Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey

Apr 19, 2008

1h 40m

★ 5.6

The untold story of hallucinogens: from jungle shamans to the hippie generation.

Overview

Plant Explorer Richard Evans Schultes was a real life Indiana Jones whose discoveries of hallucinogenic plants laid the foundation for the psychedelic sixties. Now in this two hour History Channel TV Special, his former student Wade Davis, follows in his footsteps to experience the discoveries that Schultes brought to the western world. Shot around the planet, from Canada to the Amazon, we experience rarely seen native hallucinogenic ceremonies and find out the true events leading up to the Psychedelic Sixties. Featuring author/adventurer Wade Davis ("Serpent and the Rainbow"), Dr. Andrew Weil, the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and many others, this program tells the story of the discovery of peyote, magic mushrooms and beyond: one man's little known quest to classify the Plants of the Gods. Richard Evans Schultes revolutionized science and spawned another revolution he never imagined.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Gryphon Productions

Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self / Presenter

Wade Davis

Self (archive footage)

Timothy Leary

Self

Andrew Weil

Self

Jeremy Narby

Self

Randy Borman

Self (archive footage)

Aldous Huxley

Self

Martin A. Lee

Self

Ralph Metzner

Self

Bob Weir

Self

Jonathan Ott

Self (archive footage)

Richard Evans Schultes

Self (archive footage)

Albert Hofmann

Narrated by Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and Herbie Hancock, River of Gold is the disturbing account of a clandestine journey into Peru's Amazon rainforest to uncover the savage unraveling of pristine jungle. What will be the fate of this critical region of priceless biodiversity as these extraordinarily beautiful forests are turned into a hellish wasteland?

6.5

Amazon

Jan 1, 1997

Explore the mysterious Amazon through the amazing IMAX experience. Amazon celebrates the beauty, vitality and wonder of the rapidly disappearing rain forest.

6.7

The Last Forest

Apr 18, 2021

In powerful images, alternating between documentary observation and staged sequences, and dense soundscapes, Luiz Bolognesi documents the Indigenous community of the Yanomami and depicts their threatened natural environment in the Amazon rainforest.

0.0

Ayahuasca Now

Jan 1, 2024

After many years of life marked by PTSD men and women veterans of the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, travel to the Peruvian Amazon to participate in shamanic ceremonies to heal their traumas. Stories about war and spirituality.

0.0

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

Feb 19, 2017

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the US and Mexico.

9.0

The Song That Calls You Home

Oct 25, 2022

A personal, scientific, mystical exploration of Amazonian curanderismo, focus on Ayahuasca and Master Plants, their healing and visionary properties and risks, along with the Shipibo people and their songs.

7.0

The Lost Colony of Roanoke: New Evidence

May 8, 2022

In 1587, more than 100 English colonists settle on Roanoke Island and soon vanish, baffling historians for centuries; now, experts use the latest forensic archaeology to investigate the true story behind America's oldest and most controversial mystery.

8.2

Dosed

Dec 14, 2019

The documentary follows one woman's quest to overcome anxiety, depression, and opioid addiction through the use of psychedelic medicines.

7.0

kid 90

Mar 12, 2021

As a teenager in the '90s, Soleil Moon Frye carried a video camera everywhere she went. She documented hundreds of hours of footage and then locked it away for over 20 years.

No Image Available

1.0

LaDonna Harris: Indian 101

Mar 29, 2014

A documentary film about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who led an extensive life of Native political and social activism, and is now passing on her traditional cultural and leadership values to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.

5.5

LSD: The Beyond Within

Jan 1, 1986

This refreshingly frank and impartial study of the discovery and development of the notorious hallucinogenic drug is notably free of moral judgmental, and features contributions from such legendary heroes of psychedelia as Albert Hoffman - the Swiss scientist who discovered the drug - Aldous Huxley - author of 'The Doors of Perception' - Ken Kesey - author of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

7.0

The Secret World of Plants

Jan 1, 2003

The secret world of plants gets us closer to these motionless and quiet creatures, so attractive and surprising as the rest of the living creatures. The documentary reveals the most unknown aspects of the vegetable kingdom. We learn about the secret of the eternal youth of a 3500 years old sequoia and be charmed by the 'rafflesia arnoldi' flowers, able to reach up to one meter of diameter.

9.0

The Mushroom Speaks

Apr 23, 2021

The film takes on a walk alongside parasites, symbionts and decomposers offering ideas of both interconnectedness and collaboration. Driven by a vision of resistance, the encounters seek possibilities of renewal and question what connects us when the world seems to be falling apart. With mushrooms and their allies the film invites to imagine a myco-cultural (r)evolution. What if the fungus could help us address and radically change our relationship to this world?

7.0

Cree Hunters of Mistassini

Jan 1, 1974

An NFB crew filmed a group of three families, Cree hunters from Mistassini. Since times predating agriculture, this First Nations people have gone to the bush of the James Bay and Ungava Bay area to hunt. We see the building of the winter camp, the hunting and the rhythms of Cree family life.

7.2

The Last Shaman

May 12, 2017

James, giving himself 12 months before he has "a license to kill himself," sets off to the Amazon rainforest with hopes of finding a shaman who can save his life.

0.0

Tim Leary: The Art of Dying

Mar 13, 2008

LSD Guru Tim Leary teaches us all to die by dying himself in what he calls his "custom death". This documentary deals with Mr. Leary's last days, all captured on camera by his own request.

5.0

Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within

Jan 1, 2006

A feature length documentary which invites the viewer to rediscover an enchanted cosmos in the modern world by awakening to the divine within. The film examines the re-emergence of archaic techniques of ecstasy in the modern world by weaving a synthesis of ecological and evolutionary awareness,electronic dance culture, and the current pharmacological re-evaluation of entheogenic compounds.

7.0

The Return

Jun 5, 2021

It’s spring in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Uyantza festival is underway with the community celebrating all that the forest has to offer. Meanwhile, news is breaking around the world that a novel virus is spreading and a state of emergency is declared across the country. As people test positive for COVID-19 in the community, some families decide to leave and head deeper into the jungle. Disconnected from school, friends, the internet, and work, one family learns to reconnect with life in the forest. The children begin to unlearn the national curriculum, and instead are taught Indigenous knowledge that mainstream schools normally pass over. As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the planet, the family reconnect to their ancestral ways, but as news arrives that Ecuador’s lockdown will end soon, will the family choose to return?