a PhD dissertation at Harvard: Walter Pahnke’s thesis, “Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the
Relationship Between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness,” is available in PDF
form at
http://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/pahnke/walter_pahnke_drugs_and_mysticism.pdf.
“Until the Good Friday Experiment”: Huston Smith, Huston Smith Reader, 73.
a follow-up study of the Good Friday Experiment: Doblin, “Pahnke’s ‘Good Friday Experiment.’”
a second review: Doblin, “Dr. Leary’s Concord Prison Experiment.”
“would be for psychiatry”: Quoted in Nutt, “Brave New World for Psychology?,” 658.
the first modern trial of psilocybin: Grob et al., “Pilot Study of Psilocybin Treatment for Anxiety in
Patients with Advanced-Stage Cancer.”
An internal memo: A cache of declassified CIA files related to Project Artichoke is available at
http://www.paperlessarchives.com/FreeTitles/ARTICHOKECIAFiles.pdf.
“my own constitution shuts me out”: James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 369.
“The subject of it immediately says”: Ibid., 370.
“Mystical states seem to those who experience them”: Ibid.
“that deepened sense of the significance”: Ibid., 372.
“and from one recurrence to another”: Ibid., 371.
“The mystic feels as if his own will”: Ibid.
led to lasting changes in their personalities: MacLean et al., “Mystical Experiences Occasioned by the
Hallucinogen Psilocybin Lead to Increases in the Personality Domain of Openness.”
“Doctors encounter this strange”: McHugh, review of The Harvard Psychedelic Club, by Don Lattin.
“authoritative over the individuals”: James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 415.
“The existence of mystical states”: Ibid., 419.
“might, in spite of all the perplexity”: Ibid., 420.
“ascend[s] to a more enveloping point of view”: Ibid.
“It is as if the opposites of the world”: Ibid., 378.
a pilot study in smoking cessation: Johnson et al., “Pilot Study of the 5-HT2AR Agonist Psilocybin in
the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction.”
CHAPTER TWO NATURAL HISTORY: BEMUSHROOMED
The mycelia in a forest: Simard et al., “Net Transfer of Carbon Between Ectomycorrhizal Tree
Species in the Field.”
Humans have been using psilocybin mushrooms: Stamets, Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World, 11.
“Psilocybe mushrooms and civilization”: Ibid., 16.
“Mistakes in mushroom identification can be lethal”: Ibid., 30–32.
“The Stametsian Rule”: Ibid., 53.
had personal knowledge of psychedelic drugs: Lee and Shlain, Acid Dreams, 71.
“through the eyes of a happy and gifted child”: Siff, Acid Hype, 93.
Life gave him a generous contract: Ibid., 80.
“description of your own sensations”: Ibid., 73.
a circulation of 5.7 million: Ibid.
“Seeking the Magic Mushroom”: All quotations appear in Wasson, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.”
“These they ate before dawn”: Wasson and Wasson, Mushrooms, Russia, and History, 223.
“the devil that they worshipped”: Davis, One River, 95.
“an act of superstition condemned”: Siff, Acid Hype, 69.
“carry you there where god is”: Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, Road to Eleusis, 33.
On the night of June 29–30, 1955: Wasson, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.”
“Before Wasson nobody took the mushrooms”: Estrada, María Sabina, 73.
“To find God, Sabina”: Letcher, Shroom, 104.