A lively and intensely personal addition to the drugs-memoir genre.
Strassman chronicles his experiences with psychedelic drugs.
The author’s recounting of his “psychospiritual growth” follows his story from boyhood to medical school and beyond, detailing his slow introduction to the world of altered consciousness. He recalls the desire to reinforce his “masculine qua masculine credentials” among his peers, his first rum-and-Coke (“I gulp down the rest of the drink,” he writes. “It tastes better than beer, that’s for sure. I drink two more”), and his increasingly serious experiences with heavier drugs. Strassman breaks down these experiences into considerations of one’s “set” (“our mental set includes long-standing personality, habits, and coping style”), “setting” (“everything else, the ‘not-you’ part of the experience, the outside world”), and “cause,” the actual mechanism of the experience, whether drugs or more mundane practices like breath control. In a series of illustrated chapters, the author takes readers inside the world of psychedelic drug experimentation, addressing both the ecstatic aspects and the grubby, frightening sides (the book opens with a scene of Strassman fighting his way through a rough drug experience: “Panic stirs as I begin sinking into the bed. I jerk upright before I descend much further”). Strassman writes with an engaging directness—his prose deftly toggles between sarcastic observations and sincere confessions, bringing heartfelt intensity to his observations on love, heartbreak, therapy, and particularly the wild experiences he’s had under the influence of various psychedelic drugs. His descriptions are remarkably vivid: “I inhale deeply and my entire body expands just beyond its normal boundaries, feeling nearly weightless,” he writes. “The sweet dampness pours across my lips, past my teeth, over my tongue.” Readers who give the entire spectrum of psychedelic drugs a wide berth probably won’t find themselves tempted to indulge Strassman’s chronicle, but every reader will find this account fascinating.
A lively and intensely personal addition to the drugs-memoir genre.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781644119792
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Park Street Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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