Sex and Drugs: A Journey Beyond Limits

Book Preface

In Berkeley, a young man is chanting a Hindu mantra while exuberantly balling a female member of his commune. Incense is burning, there is a chalked pentagram on the floor around the bed, and they have been copulating-unbelievably, without reaching orgasm-for nearly two hours, with occasional stops for additional sniffs of cocaine. If you tell this fellow that all this magic is unscientific and silly and that, with continued use, the coke will ruin his nasal septum, he will dismiss you as a hopeless square. He has found the real meaning of religious ecstasy in the newly faddish works of magidan Aleister Crowley (who died in obscurity in 1947). This program of drugs plus artificially prolonged T antric (sexual) yoga has raised him to a plane of beauty and joy where the warnings of the rationalist are meaningless.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a hip young lawyer with a more hard-boiled attitude is smoking a joint of Panama Red marijuana with his lady of the evening before they climb into bed. He doesn’t consider himself a magidan and he knows nothing about T antric yoga. But he, too, is pari of the new cult of drug-drenched sexual mysticism, even if he says “vibes” without realizing that this is a shortening of “astral vibrations. ” He is just looking for a bigger and better orgasm, and expeds weed to produce it.

In Darien, Connecticut, where the Mad Avenue crowd retreats at sunset to become suburbanites, a high-school student and his teeny-bopper sweetie pie are also combining drugs, sex and a little mysticism. They are nude but not yet engaged in intercourse; he is reading the “Sex Cakkra” chapter from Timothy Leary’s Psychedelic Prayers aloud to her, while 500 mikes of the new “windowpane” acid are circulating in their bloodstreams. “lie quietly in the slippery union of male and female, ” he intones, and they move together toward a mounting posture, utterly free of the furtive guilts of their parents. They are quite convinced that what is transpiring is more religiously meaningful than anything that ever happens in the local church on Sunday.

Contents
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE To the New Edition xiii
PRELUDE Ice Maiden: The Story of Jane 1
CHAPTER ONE Overview: The Brews of Aphrodite 9
INTERLUDE Slouching Toward Bethlehem: The Story of Leonard 31
CHAPTER TWO Homed Gods and Horny Potions 37
INTERLUDE Divorce Psychedelic Style: The Story of Tom and Jerri 55
CHAPTER THREE The Smoke of the Assassins 63
INTERLUDE Drug of Choice: The Story of Bill 85
CHAPTER FOUR The Mexican Weed 93
INTERLUDE Behind Suburban Doors: The Story of George and Martha 107
CHAPTER FIVE Powders White and Deadly 113
INTERLUDE Reject: The Story of Holy Out 129
CHAPTER SIX Tibetan Space-Time-Warp Star-Nova Trips 139
INTERLUDE Up Against the Wall: The Story of Tyrone 155
CHAPTER SEVEN 2000: An Inner Space Odyssey 161
RISK GLOSSARY An Alphabetized Reference, with Guidelines and Warnings 173
BIBUOGRAPHY 187