Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness

Rating:
Summary: Lucy in the sky with felines
Review: a powerful, dazzling display of authority on subject matter that gives "animals" their rightful place among "humans" as proud and adept explorers of the more interesting entheogenic realms.

This work, without over doing it on the anthropomorphic side, renders our fellow animals in a positive light that suggests they, too, have their very own forms of consciousness.

Very enlightening, heady stuff!

Rating:
Summary: Lucy in the sky with felines
Review: a powerful, dazzling display of authority on subject matter that gives "animals" their rightful place among "humans" as proud and adept explorers of the more interesting entheogenic realms.

This work, without over doing it on the anthropomorphic side, renders our fellow animals in a positive light that suggests they, too, have their very own forms of consciousness.

Very enlightening, heady stuff!

Rating:
Summary: Evolution by inebriation!
Review: This humorous and entertaining book deals with the use of psychedelic substances by our 4-footed and 6-legged friends. The author, an ethnobotanist, provides amazing examples of animals and insects seeking out and consuming psycho-active substances in their environments.

Samorini suggests that the desire to experience altered states of consciousness is a natural drive shared by all living beings. This urge is not confined to humans because animals/insects deliberately engage in these behaviors. His theory is that beings that consume these substances contribute to the evolution of their species by creating new patterns of behavior that are eventually adopted by the other members of the species, in what he humorously terms "evolution by inebriation."

He deals with crazed cows who love locoweed (Astralagus), elephants, slugs and snails, felines and catnip, reindeer and caribou tripping on the Amanita mushroom, goats that have a liking for coffee and khat (Catha Edulis), birds that binge (robins and the pink pigeon of the Mauritian islands), koalas, baboons and rats, plus insects like the house fly (Amanita again), moths, bees and butterflies.

Samorini concludes with the observation that a distinction must be made between a drug phenomenon that is natural and a drug problem that is a cultural problem. This insightful book concludes with a bibliography and index.

Other interesting titles on this topic includes DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman, Moksha by Aldous Huxley, Magic Mushrooms In Religion And Alchemy by Clark Heinrich and Persephone's Quest by R. Gordon Wasson.