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The work proves to be a trip. Among other things, it copiously details numerous substances consumed by this US-raised academic specializing in scientific thought has experimented with. They include psilocybin, acid, weed; prescription drugs for anxiety; antidepressants, fluoxetine, modern medications and tricyclics; caffeine (“I've consumed espresso without interruption since September 13, 1990”); and, personally speaking, the always disappointing booze.

The Most Reality-Shifting Element

The really trippy thing, though, lies not primarily in the author’s accounts of his psychedelic episodes, rather that they are penned by a tough-minded logical thinker, who knows empirical Foundations of Empirical Knowledge as Aldous Huxley’s mescaline-inspired perceptual explorations. Furthermore, they’re presented intending to melting the minds of his academic colleagues and general readers arguing that entheogens transcend the ego and make us part of cosmic consciousness, thus making liberation in the manner Baruch Spinoza’s thinker Baruch Spinoza explained it (expressed by the author with “a willing acquiescence regarding how one’s own body functions in the necessary universal laws”).

Melting the Cartesian Framework

The dissolving analogy is apt, as the iconic example of Enlightenment-era western philosophy was exemplified when René Descartes French thinker René Descartes melted a piece of wax. The lump may change its properties, scent, dimensions, width, and yet, the philosopher argued, we assert that we know that it is the very entity. The knower might misperceive regarding every experiences involving this wax yet not, Descartes argued, that cognition exists: this is the foundation of his well-known “I think therefore I am” – by means of which the rationalist established logical, science‑venerating entities we are to this day.

The philosopher, discombobulatingly, reverses the narrative on the Cartesian mental exploration: suppose that, instead of melting the wax, he had “altered his perception” with acid, or with hallucinogens starting to arrive across the continent from the Americas along with potatoes and stimulants, including sacred cactus or ayahuasca? Suppose that instead of foregrounded reason and instead celebrated the creative powers , he argues, are activated by psychedelics? The west might have ended up seeing the world completely differently, and human beings instead as “limitless wells of insight and understanding”.

Challenging Traditional Philosophy

There is greater depth in Smith-Ruiu’s psychedelic experience, as suggested, than considered in conventional colleagues’ theories. His approach seems kin to current contemporary, reality-altering movements as the new realism of perspectives, and object-oriented frameworks and non-human-centric views. Kant claimed the noumenal remains unknowable, inferable perhaps but not directly perceived. One cannot in this world, perceive the divine. For Smith-Ruiu, psychedelics can potentially transcend that barrier. For that thought by itself I’m amazed – and encouraged – that such ideas are accepted.

Clarity Reflections

Important to note at this point that this isn’t similar to drug-fueled memoirs typed when the writer is out of their gourd. Smith-Ruiu is no the chaotic writer. Titled On Drugs however it is not written on drugs (except, likely, from the drugs he mentions previously and the odd coffee boost). “I am as I write, clear-headed, alert, and fully dedicated to the work.”

A Surprising Plot Twist

The volume concludes with a remarkable philosophical shift (warning: insight ahead). In 2023, the author attended church service for the first time since early adulthood at the church near his Paris apartment. His proposition here proposes that substance-induced states parallels the experience of spiritual practices: normal consciousness is interpreted as an illusion, and through ritual individuals can sense, like his on mushrooms, a glimpse of timelessness. Another parallel lies in how one submits personal agency in church just as with a consciousness-expanding journey. He writes: “Psychedelics, similar to faith, comparably to creativity represent an abandonment of the will to maintain isolation.” The philosopher is self-aware to acknowledge how absurd this may seem: that substances serve as his gateway drug to the Catholic church.

Accessible Transcendence

And you don’t even need to use entheogens from any source in a Dutch head shop (as described) to expand consciousness. The author references the opening of In Search of Lost Time the classic text, when little Marcel creatively fantasizes that he has become {some of the things