Pharmacology & Neuroscience
How drugs work in the brain and body. Receptor mechanisms, pharmacokinetics, neurochemistry.
Comprehensive review of classic psychedelic pharmacology by a leading medicinal chemist. Covers structure-activity relationships, receptor binding profiles, and mechanisms of action for LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT.
Documentary series following chemist Hamilton Morris as he investigates the science, history, and culture of psychoactive substances. Combines rigorous chemistry with field journalism.
Nutt's accessible overview of drug science for general readers. Covers alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, psychedelics, opioids, and stimulants with evidence-based harm assessments and policy recommendations.
Landmark multicriteria analysis ranking 20 drugs by harm to users and others. Alcohol scored highest overall. Published after Nutt was dismissed from the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for publicly comparing drug harms.
Companion to PiHKAL covering 55 tryptamines. Includes essays on pharmacology, law, and the nature of psychedelic experience.
The longest-running online psychoactive encyclopedia. Houses experience reports, dosage charts, chemistry references, and legal information for hundreds of substances. A foundational resource for the field.
Part autobiography, part chemistry manual. Detailed synthesis and bioassay of 179 phenethylamines by the couple who made them.
Chemist whose self-experiment reports in PiHKAL and TiHKAL are the only published human data for a large share of this corpus.
Sandoz chemist who first synthesised LSD and characterised its effects; the origin of the primary-source record for the lysergamides.
Basel pharmaceutical company whose mid-century ergot programme produced the first LSD and psilocybin preparations and the earliest clinical literature on them.
Standard graduate-level textbook on CNS pharmacology. Covers receptor systems, neurotransmitter pathways, and mechanisms of action for all major psychoactive drug classes.
Pollan examines three plant-derived psychoactives — opium, caffeine, and mescaline — exploring how each substance is culturally framed and regulated.
Neuroscientist and recovering addict explains the brain mechanisms of addiction — tolerance, sensitization, and allostasis — through both research and personal experience.
The standard reference for clinical pharmacology. Comprehensive coverage of drug mechanisms, pharmacokinetics, and toxicology across every drug class.
Detailed pharmacological profile of MDMA covering serotonin/dopamine/norepinephrine release, pharmacokinetics, neurotoxicity evidence, and thermal dysregulation risks.
Proposes that psychedelics increase neural entropy — the brain's information-theoretic complexity — offering a mechanistic framework for both the psychedelic experience and its therapeutic applications.
Community-maintained wiki with detailed substance profiles covering pharmacology, subjective effects, dosage, and duration. Uses a formal effects taxonomy for cross-substance comparison.
Technical review of how tryptamine hallucinogens interact with multiple serotonin receptor subtypes beyond 5-HT2A. Important for understanding why different psychedelics produce distinct effect profiles.
Documentary portrait of Alexander Shulgin and his work synthesizing and bioassaying hundreds of novel psychoactive compounds. Features interviews with Shulgin in his home laboratory.
Landmark NIH trial demonstrating that a single IV ketamine infusion produced rapid antidepressant effects within hours in treatment-resistant patients. Launched the ketamine-for-depression research field.
Comprehensive reference covering over 800 psychoactive plants. For each, provides botanical identification, chemistry, traditional use, preparation methods, and legal status.
Account of the first FDA-approved clinical research with DMT in decades. Documents dose-response data and phenomenological reports from 60 volunteers at the University of New Mexico.
The original Rat Park experiment. Showed that rats in enriched social environments consumed far less morphine than isolated rats, challenging the chemical-hook model of addiction.
Albert Hofmann's first-person account of discovering LSD-25, its early clinical applications, and his reflections on its cultural trajectory. A primary historical document from the chemist who synthesized it.
Educational video and text resource covering pharmacology, effects, risks, and history of psychoactive substances. Clear, non-judgmental presentation aimed at general audiences.
Podcast hosted by David Nutt, former chair of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Covers drug policy, psychedelic research, and the neuroscience of substance use.
Harm reduction resource providing visually clear guides to common recreational substances. Covers dosing, effects, risks, and combinations in an accessible format.
Continuing education lectures covering CNS pharmacology. Based on Stahl's textbook, with animated mechanism-of-action modules.
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