Bureau Of Lost Culture: The Man Who Drilled a Hole in his Head (13/02/2022)
Cannabis, mescaline and LSD were not enough for Joey Mellen in his quest to expand his consciousness beyond the furthest limits ‘in search of the miraculous’. So in 1968 he used an electric drill to ‘self-trepan’ himself by boring a hole into his skull so that he would ‘never come down’.
Now a very lively 82, Joey visits the Bureau to tell how an upper middle class English public schoolboy tuned in, turned on and dropped out, became a psychonautic beatnik and carried out the act of self surgery that made him infamous in countercultural London.
Along the way we did deep into acid evangelism, the blood chemistry of the ego and the strange life of Bart Hughes, the dutchman whose theories inspired Joey, Amanda Fielding and various others to seek enlightenment through trepanation.
Don’t do this at home..
Joey’s book Bore Hole
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