Paul Krassner's collection of honest drug writing.

Magic Mushrooms & Other Highs Edited by Paul Krassner 310 pages, $20.00 It's easy to imagine Paul Krassner sending up the West Coast drug intelligentsia bat signal. At midnight on the summer equinox, a huge mushroom-shaped searchlight beam appears in the starry night above the Pacific, visible from Chula Vista in the south to Vancouver in the north. Up and down the coast, aging, nude psychedelic warriors in their backyard hot tubs smile knowingly. The next day the word is out, and by the end of the week Paul Krassner is receiving hundreds of clued-in personal drug essays from famed inner cosmonauts like Ralph Metzner and Robert Anton Wilson.

Contributors aren't paid much, but nobody minds. Paul Krassner is one of the last remaining 60s icons and has more countercult cred than perhaps any living American besides Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Bob Dylan. Although often overshadowed by those he ran with?he edited Lenny Bruce, dropped acid with Groucho Marx, helped start the Yippie Party with Abbie Hoffman and was defended in court by William Kuntsler?Krassner has been a ranking minister in the government of freaky America since he founded the satirical journal The Realist in the late 50s. And except for a brief stint as publisher of Hustler, he's never cashed in big on his resume. No Gap ads, no seat in the California legislature, no Leary-esque huckstering. He's stayed true to the creed and to himself, plugging along with satire, journalism, and stand-up comedy.

Magic Mushrooms & Other Highs presents dozens of people writing about their drug experiences, which, like peyote, is usually a recipe for extended retching. But Krassner and his crew pull it off. The stories are funny and wise, the writers able to capture genuine traces of drug insights without sounding like idiots. No burnt-out, annoying hippies here. No wide-eyed guru worship or brain-damaged nitrous-speak. Just short, sweet, reasoned tales about being on everything from DMT to smack.

Krassner himself contributes several pieces, the longest being about a New Age retreat directed by the late psychedelic evolutionary theorist Terrance McKenna. Krassner hits the tone just right: admiring, but willing to suspend healthy skepticism only so high off the ground.

If there is a moral to the collection, it is simply that drugs, if respected and used with brains, are good and good for you. They are likely to result in some damn good stories, from tasting the brain of God to having uncontrollable fits of laughter that make your abdominal muscles sore for a week. Reality can get dull as the months pile up, and a shortcut to peak moments and cosmic insights is sometimes just what we need. This book is a nice little reminder of that.

Magic Mushrooms & Other Highs is available by sending $20 to Paul Krassner at 9829 San Simeon Dr., Desert Hot Springs, CA 92240. (Buy three copies, get one free.)