[APPLAUSE]
MICHAEL POLLAN:
Thank you, David.
Thanks very much.
Can everybody hear
me in the back?
So I get to talk about
my trips, but you don't?
It doesn't seem fair.
So I'm just talking
for about 10 minutes
and just tell you a little bit
about what this book's about,
and then I'd love to
take your questions
and let your interest
dictate the path
that we take this afternoon.
First, thanks.
Thank you very much for coming.
This book is a real
departure for me.
Those of you who know me as
someone who writes about food
might think it's a
little weird that I'm
turning to psychedelics,
but in my head
there is some continuity,
as well as change.
And the continuity is that
I see my writing about food
as part of a larger interest
in writing about nature,
and the way we eat affects
nature dramatically-- more
than anything else
we do, actually,
in terms of changing the
landscape of the planet
and the atmosphere.
And I mean, it's your
most powerful engagement
with the natural world, and
I've always been interested
in that engagement.
And we use nature and plants,
especially, for many things.
Food is an obvious one.
Beauty is another, but
something we almost all
use plants for that I've always
been kind of curious about
is to change consciousness.
Most of us today
probably used a plant
to change the
contents of your mind,
or at least the feeling
tone in your mind,
whether it was coffee, or tea,
or a cigarette, or cannabis,
or whatever it is.
I mean, this is something we
do, and every culture on earth
does it with the one exception
that proves the rule.
The Inuit do not
have any plant drugs,
but it's only because none
of them grow where they live.
As soon as they
go somewhere else,
they get with the program.
So it's been a long
standing interest,
and to me, it's all
part of that story
about this
fascinating engagement
we have with other species
that defines us and reveals
a lot about us.
And I wrote a little bit about
cannabis and botany of desire,
and I wrote a long piece about
growing opium in my garden
back in the '90s.
And I've written about
medical marijuana,
so I had this interest.
And then along comes
this new research,
which I began reading about.
In 2010, I read about a
really interesting odd study
where researchers at
NYU and Johns Hopkins
were giving psilocybin--
this is the ingredient
in magic mushrooms.
They were synthesizing it--
to people who had cancer
diagnoses, people very sick,
many of them terminal, in the
hopes that they would have what
they call the
mystical experience,
a powerful spiritual
experience that
would change their
attitude toward their death
and help them essentially
to die with more peace.
These were all patients
who were struggling
with depression, anxiety,
and fear-- profound fear.
And the stories-- so I started
writing about that, because it
seemed like the last
thing I would want to do
is trip when I was facing a
terminal diagnosis-- to lose
control like that, and
you would presumably
have a very dark experience.
So I started interviewing
these people for a piece
I did in "The New
Yorker" in 2015,
and just to give you one example
to give you the flavor of it,
I remember talking
to this woman.
She was a figure
skating instructor
in New York in Manhattan.
She was about 60.
She was not a psychonaut.
She had never used
psychedelics before,
and she had ovarian cancer.
And her cancer had been
treated successfully,
but she was paralyzed by
the fear of recurrence.
She just couldn't function
because she thought any day
now this could be back.
So she entered into
this trial at NYU
and had a high dose
psilocybin experience.
And I should explain how this is
done, because the image you may
have in your head of
taking psychedelics, taking
a handful of mushrooms and
going to a concert or something,
this is not how it is used
in a clinical setting.
It's a very
controlled experience.
It's guided.
So you work with two
guides, a man and a woman.
They prepare you over a
course of several sessions
as to what to expect.
So they'll talk to you what to
do if the experience becomes
frightening, which it often
does, and how to navigate that.
They call it the
flight instructions,
and their main advice is, if
you see a staircase, go up it.
If you see a door, open it.
If you see a monster,
don't run away.
Just step right
up to it and say,
what are you doing in my head?
What do you have to teach me?
In other words, surrender
to the experience.
Trust.
They quote John Lennon.
Relax the mind and
float downstream.
And that's very
important advice,
and it's often the difference
between a good trip
and a bad trip.
A bad trip is essentially
a panic reaction
against what's happening in
your head, which is very heavy.
I mean, you're experiencing
your ego dissolving,
in fact, in front of you.
And then they sit with you
for the whole experience,
and they give you a
helping hand if you're
getting upset or struggling, and
they take you to the bathroom
and give you a glass of water.
And then afterwards
is a really key moment
called the integration session,
where they sit with you.
You tell the story of
your trip, and it usually
is this narrative.
It's almost like this
intra-psychic movie
where you go different places.
And you try to make sense
of it and apply the lessons
to your life.
