Barritt recounts his life in and around the ‘psychedelic age’ from the early 1960s to the late 1970s (which continues from now through the ages). In this time scale, Barritt travelled early on to India, became involved in dope smuggling and distribution, served time, and moved amongst some of the ‘key figures’ in the ‘literary’, ‘art’, and ‘drug’ movements of the 1960s and 1970s, including in particular Timothy Leary. Barritt offers much insight into the processing and use value of Leary’s 8-circuit nervous system diagram; this book taken alongside Robert Anton Wilson’s ‘Cosmic Trigger’ provides a multiplied view. In this way, Leary’s work appears as an ongoing collaboration – for example ‘patients’ were very early on in his career designated as ‘research assistants’, not only in respect of the relationships involved but also to emphasise the primacy of language in human perception in recent history (ie the last 10,000 – 100,000 years or so). Barritt and Leary’s adventures in Algeria may well be too much for some people who have become hemmed in by language, while others who have experienced time travel and the dissolution of the defensive ego will be delighted and inspired to hear such mysteries recounted.
Barritt writes in a dream; like William Burroughs, whose writing Barritt admires, the prose in ‘Road to Excess’ lifts off the page and the reader will see ‘how things happen and are made to happen’.
This copy is signed by the author.
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