Bicycle Day and Other Psychedelic Essays: Early Drug Histories, Modernism, War, and the Roots of Psychedelic Culture

Alan Piper examines the overlooked early histories of psychoactive drugs that shaped psychedelic culture and modernism. The collection explores why psychedelics became culturally transgressive, how Albert Hofmann's discovery of LSD's effects unfolded during a world at war, and how literary, scientific, occult, and pharmaceutical networks influenced psychedelic history. Essays discuss writers including Hope Mirrlees, David Lindsay, and Ernst Jünger; Harvard peyote experiments; Hofmann's occultic circles; and Sandoz's relationship with Nazi Germany. The book presents drug history as closely intertwined with literary and social modernism, while its focus on the interwar period in Europe and North America provides historical context for the emergence of psychedelia. It includes a foreword by Mike Jay and is published as a 126-page paperback in 2023.