So in the case of this woman--
her name is Dina Bazer--
she had this trip, and there are
many elements I won't go into.
It was like six hours.
And she went into her
body imaginatively,
and she saw this black
mass under her rib cage,
and that was her fear.
It wasn't her cancer, because
that wasn't in the right place,
but she saw what she
realized was her fear.
And she screamed at her fear.
And you have to see this woman.
She's a very timid, small
woman, and she said,
get the fuck out of my body.
And it did.
It disappeared.
The black mass was gone.
And afterwards, she said, I
realized during that experience
that I can't control my cancer,
but I can control my fear,
and that distinction
meant everything to her.
And one of the hallmarks of
the psychedelic experience
is that whatever insights
you have during it have
a force the likes of which
you've never experienced.
These are not just
opinions or insights.
They're revealed truths.
This is something
William James a long time
ago writing about the
mystical experience
called the noetic sense.
It's a very uncanny
thing, and it's
what allows people to
change that, if they think--
say they're trying
to quit smoking
and they have some epiphany
that, gee, my breath is really
precious.
I should not ruin it by smoking.
Suddenly that will be so
strongly held as a belief
that they can
actually stop smoking.
So anyway, so that's
the kind of experience
that I was learning about,
and I became fascinated
to understand the
neuroscience behind it, what's
going on in the
brain when people
are taking one of these trips.
And we now know some
interesting things about that.
If you're interested,
I can talk about that
and also the history of it.
What happened to psychedelics
in the '60s that they
became so stigmatized
that research stopped?
There had been a very
productive period of research
all through the '50s
that was yielding really
promising results in the
treatment of alcoholism,
in dealing with
people who were dying,
depression, anxiety, obsession.
And then after this
moral panic that
hits the culture around 1965,
nobody studies it anymore.
The funding dries up.
Scientists are a little
embarrassed by it,
and we had an
unprecedented situation
where a promising line of
scientific investigation
was stopped.
That never happens, and we
last 30, 35 years of research
into psychedelics.
Thankfully, it's
resuming, and my book
is very much about
the renaissance,
even though I go back,
and look at the history,
and figure out why we had this
panic reaction about them,
and try to look at them
in a very matter of fact
way as interesting tools--
interesting tools for
understanding the mind
and for healing the mind.
Now, we haven't proven all this.
There's still more
research to be done.
We're kind of in
phase two, and there
are three phases to
FDA drug approval,
but so far the results have
been remarkably encouraging.
It is one of the most powerful
psychiatric interventions
that the researchers
have ever seen,
and we're in a situation
where mental health care is
so broken in this country
it's failing to reach
half the people who need it.
The last major innovation
were the SSRI antidepressants
in the late '80s.
There really hasn't been
anything since then.
And so we need some
new ways of thinking,
and along comes this powerful
old but new innovation.
And the research is--
it's being privately
funded for the most part.
Big pharma is not
interested in this.
There's no intellectual
property that you can control,
but a lot of donors, many in
the tech community, actually,
have stepped up and are
funding this research.
And I was just at a fundraiser
where the last $7 million
was raised, and so
we will find out.
We'll get the real test,
the scientific test of what
are these drugs good for.
And then there's
the question of,
what value might they
have for the rest of us?
Because they help people
who have serious problems,
but as one researcher
put it to me,
they're very important for
the betterment of well people.
And I could talk a little
bit about that, too.
So as part of this, because
it's sort of my brand
to do immersion journalism--
when I wrote about the cattle
industry, I bought a steer.
When I wanted to learn about
architecture, I built a house.
So of course I
had to experiment,
and I found some
guides underground--
and there is a thriving
community of underground guides
in America-- who could give
me an experience very much
like the ones at
NYU and Hopkins.
And they were transformative
experiences, some of them,
some of the most meaningful
experiences in my life.
And the idea that a
molecule could occasion that
is, to me, still
kind of mind blowing.
So, though I've given you
lots of leads and things
you might want to
follow up on, and I'm
happy to talk about
anything, I advise you not
to talk about your
own experiences.
I want to welcome the
Google micro dosing
club to today's event.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, so yeah, question?
AUDIENCE: So I don't want
to be the devil's advocate
here, but--
MICHAEL POLLAN: Please do.
AUDIENCE: --this idea that
we're going to give somebody
this drug, they're going to have
this transformative experience,
and then it's going to
change them, I understand.
That makes sense
to me, but the idea
that that change would
necessarily be for the better--
that person coming back from
a trip and decides they're
going to quit smoking.
