Forthcoming September 21 in the U.K.
Forthcoming October 10 in the U.S.
TEN TRIPS:
THE NEW REALITY OF PSYCHEDELICS
The more we learn about psychedelics, the less we seem to understand them. . . .
In this engrossing, sometimes hilarious, always dramatic chronicle, a neuropsychologist deflates the hype, explores the limitless possibilities, and reveals a much-needed perspective about psychedelics, giving us a scientist’s first-person experiment with ten different compounds in ten different settings.
Once demonized and still largely illegal, psychedelic drugs are now officially a “breakthrough therapy” in treating mental illness, used to heal trauma, conquer addiction, and enhance well-being. But as Andy Mitchell reveals, this approach to psychedelics is overhyped, and most importantly, neglects what is so unusual and valuable about them: the psychedelic experience itself.
In Ten Trips, Andy Mitchell takes ten different drugs in ten diverse locations—including a neuroimaging lab in London, the Columbian Andes, Silicon Valley and his friend’s basement kitchen—to document their remarkable effects. Along the way he encounters a cast of distinctive characters: scientists and gangsters, venture capitalists and philosophers, psychonauts and shamans, musicians, monks, therapists, poets, and conmen. His experience opens a doorway to psychedelics’ full potential: for healing and trauma, for ecstatic one-ness and utter terror, for transcendence and corruption, for profundity and laughter.
U.K.
U.S.
‘An incisive, deeply personal, and beautifully written account of the power, the uses, and the modern misuses of psychedelics. Highly recommended.’
–Anil Seth, neuroscientist and author of Being You
‘Original and thrilling’
—Mike Jay, author of Psychonauts
‘Utterly compelling. Some books are in a category of their own and this is one them. Reading it is like having an out of body experience’
—Mark Miodownik, author of Stuff Matters
‘The psychedelic world has been waiting for this book: a sceptic’s account of the allure of psychedelics’
—Erika Dyck, Board Member of the Chacruna Institute
‘A hair-raising hurtle of a ride into the belly of the psychedelic renaissance, fuelled by spectacular prose’
—Henry Shukman, author of One Blade of Grass
‘Beguiling, captivating, mind-expanding. It’s impossible to read this book and not be tempted to replicate some of its wild forays into the peculiarities of human perception’
—Stuart Ritchie, author of Science Fictions
‘A dazzling, timely book, as deep and poignant as it is madcap and hilarious’
—Mark Lythgoe, University College London
‘A ground-breaking, often hilarious and awe-inspiring voyage through the realms of altered consciousness’
—Levison Wood, author of The Art of Exploration
‘Ten Trips speaks to the psychonaut in all of us and reminds us that there are as many trips as there are people seeking them’
—Katherine MacLean, author of Midnight Water
Though Andy didn’t really go near a psychedelic drug until he was approaching fifty, his life has been somewhat trippy in its own right.
Growing up in Leeds he was the singer in a punk band called 'Armitage Shanks’—named after the UK’s premier toilet manufacturer. He read English Literature at Oxford and after flirting with a career in academic philosophy, he spent several years as an avant-gardish screenwriter—there’s a good reason you’ve never seen classics like ‘God’s Toxic Piss’ and the Rom-Com ‘World of Pain.’
Plagued by pretentiousness and uselessness, Andy ran a separate career helping to establish an NGO which provided emotional and practical to support to the homeless in Leeds. Later he would work in a similar vein with Mexican gangs in Los Angles and with disabled children in Northern India.This work implied broader existential questions and in his late twenties Andy spent three years as a monk, in Big Sur, California.
It was only in his early thirties that Andy began his clinical career, first of all in psychology and later in neuroscience. Over the next fifteen years he worked across a range of mental health and neurological settings, from intensive care to community rehabilitation. With a longstanding background in meditation he recently took a sabbatical in Asia to consider ways in which different mindfulness practices might be applied to neurological patients.
And it was during this sabbatical that Andy stumbled into his first psychedelic ceremony. Curiously this has led him, full circle, back to writing again—books but also tv screenplays—as well as voluntary clinical work in Europe, America and Asia.
