I first heard about Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, on NPR’s Fresh Air podcast.

I was immediately interested.

I’ve never experimented with drugs. My dad was a pastor in a small-town community when I was growing up. When I was 16, he took me with him to a hospital visit of a woman who was dying of liver failure after a lifetime of drinking. When I saw her tiny, emaciated body in that bed, her body falling apart while she was still relatively young, it was an image that burned into my brain.

The woman died not long after we visited her. I knew I never wanted to lose control and be ruled by substances, after that experience, I was even more determined. I didn’t differentiate between substances. I even stayed away from caffeine. Other than an occasional drink a few times a year, and a very few, isolated incidents of being drunk, I’ve stayed away from substances of all kinds, besides sugar (and that is another post).

But as I’ve mentioned so many times, this year was really, really hard. This past winter was like a deep and abiding fog, impossible to see through, hard to imagine the end of. A nightmare full of shadows. I desperately wanted relief.

I felt like I didn’t have the time or the bandwidth to get results from the traditional ways of achieving change: mindfulness, meditation, real, focused prayer. I started counseling, and made progress. Once I’m back home from a session, though, it’s hard to stay in a personal growth mindset.

Then I heard the NPR podcast, about, among other things, the promise of using psychedelics to treat depression. Pollan described a patient facing fear head-on during a trip on psychedelics, and I wanted to hear more.

I requested the book from the library, and blew through it in just a little over two weeks. My library copy was a 14-day loan, and I ended buying my own copy when I wasn’t able to finish it in time. It is a pretty long book, at 400+ pages, and as a non-fiction work, requires some thought to get through.

I’m sitting here, trying to figure out how to review it.

I think part of my hesitation is that Michael Pollan has gotten a ton of publicity, and he doesn’t really need me or any other small fry telling people to read his book.

Also, I know drugs are a touchy subject, and it is hard to know how to talk about this stuff: “I was against drugs, and now I can’t wait to get high,” doesn’t feel like the right approach, although it isn’t entirely untrue.

I would say, the book was thought-provoking, and I definitely recommend it. The reason Pollan is getting so much attention may partly be because he’s a good writer, but also, this is kind of a taboo subject, his content is fascinating, and it deserves a second look.

We live in a country where weed is quickly becoming legal. Are psychedelics something we want to let back into accepted society as well? What should that look like? Who would these substances serve and how should they be used? These are some of the questions Pollan’s book attempts to answer.

The book covers the history of the use of psychedelics, current research, and what we know and don’t know about how they work.

I appreciated the way Pollan approached the subject. He was honest about his own biases, and it didn’t feel like he was trying to push an agenda. (The Chaplain and I did talk about the reason he was able to write this book at all – because he is a Caucasian male.)

I hope as information comes out, and more studies are planned, that there will be continued opportunities to explore the possibilities of psychedelics. I hope appropriate options start to present themselves for people to safely access these substances  – as the book suggests, to help healthy people access a better quality of life, and help sick people make the changes they need to make to their mindsets, or even better face their impending death.

Mental health care currently has a toolbox that feels woefully inadequate; psychedelics seem to promise a powerful alternative to generate change for people who need it.

How to Change Your Mind offers an excellent primer on this subject, full of information you may have seen bits of before, but never in a form this comprehensive and well-thought out. I’ll be ruminating over what I read for some time to come.