That's great, but why doesn't
a person come back from a trip
and decide they need
to kill their neighbor?
How do be break
the symmetry there?
MICHAEL POLLAN: Set and setting.
So one of the important
features of psychedelics
is how little the experience
is foreordained or dictated
by the drug itself.
The drug is like an
unspecific mental amplifier,
and so your expectation
and intention
is very important
to what happens.
And one of the things that
happens in the preparation
is that the guide is helping
you set an intention, like I
want to quit smoking.
I want to confront my mortality.
And you will usually have
an experience in that realm
because that's what you've
been primed to have.
Could the drugs
be used for evil?
Well, we have the case
of Charles Manson.
Manson apparently-- we
don't know all the details,
but used LSD on his little posse
of what would become murderers,
and the drugs are
incredibly suggestible.
And that you could imagine
a charismatic figure
using them that way.
Now, the CIA sought to
use them that way, too.
The CIA had a very active
research program in the '50s.
The same time all of
this university work
was going on in the
'50s to help people,
the CIA was trying to
weaponize LSD and psilocybin.
They went through a series
of different paradigms.
One was you would use
it as a truth serum.
People could tell you
the truth if you gave it
to them in interrogation.
People say crazy shit.
It didn't work.
There was no truth in that.
[LAUGHTER]
And then they thought,
well, we could
use it to have foreign leaders.
We could dose them, and they
would do embarrassing things.
That might work.
I don't know.
And we don't know how
far they got with it.
And then the other
one was my control,
that you could use this drug
to control people's minds.
As far as we know, that
didn't work either,
but we don't know for sure.
And we shouldn't put
too much by them.
So I think it all
depends on your therapist
and how the situation is.
People don't generally
go have violent episodes
after psychedelics.
In general, the
experience tends to be one
where you discover that love
is the most important thing
in the universe, and this
Hallmark card platitude
suddenly becomes
this profundity.
And it is a profundity, but
we've heard it so many times
that it's banal.
There's an interesting
line between the banal
and the profound, and
psychedelics definitely
works on that line.
So I think we should be
mindful of that possibility,
but I don't think--
we certainly haven't
seen anything like that.
There have been 1,000
dosings of volunteers
since this new wave of
research, and there has not
been a single adverse event.
No psychotic breaks, no
jumping out of windows,
but there is no question that
people can do stupid things
on psychedelics, as
they can on alcohol
and any number of other drugs.
So thanks for your question.
AUDIENCE: Awesome.
Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Do you
have any theories
of why our brains are
wired to react to things
from plants and fungi?
And are there any things
from the animal kingdom
that do the same thing?
MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, animals
do like plant drugs, also.
We have many cases of--
I mean, if you've had a
cat, never give them catnip.
AUDIENCE: No, I mean like
any venoms that [INAUDIBLE]..
MICHAEL POLLAN: Oh, yes.
Well, one of those
psychedelics I
experimented with is
something called 5-MeO-DMT.
This is a pretty
obscure psychedelic.
I see a couple of
nods in the crowd.
[LAUGHTER]
Actually only one-- that is
the smoked venom of the Sonoran
desert toad.
Somebody figured
that out, right?
I mean, what a species, huh?
But why are we wired for this is
a really interesting question.
So the way the drugs
appear to work in the mind
is that they bind to
your serotonin-- one
particular serotonin
receptor that's
very common in the
cortex, and they
start a cascade of effects.
That's what neuroscientists
say when they really don't know
what's happening for a while.
[LAUGHTER]
But that that in turn eventually
down regulates something
called the default mode network.
I'll tell you what
that is because it's
very important, actually,
and it explains a lot.
So when they first started doing
fMRI imaging of people's brains
on psychedelics,
they would basically
inject you with psilocybin and
slide you into the MRI machine,
and you'd have what could
be a very scary experience.
[LAUGHTER]
And then they took
these pictures,
and they expected to see
lots of extra activity
because they're such
fireworks in the experience,
but they were very
surprised to find
that, in fact, this
particular network went quiet.
And this is a network
that's very active
when you're not on task.
It's in a seesaw relationship
with the attentional networks
when you're working or
something like that,
but when you're asked to just
lie back in an MRI machine,
and they're trying to get
a baseline, this lights up.
And they were like, why is that?
What is it doing?
Well, this appears to be
the part of your brain
that is active when
you're mind wandering,
when you're ruminating, or
worrying, or reflecting on
yourself.
It's a center of
self-reflection.
It's also involved in
time travel, the ability
to think about the
future or the past.
