Terence McKenna was a psychedelic author, explorer, and showman. He was born in 1946 and grew up in Paonia, Colorado. In high school he moved to Los Altos, California and from there attended U.C. Berkeley for two years before setting off to travel. He travelled widely in Asia, South America, and Europe during his college years and his first book, co-authored with his brother Dennis McKenna, was based on their 1971 investigations of Amazonian hallucinogens. 

 

In 1975, Terence graduated from Berkeley with a degree in ecology, resource conservation, and shamanism. Soon thereafter, he and Dennis pseudonymously published one of the earliest psilocybin mushroom growing guides under the names Oss and Oeric. Terence then spent some time doing large-scale farming of psilocybin mushrooms during the 1980s.

 

In 1985, Terence co-founded the non-profit Botanical Dimensions, with Kathleen Harrison-McKenna, to collect and propagate medicinal and shamanic plants from the tropics around the world. During the 90s, he wrote and lectured widely about shamanism, ethnopharmacology, and psychoactive plants and chemicals (especially psilocybin mushrooms and DMT). His sometimes fantasic theories, lectures, and writings led some to dismiss him as a kook, some to follow him as a visionary, and others to enjoy him as an intellectual entertainer.

 

He is author of the books like  Entheogens and the Future of Religion (Contributor, 1997), Food of the Gods (1992),  Archaic Revival (1992), Trialogues at the Edge of the West (1992), Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (1976) and many more.

 

He spent the last few years of his life living in Hawaii and died of brain cancer in 2000 at the age of 53.