I wonder if the psychedelic experience is like the oceanic feeling we ascribe to infants at the breast, before "reality" impinges and before metaphor becomes necessary. If so, everything in our cultures and civilization is constructed to keep us from reverting to that early bliss. Freud wrote Civilization and its Discontents.
The unconditional love once experienced becomes a wish that can never be satisfied - except I guess when one takes LSD or other mind altering drugs. Even opiates create a sense of bliss and love that are completely at variance with how we usually behave. Our cultures are based on envy, competition, greed - the opposite of empathy and acceptance. And guilt, when experienced, is the burden we seek to lighten.
1
Sensory systems have evolved not to experience nor to understand the vast complexity of the universe, but rather to filter the unfathomable – allowing and exploiting only what is essential to survive and reproduce. Hallucinogens dampen the construct (built through language) of thought...the inner dialogue that we generally think of as describing/validating reality. Helen Keller, for example, described her early life as devoid of thought until she acquired language. I would speculate that the glimpse afforded by impairing one's language/thinking skills allows an experience common to preliterate complex life forms.
4
Breaking Open the Head: A psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shaminism by Daniel Pinchbeck lucidly covered the waterfront of this exploration. When I want to open the doors of perception I read his massive & comprehensive journey again. He & his fellow sojourners would see the same beings after ingesting the same substance. Large Fly Agarics mushrooms appeared several times asking "Why did you eat us?" If satisfied with the answer they asked "but are you prepared to follow this path?" If the answer was "I was trying to get high" the reply was 'Well, if you ever do this again, we're going to kill you." His insights were unforgettable. Everyday objects such as stop signs have deeply embedded symbolism we only experience in the dream state. I'm about to begin my third reading. This is life altering and dangerous territory.
7
While it has been decades since I read "Be Here Now" by Baba Ram Dass, (if memory serves) he made abundantly clear the cosmic insights available to those who ingest LSD. As I recall, it was on one such occasion that he, while in the bathroom of an eating establishment, had his epiphanic moment. Having read the sign affixed to the wall, "Employees Must Wash Hands....", he suddenly appreciated a profundity of cosmic proportions he had long overlooked. We should all be so insightful!
1
Read Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. That’s all you need to learn about psychedelic drug use.
Not!
4
Michael Pollan writes as well as anyone possibly could about what can't be adequately conveyed through language. This problem is attached to the subject of psychedelic journeys, but it raises the question of how much our more quotidian communications are as well transmitted as we like to believe. Much of experience may be more ineffable than we think, as it is strained through the sieve of our own life history and perspectives. To eat an orange may be to another what it is to us, or it may be something slightly, but ineffably different, the differences melting away into obscurity because neither the eater nor the vicarious eater is aware of them. In some ways, all of communication is a roughed out version of our own experience, partially limited by our own linguistic skills as well as by our imagination. Yet we all love to have the fantasy of being understood, because it feels so good to have that experience. Meanwhile, something inside tells us that the other person's understanding was possibly or even probably different from our own. We choose to accept the fantasy of clear communication because it feels so much better. But the real fantasy is communication itself.
9
Just by chance, I am currently reading Mr Pollan's book. He presents a lot of interesting history, and that is worth reading. But whenever he goes into his first person voice, my eyes glaze over. I'm glad he found his experiences so worthwhile, but trying to read through his self-indulgent, too long descriptions of his experiences is like viewing other people's vacation photos - after a short while you are just waiting for them to be done. He devoted too much of his book to himself - but it makes the reading of the book quick, since I skipped over many pages.
5
Michael Pollan has done a great service by demonstrating and documenting the mind-expanding possibilities of psychedelics. Of course his words fail to capture the experience! But if we stop there, we remain stuck in the unproductive divide between two camps who cannot communicate with each other at all: mainstream Americans who, erroneously believing these drugs to be addictive and necessarily harmful, insist on criminalizing them; and countercultural purists who have no interest in widening the understanding of these drugs and potentially de-criminalizing them. Yes, it is ultimately an impossible task to render these experiences in words and metaphors. But it is a heroic and necessary one, and I am immensely grateful for Mr. Pollan's graceful attempt to put these issues before the general public.
7
The ineffable of the psychedelic experiences that Pollan struggles with in this article is the same ineffable one experiences when thoughts are absent in everyday experience. The difference is the intensity of the experiences. The absence of thoughts does not appear to be something Pollan experiences in his everyday life however. So he is at a loss to make this connection.
Knowing is not about words, and in fact words undermine knowing.
7
A courageous attempt to be ‘effable’, as Michael said in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Thanks to him for his valuable effort at reporting back. From my own prior experience with LSD and psilocybin, yes, it helps to have one’s own passport stamp when listening to others describing their journey.
I personally find trying to describe such experience akin to describing how I can feel when listening to music. Maybe not just any music, but that possessed of qualities that seemingly transcend the ordinary. Yet, in the rare instance, I may find, even in the ordinary moment, that same quality of experience. As if I am somehow momentarily caught out in the open. A wonder indeed.
3
Now I want to read this book. I've not been motivated to pick it up because I have never used drugs, only flirting twice years ago with marijuana, and never graduating to anything else. What I want to know, more than Pollin's attempts to write about the experience of using these substances, is how he is different now from the experience. Is he more adventurous, considering a ride, perhaps, on a real rocket ship? Does he love more lavishly, now that he knows it's the foundation of everything? Or is the experience a mere fleeting idyll, only valuable for temporary entertainment like a binge on a TV show?
1
As a young college student I was very taken with the view of Whorf and Sapir that "we think with (in) words." Taking psychedelics convinced me that was not entirely correct, as we (or I, at least) also think in colors and images and sounds.
If I could choose one author to write about psychedelic experiences it would be Proust. His description of waking from sleep, that stage where you're not yet awake but no longer fully asleep, where you feel that you can exert some level of control over events in your dream (or dreamlike state) of the moment even as the events rush forward -- I suspect this is a near universal experience but Proust is the only thing I've ever read that came close to capturing the feeling. And I think the same distinction would hold for psychedelics: describing the experience is enlightening, and I think Pollen has done that well, but it needs a Proust to capture and express the feeling of the sublime that one gets on a trip.
3
Thanks to Pollan's book my 70-year-old husband and I (just turned 60) participated in a psychedelic retreat last weekend in the Netherlands, where magic truffles (active chemical compound: psilocybin) are legal. Neither of us had ever done any drugs in our lifetime. It was a profound experience, emotional and mind-blowing and insightful, a 'trip' that lasted about six or seven hours with 10 other attendees, overseen by four experienced facilitators.
The commenters on this article who automatically lump psychedelics with 'drugs' aka addictive substances taken just to get 'high,' really have no idea what they're talking about.
28
The last time I tripped on LSD was 1969. Between the ages of 17 and 19, I used LSD a lot. The experience changed my life. Perhaps the irony here is expressed in Pollan's article: I became aware of how all language is metaphor. That set me up for an entirely different understanding of narrative, the difficulty in finding absolute meaning, and, as another commenter said here, "all is interpretation." I became a lit major. A few other things came to me during my trips. Among them I remember thinking that there is an answer for the meaning of life, but one cannot describe it in words (perhaps it's the "love is everything" phenomenon), and you think you have it, but it passes before you can "grasp" it. It is immediate, certain, and revelatory, but inexplicable. Another lasting "realization" was an acceptance of mortality (I'm now 69, and if I ever get a terminal illness, I will definitely ask for LSD or some other psychedelic, to ease my fears). "Jim" will disappear but somehow some other "essence" of Jim will continue in people's memories and in the things I leave behind (whether it be something passed down to my children (a favorite piece of furniture) or my photography or all the books I've edited in the past 40 years. (Being a Vietnam vet, I often think of this as the "things I carried.") In sum, I remember the experience as one that was not "fun," but which was certainly enlightening, and I would recommend it if you're interested.
