Note: It's a criminal offence in Australia and many other countries to possess, manufacture or supply psilocybin and LSD. This essay is for education and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to encourage you to break the law.
When “the sea flows in our veins… and the stars are our jewels,” when all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness or self-assertion, for the pursuit of power or the drearier forms of pleasure?
- Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
I've never been on a rollercoaster. As a kid, I remember waiting shamefully with Mum and Dad at an amusement park, while my brother and sister whizzed down the slides again and again, higher and higher. I envied their abandon, their flushed and grinning faces as they emerged at the bottom of the slide, their apparent fearlessness.
As a teenager and university student I gave psychedelic drugs a wide berth. They were a rollercoaster of a different form. The same fear of leaving the groundplane, of losing control, kept me away. It is surprising, then, to be asked to write an essay about psychedelics as a woman who's never partaken. “Follow your curiosity,” urges my editor. I am nothing if not curious.
I've circled the subject for years: as a writer exploring relationships between humans and nature, and as a gardener intrigued by the agency and intelligence of plants and other beings. Interactions between people and plants/fungi that open the door, just a crack,
