TEN TRIPS

A British clinical neuropsychologist attempts to answer some “big questions” about psychedelic drugs by taking them himself.

The author addresses his skepticism of psychedelics, particularly the drugs’ efficacy as a treatment for trauma and the “relative lack of academic interest in the experiences themselves.” Of his first ayahuasca trip, he writes, “this is what real healing feels like.” In a chronological narrative, Mitchell records his experiences with psychedelic drugs in 10 locations in just over a month; before the final one, he writes, “it was becoming increasingly difficult to separate all the trips from all the trips.” In addition to various works of scientists, researchers, philosophers, and poets, the author offers details about each incident—e.g., “There’s no denying it: these mushrooms really fucking work!” and “I’d go so far as to say that I experienced transcendence.” Most experiences proved positive, although one trip was “the single most terrifying episode of my life,” during which he felt “different expressions of insanity.” Ketamine, he writes, was “more shallow than it was deep, a private weirdness to insulate one from the weirdness of the world.” After being told by a shaman in Colombia, “I drink my own medicine. Without it, I know nothing,” Mitchell writes, “There it was in a nutshell: the fusion of first and third person which harked back to the nearly obscured tradition of self-experimentation in Western science.” Calling psychedelics “MRIs of the soul,” Mitchell writes that these drugs can make you euphoric, intelligent, fearless, and enlightened, but also “uncertain, terrified, crazy, Republican, anarchic, delinquent.” Ultimately, he concludes, “the most fundamental lesson of my various trips is that these drugs defy our attempts to design them.”

Short on definitive conclusions, but worthwhile for those interested in the current and future role of psychedelics.