Terence McKenna: The Lost Interview – 1/10

Terence McKenna’s Last Trip The “altered statesman” emerged from Leary’s long shadow to push a magical blend of psychedelics, technology, and revelatory rap. He had less time than he knew. By Erik Davis In May 1999, the psychedelic bard Terence McKenna returned to his jungle hideaway on Hawaii’s Big Island after six weeks on the road. He was relieved to be home. Since claiming the mantle of Tripster King from Timothy Leary, McKenna has earned his keep as a stand-up shaman on the lecture circuit, regaling groups of psychonauts, seekers, and boho intellectuals with tales involving mushrooms, machine consciousness, and the approaching end of history. Weird stuff, and wonderfully told. But the teller was getting tired of the routine. A recluse at heart, McKenna wanted nothing more than to surf the Web, read, polish up some manuscripts, and enjoy the mellow pace of Hawaii with his new girlfriend, Christy Silness, a kind young woman he had met the year before at an ethnobotanical conference in the Yucatán. Soon after McKenna arrived home, however, he was hit with ferocious headaches. He’d long suffered from migraines, but nothing in his 52 years could match the ice picks now skewering his skull. On May 22, after dragging himself to the john to vomit, McKenna’s mind exploded. Hallucinations cut in like shards of glass; taste and smell were bent out of shape; and he was swallowed up by a labyrinth that, as he later put it, “somehow partook of last week’s dreams, next week’s fears …

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