Psilocybin Summer

An excerpt from Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna by Graham St John

Jul 31, 2025

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This excerpt is taken from Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (MIT Press, Sept 30, 2025) by Graham St John (Foreword by Erik Davis). It takes up the story of the breakthrough in Berkeley in 1975, when the McKenna brothers discovered a method to cultivate the Psilocybe cubensis spores they had retrieved from La Chorrera, in the Amazon basin, in 1971. For Terence, who is completing his BSc degree at UC Berkeley and is in the immediate wake of a relationship fall out, the discovery marked a new era of transmissions from the mushroom muse and coincided with a new romance. The long-fantasised return to the Amazon is revealed as a driving mid-seventies motif.

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A guest post by

Graham St John

Vibeologist, anthropologist and author of Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna (MITP, Sep 30, 2025). Excerpts, preorder options and subscription info at: https://www.edgecentral.net/terence-mckenna-biography