About This Book
Part memoir, part gonzo expedition narrative, part mystical testament, True Hallucinations recounts McKenna's 1971 journey with his brother Dennis to the Colombian Amazon in search of psychedelic plants. McKenna is one of the most intoxicating prose stylists of the psychedelic tradition, combining genuine erudition in botany, philosophy, and anthropology with a freewheeling willingness to follow ideas wherever they lead. Whether you read this as literal testimony, elaborate metaphor, or the ravings of a brilliantly unhinged mind, it is impossible to put down. True Hallucinations captures the ecstatic weirdness of a moment when the jungle spoke and someone was strange enough to listen.
For the parallel thread of psychedelic philosophy, Timothy Leary's Chaos and Cyber Culture shows where the 1960s consciousness revolution went when it met the digital age—a fascinating counterpoint to McKenna's more shamanic approach.