How to Change Your Mind

by Michael Pollan

  Cole, Jonathan O., and Martin M. Katz. “The Psychotomimetic Drugs: An Overview.” Journal of the American Medical Association 187, no. 10 (1964): 758–61.

  Davis, Wade. One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

  Doblin, Rick. “Dr. Leary’s Concord Prison Experiment: A 34-Year Follow-Up Study.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 30, no. 4 (1998): 419–26. doi:10.1080/02791072.1998.10399715.

  ———. “Pahnke’s ‘Good Friday Experiment’: A Long-Term Follow-Up and Methodological Critique.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 23, no. 1 (1991): 1–28. doi:10.1177/0269881108094300.

  Dyck, Erika. Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

  Dyer, Adrian G., Jair E. Garcia, Mani Shrestha, and Klaus Lunau. “Seeing in Colour: A Hundred Years of Studies on Bee Vision Since the Work of the Nobel Laureate Karl von Frisch.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 127 (July 2015): 66–72. doi:10.1071/RS15006.

  Eisner, Betty Grover. “Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past.” 2002. http://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/remembrances.pdf.

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. Boston: James Munroe, 1836.

  Epstein, Mark. Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective. New York: Basic Books, 1995.

  Estrada, Alvaro. María Sabina: Her Life and Chants. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Ross-Erikson, 1981.

  Fadiman, James. The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys.Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2011.

  Fahey, Todd Brendan. “The Original Captain Trips.” High Times, Nov. 1991.

  Frank, Adam. “Minding Matter.” Aeon, March 2017.

  Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: Norton, 1961.

  Goldsmith, Neal. “A Conversation with George Greer and Myron Stolaroff.” 2013. https://erowid.org/culture/characters/stolaroff_myron/stolaroff_myron_interview1.shtml.

  Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418 (2006).

  Gopnik, Alison. The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

  Greenfield, Robert. Timothy Leary: A Biography. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2006.

  Griffiths, R. R., W. A. Richards, U. McCann, and R. Jesse. “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” Psychopharmacology 187, no. 3 (2006): 268–83. doi:10.1007/ s00213-006-0457-5.

  Grinker, Roy R. “Bootlegged Ecstasy.” Journal of the American Medical Association 187, no. 10 (1964): 768.

  ———. “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.” Archives of General Psychiatry 8, no. 5 (1963): 425. doi:10.1056/NEJM196802222780806.

  Grinspoon, Lester, and James B. Bakalar. Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered. New York: Basic Books, 1979.

  Grob, Charles S. “Psychiatric Research with Hallucinogens: What Have We Learned?” Yearbook for Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness, no. 3 (1994): 91–112.

  Grob, Charles S., Anthony P. Bossis, and Roland R. Griffiths. “Use of the Classic Hallucinogen Psilocybin for Treatment of Existential Distress Associated with Cancer.” In Psychological Aspects of Cancer: A Guide to Emotional and Psychological Consequences of Cancer, Their Causes and Their Management, edited by Brian I. Carr and Jennifer Steel, 291–308. New York: Springer, 2013. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-4866-2.

  Grob, Charles S., Alicia L. Danforth, Gurpreet S. Chopra, Marycie Hagerty, Charles R. McKay, Adam L. Halberstadt, and George R. Greer. “Pilot Study of Psilocybin Treatment for Anxiety in Patients with Advanced-Stage Cancer.” Archives of General Psychiatry 68, no. 1 (2011): 71–8. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2010.116.

  Grof, Stanislav. LSD: Doorway to the Numinous: The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious. Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2009.

  Hertzberg, Hendrik. “Moon Shots (3 of 3): Lunar Epiphanies.” New Yorker, Aug. 2008.

  Hoffman, Jan. “A Dose of a Hallucinogen from a ‘Magic Mushroom,’ and Then Lasting Peace.” New York Times, Dec. 1, 2016.

  Hofmann, Albert. LSD, My Problem Child. Santa Cruz, Calif.: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2009.

  Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception, and Heaven and Hell. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

  ———. Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1931–1963). Edited by Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer. New York: Stonehill, 1977.

  ———. The Perennial Philosophy. London: Chatto & Windus, 1947. doi:10.1017/S0031819100023330.

  Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

  James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. EBook. Project Gutenberg, 2014.

  Johansen, Pål-Ørjan, and Teri Suzanne Krebs. “Psychedelics Not Linked to Mental Health Problems or Suicidal Behavior: A Population Study.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 29, no. 3 (2015): 270–79. doi:10.1177/0269881114568039.

  Johnson, Matthew W., Albert Garcia-Romeu, Mary P. Cosimano, and Roland R. Griffiths. “Pilot Study of the 5-HT2AR Agonist Psilocybin in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 28, no. 11 (2014): 983–92. doi:10.1177/0269881114548296.

  Kaelen, Mendel. “The Psychological and Human Brain Effects of Music in Combination with Psychedelic Drugs.” PhD diss., Imperial College London, 2017.

  Kessler, David A. Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering. New York: Harper Wave, 2016.

  Killingsworth, Matthew A., and Daniel T. Gilbert. “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.” Science 330, no. 6006 (2010): 932. doi:10.1126/science.1192439.

  Kleber, Herbert D. “Commentary On: Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” Psychopharmacology 187 (2006): 291–92.

  Krebs, Teri S., and Pål-Ørjan Johansen. “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) for Alcoholism: Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 26, no. 7 (2012): 994–1002. doi:10.1177/0269881112439253.

  Kupferschmidt, Kai. “High Hopes.” Science 345, no. 6192 (2014).

  Langlitz, Nicolas. Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research Since the Decade of the Brain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

  Lattin, Don. The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

  Leary, Timothy. Flashbacks: A Personal and Cultural History of an Era: An Autobiography. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1990.

  ———. High Priest. Berkeley, Calif.: Ronin, 1995.

  Leary, Timothy, and Richard Alpert. “Letter from Alpert, Leary.” Harvard Crimson, 1962.

  Leary, Timothy, and James Penner. Timothy Leary, The Harvard Years: Early Writings on LSD and Psilocybin with Richard Alpert, Huston Smith, Ralph Metzler, and Others. Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2014.

  Leary, Timothy, Robert Anton Wilson, George A. Koopman, and Daniel Gilbertson. Neuropolitics: The Sociobiology of Human Metamorphosis. Los Angeles: Starseed/Peace Press, 1977.

  Lee, Martin A., and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond. New York: Grove Press, 1992.

  Lieberman, Jeffrey A. Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry. New York: Little, Brown, 2015.

  Lucas, Christopher G., Sophie Bridgers, Thomas L. Griffiths, and Alison Gopnik. “When Children Are Better (or at Least More Open-Minded) Learners Than Adults: Developmental Differences in Learning the Forms of Causal Relationships.” Cognition 131, no. 2 (2014): 284–99. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.12.010.

  MacLean, Katherine A., Matthew W. Johnson, and Roland R.
Griffiths. “Mystical Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin Lead to Increases in the Personality Domain of Openness.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 25, no. 11 (2011): 1453–61. doi:10.1177/0269881111420188.

  McHugh, Paul. Review of The Harvard Psychedelic Club, by Don Lattin. Commentary, April 2010.

  McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.

  Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. New York: Penguin, 2005.

  Moore, Gerald, and Larry Schiller. “The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug That Got out of Control.” Life, March 25, 1966.

  Moreno, Francisco A., Christopher B. Wiegand, E. Keolani Taitano, and Pedro L. Delgado. “Safety, Tolerability, and Efficacy of Psilocybin in 9 Patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 67, no. 11 (2006): 1735–40. doi:10.4088/JCP.v67n1110.

  Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974): 435–50. doi:10.2307/2183914.

