Michale Pollan

“How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence” is an amazing, informative, and inspiring book to anyone interested in science, plants, and psychedelics or to anyone with a scintilla of curiosity about how the mind works. Michael Pollan is an excellent writer who became a psychonaut while researching this book. You’ll learn about the messy history of psychedelics, Pollan’s own experiences with various psychedelics, and what it might mean for the future of medicine, humanity, health care, and the concept of reality. He combines a factual history of psychedelic compounds, the current state of research and a cast of colorful characters to create an informative, entertaining and easy to read work. The title of Michael Pollan’s book is a double entendre, and sets a precedent of multiple meanings that fills the pages within, as the class of drugs known as psychedelics that he tackles in this book are so marred by cultural baggage, uncertain brain chemistry, and potential mystical experiences that it is a miracle Pollan’s explanation of them is so concise. This book is divided into 6 distinct chunks: the modern psychedelic renaissance, mushroom ecology, the ’50s, and 60’s research, Pollan’s own trips, the brain on psychedelics, and psychedelics’ medical potential. With the possible exception of the ecology section, all of the chapters feel quite necessary to understand the cultural, spiritual and medical significance of these drugs.

Michale Pollan

About

Books

Join the club