📚 How To Change Your Mind – Book Review

Think of the brain as a hill covered in snow, and thoughts as sleds gliding down that hill. As one sled after another goes down the hill, a small number of main trails will appear in the snow. And every time a new sled goes down, it will drawn into the preexisting trails, almost like a magnet...In time it becomes more and more difficult to glide down the hill on any other path...Think of psychedelics as temporarily flattening the snow. The deeply worn trails disappear and suddenly the sled can go in other directions, exploring new landscapes and, literally, creating new pathways.

Michael Pollan is one author who isn't scared to flatten the snow of his mind and allow new tracks to form. In his book, How To Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Michael Pollan takes us on a journey as he explores the world of psychedelics scientifically and spiritually.

Pollan starts off the book giving the readers a history of psychedelics in America, casually interweaving his own narrative growing up as a child in the late 1950's and 1960's. Spoiler alert: He wasn't a big druggie growing up.

As Pollan learned more and more about the science behind psychedelics, he became intrigued by the numerous accounts of patients having life-altering, long-lasting mystical experiences that changed their lives for the better. One example is found in a letter written by one of the participants of a psychedelic study in the 1960's:

The Johns Hopkins experiment shows – proves – that under controlled, experimental conditions, psilocybin can occasion genuine mystical experiences. It uses science, which modernity trusts, to undermine modernity's secularism. In doing so, it offers hope of nothing less than a re-sacralization of the natural and social world, a spiritual revival that is our best defense against not only soullessness, but against religious fanaticism. And it does so in the very teeth of the unscientific prejudices built into our current drug laws.

Pollan takes you through various studies that took place in the 1960's before psychedelics were made illegal in the 1970s. He demonstrates the medicinal importance of psychedelics through interviews with numerous scientists who were involved in the early psychedelic medicinal studies. He walks you through studies about cancer patients overcoming their fear of death, people overcoming their cigarrette and alcohol addictions, and even the studies done to alleviate depression and anxiety in otherwise healthy individuals.

Pollan, like most people, had shied away from psychedelics for most of his life, largely due to the barrage of news and stories in the media of the horrors of these dangerous plants. Eventually curiosity got the best of him, and he dipped into the underground world of psychedelic treatments, locating modern shamans and psychedelic guides to show him the way.

He meets Paul Stamets, who is no doubt one of the most influential mycologists (those who studies fungi) in the world, and they go mushroom hunting on the coast of Oregon. The two briefly discuss one of the most intriguing theories on evolution that has ever crossed the snowy terrain of my brain, The Stoned Ape Hypothesis. Originally posited by Terence McKenna, Paul Stamets gives an explanation for the doubling of the size of the early human brain 200,000 years ago. How does he think the human brain size doubled so quickly? You guessed it (hover to see the spoiler): Psilocybin mushrooms.

Pollan's journey leads him to try psilocybin mushrooms, Ayahuasca, LSD, and DMT, which are entertaining stories in themselves, but what I love about this book, and what I try to do with my learning, is connect it back to science.

Book spoilers below (hover to show):

When Pollan tries psilocybin mushrooms, he isn't talking about your average college experience where you take an eighth of psilocybin mushrooms and go to Bonnaroo. Pollan is taking what is known as a "heroic dose" of psilocybin mushrooms in a guided setting in order to launch a mystical experience. After ingesting the mushrooms, he has an ego-dissolving experience. He tells of losing his sense of self as it broke apart into tiny pieces of paper the size of Post-It notes. He became one with the universe, as trite as that sounds. It's a common occurance among people who ingest heroic doses of mushrooms, but the part I find fascinating is how he connects this back to the science.

He spends an entire section of the book discussing the neuroscience behind everything and how the ego dissolution he experiences connects back to reduced activity in the default mode network – an area of the brain responsible for your sense of self. He goes even further discussing the scientific studies on the brain activity of monks, who during periods of transcendental meditation experience similar lack of activity in the default mode network.

Overall, this book was not only incredibly eye-opening and informative, it was a captivating story of one man's personal journey. If you have any interest in psychedelics or are looking for an engaging story of discovery, this is a great book for you.

I give it 🍄🍄🍄🍄!

You can find the book on Amazon

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