Michael Pollan

Please note the updated venue for this event. This event will now take place at the Harvard Science Center in Hall B.

Harvard Book Store welcomes renowned writer MICHAEL POLLAN—author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food—for a discussion of his latest book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. He will be joined in conversation by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist RON SUSKIND.

About How to Change Your Mind

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction, and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into the experience of various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s when a handful of psychedelic evangelists catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.

A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both struggle and beauty, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.

Praise

“I've never regretted my adolescent use of LSD, but reading this fascinating, lucid, wise, and hopeful book did make me wonder if those drug experiences weren't another example of youth wasted on the young. Michael Pollan, who waited until he was a grownup to experiment, is the perfect guide to today’s dawning psychedelic renaissance.” —Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland 
 
“Michael Pollan masterfully guides us through the highs, lows, and highs again of psychedelic drugs. How to Change Your Mind chronicles how it’s been a longer and stranger trip than most any of us knew.” —Daniel Goleman, co-author Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body
 
“Very few writers, if any, have the gravitas and journalistic cred to tackle this explosive subject—from both the outside and the inside—and extract it from its nationally traumatic and irrationally overreactive past, and bring both reason and revelatory insight to it. Michael Pollan has done just that. This is investigative journalism at its rigorous and compelling best—and radically mind-opening in so many ways just to read it.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, and author of Full Catastrophe Living and Coming to Our Senses