James Nestor, Get High Now

Since the dawn of time, humans have meditated and used natural substances to get themselves high.
Now in the book Get High Now *Without drugs, James Nestor crams several centuries’ worth of wisdom and scientific research into an easily digestible volume. Don’t let the title fool you — this book won’t get you high the way drugs or alcohol would. Even so, it does offer an introduction to man’s age-old attempts at conquering his own brain.

Together with his informal HighLab test team, Nestor explores more than 175 optical illusions, breathing techniques and natural substances. Each entry, never more than a few pages long, elaborates on how these “highs” affect the human brain, then explains how to execute them. Some are included for entertainment and can’t be used seriously — eating giraffe bone marrow, for example. For certain audio or visual highs, the book directs the reader to its Web site, but unfortunately, a few of the online entries are missing.

Other than that, most of exercises can be done immediately. But whether this book can actually get you high is debatable. Does watching an optical illusion count as getting high? How about entering a meditative state? Nestor seems to think so.

He uses the word “high” to substitute techniques such as lucid dreaming and deep breathing for illegal drugs. Nestor uses the word throughout the book, but unless you count the wow factor of illusions as getting high, this term doesn’t fit the exercises very well.

Nestor is trying to redefine what “high” means, which is an admirable goal, but the book’s presentation cheapens the practices, condensing them into only a few short paragraphs. Whole books could (and have) been written on certain techniques, and Nestor takes the faster route by skating the surface and seemingly aiming for an audience that usually gets high using more illicit methods.

That said, his writing style does a good job of sustaining interest and conveying the technical aspects behind the highs. Though painfully unfunny at times, its accessibility means readers can open their eyes to a world of spiritual self-discovery without investing too much time into searching for it.

This book works well for those seeking obscure facts or an introduction to alternative “highs.” However, the Web site lacks some interesting entries, and Nestor’s insistence — yes, breathing really can get you high — gets old quickly. Readers hoping to get messed up should hit up

a dark alley or drink some beer, not read this book.
Source: collegian.psu.edu