"My personal mission statement: 'The study and use of marijuana in all its myriad forms; How to grow and refine the sacred herb and, wherever possible, get shit faced in the pot-growing strongholds of the planet.'"

In 1973, aged 17, Gerald Taylor left his New Zealand home and didn't return for four years. The story of what happened in between is Jesus Weed -- a tale of travel, lapsed Catholicism, chess and the strongest marijuana known to man.

Whether he's seduced by mud wrestlers in San Francisco, trained as an invisible assassin by an Irish druid, kidnapped and held as a sex slave in Mexico or being taught the finer points of resin production by Afghan shepherds, you will not believe the kind of scrapes in which our young pioneer finds himself. And the most unbelievable thing of all? Every word of it is true.