Ten Trips: The New Reality of Psychedelics

by Andy Mitchell

Neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell punctures the hype around psychedelic drugs while providing the fullest picture yet of their limitlessly fascinating possibilities.

'An incisive, deeply personal and beautifully written account of the power, the uses and the modern misuses of psychedelics. Highly recommended' Anil Seth, author of Being You

‘A collection of tales from the far frontiers of psychedelic experience . . . superb . . . brilliant’ Charles Foster, TLS

Psychedelics have made a comeback but remain a mystery. They are now a 'breakthrough therapy' for mental illness but in truth we have only a vague idea how they work and there is a limit to what the science can reveal. To have any hope of understanding them, we must broaden our view - dramatically - of what they actually are.

In this daring, perception-shifting odyssey, clinical neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell takes ten different drugs in ten different settings, journeying from a London neuroimaging lab to the Colombian Amazon via Silicon Valley and his friend's basement kitchen. His encounters with scientists and gangsters, venture capitalists and con men, psychonauts and shamans, as well as with the drugs themselves, reveal the reality of psychedelics in all their strangeness, hilarity, darkness and wonder.

'Original and thrilling ... achieving profound insights' Mike Jay, author of Psychonauts

'A hair-raising hurtle of a ride' Henry Shukman, author of One Blade of Grass

'Utterly compelling ... like having an out of body experience' Mark Miodownik, author of Stuff Matters

'The psychedelic world has been waiting for this book' Professor Erika Dyck

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Health, Audiobook, Ebooks, Medicine, Spirituality

338 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2023

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author goes from addict to monk to neuropsychologist to “psychonaut” aka a man with a great vocabulary and quick mind writing a very long justification as to why it’s ok for him to do drugs. His tone is quite arrogant and pretentious. He is all too comfortable with chaos and questionable judgment to claim motives of scientific pursuit. His style was more memoir than scholarly findings and quite self-important.

In many ways this was not the book I thought I was about to read. It was alright.

[Bobby (and Jelly) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t read about 40% of the book it reads like a phd thesis in some places. Some parts were interesting. This might be savage but I think I would have enjoyed this book more if someone else had written it.

[Chris Du · Rating 1 out of 5]

Be warned, it is rather academic. I read enough literature during the day in my master's. It was not what I thought it would be from the cover, Dr Mitchell barely ever got high, and definitely did not give enough time for his various "trips". Every time I thought that we were about to hear some exciting retelling of his trip experience he would turn to discussion some philosophy or another. And the ending is cheap. Felt like a long and poorly put together flow of consciousness memoir that lacked any of the humour or true rebellion that the title promised, while simultaneously failing to hold to a scientific view or provide more than a superficial insight into the human condition.

[LL · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for something more academic and insightful. This is a memoir, really. It had few interesting bits, did not hold my interest and was a real slog most of the time. But I did finish it.

Free copy received through Goodreads Giveaways.

[Vaughan Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An erudite, deep-thinking writer with a varied background. As a neuropsychologist who was a monastery initiate turned atheist, Mitchell tries to describe the phenomenon of psychedelic drugs and experience from various viewpoints, including his own as he trips on various substances, including LSD, mushrooms, ayahuasca, dimethyltripamine (DMT), ibogaine, Watchuma and rappe. His descriptions are profound and philosophical, but also vivid, lively and sometimes amusing. Places stress on the use of psychedelics as a way of promoting neuroplasticity and breaking old mental habits, which are seen as “canalisation” ([P.58] “something like ‘overlearning’, referring to the limiting of one’s behavioural repertoire .. [or] as a defence mechanism against uncertainty.” Set in South America (including among the Kogi people), Silicon Valley and London, ranges from a memoir, to academic thesis, to breathless trip reportage, to philosophical musings and valuable insights. Always authentic, though a little stiff at times as the scientist edges out the tripper but always well expressed. Advises against over-exuberance in framing psychedelics as psychiatry’s “new best friend,” advocating their use in this context but cautioning about getting too starry eyed. Draws parallels between tripping and dreaming as mental processes, pointing out that just as many of our dreams are partially unpleasant, perhaps [P.51] “to support our capacity to tolerate or regulate challenging emotions”, tripping almost invariably contains unpleasant moments too. And could hearing voices, (P.217) “the iconic psychotic symptom, be a ‘signal error’, the misattribution of internal thought”? Mitchell is always reaching for new ways of thinking and this may be the greatest strength of the book. Reading it is almost like a trip in itself. There is a little bit of a lot of things in this book. For example, he questions (P.134) “the concept of addiction as an individual disease, rather than a complex social, economic and cultural phenomenon.” And in the context of “set” and “setting” as popularised by Michael Pollan, notes that (P.87) “our setting, contemporary Western society, with its various catastrophes and imagined threats, is increasingly thought of as traumatogenic.” So could, then, the contemporary idea of most of us having mental health issues (I’m not talking DSM here) be a natural response to the disordered world we live in? There are many ideas to digest in this book. Notes that pharmaceutical companies carry out “bioprospecting” (and “biopiracy”) and try to create analogues and tweaked versions of natural psychedelics they can commercialise. Mitchell’s scope is as much medical and neuroscientific as mystical and philosophical.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked it. I hadn’t considered it memoiry until I read other reviews here on Goodreads but there is certainly a sense of truth in that. Psychedelics, at least is the view of Andy Mitchell, are such a personalized experience and so personality and ‘setting’ dependent that you cannot but have a strong author voice when talking about what they are like. Mitchell does mention other works on the subject, both author driven and academic — so it it’s not quite to your taste it could serve as a good starting point for further research.

