About the Book:When he signed up for a psychedelic retreat run by a mysterious Argentine woman deep in Brazil’s rainforest in early 2018, Ernesto Londoño, a veteran New York Times journalist, was so depressed he had come close to jumping off his terrace weeks earlier. His nine-day visit to Spirit Vine Ayahuasca Retreat Center included four nighttime ceremonies during which participants imbibed a vomit-inducing plant-based brew that contained DMT, a powerful mind-altering compound.
The ayahuasca trips provided Londoño an instant reprieve from his depression and became the genesis of a personal transformation that anchors this sweeping journalistic exploration of the booming field of medicinal psychedelics. Londoño introduces readers to a dazzling array of psychedelic enthusiasts who are upending our understanding of trauma and healing. They include Indigenous elders who regard psychedelics as portals to the spirit world; religious leaders who use mind-bending substances as sacraments; war veterans suffering from PTSD who credit psychedelics with changing their lives; and clinicians trying to resurrect a promising field of medicine hastily abandoned in the 1970s as the United States declared a War on Drugs.
Londoño’s riveting personal narrative pulls the reader through a deeply researched and brilliantly reported account of a game-changing industry on the rise. Trippy is the definitive book on psychedelics and mental health today, and Londoño’s in-depth and nuanced look at this shifting landscape will be pivotal in guiding policymakers and readers as they make sense of the perils, limitations, and promises of turning to psychedelics in the pursuit of healing.
About The Authors:
Ernesto Londoño is a national correspondent at The New York Times, where he has worked since 2014. He was born and raised in Colombia and has spent two decades covering some of the most important stories of his generation. He covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the Arab Spring; served on the editorial board of The New York Times; and was the newspaper's bureau chief in Brazil.
Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of seven novels, including Romantic Comedy, Prep, American Wife, Eligible and Rodham, and one story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her books have been selected by The New York Times, Time, EW, and People for their “Ten Best Books of the Year” lists, picked for Reese Witherspoon's book club, optioned for television and film, and translated into thirty languages. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Best American Short Stories anthology, of which she was the 2020 guest editor. She lives with her family in Minneapolis.
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