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The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever: Transcendence, Psychedelics, and Jesus Christ
For years, psychedelics were my religion.
All I ever wanted was The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, the panacea, the cure for what plagued me. From those first moments when I tasted the earthy pulp of a psilocybin mushroom, it was love. Psychedelics were my sacrament. They shot me into cathedral vaults. The promise of eternal life through chemicals glittered seductively, but hid a yawning abyss.
The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever tells my story of psychedelic devastation and spiritual rescue. It chronicles my trajectory from acid enthusiast to soul-weary druggie to psychedelic refugee. I finally found The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever—in the last place I thought to look.
All I ever wanted was The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, the panacea, the cure for what plagued me. From those first moments when I tasted the earthy pulp of a psilocybin mushroom, it was love. Psychedelics were my sacrament. They shot me into cathedral vaults. The promise of eternal life through chemicals glittered seductively, but hid a yawning abyss.
The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever tells my story of psychedelic devastation and spiritual rescue. It chronicles my trajectory from acid enthusiast to soul-weary druggie to psychedelic refugee. I finally found The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever—in the last place I thought to look.
264 pages, Paperback
Published October 9, 2024
26 people are currently reading
354 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
June 26, 2025
This book was impactful to me. The Lande family are friends, so I was excited to see this book published and hear the story of specifically Ashley's journey. Using a rich vocabulary, Ashley paints a vivid and often horrifying picture of years of psychedelic use that was at its core a search for Something. There is a profound tipping point in the story where the drugs begin to betray her relentlessly, and Jesus continually pursues her. I was particularly struck by her comparisons of Buddhism/the escapism of drugs, which try and detach you from reality, with the incarnation of God, which is all about God gripping reality by the horns, suffering and all. I already have a copy ready to gift a friend in the clutches of the New Age who I think will benefit from Ashley's testimony.
January 15, 2026
Disclaimer: This is my book. I wrote it.
A friend asked me recently how it felt to have so much of my life "out there" in print. I honestly did that know how to answer because I honestly haven't been thinking about it. After the initial publication high of "Hey, I really wrote this thing and it isn't half-bad! In fact, it's pretty darn good!" which then swung wildly within a matter of days to "This is terrible! I can't believe they published my self-indulgent, navel-gazing tripe! I'm finished before I've even began!" until I finally heard my dad's gravelly, menthol-kippered voice in my head saying what he always said in relation to my drawings: "Just walk away and stop looking at it, Ash. Just let it be finished."
And I must. There's simply too much else to attend to right now: the squealing toddler who draws on the walls and throws the marker down and runs upon discovery, his gleeful giggles of evasion trailing, like a seasoned little criminal. The two teenagers with thoughts and dreams and jokes and struggles: the girl with a face that flashes between hints of the beautiful young woman to come, the one who moves with grace except when she trips over limbs grown gangly, and the tender child who has been, who still is, and who needs me still despite regularly reminding me how much I need *her* to save the hell-on-wheels toddler from disaster (true). The man-child like a beanstalk, electric with energy, always crackling with so many thoughts, many of which involve irreconcilable philopsophical conundrums, such as "Is the Kool-Aid Man the pitcher, or the Kool-Aid? And if he's the pitcher, is the kool-aid itself his... blood? And is it interchangeable, like you could put any kind of kool-aid in there and he'd still be himself?" Not to mention sweet baby girl still in the womb, 35 weeks on, kicking and tickling and rolling about and making walking 30 feet feel like a bow-legged hobble to the finish of an ultramarathon.
So the book is out here, just floating around, on Goodreads, freely available for purchase from your favorite retailer (I hear it's only $13.99 on Amazon 😉). I am letting it be finished, letting it be what it is, letting God do what He will. I wrote what I knew and I wrote what was true, and if the "at times overwritten" accusations are legitimate and I do not, with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut's thinking on the matter, always sound like a gal raised in suburban Missouri and currently abiding in rural Kansas, well, you have to understand I was not popular in high school and I read a LOT of books. So it goes, with more apologies to Vonnegut, whose entire oeuvre I read the summer I turned 15.
I wrote this book for others, of course, but I also wrote it for myself, for the working out of my own salvation. I needed to remember what happened, needed to limn out the dimensions of what God did for me. I needed to remember the darkness that appeared as light, the madness that appeared as ecstasy, the chaos that appeared - for a time - as purposed and directional. I had to dig into soil even I hadn't wanted to touch in years, and there were those were not happy about it, but I had to let that be finished, too.
Why do we crazy people do this? Why write a memoir? Is it a dysfunctional compulsion? A colorful variation on a Tourette's-esque tic, custom-designed by Satan himself with no purpose besides antagonizing my discreet mother? Why share to the point of at least moderate self-humiliation? I'm not sure except that I think it IS something resembling a compulsion, but maybe - I hope - a holy one.