And it's involved
in theory of mind.
This is the term for
the ability to think
about the mental states
of other people--
central to compassion, and
imagination, and things
like that.
And lastly, it's involved in
something called the narrative
self or experiential
self, and this
is kind of where
you knit together
what happens to you at any given
moment with the story of who
you are based on who you've
been and who you want to be.
And it's kind of
where we sustain
that story that our
sense of self depends on.
And so this network--
so if the ego has
an address, it's
in the default mode network.
This is what the research shows.
It's really
interesting that this
is what gets down regulated
during the experience,
and it chimes with
the experience
of ego dissolution people report
on a high dose experience.
I had an experience
on a guided psilocybin
trip where I felt
my sense of self
scattered to the wind like
a blizzard of post-its.
And then I looked
out, and I don't know.
Who's the I who's
looking out at this?
I mean, there was a
split in consciousness
where I could watch
myself then get spread
over the landscape like a
coat of paint out there,
and I was fine with it.
This other self
was fine with it.
And it was this kind of very
imperturbable consciousness
that could behold this
thing, and I realized
I'm not identical to my ego.
And that's a very important
insight to acquire, I think,
and very useful.
But what was going
on in my brain
was the default mode
network was going offline
for a period of time.
The sense of self dissolves,
and then something else happens,
which is other networks in the
brain which normally would only
communicate through
this hub start
talking directly to each other.
And there's a map in the book
of the brain on a placebo
and the brain on psilocybin.
And one looks like the route
map of American Airlines,
and the other looks
like the route
map of some little commuter line
that only goes to 10 places.
And so new connections form, and
what are those new connections?
I mean, that's the
interesting question.
Is that, say, your hippocampus
talking to your visual cortex,
and so you start
having images of things
that you fear or desire?
Is it the basis
of hallucination,
or is it perhaps the basis of a
new metaphor, or a new insight,
or new meme?
We don't know yet.
That's the next step-- is
to really understand that.
So these are temporary
changes in the brain.
Eventually your ego
kind of reconsolidates,
but having had a glimpse of that
other way to behold experience
is very powerful, and in
my integration session
I said to Mary,
who was my guide--
I said, well, OK, I've had
this amazing experience
of ego dissolution.
And I realized I'm not
identical to my ego.
I can have a little
distance on it,
but I said my ego is back
in uniform and on patrol.
So what good is that?
And she said, well,
basically you've
had a taste of another
way to react to life.
A little less defensive, a
little less trigger happy.
And you can cultivate that.
And I said, how?
And she said,
through meditation.
And meditation is kind
of how you keep alive
the psychedelic experience.
It makes you a very
good meditator,
although I know
you're not supposed
to say good or bad
meditator, but being
trapped in that language.
So that's kind of a real
shorthand of what we understand
about the neuroscience.
The neuroscientific
investigation of this phenomena
is absolutely
fascinating, and for me,
that chapter of the book was
the most challenging to write.
Well, not the most
challenge, but one
of the most challenging, and
fascinating to learn about.
So thanks for your question.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Hi.
AUDIENCE: So I have
heard rumors that monks
have been able to
achieve a similar thing
to a psychedelic trip.
Do you know anything
about what that entails
or if there's any research that
hints to it being as strong?
MICHAEL POLLAN: I mean,
there's anecdotal research
that's really interesting.
So one very relevant fact--
at the same time we were
doing this imaging work
on psilocybin in
the human brain,
there was another
researcher at Yale
imaging the brains of very
experienced meditators, people
who had 10,000 hours of
meditation experience.
And they would go into
the fMRI and meditate,
and their brains
looked identical.
They also had this suppression
of the default mode network,
and of course, that is the
state of kind of selflessness
that people report
coming out of meditation.
In terms of the monks,
these are people
with really long
experience meditation
in that they can almost at will
probably quiet the default mode
network.
There's a famous story about
Ram Dass, Richard Alpert,
who was Timothy Leary's
collaborator during the Harvard
psilocybin project
in the early '60s.
This guy went on to
become a guru basically,
and he's still alive.
He's in Hawaii.
And he was very
interested in psychedelics
and then found Hindu religion.
And he went to India, and
he told his guru about LSD.
And his guru said,
I want to try it.
I want to see what happens,
because you're telling me
you're reaching this
spiritual plane on this drug,
and that's my territory.
And so Ram Dass
apparently gave him
600 micrograms of LSD, which
is a beyond heroic dose.
And that's what the guy wanted.
He said, give me as
much as you have.
