LIza,

Couldn't find one book.  Did track down the other online, it's at amazon at...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0062503952/2522-6186530-594687

The Dancing Healers: A Doctor's Journey of Healing with Native Americans
by Carl A Hammerschlag, M.D.

Good book, worth reading if you are really interested... only $8.80

A quick search on the web also showed the following:

for use with dying patients...

http://www.drugtext.nl/maps/wwwbib/assorted/asstinfo.shtml


for siberians...

http://www.inform.umd.edu/PBIO/PBIO/pbioNew/lec30.html

"C. Amanita (Amanita muscaria): A fungus (mushroom) of the Northern Hemisphere
in temperate regions.
1. One of the earliest used and most widespread hallucinogens; probably
consumed well before recorded history.
2. Used by rural people as a vegetable flypaper and insecticide, its common
name "fly-agaric" because, if ingested by flies, they died. Siberian tribesmen
used it as an inebriate as they had no other source of an alcoholic drink."

Also... http://www.cyber-dyne.com/~callen/McW/books/aint/304.html

In fact, research has shown drugs in general and psychedelics in particular to
be far less harmful than formerly feared. In 1995, UCLA's Ronald K. Siegel,
one of the few researchers permitted to perform scientific studies on LSD
after the blanket governmental ban in 1970, reported,

Dangers [of psychedelics] are not as great as the public was led to believe in
the '60's. Risks of brain damage and schizophrenia have been discounted. Most
psychedelics are stimulants, and like any stimulant, they can be harmful to
those with high blood pressure and heart conditions.


Meanwhile, a much larger group of individualists—just as sincere but lacking
governmental sanction—explore their psyches, their world, their loved ones,
their lives, and their God with entheogens. For many, LSD, due to its
sometimes tedious "electric" qualities, has been replaced with psilocybin
("mushrooms"), MDMA, and MDA.

MDMA was first synthesized in 1912. In the early 1980s, it was rediscovered
and named ecstasy. "I wanted to call it empathy," its rediscoverer said, "but
I thought ecstasy would sell better." It did—perhaps too much better. It was
banned in 1986, when after enthusiastic articles in (among other publications)
The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Newsweek—a bureaucrat in Washington decided
it should be banned.


MDA, a naturally occurring chemical with empathetic effects similar to MDMA,
is found in more than seventy plants as well the human brain. When the
chemicals the body produces to suppress the effects of MDA are suppressed,
small doses of MDA can produce powerful results. "The heart opens," one
psychiatrist explained in nonpsychiatric terms.


While MDMA is still illegal, the plants containing MDA are not. (Think they'll
ever get around to banning nutmeg, green tea, or the kola nut?) These plants
are sold by various companies working entirely within the law.

Liza,

Consider that a healthy, normal state for people is to be happy.  But when
their body, or their 'mind' is unhealthy, then their neurochemical state is
knocked off of true sobriety, so they are not happy, not grounded in reality,
not themselves.  Ingesting intoxicants temporarily makes them feel happy, or
sober, or centered, which is how they are supposed to experience LIFE, problem
is there are side effects which they accept.  That's why they might do it,
however, it doesn't mean there aren't healthier ways to get there that don't
involve sacrifice.  From what I've experienced, and from what I've read about
hallucinogens power to break addictions, it creates a profound appreciation
for sober reality and a fulfillment of that reality.   For many people, it's
enough to give up whatever they are addicted to.  After I first 'shroomed' I
gave up alcohol and marijuana and shrooms for a long-while, until my sugar
addicted dissatisfaction with life started to return.  See, there's something
about hallucinogens that feels like it 'resets' something, clears out the
garbage and leaves you clean and glad to be clean.  It can be very healing,
which is why SHAMANS (healers) used it.

However, it pales in comparison to true sobriety and the sober experience of
LIFE!

Ok, that's all for now.

love,
aaron