THE SEARCH for plant sources of entheogens, and their cultural and historical uses, has defined Jonathan Ott's career, and Pharmacotheon is the culmina-tion of his knowledge and work to date. It also greatly advances the self-publishing movement in psychedelic scholarship that has flourished these past few years. We certainly need all the useful and well-documented information we can get to prepare ourselves for the fin-de-siecle and the Psychedelic Renaissance of the coming millennium.
It appears that Ott has been thinking a lot, since his works of the 1970s, about the use of plant drugs in contemporary society. The 1980s' War on Drugs is the dominant metaphor for what went wrong with humankind's attempt to coalesce with mind-altering plants. Ott's lengthy introduction provides an overview of current drug policy issues, for those readers not familiar with this literature, and it gives him an opportunity to comment on many aspects of contemporary drug use. It is basically a preamble to the compilation of drug research that follows, presented in four parts with five appendices and an extensive bibliography.
THE SEARCH for plant sources of entheogens, and their cultural and historical uses, has defined Jonathan Ott's career, and Pharmacotheon is the culmina-tion of his knowledge and work to date. It also greatly advances the self-publishing movement in psychedelic scholarship that has flourished these past few years. We certainly need all the useful and well-documented information we can get to prepare ourselves for the fin-de-siecle and the Psychedelic Renaissance of the coming millennium.
It appears that Ott has been thinking a lot, since his works of the 1970s, about the use of plant drugs in contemporary society. The 1980s' War on Drugs is the dominant metaphor for what went wrong with humankind's attempt to coalesce with mind-altering plants. Ott's lengthy introduction provides an overview of current drug policy issues, for those readers not familiar with this literature, and it gives him an opportunity to comment on many aspects of contemporary drug use. It is basically a preamble to the compilation of drug research that follows, presented in four parts with five appendices and an extensive bibliography.
