Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change by Tao Lin

Jan 27, 2018 Tao rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author)

My first nonfiction book and first book in five years.

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Dec 24, 2017 Sam Pink rated it it was amazing

fucking sweet. i like all of tao's stuff but this one is beyond the others. it takes place in a completely new mindset and lifestyle/worldview. the reading experience felt extra important because roughly a year ago i started practicing/realizing some of the things he gets into with this book, ie reformed perspective on what a drug is and can do, how society and the media sculpt harmful narratives to help corporations profit and keep people relatively helpless/enslaved, and changing perspectives fucking sweet. i like all of tao's stuff but this one is beyond the others. it takes place in a completely new mindset and lifestyle/worldview. the reading experience felt extra important because roughly a year ago i started practicing/realizing some of the things he gets into with this book, ie reformed perspective on what a drug is and can do, how society and the media sculpt harmful narratives to help corporations profit and keep people relatively helpless/enslaved, and changing perspectives on mental health and how that impacts one's view of the world. the book is structured really well, beginning with some background info on terrence mckenna (i didn't know anything/hadn't seen any of terrence's work before reading so it doesn't affect one's experience i feel), definitions of key terms (which is a theme in the book: language as the material of the world and the various meanings words have), then chapters on dmt, psilocybin, salvia, and cannabis, which are kind of weaved around personal narratives and then it ends with a third person account of a plant drawing class with kathleen harrison, who was married to terrence mckenna. i was really in awe of how well it was written and structured, giving both interesting stats/facts/data but also making it personal and interesting to read. mostly, i felt excited by the change in tone in tao's work. i've always felt he had a unique/constructive outlook, but 'trip' takes it further and sets the groundwork for a greater exploration of being a human and becoming 'more stoned.' i still feel a lingering sense of excitement at trying to grasp the nature of the world and humans in our extremely long 'pre-historical' period, and the closeness to the earth experienced then. this book made me interested in the immense journey people have taken to get where we are as well as our indebtedness to the earth and it's strange harmony with our bodies. it also made me feel pride as a human, that i can contribute to existence in a positive way, and hopefully work to recognize the majesty of life and other people. highly recommend for people struggling with mental problems too. this is an awesome book and i think will help shift our gloomy tides. ...more

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Jan 25, 2018 Lee Klein rated it really liked it

Loved reading this, loved holding it on the subway with its subtitle and author-drawn mandala, wanted nothing other than to read it when I wasn't reading it, loved the symbiosis of life and literature in the third-person epilogue, loved how this champions complexity and at least once uses the word "complexify," but ultimately it's the overall structure I most appreciated the morning after finishing it, the clearly delineated rational movement through its subjects, with every conclusion more like Loved reading this, loved holding it on the subway with its subtitle and author-drawn mandala, wanted nothing other than to read it when I wasn't reading it, loved the symbiosis of life and literature in the third-person epilogue, loved how this champions complexity and at least once uses the word "complexify," but ultimately it's the overall structure I most appreciated the morning after finishing it, the clearly delineated rational movement through its subjects, with every conclusion more like a propulsion into the next chapter, the divisions as clear as the segues, layering like that as the author self-transforms in life and lit like Terence McKenna's self-dribbling mirrored basketball elves composed of visual language. Loved the transition from Terence McKenna's psychedelic extremism ("heroic doses") to Kathleen Harrison's sustainable plant-centricism (most troubling mental states can be alleviated by looking at a leaf for two minutes), along the way detailing the histories and chemical consistencies of DMT, LSD, psilocybin, salvia, cannabis, and Tao's own experience with each, as well as his own history and existential consistency thanks to video games, punk music, literature, depressions, anxiety, alienation, pharmaceutical drugs.

In 2004, I posted one of his first stories on the weird little lit site I edited from 1999 to 2014, Tao actually first invited me to Goodreads in 2007, and I talked to him for a while at a Karl One Knausgaard event at McNally-Jackson Books a few years ago, but I don't use the "potential conflict of interest" tag I use when I know someone whose book I'm writing about, even if I've been an online literary acquaintance of this author for ~14 years. There's something about his writing/perspective that seems to prefer a sincere response, without restraining or softening critique (see my review of Shoplifting from American Apparel) or erring on the side of praise. With this, when I saw Tao announce it a few months ago on Facebook, I immediately preordered it since it's up my alley, or aligns with an interest dormant since my teen and early college years stirring again, most likely among mid-life crisis rumblings related to a resurgence in playing music and listening to The Dead again after nearly two decades away from it. I recently read (and didn't love) DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible after watching DMT: The Spirit Molecule multiple times on Netflix, loving the descriptions of the DMT experience, the molecular interconnectedness of plants and animals, the promise or at least possibility of a burst of endogenous DMT upon death in particular, and of course I get all giddy when Dennis McKenna talks about elves in the form of self-dribbling basketballs. In high school, I'd read Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" and "Island," Tom Woolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream," and maybe a few others as I experimented with my own related real-time experiences with friends or tens of thousands of similarly addled others first at late-'80s Dead and then early '90s Phish shows. I once experienced the visual language McKenna talks about -- words emerging in color from a friend's mouth -- but generally the extent of my related reading and experience is mostly confined to when I was fifteen to about nineteen years old, a long time ago now. And the more I peek into this world now the more I see that I've just barely scratched its surface.

