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What an amazing world we live in...to watch an audio slideshow introducing my website, please click here.
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What an amazing world we live in...to watch an audio slideshow introducing my website, please click here.
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I’ve been an admirer of the work of Michael Pollan since reading The Botany of Desire, in which he suggests that four plants (potatoes, tulips, apples and marijuana) have ensured their survival by generating a strong desire for them among humans. So when I noticed that he had taken on the topic of mind-altering drugs in How to Change Your Mind: the New Science of Psychedelics, my curiosity was piqued. As someone for whom the hippie era was extremely formative (the long hair may be gone from the top of my head but the idealism’s still inside), I was intrigued to find out what has changed about the psychedelic experience during the last fifty years. It was the word ‘new’ that jumped out at me from the title; I wondered what modern scientists are making of substances I once thought could change the world. The book is divided into three sections. Firstly, Pollan recounts the history of the use of psychedelic drugs in the West, beginning with Albert Hoffman’s accidental discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in 1938. The second part relates his own trips (part of his research, as a ‘psychedelic virgin’) on LSD, psilocybin mushrooms and even inhaling the venom of a particular toad through a vaporizer. The third section of the book deals with the ‘new science’, describing recent experiments with LSD and other psychotropics to alleviate the suffering of terminal cancer patients, addicts of all sorts and the severely depressed. |