Description: In June of 2017, an international group of specialists in ethnopharmacology, chemistry, botany, psychology, and anthropology met to discuss their findings of the last fifty years and assess the potential future for investigations into traditional plant-based medicines. The Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs is the defining scholarly publication on both past and current research with psychotropic plant substances for medicinal, therapeutic, and spiritual uses.
Brief description: Director (emeritus) Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
Review Quotes:
"When comparing the papers from the 1967 conference to those presented in England in 2017, the reader is struck by how little progress has been made over the past half-century in understanding the mechanics of psychedelic plants and psychoactive chemical compounds derived from natural sources." -New York Journal of Books
"Much of [the book's] discussion centers around the indigenous people of the world who have utilized these miraculous psychedelic fungi and plants (even the skin secretions of frogs and toads) in their cultures and religions. Of course, what's most exciting is the potential for additional therapeutic discoveries, once the substances are better understood." -Foreword Reviews
"These two volumes bring together two very different eras of psychedelic studies, its early florescence in the 1960s and a current wave reflecting cumulative developments fifty years later." -Journal of Psychedelic Studies