Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change

Part memoir, part history, part journalistic exposé, Trip is a look at psychedelic drugs, literature, and alienation from one of the twenty-first century's most innovative novelists--The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for a new generation. A Vintage Original.

While isolating himself to work on his novel Taipei, Tao Lin discovered the prolific work of Terence McKenna--the leading advocate of psychotropic drugs since Timothy Leary. Tao became obsessed with McKenna, whose worldview (and particular theory of drug use) seemed to present an alternate way of being. In Trip, Tao's first ever book-length work of nonfiction, he explores parallels between McKenna's life and his own in a far-reaching search for answers to looming questions: Why do we make art? What is language for? And are there essential, universal truths out there, beyond our limited range of perception?

Trip takes readers on a trip through psychedelic culture, from D.A.R.E. to Aldous Huxley, from NYU's Bobst Library to a plant-drawing class in Santa Rosa, California. Drawing on first-person exploratory journalism as well as in-depth research, Tao details the experience of taking psilocybin, DMT, and cannabis, studies their chemical composure and legality, and ends his story with a pilgrimage out West, where he communes with McKenna's ex-wife and fellow "ethnobotanist," Kathleen Harrison.

TAO LIN is the author of the novels Leave Society and Taipei, the memoir Trip, the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, and other books. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Paris Review, NOON, and elsewhere. He was born in Virginia, has taught in Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program, and is the founder and editor of Muumuu House.