded that this desire is not a social or cultural phenomenon but a biological characteristic of the species.

That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and always has been one of the principal appetites of the soul. Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory - all these have served, in H. G. Wells' phrase, as Doors in the Wall.

Using drugs to change consciousness

Whatever the reasons for their use, drugs go way back in the history of mankind, probably to the very origins. Fermented beverages, for example, were among the most ancient and interesting discoveries of primitive man who was always on the lookout for something nourishing or diverting. Today, alcohol is by far the preferred drug in the western world. Another example is cannabis, the most important psychodysleptic drug in ancient times. It has been used for two thousand five hundred years and its consumption in the form of marijuana and hashish continues to increase at present. In fact, all civilizations have discovered some form of intoxicant, the only exception being, according to Dr. Weil, the Inuit peoples of the north.