I came for the consideration of psychedelica in future medicine but stayed for the treatises on nature, poetry, and post-colonial capitalization of native culture and knowledge. What stuck with me the most were surprisingly not even the trips itself but the descriptions of shamanic practice (which don’t necessarily involve drugs at all). All important meaningful rituals which are excepted and founded in history, believe, and knowledge and feel so very lacking in modern western society. Several centuries of enlightenment and science have undone our shared cultural knowledge of the natural word we inhabit, of the plants that surround us their functions, medicinal or otherwise. What we have gotten back is a colder understanding of functioning and big Pharma, a profit drive monolith that is frankly not only very good at hearing ailment, but also terrifying. Although we are able to heal and understand a lot more the current approach leaves very little room for the individual by needing to pathologie everything that deviates from a non-existent norm. It does not really have the means to cope with the deviant, the weird, the illogical but true and the unexpectedly connected of the human experience — in other words; with the psychedelic.

[Goda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man labai patiko.

Kadangi ir pati turiu panašių patirčių ir klausimų, kaip autorius, skaičiau knygą pasimėgaudama. Labai rūpi, kur eina psichodelikai ir kokia jų ateitis, labai įdomu, kai priversti draugauti mokslą ir New Age, knieti, kaip psichodelikai gali padėti gydyti įvairias psichologines būkles.
Ir, aišku, kad tai asmeninė kelionė labiau nei mokslinė, galbūt kitaip su medžiagomis, apie kurias rašoma, draugauti ir jas aprašyti neišeina. Tačiau matydama autoriaus pasvarstymus, ir pati daug ką apgalvoju.

Kogiai Kolumbijoje ir be sąmonę keičiančių medžiagų jaučiasi taip, lyg būtų kelionėje. Kaip dažnai ir pati pamirštu pastebėti tą mįslingumą ir egzistencijos paslaptingumą bei žavesį. O tereikia atsimerkti ir visa tai, kas yra aplink sugerti į save.

Beje, knygoje pradžiugino netikėtai, labai trumpam pasirodęs rašytojo kelionėse sutiktas lietuvis Dimitrijus. Panašių charakterių ir man savo kelionėse teko sutikti. Džiugu matyti dideles transformacijas.

Išsinešu ir aprašymą apie New Agerius bei sveikesnę galimą alternatyvą. Nebūtina nuneigti viso pasaulio aplink. Pakeliavus pasidomėti mokslu, istorija, menu yra sveika. Pažįstu nemažai žmonių, kurie atradę gamtos mediciną paprasčiausiai pamiršta sense of reason. Ir tai niekada manęs iki galo neįtikindavo.

[Joseph Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. You can't read (or write) about psychedelics. Because they are ineffable, then your explanations or descriptions just get muddy and dull. Reading about them is like reading about how water falls from a waterfall.
2. I'm not convinced they are anything more than a curiosity. Something worth trying? Maybe. But they will not cure your ills.
3. There's a lot of woo-woo adjacent stuff in this book. Mitchell kind of wants to 'keep it real' as he instinctively believes part of the charm is the woo woo stuff. So he starts to push back against the science. Maybe he's right. Though he sits in an odd place, still disaffected by new age bs, but trying to connect with the tribal weirdness in South America.
4. I'm not going to read another psychedelics book. They are something of a chore. Mitchell's writing is fine. But the subject is kind of dull, I guess. There's only so much that can be said.

