This is a book for the rest of us: the curious, the reckless, the ones who don’t need a therapist’s note to justify exploring the outer limits of their own damn minds.
Houot drops the truth bomb early: "I told a white lie. I’m not sick. I’m just curious."
That single line is a middle finger to the entire psychedelic-industrial complex. Because while everyone else is busy rebranding psychedelics as clinical medicine or sacred sacrament, Houot asks the real question: What if they’re neither?
What if they’re just… tools?
Not therapy. Not religion. Not a ticket to enlightenment. Technology.
Psychedelics as Tech: Your Brain’s Unlocked Developer Mode
Houot’s radical reframe? Psychedelics aren’t medicine or magic—they’re perception-altering hardware.
"In outer space, we use technology to move our physical body from place to place; in hyperspace, we ingest our technology to move our perception from place to place while the body stays put."
Think about it:
-
Ships let us cross oceans.
-
Telescopes let us map the stars.
-
Psychedelics? They’re the goddamn spacesuits for inner space.
And just like any explorer worth their salt, you don’t dive into the Amazon without a map, a compass, and a way to document what you find.
The Psychedelic Age of Discovery (And Why We’re Still Using Cave Paintings)
Houot draws a wild but brilliant parallel: We’re in the 15th century of consciousness exploration. Back then, Europeans were stumbling around the globe with half-baked maps and a prayer. Today? We’re doing the same thing—but the frontier is inside.
The problem? We’re still treating psychedelics like mysticism or medicine instead of a field science.
Houot’s solution? A "NASA for Psychedelics."
-
Astronauts train for years before spacewalks.
-
Psychonauts? We wing it after reading a Reddit thread.
What if we approached altered states with the same rigor as astrophysics? What if we stopped asking "How did it make you feel?" and started asking "What did you see, and can we replicate it?"
Field Notes from the Edge: How to Actually Document a Trip
Most trip reports read like bad poetry: "I became one with the universe, bro…"
Houot says: Cut the cosmic bullshit. If we’re really exploring, we need real data.
His Four-Step Method for documenting trips (stolen from phenomenology, because why reinvent the wheel?):
-
Suspend Your Assumptions – Stop trying to "understand" the experience. Just observe.
-
Reduce to Raw Data – Describe only what you directly perceive (colors, shapes, sensations).
-
Re-Examine from All Angles – Could it have appeared differently?
-
Compare with Others – Find patterns. Build a real map.
Who This Book is For (And Who It Isn’t)
-
NOT for people who want spiritual hand-holding.
-
NOT for the "healing is the only valid use" crowd.
-
DEFINITELY NOT for anyone who thinks psychedelics need a doctor’s prescription.
This book IS for:
-
The DIY psychonaut who treats their mind like a hackable OS.
-
The skeptic who rolls their eyes at "the universe loves you" but still wants to explore.
-
The person who thinks, "If academia won’t study this properly, I’ll do it myself."
If How to Change Your Mind was Psychedelics 101, this is the Advanced Lab Manual they don’t teach in school.
The Flaws: Where Houot’s Vision Gets Too Sterile
Even geniuses miss the mark sometimes. Here's our Sillyy objective take on where Houot misses the mark.
-
The Technologist’s Blind Spot – Houot’s obsession with mapping risks turning the psychedelic experience into a spreadsheet. Where’s the awe? The terror? The sheer WTF-ness of it all?
-
Ethics? What Ethics? – Encouraging amateur exploration is rad, but what about safety? Who’s liable when someone yeets themselves into the abyss unprepared?
-
Not Everything is a Frontier – Some trips aren’t exploration—they’re weather systems. Chaotic, emotional, impossible to "map." And that’s okay.
If you're looking for an alternative point of view on psychedelics that counters the new-age "psychedelics needs prescription crowd" this book is for you. Will we ever have a real cartography of consciousness? Maybe not. But for the first time, someone’s treating the attempt.
You can find RISE OF THE PSYCHONAUT on Amazon today.
