I grew up in many different countries, including Czechoslovakia, Nigeria, the UK and Holland. When I was only five or six years old I discovered that most of my grandparents, aunts and uncles on my mothers side of the family had been murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. This discovery made a deep impression, stimulating me to examine my experiences in light of such excesses of human behavior. My awareness of the Holocaust has proven a powerful motive for self-examination and for exploring the worth of various ideas and claims about human meaning and purpose.During my early teens I experimented extensively with a variety of psychoactive substances. Cannabis and LSD left a lasting impression and contributed significantly to my choice to follow an artistic career. However, it was only during the nineteen nineties that I began to have doubts about my decision to become an artist: I came to see that choice as motivated by a deeper sense of dissatisfaction and a response (perhaps inadequate) to personal problems. When I first came into contact with an authentic 'entheogenic' religious tradition, I discovered that I could use the visionary experience to examine my life and get a grip on some questions that I had, until then, failed to answer. My involvement in an entheogenic tradition (Santo Daime) led to a painful process of uncovering and questioning my beliefs and values. In the year 2000, I decided to take a sabbatical. I sold everything I owned and began traveling around South-America without really knowing where I was heading. I came to think of my journey as a 'walkabout', a concept that is forever associated in my mind with freedom and being in nature. Then, on the 11th of September 2001, I was struck by the idea of writing about my life as a way to sort things out and put them into perspective. Eventually, this became a serious preoccupation: I thought then, and today I am sure, that the events of 9-11 were not just a turning point in world affairs, but also, possibly, an opportunity to try to become more actively engaged in a meaningful dialogue about the tragic events unfolding on the global stage. Entheogens, Society & Law eventually took thirteen years to complete. I worked night shifts to finance my research and to pay for the publication. I run a small 24 hour locksmiths business in The Hague, Netherlands. Most of my works involves opening doors for people who are locked out of their houses. In a way, this work mirrors my writing which is an attempt to 'unlock' the discourse on mind-altering substances and altered states of consciousness and make the subjects interesting and meaningful to a broader audience. It also mirrors my practice as a 'facilitator' of entheogenic ceremonies, which also involves 'opening doors', albeit of perception.