![](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/How-to-Change-Your-Mind-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Michael Pollan is best known for his groundbreaking, best-selling books on food \u2014 which collectively have helped spark a revolution in the way we think about what we eat and where it comes from \u2014 but he also has a longstanding interest in cannabis. As far back as 1995, he traveled to the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam for a New York Times Magazine\u00a0<\/i>cover story\u00a0on the growers and breeders behind the world\u2019s highest-potency strains, a group of illicit horticulturalists he called \u201cthe best gardeners of my generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had come to Amsterdam to meet some of these gardeners and learn how, in little more than a decade, marijuana growing in America had evolved from a hobby of aging hippies into a burgeoning high-tech industry,\u201d he\u00a0wrote<\/a>. \u201cFewer than 20 years ago, virtually all the marijuana consumed in America was imported. \u2018Home grown\u2019 was a term of opprobrium \u2014 \u2018something you only smoked in an emergency,\u2019 as one grower old enough to remember put it. Today\u2026 American marijuana cultivation has developed to the point where the potency, quality and consistency of the domestic product are considered as good as, if not better than, any in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, such high praise from one of the world\u2019s leading journalists was virtually unheard of in the world of cannabis. In the article, Pollan even admitted to making his own furtive attempt to\u00a0grow cannabis<\/a>\u00a0back in the 1980s, which he dubbed \u201ca fiasco.\u201d Later, he included cannabis as one of four species profiled in \u201cThe Botany of Desire<\/a>,\u201d his best-selling book that took a \u201cplant\u2019s eye view of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n And now Pollan has gone a significant step further into the study of psychoactivity with his newest book, \u201cHow to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence<\/a>.\u201d Pollan defines psychedelics as substances that not only affect the mind (like cannabis), but are fully \u201cmind manifesting,\u201d noting the term itself was coined in 1956 by Humphry Osmond \u201cto describe drugs like LSD and psilocybin that produce radical changes in consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n At a recent stop on his national tour to promote the new book, he sat down for an interview that touched on everything from DMT extracted from toads and the brain\u2019s \u201cdefault mode network,\u201d to the benefits of dissolving your ego and Pollan\u2019s personal experiences taking various psychedelics with a series of underground guides.<\/p>\n Cannabis Now:\u00a0You write about the ineffable nature of psychedelics, meaning the experience of taking them is difficult or impossible to describe in words. Given that challenge, I love your description of tripping as being like \u201cshaking the snow globe\u201d of the mind. But what does that mean exactly?<\/strong><\/p>\n Michael Pollan:\u00a0<\/b>The snow globe metaphor comes from Robin Carhart-Harris, one of the leading neuroscientists\u00a0studying psychedelics<\/a>\u00a0today, and the researcher who\u2019s probably done the most analytical work to try to understand how psychedelics affect us and why they might be therapeutic. He\u2019s even been using MRIs and other brain imaging tools to see what happens neurologically during a psychedelic trip. Just imagine being injected with psilocybin [the active compound in \u201cmagic\u201d mushrooms] or LSD and then sliding into an MRI. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, so these are volunteers to whom we should all be grateful.<\/p>\n Anyway, what the researchers discovered really surprised them. Turns out one particular brain network called the default mode network was downregulated (i.e. suppressed) during the psychedelic experience.<\/p>\n What does that system do? And why might disrupting it prove beneficial?<\/b><\/p>\n The default mode network is a network of brain structures that are tightly linked, so they communicate a lot with each other. And what they do is connect structures in the cortex \u2014 the most evolutionarily recent part of the brain, where executive function takes place \u2014 to much older and deeper structures involved in memory and emotion. So this is a very important transit hub.<\/p>\n The brain has a hierarchical structure, and the default mode network kind of rides over the whole thing. It\u2019s involved with self-reflection and self-criticism. It\u2019s where our minds go to wander when we\u2019re not doing something. It\u2019s where we get our ability to think about the future or the past. And finally, it\u2019s involved in what\u2019s called \u201cthe autobiographical self\u201d \u2014 a function of the brain that integrates all of your experiences into the story of your life and keeps that story going. Because without that story, you don\u2019t really exist as an independent self.<\/p>\n Illustration Ryan Garcia for Cannabis Now<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If the ego had an address, it would be the default mode network. So how interesting that when psychedelics temporarily put that network offline, people report \u201cmelting away\u201d with no sense of self.<\/p>\n Now, why dissolving one\u2019s ego might be helpful \u2014 that\u2019s a whole other discussion. For starters, it\u2019s possible that having a hyperactive default mode network could be responsible for various kinds of mental illness, especially those that involve obsessive rumination and getting stuck on really destructive stories about yourself. For instance: \u201cI can\u2019t get through the next hour without a cigarette.<\/i>\u201d Or: \u201cI\u2019m unworthy of love.\u201d<\/p>\n That kind of rigidity of thinking is characteristic of anxiety, depression and addiction, which happen to be the three indications which, so far, psychedelics have proven the most valuable in treating.<\/p>\n What about the risks?<\/b><\/p>\n Psychedelics are not\u00a0addictive<\/a>\u00a0or drugs of abuse. If you give rats a lever that dispenses cocaine, they\u2019ll press it until they die, but give them the same lever with LSD and they\u2019ll pull it once and never again. So the risks are largely psychological \u2014 and there are people who have psychotic episodes triggered by psychedelics, especially people at risk for schizophrenia.