Breaking Open the Head - Softcover

Pinchbeck, Daniel

4.06

3,374 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007149611 ISBN 13: 9780007149612

Publisher: Flamingo, 2004

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A new ‘The Doors of Perception’ for the 21st century? A visionary journey from cynicism to shamanism by a brilliant young US writer.

Daniel Pinchbeck was an essentially sane and rational person, living the life of a sophisticated urbanite. But one disenchanted day he felt he’d exhausted the shallow aspirations of the contemporary scene. So he went on a quest.

And he went all the way: to West Africa to test Iboga, a psychedelic herb which can cause such profound insight that one dose equals twenty years of psychoanalysis; to the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert where cutting-edge technology meets radical self-exploration; to Mexico and to the Amazon where shamanic traditions are practised daily.

Sceptical but curious, following in the footsteps of Aldous Huxley and Terence McKenna, Daniel Pinchbeck guides his readers on an astonishing journey around the world and through the mind. Are you brave enough to suspend your post-modern cynicism and break open the head with him?

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Product Description:

This title guides the reader around an always-plausible, always-sane, always-sceptical tour of the psychedelic horizon, from tribal rites in West Africa and Mexico, to other tribal rites in Brooklyn apartments and at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

Review:

‘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”.’ Stephen Johnson, author of ‘Emergence’

‘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

‘By the end of this highly readable report, Pinchbeck’s head has been broken into so often – by ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, DMT and other drugs – that you might expect him to install hinges. Yet there is a seriousness behind his self-experiments and while the drug tales are gripping, and funny, he is at pains to put them in the context of his search for meaning.’ Guardian

‘A modern Odyssey, a search for spiritual revelations, a success.’ Independent

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