
My Altered States
A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Trauma, Psychedelics, and Spiritual Growth
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Narrated by:
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Rick Strassman MD
About this listen
• Recounts several dozen of the author’s experiences of drug and non-drug altered states of consciousness from birth to early adulthood
• Applies the lenses of four explanatory models—psychoanalysis, psychopharmacology, Zen Buddhism, and medieval Jewish metaphysics—in understanding how and why they occurred
• Demonstrates the importance of careful unflinching recollection and documentation of both heavenly and hellish altered states in one’s psychological, emotional, and spiritual life
Why do we seek out altered states of consciousness, or why, in some cases, do they happen unbidden? What do we see and hear, and what happens emotionally, physically, and psychologically? How and why are these experiences different from or similar to one another? Are they meaningful? And what do we do with them after they have passed?
Addressing these questions, renowned psychedelic researcher Rick Strassman, M.D., draws upon his journals and analyses of dozens of episodes of altered consciousness that occurred during, or are intimately tied to, his life between birth and young adulthood. Just as significant as the ecstatic blissful experiences are the uncensored and, at times, painfully unvarnished narratives of less elevated ones. Visually augmenting all these accounts are the striking images of artist Merrilee Challiss.
Understanding and applying the meaning and message of any altered state—its integration—first requires a clear-eyed recollection of the actual experience in all its aspects, neither pushing away the ugly nor grasping after the beautiful. This book provides a profound example of how one might go about accomplishing this daunting task.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Rick Strassman. All Rights Reserved. (P)2024 Inner Traditions Audio. All Rights Reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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After completing his groundbreaking research chronicled in DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Rick Strassman was left with one fundamental question: What does it mean that DMT, a simple chemical naturally found in all of our bodies, instantaneously opens us to an interactive spirit world that feels more real than our own world? When his decades of clinical psychiatric research and Buddhist practice were unable to provide answers to this question, Strassman began searching for a more resonant spiritual model.
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True Hallucinations
- Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise
- By: Terence McKenna
- Narrated by: Al Kessel
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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This mesmerizing, surreal account of the bizarre adventures of Terence McKenna, his brother Dennis, and a small band of their friends, is a wild ride of exotic experience and scientific inquiry. Exploring the Amazon Basin in search of mythical shamanic hallucinogens, they encounter a host of unusual characters - including a mushroom, a flying saucer, pirate Mantids from outer space, an appearance by James and Nora Joyce in the guise of poultry, and translinguistic matter - and discover the missing link in the development of human consciousness and language.
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I didn't like the narrator.
- By Dom on 03-20-19
By: Terence McKenna
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Joseph Levy Escapes Death
- By: Rick Strassman
- Narrated by: Matt Hicks
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Joseph Levy leads a quiet life in rural Wheaton, Arizona. Retired from a long career in psychiatric research and practice, he reads, writes, and wanders through the mountains and hills near the Native reservation. His quiet life ends, however, when a dental crown replacement goes poorly just before meeting an internet date in California. Thus begins a year of back-to-back nightmare infections, a drug overdose, and two failed relationships.
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Joseph Levy Escapes Death: An Unexpected Story
- By Anonymous User on 10-07-20
By: Rick Strassman
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Psychonauts
- Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind
- By: Mike Jay
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear. Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism.
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Outstanding
- By Austin on 07-20-24
By: Mike Jay
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The Psychedelic Experience
- A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead
- By: Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert, and others
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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We are in the midst of a powerful psychedelic renaissance. After four decades of hibernation, the promise of the psychoactive 60s - that deeper self-awareness, achieved through reality-bending substances and practices, will lead to greater external harmony - is again gaining a major following. The signs are everywhere, from the influence of today's preeminent psychedelic thinker Daniel Pinchbeck, to the renewed interest in the legacy of Terence McKenna, and to the upsurge of collective cultural phenomena like the spectacle of Burning Man.
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A must have in the toolkit..
- By Kuzia on 10-20-17
By: Timothy Leary, and others
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Psychedelics and the Soul
- A Mythic Guide to Psychedelic Healing, Depth Psychology, and Cultural Repair
- By: Simon Yugler
- Narrated by: Simon Yugler
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Designed for a new generation of psychedelic facilitators and seekers, Psychedelics and the Soul invokes the traditions of Jungian depth psychology, mythology, and Indigenous cultural wisdom to meet a critical question of our times: How can the emerging field of psychedelic medicine heal the soul amid planetary crisis and collective opportunity? Psychedelic therapist Simon Yugler invites the listener on a mythological journey, using depth psychology to explore 10 universal themes that transcend our individual experiences.
