 First edition cover | |
| Author | Tao Lin |
|---|---|
| Original title | Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Nonfiction, memoir |
| Published | May 1, 2018, Vintage Books |
| Media type | Book |
| Pages | 320 |
| ISBN | 1101974516 (US) |
| Preceded by | Taipei |
| Followed by | Leave Society |
Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change is a 2018 nonfiction book by Tao Lin. It is his first nonfiction book, and eighth book total.[ citation needed ]
On January 9, 2018, Entertainment Weekly debuted the cover. [1] The article also included an excerpt of the book in which Lin takes psilocybin mushrooms alone in his room and then emails a friend. The article stated that, "The jacket features Lin’s own illustration, one that reflects the themes of chaos and art so intrinsic to the book." The art was one of Lin's mandalas. [2]
Trip is in eight chapters, with an introduction, epilogue, and appendix. The chapter titles are "Why Am I Interested in Him?", "Terence McKenna’s Life," "My Drug History," "Psilocybin," "DMT," "Salvia," "Why Are Psychedelics Illegal?" and "Cannabis."
Lin describes getting addicted to pharmaceutical drugs and feeling suicidal due to his addiction and to the bleakness of his life and his society. At his lowest, he encounters the work of Terence McKenna, the psychedelics enthusiast. McKenna's philosophy changes Lin's perspective from pessimistic to optimistic. He relates his experiences with various psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin and DMT. At the end of the book, Lin visits McKenna's ex-wife Kathleen Harrison, an ethnobotanist. He takes a plant-drawing class with her and meets her children, Finn and Klea, that she had with McKenna.
Trip was published on May 1, 2018. It received mostly positive reviews. Emily Witt, writing in the New Yorker , said, "Lin avoids writing in figurative language, and there is little hyperbole in these reports, nor references to nineteen-sixties-era acid metaphysics. 'Trip' is, if not a guide to self-help, a book about a person trying to be happier, in part by changing the kinds of drugs he uses." [3] John Horgan, in Scientific American , wrote, "If an aspirant asks for an example of experimental science writing, I’ll recommend Trip. The book veers from excruciatingly candid autobiography to biography (of McKenna) to investigative journalism…to interview-based journalism to philosophical speculation to first-person accounts of the effects of DMT and Salvia." [4] In the Irish Times , Rob Doyle gave the book a mixed review, concluding, "Trip is a sane book about becoming sane, and Lin’s most valuable work to date." [5]
A French edition from Au Diable Vauvert was published in 2019. [6]
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a substituted tryptamine that occurs in many plants and animals, including humans, and which is both a derivative and a structural analog of tryptamine. DMT is used as a psychedelic drug and prepared by various cultures for ritual purposes as an entheogen.
Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound produced by more than 200 species of fungi. The most potent are members of genus Psilocybe, such as P. azurescens, P. semilanceata, and P. cyanescens, but psilocybin has also been isolated from about a dozen other genera. Psilocybin is itself biologically inactive but is quickly converted by the body to psilocin, which has mind-altering effects similar, in some aspects, to those of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, and dimethyltryptamine (DMT). In general, the effects include euphoria, visual and mental hallucinations, changes in perception, distorted sense of time, and perceived spiritual experiences. It can also cause adverse reactions such as nausea and panic attacks.
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states and an apparent expansion of consciousness. Also referred to as classic hallucinogens or serotonergic hallucinogens, the term psychedelic is sometimes used more broadly to include various types of hallucinogens, such as those which are atypical or adjacent to psychedelia like salvia and MDMA, respectively.
Ralph Herman Abraham is an American mathematician. He has been a member of the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz since 1968.
Terence Kemp McKenna was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, ethnomycology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of rave culture".
Entheogens are psychedelic drugs—and sometimes certain other psychoactive substances—used for engendering spiritual development or otherwise in sacred contexts. They have been used in various ways, e.g., as part of established religious rituals or as aids for personal spiritual development. Anthropological study has established that entheogens are used for religious, magical, shamanic, or spiritual purposes in many parts of the world. Entheogens have traditionally been used to supplement many diverse practices geared towards achieving transcendence, including healing, divination, meditation, yoga, sensory deprivation, asceticism, prayer, trance, rituals, chanting, imitation of sounds, hymns like peyote songs, drumming, and ecstatic dance. The psychedelic experience is often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as those experienced in meditation, near-death experiences, and mystical experiences. Ego dissolution is often described as a key feature of the psychedelic experience.
Psilocybin mushrooms, commonly known as magic mushrooms or shrooms, are a polyphyletic informal group of fungi that contain psilocybin, which turns into psilocin upon ingestion. Biological genera containing psilocybin mushrooms include Psilocybe, Panaeolus, Inocybe, Pluteus, Gymnopilus, and Pholiotina.
