According to the Times of India, “He devised a plan to ensure he could be indefinitely tripping through an archaic process known as trepanation. Apparently, he learned about an ancient process from Bart Huges, a Dutch academic in the 1960s. Mellen tried the procedure and wrote about the same in his memoir Bore Hole.”
Mellen explained to Vice in 2016, “At that time, I was broke, and I certainly couldn’t afford an electric drill, so I bought a hand trepan from a surgical instrument shop. It’s a bit like a corkscrew, really, but with a ring of teeth at the bottom. It has a point in the middle, which makes an impression on the skull, and then you turn it until the teeth are cut into the skull.”
It wasn’t until Mellen’s third attempt, in 1970, while using an electric drill that he felt he was “successful.”
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/crystalro/terrifying-things-i-learned-may-2023
