How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (2018)

“The Johns Hopkins experiment shows—proves—that under controlled, experimental conditions, psilocybin can occasion genuine mystical experiences. It uses science, which modernity trusts, to undermine modernity’s secularism. In doing so, it offers hope of nothing less than a re-sacralization of the natural and social world, a spiritual revival that is our best defense against not only soulnessness, but against religious fanaticism. And it does so in the very teeth of the unscientific prejudices build into our current drug laws.”

This letter, written in regard to Roland Griffith’s groundbreaking psilocybin study, signified a shift in science in which there might be room for psychedelic research to reemerge and be studied once again. Griffith showed that rigorous science can be used to study psychedelics, breaking one of the roadblocks to reestablishing the field.

“Nearing the end of her life, she had nothing but regret for having shared the divine mushroom with R Gordon Wasson and, in turn, the world. ‘From the moment the foreigners arrived,’ she told a visitor, ‘the saint children lost their purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From now on they won’t be any good.’”

Psilocybin has done incredible good to society, but it also was done without consideration for its spiritual and cultural purpose. The discovery of psilocybin damaged the culture of the people who used it as a sacrament, and it was effectively used to colonize the village and exploit its natural resources (e.g., the mushrooms).

“Even if psilocybin in mushrooms began as ‘an accident of a metabolic pathway,’ the fact that it wasn’t discarded during the course of the species’ evolution suggests it must have offered some benefit. ‘My best guess,’ Beug says, ‘is that the mushrooms that produced the most psilocybin got selectively eaten and so their spores got more widely disseminated.’”

It is unclear why evolution would have selected for psilocybin or why it continued to be passed on to the following generations. There isn’t much of a fossil record to help understand this, but we do know that animals partake in these specific mushrooms, and that probably aided in the spread.

“Another challenge was the irrational exuberance that seemed to infect any researchers who got involved with LSD, an enthusiasm that might have improved the results of their experiments at the same time it fueled the skepticism of colleagues who remained psychedelic virgins.”

The enthusiasm that LSD researchers had increased their curiosity and drive to study but alienated other people who did not understand. It also became an issue when their excitement skewed their research and compromised its scientific viability.

“One patient he treated in Vancouver, an alcoholic paralyzed by social anxiety, recalled Hubbard handling him a bouquet of roses during an LSD session: ‘He said, ‘Now hate them.’ They withered and the petals fell off, and I started to cry. Then he said, ‘Love them,’ and they came back brighter and even more spectacular than before.’”

This patient, treated by Al Hubbard, experienced how important set and setting is for a psychedelic experience, and how malleable the brain on psychedelics can be. Hubbard was critical in founding the theory of set and setting, which became integral parts of psychedelic experiences both in and out of medicine.

“Tim, I am convinced you are heading for very serious trouble if your plan goes ahead as you have described it to me, and it would not only make a great deal of trouble for you, but for all of us, and may do irreparable harm to the psychedelic field in general.”

Timothy Leary is credited with the downfall of the first wave of psychedelic research, and much of the community saw it coming from his behavior and his media interactions. This letter, written by a colleague, embodies the fear Leary’s actions caused many psychedelic researchers.

“Make no mistake: the effect of consciousness-expanding drugs will be to transform our concepts of human nature, of human potentialities, of existence. The game is about to be changed, ladies and gentlemen. Man is about to make use of that fabulous electrical work he carries around in his skull. Present social establishments had better be prepared for the change. Our favorite concepts are standing in the way of a floodtide, two billion years building up. The verbal dam is collapsing. Head for the hills, or prepare your intellectual craft to flow with the current.”

This excerpt from one of Timothy Leary’s speeches demonstrates how he typically talked to people about psychedelics. His grandiose statements and promise that the drugs would change society created the cultural panic that led to criminalization of the drug and the downfall of psychedelic research.

“It was one thing to use these drugs to treat the ill and maladjusted—society will indulge any effort to help the wayward individual conform to its norms—but it is quite another to use them to treat society itself as if it were sick and to turn the ostensibly healthy into wayward individuals.”

One of the biggest struggles with introducing psychedelics to the general public was society’s resistance to nonconformity and to acknowledging societal issues. The idea that psychedelics might create fundamental change in society itself threatened societal institutions and culled the government’s desire to condone research, which aided in the crackdown on psychedelics.

“LSD truly was an acid, dissolving almost everything with which it came into contact, beginning with the hierarchies of the mind (the superego, ego, and unconscious) and going on from there to society’s various structures of authority and then to lines of every imaginable kind: between patient and therapist, research and recreation, sickness and health, self and other, subject and object, the spiritual and the material.”

Psychedelics were feared because of their ability to break down the barriers unintentionally put up by our minds and the ones intentionally put up by society. They blurred the lines of what was the norm and gave us insight into our minds in a way that was scary because it was different and new. Society does not handle threats to structure and authority very well.

“These medicines have shown me that something quote-unquote impossible exists. But I don’t think it’s magic or supernatural. It’s a technology of consciousness we don’t understand yet.”

Fritz mentions this when Pollan interviews him to be his LSD guide. Some people see a large connection between spirituality or magic and the use of psychedelics, but in reality psychedelics only allow us to see parts of our consciousness that we are usually unable to access or understand.