So, with that significant yet sufficiently superficial previous exposure/experience in hand, Tao's book interested me in part in that it ignored the traditional division between Timothy Leary's controlled set/setting and Ken Kesey's all-out freakout schools of psychedelic experiences. I liked that he instead focused on McKenna and himself and Kathleen Harrison. Something that occurred to me at times was that Tao wasn't necessarily allowing himself to be self-critical regarding his current path and transition from opiates, downers, synthetic drugs to natural psychedelics in that he never seemed to question that he's essentially transforming into a hippie, someone interested in macrocosmic consciousness (you ever think that there are like as many atoms inside us as there are galaxies and stars in the universe, man), organic healthiness, plant appreciation, etc. But it works since Tao is otherwise super-self-reflective and his parents live in Taipei instead of Vermont or Oregon -- meaning the sort of newfound hippiedom he's expressing doesn't seem like his birthright or a stereotypical progression/well-trodden path and as such it seems sincere and makes for interesting reading. He also listens to Chopin instead of The Dead or Phish, not that there's anything wrong with those bands (I've always been a "Dark Star" enthusiast). This is autobiographical non-fiction but the autobiographical element emerges from someone without the constraints of conventional employment, marriage (I suppose his official marital status is separated but he's essentially divorced), mortgage, fatherhood -- that is, it's the memoir of a man without responsibilities (no pets even), who can afford to throw away his computer once and snap another computer's screen another time and possibly intentionally discard his iPhone. Not a serious critique, just something this reader was aware of as someone filled to capacity with responsibilities at the time.

But again, generally, I loved reading it, found it surprising, thoughtful, a champion of complexity over unnatural reductions of reality (maybe other than the masculine/feminine duality toward the end), at times I found it funny (LOL'd when he said he was now in better mental and physical health and therefore had no excuse not to try DMT), it added a few books to my reading list (I started True Hallucinations by Terence McKenna immediately after finishing this), and even if Tao is transforming into a West Coast hippie, I liked the focus on change (I loved at the end when the guy I've always assumed subsisted solely on kale smoothies orders half a chicken since he's trying to eat more like an aborigine). Also, I like that it's essentially evangelical about psychedelics -- I hope it inspires Tao Lin fans to elevate their dead-pan depressed single-quote consciousness and contributes to the overall easing of laws throughout the country. It's hard to believe that in Pennsylvania, where I live, salvia and other psychedelics and THC are illegal but I can go purchase a gun, no prob, or of course can drink myself silly and take my car out on the highway whenever. There are tons of more pressing issues in the world than the illegality of cannabis/psychedelics but they definitely should not be in the same legal class as potentially fatal, addictive drugs, and decriminalizing or even fully legalizing and seriously taxing them seems like something a semi-enlightened rational society would do. Anyway, if you're at all interested in this sort of thing, or if you watched and enjoyed "The Spirit Molecule," this is definitely recommended.

Also here's a podcast with Tao about the book: http://expandingmind.podbean.com/e/ex... ...more

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Feb 02, 2018 George Wu Teng rated it it was amazing

Trip's very first word is the first-person inclusion "I," opening the book's introduction. Aside from his very early short fiction, and in some of his poetry, Tao has wholly refrained from this sort of direct, first-person inclusion, opting instead to frame his otherwise semi-autobiographical works in a third-person, arbitrarily-named fashion, be it Taipei's "Paul," or Richard Yates's "Haley Joel Osment."

It's this direct connectedness that runs throughout Trip which places it separate from anyth ...more

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Sep 23, 2018 Helie rated it did not like it

Hot garbage. I was hopeful at the beginning, when Lin complained that many advocates of psychedelics are irrational and strange, and hoped that he'd present a more rational, introspective approach. But no, it was totally self-indulgent and weird.