Because the story is mine... but is it? Until I dig deep into the unseemly dregs of my past, grace is nothing but an abstract concept to me, a beautiful word evoking litheness and light, but little more. Until I can point and see and say "Oh yes, there it was," and "Oh yes, there again," and "Yes, there. Right there. I would've died had the Lord not been saturating me with GRACE right then." In the dark mire of my sin, of my confusion, of my wanton traipsing toward the abyss of oblivion, God's grace shockingly, staggeringly and sometimes downright inconveniently struck me down or lifted me up or simply held me and carried me, as a Father carries His son, as those musty old mass-produced cheaply framed images of footprints sunken into sand at thrift stores avow: *it was then that He carried me.*
And now the big kids are home from track practice and they're telling me things and asking me to do things and my brief moment of deep thoughts is past.
But just know this: no one ever cared for me like Jesus. I write, and spill my guts while doing so, *almost* involuntarily, as though carried along by the Holy Spirit. I write about all the things I did and failed to do and all the dumb graceless thoughts I had while doing so, so I can *remember*, and so God's grace and mercy stand in majestic contrast. Not that they need the contrast for their glory, but sometimes I do - I need it, just to see a little more clearly, though still in a mirror dimly.
I hope it helps you remember, too. (Like I said - Amazon, $13.99 That's significantly less than the Kool-Aid Ultimate Party Pack on Amazon, which does sound fun and does contain 36 packets of 18 different flavors but is also full of food dyes and sugar. My book has no such liabilities, but hopefully inspires as deep theological / ontological questions as does the Kool-Aid Man!)
A friend asked me recently how it felt to have so much of my life "out there" in print. I honestly did that know how to answer because I honestly haven't been thinking about it. After the initial publication high of "Hey, I really wrote this thing and it isn't half-bad! In fact, it's pretty darn good!" which then swung wildly within a matter of days to "This is terrible! I can't believe they published my self-indulgent, navel-gazing tripe! I'm finished before I've even began!" until I finally heard my dad's gravelly, menthol-kippered voice in my head saying what he always said in relation to my drawings: "Just walk away and stop looking at it, Ash. Just let it be finished."
And I must. There's simply too much else to attend to right now: the squealing toddler who draws on the walls and throws the marker down and runs upon discovery, his gleeful giggles of evasion trailing, like a seasoned little criminal. The two teenagers with thoughts and dreams and jokes and struggles: the girl with a face that flashes between hints of the beautiful young woman to come, the one who moves with grace except when she trips over limbs grown gangly, and the tender child who has been, who still is, and who needs me still despite regularly reminding me how much I need *her* to save the hell-on-wheels toddler from disaster (true). The man-child like a beanstalk, electric with energy, always crackling with so many thoughts, many of which involve irreconcilable philopsophical conundrums, such as "Is the Kool-Aid Man the pitcher, or the Kool-Aid? And if he's the pitcher, is the kool-aid itself his... blood? And is it interchangeable, like you could put any kind of kool-aid in there and he'd still be himself?" Not to mention sweet baby girl still in the womb, 35 weeks on, kicking and tickling and rolling about and making walking 30 feet feel like a bow-legged hobble to the finish of an ultramarathon.
So the book is out here, just floating around, on Goodreads, freely available for purchase from your favorite retailer (I hear it's only $13.99 on Amazon 😉). I am letting it be finished, letting it be what it is, letting God do what He will. I wrote what I knew and I wrote what was true, and if the "at times overwritten" accusations are legitimate and I do not, with apologies to Kurt Vonnegut's thinking on the matter, always sound like a gal raised in suburban Missouri and currently abiding in rural Kansas, well, you have to understand I was not popular in high school and I read a LOT of books. So it goes, with more apologies to Vonnegut, whose entire oeuvre I read the summer I turned 15.
I wrote this book for others, of course, but I also wrote it for myself, for the working out of my own salvation. I needed to remember what happened, needed to limn out the dimensions of what God did for me. I needed to remember the darkness that appeared as light, the madness that appeared as ecstasy, the chaos that appeared - for a time - as purposed and directional. I had to dig into soil even I hadn't wanted to touch in years, and there were those were not happy about it, but I had to let that be finished, too.
Why do we crazy people do this? Why write a memoir? Is it a dysfunctional compulsion? A colorful variation on a Tourette's-esque tic, custom-designed by Satan himself with no purpose besides antagonizing my discreet mother? Why share to the point of at least moderate self-humiliation? I'm not sure except that I think it IS something resembling a compulsion, but maybe - I hope - a holy one.
Because the story is mine... but is it? Until I dig deep into the unseemly dregs of my past, grace is nothing but an abstract concept to me, a beautiful word evoking litheness and light, but little more. Until I can point and see and say "Oh yes, there it was," and "Oh yes, there again," and "Yes, there. Right there. I would've died had the Lord not been saturating me with GRACE right then." In the dark mire of my sin, of my confusion, of my wanton traipsing toward the abyss of oblivion, God's grace shockingly, staggeringly and sometimes downright inconveniently struck me down or lifted me up or simply held me and carried me, as a Father carries His son, as those musty old mass-produced cheaply framed images of footprints sunken into sand at thrift stores avow: *it was then that He carried me.*
And now the big kids are home from track practice and they're telling me things and asking me to do things and my brief moment of deep thoughts is past.
