The DMT Chronicles: Parmenides, Plato, and the Psychedelic

by Terence Turner

This is the story about an undergraduate who is obsessed with two things: DMT and philosophy. Having come upon a surplus of DMT, Terence Turner embarks on numerous psychedelic odysseys, repeatedly coming into contact with McKenna's Self-Transforming Machine Elves. What follows is a transparent account of his psychedelic experiences coupled with various Platonic and other philosophical notions.

Genres: Philosophy

260 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 2010

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This should have been the most interesting book I have ever read, given the subject matter. Unfortunately, mainly because of the Turner's eccentric grasp of English and nigh-psychotic addiction to adverbs, it was not. This is frustrating. The central idea, that the Platonic Forms are "the psychedelic", has potential; the related suggestion that the shamanic poetry of Parmenides is the result of a DMT trip, is intuitively plausible (at least in the context of the work of Peter Kingsley, of whom the author, inexplicably given his education, seems never to have heard) but the writing is so unnecessarily garrulous that, if the author himself even knows what he's talking about (questionable) he no longer seems able to communicate this to anybody else. Almost entirely obscured by the shadow of Terence McKenna, Terence Turner lacks entirely the great man's verbosity and wit that made his ideas so compelling. A terrible shame.