A Review of “How to Change Your Mind”

by KARINA ERHARDT

The following blog post includes a few thoughts I had after reading Michael Pollan’s book “How to Change Your Mind”

Some background, to start

My curiosity to read this book all began a few years ago when I watched a documentary called Fantastic Fungi with a couple of my housemates at the time. Michael Pollan, the author of the book, was one of the main subjects. The documentary consisted of a couple renowned researchers, quirky scientists, and other unique characters with their hand in the psychedelic game. And then there was Pollan, a straight-edged author in his sixties; thoughtful, well spoken, and laid-back. Of all the eccentric individuals that the film featured, Pollan seemed the least likely to be in a documentary that nothing short of idealized the fungi kingdom. His stance on the subject was that of curiosity and wonder, which was enough to peak my own interest on the matter. Fast forward a few years later, and I finally decide to read his 2018 No.1 New York Times bestseller. How to Change Your Mind is a book about the past, present, and future of psychedelics, specifically, psilocybin and LSD, and the first-hand experiences the author had while trying them.

Psilocybin has been around for centuries (it grows naturally in the wild) and LSD was synthetically produced in a lab in 1938. Research on these two compounds began in the early 50’s, but then quickly took the hot seat in the 60’s when they became a part of the anti-establishment counterculture. This book reaches back and covers the fascinating history and stories of dozens of people involved in the testing (both in and out of the lab) before everything was shut down in the 70’s. After a long hiatus, research in the psychedelic realm didn’t start to pick back up again until the early 2000's.

A little about the author

Michael Pollan was born in 1955 in Long Island, New York, partway through the first decade of the psychedelics scene in the US. Having grown up throughout the 60’s as a young adolescent he was aware of the counterculture, but not from much first hand experience. By the time he would have been old enough to source out LSD for himself, the war on drugs was in full swing and the psychedelic compound had been classified as a Schedule 1 Substance under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. After this, both LSD and psilocybin were driven underground where they've since remained.

In and around his college years Pollan recalls trying mushrooms a small handful of times with no real mystical component to the experience. In one account early on in his book, however, he mentions that he and his wife had a mason jar full of the little wrinkled brown mushrooms that lived for many years forgotten in the back of their pantry, and yet three decades after tossing it in the trash without much thought, he said that he would now ‘give a lot to have a whole jar’.

So what exactly was it that brought him from that seemingly mundane moment thirty plus years ago to the newly formed opinion of wishing he had a jar full of magic mushrooms? Well, it all started with a report he did on psychedelic psychotherapy as an aid (or to the more hopeful, perhaps, a cure) for existential distress in cancer patients, called “The Trip Treatment” in February of 2015 for The New Yorker. The patients he spoke with that volunteered for the treatment were describing their experiences in such positive ways that even the researchers themselves thought the first dozen or so were faking it.

They weren’t.

The results were so astoundingly positive that Pollan was hooked - he had to know more. So then began the next two years of research that would eventually end with his book, How to Change Your Mind.

Thought 1: Potential side effects on one’s ‘heart centre’

In 2017 I read a book that changed the course of my life, called “The Untethered Soul”, and in in the book the author speaks of your heart as your energy centre, which is where you radiate love, joy, inspiration, enthusiasm, and excitement from. It explained in simple terms this concept of energy (beyond that which you obtain from eating healthy food or getting a good sleep) that I had always felt but had never been able to put a finger on, much less describe.

I bring this up because in one particular chapter Pollan talks about a small recreational trip that he and his wife were on after consuming magic mushrooms that he had foraged with Paul Stamets, an American mycologist. He describes his experience as an ‘opening of the heart’, not only towards his parents and his wife, but towards the plants, the trees, the birds and even the bugs in his garden. It was a strong feeling of connection to all these living yet previously separate things that had up until that point only been an object of his observation. This idea of keeping your heart centre open to give and receive love is one of the main concepts of The Untethered Soul, as explained by the author, Michael A. Singer, and yet as a self proclaimed atheist, here was Pollan describing a seemingly spiritual experience. He then goes on illustrate his three other guided trips on a much stronger dose of psilocybin, then LSD and finally, 5 MeO-DMT. Throughout each of these guided trips his experiences become increasingly spiritual, with each having had lasting positive effects on his life.

