Humans have always been fascinated by drugs and altered states. Despite the risk of addiction, many have used drugs as technologies to induce moments of meaning-making transcendence. Beginning at the close of the eighteenth century, this book traces the quest for transcendence and meaning through drugs in the West through the modern period.

• Acknowledgements


• Introduction


• 1. Technologies of Transcendence


• 2. Opium Dreams


• ·3. Anesthetic Revelation


• 4. Hashishdom


• 5. Occultism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries


• 6. The Antipodes of the Mind


• 7. Revolution in the Head


• 8. Psychedelic Shamanism


• Index

Chistopher Partridge is a Professor of Religious Studies at Lancaster University.