How to Change Your Mind (Pollan)

How to Change Your Mind:  What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us …
Michael Pollan, 2018
Penguin Publishing
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594204227


Summary
A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs—and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book.

But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third.

Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists.

Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.

A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world.

The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 6, 1955
• Where—Raised in Long Island, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—California Book Award; James Beard Award, 2000 and 2006; Reuters-IUCN Global Award-Environmental Journalism.
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California

Few writers have done more to revitalize our national conversation about food and eating than Michael Pollan, an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose witty, offbeat nonfiction shines an illuminating spotlight on various aspects of agriculture, the food chain, and man's place in the natural world

Pollan's first book, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education (1991), was selected by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 75 best books ever written about gardening. But it was Botany of Desire, published a full decade later, that put him on the map. A fascinating look at the interconnected evolution of plants and people, Botany... was one of the surprise bestsellers of 2001. Five years later, Pollan produced The Omnivore's Dilemma, a delightful, compulsively readable "ecology of eating" that was named one the ten best books of the year by the New York Times and Washington Post. And in 2008, came In Defense of Food.

A professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, Pollan is a former executive editor for Harper's and a contributing writer for the New York Times, where he continues to examine the fascinating intersections between science and culture. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
How to Change Your Mind is a calm survey of the past, present and future. A book about a blurry subject, it is cleareyed and assured. Pollan is not the most obvious guide for such a journey. He is, to judge from his self-reporting, a giant square.… [But] Pollan's initial skepticism and general lack of hipness work wonders for the material. The problem with more enthusiastic or even hallucinatory writers on the subject is that they just compound the zaniness at the heart of the thing; it's all too much of the same tone, like having George Will walk you through the tax code. Like another best-selling Michael (Lewis), Pollan keeps you turning the pages even through his wonkiest stretches.
John Williams - New York Times


As is to be expected of a nonfiction writer of his caliber, Pollan makes the story of the rise and fall and rise of psychedelic drug research gripping and surprising. He also reminds readers that excitement around any purportedly groundbreaking substance tends to dim as studies widen.… Where Pollan truly shines is in his exploration of the mysticism and spirituality of psychedelic experiences.… Michael Pollan, somehow predictably, does the impossible: He makes losing your mind sound like the sanest thing a person could do.
Tom Bissell - New York Times Book Review


Pollan’s deeply researched chronicle will enlighten those who think of psychedelics chiefly as a kind of punchline to a joke about the Woodstock generation and hearten the growing number who view them as a potential antidote to our often stubbornly narrow minds.… [E]ngaging and informative.
Boston Globe


Sweeping and often thrilling…. It is to Pollan’s credit that, while he ranks among the best of science writers, he’s willing, when necessary, to abandon that genre’s fixation on materialist explanation as the only path to understanding. One of the book’s important messages is that the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics, for the dying or seriously ill, can’t be separated from the mystical experiences to which they give rise.
Guardian


Journalist Michael Pollan explored psychoactive plants in The Botany of Desire (2001). In this bold, intriguing study, he delves further…Pollan even ‘shakes the snow globe’ himself, chemically self-experimenting in the spirit of psychologist William James, who speculated about the wilder shores of consciousness more than a century ago.
Nature, International Journal of Science


Known for his writing on plants and food, Michael Pollan… brings all the curiosity and skepticism for which he is well known to a decidedly different topic.… How to Change Your Mind beautifully updates and synthesizes the science of psychedelics, with a highly personalized touch.
Science


Amid new scientific interest in the potential healing properties of psychedelic drugs, Pollan…sets about researching their history—and giving them  a (supervised!) try himself.  He came away impressed by their promise in treating addiction and depression—and with his mind expanded. Yours will be too.
People


[Starred review] [A] brilliant history of psychedelics across cultures and generations…. This nuanced and sophisticated exploration, which asks big questions about meaning-making and spiritual experience, is thought-provoking and eminently readable.
Publishers Weekly


Before Timothy Leary… scientists and doctors saw… psychedelics as tremendous new tools for understanding consciousness. Now, these back-burnered drugs are proving effective in treating such disorders as PTSD and depression.
Library Journal


[Starred review] Pollan’s…elucidating and enthralling inquiry combines fascinating and significant history with daring and resonant reportage and memoir, and looks forward to a new open-mindedness toward psychedelics and the benefits of diverse forms of consciousness.
Booklist


(Starred review) The author's evenhanded but generally positive approach shoos away scaremongering while fully recognizing that we're out in the tall grass….A trip well worth taking, eye-opening and even mind-blowing.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Talking Points to help start a discussion for HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND … then take off on your own:

1. Why are so many of us intent on escaping our own consciousness? Consider Author Michael Pollan's statement that "if everyday waking consciousness [is] but one of several possible ways to construct the world, then perhaps there is value in cultivating a great amount of… neural diversity." What does Pollan mean—how does consciousness shape our views of the world around us? And what is neural diversity?

2. Follow-up to Question 1: Pollan writes that children approach reality with the wide-eyed "astonishment of an adult on psychedelics." Is he serious? What is he referring to?

3. Other than LSD or mushrooms, Pollan says we can also achieve neural diversity through meditation and prayer. Have you ever had a transcendent experience through either of those means?

4. After psychoactive drugs leave the body and users come off the trip, what kinds of residual effects do many users continue to experience?

5. Have you ever taken psychoactive drugs (LSD, mesc, "shrooms")? If not, do you have an interest in trying them now that you've read Pollan's book?

6. Prior to reading Pollan's account, what were your views on Timothy Leary and the 60s "turn on, tune in, drop out" culture. If you are, say, in your sixties or older, did you consider Leary a boundary-breaking hero … a self-promoter … a dangerous pied piper … a self-indulgent egotist … a daring experimenter?

7. How did Leary derail scientific study of LSD? Would it be fair to say that had Leary's counter-culture not turned LSD into a bad word, we might already be benefiting—right now—from the drug's ability to offer relief from suffering? Or is that leveling unfair blame at Leary?

8. In terms of LSD's medicinal benefits, what have scientists discovered? What do they see as the drug's potential?

9. Talk about how psychoactive drugs work in the brain. Are you able to grasp Pollan's explanations; is the writing lucid enough to cut through the scientific technicalities? Or were you stumped?

10. The author used himself as a guinnea pig. How did he experience the drugs?

11. Your opinion: LSD—good thing … or bad thing?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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