The Eaton T. Fores Research Center
Reading Room
A
Unique Assortment of Books
Intended to Serve as the Basis for an
Entirely Incoherent World View.
Pihkal: A
Chemical Love Story by Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin.
The Shulgins' classic story of "Phenethylamines I Have
Known and Loved" has to be owned by anyone who's into psychoalchemy. Many of
the materials listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act are actually Sasha
Shulgin's inventions (although contrary to popular belief, MDMA [Ecstasy] is not one of
them). The first 2/3 of the book tells the story of the evolution of Sasha and Ann's
relationship, all the while filling us in as to who these people are, what they believe,
and how they came to believe it. The final third contains chemical, synthetic, and
subjective information on a large number of psychotropic phenethylamine compounds.
Note: this is not a "cook book!" If you're not a chemist, don't try the
syntheses described in this book or you'll probably hurt yourself and/or others.
Pihkal deserves the ETFRC's highest rating, and is a shining example of what genuine
psychopharmacology is (lets not forget what the root of psycho is).
More psychotropic chemistry ...
What Does
It All Mean? by Thomas Nagel
Nagel's
"Very Short Introduction to Philosophy" can be read in an hour or two and
requires absolutely no background in philosophy to understand. It isn't about
philosophers, when they lived, what their theories were, and so on. Instead, Nagel tries
to make the reader understand and feel just why these seemingly ordinary
questions -- sometimes called "The Big Questions" -- are so baffling when
they're really examined closely. Some of the questions Nagel considers are: How do we know
anything? How can words -- vibrations in the air or marks on paper -- possibly mean
something? If the world is made of matter and energy, how can consciousness exist? If
everything that happens is the result of something that caused it, how can free will be
possible? And the ever popular: what is the meaning of life? For those who have
never been able to see why philosophical problems are so captivating, or who have felt
that philosophy is just absurd nit-picking or navel-gazing, it's possible that some
perspective on the subject will be gained from this book. For those who feel inclined
towards philosophy, but don't know where to begin, this is as good a place as any.
More intro philosophy ...
Diary of a Drug Fiend
by Aleister Crowley
Though set over a century
ago, Crowley's tale of the blisses and hells of drug addiction will ring true to anyone
who's been there. Heading out one evening, Sir Peter Pendragon is bewitched by a
young woman who introduces him to cocaine. Before you know it, they've discovered
heroin, have risen far, far above the mundane cares of the world, and are off to Paris for
marriage and intrigue. When it all comes crashing down around them -- when they're
broke, homeless, spiritual wrecks -- they are set on the path towards a meaningful life by
the mysterious King Lamus, who educates them in the esoteric ways that Crowley's name is
forever associated with. It's almost a cliche to note how little the lasting truths
of what Burroughs called "the junk equation" have changed over time, but it's
worth noting anyway.
More dope literature ...
The View From Nowhere
by Thomas Nagel
Attempting to give a brief
synopsis of The View from Nowhere is like trying to explain the general gist of
quantum mechanics in seven words or less to someone entirely new to the subject.
This book ranks among the most profound things I've ever read that tries to deal with
subjective/objective split, a split that is to be found everywhere one turns in
philosophy, religion, and science. Nagel's great virtue here is that he is uwilling
to settle for a comfortable formulation of words -- as he puts it, "a consistent set
of things to say, rather than something to actually believe" -- and
he faces up to the problem's dizzying complexity without evasion. He does not insist
upon "solving" the "problem" and is perfectly willing to consider that
subjectivity/objectivity may represent an undissolvable tension where conscious beings are
concerned. The View from Nowhere tackles everything from the mind-body
problem, to ethics, to the meaning of life. So it is, in a sense, an anachronism: it
draws the reader back to a time when philosophers where actually willing to philosophize,
rather to pretend that the deepest of all questions must either be resolvable through
dense formalisms, or else that such questions aren't really "questions" at all,
but simply linguistic confusions. Without a doubt, this one gets the ETFRC's highest
rating.
More philosophy of mind ...
Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics
For decades the standard
textbook of pharmacology for medical students, the newly revised Tenth Edition shows the
enormous progress made in pharmacology in general, and neuropharmacology in particular,
over the past two decades. Ideas that were once vague and poorly understood -- such
as the precise mechanisms that produce what is called the "blood-brain barrier"
-- are now understood down to the molecular level. The pharmacodynamics -- that is,
the molecular mechanisms of action -- of a great many drugs are also understood to the
same depth. Since the demonstration of an opiate receptor by Pert and Snyder in
1973, methodologies patterned after theirs have been deployed to demonstrate
receptors for dozens of drugs, and, in many cases, for whole families of sub-receptors
for the same type of drug. For example, the opioid receptor comes in mu, kappa, and
delta varities; the mu receptor can be further divided into mu-1 and mu-2 receptors.
The family of receptors for serotonin (5-HT) is even more diverse. But
receptors are only the beginning of the story: pharmacology has now uncovered the
intracellular mechanisms by which receptors ultimately exert their effects, increasing or
decreasing the flow of certain ions through the celluar membrane and thus hyperpolarizing
or depolarizing the neuron -- making it more or less susceptible to "firing"
based on the activities of other neurons. Neuropharmacology is fascinating because
it operates right at the point where matter meets mind. Fascinating as it is,
though, we are no closer than we ever have been to being able to say just why all of this
activity should add up to consciousness -- and that is even more fascinating.
