Neal M. Goldsmith - Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development

Psychedelic Healing is full of knowledge and wisdom, psychologically sophisticated, and up-to-date. It contains important lessons for those wishing to work with psychedelic plants and substances, which are powerful and tricky tools for accessing the psyche. Neal Goldsmith makes a well-reasoned plea for society to use them once again because they are important tools for healing inside, healing relationships, and healing society. I enjoyed his speculation about the post-postmodern synthesis of tribal and modern. Written bravely and with open eyes, this is an important, mature book

J EREMY N ARBY , P H .D., AUTHOR OF T HE C OSMIC S ERPENT AND CO-EDITOR OF S HAMANS T HROUGH T IME

Psychedelic Healing offers the reader a wondrous journey, capturing within one volume a guide for the use of psychedelics by therapists and patients as well as a contemporary summation of relevant research and points of history. Goldsmith bravely goes where few dare to tread, especially in his autobiographical vignettes that make clear how what is learned through psychedelic-assisted therapy can usefully be applied and integrated into everyday life. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning how psychedelics may contribute to a healthier, richer, and more rewarding life rather than just assuming that these substances must be categorized as drugs of abuse. There is more to these substances than their pejorative categorizations within a Drug War: Psychedelic Healing offers an easy-to-read path to these deeper waters.

J OHN H. H ALPERN , M.D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY , H ARVARD M EDICAL S CHOOL

Neal Goldsmith is one of the leading architects of the emerging paradigm of psychedelic therapy. In this book he shares the personal story of his own process of growth and transformation as both a drug policy analyst and a psychotherapist and boldly calls for the acceptance and integration of psychedelics into psychiatry and society as the powerful catalysts for self-exploration and healing that they are.

D ENNIS M C K ENNA , P H .D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR , C ENTER FOR S PIRITUALITY AND H EALING , U NIVERSITY OF M INNESOTA

Neal Goldsmiths comprehensive, wise, and timely guide explores the impact of psychedelics throughout history and today at the level of the individual, the society, and the collective consciousness. Psychedelic Healing addresses salient theoretical questions pertinent to policy, therapy, spirituality, and philosophy and offers a bountiful harvest of hard-earned insights to every reader interested in the transformative power of psychedelics. Neal has made a major contribution to ensuring the continued expansion of the psychedelic research renaissance. Psychedelic Healing will enable motivated readers to work more effectively to create a world where the mature use of psychedelics for spiritual, psychological, and medical purposes is both accepted and appreciated.

R ICK D OBLIN , P H .D, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR , M ULTIDISCIPLINARY A SSOCIATION FOR P SYCHEDELIC S TUDIES

In this lively and provocative book, Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D., makes the case for a Psychedelic Renaissance, one in which LSD-type substances would be rescheduled in the United States, permitting their applications in psychotherapy and medicine. Psychedelic Healing presents considerable evidence from the research and clinical literature, as well as from Goldsmiths own experiences, that psychedelics can relieve pain, change personality, foster spiritual growth, and promote community harmony. After reading this book, many of his readers will be persuaded that this renaissance cannot come a day too soon!

S TANLEY K RIPPNER , P H .D., A LAN W ATTS P ROFESSOR OF P SYCHOLOGY , S AYBROOK U NIVERSITY, AND COAUTHOR OF P ERSONAL M YTHOLOGY

Written with personal warmth and passionate engagement, Psychedelic Healing makes a compelling case for the medical and social benefits of a therapy practice that encompasses substance-induced experiences of transcendence. With scrupulous care, Neal Goldsmith explores the great promise of this reemerging field, while proposing a path forward that avoids the mistakes made a generation ago. This book is valuable reading for those who would like to see a crucial new chapter open in consciousness studies and the mental health field.

D ANIEL P INCHBECK, AUTHOR OF B REAKING O PEN THE H EAD

What a brave and wonderful book! Neal Goldsmith beautifully integrates personal experience and reflections with thoughtful analysis of psychedelics: their history, prohibition and regulation, and potential for transforming our psyches, spirits, and lives.

E THAN A. N ADELMANN , J.D., P H .D, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE D RUG P OLICY A LLIANCE

A wonderful blend of psychedelic history. Goldsmith has written a radical, wise, and compassionate rethinking of the nature and purpose of psychotherapy. This is the direction psychology needs to go in order to stay relevant and valuable.

J AMES F ADIMAN P H .D., AUTHOR OF T HE P SYCHEDELIC E XPLORERS G UIDE AND P ERSONALITY AND P ERSONAL G ROWTH

A thoroughly researched and engaging discussion of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, profiling not just the drugs, but many luminaries in the psychedelic research field. Goldsmith emphasizes the importance of set, setting, and ritual on outcome. By chronicling his own growth and transformation he answers the question, Is fundamental personality change possible? with an emphatic Yes!

J ULIE H OLLAND , M.D., EDITOR OF E CSTASY: T HE C OMPLETE G UIDE AND T HE P OT B OOK: A C OMPLETE G UIDE TO C ANNABIS

When we look back at the extraordinary cultural transformations of the past forty years, there is one ingredient in the recipe of social change that is consistently and inexplicably expunged from the record. And that is the fact that countless thousands, indeed millions, of young at some point in their lives lay prostrate before the gates of awe having taken a psychedelic. Neal Goldsmiths insightful book suggests that perhaps we might do well by doing the same.

W ADE D AVIS, AWARD-WINNING ANTHROPOLOGIST, ETHNOBOTANIST, FILMMAKER, AUTHOR, AND PHOTOGRAPHER

Neal Goldsmiths comprehensive analysis of the healing power of psychedelics puts the medical, spiritual, and legal status of these soul medicines in a passionate, well-informed voice.

A LEX G REY, AUTHOR OF S ACRED M IRRORS AND T RANSFIGURATIONS

Psychedelic Healing is a comprehensive contextualized guide for harnessing psychedelics to assist in personal evolution. Neal Goldsmith introduces you to all the key players at this exciting moment in the long history of human interaction with psychedelic plants. Goldsmiths clinical yet revealing and accessible narrative is as reassuring as it is instructional. Not since The Tibetan Book of the Dead has there been such a useful companion to the amazing array of spiritual medicines that are natures gift to humanity.

A LLAN B ADINER, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR AT THE C ALIFORNIA I NSTITUTE OF I NTEGRAL S TUDIES, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR AT T RICYCLE , AND EDITOR OF Z IG Z AG Z EN: B UDDHISM AND P SYCHEDELICS

PSYCHEDELIC

HEALING

The Promise of Entheogens

for Psychotherapy

and Spiritual Development

NEAL M. GOLDSMITH, Ph.D.

Healing Arts Press

Rochester, Vermont Toronto, Canada

This book is dedicated to three groups of courageous individuals.

First, the shamans, sadhus, curendaros, and ayahuasceros who over millennia developed and kept alive the spiritual use of visionary plants and whoonce Western civilization came to powerwere often demonized and persecuted for their dedication to this window to our perfection.