The "research" was mostly reading the assorted works of Terence McKenna, whose wild theories are the exact hyperbolic bullshit Lin claims to dislike. Add in an assortment weird anti-science (electromagnetic radiation is our generation's DDT, and "inflam ...more

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Apr 20, 2018 Ken Baumann rated it it was amazing

I really enjoyed reading Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change by Tao Lin. The book reminded me of Tolstoy's Confession, because both books are about recovering from depression by trying to live in ways boring people call "radical." Trip is an informative book, written in a calm and curious style, that encourages us to think broadly, seek awe, and heal. I imagine rereading Trip in the future; when I imagine this, I feel warm. ...more

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Feb 28, 2018 Chelsea Martin rated it it was amazing

extremely extremely good

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Jun 24, 2018 James Payne rated it did not like it

Shelves: journalism, nonfiction, essays, biography, drugs

Not good. A shocking number of adverbs. Confused structure. Purposeless pomo crutches. Interminable descriptions of tedious drug experiences. Conspiratorial mindset. Hero worship of a sophist. The work of a muddled mind. Joe Rogan on first page. Many citations of YouTube videos.

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Jun 08, 2018 Steve Erickson rated it liked it

Tao Lin makes a good case that recovery from substance abuse can be accomplished better by disentangling from the Internet, eating organic foods, engaging with the world and changing exactly which substances one takes (in his case, dropping benzos, opioids, Adderrall and MDMA for DMT, salvia, cannabis and mushrooms) instead of completely stopping using all drugs, however one defines them. He also makes the late Terence McKenna's ideas, especially about the value about disbelief and the inevitabi Tao Lin makes a good case that recovery from substance abuse can be accomplished better by disentangling from the Internet, eating organic foods, engaging with the world and changing exactly which substances one takes (in his case, dropping benzos, opioids, Adderrall and MDMA for DMT, salvia, cannabis and mushrooms) instead of completely stopping using all drugs, however one defines them. He also makes the late Terence McKenna's ideas, especially about the value about disbelief and the inevitability of being alienated in a society as fucked-up as contemporary America and the pointlessness of trying to make oneself "well-adjusted" in its context, more compelling than they were when I actually read one of McKenna's books. However, there's no denying that Tao also comes across as an upper-middle-class hippie, and he never really acknowledges that some of the means by which he revived himself from depression - such as using edibles several times a week during the day, even when he had jury duty - wouldn't work for someone who had a 9 to 5 job, who might have to rely on the Big Pharma-approved drugs Tao hates. This is a better piece of writing than his fiction, though, and its structure, which starts out describing McKenna's ideas, Tao's encounters with American attitudes towards drugs and his fairly late personal experiences with them, his attempts to use mushrooms, DMT (which culminated in a deeply paranoia-inducing, if ultimately productive, trip) and salvia to help himself, a history of the criminalization of drugs (which suggests a division between a view of human society as partners or dominators as the crucial one), his much longer use of cannabis and then a third-person epilogue is well-researched and seems honest (although it never addresses the accusations that have been made about his behavior towards women, and he writes like a feminist ally- perhaps he's honestly changed his attitudes.) A very good book, and in terms of legal debates in America right now, a provocative one, but one that would benefit from recognizing how unusual Tao's situation was. ...more

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Feb 09, 2021 Chandini White rated it it was amazing

truly inspirational..this book gave me many dreams and visions to manifest. and more books to add to my reading list

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Jul 12, 2018 Devon DeRaad rated it it was amazing

The working title of this book was Beyond Existentialism which may be less descriptive of its contents than "Trip, psychedelics, alienation, and change" but is undoubtedly more descriptive of its intent. It is one of the only pieces of literature I've come across that recognizes the inherent bleakness and isolation of existentialism and works toward transcending what has become the standard state of being (frustrated, cynical, searching) in our post-modern time.

Lin's gift is to write with comple The working title of this book was Beyond Existentialism which may be less descriptive of its contents than "Trip, psychedelics, alienation, and change" but is undoubtedly more descriptive of its intent. It is one of the only pieces of literature I've come across that recognizes the inherent bleakness and isolation of existentialism and works toward transcending what has become the standard state of being (frustrated, cynical, searching) in our post-modern time.

Lin's gift is to write with complex structure that is simultaneously so smooth and intuitive that the reader does not even notice the non-traditional organization. Eminently readable, logical, and followable, Trip is a calm walk through a dense garden with an old friend.

Lin investigates without answering, and discovers without sermonizing, allowing him to delve into nearly any topic without losing credibility. He embodies a quote from Terence, "my technique is don't believe anything" to a T, allowing him to critically evaluate nearly any idea without the inherent bias of belief. Because of this skill, Lin can present Terence in the most honest way possible including his most unsubstantiated and wild opinions, without losing the reader.

One of the most striking passages comes when Lin takes psilocybin, and becomes increasingly paranoid and distraught. But upon being asked if he had a 'bad trip' he says no. Lin states that a bad trip to him would be "eating candy and watching tv for three hours". In that moment I recognized that Lin's relationship with substances is so different from everything I have been taught about drugs. Lin wants to genuinely experience the effects of chemicals and use them to shape his life and experience. In this way, he utilizes psychedelics and all their effects to broaden his perspective and get what he wants out of life, contrary to the common perception of drug users as being controlled by and eventually devastated by the substances they use.

