Audiobook 04 – “The First Trip Report”

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Psychedelic Salon

Lorenzo Hagerty

782 episodes

2 days ago

Since 2005, Lorenzo Hagerty has been podcasting interviews and talks concerning the use and benefits of psychoactive plants and chemicals, both in their natural settings and in medical research institutions. Past speakers include Sasha Shulgin, Annie Oak, Rick Doblin, Daniel Pinchbeck, Shonagh Home, Bruce Damer, Aldous Huxley and others. And there have been over 200 programs featuring talks by Terence McKenna. Also interviews with several of the now long gone elders, such as Gary Fisher, Myron Stolaroff, and Al Hubbard have also been featured.

All content for Psychedelic Salon is the property of Lorenzo Hagerty and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Audiobook 04 – “The First Trip Report”

Psychedelic Salon

3 hours 46 minutes 26 seconds

1 month ago

Audiobook 04 – “The First Trip Report”

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Guest speakers: Lorenzo's AI Friends

PROGRAM NOTES:

London, autumn 1821. Thomas De Quincey is broke, hiding from creditors, and addicted to laudanum when a magazine offers him fifteen pounds ($2,000 in 2025 money) to write about his opium experiences. He has six weeks to finish what will become the first addiction memoir ever published Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

This historical novella takes us inside those crucial weeks of literary creation, following De Quincey as he races against deadlines while wrestling with an impossible question: How do you write honestly about drug experiences without encouraging others to repeat your mistakes? Each page he completes brings him closer to fame—and closer to accepting responsibility for consequences he cannot predict or control.

Based on historical events, The First Trip Report explores how private suffering became public art, how a desperate writer accidentally invented a new literary genre, and how one small brown bottle of laudanum helped create the template for every addiction memoir written since. It's a story about the dangerous act of confession, the ethics of influence, and the moment when pharmaceutical experience first became serious literature.