Stairways to Heaven: Drugs in American Religious History

by Robert C. Fuller

Book Overview

From Native Americans' use of tobacco for solemnizing oaths to the spread of New Age religious beliefs in Haight-Ashbury coffeehouses, drugs have been intimately associated with American spirituality. In Stairways to Heaven , Robert Fuller presents a rarely considered but very important dimension of American religious history -- the use of mind-altering substances as an aid to spirituality -- in a clear, engaging style. Fuller's entertaining narrative...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813366127
• ISBN13: 9780813366128
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Surprisingly comprehensive

In such a short piece (under 200 pages), Robert C. Fuller has managed to cover a lot of ground in his historical study of drug use in the US. Whilst his conception of religious drug use is sometimes quite broad (i.e. wine and coffee), his ideas and arguments are so forcibly put that it is hard to disagree over the many issues he raises. Fuller takes his cue from various fields such as religion, neurology, psychiatry or anthropology and concludes his book by pointing the pros and cons of drug-induced spirituality in a perfectly eloquent and objective way. The only objection I would raise is against his claim that Huxley, Leary, Alpert, Watts, Smith and Ginsberg were all instructing the masses and were the 'closest thing to shamans that middle-class America ever had'. And further on: 'We can only assume that such proselyting by the likes of Watts, Smith, Ginsberg and Leary prompted others to explore the essential and active ingredients of the mystical experience for themselves' (86). Huxley was against proselyting and thought psychedelics were 'for the best and the brightest', not for the masses. Watts was more on Huxley's side than on Leary's. Huxley, Watts, and Smith were all very enthusiastic about the potential of psychedelics, but when it came to proselyting, Leary, Alpert and Ginsberg were a lot more competent. The only real guru-like figure was Leary. Apart from a few French words here and there (nothing major, though), his writing is very clear and will appeal to scholars of religious history as well as anybody curious to know more about such a fascinating subject.

"Must" reading for students of religion & drug use.

Stairways To Heaven: Drugs In American Religious History is a unique, seminal work spanning Native Americas' use of tobacco for solemnizing oaths to the spread of New Age religious beliefs in Haight-Ashbury coffeehouses. Robert Fuller presents an important, overlooked aspect of American religious history -- the use of mind-altering substances as an aid to spirituality ranging from peyote, jimson weed, and hallucinogenic mushrooms, to LSD, marijuana, wine, and coffee. Stairways To Heaven explores many of the questions surrounding the use of drugs in religious life including drugs use to induce "authentic" religious experience; religious experience as an aberration in brain chemistry; how much drug use can be tolerated under the auspices of religious freedom; the legitimate role of mind-altering substances in the development of mature spirituality. Stairways To Heaven is "must" reading for students of spirituality, American religious history, and the ritual use of mind-altering substances.

An intriguing history.

How have Americans used drugs to establish and forge religious foundations? Stairways to Heaven provides a survey and analysis of the use of mind-altering substances as an aid to spirituality, with chapters considering the foundations of religious experience, the role of drugs in creating or altering such experiences, and links between religious freedom and the nation's war on drugs. An intriguing history.