Profs & Pints San Francisco: A Global History of Psychedelics

Profs and Pints San Francisco presents: “A Global History of Psychedelics,” with J. Christian Greer, lecturer in Stanford Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, historian of psychedelic cultures, and creator of the Harvard Psychedelic Walking Tour.

Across time and space, human communities have used mind-altering drugs to explore deeper levels of consciousness, access visionary states of awareness, and heal disease. 

Learn about the global history of psychedelics with J. Christian Greer, who teaches a course on the subject as a scholar of religious studies with a special focus on psychedelic culture.

In a talk that blends history, anthropology, religious studies, and archeology, he’ll trace psychedelics’ journey from ancient ceremonial use to part of modern science and culture. 

He’ll explore how substances such as peyote, ayahuasca, and “magic mushrooms” have been embedded in spiritual and healing traditions, rites of passage, sorcery, religious rituals, and divination. He’ll also discuss their more recent application in psychiatry, new religious movements, and technological innovations. 

He’ll especially focus on the ways in which scholars have long misinterpreted the evidence for humanity's ancient love affair with powerful psychoactive substances, as well as how a new generation of researchers has unearthed evidence that overturns everything that we thought we knew about humanity's irrepressible appetite for consciousness alteration. 

It’s a lecture that invites audiences to see psychedelics not as fringe curiosities but as enduring companions in humanity’s long search for insight, connection, and wonder. (Tickets available only online. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5:30 and the talk begins at 6:30. Parking available nearby at the Mason O'Farrell garage.) 

Image: Stone statues from 1000 BC to 500 AD depicting creatures with mushroom caps on their heads (National Institute on Drug Abuse / Wikimedia Commons).

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