A Short, Strange Trip
The 1971 expedition to La Chorrera was supposed to be the Big Bang for the human mind. The McKenna brothers and their crew of psychonauts hit the Colombian mud with a theory, a stash of chemicals, and a plan to crack the skull of reality. They weren’t looking for a weekend buzz; they were looking for the blueprints to hyperspace.
The takeoff was a riot. The landing was a wreck.
In A Short, Strange Trip, John O’Connor goes back into the Putumayo to see what’s left in the debris. He isn’t peddling some patchouli-soaked myth or a recycled hippie dream. He’s cutting through the overgrowth with a sharp eye and a healthy dose of skepticism, retracing the map using field notes that have been gathering dust for fifty years. He’s hunting for a legendary plant called ukuè—the real-deal sacrament that the 1971 crew thought would change the world.
This isn't a history lesson. It's a grit-under-the-fingernails trek. O’Connor embeds with the Uitoto people—the folks who actually live in the jungle while the outsiders come and go—to see how the "psychedelic renaissance" looks from the ground up. He bridges the gap between ancient, quiet ritual and the high-gloss commodification of modern medicine.
The question he keeps coming back to is simple: Were these guys onto something profound, or were they just profoundly stoned?
O’Connor offers a ribald, clear-eyed corrective to the "peace and love" narrative. He kicks the doors of perception back open just to see who’s left standing in the wreckage. It’s a bittersweet, myth-shattering look at the far-crashed side of the dream. From the wreckage of the "Time Wave" to the current corporate scramble for the soul of the Amazon, O'Connor proves that some stories are worth the mileage—even if you don't like where the road ends.
"A radical, unflinching, and occasionally harsh-toking reframing... written from the far-crashed side of the Time Wave." — Jesse Jarnow, author of Heads
"O’Connor is a masterful, ribald trip master taking you on a multi-hued journey... boundless curiosity maybe didn't kill the cat—but perhaps sent the cat to places it never imagined." — Bill Minutaglio, author of The Most Dangerous Man in America
A Short, Strange Trip by John O'Connor
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