Breaking Open the Head
Reportage & memoirThe revival
The book that made psychedelic writing publishable again. Iboga, ayahuasca, Burning Man.
True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise
Reportage & memoirThe long pauseMemoir & experience
What it is
An account of the 1971 expedition Terence McKenna and his brother made to La Chorrera in the Colombian Amazon, and of the psilocybin mushroom experiments they ran there. The book is a memoir with a speculative theory attached, and McKenna presents that theory as revelation, never as anything a reader could test. The shelf carries it as a widely read primary document of psychedelic culture, beside his Food of the Gods. Read it as autobiography.
The record
- Author
- Terence McKenna
- Published
- 1993
- Publisher
- HarperSanFrancisco
- Kind
- Reportage & memoir
- Subject
- Memoir & experience
- Era
- The long pause
- Links checked
- 04 Sep 2026, and they resolved.
Where to find it
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Related on this shelf
Decomposing the Shadow
Reportage & memoirThe revival
One person's psychological model of the mushroom experience, built from his own.
Mushroom Medicine
Reportage & memoirThe clinical era
Using psilocybin as medicine, recounted with no clinician in the room.
The Wild Kindness
Reportage & memoirThe clinical era
Bett Williams lived with mushrooms in New Mexico for years. A literary memoir.
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