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He just wants to instill fear in people
- By Sadie on 04-23-25
By: Simon Yugler
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Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance
- By: James Fadiman PhD, Jordan Gruber JD
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Microdosing is proving to be a safe and powerful approach to a wide range of health conditions and enhanced performance. Partly responsible for modern microdosing’s development and current popularity, the authors answer hundreds of questions, blending extensive research with detailed personal accounts from contributors worldwide. The book also contains wide-ranging microdosing history, research, and science.
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Excellent! Magnificent!
- By Ken Jenkins on 04-20-25
By: James Fadiman PhD, and others
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DNA of the Gods
- The Anunnaki Creation of Eve and the Alien Battle for Humanity
- By: Chris H. Hardy Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Aura Paige
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Showing that the god who created us was not the same god who expelled us from Eden, Hardy explains that there will be no apocalypse because the Good/Evil duality has never truly existed—it has been only enemy gods fighting and implicating humanity in the wake of their own competition for power. With a full psychological understanding of how the ancient “gods” have shaped humanity’s ongoing history of conflict, we can move beyond the framework of “(my) Good versus (your) Evil” imposed by Enlil and begin to steer our own planetary destiny.
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LSD and the Mind of the Universe
- Diamonds from Heaven
- By: Christopher M. Bache, Ervin Laszlo - foreword
- Narrated by: Christopher M. Bache
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Journey alongside professor Bache as he touches the living intelligence of our universe - an intelligence that both embraced and crushed him - and demonstrates how direct experience of the divine can change your perspective on core issues in philosophy and religion. Chronicling his 73 sessions, the author reveals the spiral of death and rebirth that took him through the collective unconscious into the creative intelligence of the universe.
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Profound! Stands Among the Best of All of Time
- By Curtis Barnhart on 03-20-20
By: Christopher M. Bache, and others
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Food of the Gods
- The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge : A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
- By: Terence McKenna
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Terence McKenna hypothesizes that as the North African jungles receded, giving way to savannas and grasslands near the end of the most recent ice age, a branch of our arboreal primate ancestors left the forest canopy and began living in the open areas beyond. There they experimented with new varieties of foods as they adapted, physically and mentally, to the environment. Among the new foods found in this environment were psilocybin-containing mushrooms.
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Not a scientific book
- By Jason on 06-06-19
By: Terence McKenna
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A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness
- A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation
- By: Itzhak Bentov
- Narrated by: D. Cash Keahey
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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All aboard for the excursion of a lifetime as Itzhak Bentov, the celebrated engineer, inventor, and mystic, takes you on a tour of the universe, pure consciousness, and all that lies beyond. Using comical sketches, simple metaphors, and his famous wit and humor, Bentov explains the nature of reality, points out the sights in Nirvana and the Void, and eventually takes you to a meeting with your higher self. Along the way, Bentov illuminates the Kabbalistic principles of number and sound, the meaning of cosmic shapes and symbols, the consciousness of devas, and the nature of the absolute.
By: Itzhak Bentov
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Psychedelic Integration
- Psychotherapy for Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness
- By: Marc Aixalà
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Psychedelic Integration: Psychotherapy for Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness is a trailblazing guidebook for anyone interested in psychedelic-assisted therapy and integration.
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Started Fine, Went Bad
- By G.M. on 04-16-25
By: Marc Aixalà
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Visionary
- The Mysterious Origins of Human Consciousness (The Definitive Edition of Supernatural)
- By: Graham Hancock
- Narrated by: Graham Hancock
- Length: 21 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as "the greatest riddle in human history," all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In Visionary, Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious "before-and-after moment" and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to modern human mind.
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Pseudoscience, Pure and Simple
- By Scott on 05-10-23
By: Graham Hancock
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Tripped
- Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age
- By: Norman Ohler
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, Tripped is a wild, unconventional postwar history, a spiritual sequel to Norman Ohler’s New York Times bestseller Blitzed. Revealing the close relationship and hidden connections between the Nazis and the early days of drugs in America, Ohler shares how this secret history held back therapeutic research of psychedelic drugs for decades and eventually became part of the foundation of America’s War on Drugs.
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Excellent book
- By Andrew B on 08-11-24
By: Norman Ohler
What listeners say about My Altered States
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sean
- 01-08-25
Fantastic
A true leader and pioneer in the study of psychedelics. Fantastic book, it's nice to hear personal stories about his adventures.
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- J Michael
- 02-01-25
Deeper her insight
If you’ve read his books or have seen his interviews. You know this is an incredibly interesting man. This is a very intimate look inside the mind and experience through his life. It’s fascinating to get this kind of look inside the history of someone when you know who they became.
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