Nearly everyone has had the experience of having a beer with friends to break the ice and activate the more social, empathetic parts of ourselves. Lin removes the mask from the world of chemical substances and reveals the fallacious human constructions that constitute "good" and "bad" drugs. This book directly challenges our social state of viewing drugs as a punchline. It breaks down the dichotomy between "on a substance" and sober. Lin talks about the many types of receptors in our brains, and the natural compounds our bodies make, specifically the endogenous cannabinoids which are constantly binding to receptors in our brains. Lin talks about the inflammation that pesticides, specifically glyphosate, cause, and how this modern condition of inflammation leads to decreased binding affinity between cannabinoids and our brain receptors. Lin postulates that the modern condition is inherently "a little less stoned than we used to be", and that life today feels physically and chemically different than it did a hundred or a thousand generations ago. Lin values what we consider "drugs" as a way to control brain chemistry, control his experience, and control how he interacts with the world. The transition in our society from seeing drugs as a punchline that leads to funny behavior, to seeing drugs as naturally occurring substances (from sugar to caffeine to cannabis) that mediate our interactions with the world and our own selves, will be portend a true societal transition from repression and criminalization to trust and empathy.

As I began the epilogue, I found myself reading at a slower and slower pace. As Lin reveals that his story has trended from the masculine to the feminine, Terence to Kathleen, the reader is reminded of the complex fractal structure of the story. I began reading paragraphs repeatedly, stretching out the final chapter in any way I could, mourning the impending loss of closing this book. I didn't want this book to end because while I was reading it, I felt less alone. ...more

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May 04, 2018 Peter rated it really liked it

I approach any Tao Lin content with the same apt attention that I would apply to watching a slow motion car crash drawn out to the time span of a career. I can earnestly say that, in spite of a lack of interest in the subject matter and a passive hatred of the author (if I’m being frank: I find the subject matter of drugs over-mythologized and dull, but it is interesting to see his turn towards nonfiction and exploring the ideas of the nutty egoist Terrence McKenna), this is Tao Lin’s most coher ...more

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Jan 20, 2019 Robert Frecer rated it did not like it

Vapid reading by the most self-important of self-proclaimed nihilists. Oh, will you please pity him? But... but..he's taken so many drugs!

Books like this should be considered a public health hazard - they can make lay readers believe there is no such thing as a normal, fun and helathy psychedelic experience. You either don't get it or go absolutely nuts, lost in your "revolutionary" observations and your own in vanity. I'm glad to know that's not true.

...more

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Jul 22, 2019 Perifian rated it liked it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ei5...

(Tao Lin is a decidedly unsavoury person but this book nevertheless managed to make me feel calm and collected and stuff on account of having come to me at the right time) ...more

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May 31, 2018 Theo Thimo rated it it was amazing

I initially tried to publish this review on amazon but it wouldn't let me so I'm copy/paste here but I think it didn't format correctly:
contains very courageously published, I felt, DMT trip report in which the majority is spent in a confused, paranoid fugue coming down from a psychedelic trip he can't recall, ~pg108, a depiction of breakthroughs that goes often unheard or untold in the genre but I think is relevant, dosage is difficult for DMT, I have thought in the past
cannabis is very sentime I initially tried to publish this review on amazon but it wouldn't let me so I'm copy/paste here but I think it didn't format correctly:
contains very courageously published, I felt, DMT trip report in which the majority is spent in a confused, paranoid fugue coming down from a psychedelic trip he can't recall, ~pg108, a depiction of breakthroughs that goes often unheard or untold in the genre but I think is relevant, dosage is difficult for DMT, I have thought in the past
cannabis is very sentimental section, very ode grecian urn-like, mentions euphoric/cathartic? bouts of crying while on cannabis, happy to see a wide range of depictions in regards to the effects of this plant, again breaking the public image of these drugs is good, mentions spontaneous dancing along with nice description of enjoying dancing, contains a useful section on drug recovery, pg205 pt 19, you will learn a lot about how old this plant and other plants are
contains endearing sections about middle school text based rpg game and punk music
I've only read maybe 40% of the book so far, salvia section is very cool, I've taken salvia more than most psychedelics, it's not very fun, in Miami I did it in front of a lot of ppl once as "performance art" and someone asked me if its like really strong weed, also learned, by reading the book I've been referring to, that we, based on indigenous ritual, shouldn't smoke salvia, or even dry it, that you should like roll it's leaves like iirc "a cigar," or I'm imagining it like a long grape leaf or something, and chew on it, oh and that salvia is a girl and you should refer to her as a she
psilocybin section has relatable shroom induced online meltdown, tao texts and tweets "I'm laughing," which I will often express in texts/tweets while on shrooms, everyone from my perspective with a twitter and shrooms has seemingly done some sort of spam meltdown at some point or multiple points, "I suddenly felt it didn't matter how I released information--emails, texts, tweets, even thoughts," I have had this revelation more than once from taking shrooms and using my laptop in my room between yrs 2014 and 2015 often, it's very helpful revelation from my experience, I recommend having this epiphany on shrooms, has changed the way I view private and public interaction/art/performativity and usually using the computer tends to make it feel as if u r connected to a giant collective conscious AI sentient almost thing, again v helpful stuff, not ur normal everyday to do erowid trip report, it's got some nugs here, I ate a pbj sandwich of shrooms, maybe ~4g and took a shower, 20 mins later realizing I was becoming too high, cancelled a date I had planned (or perhaps didn't cancel and ghosted), and stayed in bed out of fear of oncoming trip, was likely the highest I've been but luckily prob the most controlled setting (locked in windowless room, underneath blanket), aware that the darkness would potentiate the effects but equally afraid of the dark as I was light and getting out of bed, hallucinated, which is not really the correct word, multiple friendly, cool-seeming, people of color, kind of had a 90s vibe to them arrive, felt like the shrooms were a very close friend, saw sacred geometry which came into my vision and felt like a small turret of unpleasant orgasms being shot into my eyes, at times my phone would vibrate menacingly and shine brightly from the other side of my bed and I would do my best to ignore it
anyway, I almost want to give this book a 4 because I think it should have included more about dissociatives which instantly cure depression and give profound new outlook on life, microdosed for varying needs and nootropic-like benefits, safe relative to the class of anesthetics (iirc, you won't stop breathing on ketamine), not physiologically addictive albeit more psychologically addictive than cannabis, but I decided not to as I haven't read the whole book yet and I'm hoping there will be more mention of dissociatives before I finish ...more

