Errata

The book has been out for ten days and there’s already an errata page. Science moves faster than ink dries. So here we are—collecting the updates, corrections, and “how did we miss that?” moments. This is the book’s living edge, a place for new findings before the next edition catches up.

More Psychedelics

Ayahuasca: Beyond DMT

The book covers 🌿 DMT’s role in ayahuasca, but the brew’s other components also deserve attention. Tetrahydroharmine (THH)’s subjective effects are distinctive and fascinating. Visit my fluid opinion.

Nausea-Free Ayahuasca™

The rosemary recipe for chronic nausea 🤢 in the Santo Daime chapter works, but it tastes almost as bad as Daime itself. A refinement is much more pleasant. Combine 700 mL of water with four drops of food-grade peppermint (Mentha piperita) essential oil, ten drops of food-grade copaiba essential oil, and a quarter cup of white vinegar (5% acetic acid). Sip as needed to help clear the palate and settle the stomach.

Kykeon 🍷 Rediscovered!

Stahl’s identification of a plausible recipe for kykeon is the kind of claim that sounds too dramatic to be real. But I encourage you to meander through the Stahl shrine and judge for yourself.

Cannabis: More Favorites 🌱 [TODO]

This one comes with a caveat the size of Colorado: My favorites are spectacular. But are they really? Even taking the same precisely measured recipes, will two people following the same protocol have similar experiences? The cannabis experimentation journal that I featured in Chapter 8 was not a fictional conceit.

Predicting 🔮 Combinations

What happens when you mix psychedelics? The book mostly sticks to substances one at a time, but I’ve built an interactive app that makes specific, falsifiable predictions about the subjective effects of combining various psychedelics. Poke at my combination predictions and see where I’ve stuck my neck out.

Books I Wish I’d Cited

Farhad Dalal’s CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Politics, Power and the Corruptions of Science crossed my desk too late to make the bibliography. Dalal argues that CBT’s science isn’t just thin, it’s corrupt: a managerialist fetish for measurement that mistakes “the countable” for “the real,” propped up by NICE, IAPT, and the broader neoliberal appetite for symptom reduction as a substitute for actual healing.

A New IFS Technique 🗣️

Cece Sykes has come up with an IFS technique that she calls Self-to-Self communication. Suppose you’re talking to your client Ann. You could say something like, “Ann, do you hear how exhausted that part of you is?” Ingenious. Or “Ann, can we listen to your part who is so exhausted?” Instead of speaking to the part, you address Ann’s Self about the part, inviting her to listen with you.

I’m not sure whether this is a new idea, but it’s new to me. I haven’t seen it in any of the IFS books I’ve read. Jump to 22:15 in her IFS Talks interview to hear her describe it.

Missed by Every 👁️ Eye

On page 323, the phrase “feitio preparation ceremony” contains a redundancy: feitio already means preparation. The corrected text should read “feitio ceremony.”¹

I know. Your copy is pristine. The margins are unblemished. The spine still has that satisfying crack. The thought of taking a pen to it feels like vandalism. But I promise you: as the author, I am formally, officially, and with great ceremony granting you permission to cross out that one little word. A single thin line through “preparation.” That’s all. The page will survive. You might even feel a small thrill of liberation. 🖊️

If you truly can’t bring yourself to do it, pencil works too. Or a very tiny sticky note. I won’t judge.

The “c.f.” Catastrophe 😭

Throughout the book, I wrote “c.f.” when I meant “cf.” At least I was consistent, which is the only dignity left to me.

The abbreviation comes from the Latin confer, “compare,” and it is a single word. It has no internal period, because there is nothing to abbreviate between the “c” and the “f.” By inserting one, I have invented a phantom word boundary and dragged a whole readership into it. Somewhere, a Latin teacher felt a disturbance in the Force.

I cannot adequately express my shame. And yet I beg you, please do not correct them. It would be too onerous, 82 capitalized and 29 lowercase offenses, an afternoon of your precious life. Allow me to carry this burden.

