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Highs and lows

Sharpening the mental pencil
by
September 2021, no. 435

This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan

Allen Lane, $35 pb, 274 pp

Highs and lows

Sharpening the mental pencil
by
September 2021, no. 435
Michael Pollan at Chez Panisse in 2020 (photograph by Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons)
Michael Pollan at Chez Panisse in 2020 (photograph by Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons)

At sixty-six years of age and best known for his books on the sociology of food, the American author and journalist Michael Pollan has become an unlikely figurehead for the so-called ‘psychedelic renaissance’. In How to Change Your Mind (2018), Pollan surveyed the recent revival of psychedelic drugs as adjuncts to psychotherapy, and the emerging evidence that supports their use in the treatment of depression, PTSD, and other mental health disorders. Globally prohibited since the early 1970s and still mostly illegal, these compounds – including the ‘classic’ psychedelics LSD and psilocybin (the main psychoactive alkaloid in magic mushrooms), as well as MDMA (also known as ecstasy) and ketamine – are once again the subject of clinical trials, including in Australia where the federal government has became one of the first in the world to fund research in the field.

Ben Brooker reviews 'This Is Your Mind on Plants' by Michael Pollan

This Is Your Mind on Plants

by Michael Pollan

Allen Lane, $35 pb, 274 pp

From the New Issue

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