Helen Plum Library

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to...

Two motorcyclists travel across the U.S. in search of the "real" America. And find it

"When a once promising young writer agrees to ghostwrite a famous particle physicist's memoir, his livelihood is already in jeopardy: plagued by debt after failing to deliver a novel, he's grown distant from his wife--a successful A.I. researcher--and is haunted by an overwhelming dread he describes as "The Mist." Desperate for relief, he undergoes an experimental, psychedelic treatment and emerges to find his world transformed: joy suffuses every...

"A groundbreaking, controversial dive into the role psychedelics have played in the human experience of the Divine throughout Western history, and the answer to a 2,000 year old mystery that could shake the Church to its foundations. The Immortality Key connects the lost, psychedelic sacrament of Greek religion to early Christianity-exposing the true origins of Western Civilization. In the tradition of unsolved historical mysteries like David Grann's...

""It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents." Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician...

"Illuminates the beginnings, downfall, and legacy of the acid-inspired, spontaneous, and playful approach to life and music in the Haight-Ashbury from 1964-1967"--