Award-winning sociologist Joanna Kempner unearths how a group of ordinary people debilitated by excruciating pain developed their own medicine from home-grown psilocybin mushrooms and fought for recognition in a broken medical system. 

“A deeply absorbing examination of pain and perseverance ... an ode to self-experimentation that manages to be as clear-eyed as it is moving.” ―Susannah Cahalan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire and The Great Pretender

Cluster headache, a diagnosis sometimes referred to as a ‘suicide headache,’ is widely considered the most severe pain disorder that humans experience. There is no cure, and little funding available for research into developing treatments.   

When Joanna Kempner met Bob Wold in 2012, she was introduced to a world beyond most people's comprehension—a clandestine network determined to find relief using magic mushrooms. These ‘Clusterbusters,’ a group united only by the internet and a desire to survive, decided to do the research that medicine left unfinished. They produced their own psychedelic treatment protocols and managed to get academics at Harvard and Yale to test their results. 

Along the way, Kempner explores not only the fascinating history and exploding popularity of psychedelic science, but also a regulatory system so repressive that the sick are forced to find their own homegrown remedies. From the windswept shores of the North Sea through the verdant jungle of Peruvian Amazon to a kitschy underground palace built in a missile silo in Kansas, Psychedelic Outlaws chronicles the rise of psychedelic medicine amid a healthcare system in turmoil. 

Kempner’s gripping tale of community and resilience brings readers on a eye-opening journey through the politics of pain, through the stories of people desperate enough to defy the law for a moment of relief.