A neuropsychologist takes ten different psychedelic drugs in this panoramic, profound and wildly entertaining investigation.
'Original and thrilling' Mike Jay, author of Psychonauts
'Utterly compelling' Mark Miodownik, author of Stuff Matters
'A hair-raising hurtle of a ride' Henry Shukman, author of One Blade of Grass
'The psychedelic world has been waiting for this book' Professor Erika Dyck
Psychedelics may have made a comeback but they still remain a mystery. They are now a 'breakthrough therapy' for mental illness but the truth is we have only a vague idea how they work and there is a limit to what science alone can reveal. To have any hope of understanding them fully, we need first to broaden our view - dramatically - of what they are.
In this daring, perception-shifting odyssey, clinical neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell takes ten different drugs in ten different settings, journeying from a neuroimaging lab in London to the Colombian Amazon via Silicon Valley and his friend's basement kitchen. His encounters with scientists and gangsters, venture capitalists and con men, psychonauts and shamans, as well as with the drugs themselves, reveal the reality of psychedelics in all their richness, darkness, hilarity, wonder and strangeness.
We see that the drive to extract these substances from their indigenous and underground cultures comes with risk as well as opportunity, and that to make them safe or normal might ultimately destroy what makes them potent. We also see, more vividly than ever before, what makes them so rapturously enchanting and confounding.
'Beguiling, captivating, mind-expanding. It's impossible to read this book and not be tempted to replicate some of its wild, sanity-stretching forays into the peculiarities of human perception' Stuart Ritchie, author of Science Fictions
'A dazzling, timely book, as deep and poignant as it is madcap and hilarious' Mark Lythgoe, Director of the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging, University College London