5
At age 22ish, severely depressed, suicidal, in college (functioning in nursing school, however), I could not endure the depression, which already included states of dissociation. I decided to take acid ( I had taken it several times before, but never alone).
It was both a moment of self destruction and a moment of hope. I was prepared to totally lose my mind, and wind up in the State Hospital nearby. Or I hoped that some type of good would come of it. Either way, didn't exactly matter. I just could not stay in the same place, there had to be a shift out out in some, in any direction. I didn't care.
As the author says, the words from here don't matter. They sounds almost silly. But I will just say my night of staring at the fireflies in the tall grasses behind my dorm room provided me a connection, a groundedness, a belief that both nothing and everything mattered.
I didn't kill myself, or go crazy. I picked up with my life. I did get kicked out my landscape of depression overnight. I don't know, I could have gone to an ER, a therapist, told someone how I was feeling. That probably would have gotten me in the hospital. And a very long different road.
It was the rashness of youth, but over the decades I have had recurrent episodes of dissociative depression, and wished I could drop acid again. If psychedelics were available and there were guides available, I definitely would have sought it out. In my 60's now,,, I still would do it.
11
I was always around drugs, including psychedelics, as part of the initiation of the young back in the day. My brother-in-law was a big drug dealer who finally got bused selling a million dollars of LSD to an undercover agent. If they are used as a vision quest there may be a value to them. But a lot depends on the work put into gaining this vision. Working and sacrificing for $100 is worth much more than $1000 just given to you with no effort on your part. A vision quest implies some self-sacrifice and physical hardship to gain a "vision" as in so many tribes of yesteryear. However, these visions were never talked about, they could be depicted or symbolized as a memory device for the young tribesman, but they were supposed to add value to the resources of the tribe. In some instances I think that happened with psychoactive drugs. And we know the Greek oracles used drugs to come up with interesting answers to questions posed to them. But the Greeks also had a saying, "who the gods want to destroy they first make crazy." If the drug experience makes you a more tolerant and loving a person so much the better. But be assured that a hole will be opened that some bad spirit can get through. Utter paranoia and conspiracy obsessions, for instance, which I have seen in a lot of people who took them.
Even though I have not tripped in many decades I feel that acid gave me a global viewpoint that persists. I am grateful for that.
5
Try putting manic depression into words.
1
Kill the story, keep the illustrations.
2
To kinda borrow a lyric from Jackson Browne,
'68 I was 19 and I called the road my own...
and I found many, many others on the same road!
Marijuana - LSD Marijuana - LSD Marijuana - LSD
By far the BEST trip ever I ever took, was when I actually saw Jim Morrison's Carnival Dogs consume the Lines!! All night long, large, animated, psychedelically colorful DOGS chomping down on the night sky until it became until dawn!!
Now I'm 69 and there a lot of pot-holes in the road!
2
Mr. Pollan tripped with the privilege of a guide-and access to the pure, quality drugs. Most of us do not have the means for that.
Lucky Guy.
10
You cannot really can’t bring anything back with you. Words are not of that place. In comparison to what IS, words are mundane, useless, no matter how well thought out or how cleverly put in a row.
16
I asked Huston Smith why writing about religious experience is so hard, and after pausing for a minute or two, he said “Putting it into words would be like constructing a Shakespeare play with two-by-fours.”
16
If you are committed to the view that there is no such place then your thoughts will be hopelessly supercilious, arrogant, conceited, and play such tricks that angels will weep.
If your language is wholly derived from the time and space sensorium and your mind totally institutionalized in a neurocentric logos than you miss it all. His ontologo-centric view is analogous to the geocentric view of those past peoples. He is utterly unable to give IT up and cannot relinquish enough self to go beyond the platitudinous into the depths of the reality.
One might say, "I" and "we" cannot be translated into "it". Instead of realizing that, he rejects the validity of the experience in favor of his pre-existing paradigm. His thoughts and observations "serve a metaphysics already in place." He believes that particles are the basis of all existence and everything can ultimately be reduced to such physicality and consciousness is a fluke of evolution and has no business account in the cosmos.
This is a closed mind at work and it is not surprising that the 5-Meo experience horrified him.It presented him with "evidence" the universe is not what he thought. He is like a person hearing a foreign language in a far country and declaring it gibberish... sheer non-English, not the kings language. He dismisses the mystery and presumes that he is seated on the throne of epistemology.It appears he suffers still from epistemic trauma.
20
@steven harp
well said Steven Harp
2
You know i believe in legalizing most drugs. And over my life I have tried pretty much each drug at least once. Some I still do. And as much as I think the writer should write about what ever he or she feels. I keep saying to myself why is this essay in the paper. Isn't it irresponsible to promote drug use? And that's what this is doing. It's not right. And as far as describing an LSD or Mescaline Trip, there is still nothing that beats Alice Through The Looking Glass. Or you can just go listen to The Grateful Dead's , Anthem Of The Sun.
6
Do drugs.
Not too often.
Mostly mushrooms.
73
@L.V. this made me chuckle.
8
Can one write about what is a sensory experience in what is basically not a sensory form outside of just using one's eyes, to reading something? Nothing I have read about actually having sex, has approached the actual experience of having it. Try to explain to me what it really tastes like to eat something that one really loves. That pasta with the perfect Sunday sauce or gravy doesn't translate into words. Yeah, its moist, garlicky,a certain level of spicy but its more than just words. Words as to experiences just beat around the bush or bring back memory of the experience one already has had.
16
This comment is not about the book but about the fantastic drawing that accompanies the review. What an interesting piece of art! How does one see more of this artist’s work? I wish NYT gave more info than just name credits for photos and illustrations.
12
LSD over 100 times in my youth between ages 17 to 22. Near death experience from meningitis at age 57..... The author asks,
" what's left ? ".........nothing and everything and it's as the Beatles said " all there is, is Love." We appear and disappear in the ever abiding peace, that is also vibrant and still.
9
And as ancient models there's of course the New Testament's Book of Revelations.
Fascinating ... the imperative to write about a drug trip. Please write much, much more on this topic of importance to millions of Americans.
1
At long last, cannabis is now considered harmless and cannabis offenders are being released from prison. If psychedelics are now also to be recognized as beneficial, shouldn't people imprisoned for psychedelic "drug offenses" also be freed? Can a bourgeoisie raise his gaze above his navel? Where is the mass political movement to legalize psychedelic substances? Why does no one care? The God Pill was the holy sacrament of the revolutionary counter culture. The repression of LSD can't be separated from the repression of the Movement as a whole . . . .
3
Hi Michael,
I simply want to say thank you, and, I know what you mean.
9
Pollen is a true mystic.
My experience with drugs were nothing much compared to my practice of meditation, as taught by Maharishi Mahesh. I spent four months with him in his teacher training of meditation in some mountains in Italy in 1972. My perception was changed as I shifted from reality to
REALITY. It is still profound, and stable as a new human being who escaped the small reality which binds you. The awareness and consciousness are allowing me to live with the grace of giving it to others. The presence is.
2
I was fifteen years old. I was hanging out with my older brother's friends, and took a hit of "windowpane" acid, so called because of it's clear color.
I had a bad trip, at first. Ultimate anxiety, coupled with unpleasant hallucinations. One of the older guys (about twenty) took me aside and described a different time when he was tripping. He said he looked at a brick wall, and every individual brick stood out to him as it's own entity, which had never happened before.
