Christopher Partridge is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. His research and writing focuses on alternative spiritual currents, countercultures, and popular music.

"High Culture makes for an enjoyable and instructive read, and should belong on the library shelves of scholars and students of religion seeking to understand the particular formation of modern Western drug use as it has manifested in religious and spiritual expressions, and continues to do so to this day." -- Misha Kakabadze, Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism

"Scholars of modern religion have long tip-toed around the elephant in the room: psychoactive drugs. In High Culture, Christopher Partridge bends his ear to the beast, and hears its resplendent, daemonic roar. Critically attuned, characteristically thorough, and sharp in his sympathies, Partridge has written the most thoughtful history yet of the modern West's pharmacological mysteries."--Erik Davis, author of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica

"I have been waiting for this book for a long time-an extensive and balanced history of psychedelic revelation, plant gnosis, and chemical-mystical experience in the modern West, all envisioned and theorized by an expert comparativist. As a discipline, we have barely begun taking the psychoactive dimensions of the history of religions (and, I dare add, of historians of religions) seriously, but this book is a very significant and very welcome development in precisely this direction."--Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions

"How have drugs engaged the human psyche throughout history? What is the social context in which they have been used and for what intellectual purposes? This wonderful book provides an in depth account of the use of mind altering drugs from shamans to hippies and clearly explains how and why they were used. It is essential reading for anybody who is even remotely interested in the topic."--Richard J. Miller, Alfred Newton Richards Professor of Pharmacology, Northwestern University