'One of the aims of anthropology,' Richard Rudgley says, 'is to understand the self by way of the other.' Are we to take it that if the Koryaks of Siberia had a high old time on the fly-agaric - or on the recycled urine of a fly-agaric consumer - we too should stock up on magic mushrooms? Rudgley maintains that humans have 'a universal need for liberation from the restrictions of mundane existence, satisfied by experiencing altered states of consciousness'. The state can be achieved by meditation, aesthetic or sexual ecstasy, or by a quick fix. Rudgley, though embarrassed by the social problems of drugs in modern society, seems willing to give equal value to each route.

LRB 7 July 1994 | PDF Download