dozens reviewed How to Change Your Mind by Micheal Pollan
Review of 'How to Change Your Mind' on 'GoodReads'
3 stars
Why I Picked It Up ##
This was another impulse grab. It was available, and I remember liking Omnivore's Dilemma. I didn't even read the subtitle or synopsis, so I thought it would be some pop psychology or something. Suprise! LSD.
## What I Liked About It ##
First of all, audiobooks read by the author are usually far inferior to those read by a professional voice actor. But Pollan reads like a pro!
Now, the research and history was really interesting. Like how a lot of Silicon Valley got started on LSD.
## What I want To Remember ##
Although psychedelics seem to deliver whatever kind of trip you expect them to, the overwhelming majority of experiences seem to resolve into the profound and mundane insight that love is all that matters. I laughed out loud at the end of the book when one subject mid-trip sat upright and …
This was another impulse grab. It was available, and I remember liking Omnivore's Dilemma. I didn't even read the subtitle or synopsis, so I thought it would be some pop psychology or something. Suprise! LSD.
## What I Liked About It ##
First of all, audiobooks read by the author are usually far inferior to those read by a professional voice actor. But Pollan reads like a pro!
Now, the research and history was really interesting. Like how a lot of Silicon Valley got started on LSD.
## What I want To Remember ##
Although psychedelics seem to deliver whatever kind of trip you expect them to, the overwhelming majority of experiences seem to resolve into the profound and mundane insight that love is all that matters. I laughed out loud at the end of the book when one subject mid-trip sat upright and insisted her guide grab pen and paper and write down this very important way she just realized to live a better life: "exercise and stretch."
You can't overdose from psychedelics and they are not addictive. Experts consider them far less dangerous than alcohol.
In a lot of ways, it seems like the ego dissolving experiences of people on LSD are kind of a skip-to-the-front-of-the-line ticket to the kind of experiences that accomplished meditators and zen practitioners spend their lives working on.
Pollan suggests that psychedelics are less beneficial to the young, and more beneficial to people entering mid to later stages of life, and especially to those at the end of their lives confronting death. He didn't start using psychedelics himself until he was almost in his 60s.
One of the standard "flight instructions" is to never run away from or fear anything you see or experience, but to turn toward it, confront it, ask it what it's doing here in your mind, and to see what you can learn from it. This is useful advice even when you're not tripping.
## Who I Would Recommend It To ##
Anybody interested in consciousness, the Buddhist ideas of ego and self, the history of drug regulation in the US.
