Dr. Andrew Weil is one of the leading proponents of integrative medicine. He founded Weil Lifestyles LLC .

He received both his undergraduate degree in botany and his medical degree from Harvard University. His first book was The Natural Mind. It was concerned with psychotropic drugs and posited a human drive towards altered states of consciousness. The book also is about other means of altering ones consciousness such as meditation. He is currently employed as a professor of internal medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson where he is the director and founder of the Program in Integrative Medicine . Weil's general view is that patients do best utilizing both traditional and alternative medicine. In general, he sees traditional medicine as well suited to crisis intervention and alternative medicine for prevention and health maintanance. Nutrition is emphasized in almost all of Weil's health works.

He is the best-selling author of books such as Natural Mind, The Marriage of the Sun and Moon, Health and Healing, Spontaneous Healing, 8 Weeks to Optimum Health, Eating Well for Optimum Health, and The Healthy Kitchen. Dr. Weil's latest work is on healthy aging and will be available in the spring of 2005.

Dr. Weil and Psychedelics

Weil also purports that the psychedelic drug LSD cured him of his allergy to cats.[1]

"I had had a lifelong allergy to cats and didn't like cats. If I touched a cat and then touched my face my eyes would itch and swell, and if a cat licked me I got hives where they licked, so I always stayed away from cats. One day in an LSD state, when I was feeling very centered, a cat jumped in my lap and I just decided, well, I was going to enjoy the cat. So I played with the cat extensively, I had no allergic reaction and I have never had one since. That to me was a very powerful experience, how something that I thought was a lifelong pattern could change in an instant as a result of a change in internal reality."

Weil says that some allergies are learned. ”That gave me the idea that [taking LSD] would be a great way to teach people to unlearn allergies,” he says. ”If the drugs were legal, I think I would recommend that some patients do it.”

External links

• http://www.drweil.com