Welcome to the relaunch ofpsychedelicadventures.com, which was first uploaded in 2000 to support my bookTripping. The book is still in print, now in its Eleventh Printing, but plenty has changed since then, psychedelically speaking.

On the eve of publication we lost Terence McKenna, whom Id met in Hawaii for the interview featured inTripping. No countercultural pied piper has assumed his mantle, but we have seen a psychedelic science renaissance, the imminent legalization of cannabis nation and even continent wide, and strong indications that psychedelic drugs will soon be marketed as medicine and more.

The term psychedelic now has new connotations. For a particular vanguard of educated psychonauts and seekers of the holy, theyre considered entheogens that generate the god within.

Ketamine is now considered by official medicine the most promising pharmaceutical fortreatment-resistant depression and suicidality. Psilocybin has been shown to reduce end of life anxiety and promote spirituality, MDMA to completely eradicate symptoms of PTSD, and ayahuasca a cure for addiction.

Following the wise counsel and private regimen of the late LSD-inventor Albert Hoffman, millions have now caught on to microdosing acid and psilocybin mushrooms, a burgeoning if still illegal practice with enormous potential for health and productivity.

Its now clear that both the wizardry of the tech sector and the inspired DiY creativity of the incandescent desert flower of that festivus extremis called Burning Man are both fueled by psychedelic potions.

The hoary countercultural molt of psychedelics is being shed in favor of a gleaming white lab coat embodying the new rational appraisal of their benefits for medicine and quality of life. Psychedelic science, now that Big Pharmas industrial molecules have run out of gas, is the newest wave in medicine. Research into the health benefits of formulas that can hardly be patented due to their belonging to the ages, is burgeoning, with LSD, psilocybin, MDMA (Ecstasy), ayahuasca, ketamine, and other mind-manifesting health-conferring chemicals studied in premier institutions such as Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and NYU, and others around the world.

Goops Gwynneth Paltrow recently ventured that she believes, in spite of her trepidation about tripping herself, that psychedelics will be the next big thing in alternative consumer goods.

Some are skeptical of this development, seeing Big Pharma and the CIA behind such apparent efforts to reap profit from the plants of the Gods and weaponize them for mind control.

Trippingdropped just as we lost our last popular shaman of psychedelic and the age of psychedelic legitimacy dawned. The book presented colorful anecdotal field reports of mostly informal unauthorized uses of psychedelic agents.Trippingpolished the art of the trip report into something closer to academic document, helping to pave the way for a resurgence of controlled experimentation with psychedelics.

Psychedelic drugs are now discussed with specificity as to the genus and species of their provenance and the unique neurotransmitters they act upon in the human mind, whether its an alkaloid, cannabinoid, indole, tryptamine, phenethylamine, or other emerging category. Such classifications and the related awareness they confer have helped to generate a more educated class of consumers and decision makers.

MichaelPollans How to Change Your Mindbrilliantly summarizes the new science and presents a sober, empirical, evidence-based assessment of the new promise for what once were outlaw rides through a Wild West of proscription with prejudice, when you had to be honest to live outside the law. Dropping acid when it was illegal was a whole different set and setting, wasnt it? Yes, its still illegal, but its rapidly gaining validity.

Id like to believe that the avid compilation of field reports for whichTrippingrepresents the gold standard -- laid one of the foundations for the new era of science and medical and legal sanction by taking psychedelic phenomena so seriously and meaningful. A read though the book today is a journey to a more romantic time, when users of psychedelics imbibed in rites both sacred and recreational as members of a sort of underground resistance movement, when doing so was a political act with significant risks.

I dont want to disparage the new science and its minimization of risk through clinical controls, which are valid and even indicated. Im just saying that my book might make for more rewardingliterature.

Ill be positing thoughts from time to time, engaging with new generations of entheogen users, psychedelicists, and medicine takers.

Read on, mates.

To Psychedelic Adventures

visitors:

Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures

Edited and with an introduction and other textsbyCharles Hayes
Featuring an extensive interview with the lateTerence McKenna

and illustrations byAlex Grey

This website offers extended features
and materials as an adjunct to the classic book,
in the annals of psychedelic literature,
now in its 11th printing with an
Updated Resource Section!

The psychedelic state has been both demonized and mythologized, but what is it really like to trip? InTripping, Charles Hayes has gathered fifty narratives about unforgettable psychedelic experiences from an international array of subjectsrepresenting all walks of life -- respectable Baby Boomers, aging hippies, young ravers, and accomplished writers such asJohn Perry Barlow,Anne Waldman, Tim Page, Steven Martin Cohen, Stephen Kessler, Robert Charles Wilson, Bruce Eisner, and Paul Devereux.

Taking a balanced, objective approach, the book depicts a broad spectrum of altered states, from the sublime to the terrifying. Hayes supplemental essays provide a synopsis of the history and culture of psychedelics and a discussion of the kinetics of tripping. Specially featured is an interview with the lateTerence McKenna, who was perhaps the pre-eminent psychedelic spokesperson of our time.

Illustrationsare provided by renowned visionary artistAlex Greyand four computer graphics masters.

A storehouse of astonishing, often otherworldly tales,Trippingis a vox populi of forbidden memories that enables readers to trip vicariously or compare notes on their own experiences.

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THE AUTHOR

Charles Hayesworked forfifteen years in publishing. Since1990 hehas been a journalist whose work has appeared inShamans Drum, Tikkun, The Oxford American, High Times, Heads, The Earth Times,andE Magazine.He is also a writer/editor for a variety of businesses and organizations, a Website designer, and a communications manager for a marketing firm.Trippingis his first book.

