End to Beginning

At the edge, when even breath became a struggle, Tanner Critz found himself laid low-not in the wilderness, but in his own home, a shell of the man who once walked the Appalachian Trail. End to Beginning is a raw and luminous account of what happened next: a journey not across mountains, but into the depths of memory, mystery, and healing.

Guided by a friend, he enters the world of Ayahuasca ceremony in a suburban house, far from the jungles of South America but no less potent. The book recounts four transformative retreats over the course of two-and-a-half years, where the author battles despair, dredges up long-buried guilt, and confronts both his past and his potential with astonishing vulnerability.

There are no easy revelations here. What unfolds is equal parts psychedelic, psychological, and mythic: visions of flesh, heart, energy, and power. As the ceremonies progress, Critz learns to let go-not just of illness, but of the identity that illness had transformed. What emerges is not the return of an old self, but the shaping of a new one.

Told with warmth, grit, and flashes of the surreal, End to Beginning is a memoir of healing, fatherhood, and initiation into life after collapse. It stands as a companion piece to End to Ending-a second trail, walked inward, toward the root of suffering and the strange, luminous possibility of joy.