Kimon de Greef & Patrick Radden Keefe

Kimon de Greef discusses The Ego Trip with Patrick Radden Keefe — a gripping, deeply reported account of a Mexican doctor who claimed to have revived an indigenous ritual: smoking the secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad, which releases a potent psychedelic known as "the God molecule."

As the doctor's fame grew, so did his movement — drawing psychonauts, spiritual seekers, and PTSD sufferers to Sonora in a wave of psychedelic tourism. But in his wake came stories of extreme dosing, abusive behavior, and deaths. The indigenous people who had lent their imprimatur to his narrative of ancestral tradition conspicuously avoided the substance. Pharmaceutical companies raced to harness its therapeutic potential. And evidence of the ancestral origins he claimed appeared increasingly questionable.

Part true crime, part cult story, part cultural history — a chronicle of a messianic figure and a larger investigation into spiritual desolation in our age.