But just know this: no one ever cared for me like Jesus. I write, and spill my guts while doing so, *almost* involuntarily, as though carried along by the Holy Spirit. I write about all the things I did and failed to do and all the dumb graceless thoughts I had while doing so, so I can *remember*, and so God's grace and mercy stand in majestic contrast. Not that they need the contrast for their glory, but sometimes I do - I need it, just to see a little more clearly, though still in a mirror dimly.
I hope it helps you remember, too. (Like I said - Amazon, $13.99 That's significantly less than the Kool-Aid Ultimate Party Pack on Amazon, which does sound fun and does contain 36 packets of 18 different flavors but is also full of food dyes and sugar. My book has no such liabilities, but hopefully inspires as deep theological / ontological questions as does the Kool-Aid Man!)
December 16, 2024
Really good story of grace
December 17, 2024
There’s a risk when getting into someone else’s life story. To actually commit yourself to listening as they recount the paths they’ve taken, the dark corners in their lives where lurk wild things, the odd reasonings in their heads, and more. The risk happens at different levels. One risk is that if a person really tunes in to the tales of another’s life, as weird or dark or grief-filled as it may be, there’s a lot of commonality. ‘This person is very much like me, and I find myself thinking the same way they did.’ If you really listen, it can be eye-opening. Ashley Lande, author and writer in rural Kansas, takes a bold step by inviting you into her life story in her award-winning autobiographical narrative, “The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever: Transcendence, Psychedelics, & Jesus Christ”. It’s in both paperback and Logos Digital formats. And it is a page-turning journey through a life looking for the thing that would make everything okay forever. Simply because of who I am, I found myself praying for the author, chapter after chapter.
Lande takes readers on a trek through her kaleidoscopic existence where, as she admits, “I had ruined myself, almost on purpose, because I believed I could find something far better than God, whom I had never really known or bothered to seek” (22). The voyage includes sailing through many of her years on the chemical seas of mushrooms (psilocybin), acid, and LSD. It includes her youthful renunciation of God, diving into atheism, then moving over to an Americanized form of Buddhism and Hinduism all wrapped up in yoga, dietary rules and more. Along the way she introduces us to rocky relationships, marriage, motherhood, and death, to name a few. Inside every episode comes forth the author’s internal dialog and rationale, all of which seemed rock solid and sound at the moment, but later exposed itself as the self-delusion it was all along.
And there is a raw honesty that fuels her life story. Such as, when she turned to her “pugilistic atheism” it was to prove to herself and everyone that there was no God, and then she observes that this is “a far easier absolution to make in youth, when life has been fairly charmed and everyone you love is still alive and your hubris can fill in the nicks and concavities where you’ve been humbled” (35). Or later in her young life, confronted by grace, she came to realize “I’d lived by rules. Rules were my god, Dietary rules, in particular, had held me captive during my pregnancy…I had found grace unacceptable…I clung to the ideas that all my efforts still conferred upon me at least some degree of superiority to the pedestrian folks…who’d never gone spelunking in the deepest caverns of the cosmos, who’d never luxuriated in obliterative light, like a flotsam on a sea of oceanic bliss…My hubris knew no bounds…” (184-185). And then, before a new day dawned in her life, she saw clearly that “Psychedelics (mushrooms, acid, LSD) made me believe I could have it all. Glory without submission. Transcendence without descent. Knowledge without trauma. Freedom without discipline. New life without death. It was all a lie” (263). As I mentioned earlier, I found myself praying for the author with each chapter.
Lande’s life takes an unexpected turn; a slow, long-arched turn that finally brought her to find “The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever,” but I’ll leave it for the readers to find out what, when, how, and who. Here is a work where one gets to sit and listen and walk with Lande down the paths she’s taken, around into the dark corners in her life where lurk wild things, and get drawn up into the odd reasonings and self-made mirages of the author’s fancies. If you are on a similar journey yourself, I recommend this book to you. Love it or not, if you’re honest, it will speak to you and grab your attention. But I also highly recommend this work to pastors and Christians of every stripe. It will be enlightening, frightening, encouraging, and enfolding.
Thanks to Lexham Press for sending me the copy I requested and used in this evaluation. No demands were made. Thus, my review is freely made and freely given.
Lande takes readers on a trek through her kaleidoscopic existence where, as she admits, “I had ruined myself, almost on purpose, because I believed I could find something far better than God, whom I had never really known or bothered to seek” (22). The voyage includes sailing through many of her years on the chemical seas of mushrooms (psilocybin), acid, and LSD. It includes her youthful renunciation of God, diving into atheism, then moving over to an Americanized form of Buddhism and Hinduism all wrapped up in yoga, dietary rules and more. Along the way she introduces us to rocky relationships, marriage, motherhood, and death, to name a few. Inside every episode comes forth the author’s internal dialog and rationale, all of which seemed rock solid and sound at the moment, but later exposed itself as the self-delusion it was all along.
