Reddit mentions of The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut (Kurt's son) is an interesting non-fiction book. Basically, Mark graduates college in the 70's? and decides to try to live outside of society. He and a bunch of people all move to the Canadian wilderness. They work hard, but end up doing a fair amount of drugs in their free time. Since Mark is predisposed to Schizophrenia, the drugs end up setting him off.

He is a very charming author, and keeps you interested the whole time.

People's reactions to drugs are as individual as the people themselves.

Mark Vonnegut, son of Kurt, wrote a beautiful memoir, The Eden Express, detailing his mental breakdown following smoking some weed in the early 70's when weed was, most definitely, "pretty much just weed". Course he nibbled on some mescaline too which probably didn't help...

Fast forward a quarter of a century and in '99 there was a multitude of different strains of weed, or at least there was in San Fran and, while Baltimore is no San Fran, I'd be astounded if weed was "just weed".

People talk about 1999 like it's lost in the depths of time. It was only 16 years ago. You could get cell phones for twenty bucks! Pagers came free on a ten bucks a month contract!

If you want proof that Jay wasn't some drug king pin, that's all the proof you need right there. Jay, despite all his protestations to the contrary, was no more the "criminal element" than the man in the moon. His lack of a cell phone or pager torpedoes the wackier drug conspiracies doing the rounds.

So while there's zero proof that Adnan zonked out after smoking his first blunt, let's not pretend it couldn't have happened. He was only 17. Did it happen? Did he zonk out? No way of knowing but pretty unlikely, otherwise he'd probably have said so at his trial. Mentioning things like "the bad kid fed me full of drugs" tends to buy a smidgen of sympathy for the accused.

Amazing OP by the way, you near had me climbing down off the fence! But I'm still up here and still enjoying the view...

Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kary Mullis - "Here is a multidimensional playland of ideas from the world's most eccentric Nobel-Prize winning scientist. Kary Mullis is legendary for his invention of PCR, which redefined the world of DNA, genetics, and forensic science. He is also a surfer, a veteran of Berkeley in the sixties, and perhaps the only Nobel laureate to describe a possible encounter with aliens. A scientist of boundless curiosity, he refuses to accept any proposition based on secondhand or hearsay evidence, and always looks for the "money trail" when scientists make announcements. "

maybe this

The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity by Mark Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut's kid = "The Eden Express describes from the inside Mark Vonnegut’s experience in the late ’60s and early ’70s—a recent college grad; in love; living communally on a farm, with a famous and doting father, cherished dog, and prized jalopy—and then the nervous breakdowns in all their slow-motion intimacy, the taste of mortality and opportunity for humor they provided, and the grim despair they afforded as well."

There are others, like say. "The Hasheesh Eater".

A few reddit favorites: House of Leaves

Neuromancer

Slaughterhouse Five

1984

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Ishmael

Cryptonomicon

The Monster at the End of This Book (and that's no a joke, it was so important to me as a child, because of what it did with the story that I read it to my own son)

and a few not on that list: The Clock of the Long Now (by Stewart Brand)

Hot House (by Pete Early)

Underworld ( by Don Delillo)

Disgrace (by J.M. Coetzee)

The Eden Express (by Mark Vonnegut)

And one book I recently picked up (because I liked the author's first novel) really blew me away: The Unnamed (by Joshua Ferris).

This might interest you: The Eden Express, by Mark Vonnegut, telling of his experiences with schizophrenia. Mark is the son of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.