I'm simplifying a bit, but at some point I began to calm down. I closed my eyes and saw myself floating through space, alone. In the distance I saw a dot. As the dot moved closer to me, I could see it was made of people. Human beings were clasped together, in the manner of a jungle gym. I gradually realized, it was every human being who had ever lived, or would live. I floated into the midst of the people, and as I floated out the other end, I saw there was a streamer attached. The streamer read "Relationships".
I then snapped out of my hallucination, into a different type of hallucination- ecstasy. I was unbelievably, profoundly happy. I had come to a realization- I was lucky to be alive, to be sentient.
I believe this acid trip, regardless of the harm it may have done, changed my life in incredibly important ways. I began to develop empathy. I realized there is more to life than eating, sleeping, and working.
32
I had a few DMT experiments, the last around 30 years ago.
To resort to metaphor, vaping DMT is like a birthday prank where you find yourself kidnapped by ninjas, hustled on to a waiting airplane, borne aloft, and kicked out of the side door to skydive, all in the space of about 5 seconds.
The landscape you find yourself falling into seems as if it's the machine code that structures human neural activity. Which soon transforms into something else. I don't know what that something might be.
About 5 minutes in, a (metaphorical) parachute deploys: the experience of being swallowed up in Eternity abates, replaced by a profound sense of relief as perception begins to reassemble. That's when elation sweeps over- with the realization that the mind is restructuring a recognizable map of navigable reality. Reassembly is like a rebirth, an invitation to appreciate the default condition of self-aware consciousness anew- instead of taking it for granted as a mundane faculty on account of being jaded, as it were, by homeostatic stability and routine.
Before the moment when I was assured that reintegration had begun, I always found the experience terrifying.
Maybe readers can get the picture from that report.
Strangely enough, DMT produces no hangover or after-effects whatsoever. Within fifteen seconds after vaporizing the compound, you're out beyond the comprehension of such basic concepts as forward or backward, in or out. Twenty minutes later, it's worn off completely.
13
This reminds me of the books of Carlos Casteneda, the anthropologist who wrote a series of books about the teachings of the sorcerer Don Juan. Don Juan was a Yaqui sorcerer and shaman. These stories were very influential for me in the ‘60s.
6
@MCD. Yes! Brilliant anthropological fiction. He made it all up but it seemed totally real.
2
@MCD
FYI, Castaneda's work as well as his thesis are generally considered a hoax.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda
"How to Change Your Mind" is a great read on an important topic. Whatever one's experience, the use of psychedelics forces the user to acknowledge that perception is not reality.
In and of itself, that is a vital lesson. Thank you for sharing, Mr. Pollan!
6
Casting off the lines that moor us to reality can have devastating consequences for some. As a child of the 60s I am aware of people who were permanently altered by their psychedelc experience and unable to regain the ability to reenter psychic normality. It is likely that they had a preexisting psychiatric vulnerability and that the LSD trip only provided the trigger. However, I would caution anyone contemplating experimenting with psychedelics that their “altered reality” may be nightmareish and permanent.
8
I am hesitant to believe much of what Mr. Pollan says considering that at least some of what he says in his book is untrue.
He claims that it was the experiments and counterculture acceptance of Timothy Leary that ended legitimate medical experimentation on LSD that had promising results.
This is untrue. I knew several of the doctors who were involved in the LSD research in the 1950s and they found that LSD was more likely to worsen the symptoms of mental illnesses than be beneficial for them. They ceased their experiments with it long before anybody ever head of Leary.
2
Yep, reading writing about writing while high, is just as boring as reading writing written while high. Same old same old.
10
@Mary Sojourner
Amazed by your reaction. I found this piece to be among the most fascinating I've ever read in the NYT. Different strokes...
3
Perhaps this search for the holy grail to open the mind is a piecemeal search for practices lost to the guns, germs and steel mentality of the west. Wealth was as material as you can get, gold, precious stones, slaves and land that could be utilized for yet more money. What was lost through arrogance and ignorance was the practice of indigenous medicine, ways of eating, and of course the belief systems. With western science trying in it’s piecemeal way to analyze individual effects of substances, once again humans lose out to tiny ineffective bandaids. To open your mind as scientists researching psychedelics, one must give up western conventional modes of belief. You cannot straddle a wall and understand neither the origins of its birth or how we as a western society can use the same to our advantage. Every time a village doctor summoned spirits, danced or distributed psychedelics, it was to an audience steeped in single minded belief in a way of life that encompasses all their knowledge. The only comparative system the west had was single minded religion, divorced from the daily foods, medicinal and scientific habits of its people. Today, we have in the west separated belief and science and seek to effect change with one or the other. What I read, is a desire to change western scientific approach. If so I applaud it. Enough time has been wasted running in circles.
9
“Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.”
Carlos Castaneda
7
@Ron
Castaneda's work and thesis are generally considered a hoax.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda
"Murder, My Sweet" with Dick Powell has a great sequence trying to recreate a trip. To experience being stoned on pot or high on weed-- which is different from tripping, but analogous to a small degree of unreality -- I suggest headphones and a good music album (your artistic and cultural choice); a walk outside in the open air, at least, and in nature, if possible; and finally, wearing sunglasses. Something about the raised heartbeat and altered perception can bring about thoughts, feelings, and experiences analogous to tripping. But to get the deep time distortions and visual fantasia Pollan refers to, you need to get some mushrooms or acid. And never forget George Harrison, who said something like, "When you're good at it, you don't need the drugs."
5
This is right up my alley. If you want to read true classic accounts of tripping on psychedelic drugs read Roller Coaster Kid's; Tales of 1960's Coney Island. the 2nd part of this epic contains quite a few such stories, and cautionary drug tales including bummers. the author writes from the vast experience of 120 trips on LSD, mushrooms and mescaline.
3
I very much enjoyed this article. In 1959 I was a senior in high school. One of my best friends lived next door to Aldous Huxley, who we would sometimes encounter on the road, for a short chat. I read most of his books, and the Doors of Perception fascinated me, as I was curious about the pathways to knowledge – how we know what we know. As a subject for my Physiology term paper I chose (what were then called) hallucinatory drugs. Not much was available at the time for research: Charles Tart, the wonderful Robert De Ropp, and some of the literary examples: De Quincey, etc. At that time drug hysteria was not prevalent, so when I realized that I needed to have the experience, I was able to buy Peyote mail order from Arizona. My subsequent paper, including several descriptive pages was given an A+ and a commendation for my "intellectual courage."
Since that time, I have taken a few psychedelics, adopted and rejected existential materialism, floated for hours in isolation tanks, practiced Kundalini and Tantric Yoga, spent years with various schools of meditation, worked with native shamans, and practiced contemplative prayer. Now at the age of 75, I think that what is most important is the question. A wide variety of experience becomes integrated as we age, if we can manage not to take ourselves too seriously. I think the mind is a wonderful thing, and too big to be the property of a single ego. I hope we can always question what we know, and not believe everything we think.
69
What you’re really describing, with your experiences, is a letting go of preconceived notions that tether us to our conscious, logical thoughts and the narrative that continuously courses through our minds, a seeing of the illusions we live with day to day. Having had experiences, at one point in my life many years ago, with LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin, I can understand what you are describing.
I’ve also had experience over many years with zen meditation (mindfulness meditation) and found that I’ve had similar insights. The difference is that they are gradual and come from a regular practice, not popping a pill, or whatever. The sense of intense love and appreciation of everything in existence comes from the opening up of the heart, that results from letting go, to just be in the moment. The drug experience is like tossing a ball in the air … gravity always wins and you’re back where you started from.