[Josh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very dissapointed with this book...

£22 is a fair old investment for something that dissapointed on quite a few levels. I agree with others who have said this read is very dense, confusing & in places, random & impossible to understand. Others have said you need a phd to understand the way it's written & the contents... if you're young like me & are very interested in the resurgence of psychedelics... this book didn't deliver. Im around 1/5 through & wish i could take it back 🤣 i didn't realise you had to be a strong academic to understand the book prior to buying it! And i bet i'm not the only one to feel this way.
Now to decide wether to finish the other 4/5 🤣
I'm so confused by all ive read so far

I also agree with others about the fact it's a memoir, makes you want to skip huge chunks of dense, unedited anecdotes & text...

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. I appreciated so much the research, scrutiny and what I felt were really important questions about the morality, ethics and future of psychedelics. I absolutely loved the first hand accounts and insights gained during his own journeys, many of them were both transcendent and laugh out loud funny. Loved the connection he made between psychedelics and poetry, art and music—the transcendent meaning possible in both. For me this information heavy memoir perfectly toed the line between the critical and romantic views of psychedelics, refusing to turn a blind eye to the shadow of the renaissance nor to dismiss the potential of what they can teach us.

[Oisín Byrne · Rating 1 out of 5]

For me, this was just far too pretentious. It’s a book about taking mind altering and horizon expanding substances and the author makes it difficult to read with endless joyless exposition.

There is a passage about tricking AI into writing about tripping, therefore you’ve given AI a psychedelic experience. The most pretentious thing I’ve ever read, to be honest.

I’m definitely not the target audience for this but having taken some of the drugs in this book, it reads like the most boring, navel-gazing trip anyone’s ever had.

[Eleanor Pilcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ten Trips is not a book that tries to sell you on psychedelics, it tries to tell you the truth. Through ten radically different journeys, Andy Mitchell captures the wonder, confusion, danger, humor, and haunting beauty of altered states with rare honesty.
What makes this book exceptional is its balance: clinical insight without cold detachment, personal experience without reckless glorification. It’s thoughtful, unsettling, funny in unexpected places, and deeply human throughout. This is one of the most grounded and trustworthy books I’ve read on the modern psychedelic world.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like other books written in this style, I was met with a memoir when I wanted a blend of both anecdotes and factual information. Ten Trips certainly attempts to meet this request -- except it could have done with some editing down. Dense blocks of text prompted me to skim and skip large portions.

Ten Trips is an interesting memoir, perfect for those who like their facts submerged in dense anecdotes and plenty of detail.

[Tamara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am very interested in the neuroscience of perception and ways how psychoactive substances can make us better understand it. I expected this book to provide some good food for thought, but instead it proved to be rambling, self-important, and as a result pretty indigestible, to the point I am giving up on it barely a third in. My guess is that if this had been edited down by a good half, it would have done justice to some interesting bits covered.

[Nikki Lockwood]

This wasn’t what I had hoped.

I didn’t gel with the story telling and also felt bombarded with all the scientific speak. Given I was hoping for a great yarn backed up by some hopefully easy to digest science and was not loving either aspect - I bailed before investing 8.5 more hours on a fruitless mission.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

5-stars for bravely publishing a personal account of psychedelic experiences.
The author's personal experiences and insights were enjoyable, the author writing about neuroscience and philosophy was boring.

[Christine Best · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay. Quite strong on how psychedelics are becoming the preserve of well off westerners. Author concentrates as much on the people involved as the drugs themselves.

[Erin Stark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about Mitchell's personal experiences and insights (and skipped quite a few dense sections about neuroscience and philosophy).

[milo · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Elle Buckthorpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes yes yes. We need more books like this. Definitely in a genre of its own in my opinion. Much enjoyed reading it and doubt anything else will come close for a while.

[Josephine Olok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the parts where the author was talking about his experience with psychedelics. Some parts were too academic for me. Ultimately, I was hoping for an answer as to whether psychedelics can provide a cure for trauma, depression, mental conditions, but I don't think it is clear.

[Jan Pstrokonski · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok content, could have been an article

ok content, could have been an article . Too many words, too long for what it says. Still, better than Pollan.