Thought 2: What do people see

What exactly is it that people see when they’re on a guided journey with eyeshades on and nothing but the back of their eyelids to look at? Some might argue that the pictures one see’s are ‘made up’, a by-product of the compounds that have entered your body. But this does not give a proper explanation of the drugs themselves. LSD is a non-toxic and (I do feel the need to point this out) non-addictive molecule that acts on the 5-HT receptors in the brain, which is where serotonin attaches itself. Once the LSD has attached, however, it sends impulses to different and older areas of the brain, and the usual serotonin neural messages that go to the brain are temporarily suspended.

So where do these stories, insights, and feelings come from? Well, everyone’s experience is entirely different, which lends itself to the argument that they do not come from the actual molecule itself. They do in fact come from somewhere inside of our minds, and from many of the stories I read throughout the book, the experiences are very personal to the individuals themselves. They describe experiencing profound insights about things from their birth all the way to their death, and the people they see are often those that have been a part of their lives in a significant way at one point or another. The fact that these images can have such a profound and lasting effect on the individuals tells us that there is something more going on here than simply a new chemical attaching itself to a serotonin receptor site in the brain.

Thought 3: So, what’s the point?

The older we get, the more accustomed we become to the way our minds perceive the world, and the more devoted we become to our own set of beliefs, whether that’s consciously or subconsciously. Just think for a moment of something you have formed a set of beliefs around, such as the political stance you take, the religion or type of spirituality you believe in, the way you view humanity (are humans inherently good or bad? peaceful or violent?). Picture these ways of thinking as ‘mental grooves’ that make up the pathways in our brains. As you age, they become deeper, you tend to question them less, and the more you begin to operate on auto pilot. Some might say that’s a nice place to be; comfortable, familiar, no surprises. But what if there was a better way to view the world? What if rather than thinking humans are inherently bad or the world is a dangerous place, you could view it - if not only temporarily - from the lens of a more positive place? What if you could re-write some of the negative neural pathways in your brain that create your mental reality?

Well, that’s basically what happens when volunteers are hooked up to brain scans after taking a high dose of either LSD or psilocybin. All of the familiar pathways in their brain showing thick lines connecting different areas - the ‘highways’ as one of the researchers in the book put it - begin to go quiet, and all sorts of new areas of the brain start connecting. And this, some scientists believe, is where the insights come from. The new ways of viewing your life that you had never previously considered and conclusions you may not have ever come to without the nudge of psychedelics.

This is actually one of the main reasons why it’s currently being studied extensively here in Canada to treat three things: alcohol use disorder, treatment-resistant depression and end-of-life psychological distress in advanced-stage cancer patients. When done in a controlled environment and with the guidance of a trained therapist in what they are calling psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, the metaphysical experience itself is what is transforming the lives of the subjects. And again, what you see (with eyeshades on) isn’t coming from outside of you, it’s all from within your own mind. Think of a guided trip as the ability to travel to a completely new place without actually having to buy a plane ticket. You go, see some amazing - and possibly scary - things, gain some new profound insights and better ways of seeing the world, your relationships and yourself, and return, all within 8-12 hours, and your life has changed for the better.

Thought 4: Not for everyone

Now, I understand that this may sound as if I’m trying to convince everyone to eat some magic mushrooms or drop acid (or as the controversial Timothy Leary put it in the 60’s “turn on, tune in, drop out”), but this is my disclaimer: I am not. It’s not for everyone, and determining whether or not it’s for you will require your own research. My aim with this post is to simply share my own personal opinion and fascination over the promising future of these two compounds that are currently being studied extensively in research facilities across North America and beyond.

Conclusion

Note: None of the fungi images throughout this post are a depiction of magic mushrooms, but rather, a simple depiction of the beauty found in nature when you stop and look. I took these while on a walk in a temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest.

In conclusion, I would like to end with a few final thoughts on the matter. I truly believe that:

1. Psychedelics have the ability to alleviate the mental and emotional pain that many people live with, offering reprieve from the sometimes debilitating internal dialogues that our ego-filled minds can relentlessly administer to us from sun up to sun down.

2. Our physical bodies will benefit as well, as this form of mental support can be done in a way that is non-toxic and does not require the constant need for expensive daily medication, many with all sorts of negative side effects.

3. Our future will one day contain a safe space in which any individual who wants this type of therapy can go and recieve the help that they need.

That's all, for now ;)

If this topic peaked your interest even a little, I highly recommend that you read the book. You won't be disappointed.

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

And finally, if you made it this far, thanks so much for reading. This is my first time writing and posting on my blog after quite a long time, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Much love,

Karina