[LAUGHTER]
And the monk-- or
whatever he is.
He's a guru, I guess-- takes
it, and nothing happened.
[LAUGHTER]
Is this true?
I mean, Ram Dass
tells this story
and swears that it's true,
but it goes to your point.
There are other ways to
achieve the same effect.
Psychedelics are
probably a shortcut
to becoming a really good
meditator, but my guess is
we will find at some point
that all the disciplines,
the spiritual
disciplines that share
this sense of
transcending the ego,
are doing the same
thing in the brain--
that that is where
that's happening.
And I'm thinking of
sensory deprivation--
if you get into these tanks,
sensory deprivation tanks.
They're sort of coming back.
They were a thing in the '60s--
or fasting, or prayer, or
the right kind of music,
and breathing exercises.
One of the psychedelic trips
I had involved no drugs--
something called
holotropic breathwork.
It's based on a yogic breathing
exercise where you essentially
hyperventilate.
You breathe really fast.
You exhale more than you inhale,
and you enter a trance state.
It's the most uncanny
thing, and my guess
is that hyperventilation is
starving the default mode
network of oxygen and
reducing the activity there.
So this is all areas
to be explored.
We may find other ways to
achieve the same thing,
but I think it's all connected.
AUDIENCE: Thank you so much.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Hi.
AUDIENCE: One of the
interesting trends
that I've read about
on blogs and whatnot
is the rise of microdosing.
For those who don't
know, microdosing
is taking small
doses of psychedelics
on a somewhat regular basis--
far too small to actually
cause any sort of trip.
And proponents of
microdosing claim
that it can help with things
such as depression and anxiety,
improve mood,
improve creativity.
And I'm wondering
if you got a chance
to investigate microdosing
at all in your book,
and if you get a sense that
some of the renewed research
interest for high
dose experience
might carry over into
researching whether microdosing
is clinically
significant or not.
MICHAEL POLLAN:
Excellent question.
So microdosing is a very
interesting phenomenon.
As the questioner said, it's
taking a sub-perceptual dose,
often with LSD,
about 10 micrograms
every third or fourth day.
And the reason you
don't take it every day
is because it would
lose its effect.
The drugs kind of
cancel themselves out
at a certain point.
Many people anecdotally
report success
with this, that it's
kind of a brain tonic,
and it does help
with depression.
There's a wonderful
book written about it,
if you want to follow up,
by Ayelet Waldman called
"A Really Good Day."
And she's someone who's
struggled with depression
for many years and
found more relief
on this regime of
microdosing, and she's
been through the whole
pharmacopoeia, I'm sure.
The reason I don't spend a
lot of time on it in the book
is that there isn't yet anything
beyond the anecdotal reports.
They're interesting.
They're really
provocative, and they're
being systematically connected.
If you go online, there's a
guy named James Fadiman, who
is one of the first
generation researchers who's
advising people on the
protocol, and soliciting
reports, and getting this
interesting data set,
but it has not been trialed
the way the large dose
psilocybin has.
I hear that these trials
are about to happen,
and so we may get some
really solid information
on whether microdosing works.
The fact is, though, there
is such a strong placebo
effect with psychedelics--
they're so suggestible--
that it's very easy
to see how it would work.
Just the very idea that you're
taking a small dose of LSD
probably would have
an effect, but is
it a pharmacological
effect or a placebo effect?
That's what remains
to be learned.
So I'm skeptical about it.
I do want the
research to happen,
and this interest
in m if you will,
has stimulated people to fund
some research, some of which
will be underground and some
of which will be above ground.
So I'm very excited to see
what they come up with.
Thanks.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Thanks for
being here today.
Wozniak pretty
famously said that LSD
was one of the things
that differentiated Apple
from Microsoft.
[LAUGHTER]
MICHAEL POLLAN: I think
Jobs said that, too.
AUDIENCE: And at
this organization,
we selected apocryphally
Eric Schmidt as CEO
because he was the candidate
that had been to Burning Man.
As an external
observer, I'm curious
what are your observations
about the intersection
between psychedelics and
the technology-- or the tech
industry.
MICHAEL POLLAN: It's a really
interesting relationship.
So Steve Jobs
famously said, too, it
had been formative to his
intellectual development,
and I thought it was
him, but maybe it
was Wozniak who
said that Windows
would have been a much
better product had Gates ever
taken LSD.
It was a really mean
thing to say, I think.
And Gates immediately
said, but I did, but I did.
[LAUGHTER]
But it didn't work.
It must not have been enough.
