Product Description A dazzling work of personal travelogue and cultural criticism that ranges from the primitive to the postmodern in a quest for the promise and meaning of the psychedelic experience.
While psychedelics of all sorts are demonized in America today, the visionary compounds found in plants are the spiritual sacraments of tribal cultures around the world. From the iboga of the Bwiti in Gabon, to the Mazatecs of Mexico, these plants are sacred because they awaken the mind to other levels of awareness--to a holographic vision of the universe.
Breaking Open the Head is a passionate, multilayered, and sometimes rashly personal inquiry into this deep division. On one level, Daniel Pinchbeck tells the story of the encounters between the modern consciousness of the West and these sacramental substances, including such thinkers as Allen Ginsberg, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, and Terence McKenna, and a new underground of present-day ethnobotanists, chemists, psychonauts, and philosophers. It is also a scrupulous recording of the author's wide-ranging investigation with these outlaw compounds, including a thirty-hour tribal initiation in West Africa; an all-night encounter with the master shamans of the South American rain forest; and a report from a psychedelic utopia in the Black Rock Desert that is the Burning Man Festival.
Breaking Open the Head is brave participatory journalism at its best, a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck's personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.
It was ok...September 15, 2008 It was a good book but there didn't really seem to be a purpose. A little eclectic and scattered it was an interesting read but i would recommend The Electric Kool-AId Acid Test by Tom Wolfe instead.
spiritual alientation in the modern worldAugust 27, 2008 If Marx addressed the problem of modern man's alienation from an economic perspective, Pinchbeck addresses the exact problem from a spiritual stance, not unlike Jung. In the argot of postmodernism, this is a "readerly text. In other words, it's not something you'll use for your graduate thesis; but that's what I like about it: none of us is able to put forth our own personal ontology as something universal or objective. To do so would not only be a bore, but insufferably self-absorbed. Pinchbeck offers his experiences with wit and learned insight. Can't ask for more than that given the nature of the subject.
fascinating reportingJune 20, 2008 I read Pinchbeck's 2012 last Fall, and found his writing on contemporary shamanism fascinating. Where 2012 discussed a lot of other seemingly random, somewhat interconnected phenomena, the underlying narrative was his discussion of psychedelic drugs. Having never tried psychedelics, I found his study interesting, and 20122 was hard to put down...so I had to pick up Breaking Open the Head.
Breaking Open the Head is just as good as 2012. The focus was more on the drugs, less on Pinchbeck's life. Pinchbeck presents a convincing case for the decriminalization of psychedelics. He provides vivid depictions of his trips...both physical and psychedelic, making this a fast, entertaining read.
Breaking Open the HeadMay 31, 2008 Pinchbeck has a talented, colorful writing style. I think this book will be helpful to people that are just beginning their quest for knowledge about entheogens. He gives a nice overview of the cultural history involved and quotes from writings by many well-know researchers. My favorite two parts in the book were his descriptions of Burning Man and the Ethnobotany Conferences. I laughed as I read through them, remembering some of my experiences at those events.
I am not trying to be too critical of the book, although I have to be honest. There were some inaccuracies and they distracted my concentration as a reader. Whenever I see inaccurate info, I always wonder what else was inaccurate that I didn't notice. It sort of ruins an author's credibility. It is like he needed to do a little more research in a few places.
The Pickard Case p. 212 - His LSD lab produced way more than 1/3 of the world supply. And the missile base it was operational in did not have the marble tiled bathroom or the expensive stereo system (those were at Todd's missile base - the lab was at another base).
Eating mushrooms in chocolate broth w/maoi p. 214 - Mushrooms and MAOI combo is fine, but chocolate being in the mix can be dangerous. I personally got myself into a hypertensive situation one time by eating chocolate accidentally while on an MAOI. Just a warning...
There were more inaccuracies but I will not note them all here.
a must readMay 29, 2008 hard to explain how positively this book affected me, but suffice it to say it points the way into a journey of awakening.
