The 1988–1989 Hawaiian mushroom trip that shattered Terence McKenna's relationship with psychedelics is detailed in Graham St. John's biography *Strange Attractor*. During a routine five grams session with wife Kathleen Harrison, a violent storm triggered an uncontrollable "nothingness" that left McKenna howling in fetal position, unable to surrender to ego-loss as Harrison did. He emerged declaring "No… no meaning," a classic "dark night of the soul" for a man who'd championed the "heroic dose."

Afterward, McKenna never tripped with Harrison again and rarely used mushrooms, though he publicly still advocated high doses. Dennis McKenna marks this as the start of his estrangement from plant teachers. The crisis echoed earlier La Chorrera visions and Timewave Zero prophecies, while cannabis became psychological maintenance. Harrison, later calling him a "brilliant narcissist," noted his cerebral style bypassed tenderness and his public "rap" became a prison.

The marriage collapsed amid speaking-circuit success, and the late-1980s cultural shift toward postmodern incredulity mirrored his private unraveling. La Chorrera's 1971 experiment had birthed Timewave Zero's 2012 singularity, but the Hawaii trip revealed the cost of prophetic authority: a master cracked by the very substance he'd urged others to embrace.