And I thought this was
the beginning of the tech
community's interest
in these drugs,
because it's very current.
I mean, you know better
than I, but I mean,
I've talked to lots of
people in Silicon Valley,
and it's a big part of
the culture right now.
Microdosing,
macrodosing-- I mean,
I know one prominent
tech company that uses it
in their management training--
LSD.
So there's a lot
of interest there,
and it is the tech
community, as I said,
that's funding a lot
of this research.
But it turns out that engineers
have been interested in LSD
back in the '50s
and that there's
this very interesting episode.
Before Timothy Leary and the
whole '60s psychedelic story
that we think we know so well,
there was this research period,
and there was this very
interesting character, who's
kind of a counterpart to
Leary, named Al Hubbard,
and I tell this
story in the book.
He's a very mysterious figure.
He's involved with the
OSS, which became the CIA.
He's playing both
sides of many worlds,
but he had a vision
in 1951 that told him
he could be involved in a
major civilization change.
He realized it was LSD.
He went to Sandoz, which
owned the patent on it.
It was a Swiss
pharmaceutical company--
persuaded them to
give him something
like a liter bottle
of LSD, which probably
is enough to trip a third
of the population of Earth
at that point.
I mean, just an
incredible amount,
which he keeps buried in
Death Valley at his place.
And anyway, he's
a great character.
He's so much more
interesting than Leary.
So he becomes the
Johnny Appleseed of LSD,
but he's got a different theory.
He was kind of a
conservative guy.
He wanted to turn
on the elite, so he
was going to do captains of
industry, engineers, artists,
people in the church,
the Catholic church.
And he would go around with
this satchel tripping people.
Remember, it was legal then.
And he became a
very gifted guide.
So he has his eye on the tech
world as one of the places
where you could have
this multiplier effect.
So he turns on a
couple engineers
who are working at a company
called Ampex, which is actually
one of the first Silicon
Valley companies in the '50s.
They make magnetic tape,
on which, as you know,
all computer
information was stored,
but also video and
sound recording.
They had 40,000
people in the valley
before it was called
Silicon Valley.
And the head of
strategic planning,
he turned on, and another
guy, and actually Ampex--
for a while, it was
going to be the world's
first psychedelic company,
but the president was Jewish,
and Al Hubbard was Catholic.
And he kept bringing in
crucifixes and things,
and the president said go away.
So but anyway, so
these engineers,
though, were so taken
with this experience
that they left the company--
a group of three
or four engineers--
and started a big research--
something called the
International Foundation
for Advanced Research,
and they were doing
a lot of psychedelic research.
And I've always
been interested as
to why engineers in particular
had such a strong reaction
to this drug, and I talked to
a couple engineers about it.
And you can tell
me if this chimes
with your sense of things,
but this one guy in particular
told me that--
and some of the early chip
designers were into LSD.
It's very hard to design
a chip without a computer,
but of course, at the
beginning, you had to.
And you could hold this complex
3D structure in your head
with the help of the drug.
And this guy said-- oh,
and one of the-- sorry, one
of the early people
at the International
Foundation for Advanced
Study who was tripped
was someone you
probably know if you
know your history
of your industry,
but Doug Engelbart,
who invented the mouse,
and the interface, and
email, and everything.
There was this
mother of all demos.
Well, that guy got LSD
from those Ampex guys,
and under the influence-- they
were doing a creativity study--
he invented something then.
It wasn't that profound.
It was something he called
the tinkle toy to toilet train
boys, and it was something you
could aim a stream of urine at,
and it would make things happen.
It's not quite the mouse,
but it was pretty cool,
but it primed the pump.
[LAUGHTER]
So anyway, where was I?
So this engineer I was talking
to said, well, the problem--
if you're an engineer as
opposed to a scientist,
a scientist can--
their goal is to reduce
problems to the simplest terms,
but engineers are faced with
an irreducible complexity
and number of variables.
So the challenge is different.
The challenge becomes
finding pattern,
and psychedelics-- one of
the things that happens
is you find pattern where
you didn't see it before.
And that, he thought,
was why so many engineers
found this a useful tool.
I think that's fascinating.
John Markham wrote an
interesting history
about Silicon
Valley and the '60s,
and there's some very
good stuff on drugs.
And he interviewed Jobs
about his experience,
but yeah, it's part of
the tradition you're in.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
MICHAEL POLLAN: You're welcome.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Hi.
AUDIENCE: So you
talked a little bit
about how every
culture in the world
has experienced
this to some degree
or is integrated
into their culture,
and I'm curious from a sort of
anthropological perspective,
because I imagine there's
a huge range in the way
that these drugs
are applied, right?
