"A magnificent collection."
- Alexander Shulgin, godfather of MDMA "Hayes is such a bristling and intelligent writer that one almost wishes that he had written the whole book himself. The free flow of ideas about these verboten substances and their anthropological/psychological possibilities is exhilarating."
- The Oxford American "A sensitive and responsible approach to documenting profound experiences with 'drugs.' The results of this informal research are both informative and highly moving."
- The Lancet "Intriguing. The narratives are informative, cautionary, hilarious and spooky. The uninitiated may recoil from stories of visions of goat-devils, the moon as an alien flashlight, and nude escapades at Burning Man, but those in on the book's implicit wink will find like-minded stories of drug-induced bliss and abject terror."
- San Francisco Chronicle "Readers will find a sequence of first-person narratives (a form at least as old as
The Canterbury Tales) that presents, in kaleidoscopic fashion, the last thirty years as refracted through the prism of a drug experience."
- The Chronicle of Higher Education "We can theorize about psychedelics till the cow patties come home, but there's nothing as poignant, perplexing, and funny as a well-told trip report. Charles Hayes has gathered together some great ones.
Tripping is instructive, hilarious and -- let's face it -- enticing. I
loved it."
- R.U. Sirius, Mondo 2000 "A classic in the growing body of contemporary psychedelic literature. For the experienced,
Tripping is a harvest of inspiring moments and a reminiscence of one's own deeply shape-shifting journeys. For the uninitiated, it is a profound glimpse into the hidden world of the subconscious and a provocation for wider acceptance of the usefulness of psychedelic states."
- Allan Badiner, Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics