Amazing Dope Tales [Paperback]

Stephen Gaskin (Author), Spider Robinson (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 1999

Stephen Gaskin looks back on the San Francisco scene during the 1960s -- the Summer of Love, the Grateful Dead, and the Merry Pranksters -- and shares his mind-blowing adventures.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Ronin Publishing; 3rd edition (April 23, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579510108
• ISBN-13: 978-1579510107
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,003,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get a contact high, May 20, 2002

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Amazing Dope Tales (Paperback)

I've got somebody I'd like you to meet. Reader, this is Stephen Gaskin; Stephen, this is Reader.

Stephen Gaskin is, among other things, one of the founders of The Farm (which is about the only big hippie commune that turns out to have been built to last) and an activist for cannabis legalization. He's usually billed as a "hippie spiritual teacher," which means that listening to him has the power to knock your mind loose from your brain.

And that should clue you in that this book -- originally published in 1980 and republished here with a new foreword by Stephen and a new introduction by Spider Robinson -- is _not_, despite its title, about dope. Stephen himself will tell you that dope is just one means among others and that all of this stuff can be approached in other ways. As for dope itself, Alan Watts and Baba Ram Dass used to say that when you've gotten the message, you should hang up the phone.

If you're worried about the drugs, you should be aware that for the most part the only drugs involved here are cannabis and LSD (plus an occasional bit of peyote and one or two others). Moreover, the book includes lots of cautionary tales about bad trips. And it's not _at all_ about (what I regard as) the really dangerous drugs. (These distinctions are important, especially during today's indiscriminate "war on drugs." Being "anti-drug" is roughly equivalent to being "pro-food.")

So what _is_ the book about? It's about consciousness and religion and getting telepathic, and it's about some things that happened during some of Stephen's trips that hipped him to all of that stuff. More prosaically, it's a transcription of some oral history about the late '60s as delivered in Stephen's unique voice.

You'll like Stephen. And I wasn't kidding when I said he can knock your mind loose from your brain.

The _way_ he tells his stories is as important as the stories themselves. You can read a couple of sample pages and see what I mean; the whole book is like that. He talks from inside the experiences he describes, and these transcriptions make them real for you too, just as if he were sitting there talking to you. He's also pretty self-critical in what he makes of these experiences; pay close attention to his opinions about how hallucinations work and in what sense(s) they may be "real."

Anyway, when you read one of his amazing dope tales, you may find that you've picked up a contact high from Stephen and that you, too, can sometimes see the subconscious on people. If enough of us did this sort of vicarious tripping, it might help us to get telepathic even without taking dope ourselves. That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

If (like me) you're also a Spider Robinson fan, you'll enjoy his short introduction, which deals with both the significance and the failures of hippie ideals. (Stephen has shown up, sometimes disguised, in several of Spider's books.) And vice versa: if you like this book, you'll probably enjoy Spider's fiction as well.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars expansive humor, February 10, 2004

By 

Author Brian Wallace (Mind Transmission, Inc.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amazing Dope Tales (Paperback)

a wildly fun and entertaining romp through some of the more interesting corridors of mind. Well worth the trip!

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To Kamiu, June 26, 2000

By 

Beautiful Woman (San Diego) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amazing Dope Tales (Paperback)

I was wondering, did you read the title before buying the book?