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May 08, 2018 Brandon rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, comfy, non-fiction, biography, roman-a-clef, drugs, alt-lit

Tao Lin has been perhaps my favorite contemporary prose author since shortly after my friend in 10th grade introduced me to the man's name, within the statement "Friends don't let friends read Tao Lin," after which I found a copy of Richard Yates among my local library branch's "New Releases," drawn in by cover art, which, at a distance, looked like a man with a cunt for a face, spreading it open (it turned out to be, upon closer inspection, a mere seashell, which made a hell of a lot more sense Tao Lin has been perhaps my favorite contemporary prose author since shortly after my friend in 10th grade introduced me to the man's name, within the statement "Friends don't let friends read Tao Lin," after which I found a copy of Richard Yates among my local library branch's "New Releases," drawn in by cover art, which, at a distance, looked like a man with a cunt for a face, spreading it open (it turned out to be, upon closer inspection, a mere seashell, which made a hell of a lot more sense).

Anyway, I've always struggled with my own appreciation of Tao Lin and his works. I own all of his print material as of Trip (including Selected Tweets, though I did deliberate on buying that one for a year or so after its release), yet I cannot really stomach anything from his peers (that is, all other "alt-lit" I've read just feels like a rip-off of Lin's work). I frequent a particular pseudointellectual hangout on the Internet which upholds Mr. Lin as a meme-person, with supporters of his works always instructed to "go to bed," under the assumption they are Lin himself roleplaying as one of his fans. I firmly believe it is too early to consider any writer from the past two decades to be "great," yet I made the choice to be a useless piece of shit and change majors to English not long after finishing my first reading of Taipei in Nov. 2013. I would never recommend anyone read Eeeee Eee Eeee, yet I was immensely moved by his apparent disdain for Orlando and thereabouts, yearning to move to a more interesting city in the vague hopes it might lead to an interesting life, much as I also felt while attending UCF (and of course I loved the argument about Batman Begins being neither clearly ironic nor sincere), and I saw too much of myself in "Haley Joel Osment" when re-reading Richard Yates.

Terence McKenna is a bit of a different story. I've only read Food of the Gods, in Aug. 2014, about a year and a half since I'd first experienced psilocybin, having long since cooled off on any inclination toward that, or any other, drug. I still retained a mild "openness" to further drug experimentation, but it seemed worthless to meet new people for the sole reason of copping new and different drugs. I think the reason I initially read Food of the Gods was that I was planning on cultivating a neo-hippie persona, intending to wear those "drug rug" hoodies and quote McKenna and Watts and shit, as a new identity with which to play around after having transferred universities, but I dawdled for too long, and I don't think I bought/read that book until a couple weeks into the Fall semester, a bit too late to change my identity. The book itself was quite interesting, and many ideas influenced my mode of thought at the time (partnership vs. dominator societies, mainly, which wasn't even McKenna's own idea!), but mostly the book was just silly enough that I couldn't take it all strongly. Homo erectus ate shrooms, spontaneously developed consciousness, and evolved into Homo sapiens? I love the idea, but mostly for how batshit insane it sounds, especially compared to some otherwise more reasonable points (which have not stuck in my mind these past 3.5 years at all).