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THE EDITORS

David Stanfordbought the project for Viking Penguin in 1997 and helped shape the book through the end of 1998, when he left the company to work independently. He has edited books by Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Robert Hunter, Charles Schulz, and G.B. Trudeau.

Paul Slovak, Senior Editor, VP of Publicity, and Associate Publisher, Viking Penguin, has been editor forTrippingsince January 1999.

Authors literary agent:
Sheree Bykofsky Associates, Inc.E-mail Sheree atshereebee@aol.com

NOTABLE FEATURES

Trippingis the first major compilation of narratives -- not clinical case studies -- about psychedelic experiences. The book containsnarratives by 50 peopleof various nationalities and walks of life about their most unforgettable psychedelic experiences.

Included is a lengthy conversation with the lateTerence McKenna, on trips and tripping, psychedelic consciousness, cultural issues, Novelty Theory, and the End of History.

Narratives by several accomplished writers and artistsare presented.

Most narratives are by anonymous ordinary people for whom their anonymity brings out a confessional dimension that gives their stories an intensely personal character, permitting forbidden, unspeakable memories and experiences to be liberated and brought to light.

A balanced, objective perspective portrays both positive and negative impacts of psychedelic experiences. A wide range of such experiences is covered, ranging from the sublime to the terrifying -- good and bum trips both.

Types of experiences include spiritual ecstasy, encounters with discarnate entities, I-know-what-its-like-to-be-dead or out-of-body experiences, freak-outs, flashbacks, psychosis (momentary and otherwise), and acts or events of apparent magic or miracle.

A broad age range is represented; narrators were eighteen to seventy-something at the time their stories were related.

Experiences were catalyzed not just by classic psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin, but by awide array of psychotropic substancesranging from the sacred plants of indigenous societies to the latest synthetic smart drugs.

Aside from the trip narratives, additional texts include:

A succinct synopsis of the history and culture of psychedelics

An exposition on the basic features of the psychedelic experience

A concise index of psychedelic substances

A Bibliography and Resources section, includingWebsites

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SAMPLE PLOTLINES

At a Rainbow Gathering, a tripper believes hes participating in the final celebration of the gods and that his urgent mission is to mate with his chosen one before the entire tribe moves on to a higher sphere at the climax of the orgasm death dance. (SeeJason).

A young man eats some peyote buttons on a hike in the Grand Canyon, and stumbles upon a near-death experience. (See Carl).

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After an afternoon in his room stricken with the terror of damnation, seeing demons literally -- in every corner, an Australian chap wanders out into the family garden, where he beholds a pagan wonderland in the trunk of a tree; he drops to his knees groaning in ecstasy as his dear mum and dad watch aghast from the kitchen window. (See James).

A college student wanders into a forest where hes drawn to an inviting glen, whereupon he is visited by a vision of God Himself, who anoints him the Sun King and asks him to perform some ritual labors ahead of appointing himself some disciples. (See Marcel).

A non-specific psychedelic ingested at the notorious Altamont concert of 1969 triggers a bizarre odyssey through the San Francisco city jail and mental health system for a fellow under the delusion that hes a member of an elite corps of angelic revolutionaries armed with poetry and pacifist principles, bent on transforming a violent and materialistic society. (See Stephen Kessler).

After being seized by a dj vu of godliness during which he begins speaking in tongues, a tripper plummets into the flipside of that experience in an episode of horrific eternal recurrence that revisits him in flashbacks for many years to come.(See Jeremy).

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As a fellow leans over to kiss his wife, she turns into a snake, and he crashes through a phantom windshield, emerging in spiritual realm where he is now psychically free of two phobias that had been haunting him, one for snakes and one for car crashes. (See Herbie Greene).

After chewing up 75 datura seeds in India, an American seeker begins conversing with a corpse, hallucinates the beating hearts of his companions under a pile of dirt, and finally concludes that lifes an illusion, joining ranks with a group of wandering sadhus.(See Matthew S. Kent).

A wooden carving of Christ speaks out loud to a seminary student during a church service, reshaping her theology and the depth of her faith, and later inspiring her to use psilocybin mushrooms at a service she is officiating, when shes seized by an out-of-the-blue urge to deliver a prophesy about a member of the congregation. (SeeReverend Marianne).

CONTRIBUTORS

Trippingfeatures stories or anecdotesby the following authors and notable figures:

Terence McKenna

The late author, lecturer, and shamanologist

Dennis McKenna

Author, ethnobotanist, and natural products industry consultant

John Perry Barlow

Electronic Frontier Foundation

co-founder and former Grateful Dead lyricist

Tim Page

Author and war photographer

Anne Waldman

Beat poet and Jack Kerouac

School of Disembodied Poetics teacher

Steve Silberman
Author of the award-winning bestseller
Neuro Tribes:The Legacy of Autismand the Future of Neurodiversity.

Clark Heinrich

Author and ethnobotanist

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Herbie GreeneSan Francisco rock scene and unofficial Grateful Dead photographer
Bruce EisnerAuthor and Island Foundation president
Paul DevereuxAuthor and phenomenologist
Robert Charles WilsonScience fiction author
Steven Martin CohenThriller writer
Stephen KesslerWriter/translator and literary editor
Yippie Kate ColemanJournalist and former
Robert BellAuthor, journalist, and Irish Troubles chronicler
Leonard MercadoPeyote Foundation president
Matthew S. KentPeyote Way Church of God president
Leonard GibsonHolotropic Breathwork International presiden

Click onArtworkpage for illustration contributors and to view illustrations.

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