daniel
11-10-2002, 05:51 AM
"I much admire Breaking Open the Head for being the account of an authentic quest for enlightenment in jungles, up rivers, in deserts, and hardest of all to access, the human mind and heart via the one of the oldest thoroughfares on earth, mind-expanding drugs. This is a serious and illuminating journey."
- Paul Theroux
"This is a brave book. Brave because it accepts, as matters of fact, realities that cannot co-exist peacefully with the standard American Myth. That the discussion of these issues avoids both New Age glitter-speak and standard psychedelic hoo-ha makes it all the more provocative. It is also brave for its unflinching willingness to bare the less expanded parts of the author's psyche. And it is brave, as it is always brave, to attempt to speak clearly of that which can't be spoken."
- John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead
"As Daniel Pinchbeck so vividly discovered through his own extraordinary experiences, sacred plants are pivotal to the culture and spirituality of humans the world over. Like an anthropological explorer to another world, he invites us along with him on a journey deep into the soul of his and our humanity. The lessons he learns hold the keys to the survival and heart of ancient cultures, and possibly to the renewal of our own."
- Thom Hartmann, author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation
"Constantly prohibited, constantly used, drugs fuel the fears and fantasies our society lives by. With verve and insight Daniel Pinchbeck's book rides this roller-coaster, asking us to imagine a world where, along with so many other prohibitions, the War Against Drugs has disappeared. An unabashed enthusiast, Pinchbeck re-examines the claims made for drugs since the sixties, creates alternative histories, portrays lessons he has learnt from marvelous third and fourth world rites of healing involving drugs, and above all 'opens the head' with his clear prose and penetrating questions, as lively and absorbing as any drug I know."
- Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University; author of Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man
"As mind-expanding as the chemicals it chronicles, Breaking Open the Head is the most artful and provocative investigation of psychedelia since Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception."
- Steven Johnson, author of Interface Culture and Emergence
- Paul Theroux
"This is a brave book. Brave because it accepts, as matters of fact, realities that cannot co-exist peacefully with the standard American Myth. That the discussion of these issues avoids both New Age glitter-speak and standard psychedelic hoo-ha makes it all the more provocative. It is also brave for its unflinching willingness to bare the less expanded parts of the author's psyche. And it is brave, as it is always brave, to attempt to speak clearly of that which can't be spoken."
- John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead
"As Daniel Pinchbeck so vividly discovered through his own extraordinary experiences, sacred plants are pivotal to the culture and spirituality of humans the world over. Like an anthropological explorer to another world, he invites us along with him on a journey deep into the soul of his and our humanity. The lessons he learns hold the keys to the survival and heart of ancient cultures, and possibly to the renewal of our own."
- Thom Hartmann, author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation
"Constantly prohibited, constantly used, drugs fuel the fears and fantasies our society lives by. With verve and insight Daniel Pinchbeck's book rides this roller-coaster, asking us to imagine a world where, along with so many other prohibitions, the War Against Drugs has disappeared. An unabashed enthusiast, Pinchbeck re-examines the claims made for drugs since the sixties, creates alternative histories, portrays lessons he has learnt from marvelous third and fourth world rites of healing involving drugs, and above all 'opens the head' with his clear prose and penetrating questions, as lively and absorbing as any drug I know."
- Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University; author of Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man
"As mind-expanding as the chemicals it chronicles, Breaking Open the Head is the most artful and provocative investigation of psychedelia since Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception."
- Steven Johnson, author of Interface Culture and Emergence