A good conclusion to the Bobiverse trilogy. Listened to the series in beginning 2019 and 2020 (two times total). Looking forward to more books and maybe even to write some fanfiction.
The storylines almost all conclude and the Bobs win against the Others. There are more than 500 of them, so more than enough to make new stories with and explore the Bobiverse.
Original review on Blossom Analysis
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Drugs Without the Hot Air by David Nutt is an eye-opening book that delights with statistics and rational information about drugs and their effects. Effects on you, your environment, government, international effects, and effects compared to riding a horse. To get the last reference you have to read the book, something I recommend you do if you’re interested in a policy-oriented overview of drugs.
One thing that stands out and really makes the book shine, is the constant comparison of ‘drugs’ with our two most widely used substances – tobacco and alcohol. Minimizing the harms of legal and illegal drugs is the subtitle of the book. Policy should be aimed at reducing harm (which is David Nutt’s perspective too), but more often is driven by headlines whilst the effects of alcohol and tobacco are much larger (in most ways you can measure it) than ‘hard’ drugs.
One thing that angers (as far as a book can convey that) David is the use of too stringent drug categories for the ones that do less harm. This diminishes our trust in the system. It makes many people do illegal things (and he argues that the legal effects – getting jailed – are much worse than smoking it) – kids included. And makes research with compounds that could help (classical psychedelics, ketamine, MDMA) way more difficult.
One of the ‘scares’ in the UK (on which the book focusses, but lessons apply widely) was that of Ecstasy/mollie/MDMA. In the book (and this paper – published in a leading psychology journal) he argues for the greater danger from Equasy. A condition from which (from the paper) “The harmful consequences are well established – about 10 people a year die of it and many more suffer permanent neurological damage as had my patient. It has been estimated that there is a serious adverse event every 350
exposures and these are unpredictable, though more likely in experienced users who take more risks with equasy. It is also associated with over 100 road traffic accidents per year – often with deaths.” It’s riding a horse (and the accidents related to it).
There are multiple factors to keep in mind, this includes the harm done to the user, others in the community, others around the world, nature (in total he identifies 16 sorts of harm). Based on this model he (with the backing of a panel and much research) concludes the overall harm to be ordered as follows (on a 0-100 scale):
See the full ISCD report here.
People have been taking drugs for a very long time. One of the main reasons is to ‘change our consciousness’. With alcohol we feel more open to talking, with tobacco less nervous, with heroin we can get the pain to go away. There are a variety of reasons for taking drugs, and they are almost all reasons that are hardwired into us.
The book does not focus only on psychedelics (as this site does), but does devote a chapter to them and explains the relatively little harm they do to the user (or their environment). It even mentions some studies that are related to LSD and the ability to increase creativity (and mentions anecdotes from Steve Jobs to Francis Crick).
The most interesting/out-there chapter is the one about the future of drugs. It ponders if we can use gene sequencing to make drugs more personalized. Both for treatment (as is already being done in some cases), and also for recreational use and identifying possible genetic risks. The future might also help us negate some of the negative side effects of drugs (e.g. Tuesday dip after MDMA use, the memory loss from alcohol). How much governments are open to innovation and research is one of the main factors as to where the future will bring us.
David Nutt is known as a great advocate for looking at drugs and their harm in an objective and scientific manner. This got him dismissed as ACMD chairman. He subsequently wrote this book. He has also founded the informational website Drug Science.
How Not to Diet by Dr. Greger is another great book by him (after How Not To Die). It’s heavy, thick, but so worth it. Great advice overall and good specifics.
Based on some advice, mostly from this book, I’ve made some dietary tweaks that I’ve documented here: Finally getting that six-pack
“Every month seems to bring a trendy new diet or weight loss fad—and yet obesity rates continue to rise, and with it a growing number of diseases and health problems. It’s time for a different approach.
Enter Dr. Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM, the internationally-renowned nutrition expert, physician, and founder of Nutritionfacts.org. Author of the mega-bestselling How Not to Die, Dr. Greger now turns his attention to the latest research on the leading causes—and remedies—of obesity.
