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Brought to you by Penguin

In Ten Trips neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell takes ten different psychedelic drugs in ten different settings, puncturing the hype while providing the fullest picture yet of their limitlessly fascinating possibilities.

Once demonised and still largely illegal, psychedelic drugs are now officially a 'breakthrough therapy', used to treat depression, trauma and addiction and to enhance well-being. But as neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell shows in this deeply serious yet wildly entertaining investigation, this approach misses what is so strange and valuable about them: the psychedelic experience itself.

In Ten Trips he takes ten different compounds, some famous, others obscure, journeying from a neuroimaging lab in London 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 provide a panoramic view of psychedelics today: their capacity for healing but also trauma, for transcendence and corruption, profundity and hilarity.

By removing psychedelics from their indigenous and underground cultures, we risk losing the very things we need to harness them. To make them safe or normal might ultimately destroy what makes them potent. That potential is indeed great, not as an antidote to mental illness - none exists - but as a way of changing our whole perspective on mental health and flourishing.

Ten Trips is a dazzling, perception-shifting odyssey that shows how psychedelics can re-enchant us with the world.

© Andy Mitchell 2023 (P) Penguin Audio 2023

Critics Review

  • 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

  • An original and thrilling investigation into psychedelics and the claims that currently surround them, achieving profound insights into their essential qualities

    Mike Jay, author of Psychonauts

  • Utterly compelling. Some books are in a category of their own and this is one them. Reading it is like having an out of body experience

    Mark Miodownik, author of Stuff Matters

  • A hair-raising hurtle of a ride into the belly of the psychedelic renaissance, fuelled by spectacular prose

    Henry Shukman, author of One Blade of Grass

  • Beguiling, captivating, mind-expanding. It’s impossible to read this book and not be tempted to replicate some of its wild, sanity-stretching forays into the peculiarities of human perception

    Stuart Ritchie, author of Science Fictions

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