Review of HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND
What tripping on LSD and shrooms can offer
Psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin (aka shrooms) have a complicated and tortured history here in the United States. But one thing is clear: psychedelics are different than other drugs like uppers and downers that are commonly at the center of addiction crises. Have you ever heard a story about a shroom addiction crisis? No, I bet you haven’t.
Doing a deep dive into psychedelics, Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence, explains all the details about the history, use, and applications of psychedelics showing why they’re fundamentally different than other drugs.
In classic Pollan style, How to Change Your Mind feels like several books in one. He begins with the varied histories of LSD and psilocybin, followed by his classic memoir style of his own drug trips, and then closes out with what could be a whole separate book on the science of psychedelics and their therapeutic applications.
In the past decade, psychedelics have been in the news as new legislation has allowed for continued academic research on the beneficial effects of psilocybin in particular, with academic power-houses like Johns Hopkins University leading the charge. It’s a shame, really, that politics put a temporary end to research in the 1960’s and scheduled these drugs unnecessarily as those without any therapeutic potential.
Which, we knew then and now to be completely false.
As Pollan shows in the sections on the science of psychedelics, this class of drugs has astounding therapeutic potential for chronic ailments like addiction and depression. It’s often the case that a single guided trip by a trained therapist can alleviate years of suffering. Something that is obviously at odds with a psychotherapy industry that costs patients hundreds of dollars weekly and requires an indefinite timeline.
Psychedelics are also non-addictive, allowing for a truly consciousness altering experience with little desire to trip again in a short timeframe. Most people who take psychedelics don’t do so daily or even weekly or monthly. There’s just little motivation to. But interestingly science shows that our brains become more explorative and connected when tripping – very similar in ways to which a child’s brain functions early in development. This is likely why folks that have tripped report changes in a trait called “openness to experience” long after the immediate effects have subsided.
Overall, I liked this book but some parts felt a bit repetitive (e.g., there are three different history chapters which felt like different drafts of a single chapter). It’s a classic Pollan style book, and offers a fascinating take on psychedelics, both for those who have and have not tripped before.
Published: May 2018
Format: Paperback
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear by Carl Hart (2021)
This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan (2021)
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