True Hallucinations
Reportage & memoirThe long pause
The Amazon expedition, the mushrooms, and the theory McKenna built on top of both.
Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
Reportage & memoirThe revivalMemoir & experience
What it is
Journalist Daniel Pinchbeck's first-person account of his encounters with psychoactive plants and fungi, taking in an iboga initiation in Gabon, ayahuasca in the Amazon, and the psychedelic culture around the Burning Man festival. Psilocybin is one thread among several, and never the subject. Many credit the book with reopening mainstream publishing to serious psychedelic writing in the years before the current clinical revival, which is why it appears here. Treat it as cultural history; it is no kind of source on any compound.
The record
- Author
- Daniel Pinchbeck
- Published
- 2002
- Publisher
- Broadway Books
- ISBN
- 9780767907439
- Kind
- Reportage & memoir
- Subject
- Memoir & experience
- Era
- The revival
- Links checked
- 04 Sep 2026, and they resolved.
Where to find it
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Related on this shelf
Decomposing the Shadow
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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.
The works listed here are third-party publications, included for reference. Listing is not endorsement, and nothing here is a medical or efficacy claim. Rights holders can request removal at any time.