Mescaline

These notes were published in 2020 and discuss Jay's mescaline history and experience claims as presented in the book at that time.

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.

Quick take

A quick take summarizes key points from the book but doesn’t go as deep as our regular analyses.

Jay traces mescaline's long use in rituals and its relationship to peyote cactus, whose dried buds contain the substance. I understood him to compare its effects with LSD while describing more bodily discomfort. Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception helped make mescaline widely known, and Jay connects Alexander Shulgin's later compound work to his own mescaline experience.

The book follows repeated attempts by Western governments to ban peyote or mescaline, from Spanish colonial contact to the US context described in the book. It also emphasises the rituals around peyote, including rhythmic drumming. The account contrasts those settings with unpleasant experiences at some American house parties. In ritual settings, Jay describes experiences that could be pleasant, transformative or disorienting, including for artists. I noted that mescaline helped launch the psychedelic era but later became less common, partly as substances such as 2C-B became easier to isolate.

Back-cover synopsis

“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.”