I was anticipating the release of this book for some time, since it was originally titled "Beyond Existentialism." I didn't bother reading the "Tao of Terence" articles at all, but whatever. I was pretty excited to see what mindset Lin would take w/r/t to McKenna's character and body of work. Lin's prose has always felt incredibly "detached," his semi-autobiographical fiction with his own name changed to something different every time always felt as though he was "detached" even from his own life, that he might see himself better as a character in a novel than a human being in the 3D world. So how could he write about Terence McKenna, a man so enthused about the wonderful world of psychedelics and their insight to "the imagination"?

I don't feel like writing too long a review, nor too deep an analysis, so I'll simply say this: I liked this book. I've liked all previous Tao Lin books, and, with the exception thus far of Selected Tweets, I've read each piece at least twice. So, too, will I read this one again. Indeed, there were points where I really wanted to underline or otherwise mark certain lines and passages, but I decided instead to postpone that gratification for a later reading of the text. I imagine my second reading would decorate the book as much as with my copy of Taipei, with so much shit highlighted I actually felt compelled to erase a few markings before lending it to a friend a couple years back.

The structure of the book is alright. Lin first introduces himself, then McKenna, then how he's been influenced by McKenna's words/works, before going chapter by chapter discussing his own experiences with certain psychedelics, including McKenna's views on the drugs, where applicable, and maybe some quotes from more scientific studies that don't really vibe too well with Lin's prose. The highlights are really Lin's first-hand, subjective experiences with psilocybin and DMT, written comfortably in his own prose, not burdened with more near-objective "facts" (including McKenna's own subjectivity, so far apart from Lin's own life, in space and time), fitting better in line with Lin's previous oeuvre. Curiously, there is a break between drug-centric chapters, with a chapter on why drugs are illegal disrupting Lin's train of thought before going into the "Cannabis" chapter. Lin regurgitates McKenna's idea that psychedelics are banned because they promote free thought, but Lin does not get nearly as in-depth as McKenna did in his own Food of the Gods (if I'm remembering correctly, McKenna spends much more time talking about how cannabis and heroin were banned because of association with degenerate Negro jazz culture and its perceived harmful effects on white America [not my own language, but I'm eschewing quotation marks because of obvious paraphrasing]). The "Cannabis" chapter is also clearly more an interlude between the greater McKenna-focused text and the lengthy "Epilogue" following McKenna's ex-wife Kathleen Harrison.

The "Epilogue" is fantastic, with Lin kinda-sorta "fictionalizing" his life (as per his novels) by presenting a narrative of his time meeting Harrison, written in the third-person (as opposed to the first-person view throughout the previous ~200 pages). Whereas Lin's previous writings were bleak, Trip's "Epilogue" presents a thoroughly "positive" vibe, occasionally touching on anxieties Lin may face in the present, but it is clear his love for McKenna has turned his life around, and the result is the first Tao Lin story that could truthfully be considered Sincerely Happy. ...more

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Apr 12, 2019 Radia rated it it was amazing

I really, really loved this book. As a person who is curious to a fault and frequently experiences some sort of existential/mental health crisises, I found this book fulfilling, refreshing, creative and thought provoking.

First off, I love the style. I felt like I was being given access to a slice of Lin's brain, while also being presented with the worldviews and ideas of others. I loved how the book goes from McKenna to Harrison, from McKenna's intense psychedelic perspectives to Harrison's mor I really, really loved this book. As a person who is curious to a fault and frequently experiences some sort of existential/mental health crisises, I found this book fulfilling, refreshing, creative and thought provoking.

First off, I love the style. I felt like I was being given access to a slice of Lin's brain, while also being presented with the worldviews and ideas of others. I loved how the book goes from McKenna to Harrison, from McKenna's intense psychedelic perspectives to Harrison's more palatable, plant-centric, animist lessons, shifting from man to woman, mirroring and reversing the theme Lin mentions in the later part of his book, of God going from woman to man. (Although upon reading other reviews it does become more apparent to me that he doesn't even really talk all that much about Harrison at the end and more just about himself and her son, fair criticism) And the epilogue was so fun to read!!

I loved that Lin shared his own personal experience with drug use and how technical he was in his descriptions, outlining dose amounts, as well as the receptors in the brain that were effected by the drugs he imbimbed (even something as seemingly mundane as caffiene was accounted for!). The added pictures were awesome as well :-)

I loved the summaries of McKenna's work, and the work of others in the fields of psychedelics, cannabis and conciousness-- it was clear how carefully researched this book was, and how curious Lin himself is. I was especially excited by his summary of McKenna's perspective on language and conciousness. Additonally, Lin's consideration of the sociopolitical context of drug use and legality was useful and needed-- the book would have been lacking without it. And the book was pretty funny at times too!