Sadly, from many of the responses I've seen here people have limited experience or no idea of what they write.
Thanks for your efforts!
22
Absolutely fascinating, important essay.
The author's desire to describe the psychedelic experience forces him to confront some essential, troubling aspects of language. That language is based upon shared experiences.
This realization created a revolution in mathematics during the 19th and early 20th centuries: e.g. the development of non-euclidean geometries (Gauss, Klein, Hilbert); Godel's work in logic; Cantor's work in set theory.
I think reports and accounts from the land of psychedelia are extremely important; for the insights they give us into perception, the limits of language, biology, and philosophy.
9
I was 20 years old in 1969, in my last year of college. I took LSD a few times and the visuals were interesting, such as light appearing to course through the veins of my hands and seeing a rock band performing on stage transformed into wearing leopard skins. I had received a scholarship to study in France for a year, which I found exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. On another occasiion, while looking out at the ocean, I saw swirling colors and forms which seemed to be occasioned by the anxiety of the foreign adventure. France was indeed across the sea.
But, what is more interesting, is that I had a bona fide mystical experience on no drug at all. Pollan mentioned sensory excitement as a trigger. Standing in the plaza in San Antonio, TX, I took in the exotic Mexican sights, sounds, and smells from the storefronts and restaurants. I believe the sensory overload brought on an ecstatic state. Suddenly, I no longer felt the boundary of my body and time stood still. I was one with the All. The sensation was indeed blissful, nirvanaesque. What's more, I felt energy pouring from my heart and saw sparks of light speading out infinitely beyond me.
I have been studying mystical experiences for some time. Light and love, mind and heart, combine to relieve stress and provide wisdom. I believe it is a neurological phenomenon and a gift of nature.
19
As a young, fledgling writer I thought having three acid trips and one mushroom trip added to my portfolio of experiences, yet I’ve never been tempted to write about them (until now).
I am thankful for the mind-opening thrill of that first experience with LSD — the remarkable imagery from 35 years ago is still fresh in my mind.
Equally fresh was the BAD TRIP I experienced on my second acid outing. I endured psychological terror beyond logical description, this despite being in the company of supportive friends.
The insight I gained was less into myself than into the motivations of others. I applaud the spirit of experimentation, but caution all who read these comments that there can be a dark side to diving deeply into the uncharted waters of the mind.
I will never revisit psychedelics again, content to have experienced that one amazing good trip tempered by the most frightening few hours of my life.
13
@Stephen Greenfield "The insight I gained was less into myself......motivations of others." I am thinking that questioning the motivations of others IS insight into oneself is it not? It can be our projection of our fears unto the other. Just thinking.
I think that just a healthy salad for lunch would be better. And more interesting.
Take a nap. Maybe go for a bike ride later in the afternoon.
That is the most interesting stuff of all.
8
I listened to the Terry Gross interview and thought it was fantastic. Michael Pollan is one of the most eloquent speakers I've ever heard. As for reading about a trip - wouldn't be my first choice. The potential applications for medical uses, however, were profound on their own terms.
7
Best writing on the acid experience I have read was, "Be Not Content" by William J. Craddock (Doubleday, 1970). It was out of print for many years before being reissued by Transreal Books in 2012.
It was legendary and a touchstone among the smattering of my friends in the '70s who had read it. Hardly journalism, though. It was built around an ironic, funny and ultimately deeply pessimistic memoir of the desparately bold narrator and his tripping friends.
I think it's great story-telling, but that can be a matter of taste. However, the description of the acid experience is absolutely vivid: was the moment I read it and remained so until I happened on the reissue. Craddock never tried to separate sensory experience from the existential aftermath. All the trips were high-dose and there were a lot of them. They varied a lot too, though after a while the writing on the wall was always the same. Enough imagery, metaphor, simile, to fill up your bag, and a giant lingering question mark that took weeks to disperse when I finished reading the reissue.
But, maybe you have read it. Pardon me if so. Maybe this will be news to someone.
3
@Wylie Krueger
I remember that book!
1
A lot of criticism of Pollan in here, but reading the comments it appears to me they were written by people who have neither read his book nor heard him speak about it. The book is much more than a recounting of personal psychedelic trips; I think many criticizing Pollan for undertaking an exploration of psychedelics would feel differently about the endeavor if they read the book. This article is merely a tangent, an exposition on one little element of the book - his personal experience - and an even smaller point, how to write about it. Pollan does seem to enjoy recounting in great detail the challenges of putting his personal experience into words. And who can blame him? He's a writer. If this article bores you, so be it, but don't generalize the criticism unless you've read the book.
85
"The Tao [or trip] that can be said is not the eternal Tao/trip...(!)
1
What a wonderful piece of writing about writing, and writing about the human experience. The problem of writing about hallucinogenic experiences taps into the most profound issues of communication through the written word: issues of audience, self, narrative, vocabulary. Also the problem of what is banal and what is the opposite of banal -- reminding me a little of Hannah Arendt's struggles with defining the momentousness of Eichmann's role in the Holocaust. A beautiful piece, Mr Pollan!!! Many thanks for the work you put into it.
9
Pollan's book Botany of desire changed my life and my outlook. All I can say reading this is that I have sympathy his predicament. Pollan's vision of the cage that covered him head to toe seems to be a fear of what his audience will think, while the organic vine (free of self judgement) is free to use the circular bar of the cage to spiral its way and grow towards the light. People in this culture are so afraid to be real and be judged by others. Let it all be as it is and love it as it is, everything doesn't need to be put into a box/cage for the mind to absorb it. I wonder what this book would look like if written from a fearless state of mind. This is what separates the visionaries from the caged.
7
It was your book that inspired me to seek out a guided experience. I had not had done psychadelics since college but for many personal reasons felt that the experience could be beneficial. In the space of eight days I had three trips each one increasing in dose to the last which was of heroic proportions. I attended this experience with thirteen others all bringing various reasons of their own for attending. Most of them seemed to be looking for a shortcut to what years of therapy couldn't seem to help. I think everyone there came away from the experience with positive feelings about the week spent and were eager to incorporate their new found insights into their daily lives. For myself I experienced pure joy and gratitude. I appreciate the dilemma of trying to convey the experience through language when it seems that there are insights presented that are beyond words. The importance of love seems to be a common thread I have heard many try to express, but language does seem to fall short of conveying the profoundness of the experience and becomes a kind of psychic babble.The experience has changed me for the better and given a lightness to my daily routines that is liberating. I think you have done a great service to many(everyone there had read the book) in exposing the positive aspects of a phenomena that has been with us for centuries but lost in a modern world.
89
I'm a baby boomer and grew up in the 60's when acid mades its way into high school. I flushed acid down the toilet whenever a classmate gave me some. I never did it because I knew I would lose my mind.
3
I had already lost my mind by high school, to PTSD from witnessing domestic violence and experiencing sexual assault. My mind was controlled by the alarm system and security measures installed by multiple traumas.
I never thought about this before, but I think maybe the mild doses of psychedelics I ingested once in a while probably helped keep me functional enough to be able to remain in school and still care about learning things.
PTSD can be like tunnel vision. Sometimes you need to hear from the parts of the brain that don't believe in or recognize those tunnels.
29
I think Mr. Pollan, you might be experiencing a mid-life crisis at this stage of your life and career. At some point most intellectual folks go through a philosophical crisis. taking one back to embarrassingly teenage states. I am guessing a lot of people are so self conscious about longings for these childish, episodic feelings they need to justify it by attaching great significance to the trip. My suggestion, just take a long sabbatical, and dream. You do not need drugs to bungee jump with your mind or write sad nonsense, you do not need to write at all. Simply be. That is the greatest trip of all. No need to share. The day you wake up to the wonder of simply being you, that day you will certainly feel enlightened.
