Tripping on Utopia

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

By: Benjamin Breen

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

A Los Angeles Times Bestseller

One of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2024

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.

"Brilliant and original."―Charles King, author of Gods of the Upper Air and Midnight at the Pera Palace

"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.

"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." —Lindsey Fitzharris, New York Times bestselling author of The Facemaker

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

"In this strikingly original new history of psychedelic science, Benjamin Breen focuses on its origins in the interwar years alongside the expansive utopian projects of that era: anthropologists studying how cultures change, cybernetic dreams of reprogramming the brain, and the fascination with other wonder drugs such as hormones, truth serums and tranquilisers. The result is a thrilling history of ideas, deeply rooted in archival research and narrated with infectious energy and enthusiasm. Tripping on Utopia is full of surprises and beautiful writing."
—Mike Jay, author or Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind

“The hidden history of how psychedelic drugs spread from CIA clinics and chic parties into the American counter-culture is not quite as wild as an LSD trip — but as this book makes clear, it's close. Deeply researched but also highly imaginative, Tripping on Utopia uncovers a maze of startling connections among some of the strange and fascinating characters who shaped a dazzling chapter of American cultural history.”—Stephen Kinzer, author of Poisoner in Chief

"A captivating tale of scientific idealists and Cold War spies, love triangles and tripping dolphins, and the never-ending search to maximize human potential and make the world a better place. Deeply researched and alive with extraordinary human stories, this book will change your mind about the origins of the counterculture and the people who shaped it."—Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

Completely wild

Completely wild history of a corner of social science and two giants related to it. The name dropping in here, in a good way, is off the charts. Incredible how many people they touched and influenced.

Grandma, When Do We Get to the Acid?

Tripping on Utopia felt like having your grandmother tell you the history of psychedelics: respectable, careful, occasionally interesting, but somehow draining all the danger, weirdness, and cultural electricity out of it. Everybody’s taking acid, but somehow you’re still stuck looking at vacation slides.

The book starts earlier than most psychedelic histories, which gives it a different perspective. Unfortunately, it feels like it takes half the book just to reach the 1960s. I appreciated the background, but after a while I wanted to politely ask Grandma if we could skip ahead to when things got weird.

More than anything, this felt like a biography of Margaret Mead with some psychedelics mixed in. To be fair, she seems to have been at least peripherally involved in just about everything, and some of those connections are genuinely interesting. But there were stretches when I wondered whether the psychedelics were ever coming back or whether Margaret and I were simply settling into a life together.

There is good material here. It covers plenty of the familiar high points and gives the less familiar early history some attention. My issue was how quietly it all went by. For a subject full of strange people, wild ideas, and questionable decisions, the telling felt surprisingly well behaved. Even the questionable decisions sounded like they had been approved by a committee.

I finished it, and I’m glad I picked up some history I hadn’t heard before. I just wasn’t often eager to hit play again. If you’re particularly interested in Margaret Mead and the people around early psychedelic research, you’ll probably enjoy it more than I did. I wanted a little more energy and weirdness. Grandma had more slides.

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!