Psychonautics refers both to a methodology for describing and explaining the subjective effects of altered states of consciousness, including those induced by meditation or mind-altering substances, and to a research cabal in which the researcher voluntarily immerses themselves into an altered mental state in order to explore the accompanying experiences.
A psychedelic experience is a temporary altered state of consciousness induced by the consumption of a psychedelic substance. For example, an acid trip is a psychedelic experience brought on by the use of LSD, while a mushroom trip is a psychedelic experience brought on by the use of psilocybin. Psychedelic experiences feature alterations in normal perception such as visual distortions and a subjective loss of self-identity, sometimes interpreted as mystical experiences. Psychedelic experiences lack predictability, as they can range from being highly pleasurable to frightening. The outcome of a psychedelic experience is heavily influenced by the person's mood, personality, expectations, and environment.
Dennis Jon McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He is the brother of well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna and is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with the investigation of the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelic medicines.
Rick Strassman is an American clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He has held a fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology research at the University of California San Diego and was Professor of Psychiatry for eleven years at the University of New Mexico. After 20 years of intermission, Strassman was the first person in the United States to undertake human research with psychedelic, hallucinogenic, or entheogenic substances with his research on N,N-dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT. He is also the author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, which summarizes his academic research into DMT and other experimental studies of it, and includes his own reflections and conclusions based on this research.
Ethnomycology is the study of the historical uses and sociological impact of fungi and can be considered a subfield of ethnobotany or ethnobiology. Although in theory the term includes fungi used for such purposes as tinder, medicine and food, it is often used in the context of the study of psychoactive mushrooms such as psilocybin mushrooms, the Amanita muscaria mushroom, and the ergot fungus.
High Priest is a 1968 book by American psychologist and writer Timothy Leary, published by New American Library. Written before Leary's incarceration on drug-related charges, it is an autobiographical account of his experiences from 1959 to 1962, a period that roughly coincides with his employment as a lecturer in clinical psychology at Harvard University.
O-Acetylpsilocin is a semi-synthetic psychoactive drug that has been suggested by David Nichols to be a potentially useful alternative to psilocybin for pharmacological studies, as they are both believed to be prodrugs of psilocin. However, some users report that O-acetylpsilocin's subjective effects differ from those of psilocybin and psilocin. Additionally, some users prefer 4-AcO-DMT to natural psilocybin mushrooms due to feeling fewer adverse side effects such as nausea and heavy body load, which are more frequently reported in experiences involving natural mushrooms. It is the acetylated form of the psilocybin mushroom alkaloid psilocin and is a lower homolog of 4-AcO-MET, 4-AcO-DET, 4-AcO-MiPT and 4-AcO-DiPT.
Tao Lin is an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. He has published four novels, a novella, two books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a memoir, as well as an extensive assortment of online content. His third novel, Taipei, was published by Vintage on June 4, 2013. His nonfiction book Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change was published by Vintage on May 1, 2018. His fourth novel, Leave Society, was published by Vintage on August 3, 2021.
The stoned ape theory is a controversial theory first proposed by American ethnobotanist and mystic Terence McKenna in his 1992 book Food of the Gods. The theory claims that the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens and the cognitive revolution was caused by the addition of psilocybin mushrooms, specifically the mushroom Psilocybe cubensis, into the human diet around 100,000 years ago. Using evidence largely based on studies from Roland L. Fischer et al. from the 1960s and 1970s, he attributed much of the mental strides made by humans during the cognitive revolution to the effects of psilocybin intake found by Fischer.
Patrick Lundborg was a writer on psychedelic culture and author of the books Psychedelia and The Acid Archives. Lundborg had a Bachelor of Science degree in applied systems science from Stockholm University, with additional studies in classic philosophy and the history of religion. Lundborg was an original member of the Lumber Island Acid Crew, a psychedelic artist collective which formed in Stockholm in the mid-1980s and remains active up to the present time.
Mind Medicine Inc., also known as MindMed, is a New York-based psychedelic medicine biotech company that develops psychedelic-inspired medicines known as psychoplastogens and therapies to address addiction and mental illness.
Klea McKenna is an American visual artist based in San Francisco, California. She is known for her camera-less photography, photograms and inventive techniques using light sensitive material. Her work is included in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco airport, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Her father was ethnobotanist and mystic Terence McKenna.
Entheogenic drugs have been used by various groups for thousands of years. There are numerous historical reports as well as modern, contemporary reports of indigenous groups using entheogens, chemical substances used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context.