Dr. Greger hones in on the optimal criteria to enable weight loss while considering how these foods actually affect our health and longevity. He lays out the key ingredients of the ideal weight-loss diet—factors such as calorie density, the insulin index, and the impact of foods on our gut microbiome—showing how evidence-based eating is crucial to our success.
But How Not to Diet goes beyond food to identify twenty-one weight-loss accelerators available to our bodies, incorporating the latest discoveries in cutting-edge areas like chronobiology to reveal the factors that maximize our natural fat-burning capabilities. Dr. Greger builds the ultimate weight loss guide from the ground up, taking a timeless, proactive approach that can stand up to any new trend.
Chock full of actionable advice and groundbreaking dietary research, How Not to Diet will put an end to dieting—and replace those constant weight-loss struggles with a simple, healthy, sustainable lifestyle.”
Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic by Mike Jay gives you a full history of Mescaline. It takes you on a journey through the jungles of South America, over the plains of North America, to labs around the world. It not only documents who has been involved with the early use of it, but also how it’s been taken up (and later left behind) in popular culture. A deep-dive into mescaline.
This review also appeared on Blossom.
A quick take summarizes key points from the book but doesn’t go as deep as our regular analyses.
“Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-twentieth century through Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, after which the word “psychedelic” was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: the earliest Andean cultures depicted mescaline-containing cacti in their temples. Mescaline was isolated in 1897 from the peyote cactus, first encountered by Europeans during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. During the twentieth century it was used by psychologists investigating the secrets of consciousness, spiritual seekers from Aleister Crowley to the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, artists exploring the creative process, and psychiatrists looking to cure schizophrenia. Meanwhile, peyote played a vital role in preserving and shaping Native American identity. Drawing on botany, pharmacology, ethnography, and the mind sciences and examining the mescaline experiences of figures from William James to Walter Benjamin to Hunter S. Thompson, this is an enthralling narrative of mescaline’s many lives.”
Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley is another take on the psychedelic experience. It’s written by the author of Brave New World, and The Doors of Perception
It isn’t as good/interesting as The Doors of Perception, so not per se the most interesting (but also not too long) book.
I wrote a longer summary on Blossom Analysis, replicated here:
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“Like the earth of a hundred years ago [1856], our mind still has its darkest Africas, its unmapped Borneos and Amazonian basins.” Huxley remarks that we first need to map/explore our minds, only then form theories, classifications, etc.
He states that he knows of two ways to reach the depth of our minds (or its far-off destination), 1) mescaline (and LSD), 2) hypnosis.
Light is an important concept in the short book. Huxley states that in 2/3rds of our dreams there is no light. Whilst in the psychedelic experience there is almost always much bright light.
Another recurring subject is the absence of language. In many contemporary theories, language (or the absence of it) is often mentioned.
The third thing experienced is ‘objects’, by this he means geometrical forms, patterns, mosaics. An example of how this looks can be found on PsychonautWiki.
“Every mescalin experience, every vision arising under hypnosis, is unique; but all recognizably belong to the same species,” Huxley states that we don’t know why, researchers now are trying to identify what changes in the brain (and what underlies the experiences, but still makes them unique for every person – for instance, see this paper).
The theme of light is continued with an observation that many people see – brightly colored – gems. But, nowadays many people see pastel colors, so have we become too familiar with bright colors (e.g. through advertisements)? “Familiarity breeds indifference. We have seen too much pure, bright colors at Woolworth’s to find it intrinsically transporting.” This is an interesting observation, but in the PsychonautWiki link, there is (still) an overwhelming amount of bright colors in the visuals.
Huxley then observes that the beings some people see “… are content merely to exist,” which reflects nicely on his observations in The Doors of Perception that he felt the same (and thus also not motivated to do much).
In art (paintings), Huxley observes that we like some types more than others, “… natural objects a very long way off, and, second those which represent them at close range.” You could argue that these are also the domains that are extraordinary, that these are ones we don’t deal with normally (the average range), so observing them is ‘special’.