I appreciate how this book, while at it's root, perhaps, is about psychedelics, is about so much more. It is about nature, detail, conciousness, isolation, alienation, awe, history, biology, time, patterns, growth, finding peace, and above all, being a human and coming to terms with/existing within/negotiating our way through a world, universe, existence so much more complicated than any one person could ever know.

This book left me with feelings of immense gratitude for the Earth, my ancestors, connections between people, and all the things there are to learn! Thank you for this book, for sharing what you know, Tao! I hope to look at the world with awe in my every day, and look forward to returning to the ideas this book put in to words again and again.

Note: I do want to state, however, that Lin's distaste for the "unnatural" and suggestion that cannibis/psychedelics could replace anti-depressants/anxieties etc does seem a bit far fetched, as that is not the answer for everyone. But then he also seems to make clear that this book is about his personal experience, so maybe this note is unwarranted. And I'm also not sure I believe his complete trust in DMT lol ...more

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Jan 06, 2021 Christopher Gutierrez rated it liked it

3/5

I didn't realize how much research went into this book until I glanced through the end of it. Tao Lin did a great job of explaining psychedelics and the ideas of Terence Mckenna and Kathleen Harrison. I loved his takes on Cannabis, why drugs are illegal, and how modern-day humans have numerous genetic deficiencies for many reasons.

My least enjoyable part of this book was the writing style. Lin sure does love long, hard-to-read sentences. It took me longer than usual to adapt to his writing s ...more

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Aug 01, 2018 Harris rated it it was ok

Shelves: memoir, usa, non-fiction, library-book, millennial-life

Trip, Tao Lin’s first explicitly nonfiction work, was a fascinating account of his personal transformations regarding psychedelics and the role they played in stabilizing his life and giving him a sense of well being. It was very interesting to see him use the first person for the first time, allowing him to inhabit the role taken by various ostensible self inserts in his works of fiction. In some ways, this is definitely a sequel to the events and moods of his earlier semi-autobiographical work Trip, Tao Lin’s first explicitly nonfiction work, was a fascinating account of his personal transformations regarding psychedelics and the role they played in stabilizing his life and giving him a sense of well being. It was very interesting to see him use the first person for the first time, allowing him to inhabit the role taken by various ostensible self inserts in his works of fiction. In some ways, this is definitely a sequel to the events and moods of his earlier semi-autobiographical works, Taipei in particular. I still find his voice exemplative of the moods and zeitgeist of the “millennial” generation, here more than ever as Lin struggles against the “bleak ideology” of existentialism he’d focused on, evident in much of his earlier work, which worked in themes of nihilism couched in an autobiographical, deadpan examination of everyday life.

In Trip, Lin recounts his discovery of the work of the late psychedelic proponent Terence McKenna on YouTube after years of feeling “zombie like and depressed,” sparking him to refocus his use of drugs from opioids and amphetamines to psychedelics. Beginning as an informal biography of McKenna and his ex-wife Kathleen Harrison, he goes on to discuss the effects these substances they advocate had upon his life and attitudes.

While telling us what he's learning, Lin wrestles with questions that, in our current state of political instability, economic worry, and one deferred crisis after another, are pressing many people, the young especially. His use of psychedelics, psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, DMT, salvia, and cannabis specifically, in order to improve his own state of being and peace of mind, decreasing symptoms of anxiety and depression, were fascinating, even inspiring. I found some of his descriptions of the trips themselves a little tedious, I guess. He does leave me very curious about the effects of psychedelics, especially psilocybin and I feel that they could conceivably be useful in confronting mental distress and sparking creative inspiration, but it also seems very subjective. As Lin’s first non-fiction work, I would take this more as memoir, focusing on Lin’s own experiences with drugs and psychedelics rather than any rigorous research or journalism, though.

Lin definitely makes a good case for the legalization of psychedelics, especially in his account of serving on a jury, dealing with sentencing of minor drug offences, the strongest and most interesting portion of the book. For the most part, it appears that he obtains a large portion of his research material from a few choice reference works and a lot of YouTube and Wikipedia. In the last section of the book, Lin switches back to his usual third person style in describing his meeting with Kathleen Harrison, an important influence and teacher herself, spending time asking questions about her life and beliefs, though in the end losing his notes and concluding that it is better that way. In using the third person, he again distances himself from this while still focusing on his own emotional reactions to the world. He definitely evokes some thought provoking and intriguing ideas, ones that will definitely keep me thinking for awhile. In particular, he fixates on how indigenous peoples may have better ways for dealing with existence than our own.

