Dale Pendell is a contemporary author who combines science and poetry in his explications of the relationship between psychoactive compounds and human beings. A long time student of ethnobotany, Pendell discusses historical and cultural uses of "power plants" in his works. He reads and distills the literature of pharmacology and neuroscience, of ethnobotany and anthropology, of mythology and political economics as they intersect with the direct experience of human psychoactive use.
His publications include the Pharmako Trilogy: Pharmako/Poeia (1994), Pharmako/Dynamis (2002), and Pharmako/Gnosis (2005), all published by Mercury House. He covers all the major categories of psychoactives and details the use, the pharmacology, the chemistry, the political and social historical implications and effects of the use of psychoactives.
He is also well regarded as a myth critic. Certain of his works contained detailed scholarship on the origins of cultural myths.
Dale Pendell is highly regarded for his expertise on psychoactive plants and drugs and as a writer and poet; one of his works is used as a textbook for a course in the University of California, Berkeley's Molecular and Cell Biology department.
Pendell has also delved into politics, introducing the concept of "Horizon anarchism" at his Burning Man 2006 Palenque Norte lecture. [1]