And there is a raw honesty that fuels her life story. Such as, when she turned to her “pugilistic atheism” it was to prove to herself and everyone that there was no God, and then she observes that this is “a far easier absolution to make in youth, when life has been fairly charmed and everyone you love is still alive and your hubris can fill in the nicks and concavities where you’ve been humbled” (35). Or later in her young life, confronted by grace, she came to realize “I’d lived by rules. Rules were my god, Dietary rules, in particular, had held me captive during my pregnancy…I had found grace unacceptable…I clung to the ideas that all my efforts still conferred upon me at least some degree of superiority to the pedestrian folks…who’d never gone spelunking in the deepest caverns of the cosmos, who’d never luxuriated in obliterative light, like a flotsam on a sea of oceanic bliss…My hubris knew no bounds…” (184-185). And then, before a new day dawned in her life, she saw clearly that “Psychedelics (mushrooms, acid, LSD) made me believe I could have it all. Glory without submission. Transcendence without descent. Knowledge without trauma. Freedom without discipline. New life without death. It was all a lie” (263). As I mentioned earlier, I found myself praying for the author with each chapter.
Lande’s life takes an unexpected turn; a slow, long-arched turn that finally brought her to find “The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever,” but I’ll leave it for the readers to find out what, when, how, and who. Here is a work where one gets to sit and listen and walk with Lande down the paths she’s taken, around into the dark corners in her life where lurk wild things, and get drawn up into the odd reasonings and self-made mirages of the author’s fancies. If you are on a similar journey yourself, I recommend this book to you. Love it or not, if you’re honest, it will speak to you and grab your attention. But I also highly recommend this work to pastors and Christians of every stripe. It will be enlightening, frightening, encouraging, and enfolding.
Thanks to Lexham Press for sending me the copy I requested and used in this evaluation. No demands were made. Thus, my review is freely made and freely given.
October 19, 2024
I gobbled this book up! Lande writes so well, pulling her reader through her story to the pinnacle of the person of Jesus Christ. As someone living in New Orleans surrounded by 'tormented' people, I feel like this book has equipped me a little better to understand what desires are pulled on by drugs and psychedelics that are actually met and fulfilled in Christ.
July 14, 2025
I liked reading this memoir for book club. Definitely not something I would normally read. And I liked the Kansas City connection. I liked how Lande’s language shifted from flowery and complex in a youthful overconfidence to a more honest but still powerful tone as she grew. However, I wanted more of the author’s insight about why she left behind psychedelics and speed and found faith in Jesus so compelling. I felt like she spent 200 pages with deep insight into her formerly tripping self so I expected similar depth of reflection on what compelled her to change her mind.
December 26, 2024
In a way, this book was captivating, but perhaps that was because I was already excited to read it. Lande’s writing style was mesmerizing. Her language was descriptive, imaginative, and colorful (but not in the cursing sort of way). If you are looking for arguments to use against New Age philosophy, you probably won’t find any direct ones here, aside from Lande’s story. If you are looking for a book that is heavy in technical theology, you will not find it here. What you will find, however, is Lande’s personal story, vividly chronicling her life in spiritual darkness and pride until she finally succumbs to the saving grace and truth of Jesus Christ.
January 30, 2026
“Psychedelics, at best, could never do more than airlift me to the tenuous and swaying peak of the tower of Babel, an unsound piecemeal stack of children's blocks, of man's spurious attempts reach heaven. Jesus and Jesus alone can lead us into the true kingdom, the one that never perishes, the one that satisfies and gives us more than we could have ever asked or imagined, the one where our tearful, anxious questions, like mine on that final mushroom trip --'Does anything mean anything at all?' — are answered conclusively, and abundantly, and in greater affirmative measure than we could have ever hoped.” p. 261
Lande is a great writer. Very cool story of grace.
Lande is a great writer. Very cool story of grace.
August 15, 2025
I love reading about how God draws people to saving faith in Jesus. Some of my favorites include Carolyn Weber's "Surprised by Oxford", Sheldon Van Auken's "A Severe Mercy", and Jonathan Aitken's "John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace". Ashley Lande's book joins a list of favorites in this genre. Lande's descriptive writing provides a fitting color and pace to this story about how Jesus drew her out of a lifestyle of LSD, Magic Mushrooms, and the vacuity of New Age Spirituality.
"The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever" reminds us of the amazing character of God's grace and that the Hound of Heaven will retrieve his own, no matter how far they've run or how seemingly well-fortified their hearts are against him.
"And I saw it clearly, at last: it wasn't about my search for him, wasn't about my clutching and grasping scrabble up my tower of Babel, piling on litter to create another foothold by which I might finally lurch my body onto the peak and into the heavens. It wasn't about how I could get to him, how I could storm heaven and lay claim to holy ground. It didn't work that way at all. It was about what he--broken, bleeding, bereft--had done for me. I'd found the secret, the Promise That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, that did make everything okay forever, in the end. And it turned out that the only God who could truly offer me anything at all offered me everything."
"The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever" reminds us of the amazing character of God's grace and that the Hound of Heaven will retrieve his own, no matter how far they've run or how seemingly well-fortified their hearts are against him.