More science ...
Insanity: The Idea and Its
Consequences by Thomas S. Szasz
Since his first book, The Myth of Mental
Illness, appeared in 1974, Szasz has written almost thirty books on the same theme,
each time trying to clarify his thoughts, distance himself from those who grasped
"anti-psychiatry" when it was hip, answer the endless objections to his books
(more commonly, to the titles of his books, for most of those who are extremely critical
of Szasz have never actually read him) and to generally sharpen his thoughts and
distinguish them from what they are not. In Insanity: The Idea and Its
Consequences, Szasz has probably come as close as is possible to distilling over
thirty years of thought into a single work. Any metaphor rests on the literal meanings of
the words that go into it. You cannot construct a metaphor from words that have no literal
meanings. The process of taking a metaphorical idea and making a "thing" of it,
and then operating on the illigitemate thing rather than upon the metaphor is called
"reification." Alfred North Whitehead also called this the "falacy of
misplaced concreteness." It's a common manuever which allows us to begin with a
simple figure of speech and turn it into something real, perhaps even an entire
theoretical edifice. This, Sazasz argues, is what has happened with psychiatry,
whose roots are in madhouses and which is now trying to make itself respectible as a
legitimate branch of medicine by postulating the existence of subtle "chemical
imbalances" in our brains, which neutralize us as moral agents. The fact that
these "chemical imbalances" have been searched for for nearly a century, with
not an iota of evidence for them being found does not dissuade the biopsychiatrist.
Nor does the necessarily value-laden process of describing experience and behavior as
"pathological." Mental states can only be metaphorically sick, the way
that "spring fever" and "homesickness" are sicknesses. Szasz is
a genuine genius, and a master of prose who is a joy to read. His biting sarcasm
will also make readers smile -- at least, those readers who aren't committed to the idea
that they have "chemical imbalances." Another book that gets the ETFRC's
top rating.
More critical psychiatry ...
Drug Warriors And Their
Prey by Richard Lawrence Miller
Usenet citizens
generally realize that once an agument has reached the point where "the Hitler
analogy" is advanced, the discussion is over. Analogies have been taken to the
limit of absurdity and there is nothing more to say. That was my immediate reaction
to this book, which compares the systematic destruction of American drug users to the
systematic destruction of Jews in Nazi Germany. But I kept reading. Miller
builds his case slowly and carefully, and, at the moment you realize that the parallels
are indeed exact, your blood runs cold, and you experience terror and dread -- for your
country, for what you thought were its values, and for freedom itself. The
simplicity with which ordinary people can be signed up for campaigns of destruction
against their neighbors is utterly terrifying. Miller follows the five-step process
by which ordinary citizens are removed from the social and economic life of their nation,
deprived of property, and finally deprived of life itself: identification, ostracism,
confiscation, concentration, and annihilation. Mandatory drug testing has so
permeated society that it is essentially impossible to become employed without undergoing
it. But if drug use produces the obvious deficits in performance that we are told it
does, then why are special laboratory tests required to identify drug users? If a
person's job performance is exemplary, what does it mean when we fire that person because
of molecules detected in his urine? American drug users are identified and pushed
out of society and the economy. What is the next step? This book will wake
you up to an obscenity that has been going on right under our noses for decades.
History shows that it is not too late to shake off our collective slumber and set things
right. An absolute must-read for anyone interested in the long war America has been
waging on a group of entirely ordinary citizens.
More drug war and harm reduction
commentary ...
Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health
by Elliot S. Valenstein, Ph.D.
University of Michigan Professor of
Neuroscience Elliot Valenstein's critical examination of claims that "mood
disorders" and "thought disorders" are ultimately biochemical distrubances
in the nervous system, not different in kind from epilepsy. Not surprisingly, a
clear look at the evidence -- or, more precisely, the lack of any evidence at all --
supporting this claim reveals that it is based on nothing more than the desire of
pharmaceutical companies to keep selling pills, and the desire of people to believe that
their troubles are biochemical in origin and beyond their control or responsibility.
How many people have informed you that a doctor told them that they have a
"chemical imbalance" and must be treated with one of modern pharmacology's
enormously costly placeboes? How was the diagnosis of this "chemical imbalance"
made? Was exploratory neurosurgery done, with picomolar quantities of neuroactive
substances applied to specific synapses? No? Well, then, a spinal tap must
have been done to examine, at least at a gross level, the ratios of various
neurotransmitter metabolites, right? No? Wait a minute -- did the doctor even
draw blood to assess the most basic body chemistry? Nope. Then how did he know that
an undetectably subtle error in neurotransmitter metabolism was present? It turns
out that he had a brief chat with his patient, and the patient told the doctor that he
felt sad and hopeless. Can you imagine a hematologist diagnosing leukemia using this
technique? Valerstein goes over 50 years of fruitless research in great detail, and
along the way explores the role that the pharmaceutical industry has in fabricating
imaginary diseases to sell cures for. This little-known book is well worth a close read
for anyone who feels uncomfortable when a Paxil commercial on television tells him or her
that "a chemical imbalance may be to blame" for the nervousness he or she may
feel about living in an utterly insane world. Highly recommended.
More critical psychiatry ...
Demon Box
by Ken Kesey
More literature ...
Minds, Brains and Science
More philosophy of mind ...
Knots
More psychology ...
