Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1467593 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 196 pages

Customer Reviews

A peek behind the curtain...
Cole, a smart young woman from Kansas, is picked up by G. Todd Skinner, a rogue psychopharmacologist who was involved for a time in producing 1/3 of the world's LSD, and swept into a world of high-power drug deals, shady exchanges with Big Brother and entheogenic (psychedelic) experiences.

The book is written from her perspective about the events that transpired over the 3 or so years that she lived with Skinner. We learn about such exciting things as: the jet-set life of a drug chemist, how to launder huge amounts of money, how the DEA protects drug creation/distribution, and the bust and subsequent trial of Skinner and accomplices. As well as: what it's like to take such exotic entheogens as Ergot (Templar) Wine, DMT, and ALD-52, the effects that these compounds and concoctions had on her physically, psychologically and spiritually, and personal realizations such as the reality of telepathy, non-duality and the fickle nature of our perceptions.

I did have a few problems with the book, however. I feel that she didn't go into as much depth as I would have appreciated throughout most of the book. It seemed like we got more of a gloss of what was actually going on. Another problem was the fact that I can't tell if the book was linear or not, though I think the latter. And, her narrative is a mixture of what happened and her philosophical interpretation of what happened, which is organized haphazardly.

All in all, it's definitely a worthwhile read. There is a lot of stuff in this book which I'm glad was released honestly to the public. She is confident in her convictions and clearly not a disinformationist. This is bound to become a collectable for psychonauts who can relate with her experiences and scholars who specialize in government shenanigans.

A Psychonaut's Guide to the Entheogenic Galaxy
I loved this fascinating book and only wished it were much longer!

Krystle Cole, An intelligent but non-worldly small town Kansas girl raised in poverty, tells her amazing recount about loving and tripping with the brilliant, sophisticated Gordon Todd Skinner, characterized by Rolling Stone magazine as the "Acid King", and who produced perhaps 90% of the world's LSD supply from his lab hidden in a deactivated nuclear missle site in America's heartland.

A Cosmic karmic tornado cast Cole as Dorothy opposite this LSD Wizard of Oz. The fictional Dorothy scolded the wizard, "You're a very bad man!", and the wizard replied sadly, "Oh, no, my dear, I...I'ma very good man - I'm just a very bad Wizard". But Skinner was the real deal: a very, VERY good wizard, but who Cole came to realize was possibly a bad man, with a load of his own karmic crap to work out.

If this was a novel and not non-fiction, the reader would find the characters and situations too over the top to be believeable, more Alice in Wonderland than Associated Press news material. But all a reader need do is Google GORDON-TODD-SKINNER and read the testimony from the LSD trial to see that fiction is once again stranger than fact.

Cole's pen paints a picture of the tapestry of her life experiences, braiding the warp of the life style of the rich LSD underground intelligentsia with the weft of a small town gal's 1000+ microgram LSD experiences. She sees her trips as psychedelic ruby slippers which showed her that it is Kansas, not Oz, that is illusory.