"Richard Rudgelys first book, Essential Substances, was the winner of the British Museum Prometheus Award and hailed as a masterpiece by the Director of Harvard Botanical Museum, the worlds leading authority on hallucinogenic plants. It is still one of the few books to have explored the role of drugs in the religious, political, economic and sexual life of our species from prehistory to the present day . Added for this edition is a new appendix, A Psychoactive Bestiary."--Jacket.