Ten Trips

Brought to you by Penguin.

Ten psychedelic drugs. Ten very different experiences.

In recent years, scientists have made major claims for psychedelics' ability to heal trauma, alleviate depression and cure addiction. From micro-dosing to ayahuasca retreats, the psychedelic renaissance is well under way. And yet, psychedelics are hugely various, and as every expert acknowledges, the experience of taking them depends on how and where they are taken, and above all on who is taking them - complexities that science and commerce seek either to eliminate or obscure. In Ten Trips, neuropsychologist Andrew Mitchell shows that by narrowing our view of these substances, we miss what is most interesting about them.

Combining an expert's knowledge of the medical literature with an intrepid spirit and an open mind, Ten Trips describes his experiences with ten different compounds, resulting in a panoramic view with multiple perspectives. From the jungle shamans of Iquitos to bespoke addiction treatment centres in the Rockies via micro-dosing cosmopolitan youth, Mitchell shows that the reality of psychedelics is far wilder, more unpredictable and vastly more interesting than a medical cure or cognitive enhancement.

Above all, he shows how psychedelics provide a supercharged portal to the magical this-ness of things - from a Bach Invention to the colour of a butterfly to a metal bin. The experience of taking them is sometimes terrifying, isolating and annihilating. At others it leads to profound and euphoric feelings of interdependence with all things, to awe, ecological wisdom, gratitude, freedom from negative emotions, to love and seemingly to the experience of other realities, ones protected from our own by the filmiest of screens.

©2023 Andy Mitchell (P)2023 Penguin Audio