Mothership by Greg Wrenn

A dazzling, evidence-based account of one man’s quest to heal from complex PTSD by turning to endangered coral reefs and psychedelic plants after traditional therapies failed—and his awakening to the need for us to heal the planet as well. Professor Greg Wrenn likes to tell his nature-writing students, “The ecological is personal, and the personal is ecological.” What he’s never told them is how he’s lived out those correspondences to heal from childhood abuse at the hands of his mother. Weaving together memoir and cutting-edge science, Mothership is not just a queer coming-of-age story. It’s a deeply researched account of how coral reefs and a psychedelic tea called ayahuasca helped Greg heal from complex PTSD—a disorder of trust, which makes the very act of bonding with someone else panic-inducing. From the tide pools in Florida where he grew up, to Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago and the Amazon rainforest, this is his search for wholeness when talk therapy and pharmaceuticals did little to help. Along the way, as his ecological conscience wakes up, he takes readers underwater to the last pristine reefs on earth, and into the psyche. Written with prophetic urgency, Mothership ultimately asks if doses of nature will be enough to save us before it’s too late.