Harris is candid about the risks of ingesting psychedelics:
“There is no getting around the role of luck here. If you are lucky, and you take the right drug, you will know what it is to be enlightened (or to be close enough to persuade you that enlightenment is possible). If you are unlucky, you will know what it is to be clinically insane.”
Harris describes one LSD trip as plunging him into “a continuous shattering and terror for which I have no words.”
Some readers, Harris notes at the outset, may want to consult their mental-health professionals before carrying out any of the ideas he endorses (including meditation), and he concludes that after expanding one’s consciousness through drugs “it seems wise” to find other practices that “do not present the same risks.”