Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey

I've seen many documentaries about LSD and other psychedelics, but this is probably the most up to date, and the most thorough of them all. This film follows the journeys of renowned ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes who was the first western scholar to have tried Peyote, Magic Mushrooms, morning glory seeds and Ayahauasca 30 years before the hippies, in a time when the use of these sacraments was virtually unknown in the western world. The film also follows the psychedelic revival of the sixties through Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey and all the usual suspects. If you are looking for a film about psychedelics, or if you are just open to new ideas and amazing worlds - this is the film for you.

Most documentaries on drugs fall short simply because you cannot accurately describe the feeling of intoxication on film. But this one doesn't even try... Instead, it documents Richard Evans Schulte's journeys on the American continent, simply mentioning a long list of hallucinogens that he discovered during his researches. The reporter just visits places where Schultes has been and concludes that they're much more different today compared to a few decades ago (well duh...). Footage from actual shamanistic ceremonies is extremely limited and you never really get the feeling of understanding what's going on, not to mention that the reporter himself never actually tries the substances that he mentions (or if he did, he obviously did it off camera).

The cultured scholar might also remark from the beginning that one of the drugs mentioned in the title of this movie was made in a lab in Switzerland and has nothing to do with Schulte's journeys... Which is to say that the documentary simply forces a part on LSD which doesn't really fit in with the rest of the narration, probably to draw in more viewers since LSD is THE hallucinogenic drug that everyone knows. Now, if this documentary was called "The journeys of Richard Evans Schultes", it might have made a lot more sense, but the way it's presented here, you can't help but feel a little scammed...