Dismantled: How Love and Psychedelics Broke a Clergyman Apart, and Put Him Back Together

by Bruce Sanguin

With the ending of a marriage, a career as a clergyman in the church, and the alluring promise of love, the author turns to psychedelics, sacred ceremony and psychotherapy to get his life back. During this process, he discovers how childhood trauma forced him to develop a false self in order to survive. His personality is dismantled as these sacred medicines reveal the truth to him. In the process, Sanguin presents evidence for the shocking prevalence of childhood trauma. Along the way, the author questions and ultimately undermines much conventional wisdom, including the sentimentalization of family, the rush to forgiveness as a cure all and dogmatic Christianity. He supports the forgotten tradition in the gospels that authentic suffering and the acceptance of reality is the key to living a full and authentic life. The book is a testament, both to the importance of conscious integration of psychedelic experiences and to the healing power of these medicines when taken in the proper set and setting. By the end, we are given a model of healing which is not a quick fix, but rather one that honours the complexity of the human experience. This is a hopeful book that supports a growing body of research indicating that psychedelics as medicine hold one key to the healing and evolution of our species. 

312 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2018

Reviews

[Bonnie Barnard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly one of the best books I've read to date. Will re-read until the spine falls off. Sanguin speaks of freeing himself emotionally from the bonds of a mother too distracted with circumstances to give him what he needed -- love. He becomes free of these emotional bonds to experience love through moving beyond his own patterns. He uses a therapist and psychedelics to do this. Not a fan of psychedelics, their use didn't get in the way of my witnessing the rebirth of a man. Beautiful book.