More connection, less self-preoccupation

...All of which suggests that the Buddhist ideal of ego suppression is grounded in neurochemical reality, for the brains of experienced meditators and people undergoing a psychedelic trip display striking commonalities. The more connected we feel to what’s around us, and the less we obsess about ourselves, the happier we are likely to be.

Happiness, it turns out, is not that profound, but then it doesn’t have to be. Pollan describes one intellectual — a professor of philosophy — coming out of his first trip during a clinical trial and summing it up with three timeless words: “Love conquers all.” And here’s how a smoker explained his decision to ditch nicotine after a particularly potent trip: “Because I found it irrelevant.”

In the most moving section of the book, Pollan describes a dying cancer patient named Patrick Mettes, who sat up during his psychedelic treatment and said, “Everyone deserves to have this experience.” Mettes’s widow later described to Pollan the scene at her husband’s deathbed: “He was consoling me.” A 2016 study showed that 80 percent of cancer patients responded positively to psychedelic treatment — and the more intense their trip, the more positive and long-lasting the benefits. “If it gives them peace,” one psychedelic researcher tells Pollan, “I don’t care if it’s real or an illusion.”

Human consciousness is one of the greatest puzzles of existence, and will likely remain so, no matter what psychedelic enthusiasts might promise. In that sense, it probably doesn’t matter whether the doorway to heaven is in the dirt, among the fungi, or whether psychedelic visions are merely the churn of a poisoned brain. That’s the problem with psychedelics. They’re hard to talk about without sounding like an aspiring guru or credulous dolt. Michael Pollan, somehow predictably, does the impossible: He makes losing your mind sound like the sanest thing a person could do.

Tom Bissell reviewing HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
By Michael Pollan

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