Psychedics—A Novel Therapy for Mental Illness & Addiction

Dr. Oppitz’s Book Review On

How to Change Your Mind:  What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

By Michael Pollan

Many of you are probably familiar with Michael Pollen’s work—his most famous book is probably The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006).  A few weeks ago, I was trying to decide which book to review for my upcoming Rachel’s Ruminations and saw that his latest book This is Your Mind on Plants (2021) had just been released in paperback, so I mentioned the idea to Cascade, my daughter and favorite bookseller.  Cascade mentioned an alternative Pollan book, How to Change Your Mind (2018), for two reasons; first they conveniently had a copy sitting on their bookcase and two Netflix just released a docuseries featuring the book and author, how timely!  I must admit that the topic of psychedelics did not hold much appeal to me until 2020 when I watched episode 1 of Gwyneth Paltrow’s The Goop Lab featuring The Healing Trip (which I almost skipped but in hindsight am glad I watched; this series is also a worthwhile watch).

This 400-page book contains 6 chapters.  The prologue eloquently sets the stage for the upcoming content.  I had forgotten Pollan’s mastery of the English language and breadth of his vocabulary; I find his non-fiction writing style a pleasure to read!  What I gleaned from chapter 1 “A Renaissance” was that psychedelics have really come full circle, because from about 1950-1966 psychedelics were largely being studied and utilized by the US government and medical community for the treatment of mental illness and addiction until they transitioned in the mid-to-late 60s to become part of the hippie counter-culture movement about the same time they were banned by the American government.  Another interesting side note from chapter 1 is that LSD is not as dangerous as we were taught in high school health class. 

I absolutely loved chapter 2 “Bemushroomed” which was essentially a biography about Paul Stamets, a modern American mycologist, who is world-renowned for both his research and manufacture on all things mushroom-related.  I suspect I found this chapter particularly interesting because I have heard Stamets speak at a medical conference at least once and I also periodically recommend medicinal mushrooms (not psychedelics) to my patients for various health conditions.  Although I found Chapter 3 “History” a bit tedious, Pollan did mention Andrew Weil’s role with psychedelics at Harvard and the evolution of Ram Dass from Harvard researcher to spiritual teacher—trivia about well-known figures that really caught my attention.

Chapter 4 “Travelogue” was by far one of my favorites about Pollan’s personal experiences with the 3 psychedelics he features in the book—LSD, psilocybin, and 5-MeO-DMT (“The Toad” or smoked venom of the Sonoran Desert/Colorado River toad).  In the book, Pollan shares his 5 experiences with psychedelics, the first with his wife and their home using psilocybin from his visit with Stamets, the other four under medical supervision (his fifth experiment was with ayahuasca, a tea brewed from 2 Amazonian plants which he shared in the epilogue).  In Chapter 5, Pollan explores the neuroscience of psychedelics which I found somewhat boring.  The last chapter “The Trip Treatment” focuses on the 3 primary clinical usages for psychedelics which are dying (easing the mental-emotional component for patients with terminal diseases), addiction, and depression.

While reading the book, I did reach out to several MN colleagues to find out what the status of psychedelic treatment options are for people in our state who might be looking for medical facilities using these novel therapies and I did learn about a few centers that currently utilize ketamine which Pollan did not address in this specific book.

Rachel Oppitz, ND