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Death Trip: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir
When a midlife crisis threatens his marriage and an open-minded therapist offers him MDMA, the author learns just how trippy a search for meaning can get.
Like many children of immigrants, Seth Lorinczi knew only the major plot points of his Hungarian family's backstory. But when he stumbles upon his father's long-forgotten memoirs, he realizes the antisemitic violence and trauma suffered by his Holocaust Survivor forebears might be guiding his worldview and actions in unseen ways. Eventually, the quest to learn the truth will take him halfway around the world to an epic showdown with his family's ghosts.
A marriage story, a search for meaning in the wake of the Holocaust, and a struggle to release the weight of ancestral trauma, Death Trip takes readers from the ayahuasca basements of Portland's psychedelic therapy underground to the streets and alleyways of Budapest during the darkest days of World War II. By turns wrenching and hilarious, it asks "can trauma be inherited" and, if so, "can psychedelics help us heal?"
Offering a uniquely literary perspective on the dawning field of psychedelic therapy, Death Trip is a harrowing but ultimately triumphant story about overcoming fear, trauma, and disconnection. Fans of books on psychedelics and books on family secrets will thrill to this quest to learn the truth about the past in order to make sense of the present.
Like many children of immigrants, Seth Lorinczi knew only the major plot points of his Hungarian family's backstory. But when he stumbles upon his father's long-forgotten memoirs, he realizes the antisemitic violence and trauma suffered by his Holocaust Survivor forebears might be guiding his worldview and actions in unseen ways. Eventually, the quest to learn the truth will take him halfway around the world to an epic showdown with his family's ghosts.
A marriage story, a search for meaning in the wake of the Holocaust, and a struggle to release the weight of ancestral trauma, Death Trip takes readers from the ayahuasca basements of Portland's psychedelic therapy underground to the streets and alleyways of Budapest during the darkest days of World War II. By turns wrenching and hilarious, it asks "can trauma be inherited" and, if so, "can psychedelics help us heal?"
Offering a uniquely literary perspective on the dawning field of psychedelic therapy, Death Trip is a harrowing but ultimately triumphant story about overcoming fear, trauma, and disconnection. Fans of books on psychedelics and books on family secrets will thrill to this quest to learn the truth about the past in order to make sense of the present.
- GenresMemoir
258 pages, Paperback
Published May 21, 2024
6 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 31, 2024
I read Death Trip with a sense of consistent whiplash. There were so many aspects that resonated with me that I had trouble making sense of it. For the past 20 years I worked on, completed, and distributed a film about Dr John Sarno, which focused on his idea that un-recognized and un-processed trauma from childhood had fueled and epidemic of back pain. He recognized that it was also connected to many other ailments, like auto immune and gut issues. Through my process of working on that film, which became quite personal, I also worked on gaining a better understanding of various traumas that ran in my family.
While reading "Death Trip" I was able to make some very powerful connections and awarenesses. Sometimes we get very stuck in our own story, but when we read someone else's it can help us gain new perspective. As I read Seth's memoir I gained a much deeper and complex understanding of my parent's relationship, and how that impacted my own way of being in the world. I was also able to see how, as first and second generation jews whose families had fled from persecution in Eastern Europe, both of my parents carried un-recognized trauma that they never seemed to fully process. This is not to say that I was completely unaware of the trauma that they carried. However, the book helped me to see their stories in a broader context; of an entire culture that tried to bury the trauma of two world wars through capitalism, consumption, and conformity. In the 60's that buried trauma exploded in cultural upheaval. This is when I came of age. However, I had no real understanding of how that century of trauma impacted me.
When we worked on our film there was not cultural discussion of collective trauma; nor was there any solid medical awareness about the impact of trauma on health. That began to shift a few years ago and now the term "trauma informed" is in regular use. This is a profound shift, but I dont' think it encompasses a deeper understanding of how profound the generational aspect of it is. it is my hope that a tsunami of stories will help shift our collective understanding and help us to get more in touch with ourselves and each other. Death Trip is a big piece of a much larger puzzle.