As for the rest of the creative innovators, they went into drug stupors obsessing with focus, not on the state of their minds but one single problem. Had they not smoked their brains out and simply travelled as they did, they might have come up with the same ideas if not better. As a scientist it is certainly a fallacy to regard drugs as the key to clarity. Et tu Pollan? Then die science.
4
As a scientist, you should take some time to look at the research on psychedelics. I think you’ll find the questions robust, the chemistry fascinating, and some of the results stunning. And if you ever dare take a trip of your own, come back and revisit this article. I guarantee you’ll have a more sympathetic perspective, and hopefully a purging of your preconceived notions surrounding “drugs”.
33
@Meena FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under ... LSD when he first deduced thedouble-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago. He is only one of many:
14 Famous Scientists and Inventors who Experimented with Drugs
Andrew Weil – Morphine. Andrew Weil is widely credited as the founder of “integrative medicine”. ...
Bill Gates — LSD. ...
John C. Lilly — LSD, Ketamine. ...
Kary Mullis — LSD. ...
Paul Erdös — Amphetamines. ...
Ralph Abraham – LSD/ Other. ...
Stephen Jay Gould – Marijuana. ...
Steve Jobs — LSD.
And I'll add one of many great writers: Shakespeare - pot
17
@Robin Maxwell
Absolutely, I am not at all opposed to either the use of hallucinogens or drugs of any kind. In fact I am absolutely for the legalization of all such trippy substances. Let people take responsibility for their minds. Perhaps I cannot comment on the biochemistry of such substances unless I read further. I am sure many in the research community partake of such indulgences. Perhaps it helps in sharpening one’s focus by excluding the outside world completely. BUT the folks who are brilliant, can see a future, that they do so only under the influence of drugs is debatable, the rest can simply keep tripping and hoping. For every responsible pot smoker or drug user, I can show you hordes of homeless, hapless youngsters with wasted lives. Where is the innovation in the streets? I sincerely believe everyone is capable of brilliant thoughts, the tricky part lies in execution.
My argument is with the presumption that drugs are the only pathway to achieve single minded focus or a freedom of the mind. Perhaps the difference is personal, perhaps the real fight is not with using hallucinogens or not, its whether an uptight, self conscious, politically correct, ethic inhibits the freedom of thought. I find it difficult to rely on so far unproven data with such shortcuts. I’ll wait for the brilliant mice who break out of the labs and rescue fellow mice the world over, then I’ll gladly snort anything they snacked on.
1
I had a spiritual teacher who said that all of us seek divinity in one way or another, and one way was through drugs. The problem with drugs, however, is that it is addictive, unsustainable and very often destructive over the long-term. That a more healthy and sustainable method was meditation, which could also lead to great personal insight, and could also benefit one's day to day lives (i.e. lessen suffering). Most importantly, one can meditate all one's life without ill-effect. (Unless you count creaky knees from time to time.)
I know which one I choose.
7
@Diva As a lifelong meditator, I agree wholehertedly with your praise of its powers. But I've also occasionally used psychoactive drugs in safe settings and found those experiences to have been tremendously valuable, too. It doesn't have to be an either or...
4
One can't help but observe the flood of misoneistic and uninformed comments from readers claiming psychedelics cause addiction and even brain damage.
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Cary Grant, author Peter Matthiesen, Noble Prize in Chemistry recipient Kary Mullis, John Coltrane, Phil Jackson, and Jean-Paul Sartre have all experimented with psychedelics and have attested to their personal and professional life-changing properties.
So did Douglas Engelbart, whose invention of the mouse and the copy and paste function, both considered major advancements in computer technology, were inspired by LSD.
Psychedelics aren't for everyone, but promulgating fear and false information about their use should not continue to support prohibition for anyone seeking to heal or expand their mind or experience of the universe - especially for those whose psychedelic-inspired insight can potentially benefit humanity.
104
One Aldous Huxley comes to mind who described the red color of the rose was so vivid and intense that words failed him when he came back from LSD.
11
@Spin Psychle
Don't words fail all of us when we try to really describe the vividness of a red rose?
4
Tripping is perfectly describable but most trips are uniquely individualistic. I think the writer is complicating a really fun experience.
7
This meandering, overly intellectualized screed is exactly why one cannot write about this sort of experience. If you’ve had an LSD trip you know I’m correct. It cannot describe the intensity of feeling and lasting knowing that it imparts the user. That is probably the point of a drug that provides a very personal time of insight.
The writer starts with how difficult a challenge this would be and that others have tried and failed to completely document an LSD trip and all that comes with it. Then, he spends the same amount of time writing about other writers and history and blah blah blah and leaves the reader slogging through this joyless essay that feels like a ten hour trip without the fun and insight.
There’s a reason kids invented the text shorthand TL;DR. I should have thought of that two paragraphs in.
9
"So Sergeant Pepper took you by surprise?"
11
Blah blah blah, young fella. I have four words for Michael.
Alan Watts
Carlos Castenada
Be quiet. Stop talking. Surrender to the delusion of what is real and what is not. Your consciousness is yours and yours alone. No one can begin to fathom the mysteries. Have fun, you rascal you.
19
The author is a bloody fool. Anyone dabbling in illicit drugs has no idea what they are actually ingesting. Cannibis, sure go ahead if you purchased it legally. At least it has undergone some testing to assure it is actually what you think it is. Peyote? Maybe, if you have enough botanical knowledge to go out and the desert and pick it yourself to assure that it is a natural unadulterated product (assuming you like vomiting with your psychedelic experience). Psilocybin mushrooms? Again, do you have enough knowledge of mycology to gather them yourself from the wild? Otherwise you may just be getting some 'shrooms of another genus that some enterprising soul added a synthetic mind altering chemical to. Smoking toad venom? How the hell do you know that is what you are getting? Did you personally watch the gathering and processing of the substance (or depend on someone else that you would trust with your life)? Beyond that, purchasing any illegal synthetic chemical substance is a crap shoot with your health, and possibly with your life. LSD? Who cooked that up? Some organic chemistry undergrad that you hope correctly mastered the process? You do know that a misstep in making LSD can result in a similar chemical that can cause "locked in syndrome" wherein the victim is so disabled that can only communicate by blinking their eyelids, right? It is grossly irresponsible to romanticize the use of black market psychedelic chemicals in the pages of the NYT.
12
One can't help but think, as these various psychotropic drugs get a mainstream aura of respectability, about all the lives that were ruined in the penal system, and all the people still in jail and still going to jail for what are now a set of mind-expanding options available to the well-known and well-written.
Less than a week ago, there was an Op-Ed on the health literacy of seniors. Michael Pollan needs to be forewarned: If a young specialist asks him if he has ever used illicit drugs, and he replies with the truth, he will find a wholly different set of mind-blowing and ego-crushing experiences as each medical worker from lowly tech to high-priced specialty M.D. plays out their zero-tolerance prejudices learned not in med school but in the hallways and classrooms of the public schools.
We're hearing that tech workers are taking doses for their "creativity", though who they are and whether they are really "tech" and why they need it are left to the imagination. When your job starts at $200K, nobody will question your illicit habits.
Michael Pollan owes those ruined by what people were conditioned to think of these experiences a follow-on to tell us why their lives deserved not the accolades he got but punishment instead.
3
Fresh Air repeated Terry's interview with this author. it was fascinating.
6
The first few times I dropped acid starting in 1969, I was eager to share my experiences with others. But I very quickly learned that you've either been there or you haven't. It is just not a "word" thing.