It's a select few, or
it's open to everyone,
or it's ritualistic, or
it's ordinary, or whatever.
Are there other sort
of cultural patterns
that can be deduced or
associated from the drug
use within those cultures?
MICHAEL POLLAN: That's
a good question.
I actually think we
have a lot to learn
from the traditional
use of these drugs.
So we're going to
stay on psychedelics,
and there are lots
of plant drugs
that are not that
controversial, like caffeine,
although in some
cultures they might be.
But psychedelics have
been used for it looks
like several thousand years.
It appears that the
ancient Greeks--
all the writers you've
heard of participated
in an annual ritual
that involved
what seems to be a psychedelic.
It was called the kykeon.
It was an annual rite in honor
of Demeter, harvest related.
It was called the
Eleusinian Mysteries,
and everybody was sworn
to secrecy about this,
so we don't know
that much about it,
but everybody took this potion
and went to the underworld,
had experiences of a beyond.
And it was very profound, and it
was the only time you were ever
allowed to take this drug.
We don't know what the drug was.
And in fact, one
person was caught
using the drug at a party and
was imprisoned, or killed,
or something.
It was a big crime.
The lesson, I
think-- the takeaway
from lots of traditional
cultures' use
is that they recognize
that these were very
powerful medicines not
to be treated casually
and that they all surrounded
the use of their plant medicine,
as they often call it,
with ritual, ceremony,
elders in attendance.
It was never careless.
It was never casual.
It was never recreational.
It was a profound experience.
And I think when the drugs
hit the west, beginning in
the late '50s, early
'60s, we didn't
have any container for them.
We didn't have rituals.
We just kind of took
a handful of mushrooms
and went to a concert, or we
drank LSD from the punch bowl.
And I think that's why some
people really got in trouble.
And so the lesson that
we failed to learn
was that, yes, these drugs
have been ancient lineage,
but look how they were used.
Look at what those cultures
learned by trial and error.
And now we see it in shamanic
ceremonies in South America.
There were mushroom
cults in Mexico
that went back we don't know how
long, but at least 1,000 years,
but they were always taken
in a group with guidance
with someone who wasn't
taking the drugs,
and with enormous care.
And I think that's
what we lost, and we
need to now invent that
container for ourselves.
Maybe it's this therapeutic
protocol I'm describing.
I'm not sure, but
that's the cultural work
that needs to be done.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Sure.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I was wondering whether
in your research
you'd come across
the video of a debate
from 1967 between Timothy Leary
and Jerome Lettvin at MIT.
MICHAEL POLLAN: No.
Jerome?
AUDIENCE: Lettvin.
For those who don't--
MICHAEL POLLAN: I
don't know who that is.
AUDIENCE: --recognize
the name, Jerome Lettvin
was one of the pioneers
of neuroscience.
He was one of the
four authors of one
of the first papers on the
physiology of perception titled
"What the Frog's Eye
Tells the Frog's Brain,"
and he was also one of the most
charismatic professors at MIT
in the 1960s.
And they held this
debate sometime in 1967,
and Leary went first, and
he had the whole audience
lulled into going along.
MICHAEL POLLAN: He
was very charismatic.
AUDIENCE: And Lettvin got
up and said, bullshit.
I think it may have
been the first time
bullshit was allowed to be
said on broadcast television.
Anyway, Lettvin's biggest
argument against taking LSD
was the phenomenon of
uncontrolled flashbacks
and how that could get
people into trouble,
but as I was standing in
line here, I looked it up,
and it's on YouTube.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Great.
AUDIENCE: The whole thing
actually ran about two hours.
WGBH, public TV station,
recorded it and broadcast
a one hour edited version.
MICHAEL POLLAN: So
Lettvin, L-E-T-V-I-N?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
Maybe one or two T's.
Two T's?
MICHAEL POLLAN: Well,
this is a good occasion
to talk about risk, unless you
want to frame the question,
but I'd love to
address that question.
AUDIENCE: Actually, I'll
let you talk about it,
but I just wanted to ask
one more side question.
When you talk about
food, you almost always
bring a bag of groceries.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Oh, yes.
Where's the mushrooms?
AUDIENCE: I was wondering if you
brought a bag with you today.
[LAUGHTER]
MICHAEL POLLAN: Let me tell you
a little tutorial on the law.
[LAUGHTER]
So I was a very nervous Nellie
doing these experiences.
