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The work proves to be an adventure. In particular, it copiously details various compounds consumed by this US-born scholar in scientific thought has ingested. They include psychedelic fungi, acid, cannabis; anxiety medications to ease tension; mood stabilizers, SSRIs, modern medications and tricyclics; coffee (“I've ingested coffee every single day since September 13, 1990”); and, in his experience, the always disappointing spirits.

The Truly Trippy Aspect

The truly astonishing aspect, however, lies not primarily in the philosopher’s narratives of his substance journeys, instead that they are penned by a rigorous logical thinker, who knows analytic epistemological works just as much as mystical mescaline-inspired The Doors of Perception. Furthermore, they’re presented intending to eroding the minds of his fellow thinkers and general readers proposing that hallucinogens transcend individual identity merging us with universal awareness, thereby rendering true freedom in the manner the 17th-century theorist Baruch Spinoza defined it (expressed by the author as “an agreeable acquiescence regarding how one’s own body is moving within the inevitable order of things”).

Transforming the Philosophical Tradition

The transforming metaphor fits well, because the foundational moment of 17th-century European thought occurred when the French philosopher French thinker René Descartes heated a piece of wax. The substance might transform its shape, smell, dimensions, breadth, however, the philosopher argued, we continue to believe with certainty its identity as the same piece. The thinking mind might misperceive regarding every their perceptions about the substance but not, Descartes argued, the fact that cognition exists: here lies the foundation of his well-known “I think, I exist” – through which the French thinker made us logical, empiricism-loving entities we have been from then on.

Smith-Ruiu, astonishingly, challenges the tradition on the Cartesian mental exploration: suppose that, instead of heating the substance, the philosopher had “melted his mind” via psychedelics, or with psychedelics starting to arrive across the continent across the Atlantic along with new crops and tobacco, like mescaline or ayahuasca? Imagine if he had not prioritized logic but rather praised the visionary abilities which Smith-Ruiu suggests, are activated by psychedelics? European thought could have become perceiving reality in a wholly new way, and human beings instead as “boundless sources of illumination and understanding”.

Transcending Conventional Thought

There’s more in Smith-Ruiu’s psychedelic experience, one might say, than imagined in conventional philosophers’ frameworks. His perspective bears resemblance to these contemporary, mind-blowing intellectual trends as contemporary realist theories, and the holistic views of frameworks and object-oriented philosophy. The German philosopher claimed the noumenal was by definition inaccessible, theorizable but never knowable. We could never in this world, experience transcendence. In this work, consciousness-expanders can potentially transcend that barrier. Due to this proposition merely I’m amazed – and encouraged – that he got tenure.

Clarity Perspectives

It’s worth mentioning at this point that this isn’t like those wild narratives typed while the author is under the influence. Smith-Ruiu is no Hunter S Thompson. Named About Psychedelics but it was not composed while high (apart, likely, from the medications he describes above and regular coffee boost). “I am as I write, sober, lucid, and fully focused on the project.”

A Remarkable Plot Twist

The volume concludes with an unexpected turn of events (warning: insight ahead). In 2023, Smith-Ruiu went to Catholic mass after decades since early adulthood in the parish next door to his home. His argument at this point is that entheogenic journeys parallels the experience of religious ceremonies: ordinary time is seen as an illusion, and through ritual one might perceive, like his with psilocybin, a glimpse of eternity. An additional connection concerns how a person relinquishes one’s will in church just as with a consciousness-expanding journey. The author states: “Entheogens, like religion, like poetry are among other things an abandonment of control to go it alone.” The philosopher shows awareness to acknowledge how strange this appears: that psychedelics have become his pathway to the Catholic church.

Common Psychedelia

And you don’t even need to use psychedelics from any source in Amsterdam (as Smith-Ruiu did) to alter perception. He points to the initial section of In Search of Lost Time À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, when little Marcel vividly envisions that he transforms into {some of the things