Synopsis: Fishers of Men
In the tradition of first-person psychedelic memoirs like Daniel Pinchbeck’s 2012 and gritty, no-holds-barred coming-of-age stories like Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries, Adam Elenbaas’s Fishers of Men chronicles, with unflinching honesty and an elegant narrative voice, his journey from intense self-destruction and crippling depression to self-acceptance, self-awareness, and spiritual understanding, through participation in mind-expanding, and ultimately healing, ayahuasca ceremonies in South America and beyond.
From his troubled and rebellious youth as a Methodist minister’s son in northern Minnesota, to his sex and substance abuse–fueled downward spiral in Chicago, culminating in a depressive breakdown, Elenbaas is plagued by a feeling of emptiness and a desperate search for meaning for most of his young life. After hitting rock bottom at his grandfather’s house in rural Michigan, a chance experience with psychedelic mushrooms convinces him that he must change his ways to achieve the sense of peace he has always so deeply desired. Several subsequent psychedelic experiences convince him to go on a quest to South America and take part in a shamanic ceremony, where he consumes ayahuasca, a psychedelic jungle vine revered for its spiritual properties.
Over the course of nearly fifty ayuhuasca ceremonies during four years, Elenbaas discovers the truth about his own life and past, and begins to mend himself from the inside out. An engrossing travelogue of a young man’s desperate fall and spiritual reconnection to life, Fishers of Men tells not only Elenbaas’ own story, but the simple truths for a richer existence that he learned along the way (which range from “I drink a lot of water” and “I stretch out” to “I do not believe in free love”).
A memoir not just of survival, but of rebirth, Fishers of Men is never self-indulgent, and never reaches for trite answers or pat explanations. Instead, it is the gripping, heartbreaking, and yet essentially uplifting story of how we can transcend our past, and create our own meaning in life.
--Tarcher/Penguin
See excerpt below.
From his troubled and rebellious youth as a Methodist minister’s son in northern Minnesota, to his sex and substance abuse–fueled downward spiral in Chicago, culminating in a depressive breakdown, Elenbaas is plagued by a feeling of emptiness and a desperate search for meaning for most of his young life. After hitting rock bottom at his grandfather’s house in rural Michigan, a chance experience with psychedelic mushrooms convinces him that he must change his ways to achieve the sense of peace he has always so deeply desired. Several subsequent psychedelic experiences convince him to go on a quest to South America and take part in a shamanic ceremony, where he consumes ayahuasca, a psychedelic jungle vine revered for its spiritual properties.
Over the course of nearly fifty ayuhuasca ceremonies during four years, Elenbaas discovers the truth about his own life and past, and begins to mend himself from the inside out. An engrossing travelogue of a young man’s desperate fall and spiritual reconnection to life, Fishers of Men tells not only Elenbaas’ own story, but the simple truths for a richer existence that he learned along the way (which range from “I drink a lot of water” and “I stretch out” to “I do not believe in free love”).
A memoir not just of survival, but of rebirth, Fishers of Men is never self-indulgent, and never reaches for trite answers or pat explanations. Instead, it is the gripping, heartbreaking, and yet essentially uplifting story of how we can transcend our past, and create our own meaning in life.
--Tarcher/Penguin
See excerpt below.
