Andy Letcher’s Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom is also on my to-buy list.

Much stranger than the fictions it has inspired, the world of the magic mushroom is a place where shamans and hippies rub shoulders with psychiatrists, poets and international bankers.

The magic mushroom was only rediscovered fifty years ago, but has accumulated all sorts of folktales and urban legends along the way. In this timely and definitive study, Andy Letcher strips away the myths to get at the true story of how hallucinogenic mushrooms, once shunned in the West as the most pernicious of poisons, came to be the illicit drug of choice.

It fits right in with this. But is “the laboratory” the best place to be having mystical experiences. At least the famous 1962 Good Friday Experiment used a chapel. “Set and setting,” remember?