82
@Chuck Burton - I think "been there" also refers to experiencing military combat, giving birth, raising a family and I suspect, many other experiences in life.
14
Yep. Words won’t nearly do. As the writer’s post-it notes reveal, the experience leaves language well behind. Try music.
11
@Chuck Burton, to paraphrase Ken Kesey, you're either on the bus or off the bus.
8
“How do you construct a narrative in the absence of those cozy coordinates of reality?”
It’s just a waltz, and all of life is a stage.
One, two, three. One, two, three...
12
This is the stupidest thing I have ever read. Why would you do all these drugs just to write this article. You are putting yourself at risk of becoming addicted for what....
1
There are addictive drugs, like alcohol, opiates and amphetamine, that cause physical craving. Others create a psychological demand like cannabis. But the so-called psychedelics do not. It is typical to emerge from an experience depleted of all mental and physical energy, even the liver’s store of glucosamine is gone.
But theres no compulsion to repeat the experience. Best to check sources before making overly-broad statements.
42
@Debbie
I don't know. Why travel to one of those foreign countries where you don't know the language and might get robbed or pick up a strange disease or...?
4
@Joen. Surely you are speaking tongue in cheek here!? How strange. Why travel to foreign countries where you might be robbed or ....? Why go outdoors at all? Why explore the world at the risk of disease and death and all manner of misfortune? Why interact with other people who might be carriers of all kinds of pathogens? Please, y’all, never try to expand your horizons!
3
For most people, it is safer and ultimately a more successful path to self awareness (i.e., mindfulness) by learning and practicing meditation than it is to experience powerfully hallucinogenic drugs. Like anything else in life, rewards most often come from hard work and some discipline rather than a pill.
That said, if you are intensely curious about things and with expert guidance you feel you can benefit, go ahead and try a "psychedelic experience." Otherwise, consider trying what Buddhist philosophy has been experimenting with for 2,700 years.
6
@a goldstein
The methods used to gain self awareness (mindfulness) are not mutually exclusive. Any amount of meditation, deep thinking or psychedelic drugs could tell you that.
10
@Joey R.
Chances are that people have been ingesting rye mold, peyote, certain mushrooms, et al for many thousands of years without the baggage of misinformation that we see here.
2
Alcohol is a drug, and many are addicted. Addiction goes unnoticed in this culture. Experimenting with hallucinogens often goes with cyclical, off and on, addicts. Staying off one drug, exploring another. The 'bro- guru' culture tells us how wonderful micro-doses are. Michael Pollan may be an addict who is experimenting with other drugs. Maybe staying off all drugs is the right idea? You don't see more, have higher insights, with drugs. You just care less of the end product, like this article.
2
All drugs? You mean like Prilosec for example? Speaking of addiction, people are only supposed to take PPIs for two weeks max. But I see chili cheese fry addicts who develop a dual dependency on overspiced, oversalted, fatty junk food and the PPIs necessary to block the inevitable heartburn. Not a good thing, given that PPIs have lots of bad side effects, like bone demineralization for example.
Psychedelics are not a real problem compared with that.
6
What's wrong with "“love is everything” isn't that it can't withstand the irony of unmedicated hours.
What's wrong is that it's plainly untrue or, at best, unlivable in sobriety. For all but saints and madmen, it's no more or less useful than the revelation that the universe smells like turpentine.
3
temporary psychosis , if you find it enjoyable or enlightening go for it
What's the point? Time to get back into the kitchen, maybe with a glass of wine and some music in the background. It's there -- and maybe in a good book and a walk in nature or helping the helpless and hopeless or nurturing a friendship -- that one's mind is best changed.
5
In research, we have the Hawthorne effect in which the subject being observed changes its behavior in response to the awareness of being observed. In Pollan’s case, how did his intention of chronicling or writing the experience change his experience? In my experience of ayuhuacsa and other psychedelics, the duality of human existence—of I and other—is obliterated. There is no observer and observed only a profound interconnectedness of all beings.
Oh geeze...now I’m spewing platitudes. But sometimes I wonder how different this world could be if psychedelics were more accepted as a form of medicine.
58
@FM
The two most common observations that I've heard from people who have tripped for the first time is that everything is cyclical and that everything is interconnected. I'd go one step further and take the interconnectedness away from just "beings" and put the connection between everything.
7
@FM, which is why Pollan is at his most effective when he abandons metaphor, which is not only image but concept, for pure (phenomenological) description, absent the id, ego, and superego of his kind of tiresome three part writing scheme. Michaux doesn’t abandon his readers. He reveals HIS lived experience of an ‘ineffable’ experience by way of graphical (textual) exegesis. Pollan forgets that everything is interpretation.
3
Carlos Casteneda did it admirably 30+ years ago in his books about mescaline culture in the southwest/Mexico.
4
Casteneda was invited to speak to our Psychology of Eastern Religion class at UC Santa Cruz in 1969. It took little time to determine that he was the straightest, most rigid and conservative person in the room. I loved his first four books before they devolved into nonsense, but there has always been a raging debate whether he was a reporter or a novelist.
1
@Chuck Burton Casteneda answered that question himself. He admitted that everything he wrote was total fiction.
Or,in short, the toad trip really blew my mind.
Tom Miller
Waimanalo, Hawaii
2
Kesey did it better. Read the Psychedelic sequences in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
7
Various: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"
As you point out, limitations in language, written or verbal, fail us when attempting to communicate certain perceptions of the mind. I believe dance was always an important component to communal ritualistic psychedelic exploration.
"For an instant I think I saw. I saw the loneliness of man as a gigantic wave which had been frozen in front of me, held back by the invisible wall of a metaphor."
Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan
25
"If you're looking to find the key to the Universe, I have
some bad news and some good news. The bad news is: there is
no key to the Universe. The good news is: it has been left
unlocked."
We can never Know; we can always Be.
40
@Miss Anne Thrope beautiful. Thank you.
1
Pollan should have left off with "ineffable."
One word covers it all. The rest was embarrassing, unreadable.
And I find all this recent commentary on psychedelics irresponsibly casual, as if the only challenge was how to write about it.
Taking psychedelics is serious business and making it sound like a fun game is folly.
22
@Phil Carson
Ahhhhhh; the old Leary versus Keasy debate...I'm squarely in team Keasy.
5
'How Does a Writer Put etc.....' Well, I'd suggest tackling familiar territory while in the zone - like preparing a capon for roasting...from castrating to carving. The rest of the experience, while compelling, is but 'Oh Wow will ya lookit that...' Avoid driving, guns, alcohol, sky-diving and making stock-market investments using college funds while tripping. Although Kerouac, Kesey, Castenada and the Beatles have traveled this road - I do think Michael Pollan has much to add and I look very much forward to reading what insights he will undoubtedly have.
3
@Tom Storm
No need to look forward. he has already written the book.
1
I have a former colleague, a scholar who specializes in psychedelics. Did his research make him a kinder, more generous person? This person had many experiences in psychotropic drug use, but then refused to discuss them with his students. I don't doubt the promise of psychotropic drugs to be helpful in medical research, but having known this person for a long time, he was one of the worst bullies I ever met. His insights into the subconscious may be interesting, but where does this research go? It's interesting that Pollen chose this topic to write about, but I can't say that it will make me run and out buy his book. I have already seen some of the serious scholarship on this topic, and, so far, fail to see how it is illuminating when so much of this has already been done and reported. Where can this research lead us, and how can it be helpful beyond personal self-discovery ?
4
@Birdygirl ...or discovering there IS no "me" of the "I" who is speaking?
2
@Birdygirl The best way to answer your questions about the potential in this research would be to actually read the book -- which you can get at the library, so you don't need to "run out and buy" it.
