Review of How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence By Michael Pollan

Below is my review of Michael Pollan's book as submitted to the editor for the April, 2019 issue of The Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine.

Mind Blowing

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence

By Michael Pollan

Penguin Press, 2018

By Richard Morchoe

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan was not what someone of my generation might have expected.  Baby boomers would remember the subject by conjuring up pictures in their minds of news reports from Woodstock and people in tie dyed tee shirts as well as friends telling of their “Trips.”  That is, of course, if they were not doing it themselves.

As the 60s became the 70s, the LSD culture that had been part of hippiedom seemed to wane.  True, there may have been a persistence invisible to the general society, but few would have known.

Is Mr. Pollan writing about a resurgence of the counterculture?  Not at all.  Has he taken notice of the “Microdosing” of psychedelics that is the rage in Silicon Valley among techies?  Yes, but only in passing.

How to Change Your Mind is a history of all that has happened in the development of substances that do change the mind, but it is much more than that.  It is also an exploration of what the drugs can and are doing and it is personal.

The author and I are baby boomers with him being five years my junior.  This leads me to wonder about his motivation.  When the “Summer of Love” happened in 1967, he can’t have known anyone who had “dropped acid” at the time.  Scott MacKenzie’s lyrics beginning with “If you’re going to San Francisco” would have had little meaning to him as he would not have known someone wearing “flowers in their hair.”

Then again, in his youth, the man was braver than I.  No matter who was doing what around me, your reviewer never touched the stuff while Pollan ate magic mushrooms with his future wife.

If you were looking for someone to tell us where the world now stands with mind altering substances and how we got here, you could do worse than Michael Pollan.

Pollan is the author of several books, probably best known for the Omnivore’s Dilemma, an engaging discussion of where our food comes from and how it affects us.  The book was controversial as he is not for many of the practices of industrial agriculture.

Pollan’s attitude toward food is popular enough with many and thus is hardly out of the mainstream.  At this point in time, psychedelics are nowhere near that, yet the subject matter is not really a departure for someone with as inquisitive a mind.  Who knows, it may have been unanswered questions from his experiments with his partner that spurred his interest, or not.

Albert Hofmann did not invent psychedelics, indigenous people of the Americas had been doing mushrooms for centuries.  He did discover what we know as LSD.  Hofmann himself may not have set out to get high, but he did.

The Swiss research chemist partook of the molecule in 1943.  His experience, not completely pleasant, convinced him that the substance would be of no little value to psychiatry.  Hofmann, according to Pollan, did not foresee that it would also become a “pleasure drug.”  Yet he understood it as a response to a spiritually impoverished society needing a “spiritual balm.” He was not a soulless scientist.

LSD would be studied seriously in the academic and medical world along with mushrooms and derivatives.   The famous novelist, Aldous Huxley would write of his 1953 experience with Mescaline in his book The Doors of Perception.

Interestingly, Bill Wilson, also known as Bill W, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous was interested in psychedelics as possibly part of the program due to its spiritual aspects.

Of course, Timothy Leary was inevitable and LSD, Mescaline, Psilocybin et al went out into the world.  The world got to see it all through the eyes of the media and pushback occurred such that the substances would become scheduled by the government.

The hibernation appears to be over and thus Mr. Pollan’s book.  He documents where the study and experimentation is now headed.  The author personally became part of his research.  He does also admit to some, not demons, but questions maybe and “there are moments when curiosity gets the better of fear.”

Participation would be necessary as all you have are the subjective experiences of study volunteers, as well documented as they may be.

Taking the substances without some guidance and in the wrong environment, what is referred to as “set and setting,” could be a problem.  A guide is necessary as the result could be a “bad trip” with the wrong person or none at all.  Pollan documented his search for a discerning chaperone.

The author would use LSD, Psilocybin, and 5-MeO-DMT (found on a psychoactive toad species and is obscure, a tribute to Pollan’s dedication and daring that he would do it).  The effects on him would vary and be a learning experience.

When he was taking LSD, he asked the woman guiding him if they could change the music that accompanied the session.  Music was part of each experience and had run to New Age and Pollan found it bland.  He and the guide agreed on a Bach unaccompanied cello suite.  Michael described it as mournful and it is somber. 

The author began his recounting of the “trip” by writing, “Never before has a piece of music pierced me as deeply as this one did now” and went on to wax eloquent on what it evoked.  One might wonder how valid it all was and they would not be alone.  In a later recollection, he would think, “Fool, you were on drugs.” 

Reflecting on it further led him to write “everything I experienced, I experienced…” and in a session with the guide, was able to realize what he could take from it.

After the voyages to inner space, How to Change Your Mind explores what psychedelics can do for the greater world in the chapter, “Trip Treatment.”  It begins with the story of the latter days of Patrick Mettes.  Patrick would participate in a trial with

psilocybin at N.Y.U.  As Pollan puts it, it “would change his death.”

Mettes had a virulent cancer and, according to Michael, “was buckling under the weight” of the chemo and “the dawning realization that he might not survive.”  Patrick’s end of life journey is lovely to read.

The rest of Trip Treatment speaks to research in addiction and depression and though there is promise, that is all there is at this point and much is to be done.  

So, should we all be thinking about the possibility of seeking a change of mind?  The last chapter has a debate about the purpose of it all.  We might applaud uses that lead to amelioration of suffering, but is that it?  Is the promise that all the researchers after Hofmann saw not to be realized?  Will we not see psychedelics be used, in the words of Bob Jesse, for “the betterment of well people?”

The whole experience did change Pollan’s mind.  He ends with, “Mysteries abide.  But this I can say with certainty: the mind is vaster, and the world ever so much more alive, than I knew when I began.”