On Drugs blends autobiography, intellectual history, and philosophical inquiry to explore the transformative impact of psychedelics on human consciousness and thought.
This book is a trip ... It copiously details all the drugs that the US-born professor of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité has ingested ... There’s more in Smith-Ruiu’s psychedelic experience…than is dreamt of in strait-laced colleagues’ philosophies ... This [is an] extraordinary book, whose riches I can only hint at in this review.
A mind-stretching, almost manically polymathic meditation ... Jarringly out of tune ... Readers of a materialist bent can be forgiven for concluding that heaven is in your mind.
Smith-Ruiu skillfully threads his way between explaining the benefits of their use while not advocating for it ... A perceptive and thought-provoking book recommended for libraries with large philosophy or alternative-medicine collections.