2
it's a tribute to the transformative insights that a really solid "trip" can produce that we find Pollan not describing the experience per se but wrestling with the tactical implications for his journalistic craft back on earth.
the implications back in reality: that's what a psychetrip does so well.
i think the most important part of a trip is spiritual slash emotional: once your perceptions become -- what, "altered"? -- it's the impact on your space of emotion that is most powerful. have you ever felt sadness to live in the cage of a "self"? acid will take you there. "All is love" is a heartfelt, not a factual, observation. In my case it was more a feeling of raw awe, like looking upward into a vast waterfall of light, and feeling within the flux an immense, humbling source of power that i affirmed with all my heart.
i wonder if Pollan has a "humble hangover" from his trip in his stated concerns with language, accuracy and so on. come on, Michael: literature is lawn; it just grows as it grows. it's the reader who is the lawnmower, trimming the text to a domestic preconception. the writer has no control over that. the writer only takes in the sunshine of life, and does what he does.
control ... eh Pollan? it's a badger.
I cherish my twentysomething trips on acid and my only regret is that I can't find acid now. apparently I should start looking.
6
Ah yes, the rocket...a metaphor I have used myself to describe the launch of an acid trip, like the line from the movie, "Hold on tight, we're in for a rough ride"! There's the cosmic travel metaphor, racing through a universe with diamond stars of meaning and truth flashing into view, into consciousness and then flying by, receding behind before they can be crystallized into language. A Trip looks like the patterns generated by fractal geometry, an eyelid movie of self generating and ever expanding organic networks of images, can't describe fractals either, you have to see them. The revelation to me, the unimaginable creativity of the human mind when freed of preconception and dismissive categorization.
13
@John Griswold
There is more talent (and insight) in your comment than in all of Michael Pollan's book.
2
@John Griswold
Wow! Something like a magic carpet ride?
1
Having read and shared Pollan's previous books, I will certainly read this one with interest. Particularly since I had abundant experience with LSD and other psychedelics at an early age.
Being an aggressively curious person, I am fortunate in that my daring has (nearly) always been tempered by caution.
In 1970, in suburban Philadelphia, there were no experienced witnesses beyond my contemporaries, who struck me as...unreliable. There were, of course, plenty of psychedelic references in popular music and art (which likely piqued my interest in the first place), but also the dire (and bogus) warnings mentioned in this article.
Being a reader, I soon discovered Huxley's Doors of Perception, and was greatly reassured. I tried to read Michaux, but his account seemed to reinforce the need for caution. Carlos Castenada's "The Teachings of Don Juan" was very encouraging, but far too exotic and out of reach.
Then I found Bernard Roseman's, "LSD: The Age of Mind", which was a methodical chronicle of his investigations into a wide range of mind altering, vision inducing, life enhancing substances. LSD, peyote, synthetic mescaline, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and more were all revealed in journalistic fashion, according to Roseman's own experience. I will always be thankful for the guidance his book provided.
In light of that, it seems a curious omission on Michael Pollan's part not to have referenced or even mentioned this important author and his work.
13
@Allen
Don't. You will be disappointed. See above.
As of 10:30 AM ET this Sunday morning the lack of any comments to Michael Pollen's wonderful piece strikes me as an apt testamony testament to the ineffablilty of ineffability itself, which he addresses so well here. Thanks, Michael.
4
I heard your NPR interview on fresh air and I thought it was fabulous.
Thank you for opening minds when so many of them in the USA are closing. The USA and many other once reliably democratic citizens are choosing to look inward, with eyes closed - embracing unhappiness and self constructed limitations.
It’s the opening of minds and possibilities that MIGHT start to heal the world. This is a trip the world needs now.
17
Thank you, Michael, for jumping with abandon into the journey you describe. I appreciate your skillful struggle to describe the ineffable.
There is something fascinating and deeply important about the consistency of what people report experiencing with the dissolution of the narrative self. The fundamental importance of love. The peaceful consciousness that hosts all the travails of the ego-shaped self. The awe, wonder, and serenity that are always available, hidden in plain sight, in the vivid experience of living this arising moment.
Three things.
It should be noted that these insights are equally available through a dedicated practice of contemplative meditation. Contemplative insight appears to require long and consistent practice, but I suspect the insight gained is gentler, more sustainable, and more available to be integrated in one's day-to-day life.
I worry about the potential damage that might be done to the biological functioning of the brain by exposure to the toxins that cause a hallucinatory trip. Perhaps this is just the worried grandmother in me.
Three, I worry about the acquisitiveness that can arise following chemically induced insight. The insight is fast on and fast off and we often want it back, sometimes desperately. We can cling miserably to a memory of insight that nothing in ordinary life can compare to, losing in the clinging the acquired intimacy with just this. The vividness and vulnerability of being.
47
I, too, was noticing the comparison to what Fr. Richard Rohr and all the contemplatives share of their experience and the access for all of us to it, with the stilling of ourselves and our mind.
3
@Just This
this post makes two errors:
1. these substances are not toxic by standard measures for toxicity. These substances show no toxic effect when taken in larger doses.
2. These substances are not addictive.
As Pollan notes, they are anti-addictive.
A lab rat given the choice of food or psilocybin will press the button for food. With cocaine, for example, it will press for the drug repeatedly, until it dies.
39
@Just This
Let's agree that meditation is superbly valuable. However it is not the same. There are well-documented cases in Pollen's book of one heavy dose of psilocybin eliminating all signs of untreatable depression for at least a year. Meditation cannot do that, nor is that its purpose. Brain imaging also shows different effects. I found the experience life-changing, and I am a grandfather.
15
As an author who has written psychedelic journeys in several of my novels (mushrooms eaten by a Neolithic shaman, hash by 15th century Italians), I deeply appreciate your attempts to explain yours here. I read your book, and saw the difficulties you were experiencing, but thought you did an admirable job with an next-to-impossible subject. My frustration these days is that so few of my contemporaries (I'm 70) are even interested in having psychedelic experiences. With younger people it's even worse. The new rage is CBD as medicine. Nobody wants THC. Nobody wants to even get stoned. What's wrong with people?! I've written all twelve of my novels with the help of cannabis (which may not be considered psychedelic) but it certainly opened MY doors of perception and made me a better writer. Thank you for your book and this article. Perhaps it will make a few people wake up.
83
@Robin Maxwell You should come to Vancouver. Nobody doesn't want to get stoned. What joy to live amongst a million self-created morons stumbling around, content to live lives that should make them shudder. I don't think it's waking anyone up. That myth has sailed.
I would say instead: nobody is interested in reading anymore. Especially young people. What's wrong with them? Reading opened my doors of perception in ways that pot never did.
22
@Robin Maxwell Cannabis made me stupid, depressed, and lazy. As with any drug, your mileage may vary.
7
@Rage Baby Every try one single hit of good quality cannabis? Alone in a beautiful spot in nature?
11
let s try this again. Never mind the metaphysical non insights. I would settle for some interesting visual memories. The illustrator provided a good start.
4
For a worthwhile and interesting 'trip' by way of a musical journey, check out 'Voyage 34' by Porcupine Tree.
Rock On Kiddies!
2
Yes, but was parking available?
11
I read Michael's book. It was kind of a nostalgia trip for me. I've been down that road once or twice. It was interesting to meet a couple of the characters I'd never heard of before, and to get an update on the state of the art/science/politics of this community. The exposition was wonderful but I must admit I skimmed over the parts where he described his personal experiences.
2
Truly one of the most difficult things to describe is a psychedelic journey. I heard someone sum it up best one time by saying "it's like your brain is moving at a million thoughts a minute but you might only be able to communicate one"
can't wait to get this book and give it a read.
