A richly illustrated exploration of the history, art, and design of printed LSD blotter tabs. Blotter is the first comprehensive written account of the history, art, and design of LSD blotter paper, the iconic drug delivery device that will perhaps forever be linked to underground psychedelic culture and contemporary street art. Created in collaboration with Mark McCloud’s Institute of Illegal Images, the world’s largest archive of blotter art, Davis’s boldly illustrated exhibition treats his outsider subject with the serious, art-historical respect it deserves, while also staying true to the sense of play, irreverence, and adventure inherent in psychedelic exploration. Davis weaves together two main stories: first, the largely unknown history of blotter paper’s development in the 1960s and its later flowering in the 1970s and 1980s; and second, the story of how San Francisco artist, professor, and “freak” McCloud began collecting blotter and ultimately became embroiled with the LSD trade. The book closes with a unique discussion of the market for “vanity blotter”—more recent perforated papers produced as collectible art objects never meant to be dipped in LSD. While vanity blotters are intimately related to the underground blotters of the LSD trade, they effectively open up their own visual world. As the ultimate document of this ephemeral artform, Blotter represents an exceptional contribution to the scholarship of art and psychedelics that will entertain older readers with lysergic nostalgia and younger readers with its image-driven journey through a colorful and scandalous corner of psychedelic lore.

Provides a social history of how the CIA used the psychedelic drug LSD as a tool of espionage during the early 1950s and tested it on U.S. citizens before it spread into popular culture, in particular the counterculture as represented by Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, and others who helped spawn political and social upheaval.

Novel Psychoactive Substances: Classification, Pharmacology and Toxicology provides readers with background on the classification, detection, supply and availability of novel psychoactive substances, otherwise known as "legal highs." This book also covers individual classes of novel psychoactive substances that have recently emerged onto the recreational drug scene and provides an overview of the pharmacology of the substance followed by a discussion of the acute and chronic harm or toxicity associated with the substance. Written by international experts in the field, this multi-authored book is a valuable reference for scientists, clinicians, academics, and regulatory and law enforcement professionals. Includes chapters written by international experts in the field. Provides a comprehensive look at the classification, detection, availability and supply of novel psychoactive substances, in addition to the pharmacology and toxicology associated with the substance. Offers a single source for all interested parties working in this area, including scientists, academics, clinicians, law enforcement and regulatory agencies. Provides a full treatment of novel psychoactive substances that have recently emerged onto the recreational drug scene including mephedrone and the synthetic cannabinoid receptors in ‘spice’ / ‘K2’.

ACID - The Secret History of LSD explores the emergence of LSD and chronicles how the drug found favour with many psychologists, including doctors at a mental institute who believed it could be used to treat mental illness.'

Gautam has here laid out the first serious reading of Michel Foucault in relation to key Sanskrit texts, and--what may be a surprise to many--he has written the first book-length work in English on the nature and origin of the Kamasutra. Gautam also takes up the Natyasastra (the Kamasutra's twin), locating in the first the themes of sexual-erotic pleasure, and locating in the second the classical Indian view of theater, music, dance, and aesthetic pleasure. The book shows how closely intertwined the history of erotics in ancient Indian culture is with the history of theater-aesthetics. Foucault provides a framework for opening up the intellectual horizon of Indian thought; it is his distinction between ars erotics (erotic arts) and scientia sexualis (science of sexuality) that fuels Gautam's exploration of the courtesan as symbol of both erotic and aesthetic pleasure, particularly in her role as a wife to her patron, which entails the morphing of erotics into a form of theater. The scope broadens ambitiously, to an inquiry on the nature of knowledge formation, erotics, theater, and gender relations in premodern Indian society and culture--as they converged on the historical figures of the courtesan and her male counterpart, the dandy. Gautam's twining of aims and subjects--Foucault's western philosophy of pleasure and India's classic text on eros (anchored in art and aesthetics)--transforms both the modern and the ancient texts with new understandings, and as new forms of investigating erotics and subjectivity itself.