I know, I know: Those words—”Holocaust” and “psychedelic”—don’t usually go with one another. But really, I can’t think of a better way to put it. And it’s a story that I never would have expected would happen to me, not in a million years. But it did. It’s all true.
Death Trip is a work of narrative nonfiction, a book about leveraging the life-changing power of psychedelics to come to grips with the trauma that my childhood—and deeper still, the experiences of my ancestors—implanted in me. Ultimately it’s about recognizing a lifelong sense of being an outsider, facing it squarely, and waking up instead to a life of love, acceptance, and possibility.
Oh, and it’s just a bonkers story. Let’s just say I got way more than I bargained for.
Along the way, Death Trip leapfrogs from the Washington, D.C. of the 1970s to the White War—World War I’s astonishingly brutal (and largely forgotten) Alpine Front—to the psychedelic healing underground of present-day Portland, OR. It ends in Budapest, in a heart-rending confrontation with the ghosts of the Holocaust and a reckoning with how it forever altered the lives of those who survived it.
I believe with all my heart that there’s a large potential audience for Death Trip. And let’s be clear here: It’s not a self-help book. But whether or not you’re Jewish, whether or not you’re interested in psychedelics or the Holocaust or the World Wars, this book is a beacon for those who have not felt they belonged to this life.
Want to know more? Sign up below for my Substack. Follow me on Instagram. And if you have friends interested in the healing potential of psychedelics, or Jewish trauma, or any of the other themes I name here, tell them about Death Trip.