17
Never mind the metaphysical non insights. I would settle for some interesting visual memories. The illustrator provided a good start.
2
@Catherine Shalen Read the book. Pollan provides plenty of visuals.
Great essay, enjoying your new book ,“How to Change Your Mind,” as well, Michael Pollan.
I think you are striking the best balance. Psilocybin and other hallucinogens alter our senses while they alter our metacognitive perceptions, which affects reality, which affects the language we want to use to describe that reality. Language is not nor has ever been a medium for thought; it is a medium for communication. Addressing the reader breaks the narrative flow but maintains the reader's trust.
Further, metaphors are abhorred by science because they are approximations--science likes objective, calibrated measurements; however, what happens within the hallucinating mind is subjective.
Thank you for your 'research.' I hope more people can be helped by psychedelics. There is a lot of promise for the ill and 'healthy-normals.'
20
@James Siegel Language is not a medium for thought? Could not disagree more. Language is one of the most effective, not to mention common mediums for thought.
3
@James Siegel, metaphors are frequently used in science, it is subjective description and introspection that have been frowned on for decades in part due to the Behaviorist movement. In fact, to mention some rather hard-core social science, Lakoff and Johnson showed that human beings cannot go more than a sentence or two without some kind of metaphorical use of the language.
8
@James Siegel Yes, psychedelics are the key to ending so many ills, including addiction, pain management, depression, PTSD. Most people who claim these substances are harmful or unworthy are not even keeping up with mainstream media - they are cover stories everywhere!
3
Totally awesome...I’ll stick with martinis, thanks
2
@Bello alcohol is toxic to the body, does great damage to the brain, liver and kidneys, and is addictive to many. It's societal impact is measured in death and personal destruction on a massive scale.
12
@macdray
You are correct about alcohol, though its toxicity when consumed in moderation is debatable, in fact possibly even beneficial. My own experirences with psychedelic drugs have been scary and unpleasant in the extreme, therefore my stated preference for a cocktail.
2
I loved reading this. As a veteran of a dozen or so acid trips some fifty years ago, including one where I wrote down anything and everything that came into my head, I can attest to how difficult a task that is. You are in a psychotic state while trying to make enough sense of it in a comprehensible way to write it down.
I still have the forty pages I wrote in long hand. Every couple of years I pull it out and look at it. Just a stream of somewhat comprehensible consciousness but (in my humble opinion) compelling in an interesting sort of way. If I ever write a book, it will be the first chapter.
20
Mr. Schwarz,
My experience is markedly similar: several psychedelic experiences, during one if which i made continuous notations of thoughts, feelings, images, and actions, including choosing actions or inner directions i chose to pursue and questions i wished to explore. it recalls the whole experience and my sense if myself at the time vividly, for me. My trips 50 years ago have informed my life richly and I value them accordingly. Mr. Pollan's book rang resoundingly for me and within me.
Key takeaway: there is a universe of human depth and scientific biological validity to the idea, "All you need is love."
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@Barry Bussewitz
Thanks for sharing that and for sort of completing my thoughts on the matter. My trips too have informed my life in many ways that I wouldn't trade for the world. And as I said at my retirement party about two months ago, though I was paraphrasing Che rather than John Lennon, if your life is not primarily motivated by love, you're missing out on a lot.
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@Barry Bussewitz 89 years young, psychedelics part of the continuing trip, "All you need is love and all IS love.....
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Thank you, Mr. Pollan, for serving as our modern Huxley. I've always found it exhilarating to read through trip reports. Through words and imagery the reporter can distill empathy and the human experience into just a few paragraphs, and you'vr done so ellagantly and with underatanding. The only thing now is for the curious reader to experience it for themselves. And please report back.
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I think that we have to commend Michael Pollan for taking up again a conversation that was begun in the 1940's and became popular in the 1960's. That said, somehow he did not pick up on the fact that you cannot sit in a sterile laboratory setting and get much out of psychedelics. What the shamans knew, and what we learned, is that you have to go out into nature. So Michael, grab yourself some liberty caps, go into the woods, forget the intellectualization, and giggle.
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@RPB Have you read the book? Pollan's trips were undertaken outside the lab.
People who trip often enough lose their minds because brain cells are destroyed - permanently. Just a word of caution.
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You are quite wrong. Listen to the NPR interview. Read his book.
Are you a physician? In the book Michael recommends many safe ways to trip, Also stating that brain cell are be destroyed is ridiculous.
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@kkm Got any evidence to back up that opinion?
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@kkm, really? And your source of this supposed medical information is what, pray tell? There are many forms of damage socially and psychologically that have been alleged for psychedelic drugs but brain damage due to destroyed brain cells is principally the realm of severe overindulgence in alcohol, not these drugs.
I notice your fake news is quite popular in the comments. Do you recall where you heard it?
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“There was life after the dissolution of EGO and that is big news”
Given the modern problems posed by outsized egos and the grotesque mess they cause, please write more about ego-less escapades -this thrills me.
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Funny how drugs follow food in Pollan's thrill scale, running (just a guess) being so two thousand's... I'll let my wife know what to expect after I'm done with sourdough and kompucha'ing of every plant in our garden.
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Congratulations, sir. Both for pursuing your goal of tripping and writing about it, and getting the New York Times to publish it.
As it happens, I've just given back "The Doors Of Perception" to my local library, seeing as how the famous drug addict/alcoholic Jim Morrison thought it was the bible, and I'm into the Doors.
I attempted to read it and was put off by the author's need to explain, from the 1950s perspective, all about pyschedelics, the experience of which by now I, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of others, went through with LSD, mushrooms - and moved on, because those drugs are to be taken when you're in your late teens or twenties, and then, in a natural progression of the mind wishing to understand itself and the misery and despair that is a life and coming to peaceful terms with it, looks inward over a lifetime. Without any drugs, especially explosive ones like you describe, unless they are doing without such things as a job, responsibilities, driving a car, paying bills, looking after little ones.
So, yes, I found the book naive in the extreme, a tome of its time, even though I love "The End" and "Break On Through" as much as the next guy.
But -
Little late to the party, aren't you? I discovered this stuff in 1979, and that's the last time I "tripped." As George Harrison said "You only need it once."
But, yes, congratulations, here's hoping your experience enriched your life and those who know and love you, you toad-smokin' guy!
@CharlesFrankenberry Better late to the party than never. There's a whole new group of people experimenting with psychedelics now. Pollan is as worthy as any psychedelic ranger that has come before.
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@David Breitkopf Yes, I've seen them on the street corners with their signs, white kids in their teens and early 20s who come from affluent families, asking for money for more drugs, drugs, drugs.
@David Breitkopf Yes, I agree. It's courageous for a respected non-fiction author like Pollan to lay himself bare to ridicule by the people who have not done their homework about these substances. I applaud him.
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It's typical of a newbie to be too clinical, "objective", analytical of what this all is. It's also consistent with those who have been down the road to be patient. Listen and learn.
Didn't hear any "Oh, Man, I was blown away." Not even with the psilocybin, but maybe that's a stylistic thing. Anyway, he might have been thinking too much about his referents and the personal meanings the trips meant to him. Anyway, it's cool. I suppose. How else can you get in the NYT?
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Really? Does the author truly not know that people have been writing about substance-related mind-altering experiences for centuries? This is a very strange essay...
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That book sounds like a good one to skip.
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That book sounds like a good one to trip.
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In the parallel universe of my own thoughts that were flowing while reading this lengthy and incoherent story within a story within a fourth person account of psychedelic tripping I was jolted awake with a mindblowing insight: what a great way to sell books!
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