Among the New Books

Abstract

Had you been a young boy in the 1960s and wanted to try for yourself the psychedelic experience written about in books such as The doors of perception, how would you have acquired the necessary 'drugs'?f-'AIJL DEVEKE~JX wrote to Aldous Huxley and amazingly Huxley replied.Whilst Huxley could not supply, in this case mescaline, he wished him well in his quest, and by his 21sl birthday two small sugar cubes with LSD launched DEVEKEIJX on his first trip.So begins PAUL DEVEKEIJX'S The long trip (xix+298 pages, 78 figures.3997.London: Penguin Arkana 0-14-019540-8 $15.!35 paperback): and indeed it is a trip of some length, from the entoptic: images found on caves walls, to the ghost roads of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages.The long trip is a traveller's guide to the psychedelic experience of others in the 'foreign countries' of time, combining linguistics, ethnobotany, biology and anthropology, and, for our own journey, bringing together dispersed research on the archaeology of thc altered states of mind; Lewis-Williams and Dowson on Palaeolithic art, Dronfield 011 megalithic monuments, Sherratt on opium brazicrs of the Neolithic.Wasson and Richardson on magic mushrooms in the New World.The range of evidence for the use of hallucinogenic substances is astounding and undeniable.It includes the literary works of De Quincy, Coleridge and Greene, the bright frescoed images and the poppy goddess from the Palace of Knossos; perhaps evcn the flying carpet -a carpet whose designs were inspircd by