Michael Pollan’s long, strange trip to explain LSD
His ‘Change Your Mind’ seems unlikely to do so
I was amused when I saw the title of Michael Pollan’s new book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (Penguin Press, 480 pp., ★★g☆).
Books of this sort started popping up a few years ago after a small group of doctors revealed they were giving hallucinogens to terminal cancer patients to help them cope. Michael Pollan, like many others, wants to know if the drugs can help the rest of us, too. Well?
Here’s the problem: Reading about an acid trip is like listening to someone recount a dream. It’s far more interesting to the person who experienced it. Pollan is a gifted writer — his best-selling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma changed the way many of us think about food — and he can make just about any topic engaging. But a deep-dive into hallucinogens stretches his talent.
Do we really need another investigation into the transformative power of LSD? The result here is a mixed bag.
How to Change Your Mind begins with a hunt for psychedelics in the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, Pollan explains how the drugs are being studied to treat all kinds of diseases, including alcoholism, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders and treatment-resistant depression. Eventually, our narrator tries a hallucinogenic mushroom for himself and takes note of what he sees: “Fractal patterns, tunnels plunging through foliage, ropy vines forming grids.” Two trees suddenly remind him of his parents; soon he can no longer tell if the dragonflies around him are real. It sounds like a wild experience, but it’s not much to read about.
What follows is a series of interviews with men and women who have had “full-blown mystical experiences, people whose sense of themselves as individuals had been subsumed into a larger whole.” But there’s no payoff. We don’t know any more about these oddballs after reading about them. They tripped and enjoyed it. So what?
Pollan concedes that psychedelic experiences are difficult to render in words, but he does his best. We’re along for the ride as he drops acid, munches psilocybin and ingests the smoked venom of the Sonoran Desert toad transforming what could be a collection of vague ramblings and psychobabble into some genuinely moving passages.
He also reminds us of Timothy Leary’s madcap acid tests and the war on drugs that stifled important research. There’s a lot to explore here, but it’s well-worn territory.
Perhaps the most provocative section examines how psychedelics might help people grappling with addiction. Many people are unable to kick a toxic habit, and there’s reason to believe psychedelics may actually help. But the research is in its infancy, and it’s unclear if doctors will ever routinely prescribe something like LSD. (I hope not.)
In trying to describe hallucinations, the author poses a question: “How do you put into words an experience said to be ineffable?” Unfortunately, you can’t. Michael Pollan made a valiant effort to dissuade this skeptic, but he wasn’t able to change my mind.
Matt McCarthy is an internist and author of The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly.