When I was in my early twenties, I gobbled up Carlos Castaneda books like they were Jelly Bellies. (I didn’t do peyote buttons. I love Jelly Bellies.)

The books are based on somebody who did, Don Juan, a Yaqui shaman who was either an actual human being or someone you’d meet after you, your own personal self, had eaten a 12-oz. package of Hershey’s Industrial Strength Peyote Buttons.

Johnny Cash, a man my family and me adored (still do) played the Space Coyote in a “Simpsons” episode inspired by the Castaneda books, when Homer goes on what we once quaintly called “a trip.”

Space Coyote eventually bites Homer on the ankle.

All of this happens because Homer eats a pepper, in a chili contest, that’s Don Juanesque. The episode remains a “Simpsons” classic–among other things, Homer breaks the cinematic wall and becomes three-dimensional–and it’s so daring that I still don’t know how they got away with it.

Here’s an excerpt.