Hello World!

Reflections, Housekeeping, and a Reintroduction

Hi people,

I have had a welcome influx of new subscribers recently. Given that, I want to share reflections on writing this newsletter, do a little housekeeping, and reintroduce myself for those new people who don’t know my past work. 

First the housekeeping: 

Sometimes, readers write to me saying they want to read the complete articles but can’t afford paid subscriptions at this time. I’ve been giving these people free access. If you fall into this category, I want to offer you a complementary subscription also. Please write me (daniel.pinchbeck@gmail.com). You can contribute a smaller amount if you want, via PayPal. Or, if you are truly broke or in a tight squeeze, I am happy to comp you.

Generally, the Substack subscription model has been very good for me — a God send! It provides me with a modest, slowly growing income. My work tends to fall outside of institutional structures in ways that make my life difficult.

As a thinker who seriously explores far-out topics like psychic phenomena, ETs, crop circles, psychedelics, the occult, indigenous prophecy, anarchism, etc, I lack access to the academic world, the literary establishment, or the mainstream media. The gatekeepers have barred the gates. I seem to have a rebellious psychology, dedicated to the truth as I see it. I tend to criticize even those institutions and individuals that might help or support me. I am witnessing this tendency now, trying to tame it.

Beyond the financial benefits, the subscription model has had surprising psychological benefits. I know that I write for a community of people who value and care about my work. We share a fascination with a similar complex of ideas and possibilities. I feel, also, a responsibility to go deeper, to excavate more of my ideas and philosophy for these dedicated folks. 

In past books, I developed many thoughts to a certain level but not completely. Now, in the newsletter, I can extend those tendrils of thought out further. I can see where they want to go and what other new ideas and bits of information they may attract or ensnare along the way. 

Mainly, I want to express gratitude for those of you who support my work via subscription. I am always interested in hearing from you. I am looking for new topics to cover and I appreciate well-meaning criticism as well as opposing views. 

Reintroduction

I have written and spoken about my personal journey so many times that it feels a bit rote at this point. I grew up in New York City, between the East Village, SoHo, and the Upper West Side. My father, Peter Pinchbeck, was an abstract painter and sculptor who moved from England in the early 1960s to pursue his artistic dreams. My mother, Joyce Johnson, is a writer of memoirs, novels, and nonfiction who was for many years a book editor. She published radical books in the 1960s including Abbie Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of It and Julius Lester’s Look Out Whitey! black power’s gon’ get your mama. She is best known for her memoir, Minor Characters, on her early life, friendships, and her 18-month relationship with Beat Generation avatar Jack Kerouac. 

In 1986, I dropped out of Wesleyan University and started working in magazines as an editor and writer. I wrote for The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, Wired, Rolling Stone, Esquire, ArtForum, etc. I co-founded and co-edited a literary journal, Open City. At one point, I was one of “Thirty Under Thirty” destined to change the culture, according to The New York Times Magazine. 

In my late twenties, I fell into a severe depression, a crisis of meaning and purpose. I recalled psychedelic experiences from college and decided to experiment with them again, writing about my journeys for magazines as a way to fund my research. At the time, these substances were very taboo. Psychedelics were considered ridiculous, somehow beneath contempt, as well as being legally repressed. 

Taking mushrooms and LSD again, I found my trips revelatory, astonishing. I was fascinated. I wanted to understand why postmodern post-industrial civilization seemed tightly organized to suppress them on multiple levels – through ridicule as well as legal interdiction. This line of inquiry led me to my first book, Breaking Open the Head (2002). 

On assignment from Vibe, I went to Gabon for initiation with the Bwiti tribe who use iboga, a very powerful, long-lasting psychedelic as their sacrament. I stayed with the Secoya, a small indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon who preserved an ancient tradition with ayahuasca. I visited the Mazatecs in Oaxaca, Mexico, where the modern world rediscovered psilocybin mushrooms in the 1950s. I interviewed the legendary psychedelic chemist Sasha Shulgin. I went to the Palenque conference on entheobotany, started by Terence McKenna, and smoked DMT for the first time. In 2000, I made my initial visit to Burning Man, as a journalist for Rolling Stone. 

While researching Breaking Open the Head, I had a series of shocking paranormal and psychic experiences. Taken cumulatively, these convinced me that the shamanic, alchemical, or occult understanding of the nature of reality is more valid than the rational / materialist view.