The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones

NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. First edition. Octavo; 170pp.; orange-brown cloth boards, black spine lettering, in dust jacket. A couple of minor bumps to base of rear board, else fine in a fine jacket with “$6.95” price still present on front flap.

A meditation on the drug experience, considering the types of illuminations one might glean through experimentation with psychoactive compounds, as well as the light that such moments shed on the normal (and abnormal) processes of the human mind. In customary fashion, Michaux effortlessly interweaves passages of lucid reflection with more poetically charged descriptions of the mental and sensory experiences provoked by psychedelic substances.