How to Change Your Mind
How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
During the 1950's the psychiatric establishment regarded LSD as a miracle drug. However, at the end of the 60s, there was a moral panic arising as a result of a counter culture adoption of the drug. Around the 1990's, a small group of scientists and psychotherapists resolved to recover something precious that had been lost from both science and culture.
This book reveals new evidence on psychedelics, confirming their power to cure mental illness, ease depression and addiction.
Every day people are taking the substance or doing something to alter their state of consciousness. Psychedelics seem to be a class of mind-altering substances that open to the mind to a greater awareness.
🎨 Impressions
A detailed overview of the history of psychedelics, extensive first hand research, anecdotal accounts of his own experiences.
How I Discovered It
This is pretty much the number one book in the psychedelic space. I think that there will be a tremendous growth in this area of science and adoption - it is already starting to be seen. I wanted to have a more through overview of psychedelics and the significant swings of their use that has been seen in society.
Who Should Read It?
If you are interested in an up and coming area of development or if you want to learn in detail about psychedelics, this is the book.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
Normal waking consciousness feels perfectly transparent, and yet it is less a window on reality than the product of our imaginations-a kind of controlled hallucination.
Compared with other drugs, psychedelics seldom affect people the same way twice, because they tend to magnify whatever’s already going on both inside and outside one’s head.
One good way to understand a complex system is to disturb it and then see what happens.
📒 Summary + Notes
Key Takeaways:
The intention of the user before a psychedelic experience and the setting the experience takes place in will dictate the quality of the experience.
Psychedelics, contrary to popular opinion, are not addictive and tend to become less effective with more use. Overdosing on psychedelics is very difficult.
Psychedelics give the amazing possibility of treating depression and anxiety. Through interrupting compulsively negative self-reflection and allowing users to connect with simple truths on a spiritual level.
After the banning of psychedelics around 1960's, psychedelic therapy practitioners continued their research underground with LSD and magic mushrooms underground.
Mexican Indian tribes, where the drug was first found, have been using mushrooms containing psilocybin as a healing agent for centuries.
During a hallucinatory experience through psychedelics, the brain is more interconnected so that memory, emotion and visual information all interact (see below).
There is so much authority that comes out of primary mystical experiences that it can be threatening to existing hierarchal structures; so the cultures become reluctant to expose themselves to such changes.
It is considered that the experience, not the chemical is the key factor in therapy.
LSD wrongly became regarded as a mental illness not a cure. The media was in full on panic mode, urban legends about the perils of LSD were spreading more rapidly than facts.
Communication between brain networks in people given psilocybin (right) or a non-psychedelic compound (left). Source: Wired
