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As his Dodge Place visit demonstrated, McKenna’s friends recognised his abilities as an engaging raconteur. Outrageous and captivating, entertainer-prophet hybrid, part comic and part eschatologist, his capacity to amuse was matched by a proclivity to charm. In recall, tone, and rhythm, he was, at the very least, an extremely talented bullshit artist.

What did they have to lose? After a pregnant pause, the scraggly bearded beanpole makes a well-timed gesture that causes the room to explode with glee: “So we said, fine. So we’ll try it!”

“From that dawn moment when we piled out of our hammocks to look at the mushroom, something was very, very bizarre about me. Something had happened to me. And it was true. I mean . . . I was, and am, in a very strange place.” Such are the musings of Terence McKenna upon his condition in the aftermath of a much-vaunted “experiment” at the mission of La Chorrera deep in the Colombian Amazonas in March 1971.