“But visionary experience is not always blissful. It is sometimes terrible. There is hell as well as heaven.” Seeing the world this way, Huxley argues, can be seen in the later Van Gogh landscapes and Kafka’s stories (e.g. The Metamorphosis).
Huxley again makes the link between negative psychedelic experience and schizophrenics. He makes a good point about schizophrenics not being able to ‘exit’ the experience, whilst most people on psychedelics do know quite well that in a few hours they will be back to ‘normal’.
He also argues that “If the liver is diseased,” then this may cause the negative psychedelic experience. There seems to be little to no proof of this hypothesis.
Huxley ends the book with the following: “My own guess is that modern spiritualism and ancient tradition are both correct. There is a posthumous state of the kind described in Sir Oliver Lodge’s book Raymond; but there is also a heaven of blissful visionary experience; there is also a hell of the same kind of appalling visionary experience as is suffered here by schizophrenics and some of those who take mescalin; and there is also an experience, beyond time, of union with the divine Ground.”
There is much reference to works of art (paintings, poems). Again he mentions the following book:
Heaven and Hell has been used as a reference book in the 1960s counter culture. After that, it has found less fame than The Doors of Perception (review).
(from the back of the book) “Poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, travel writer, essayist, critic, philosopher, mystic, and social prophet, Aldous Huxley was one of the most accomplished and influential English literary figures of the mid-twentieth century.”
His best-known work is the dystopian novel Brave New World.
His other work on the psychedelic experience is The Doors of Perception (review).
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu is an amazing book in a genre that I normally don’t read. It’s a fantasy book that is set on some islands and represents technology as in the 16th age of China (or at least so I imagine).
The story is long, intriguing and very moving. It features love, politics, warfare, honour, betrayal, and more.
It features complex characters, situations that you can see from different perspectives, and highlights the difficulty of working together in this world.
I definitely can recommend it.
Lifespan by David Sinclair is an awesome book about how we can extend lifespan and the implication. Optimism abounds with Sinclair, but his research does keep him somewhat to the ground.
For many later parts in the book (the speculative/extrapolations) it’s difficult for me to judge where we’re going. But I dearly hope that he is right and that we will be living much longer than our parents.
And yes, that is healthspan, not only lifespan. Or in other words, I want to live in a healthy body, not extend the last phase forever.
At a later date, I will write down more extensive notes (when the longevity theme – 2020 goals – comes around).
Here is another good summary.
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley is a very interesting take on the psychedelic experience. It’s written by the author of Brave New World, a very interesting book too.
I’m reading it for my new venture, and it’s a fun read. Not per se necessary to understand psychedelics. Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind might be a better (and longer) intro.
I wrote a longer summary on Blossom Analysis, replicated here:
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The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley is a vivid first-person description of the psychedelic experience. It details a trip on mescaline (peyote, similar to LSD). His superior skill in writing makes the experience come to life. Huxley wonders about many aspects of life, describes his visual experience, and his interactions with a guide and his wife. A good, and short, introduction to the psychedelic experience.
“Is the mental disorder due to a chemical disorder?” Throughout the book, Huxley asks if – at a level – it’s just a chemical imbalance. This matches our current understanding and hypothesis of what is going on in the brain. Nor he or scientists ignore the broader scope of interpersonal relationships (i.e. he isn’t preaching or arguing for a behaviorist interpretation of the mind).
“I swallowed four-tenths of a gram of mescalin …” This is on the high-end of a normal dose (PsychonautWiki).
“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.” This follows a part where he talks about our subjective experience/sensation (qualia) and how it’s difficult to (perfectly) understand others.
At various moments he talks about “Istigkeit” or “Is-ness“. He compares this to Being-Awareness-Bliss, and I think you can also understand it as a form of ego dissolution.
“When I got up and walked about, I could do so quite normally, without misjudging the whereabouts of objects.” The influence of psychedelics seems to be confined mostly to our ‘higher-level’ aspects of our brain, all – if not most – bodily functions and capabilities are not affected. Further on, Huxley remarks “… the body seemed perfectly well able to look after itself.”
