Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures

Rating:
Summary: Tripping: A Bit Unreal, But Great
Review: "Tripping" by Charles Hayes is a unique collection of personal narratives about the LSD experience. A joy to read, it provides a much-needed corrective to the anti-drug hysteria which demonizes substances and their users. This work replaces psychedelic explorations where they belong, in the minds and hearts of normal human beings. The stories are as unique as each person is; a wide range of reactions is included, some funny, some sad, spiritual, frightening, and exciting. Besides being fascinating, this book is also useful to libraries as a reference source, since the stories are accompanied by well-researched scholarly material. I loved this book!

Rating:
Summary: what a long strange trip it's been....
Review: My fascination with the use of psychedelics led me to buying this book.
Reading this book is like stepping into the minds of hundreds of different people on their recreational, spiritual, or psychological journeys with psychedelic substances. It's a collection of personal accounts of the psychedelic experience.
The beginning of the book has some very useful information describing the various chemicals and plants used by the writers throughout the book.
I highly recommend it to anyone who's even slightly interested. It's pretty long, but you won't be able to put it down!

Rating:
Summary: It's time to come out of the psychedelic closet
Review: The censors of consciousness are not going to like this book, which is reason enough to read it. For those who have taken a psychedelic journey or two it's a confirmation and vivid reminder of the experience. I was startled to see descriptions of unusual events and/or visions that I could have written myself, they were so similar to my own. For those who haven't ingested a psychedelic the book is must reading; it offers insights into the experience that are revealing, inspiring, and sometimes frightening. These drugs change lives, often for the better, especially if the set and setting are paid the proper attention. These stories testify to this fact. We would all be amazed and delighted if everyone who had ever benefited from psychedelics went public with it. Differing forms of these substances have been used for as long as there have been human beings, sometimes playing a vital role. One need only realize/recognize/remember that the religious systems of India and Greece, to name just two, were dependent on the use of psychedelic plants, to understand their potential value. Read this book: it will open your eyes. And to all users of psychedelics, past and present, I issue a challenge: Don't let others tell you what you can and can't do with your own mind and consciousness. Stand up for your rights, which are being whittled away daily by those running the Drug War--and make no mistake, it is a war. Half the prison population is comprised of drug POWs. Speak up. Defend yourself. Come out, come out, wherever--and whomever--you are.

Rating:
Summary: Armchair Tripping!
Review: This anthology of true life psychadelic experiences, from LSD and Ecstacy to peyote and ayahuasca, is an entertaining, enlightening trip into the world of mind altering drugs, which probably is too honest and unbiased for the liking of authorities who wish to erase drugs from society. Its candid and honest perspective is a refreshing change from the constant message that drugs are bad and must be obliterated. In Tripping, both euphoric and terrifying experiences are related, as well the use of entheogens, drugs used for spiritual purposes. Tripping neither encourages or discourages drug use, it simply lays the facts out straight. Although every trip differs, there are themes that turn up frequently, such as a higher understanding of self and life, of enlightenment, and sometimes of complete disorientation and panic. I'd highly reccomend Tripping to anyone interested in hallucinogenics and tripping.

Rating:
Summary: Psychedelic experience as story-telling
Review: This book contains an amazing interview with Terence McKenna, which took place toward the end of his life, that is worth the price of the book.

Tripping is the best story-telling approach to the psychedelic encounter that I have read or experienced. I have always felt that all story-telling festivals need a psychedelic tent, because these extreme experiences are some of the best stories human beings can tell. Through the psychedelic medium human beings still tell stories of meeting gods and demons, travelling to new fantastic worlds, and taking mythic and perilous journeys.

Even though these stories are about the experiences of a number of travellers, Hayes has expertly rewritten their accounts through a single narrative voice. This gives the book continuity it otherwise might have lacked.

Bruce Eisner's story about taking too much LSD at Burning Man is hilarious. Very well done.

Rating:
Summary: My Vicarious Journey
Review: Though I've never had any first-hand experience with tripping, I must
admit, I've always been curious. Charles Hayes' anthonolgy satisfied
that interest and then some. Not only was I entertained by the
individual accounts in this book, I was faciniated by the history
behind psychedelic substances. The book never endorses nor condems
the use of these drugs--it simply reports on them in ways that are
sometimes amusing, sometimes frightening, often spritual and always
honest and deeply personal. The discriptions are so vividly written,
you can very nearly experience them yourself. When it is my turn to
host the neighboorhood bookclub, I and the rest of my suburban
housewife compatriots will be Tripping! You don't have to be a '60's
hippy or part of any drug culture to thoroughly take pleasure in this
book. I highly recommed it.


Rating:
Summary: My Vicarious Journey
Review: Though I've never had any first-hand experience with tripping, I must
admit, I've always been curious. Charles Hayes' anthonolgy satisfied
that interest and then some. Not only was I entertained by the
individual accounts in this book, I was faciniated by the history
behind psychedelic substances. The book never endorses nor condems
the use of these drugs--it simply reports on them in ways that are
sometimes amusing, sometimes frightening, often spritual and always
honest and deeply personal. The discriptions are so vividly written,
you can very nearly experience them yourself. When it is my turn to
host the neighboorhood bookclub, I and the rest of my suburban
housewife compatriots will be Tripping! You don't have to be a '60's
hippy or part of any drug culture to thoroughly take pleasure in this
book. I highly recommed it.


Rating:
Summary: mandatory reading for passage through an absurd time
Review: Tripping, the book, is a collection of brief but compact, and often intense explorations of the meaning of Being. Here is the classic mid-journey text that has outgrown the initial amazement of psychedelic enlargement but still retains the open endedness that much remains to be learned. Tripping, the experience, is presented without gloss as the unpredictable state of consciousness that may be kissed by the angels, interrogated by the demons, or simply incredibly weird. Some experimenters record life changing moments of psychic integration and movement to a higher plane, as a lifelong clarification, others describe the possibility of sinking into the *schlomuss*, or state of spiritual desperation. A worthy and honest book such as this one should make us concerned to know which circumstances are most likely to promote change of great value, and which may lead in another direction. The author himself, to his great credit, begins the narrratives with a questioning note much like this. As Tripping will be a heavily referred to text in the upcoming Mind States II conference, readers should also consider The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq , a moderately difficult but highly important work that might have been titled UnTripping. I read Hayes and Houellebecq side by side, a couple of narratives from Tripping, then a chapter of Elementary Particles. The combined experience is not easy to absorb intellectually, but once all has settled, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. If I had to make one recommendation , it would be to read these books together and treat them as a single masterpiece that no sigle mind could have imagined.