“‘It’s like when you see a mountain lion,’ he suggested. ‘If you run, it will chase you. So you must stand your ground.’”

Fritz says this to Pollan as part of his flight instructions, to prepare Pollan to confront the thoughts that would be pulled up in his psychedelic experience. Embracing the experience and not running in fear is a common direction that guides give their clients.

“Mary suggested that having a taste of a different, less defended way to be, I might learn, through practice, to relax the ego’s trigger-happy command of my reaction to people and events. ‘Now that you have had an experience of another way to react—or not react. That can be cultivated.’”

Pollan’s guide for his psilocybin experience describes the usefulness of the ego death point of view. Now that he has experienced ego death, Pollan can use that as a framework for his usual thinking, and try to find that state again.

“The grip of an overbearing ego can enforce a rigidity in our thinking that is psychologically destructive. It may be politically destructive too, in that it closes the mind to information and alternative points of view.”

Ego death is crucial to the full psychedelic experience because it allows us to change our potentially damaging but consistent thoughts and opens our minds to something new and different. The ego can create closemindedness and may drive mental illness.

“Each generation of children confronts a new environment,’ she explained, ‘and their brains are particularly good at learning and thriving in that environment. Think of the children of immigrants or four-year-olds confronted with an iPhone. Children don’t invent these tools, they don’t create the new environment, but in every generation they build the kind of brain that can best thrive in it.”

Psychedelics can bring us back to a more childlike state of consciousness, which allows broader intake of experience and increased creativity. The child’s mind is much less rigid than the adult mind, and psychedelics unlock the learning potential that children have in adults.

“The short summary is, babies and children are basically tripping all the time.”

The state of child consciousness is as close as an adult can get to experiencing that state again. Psychedelics give us a window into a more open and creative mindset.

“If we are able to develop optimal research designs for evaluating the therapeutic utility of hallucinogens,’ Grob has written, ‘it will not be sufficient to adhere to strict standards of scientific methodology alone. We must also pay heed to the examples provided us by such successful applications of the shamanic paradigm.”

Charles Grob writes on the combination of science and spiritualism (shamanism) that is required to fully understand psychedelics in a meaningful way. Science alone cannot uncover all that these drugs have to offer, and we must pay attention to the spiritual to capture the full effects of a psychedelic experience.

“I mentioned that everyone deserved to have this experience…that if everyone did, no one could ever do harm to another again…wars would be impossible to wage.”

Patrick Mettes, a terminal cancer patient in a volunteer trial, said this during his trip. His experience is echoed in many other anecdotes of other people who experienced extreme love and compassion while on psychedelics.

“The universe was so great and there were so many things you could do and see in it that killing yourself seemed like a dumb idea. It put smoking in a whole new context. Smoking seemed very unimportant; it seemed kind of stupid, to be honest.”

This was a takeaway from a volunteer in a smoking cessation psychedelic trial. Many of the other volunteers had similar mundane experiences, which showed them that smoking was insignificant in comparison to the rest of the world.

“Think of psychedelics as temporarily flattening the snow. The deeply worn trails disappear, and suddenly the sled can go in other directions, exploring new landscapes and, literally, creating new pathways.”

Psychedelic researched Mendel Kaelen gives this metaphor to explain how psychedelics impact our rigidity of thought and default mode network. Psychedelics allow users to find new thought pathways, leading to creativity or new understanding of current situations, while reducing ruminating and repetitive thought patterns.

“To say the default mode network is the seat of the self is not a simple proposition, especially when you consider that the self may not exactly be real.”

While the default mode network can be considered the conductor of the brain’s thought patterns and the director of ego, there is more to the DMN than that. There is a lot that is still unknown to science, and the idea of the DMN controlling a person becomes more complex when we realize that our own brains created our idea of self and consciousness.

“‘A spiritual experience does not by itself a spiritual life.’ Integration is essential to making sense of the experience, whether in or out of the medical context. Or else it remains just a drug experience.”

Spiritual experiences aren’t created by the drugs alone but by our intentional reason for seeking out the drug, and by understanding what our consciousness was telling us during the experience.

“That was a very different time. People wouldn’t even talk about cancer or death then. Women were tranquilized to give birth; men weren’t allowed in the delivery room! Yoga and meditation were totally weird. Now mindfulness is mainstream and everyone does yoga, and there are birthing centers and hospices all over. We’ve integrated all these things into our culture. And now I think we’re ready to integrate psychedelics.”

Rick Doblin said this about the current state of society, compared to the state of society when psychedelics were first discovered and introduced. Society has come a long way since the mid-20th century, which makes the psychedelic field more confident that we are ready to experience the deeper conversations and emotions stimulated by these drugs.

“We don’t die well in America. Ask people where do you want to die, and they will tell you, at home with their loved ones. But most of us die in an ICU. The biggest taboo in America is the conversation about death.”

Tony Bossis talks about end-of-life care for people in the United States, which currently does not offer patients much more than hospice. Psychedelics represent a new potential to engage in previously taboo conversations—and give patients a way to cope with death.