Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind, is replete with all kinds of interesting anecdotes and observations about the history, folklore and seeming effects of psychedelic drugs. However, the author’s fluency covers up a number of serious flaws, omissions and misstatements. As an example, he states that the edited book by C. Tart, Altered States of Consciousness, made “a tremendous impression on Paul,” but he failed to mention that my opening chapter by the same title in that book, defining the characteristics of these states, conflicted with many of his observations about psychedelics. Most important, for all his seemingly scholarly references, he completely omitted to mention the results of perhaps the largest, federally funded research project comparing the effects of hypnodelic therapy, psychedelic therapy and hypnotherapy to placebos on chronic alcoholics (A. M. Ludwig, J. Levine, L. Stark, LSD and Alcoholism, 1970, Chas. C. Thomas, Publ.). This study won the Hofheimer Award, given annually by the American Psychiatric Association for outstanding research. In brief, what this two-year follow-up study (plus several previous articles) showed was that although the patients receiving hallucinogens claimed greater subjective improvement than those receiving placebos, they were comparable on all objective measures (e.g., legal difficulties, social problems, employment, marital problems, relapse, etc.) to those receiving placebos. In other words, psychedelics contributed no significant improvement in their overall behavior. Also, Pollan’s book made no mention of prior actual studies dealing with the use of LSD in the treatment of drug addiction. Aside from this omission of critical information, the author’s interpretation of the major effects of psychedelic drugs is questionable. After his experience with the drug, he appropriately stated, “Psychedelics can make the most cynical of us into fervent evangelists of the obvious.” One of his great insights after taking a hallucinogen was, “Love is everything.” Nice. But what he does not emphasize is that psychedelics also can make users fervent evangelists of the PREPOSTEROUS. Unfortunately, the author of the book does not adequately distinguish between “true” meaning and the artificial or false sense of meaning. Just because something seems very real or profound to someone does not make it true. A paranoiac’s delusion proves the point.