However, Lin also seems to go deeper into some, to me slightly disturbing, fringe directions involving fears that technology itself is the cause of these issues. As elements of anti-vaxxing were introduced, I began to question where his arguments were going. While he might be coming from an entirely different political viewpoint, with this talk of “degeneration,” of a yearning for some period in the past where things made sense, I can’t help but view these as related to the very same ideas pushed by such right wing hacks as Jordan Peterson. Peterson, though he might certainly not advocate the use of psychedelics to best respond the world, also discusses the importance of “myth” and the “mystical” along with some diet advice, and he definitely has his own fixation with the problematic “noble savage” trope. I definitely don’t want to equate what Lin is arguing with the quasi-fascist murmurings of some doofus like Peterson, but the parallels between the two approaches dissatisfied with contemporary existence are interesting and concerning. Two reactions to the same ennui felt by many in today’s uncertain world, each, to me, questionable in their own ways. In the end, it seems like he advocates psychedelics and an inflammatory free diet as a cure all for all of modernity’s ills.

He writes that he is explicitly writing to convert his readers (“the cynical, depressed, atheistic” literary types his fans consist of) to this worldview, and in spite of all of the intriguing aspects, I guess I can’t quite get over my skepticism. I'm not convinced. I’m just too atheistic, I guess. Abandoning society is not an option for most people, after all. ...more

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Mar 08, 2018 tao_lin3 rated it it was amazing

Shelves: tao

I like this book. I can read this book in any mood and enjoy it, I think. This book is sweet, insightful, positive and smart.
The words all have meaning that my brain can process. After I read the words I feel emotions. Each drug makes me feel awe.

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Apr 18, 2018 Jordan rated it it was amazing

The first book on psychedelics I'll recommend from now on, I think. Phenomenal. Wonderfully experimental in form, rich in content. One of the best non-fiction books I've read. ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Paul Wilner rated it liked it

He's a bright guy and he can write. Terence McKenna, the subject of much of his, was also bright, and surprisingly funny, for a psychedelic pioneer- Lin cited a You Tube discussion between McKenna and Ram Dass, in which the old man, who's been around a lot more of these movies, added some badly needed perspective. But he's also, objectively and subjectively speaking, nuts. (I won't get into the specifics, I'm sure the fractalites, believers in mushrooms that talk to you and UFO junkies will have ...more

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Jun 30, 2018 Jack rated it it was amazing

Couldn’t put it down

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Jul 02, 2018 ebabehh marked it as to-read

Shelves: want, lyfe

My first Tao Lin, and I was surprised by how poorly written it was. Here he describes the minutia of his diy-homework-assignment-like trips, whose significance in the moment do not seem nearly as profound as he later attributes them. His mode of description involves stringing adjectives together into a misshappen clump. He seems stuck in a cycle of anhedonia and hedonism. One set of drugs (pharmaceuticals, attention-focusers) stops working for him, so he switches to another ("natural" psychedeli ...more

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May 14, 2018 Micah rated it it was amazing

Unbelievable book that I see myself returning to many times in the future. Really uniquely laid out and interesting techniques used by the author throughout and he does a good job explaining his point, which I would say is that you should question everything and that psychedelics can greatly open one's understanding of the world. ...more

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Sep 08, 2018 Chris rated it liked it

this wasn’t bad actually. his weirdly rigid neurotic style works much better here than it does in his fiction, though disappointingly he reverted to his old minutiae detailed third person in the ‘epilogue’. I’d be interested to read more of his non-fiction in the future if he continues in that direction.

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May 10, 2018 Neal Jochmann rated it it was amazing

I recommend this book.

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May 27, 2018 Kate rated it liked it

How did I end up with this books: I picked it from Dog-Eared Books when I was buying The Vegetarian (along w/ Diary of a Teenage Girl).

Summary:
Tao Lin chronicle's his re-discovery and academic exploration of psychedelics, thinking of them as a way to explore his own mind and re-discover the world. In particular, he talks about how cannabis can moderate his own social anxieties and gloomy seriousness. The book also explores the philosophies of Terence McKenna, Kathleen Harrison, as well as other ...more

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May 28, 2018 Kyle Todd rated it really liked it

A very informative and reflective book, more so the latter than the former, which I think works quite well for Tao Lin. He informs us about Terence McKenna broadly and then more concentratedly as the memoir / non-fiction piece moves along, using McKenna's philosophies and opinions to enrich his own experiences . He reflects broadly on his drug history and then focuses on several psychedelics: Salvia and Psilocybin somewhat briefly and DMT and Cannabis at a greater length. I've only ever tried Ca ...more

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Jun 08, 2018 John rated it liked it

Drug use, particularly psychedelics is often romanticized within the arts. There's a whole mythologizing of the role of drugs within the creative process. As such, I have some rules of thumb about people I meet--do you like Hunter S. Thompson? If so, are a Raoul Duke fan? That's an acid/litmus test for how much I can stand someone.

I came into reading this book due to comments that it was the new "Electric Kool Aid", which is is not. Instead, it's a relatively level and even-handed overview of w ...more

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