I didn't have a
lot of experience
with psychedelics
in college, and even
after I was really too
afraid to take these drugs.
I didn't think I was
psychologically sturdy enough
at that point in my life.
And so before I dove
in for this project,
I did a lot of research, as
I'm wont to do as a journalist,
to figure out what are
the dangers, because there
are lots of stories
you heard in the '60s.
People staring at the sun
till they would go blind.
That was one story.
Scrambling of your chromosomes.
Both those stories,
by the way, were--
one was made up.
The first was made up,
and that's been proven,
and the chromosome story
was withdrawn within months.
It was just really bad research.
Psychotic breaks-- and
that did happen sometimes.
There are people at
risk for schizophrenia
that an acid trip was
what tripped them off,
but a lot of what was--
well, let me divide it into two.
There's physiological risk,
and there's psychological risk.
On the physiological
side, it's stunning how--
I don't want to overstate
this, but that how
compared to other drugs that we
take routinely how nontoxic--
relatively nontoxic
classic psychedelics are.
And I'm talking about LSD,
psilocybin, DMT, mescaline.
There is no known
lethal dose, which
you can't say about
over-the-counter drugs
you take for a cold or for pain.
They're very few
molecules in your brain.
They're washed out
really quickly,
and they don't seem
to affect the--
they affect your brain, and
they don't affect other parts.
If you have a panic
attack, your blood pressure
is going to go up, but
they don't directly
affect other systems.
That's one thing, and
they're also non-addictive.
The first thought you have upon
finishing a psychedelic trip
is, when can I do that again?
It's actually, do I ever
have to do that again?
Because it's really intense.
So they're not habit forming.
If you give the rats--
in that experiment where
the rat has two levers,
and one is cocaine,
and one's food,
and if he presses the lever,
he gets a dose of cocaine,
and they'll press till they die
over and over and over again.
You put LSD in that contraption.
They'll press it
once and never again.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, imagine
being a rat on LSD.
[LAUGHTER]
So from the physiological
point of view,
they're safer than a lot
of drugs we take routinely,
and I was surprised to
learn that, frankly.
Psychologically-- it's very hard
to sort through the stories.
The flashback phenomenon,
which I've heard
reported, I have never found
any really good research on it,
and I'm still looking for it.
If anybody has a good paper
on that, I'd love to see it.
I've kind of flashed on things
that happened in my experience
because they're part of my store
of powerful psychic memories.
Is that a flashback?
I don't think so because I
can get it out of my head,
but there are people
who have these unbidden
moments of consciousness
that may be connected
to what happened to them.
I haven't heard
that they interfere
with people's life
or mental health,
but it's a question mark.
The great danger
is the danger you
have drinking too much, also,
which is doing stupid things,
walking into traffic, falling.
All that happens
on psychedelics,
as it happens with
any powerful drug,
and that's why a guide is
really important, somebody
to look out for your body.
In the studies
that have gone on,
there have now
been 1,000 dosings
of people who have been screened
for mental health problems
and things like that,
and there has not
been a single serious
adverse event.
So are there adverse events
when people use the drugs
recreationally?
Yes, we all know people who
have had really bad trips,
and they usually stop
using it at that point--
felt trapped, had
panic reactions.
But often psychiatrists who
didn't know this territory
would misinterpret a panic
reaction as a psychotic break,
because it sure looks like that.
You're having delusions.
You're hearing voices.
I mean, to an
average psychiatrist,
this would say psychosis, but
often it was a panic attack.
I interviewed Andrew Weil,
Dr. Andrew Weil, about this,
and he was very interested
in psychedelics in the '60s.
He was at Harvard
when Leary was there,
and when he graduated from
medical school in 1968,
he went out to San
Francisco and volunteered
at the Haight-Ashbury
free clinic.
And they were seeing
lots of LSD casualties,
as they call it-- people
coming in, having bad trips,
thinking they're losing
their mind or they're dying.
And he knew the
territory really well,
having used a lot
of psychedelics,
and he would come into
the little cubicle
with somebody who was
completely freaking out.
And he had on his white
coat, and his stethoscope,
and his clipboard, and
he'd ask a few questions.
And then he'd say to the
person, will you excuse me?
There's someone in the next
room who's really in trouble,
and he'd leave.
And they were like, wow,
someone's more fucked up
than I am, and they
would suddenly feel fine.
[LAUGHTER]
It would just
completely subside.
So suggestibility is a very
big part of the experience.
AUDIENCE: Thank you very much
for coming to talk to us today.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Oh, thank you.
Thanks for your great questions.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