“The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.” This is a quote by Dr. C.D. Broad and highlights the ‘Mind at Large’ hypothesis. This seems like a top-down model and reminiscent of Plato (and that we have to go ‘back’ to this ideal state), and opposed to other ideas like those of Popper.
But there is logic and science to the “reducing valve”, the REBUS model and our, limited, understand of consciousness does say that there might be more criticality when under the influence of psychedelics.
Huxley also observed the following:
“In the final stage of egolessness there is an “obscure knowledge” that All is in all – that All is actually each.”
“… when the cerebral sugar shortage … “ We now understand better how the brain works and that a sugar shortage is not how mescalin works. But that it binds to and activates the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor with a high affinity.
“What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful.” A great way of describing what artists (he mentions some painters and musicians throughout) might be able to perceive over ‘the rest’ of us.
“How could one reconcile this timeless bliss of seeing as one ought to see with the temporal duties of doing what one ought to do and feeling as one ought to feel?” This speaks to the ‘importance’ or euphoria that one experiences on psychedelics. The here and now feels as important is anything in the world. “This participation in the manifest glory of things left no room, so to speak, for the ordinary, the necessary concerns of human existence, above all for concerns involving persons.”
“Mescalin opens the way of Mary, but shuts the door on that of Martha. It gives access to contemplation – but to a contemplation that is incompatible with action and even with the will to action, the very thought of action. In the intervals between his revelations, the mescalin taker is apt to feel that, though in one way everything is supremely as it should be, in another there is something wrong. His problem is essentially the same as that which confronts the quietist, the arhat and, on another level, the landscape painter and the painter of human still lives. Mescalin can never solve that problem; it can only pose it, apocalyptically, for those to whom it had never before presented itself.”
What a wonderful reflection of your mind under the influence of psychedelics.
“The Highest Order prevails even in the disintegration. The totality is present even in the broken pieces.” This again refers to the Higher Mind.
“Most takers of mescaline experience only the heavenly part of schizophrenia.” This refers to a moment of terror he experienced and which brought him more empathy for those who are suffering from mental illness.
Alas the trip has to end somewhere, “… I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as “being in one’s right mind.” “
Huxley laments that only alcohol and tobacco are available without restriction. He mentions that we use them to escape daily life and its drudgeries. Prohibition is not what will prevent this, “The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducting men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones.”
But, he is not advocating that we all should start using mescalin, “… there is a minority that finds in the drug only hell or purgatory.” The effects of mescaline (8 hours on average) are also much too long for most situations.
In the final parts of the book, Huxley comments on the “foppish” nature of speech, on how it isn’t everything that consciousness is.
Although the book is mostly his first-person experience, some other works are mentioned:
The Doors of Perception are mentioned in many works and scientific papers. If particular ones spring to mind, they will be added here.
(from the back of the book) “Poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, travel writer, essayist, critic, philosopher, mystic, and social prophet, Aldous Huxley was one of the most accomplished and influential English literary figures of the mid-twentieth century.”
His best-known work is the dystopian novel Brave New World.
Eight Weeks to Optimum Health by Andrew Weil was not my cup of green tea. I think the biggest problem was that his information is based on outdated science and many anecdotes. So although he is coming from the right place, I couldn’t agree with many of the specifics.
I can say that his advice is much better than the average American diet. It also does do a good job of seeing food as part of something larger and includes things like meditation. It’s more holistic than how we normally look at diet.
Some more notes:
Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday is already the third book I’ve read by him. The others were ‘The Obstacle Is the Way‘ and ‘Perennial Seller‘.
Holiday’s influences range from the ancient Stoics to Buddhists, to presidents of past ages and coaches of today.
The chapters consist of short lessons around the mind, body, and soul. Each has some connection to stillness. Inner calm is what he argues for, and does so with success most of the time.
I couldn’t agree with everything, finding a higher purpose is something that still doesn’t sit right with me. I can understand it at some level, and he even goes as far as saying you don’t need religion for it. Yet, I also think that you don’t need/there is no overarching purpose/reason for things.
Some of the topics/chapters are: