A Strait-Laced Writer Explores Psychedelics, and Leaves the Door of Perception Ajar

Microdosing is hot. If you haven’t heard — but you probably have, from reports of its use at Silicon Valley workplaces, from Ayelet Waldman’s memoir “A Really Good Day,” from dozens of news stories — to microdose is to take small amounts of LSD, which generate “subperceptual” effects that can improve mood, productivity and creativity.

Michael Pollan’s new book, “How to Change Your Mind,” is not about that. It’s about macro-dosing. It’s about taking enough LSD or psilocybin (mushrooms) to feel the colors and smell the sounds, to let the magic happen, to chase the juju. And it’s about how mainstream science ceded the ground of psychedelics decades ago, and how it’s trying to get it back.

“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. In the prologue, he describes himself as someone “not at all sure he has ever had a single ‘spiritually significant’ experience,” a pretty straitened admission even for an avowed atheist. “I have never been one for deep or sustained introspection,” he writes later. You often find yourself thinking: This guy could really use a trip.

 

Read from original article

Schedule a Call

Entheogen-assisted Healing

Taking entheogens can be like air travel: people do it all the time, it’s usually fine, but when it’s not fine, it’s sometimes very bad. We’ve been there. And that’s where an experienced GUIDE can make the difference in the outcome.
I’m available by phone if you or someone you know wants to ask questions of ANY nature. Use this link to schedule a call HERE.