You know when you say something innocuous and you have no memory of it, but it makes an impression on someone else? So, yeah, that happened, and it’s how we ended up with Alice (as in Wonderland) on our cover.
We were having a preliminary conversation on how to illustrate our story on psychedelic medicine, and evidently I referred to some aspect of the project as “going down the rabbit hole.” The reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was unintentional, but it spurred one of the visual thinkers in the room, creative director Erin Sonnenschein, to start picturing its protagonist. Before this verbal thinker knew what had happened, Erin had also pointed out that a brain and a mushroom cap were similar in shape.
Cue the next meeting, wherein art director Giorgia Virgili laid out options for illustrating Alice. We flirted with surrealism and modernism before choosing a pen-and-ink style reminiscent of the Victorian original. Mercifully, Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are out of copyright, and illustrator Craig McGill evokes them beautifully.
After all, Alice—the heroine of one of the first true children’s books—goes on a journey full of imagination and nonsense and riddles and possibility.
Which led to the next question: Whom should Alice represent? She could don a lab coat and be one of the Stanford scientists investigating whether psychedelics effectively treat mental health conditions, how to use or modify them to make them as safe as possible, and which treatments work best for which patients. She could be the patient, wondering whether all the buzz about psychedelic medicine is warranted and whether it could be the quick solution to her long-standing anguish. Or—ooh—she could be you, the reader, observing the conundrums inherent in researching substances that have largely been outlawed, carry risks ranging from bad trips to addiction, and yet may represent the best next hope in a stalled field of psychiatric drug development.
After all, Alice—the heroine of one of the first true children’s books—goes on a journey full of imagination and nonsense and riddles and possibility. She has to decide whether to follow the White Rabbit. To eat or drink something that might alter her mind. To question the Queen of Hearts’ evidence.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” Alice asks the Cheshire Cat. About a dozen Stanford researchers are striving to help us answer that very question.
We hope you enjoy the opportunity to accompany them down the rabbit hole. And if not, now you know whom to blame.
Kathy Zonana, ’93, JD ’96, is the editor of Stanford. Email her at kathyz@stanford.edu.
