Paperback £6 this month from Yale, same deal on Psychonauts and Free Radicals yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

On the horizon for October www.waterstones.com/events/wireh...

“On May 5th, at night, after walking for an hour amidst the scenery of the Avon, at this period rendered exquisitely beautiful by bright moonshine; my mind being in a state of agreeable feeling, I respired six quarts of newly prepared nitrous oxide....” publicdomainreview.org/essay/o...

“a peculiar lightness ... a horrible feeling of impending death ... a beautiful purplish hue ... My body seemed to be fashioned from wood” — from a New York physician’s 1884 “trip report” after ingesting cannabis and ergot (proto-LSD). More in our latest post: publicdomainreview.org/collection/e...

When the legend becomes fact… mikejay.net/bicycle-day-...

I wrote a piece about why America, perhaps surprisingly, is falling out of love with cocaine. It's about cultural and economic shifts, plus exaggerated fears that most cocaine contains fentanyl. san.com/cc/why-ameri...

Finished @mikejay.bsky.social's PSYCHONAUTS. Been a fan since reading his essays in Fortean Times and Anomalist (great piece on Coleridge!). Approachable, with deep insights. Text runs from Freud to Yeats, H.G. Wells, to Crowley, Blavatsky to Baudelaire. Bold, rich, nuanced.. and fun! 🔥 #BookSky

www.arte.tv/de/videos/12... Have humans always intoxicated themselves? My thoughts, from the Poison Garden in Alnwick, overdubbed in German

The Dream-God (1874) - One man's account of his intense and elaborate visions while under the influence of morphine, including 500 foot lizards and conversations with Confucius and Zoroaster. Read it here: http://bit.ly/17TOGOF

Coming in October yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Psilocybe Pickers tells the story of how these psychedelic fungi entered British consciousness in the twentieth century, the bemushroomed Britons who took them on as part of their culture, and how the authorities tried to police them. psychedelicpress.co.uk/products/psi...

27 February? That can only mean one thing. YES, THAT’S RIGHT! It’s 175 years to the day since George Merryweather gave a three-hour lecture to the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society about his leech barometer 🧵

‘Most of the tropes that came to define the vampire – neck-biting, blood-drinking or invisibility in mirrors – are recent inventions, though some, such as the protective virtue of garlic, do have a historical basis.’ @mikejay.bsky.social on the dangerous dead. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Sleep paralysis, somnambulism, hypnic jerks: we’ve all drifted through the borderlands of sleep & wakefulness. Those borderlands have preoccupied philosophers, scientists, & novelists, from Montaigne’s “most profound and maddest fancies” to E.M. Cioran’s warning of sleep’s “frightening importance.”

Only recently learned that A MAN CALLED HORSE and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE are both based on short stories by a little-known female author. Both in this collection which is solidly excellent.

“If we conflate the richness of biological brains & human experience with the information-processing machinations of deepfake-boosted chatbots, or whatever the latest AI wizardry is, we do our minds, brains & bodies a grave injustice.” — @anilseth.bsky.social, winner of @berggruen.org Essay Prize

The most detailed account yet of the Liberty Cap’s emergence - highly recommended 🍄

In the middle of a wild wkend at Entheogenesis Australis' Garden States. Missing way too much but what I have caught has been deeply engaging. Below daytime is Dave Nickles dropping bombs on the local community and night time is @mikejay.bsky.social going deep on mescaline art.

Still a few tickets left for this event with the amazing @mikejay.bsky.social tonight 6-7.30 at @kingsioppn.bsky.social All welcome as Mike discusses his new book on the discovery of N2O & the birth of psychedelic science👌👌

From ancient dream theory to hypnosis, somnambulism to psychedelic mind-expansion, "The Unconscious" by Antonio Melechi traces the wider social and scientific history of the unconscious mind. Coming in February! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205102...

#OnThisDay in 1977 the artist William Kurelek died. His 1953 autobiographical painting, The Maze, painted during his time as a patient at the Maudsley Hospital, continues to captivate visitors to Bethlem Museum of the Mind. Discover this intriguing artwork here: bit.ly/MOTMMaze

Listen to a series of recordings made by the ethnographer James Mooney in 1894 of different Native American Ghost Dance songs. According to the Library Of Congress notes that accompany the recordings, the performances are probably by Mooney himself — publicdomainreview.org/collection/j...

The tragic story of James Tilly Matthews, a former peace activist of the Napoleonic Wars confined to Bedlam asylum in 1797 for believing that his mind was under the control of the “Air Loom” — a terrifying machine which was brainwashing politicians: publicdomainreview.org/essay/i...

‘Tis the season…

"Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Mind" by Mike Jay "…Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism." Mike is always a great read! erowid.org/books/psycho...

Erowid needs your support. Donate toward real, honest info about psychedelics plants & drugs…for harm reduction, benefit enhancement, and the history books. Matching challenge! $20-$499 donations are DOUBLED $500-$3,000 donations are TRIPLED Erowid.org/sept_drive Donate and help spread the word!

From fairy-rings to Lewis Carroll's Alice, mushrooms have long been entwined with the supernatural in art + literature. @MikeJayNet on early reports of mushroom-induced trips and how one species became established as a stock motif of Victorian fairyland. publicdomainreview.org/essay/f...

If you're anywhere in Australia at the end of Nov then I'd suggest you make your way here. This is the first outdoor entheogenesis conference in 8 yrs. An incredible event with a sharp line up of speakers. @mikejay.bsky.social @tehseennoorani.bsky.social @pyrodelic.bsky.social @gmantic.bsky.social

‘One veteran shaman, returning from his first experience performing at a top-dollar eco-lodge, asked the ayahuasca researcher Stephan Beyer why these people had come halfway round the world to see him when they weren’t sick.’ @mikejay.bsky.social on shamanism: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thrilled to see this mammoth review of "Shamanism" in @lrb.co.uk from master drug historian @mikejay.bsky.social! www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Ever dreamt of being chased, falling, or flying? Our new exhibition, 'Between Sleeping and Waking', will bring together 200 years of artwork to show you are not alone! Opening this Thursday, 14 August *ੈ✩‧₊˚ bit.ly/MOTM_dreams Image: Let There Be Light, Edgar Farrar, 1943.

Out in paperback in the US today mikejay.net/books/free-r...

On today's new Little Atoms podcast, @mikejay.bsky.social on his latest book Free Radicals. Out now from @yalebooks.bsky.social. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or here: shows.acast.com/b5fe8d16-751...

Talking FREE RADICALS and the discovery of nitrous oxide www.drugscience.org.uk/podcast/epis...

Behind the scenes at the Pneumatic Institution, with Tim Haigh bookspodcast.com

I’ll be down under for this in Nov/Dec www.gardenstates.org

late to this but easily the best thing that's been written on the history of ketamine to date. i dream of visiting john lilly's archive at stanford...

On the gas in Bath tomorrow www.brlsi.org/whatson/free...

The mighty Sia get due recognition in Audubon - great piece by @rachelnuwer.bsky.social www.audubon.org/magazine/nat...

Bristolians: launching FREE RADICALS at the Bookhaus on Wednesday www.bookhausbristol.com/events/

This guest blog by @mikejay.bsky.social Mike Jay was originally published in the New Statesman, reproduced with permission Mike Jay is a cultural historian, author, & former Transform Trustee mikejay.net His books include the recent: 'Psychonauts: drugs & the making of the modern mind' 2/