"And I saw it clearly, at last: it wasn't about my search for him, wasn't about my clutching and grasping scrabble up my tower of Babel, piling on litter to create another foothold by which I might finally lurch my body onto the peak and into the heavens. It wasn't about how I could get to him, how I could storm heaven and lay claim to holy ground. It didn't work that way at all. It was about what he--broken, bleeding, bereft--had done for me. I'd found the secret, the Promise That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, that did make everything okay forever, in the end. And it turned out that the only God who could truly offer me anything at all offered me everything."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 5, 2024
This book is remarkable. I have never read anything like it. Lande’s voice is completely unique and gripping. In this memoir of a young life, she tells the story of her quest for meaning, understanding, and transcendence through psychedelic drugs. And in the chasing after this “enlightenment” Lande details how, time and again, her friend LSD betrays her. “A slave does not know what his master is doing.”
Lande’s use of language is stunning. I loved her employment of sacred images and words to convey the not-so-hidden idolatry of psychedelic culture. Drugs as sacraments, Bob Dylan leading you into “hymnic reverence”, incantations and yogic poses as paltry substitutes for liturgies and humble prayer. And the VOCABULARY in this book! My lexical palate expanded considerably!
Lande builds a slow, steady crescendo to the summit of her story: surrendering to the person of Jesus. In reading it, I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me, so shattering were her descriptions of finding the Meaning and Truth she’d always been looking for.
*chapter 3 includes an extensive recounting of a very strange book by RA Lafferty that was impactful to Lande at the time. I mostly skimmed this part as I was rapidly losing interest in hearing about someone else’s book. Once I got through that section, I was again engrossed in the story.
Lande’s use of language is stunning. I loved her employment of sacred images and words to convey the not-so-hidden idolatry of psychedelic culture. Drugs as sacraments, Bob Dylan leading you into “hymnic reverence”, incantations and yogic poses as paltry substitutes for liturgies and humble prayer. And the VOCABULARY in this book! My lexical palate expanded considerably!
Lande builds a slow, steady crescendo to the summit of her story: surrendering to the person of Jesus. In reading it, I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me, so shattering were her descriptions of finding the Meaning and Truth she’d always been looking for.
*chapter 3 includes an extensive recounting of a very strange book by RA Lafferty that was impactful to Lande at the time. I mostly skimmed this part as I was rapidly losing interest in hearing about someone else’s book. Once I got through that section, I was again engrossed in the story.
January 28, 2026
It's fun to read, more like a 250-page blog than a book. It qualifies as testimony. I'm not sure it qualifies as a memoir? I can't quite pin why.
October 14, 2024
Ashley Lande’s search for The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever took her everywhere— New Atheism, Buddhism, Hinduism, New Age Mysticism, though her longest stop along the way was in the land of psychedelics. Her search and her journey are gripping. She relays her story with a mastery of language that feels like a true anointing (not ashamed to say I googled more than a few words in this one).
I love this one. I think you should read it. Maybe you’re on your own journey of finding The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, most of us are, and you should listen to this one who is going before us.
I love this one. I think you should read it. Maybe you’re on your own journey of finding The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, most of us are, and you should listen to this one who is going before us.
September 2, 2025
This was fantastic.
September 19, 2024
As I read this book, I was concerned that it not glorify the druggie life by making it so interesting. She did, however, show her journey as she tried and tried to find that “thing” that makes a person whole. I thought her description of salvation as definitely coming from outside of her was very instructive and, I hope, a cautionary tale to those who try the same things she did. The arrogance of her unbelief and the absolute emptiness of Eastern religion are especially strong points of her story. It was so encouraging to read how God rescued her and her family from a life of vanity.
December 5, 2025
**SPOILERS**
This is why words are so important. This author, using words, took what I knew about Jesus Christ and elevated it—wait, that's not the right word. Because of her unique path to Christ and her mastery of the English language, she made Jesus shine for me. She couldn't have done it without the words. I'm so grateful that she studied her English and read good books and chose to tell us about how Christ found her and rescued her.
Here are some of the radiant bits about Jesus that I want to read again and again, so worshipful are they for me.
This is why words are so important. This author, using words, took what I knew about Jesus Christ and elevated it—wait, that's not the right word. Because of her unique path to Christ and her mastery of the English language, she made Jesus shine for me. She couldn't have done it without the words. I'm so grateful that she studied her English and read good books and chose to tell us about how Christ found her and rescued her.
Here are some of the radiant bits about Jesus that I want to read again and again, so worshipful are they for me.
... spoke this secret language of blood and death and new life, of Jesus as God, a deeply personal reality rather than an amorphous life force. God became flesh and bones. It was unfathomable, and maybe even unconscionable—It narrowed God to a terrifyingly specific point. And with terrible specificity came accountability, came inescapability, came a piercing intimacy.
