How to Change Your Mind is quite a different pace from the author's other books; but the result is excellent nonetheless. I typically had read Michael Pollan for his food non-fiction works but How to Change Your Mind is a personal journey of psychedelics that the author bolsters with history and science to help the reader learn about a subject that is seemingly wrongly a taboo. There's a lot of ground covered in the book and the level of objectivity is to be admired. For a person looking to learn about psychadelics, the mind and perspective on a balanced life; this is worth the read.
The book is split really into 3 parts. The author gives a quick introduction to how he came to want to take the personal journey to understand psychedelics and the potential benefits as his personal background was largely absent of substance use/abuse so the first chapter really just contextualizes the why for this project as its a different pace than his previous books. The book then gets into a more structured approach and discusses the history of the use of psychedelics in the West. He discusses how mushrooms were discovered in Mexico and had been used for spiritual journeys and also how LSD was synthesized and shelved by Sandoz and how its use by an individual was largely a random act. Its pretty interesting to learn the history of what early benefits were perceived for LSD; in particular as a means to understand psychosis but soon after as a means to help with addiction and terminal illness. LSD and mushrooms were made illegal partially due to Timothy Leary and the counterculture that evolved and embraced their use and the author gives the stories of events. Its definitely interesting for those unfamiliar. After giving the reader a good sense of how people used and thought about psychedelics as they first explored their potential, the author gets into his experience in using them for the first time. Inevitably communicating the experience is tough as one has an altered state of consciousness that is difficult to communicate with accuracy, but to one gets a shadow of the author's experience on some serious mushrooms, LSD and a hallucinogenic toad. Its definitely entertaining and the sense of connectedness is conveyed. Especially if one has personal experience with doing the drugs the author does a pretty good job of describing some of the sensations. In any case the author goes through experiences of mushroom hunting as well as the perceptions while on it and the lingering aspects of the experience. If one has read the omnivore's dilemma, mushroom hunting falls within the author's expertise but magic mushrooms are seemingly much harder to distinguish from many poisonous mushrooms so the hunting process is pretty interesting. The author then discusses some of the understood neuroscience of hallucinogens and some theories about how psychedelics operate. This remains a subject of study so there aren't definitive conclusions but the author argues that mushrooms and LSD improve communication between parts of the brain which don't communicate actively and suppress activity in the more self referential parts of the brain which the author names the default network. The author discusses recent studies in psychedelic clinical research and notes funding for such programs has increased in the last decade. The author finally discusses how these substances might be useful to people. The focuses of discussion are on those terminally ill, as psychedelics can help a person come to grips with their mortality; the author takes a case study approach with this chapter and discusses the effects on particular people who found them extremely useful. The author discusses addiction as well and how addiction can be broken with psychedelics when properly applied, it is caveated though that the effects are unlikely to be permanent but can help behavior on the order of months. One needs to remember that these are areas that need to be studied such that clinical data can lead to actual conclusions about these topics rather than the stories and hopes projected by believers or the fears projected by the puritanical. The author finally discusses depression which is a huge category. The anecdotal evidence from the authors interactions were all positive about the benefits of clinically administered psychedelics to combat depression.
How to Change Your Mind is an informative book to consider. The author partially argues that psychedelics become very useful as we get to middle age and get entrenched in our way of thinking. These drugs expand the way the mind processes and bring back a youthfulness to the way that the mind thinks about things that is very spiritual. The author is scientific in approach and given his non substance intensive background it seems to be an honest account of a subject which I am sure many people consider taboo so its quite convincing. The book definitely helps rationalize doing psychedelics for tangible benefit without real side effects; though it is careful to remind the reader the environment of consumption matters. Definitely worth the read and almost definitely worth the experience if one can!
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, a
4.7 | 10,274 ratings
Price: 19.69
Last update: 12-23-2024
About this item
Top reviews from the United States
A. MenonNarrative of the author's introduction to and journey with psychedelics in middle age.
Will Leahy