Certain plants long known to contain healing properties have been used in many cultures to treat everything from depression and addiction to improving spiritual well-being. Can Western medicine find new cures for human ailments by tapping into indigenous plant wisdom ? The first international symposium on the search for psychoactive drugs was held in 1967 under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health in San Francisco, California. Shortly after that conference, governmental restrictions were imposed upon research with psychedelic substances, greatly slowing progress. In June of 2017, an international group of specialists in ethnopharmacology, chemistry, botany, psychology, and anthropology met to discuss their findings of the last fifty years and assess the potential future for investigations into traditional plant-based medicines. This two-volume collection of conference proceedings is the defining scholarly publication on both past and current research with psychoactive plant substances for medicinal, therapeutic, and spiritual uses.

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