Stairways to Heaven: Drugs in American Religious History

Explores the historical link between mind-altering substances and religious experience in the United States 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. Stairways to Heaven illustrates how such substances as peyote, jimson weed, hallucinogenic mushrooms, LSD, marijuana, wine, and coffee have stimulated ecstatic revelations of spiritual truth and strengthened the social bonds that sustain communities of faith. The book deftly moves from historical examples to an engaging consideration of the legal, ethical, and spiritual controversies that surround drug use in contemporary America. Clearly written and accessible, Stairways to Heaven is a significant scholarly review of the relationship between religion and drugs in America.