Another Hymn I Should Have 🚩 Flagged

In the Santo Daime chapter, a footnote calls out “Linha Do Tucum” (O Cruzeiro #108) for endorsing splitting. I should have added a second offender: “Guardião” (Hinário da Fé, #18). The shaming sits in the middle verse:

Aqui não se cria zombeteiro
Não se alimenta sofredor
Os vícios é para ser curado
Esta casa é de Deus
E Deus não tem vício nenhum

And yet, “Guardião” offers beautiful music and genuine poetry. The melody carries the shaming straight past the part of the mind that would object. It worked on me again. 🙈

The BookLife Jab: A Calm Re-Examination

Back in April, the BookLife review came in and I reacted in a way that needs unpacking. But first, the timeline.

After processing feedback from a series of 19 remarkably talented beta readers (sourced through fiverr.com), I hired Nicholas Carter, a professional editor, to do a final sweep. He completed his work by Jan 12. Feeling satisfied, I sent it off to Kirkus (Feb 17) and BookLife (Feb 20) for reviews.

Then, on Feb 23, I started recording the audiobook and worked on it through the end of March. I shouldn’t have been surprised that reading the text aloud surfaced a number of awkward phrasings and redundant clauses that had survived every prior pass, including Carter’s.² I corrected those. Later still, listening back to my own audiobook recording with a print copy open in front of me, I found even more items to fix, and continued finding them up to the offset printer’s deadline. The version of the book sold today incorporates the full pile of those later corrections.

BookLife delivered their review on Apr 2. I was disappointed to receive a grade of A- for editing, but it was understandable. Between Feb 20 and the publication date, I inserted 17.1k and deleted 20.3k words. No small amount of churn for a “final” draft. But the editing grade wasn’t what got under my skin.

“A preening quality infects Pritikin’s playfulness, which readers may find indulgent.” That line, maligning the final chapter, registered as a gut punch. The reviewer was clearly taking its excess at face value, not as performance. How should I feel about that? A parody indistinguishable from its target could signal supreme craft. But it could also mean the wink failed. My reaction was impulsive. On April 26, with the June 15 release deadline rapidly approaching, I added an entry to the end-of-book review section:

Belief: The last chapter’s satirical content reflects the author’s preening self-indulgence.

Our Position: The last chapter parodies spiritual leaders whose actual preening makes this book look positively self-effacing.

Caveat: BookLife apparently took the parody at face value. When satire lives inside the thing it mocks, some readers will simply see the thing.

Was this enough? A part of me thought so. Most of me didn’t. As of today (Sep 18), the book has only garnered 17 Goodreads reviews against a target of 30. Every time I reload the page (at least three times a day), I also wonder whether my publicist undersold the book. She favored conservative pitching angles, focusing on the first chapter, largely avoiding the two hot-button topics: psychedelics and religion.³ Or maybe that was my fault. I myself only recently gained enough distance from the manuscript to appreciate what I’d actually written.

I exiled these concerns to the background while I was consumed trying to get the word out. I’ve given 28 interviews so far. But I finally found time to revisit the BookLife review today. As preparation, I reread the review carefully. Oh shit—I’d missed something. Right before the clause I fixated on in April is this: the final chapter “edges between prank and capstone.” The word “prank” is there. What’s the opposite of a gut punch? I think I’m feeling that now.

I did not see the word “prank” in April, weigh it, and set it aside. I read past it, and I kept reading past it for five months, until today.

But doubt lingers. BookLife named the register, but proceeded to criticize the chapter anyway. So what was BookLife’s true position? We’ll probably never know. If BookLife missed the parody, the jab was appropriate. On the other hand, if BookLife credited it, as the word “prank” suggests, then I owe BookLife an apology.

I could already feel the dignity of it, the gracious mea culpa. The correction for this very page was half-written—Update, Sep 18: In the spirit of intellectual honesty that this book claims to champion, I must now—No, wait, this is Chapter 8. Wounded pride reaches for a rebuttal before it reaches for banality—reading comprehension. Imagine that: without meaning to, I’m still in character, channeling the fragile megalomaniac, enacting the performance.⁴ Both doors open to the same room, and I’m already in it. No correction needed.

Notes