Nothing in the Bible acquiesced to my attempts at syncretism. Jesus descended to ascend, Philippians read, yes, but there was nothing about him embracing the darkness or his "shadow" or having complicity with the dark in any way. In him there is light, and there is no darkness at all. How could that be? It sounded too good to be true. I'd been told and told myself for years that I had to embrace the darkness as part and parcel of the cosmic dance... The idea of someone, dear God, anyone in the universe being composed only of light "with no shadow of turning with thee," as the hymn went, filled my heart with a hope that the rest of my being looked at askance. It was a naive hope, an unsophisticated hope, I thought. It was the hope of a child, and that kind of hope was what I needed more than anything else.
Because of Jesus Christ, the man silent before Pilate and sniveling Herod, the man whose bones were riven by nails on the cross, the man who hung there with his skin graffitied with blood and glistening with the sweat of unimaginable pain and exertion and flecked with the sour contemptuous spit of his accusers. His body trashed. His blood spilled. The Holy One. The only Holy One in the whole pantheon of would-be gods. He was my Redeemer. He was my Savior, there could be no other, I now saw, no other solution, no other salve, no other story big enough to cool the flaming hell of this roiling world and my own rotten heart and seed both with new life.
Only Jesus—baffling, confounding, radical, indefinable Jesus.
June 3, 2025
I'm so grateful for this book. The author's story is worth the telling simply as a fascinating narrative, but the real gift of the book is how beautifully she contrasts New Age spirituality and the truth of the Christian gospel.
"For so long, I'd lived by rules...I found the idea of grace unacceptable."
On the surface, New Age culture seems to be about freedom from convention, self expression, and pleasure seeking. But at its core, New Age spirituality is just another kind of legalism - do these practices, take these drugs, achieve maximum health, read these books, believe these things, and maybe if you try hard enough, you can save yourself. An ever-increasing list of demands, promising everything, but never delivering.
In the end, we have two choices: Law or gospel. Legalism or grace. Desperately trying to save ourselves, or accepting the salvation Jesus has offered to us. Ashley Lande was on the hamster wheel of self-salvation. And this book is a heart-wrenching memoir of how the Lord reached her heart -and her husband's! - with the Good News.
"It wasn't about my search for him...It was about what he had done for me."
"For so long, I'd lived by rules...I found the idea of grace unacceptable."
On the surface, New Age culture seems to be about freedom from convention, self expression, and pleasure seeking. But at its core, New Age spirituality is just another kind of legalism - do these practices, take these drugs, achieve maximum health, read these books, believe these things, and maybe if you try hard enough, you can save yourself. An ever-increasing list of demands, promising everything, but never delivering.
In the end, we have two choices: Law or gospel. Legalism or grace. Desperately trying to save ourselves, or accepting the salvation Jesus has offered to us. Ashley Lande was on the hamster wheel of self-salvation. And this book is a heart-wrenching memoir of how the Lord reached her heart -and her husband's! - with the Good News.
"It wasn't about my search for him...It was about what he had done for me."
August 20, 2025
A beautiful memoir of God’s relentless pursuit of those He calls. Lande’s search for meaning in psychedelics, speed, yoga and other transcendental means never “made everything ok forever,” and she recounts those pursuits in detail. I was particularly taken by how child birth and raising her children led her to ask different questions and be willing to open her life to God.
I’d think of this as an edgier or R rated Surprised By Oxford. There are so many ways that the “Hound of Heaven” saves His own.
I’d think of this as an edgier or R rated Surprised By Oxford. There are so many ways that the “Hound of Heaven” saves His own.
March 14, 2025
What a beautiful story of God’s patient goodness. Grateful.
November 5, 2025
Ashley has such a beautiful testimony of the relentless and unending love of God. She writes beautifully of her journey in coming to know Christ. Highly recommend.
January 5, 2026
I kept thinking as I read this book: "how wonderful that Ashley's drug use didn't wreck her brain, or fry her vocabulary." Ashley's testimony intrigued me, but it was her writing that made this book enjoyable.
How interesting that her epiphanies worked through her slowly and painfully, unfolding concurrently with the slow pain of giving birth. And how beautiful that she worked so hard to ascend to God, only to finally give herself over to the God who descended to her.
I found many of her insights astute. The one that moved me most was her awareness of the "narrowed God" of incarnation, who came with "piercing intimacy," down to a "terrifyingly specific point." What a surprising God we find in Jesus Christ.
Overall, a well written book full of heart and wisdom.
How interesting that her epiphanies worked through her slowly and painfully, unfolding concurrently with the slow pain of giving birth. And how beautiful that she worked so hard to ascend to God, only to finally give herself over to the God who descended to her.
I found many of her insights astute. The one that moved me most was her awareness of the "narrowed God" of incarnation, who came with "piercing intimacy," down to a "terrifyingly specific point." What a surprising God we find in Jesus Christ.
Overall, a well written book full of heart and wisdom.
December 7, 2024
A great debut by Ashley! A crazy journey that seems so impossible for so nice a person.
December 26, 2025
Having read several underwhelming books about psychedelics X Christianity, I highly recommend this wonderful book for several reasons; Right out of the gate, the author's unique voice is strong and clear as she brings the reader into her life and psychedelic experiences, holding nothing back. The authenticity was inspiring and kept me turning the pages. The story progresses in an interesting way building up to some beautifully written scenes that are very powerful. By the end of this book, you will feel like you've made a new friend.