  Nichols, David E. “Commentary On: Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” Psychopharmacology 187, no. 3 (2006): 284–86. doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5.

  ———. “LSD: Cultural Revolution and Medical Advances.” Chemistry World 3, no. 1 (2006): 30–34.

  ———. “Psychedelics.” Pharmacological Reviews 68, no. 2 (2016): 264–355.

  Nour, Matthew M., Lisa Evans, and Robin L. Carhar-Harris. “Psychedelics, Personality and Political Perspectives.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs (2017): 1–10.

  Novak, Steven J. “LSD Before Leary: Sidney Cohen’s Critique of 1950s Psychedelic Drug Research.” History of Science Society 88, no. 1 (1997): 87–110.

  Nutt, David. “A Brave New World for Psychology?” Psychologist 27, no. 9 (2014): 658–60. doi:10.1097/NMD.0000000000000113.

  ———. Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs. Cambridge, England: UIT Cambridge, 2012.

  Osmond, Humphry. “On Being Mad.” Saskatchewan Psychiatric Services Journal 1, no. 2 (1952).

  ———. “A Review of the Clinical Effects of Psychotomimetic Agents.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 66, no. 1 (1957): 418–34.

  Pahnke, Walter, “The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter with Death.” Harvard Theological Review 62, no. 1 (1969): 1–22.

  “Pass It On”: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1984.

  Petri, G., P. Expert, F. Turkheimer, R. Carhart-Harris, D. Nutt, P. J. Hellyer, and F. Vaccarino. “Homological Scaffolds of Brain Functional Networks.” Journal of the Royal Society Interface 11, no. 101 (2014).

  Piff, Paul K., Pia Dietze, Matthew Feinberg, Daniel M. Stancato, and Dacher Keltner. “Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108, no. 6 (2015): 883–99. doi:10.1037/pspi0000018.

  Pollan, Michael. “The Trip Treatment.” New Yorker, Feb. 9, 2015.

  Preller, Katrin H., Marcus Herdener, Thomas Pokorny, Amanda Planzer, Rainer Krahenmann, Philipp Stämpfli, Matthias E. Liechti, Erich Seifritz, and Franz X. Vollenweider. “The Fabric of Meaning and Subjective Effects in LSD-induced States Depend on Serotonin 2A Receptor Activation.” Current Biology 27, no. 3 (2017): 451–57.

  Presti, David, and Jerome Beck. “Strychnine and Other Enduring Myths: Expert and User Folklore Surrounding LSD.” In Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion, edited by Thomas B. Roberts, 125–35. San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices, 2001.

  Raichle, Marcus E. “The Brain’s Dark Energy.” Scientific American 302, no. 3 (2010): 44–49. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0310-44.

  Raichle, Marcus E., Ann Mary MacLeod, Abraham Z. Snyder, William J. Powers, Debra A. Gusnard, and Gordon L. Shulman. “A Default Mode of Brain Function.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, no. 2 (2001): 676–82. doi:10.1073/pnas.98.2.676.

  R.C. “B.C.’s Acid Flashback.” Vancouver Sun, Dec. 8, 2001.

  Richards, William, Stanislav Grof, Louis Goodman, and Albert Kurland. “LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy and the Human Encounter with Death.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 4, no. 2 (1972): 121–50.

  Samorini, Giorgio. Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness. Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2002.

  Schuster, Charles R. “Commentary On: Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” Psychopharmacology 187, no. 3 (2006): 289–90. doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5.

  Schwartz, Casey. “Molly at the Marriott: Inside America’s Premier Psychedelics Conference.” New York Times, May 6, 2017.

  Siff, Stephen. Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

  Simard, Suzanne W., David A. Perry, Melanie D. Jones, David D. Myrold, Daniel M. Durall, and Randy Molina. “Net Transfer of Carbon Between Ectomycorrhizal Tree Species in the Field.” Nature 388 (1997): 579–82.

  Smith, Huston. Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000.

