From the Bookshelf of Science and Inquiry…

How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics

Michael Pollan

Start date: October 1, 2019

Finish date: October 31, 2019

Discussion: Book Club 2019

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Book Club 2019

December 2019 - Uninhabitable Earth
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Feb 13, 2019 Charlene rated it really liked it

Shelves: biography

Pollan has a great writing style. The last book I read about microdosing, A Really Good Day by Ayelet Waldman, was really unsatisfying. The writing style was definitely not my cup of tea, and I felt as if the only way I might enjoy the book would have been if I were lucky enough to have microsdosed before reading it and have been looking for a good book on microdosing ever since. Pollan's book was a good antidote to Waldman's book.

Pollan included an interesting history of psychedelics as he wro Pollan has a great writing style. The last book I read about microdosing, A Really Good Day by Ayelet Waldman, was really unsatisfying. The writing style was definitely not my cup of tea, and I felt as if the only way I might enjoy the book would have been if I were lucky enough to have microsdosed before reading it and have been looking for a good book on microdosing ever since. Pollan's book was a good antidote to Waldman's book.

Pollan included an interesting history of psychedelics as he wrote about his own experience trying some of these drugs. The best parts of this book reminded me of Drugged by Richard Miller and made me love reading about humans and their quest to understand the effects of drugs. I would have given this 5 stars if not for a tiny section in the book where he kept writing about the perspective of "science" from scholars such as Timmothy Leary and others. He kept referencing psych experiments and saying that since Leary and others didn't like the results, they didn't like science. All too often, psych fits into the category of extremely soft science. The methods are often horrific. The findings based on self report and subjective interpretation. CBT often provides results that could be considered scientific, but most of the time, the field of psych is flying blind (and not blind in the good way, as in double blind trials). Pollan should know better than to lump all of science together like that. It's fine, and in fact preferable, to call out pseudoscience. Pollan did challenge Leary and others for not using the scientific method. He was also really good at conveying that what Leary and others were trying to get at might be, in their opinion, beyond the bounds of science. All of that was fine. It was just the way he talked about science in general, as an entity, showed at times his own lack of understanding about what science, in general, is. No scientist or science Journalist should write about science in that way. It gives the public an entirely incorrect idea about what science is.

Beside that small issue, the book was one of the best I have read about psychedelics. I highly recommend.
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