A review of Mike Jay's book 'Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic' describes the work as tracing mescaline's journey from pre-Columbian use in the Americas through its isolation by Western scientists, its role in shaping modern psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and its influence on art and mythology. The review notes Jay's narrative weaves together diverse historical and scientific threads, showing how mescaline challenged conventional understandings of consciousness and perception. The book is presented as a comprehensive account that connects indigenous traditions, laboratory research, and artistic experimentation, offering a broad cultural history of the substance.
A review of Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock's edited collection 'Expanding Mindscapes: A Global History of Psychedelics' describes how the volume expands the historiography of psychedelics both temporally and geographically beyond the familiar North American narrative. Across 20 chapters, contributors explore topics including LSD in clinical theology among medical missionaries in India, African plants voacanga africana and tabernanthe iboga, Korean artist Nam June Paik's video work as a technology of consciousness, and psychedelic use in Israel, Britain, France, and Pakistan. The collection maintains a unified critical perspective while covering Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America, though scholars from the Global South are heavily outnumbered.
MDMA (ecstasy) has been characterized as both a hedonistic party drug and a harmful substance, but this chapter argues for a more nuanced historical perspective. It provides a 'synthetic history' tracing MDMA's invention by Merck in Germany, its reinvention by American chemists in the 1960s-70s, and its arrival in Britain's rave scene. The authors contend that ecstasy is a historically contingent intoxicant, shaped by factors like pill potency (2010s pills were considerably stronger than 1990s versions) and 'hyper-specific' spaces and scenes of consumption, as well as structural factors such as gender, race, and class. They propose that ecstasy's characterization as a universalizing intoxicant deserves closer interrogation.