<\/p>\n Before moving forward with my own psychedelic experiences, I actually went to my cardiologist and told him what I was planning, and the only psychedelic he warned me off of was\u00a0MDMA<\/a>\u00a0(ecstasy). He basically greenlighted the others, so off I went, on a series of really interesting journeys, all but one of which were guided by trained underground therapists.<\/p>\n Ideally, I would have participated in one of the fully legal clinical trials currently underway, but I didn\u2019t qualify for any of them and perhaps they didn\u2019t want a journalist hanging around anyway. So I took psilocybin from psychedelic mushrooms, LSD, 5-MeO-DMT from dried toad venom and ayahuasca. They were all very interesting experiences that taught me important things about myself and allowed for a certain stock-taking of life that I found invaluable.<\/p>\n Why do you think the authorities have been, at least until relatively recently, so hostile to psychedelics and the psychedelic mind state?<\/strong><\/p>\n When psychedelics arrived in the United States, largely in the 1950s and \u201960s, they arrived naked. Which is to say that these incredible molecules showed up, with very powerful properties, and unlike many other cultures which had long traditions of ceremonial and shamanistic use, we didn\u2019t know how to use them. In those other cultures the psychedelic experience was regulated, guided and to some extent controlled by elders with decades of experience, but that\u2019s not what happened here.<\/p>\n And so, while a lot of people had very positive experiences simply taking psychedelics at a concert or during a walk in the woods, some got into trouble. The experience of feeling your ego dissolve can be ecstatic but it can also be terrifying. And if there\u2019s no one there to help you with that, you can get into a very dark place and have a panic reaction.<\/p>\n So that partly explains how the authorities reacted. But another big part of this is that psychedelics became a sacrament for the counterculture. Which was a very positive thing for the counterculture, but not for members of the establishment who were trying to send young men off to Vietnam to fight a war.<\/p>\n Psychedelics therefore became very frightening to the authorities.<\/p>\n Your experiences varied pretty widely, based on the specific psychedelic and set-and-setting. Which did you find most useful?<\/b><\/p>\n The most valuable experience was my guided psilocybin trip, where a lot of interesting things happened, but what was perhaps most helpful was having my sense of self dissolve completely. I saw myself blown into the wind like a sheaf of little Post-it notes, and I was fine with it. I had no desire to compile myself back together.<\/p>\n The consciousness that was perceiving this was not my usual consciousness. Aldous Huxley [author of \u201cBrave New World\u201d] would say it was \u201cthe mind at large.\u201d And this is what I think has helped terminal cancer patients who\u2019ve been given psychedelics to help deal with end-of-life anxiety. Taping into this kind of universal consciousness that doesn\u2019t have the usual ego defenses attached to it can be incredibly liberating. It also could have been terrifying, but I felt safe and that\u2019s really what\u2019s important about having a guided experience.<\/p>\n You\u2019re going to have to put down all of your mental defenses when taking a high-dose psychedelic trip and if you do that in a situation where don\u2019t feel safe or trust the person that you\u2019re with, it can be terrifying. But I did trust my guide, and so I was able to let go and surrender to the experience.<\/p>\n And the insight I brought away was, \u201cWow, I\u2019m not identical to my ego.\u201d<\/p>\n Ego is really important. Ego gets the book written, but it also gets in our way, and walls us off from other people and from strong emotions. I think ego consciousness is at the root of tribalism and the environmental crisis, because it separates us from nature. So to find out there\u2019s another ground on which to stand, for me that was a real epiphany. I could have gotten there probably via 20 or 30 years of psychoanalysis, but I got there in an afternoon and that\u2019s the power of psychedelics when used in the right context.<\/p>\n Then, after the experience comes the most important part, which we don\u2019t talk about enough because we tend to focus on the trip itself. But if you\u2019re engaged in therapist-assisted psychedelic therapy, as I was, there\u2019s a formal session where you share your experience with the therapist and attempt to integrate it into the rest of your \u201cnormal\u201d life.<\/p>\n When I reported my surprise at finding that I\u2019m not the same as my ego, and how liberating that felt, the therapist said, \u201cWell, that\u2019s really worth the price of admission isn\u2019t it? You\u2019ve had a taste of another way to be and now you can cultivate that feeling and exercise that new muscle.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you see a medical value in psychedelics?<\/p>\n Originally published in Issue 33 of Cannabis Now.\u00a0LEARN MORE<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The post Michael Pollan & The Landscape of the Mind<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Michael Pollan is best known for his groundbreaking, best-selling books on food \u2014 which collectively have helped spark a revolution in the way we think about what we eat and where it comes from \u2014 but he also has a longstanding interest in cannabis. As far back as 1995, heContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":30375,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1213,6373,59,6374,50,2377,2790,6375,6376,85,6071,425,6377,53,6378,6379,6380],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30376,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30374\/revisions\/30376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/How-to-Change-Your-Mind.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Michael](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/michael-pollan-illustration.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n
\nRead More: Michael Pollan & The Landscape of the Mind<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"