10 how to change your mind michael pollan

ALSO BY Michael Pollan Cooked Food Rules In Defense of Food The Omnivore’s Dilemma The Botany of Desire A Place of My Own Second Nature PENGUIN PRESS An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 penguin.com Copyright © 2018 by Michael Pollan Penguin supports copyright Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader Image here and here from “Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks,” by G Petri, P Expert, F Turkheimer, R Carhart-Harris, D Nutt, P J Hellyer, and F Vaccarino, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 2014 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-INPUBLICATION DATA Names: Pollan, Michael, 1955– author Title: How to change your mind : what the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression, and transcendence / Michael Pollan Description: New York : Penguin Press, 2018 Identifiers: LCCN 2018006190 (print) | LCCN 2018010396 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525558941 (ebook) | ISBN 9781594204227 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Pollan, Michael, 1955—Mental health | Hallucinogenic drugs—Therapeutic use | Psychotherapy patients—Biography | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Science & Technology | MEDICAL / Mental Health Classification: LCC RM324.8 (ebook) | LCC RM324.8 P65 2018 (print) | DDC 615.7/883—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006190 NOTE: This book relates the author’s investigative reporting on, and related self-experimentation with, psilocybin mushrooms, the drug lysergic acid diethylamide (or, as it is more commonly known, LSD), and the drug 5methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (more commonly known as 5-MeO-DMT or The Toad) It is a criminal offense in the United States and in many other countries, punishable by imprisonment and/or fines, to manufacture, possess, or supply LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and/or the drug 5MeO-DMT, except in connection with governmentsanctioned research You should therefore understand that this book is intended to convey the author’s experiences and to provide an understanding of the background and current state of research into these substances It is not intended to encourage you to break the law and no attempt should be made to use these substances for any purpose except in a legally sanctioned clinical trial The author and the publisher expressly disclaim any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the contents of this book Certain names and locations have been changed in order to protect the author and others Version_1 For my father The soul should always stand ajar —EMILY DICKINSON Contents Also by Michael Pollan Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Prologue: A New Door CHAPTER ONE A Renaissance CHAPTER TWO Natural History: Bemushroomed Coda CHAPTER THREE History: The First Wave Part I: The Promise Part II: The Crack-Up Coda CHAPTER FOUR Travelogue: Journeying Underground Trip One: LSD Trip Two: Psilocybin Trip Three: 5-MeO-DMT (or, The Toad) CHAPTER FIVE The Neuroscience: Your Brain on Psychedelics CHAPTER SIX The Trip Treatment: Psychedelics in Psychotherapy One: Dying Two: Addiction Three: Depression Coda: Going to Meet My Default Mode Network * Several of the NYU therapists referred me to the writing of Viktor E Frankl, the Viennese psychoanalyst and the author of Man’s Search for Meaning Frankl, who survived both Auschwitz and Dachau, believed that the crucial human drive is not for pleasure, as his teacher Freud maintained, or power, as Alfred Adler maintained, but meaning Frankl concurs with Nietzsche, who wrote, “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” * Katrin H Preller et al., “The Fabric of Meaning and Subjective Effects in LSD-Induced States Depend on Serotonin 2A Receptor Activation,” Current Biology 27, no 3 (2017): 451–57 The work was done in Franz Vollenweider’s lab When the serotonin 5-HT2A receptors were blocked with a drug (ketanserin), “the LSD-induced attribution of personal relevance to previously meaningless stimuli” was also blocked, leading the authors to conclude that these receptors play a role in the generation and attribution of personal meaning * The experience would shape his post-NASA work: the former engineer established the Institute of Noetic Sciences to study consciousness and paranormal phenomena * “A human being is a part of the whole called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” (Walter Sullivan, “The Einstein Papers: A Man of Many Parts,” The New York Times, March 29, 1972.) * Quoted in Charles S Grob, “Psychiatric Research with Hallucinogens: What Have We Learned?,” Heffter Review of Psychedelic Research 1 (1998) * Ibogaine, a psychedelic derived from the root of an African shrub, is being used underground as well as in clinics in Mexico to treat opiate addiction; ayahuasca has also been reported to be helpful breaking addictions * As for the three volunteers who received no benefit, they had mild or unremarkable sessions This might be because they were still on SSRIs, which may block the effects of psychedelics, or because some fraction of the population simply doesn’t respond to the drugs The Hopkins team, too, has occasionally seen cases of “dud trips” that leave people unaffected * By me, as it happened “The Trip Treatment,” New Yorker, Feb 9, 2015 * This is how Freud understood depression, which he called melancholia: after the loss of an object of desire, the ego splits in two, with one part punishing the other, which has taken the place of the lost love in our attentions In his view, depression is a misplaced form of revenge for a loss, retribution that has been misdirected at the self * Tom Insel, who after leaving the NIMH went to work for Google’s life science subsidiary, Verily, before joining a mental health start-up called Mindstrong Health, told me that there are now algorithms that can reliably diagnose depression based on the frequency and context of one’s use of the first-person pronoun * Or at least people who can afford it One advantage of medicalizing psychedelic therapy is that it would presumably be accessible to everyone with health insurance * He recounts these experiences in his book Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), 190–93 * I don’t dismiss the possibility they may come from somewhere else, but will confine myself here to the more parsimonious explanation * In a 1969 essay in the Harvard Theological Review, Walter Pahnke described several distinct modes of psychedelic consciousness, including one he termed “the cognitive psychedelic experience.” This is “characterized by astonishingly lucid thought Problems can be seen from a novel perspective, and the inner relationships of many levels or dimensions can be seen all at once The creative experience may have something in common with this kind of psychedelic experience, but such a possibility must await the result of future investigation.” What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author Sign up now ... Names: Pollan, Michael, 1955– author Title: How to change your mind : what the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression, and transcendence / Michael Pollan. .. platitude that psychedelics offered a key to understanding—and “expanding”— consciousness no longer looks quite so preposterous How to Change Your Mind is the story of this renaissance Although it didn’t start out... the mind in the first person too to see how the changes in consciousness these molecules wrought actually feel and what, if anything, they had to teach me about my mind and might contribute to my life • • •