November 17, 2024
This book is a testimony of one woman's journey from dependence on psychedelics to salvation in Jesus Christ. It is a dramatic story, but one of the things that stood out to me so much about it are the seemingly small details in her life that added up to providentially guide her down this path. I suppose that is the most encouraging part of this book for me, beyond the obvious that God can reach anyone, anytime, anywhere. Even the destructive desire that led her in the wrong direction was the first step that God used to cause the author to want something better. R. A. Lafferty was a science fiction writer, not an evangelist, but his short stories provided another step. This is a very good book that helped me learn more about some things that simply I don't have very much experience with.
March 13, 2025
brilliant
So well written - had to finish. A vivid story of seeking meaning in LSD and unexpectedly finding it in Jesus. Thank you for telling your story.
So well written - had to finish. A vivid story of seeking meaning in LSD and unexpectedly finding it in Jesus. Thank you for telling your story.
January 11, 2026
This book is incredible. I love a good memoir, but I sometimes find that while the story is fascinating, the writing is subpar. Not this one. Lande writes in a beautiful, poetic way. Her rich language and storytelling ability help the reader understand why someone would go down the path she did. Even though I have no experience with the substances she describes, I felt the deep need to find meaning and transcendence by any means possible. I appreciated the insight into a world I don’t know and am thankful that I now have a better understanding of the allure of psychedelics, Eastern mysticism, and even free birthing.
I found the final chapters especially moving. The sections on motherhood and seeing one’s children as eternal souls were heart-rending. Whatever mental gymnastics you use to justify your existence and actions no longer add up when you are holding your tiny child. Oof. Her final thoughts on her lack of control really describe the human experience. This is one that will stick with me and will be worth a re-read in the future.
I found the final chapters especially moving. The sections on motherhood and seeing one’s children as eternal souls were heart-rending. Whatever mental gymnastics you use to justify your existence and actions no longer add up when you are holding your tiny child. Oof. Her final thoughts on her lack of control really describe the human experience. This is one that will stick with me and will be worth a re-read in the future.
September 5, 2024
I just finished reading ‘The Thing That Would Make Everything OK Forever’ by Ashley Lande, published by Lexham Press in 2024. It’s an autobiographical journey through Ashley’s psychedelic search for transcendence.
The author takes you through a labyrinthian maze of her magic mushroom memories. The book consists of a prologue and 11 chapters, weighing in at 273 pages (including the end-notes). The prologue begins: “The last time I ever tripped, I ate mushrooms I’d grown myself.”
She describes stumbling down the rabbit hole of psychedelic drugs as a teenager, looking at the “glittering doorway of decadent effulgence… I was a feckless moth, drawn toward the flame of anything even remotely countercultural.” (p.15) “I was in that sweet spot, poised on that glimmering threshold where the Turkish Delights proffered by the White Witch still tasted good. Rumors of darkness from beyond — bad trips, psychosis — glanced off me.” (p.29)
Although it’s her first book, her obvious love of art, music, and literature reveal a mature vocabulary. She had me looking up a few words in the dictionary, like someone studying the menu at a nice restaurant — to savor the flavors.
This author was a contributor to another volume published in 2023, “Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity“
In this memoir, she interacts with a variety of authors, like atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great). Along the journey she mentions William J. Craddock (Be Not Content); R. A. Lafferty, Ram Dass, and Alan Watts (On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are).
My review continues here -- https://dougvos.com/thing-that-would-...
The author takes you through a labyrinthian maze of her magic mushroom memories. The book consists of a prologue and 11 chapters, weighing in at 273 pages (including the end-notes). The prologue begins: “The last time I ever tripped, I ate mushrooms I’d grown myself.”
She describes stumbling down the rabbit hole of psychedelic drugs as a teenager, looking at the “glittering doorway of decadent effulgence… I was a feckless moth, drawn toward the flame of anything even remotely countercultural.” (p.15) “I was in that sweet spot, poised on that glimmering threshold where the Turkish Delights proffered by the White Witch still tasted good. Rumors of darkness from beyond — bad trips, psychosis — glanced off me.” (p.29)
Although it’s her first book, her obvious love of art, music, and literature reveal a mature vocabulary. She had me looking up a few words in the dictionary, like someone studying the menu at a nice restaurant — to savor the flavors.
This author was a contributor to another volume published in 2023, “Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity“
In this memoir, she interacts with a variety of authors, like atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great). Along the journey she mentions William J. Craddock (Be Not Content); R. A. Lafferty, Ram Dass, and Alan Watts (On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are).
My review continues here -- https://dougvos.com/thing-that-would-...
January 19, 2025
The author recounts a story told by her yoga instructor from her Buddhist retreat:
Yoga teacher: So I'm just not supposed to care if my brother dies?
Buddhist teacher: No, no, you don't start with that. You start with small attachments to stop caring about, and you work your way up to that.
Luckily, Lande had had her first baby at this point. Alarm bells were starting to go off. Before, her acid-steeped brain thought this emotional detachment made sense as an elite spiritual knowing. Now, it was starting to sound bad...
