Tripping on Utopia

Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science

By: Benjamin Breen

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley.

"It was not the Baby Boomers who ushered in the first era of widespread drug experimentation. It was their parents."

Far from the repressed traditionalists they are often painted as, the generation that survived the second World War emerged with a profoundly ambitious sense of social experimentation. In the '40s and '50s, transformative drugs rapidly entered mainstream culture, where they were not only legal, but openly celebrated. American physician John C. Lilly infamously dosed dolphins (and himself) with LSD in a NASA-funded effort to teach dolphins to talk. A tripping Cary Grant mumbled into a Dictaphone about Hegel as astronaut John Glenn returned to Earth.

At the center of this revolution were the pioneering anthropologists—and star-crossed lovers—Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Convinced the world was headed toward certain disaster, Mead and Bateson made it their life’s mission to reshape humanity through a new science of consciousness expansion, but soon found themselves at odds with the government bodies who funded their work, whose intentions were less than pure. Mead and Bateson's partnership unlocks an untold chapter in the history of the twentieth century, linking drug researchers with CIA agents, outsider sexologists, and the founders of the Information Age.

As we follow Mead and Bateson’s fractured love affair from the malarial jungles of New Guinea to the temples of Bali, from the espionage of WWII to the scientific revolutions of the Cold War, a new origin story for psychedelic science emerges.

©2024 Benjamin Breen (P)2024 Grand Central Publishing

Critic reviews

"Benjamin Breen has crafted a brilliant and original history of the chemical dreamscape of American democracy. With a driving narrative and unforgettable cast of characters, Tripping on Utopia resurrects the promise, dangers, and sheer weirdness of one of the twentieth century's unsung frontiers of discovery: the quest to change the world by altering humans' perception of it." (Charles King, author of Gods of the Upper Air and Midnight at the Pera Palace)

“Tripping on Utopia is epic in its scope, cinematic in its rendering. This masterpiece of storytelling is underpinned by impeccable research and extraordinary material that will have you questioning everything you think you know about America's history of psychedelic drug use. Breen is an exciting new voice in narrative non-fiction.” (Lindsey Fitzharris, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Facemaker)

"Part biography, part intellectual history, this kaleidoscopic book reveals the century-long search for psychological liberation at the heart of today’s fascination with psychedelics. It’s a marvel of scholarship and impossible to put down." (Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism)

fascinating history and essential to understanding the 20th century

the narrator of this incredible history is excellent. the scholarship and research for the book is solid and the connections made are revelatory and important. so often people stay in the bubble of a specific story and fail to remind us of other threads of thought or counter arguments but this one remarkably does and I will continue to cite and share from it for years to come.

The good of the greater..

..isn’t always necessarily so. The chronological explanation of events were well documented by the author, making it easier to understand. The narrator had good expression; it was a pleasant listening experience.

A good book

You could just get lost in lost life Margaret Mead. So I suggest you do it!

Interesting cast of characters

This book will be of interest to anyone who is fascinated by psychedelics and in particular the history of LSD in the mid-twentieth century. The book focuses in particular on Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, along with Timothy Leary. A major theme is the role of the CIA in research on LSD. Many of the characters either worked for the CIA or were in the social orbit of those who did. My feeling is that the author sort of hoped he would find evidence of connections between Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson and the CIA, but that all he was able to substantiate were connections with some people who did work for the CIA. Bateson and Mead did work for the government in WWII, though.

Fluid thread

Enjoyed how the author followed what appears to be the thread of. MM & GB life and philosophy

Revealing and comparing my own lifetime experiences

The lack of neutral acceptance in the some time snarky intonations of the narrator which will require me to buy and read the book.