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A review by rbruehlman
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
4.0
I think the title of this book is really misleading... it should be better be called "How to Change Your Mind: the History of Psychedelics." Most of the book covers the complicated, fraught history of psychedelics, including how it became taboo in the United States and research on it stopped ... with lots of attention given to the strange characters along the way who saw it as a form of advancing mysticism.
It takes a MADDENINGLY long time to talk about the actual science--I'd say the last 4/5 of the book, probably. And even at that, I didn't find the research to be particularly exhaustive. He mentions at one point he has tried to spare the reader descriptions of the different brain regions and their role in the psychedelic experience... which was exactly what I wanted to be reading about!
I think the book is well-researched, and it is exhaustive in its exploration of psychedelics' history from the 1930s to the 1960s ... but as far as actual science, I was expecting something more.
It takes a MADDENINGLY long time to talk about the actual science--I'd say the last 4/5 of the book, probably. And even at that, I didn't find the research to be particularly exhaustive. He mentions at one point he has tried to spare the reader descriptions of the different brain regions and their role in the psychedelic experience... which was exactly what I wanted to be reading about!
I think the book is well-researched, and it is exhaustive in its exploration of psychedelics' history from the 1930s to the 1960s ... but as far as actual science, I was expecting something more.