How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
by Michael Pollan
View on GoodreadsMichael Pollan's mainstream-respectable tour of the psychedelic research renaissance — its history, science, therapeutic applications, and his own first-person experiments.
Core ideas
- The default mode network is the neurological correlate of the ego/self — psychedelics quiet it, which produces the "ego dissolution" experience and may be the mechanism behind their therapeutic effects.
- Clinical results in depression, addiction, and end-of-life anxiety are striking; the substances appear to do in one or two sessions what years of therapy and medication often can't.
- The 1960s counterculture's overreach is what shut the research down; the current renaissance is built on rigorous protocols and conservative institutional positioning to avoid the same fate.
Published2018
Pages480
ISBN9780241294222
ReadMay 2023