  ———. The Huston Smith Reader. Edited by Jeffery Paine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

  Smith, Robert Ellis. “Psychologists Disagree on Psilocybin Research.” Harvard Crimson, March 15, 1962.

  Solomon, Andrew. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. New York: Scribner, 2015.

  Srinivasan, Mandyam V. “Honey Bees as a Model for Vision, Perception, and Cognition.” Annual Review of Entomology 55, no. 1 (2010): 267–84. doi:10.1146/annurev.ento.010908.164537.

  Stamets, Paul. Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World. Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 1996.

  Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. New York: Grove Press, 1987.

  Stolaroff, Myron J. The Secret Chief Revealed. Sarasota, Fla.: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2004.

  Strauss, Neil. Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead: Journeys into Fame and Madness. E-Book, 2011.

  Sullivan, Walter. “The Einstein Papers. A Man of Many Parts,” New York Times, March 29, 1972.

  Sutton, Gregory P., Dominic Clarke, Erica L. Morley, and Daniel Robert. “Mechanosensory Hairs in Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) Detect Weak Electric Fields.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 26 (2016): 7261–65. doi:10.1073/pnas.1601624113.

  Tennyson, Alfred. “Luminous Sleep.” The Spectator, Aug. 1, 1903.

  Tierney, John. “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again.” New York Times, April 12, 2010.

  U.S. Congress Senate Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Committee on Government Operations: Hearing on the Organization and Coordination of Federal Drug Research and Regulatory Programs: LSD. 89th Cong., 2nd sess., May 24–26, 1966.

  Vollenweider, Franz X., and Michael Kometer. “The Neurobiology of Psychedelic Drugs: Implications for the Treatment of Mood Disorders.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11, no. 9 (2010): 642–51. doi:10.1038/nrn2884.

  Vollenweider, Franz X., Margreet F. I. Vollenweider-Scherpenhuyzen, Andreas Bäbler, Helen Vogel, and Daniel Hell. “Psilocybin Induces Schizophrenia-Like Psychosis in Humans via a Serotonin-2 Agonist Action.” NeuroReport 9, no. 17 (1998): 3897–902. doi:10.1097/00001756-199812010-00024.

  Wasson, R. Gordon. “Drugs: The Sacred Mushroom.” New York Times, Sept. 26, 1970.

  ———. “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” Life, May 13, 1957, 100–120.

  Wasson, R. Gordon, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck. The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries
. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 2008.

  Wasson, Valentina Pavlovna, and R. Gordon Wasson. Mushrooms, Russia, and History. Vol. 2. New York: Pantheon Books, 1957.

  Watts, Rosalind, Camilla Day, Jacob Krzanowski, David Nutt, and Robin Carhart-Harris. “Patients’ Accounts of Increased ‘Connectedness’ and ‘Acceptance’ After Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 57, no. 5 (2017): 520–64. doi:10.1177/0022167817709585.

  Weil, Andrew T. “The Strange Case of the Harvard Drug Scandal.” Look, Nov. 1963.

  Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition. New York: Penguin, 1986.

  Wit, Harriet de. “Towards a Science of Spiritual Experience.” Psychopharmacology 187, no. 3 (2006): 267. doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0462-8.

  Wulf, Andrea. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

  Index

  The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

  Note: Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

  abuse of psychedelics, low risk of, 50

  Acid Tests, 184, 206

  active placebos, psychedelics as, 159

  Adamic moments, 25

  addiction, 358–75

  and autobiographical narratives, 387–88, 391

  and awe-inspiring experiences, 373–75

  and ayahuasca, 369n

  banality of insights after treatments, 361–62, 363–64

  and default mode network, 387–88

  depression’s links to, 383

  and ego dissolution, 271, 366

  and excess of order in brain, 313, 329, 385

  and mental time travel, 387

  and negative thinking habits, 383

  Nutt’s conclusions on, 300n

  and overview effect, 359–60

  and rat park experiment, 372–73