She divided the world into "those who have taken acid" and "those who haven't." One of her "acid" friends gave her a children's book for this precious new baby. She opens the pages with him:
"I am the sun.
I am also my feet.
I am the puppy across the street."
Equivocating on matter was no longer compelling to her. Her son was a beautiful, wonderful other, different from her, and worthy of her attachment and emotional investment.
It's remarkable how much psychedelic use can lead to a sense of spiritual arrogance, with the "secret knowledge" it lures its people with. But ultimately, it's an abusive god, Lande writes, and the "all is nothing" / "all is one" worldview that typically comes with it depressive and hollow. It's also interesting how much having children can cause one to reevaluate one's dearest held beliefs.
Yoga teacher: So I'm just not supposed to care if my brother dies?
Buddhist teacher: No, no, you don't start with that. You start with small attachments to stop caring about, and you work your way up to that.
Luckily, Lande had had her first baby at this point. Alarm bells were starting to go off. Before, her acid-steeped brain thought this emotional detachment made sense as an elite spiritual knowing. Now, it was starting to sound bad...
She divided the world into "those who have taken acid" and "those who haven't." One of her "acid" friends gave her a children's book for this precious new baby. She opens the pages with him:
"I am the sun.
I am also my feet.
I am the puppy across the street."
Equivocating on matter was no longer compelling to her. Her son was a beautiful, wonderful other, different from her, and worthy of her attachment and emotional investment.
It's remarkable how much psychedelic use can lead to a sense of spiritual arrogance, with the "secret knowledge" it lures its people with. But ultimately, it's an abusive god, Lande writes, and the "all is nothing" / "all is one" worldview that typically comes with it depressive and hollow. It's also interesting how much having children can cause one to reevaluate one's dearest held beliefs.
March 30, 2025
I really enjoyed this book. It is an autobiography of a woman who became an atheist as a teenager but was unable to reconcile herself to the meaninglessness of a God-less world. She ended up using psychedelic drugs to find significance (or "the one thing that would make everything okay") in her life, even as her mental and physical condition deteriorated.
I particularly found the connection between atheism and New Age philosophy/spiritualism interesting, especially in light of how Eastern spirituality is beginning to play a role Western culture. In light of a "God-less" world, people are increasingly turning to mysticism and the religion of impersonal forces that provide deeper meaning to the world, but do not require a dying to the self. This book is the story of a woman who finally realized that "glory without submission, transcendence without descent, knowledge without trauma, freedom without discipline, new life without death" was all a lie, and that the only way to salvation was not through a Something, but a Someone, Jesus Christ.
I particularly found the connection between atheism and New Age philosophy/spiritualism interesting, especially in light of how Eastern spirituality is beginning to play a role Western culture. In light of a "God-less" world, people are increasingly turning to mysticism and the religion of impersonal forces that provide deeper meaning to the world, but do not require a dying to the self. This book is the story of a woman who finally realized that "glory without submission, transcendence without descent, knowledge without trauma, freedom without discipline, new life without death" was all a lie, and that the only way to salvation was not through a Something, but a Someone, Jesus Christ.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 3, 2025
Admittedly, I picked up this book because the subtitle piqued my interested. I began reading with a vain curiosity about the world of psychedelics, but what I learned (or relearned) was about the goodness and kindness of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Ashley's story is fascinating to someone uninitiated into this world of drugs, legal and illegal. She writes beautifully and bears her soul in ways that most of us shudder at the prospect of, an act of someone who has truly experienced total forgiveness and freedom in Christ. Although unique in its particulars, as Ashley catalogues her own search for meaning, for transcendence, and for truth, her experience will resonate with anyone who has, like the prodigal son, left Home in search of something "exponentially more alluring, though tenuous and volatile: Adventure. Art. Sex. Tragedy. Knowledge.” (22) Read her story. Be reminded of the grace of God found in Jesus Christ. Be encouraged that "where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more." Finally, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."
January 1, 2025
This book was so interesting. It was a window into a world I have no concept of--the descriptions of her psychedelic experiences were hard for me to wrap my mind around in a way, but Lande is an above average writer, so that helped. The narrative moved at a good clip (although there was one point where it dragged a little bit, but at that point it moved to a different phase of her life, so that worked). She quotes from a variety of New Age writers as illustration of how she was thinking at that phase in her life, and it was interesting to see how some of that thinking has crept into the mainstream (she even mentioned one piece of New Age lite that I have read--Ina May's Guide to Childbirth).
Lande is an above-average writer (although she might be a bit too flowery for some tastes--also she throws around some pretty obscure words), the book pulled me along the whole time, and I enjoy a good finding-Jesus story. Maybe more of a 4.5, but I enjoyed it enough to give it 5 stars.
Lande is an above-average writer (although she might be a bit too flowery for some tastes--also she throws around some pretty obscure words), the book pulled me along the whole time, and I enjoy a good finding-Jesus story. Maybe more of a 4.5, but I enjoyed it enough to give it 5 stars.
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