By: Jordan Blake
If the hero’s journey is a familiar path paved with triumph, transformation, and tidy narrative arcs, Anti-Hero’s Journey is the molotov cocktail lobbed straight through its stained-glass window. Written by war medic turned psychedelic guide Ben “Doc” Askins, the book is less a memoir than a literary trapdoor—equally absurd and profound, at times brutal and liberating, offering moments of offense and enlightenment.
So how does one write a book that challenges its readers? By dancing across a razor’s edge, eyes wide open, middle fingers raised, and heart cracked wide.
“Truth is Grotesque and Hilarious. So Is This Book.”
Askins doesn’t pretend to walk the line between sacred and profane—he dismantles it. “I didn’t try to balance anything,” he says. “I just stopped pretending they were different.” That’s the tightrope of awakening he writes about: a confronting and exhilarating swing between profound insight and sometimes utter absurdity.
Humor isn’t a decoration—it’s his delivery system. “Humor is the spoonful of sugar that helps the existential dread go down,” he explains. “One second I’m quoting Wittgenstein, the next I’m making off-color jokes. Because life is absurd.”
In that absurdity, Askins finds clarity. To him, laughter and despair aren’t opposites; they’re partners in a deeper, truer awakening. “You’ll laugh until you cry, cry until you laugh, and then you get to rest. At that point of stillness. That is the Zero point.”
A Psychedelic Whitewater Ride… Without the Kayak
Anti-Hero’s Journey is not written like a traditional memoir or spiritual book—and that’s exactly the point. Askins describes it as a “psychedelic simulator on how to exit the simulation—all in just 150 pages.” There are no tidy lessons or familiar beats. Instead, it’s a challenging and unpredictable experience, and the reader doesn’t get a kayak.
“It’s intended to be a unique experience,” he says. “Lieutenant General Martin R. Steele told me, ‘I’ve never read anything like it and will refer to it as I journey through life.’ You know how many books you have to read on the way to becoming a three-star general?”
This isn’t a flex—it’s a dare. “Or just go back to reading all those safe, little hero’s journeys with all the same characters and all the same stories in slightly different spandex pants, you might prefer that.”
No Safety Nets. No Censorship. No Going Back.
Were there moments when Askins felt he went too far—or not far enough? “Every page. And not once,” he says. “If you’re not offending somebody, you’re probably just publishing LinkedIn posts.” For Askins, going “far enough” was never the goal. “This book’s a tightrope over a bottomless pit and I left the safety net at home.”
Every sentence is an invitation—and a provocation. His goal? To crack the reader’s armor wide open. “If you’re not clutching your pearls and wondering if I need help, I didn’t go far enough,” he says. “And neither have you yet…”
The Voice in Your Head Is… a Drunk Philosopher?
When you read Anti-Hero’s Journey, whose voice should you imagine whispering—or screaming—through the lines? Askins offers several options: “Alan Watts with PTSD. Deadpool with a theology degree. Your favorite teacher on mushrooms or your worst enemy in therapy.”
But ultimately, it’s something closer and more haunting: “Me, but in your voice. The real one. The one you haven’t heard since before the lies. Sitting next to you. Handing you a shovel and saying, ‘We’re gonna dig—grave or garden, you choose.’”
It’s this deeply personal, often uncomfortable intimacy that makes the book feel like both a confrontation and a companion.
Laughter as Liberation, Not Escape
Askins never worried that humor might undercut the heaviness of his experiences. Quite the opposite. “Humor’s not a distraction. It’s a weapon,” he says. “Irony is the knife that skins sacred cows. If you can’t laugh at your suffering, you’re still owned by it.”
To him, humor isn’t about making light of trauma. It’s how we reclaim power from it. “Humor isn’t downplaying—it’s decoding. It’s how we smuggle truth past the trauma gatekeepers.”
That subversive, gallows humor permeates every page of Anti-Hero’s Journey, making it feel like a therapy session in a war zone—or a sacred sermon in a dive bar.
When the Medic Becomes the Mirror
Askins’ voice doesn’t come from theory—it comes from blood, bodies, and battlefield trauma. He’s seen life end in his hands and seen life reawaken in others who had all but given up. His narrative perspective is born from contradictions: soldier and healer, clinician and mystic, destroyer and mirror.
“I’ve watched people die because of actions I’ve taken and begged people to live in spite of the actions they’ve taken,” he says. “I’ve written prescriptions for Zoloft and read the Tao. I’ve tapered the Zoloft and prescribed the Tao too.”
The result? A voice that defies genre or expectation—a “stitched-together Frankenstein of compassion, gallows humor, and PTSD-induced clarity.” Sometimes it’s just a conversation “between what’s left of ‘me’ and the Zero with a Thousand Faces.”
Unmasking the Lie. One Page at a Time.
If you’re looking for answers, this book might not give them to you. But it will challenge the false premises hiding your questions.
Askins doesn’t offer enlightenment. He offers a mirror—and a hammer. “I wrote the book to unwrite you,” he says. “It’s a wrecking ball to the ego, an irony-infused therapy session for the soul, and a direct challenge to everything you think you know about who you are.”
What’s left after the collapse? That’s up to you. Grave or garden. Truth or illusion. Identity or emptiness.
But one thing is certain: you likely won’t finish Anti-Hero’s Journey the same person you were when you started.
If that person even existed in the first place.
