Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception.

Aldous Huxley’s personal account of his experience taking mescaline in "The Doors of Perception" (1954) has influenced popular understandings of the effects of psychedelic drugs and encouraged many personal experiences with these drugs. Huxley encouraged the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond to coin the term ‘psychedelic’. He knew many of the leading figures in early psychedelic research and advocated for the use of psychedelics to spiritually enlighten the intellectual elite. We provide background on who Huxley was, how his mescaline experience came about and the key messages of his essay. We also discuss the impact of Huxley’s essay and advocacy on early psychedelic research.