While reading "Death Trip" I was able to make some very powerful connections and awarenesses. Sometimes we get very stuck in our own story, but when we read someone else's it can help us gain new perspective. As I read Seth's memoir I gained a much deeper and complex understanding of my parent's relationship, and how that impacted my own way of being in the world. I was also able to see how, as first and second generation jews whose families had fled from persecution in Eastern Europe, both of my parents carried un-recognized trauma that they never seemed to fully process. This is not to say that I was completely unaware of the trauma that they carried. However, the book helped me to see their stories in a broader context; of an entire culture that tried to bury the trauma of two world wars through capitalism, consumption, and conformity. In the 60's that buried trauma exploded in cultural upheaval. This is when I came of age. However, I had no real understanding of how that century of trauma impacted me.
When we worked on our film there was not cultural discussion of collective trauma; nor was there any solid medical awareness about the impact of trauma on health. That began to shift a few years ago and now the term "trauma informed" is in regular use. This is a profound shift, but I dont' think it encompasses a deeper understanding of how profound the generational aspect of it is. it is my hope that a tsunami of stories will help shift our collective understanding and help us to get more in touch with ourselves and each other. Death Trip is a big piece of a much larger puzzle.
May 27, 2024
Despite having the same last name, I am not related to Seth.
While Seth's family survived the Holocaust, the lessons in the book apply to many who experience trauma in their lives. For me, it resonated as a son of an immigrant father, the stories of my Grandfather's lifelong traumas of war, loss, revolution, and near death experiences at the hands of others.
I loved the way he wrote it. The flow was easy. The story easy to follow. This man put opened himself up to the reader. What I loved is he kept challenging himself to take that next step to find answers no matter how hard it was.
The journey he went on is not an easy one for anyone. If you are thinking of starting a personal journey of your own, Seth's book may help nudge you.
While Seth's family survived the Holocaust, the lessons in the book apply to many who experience trauma in their lives. For me, it resonated as a son of an immigrant father, the stories of my Grandfather's lifelong traumas of war, loss, revolution, and near death experiences at the hands of others.
I loved the way he wrote it. The flow was easy. The story easy to follow. This man put opened himself up to the reader. What I loved is he kept challenging himself to take that next step to find answers no matter how hard it was.
The journey he went on is not an easy one for anyone. If you are thinking of starting a personal journey of your own, Seth's book may help nudge you.
May 17, 2024
Words can’t convey what a devastating, beautiful, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting book this is. It’s exquisitely written, and compulsively readable. I never thought I’d say this about a historical memoir like this, but it’s a true page turner. For what it’s worth, everyone I know who read this book says they finished it in a day because they couldn’t put it down! I cannot recommend it highly enough!
May 30, 2024
Lovely and heartfelt account of finding oneself by reconnecting with one’s history. The ritual of reliving and accepting the past (here the unspeakably painful experience of Jewish persecution in Hungary) becomes a way to bring back to life the people that shaped us, and in so it illuminates a web of relationships that is always alive in us, and so wise.
April 11, 2026
interesting and engaging, but mildly difficult to relate to, to feel pulled into the story. felt a bit surface -level? i think? it's difficult to communicate the experience of healing through psychedelics, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.
September 10, 2024
Death Trip is a powerful work of inner exploration that is by turns invigorating, unsettling, heart-rending and poignant. Seth Lorinczi has a deft hand at memoir -- one has the sense that the narrator is doing open-heart surgery in front of you -- on his own living body and soul. He makes it impossible to look away, and his experiences delving into his family's past, his own epigenetic trauma and the problems in his marriage become absolutely riveting. Lorinczi's courage and perseverance, both in life and words, are inspiring as he works to mend a life that was hurtling towards oblivion and destruction. His chosen path of psychedelics might not be chosen by everyone, but Lorinczi rapidly convinces readers that this was a good direction -- perhaps the only right path, in fact -- for him and his family. Far from shallow, and impossible to ignore. This one is a keeper.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews