Commentary: 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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Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence speaks to exactly what it advertises— what LSD, Shrooms, DMT, and other psychedelic drugs can treat in mental health frameworks. And, while there were parts of this book that raised deeply fascinating questions about consciousness and nature that I swallowed up hungrily, I also felt a disappointing sense of lacking in how Pollan talked about the history and future of these drugs. Little was said about the Indigenous history of these miracle substances, nor of how the future could look outside of the White imagination.
In the book’s prologue, Pollan briefly addresses the colonized history of psychedelics in Indigenous communities,
“Produced not by a chemist but by an inconspicuous little brown mushroom, this molecule, which would come to be known as psilocybin, has been used by the Indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America for hundreds of years as a sacrament. Called teonanacatl by the Aztecs, or “flesh of the gods,” the mushroom was brutally suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church after the Spanish conquest and driven underground.”
The rest of the 400+ page book; however, focuses on the largely white-led clinical research history from the 1940s-1970s and then again from the late 1990s-today. That history points to a very probable future where psychedelics will be utilized in therapeutic settings to fight addiction, depression, anxiety, and OCD (for those who would be able to afford such treatment.)
The question I ask here is this: Who exactly would this newly-accepted use of psychedelic drugs be for?
As much as a future where mental illness and existential crises could be treated in healthy, lasting ways is CRITICAL and deeply needed, we also need to center Indigenous people in these conversations; they should not be a side note or an after thought. Their culture, history, medical practices, religion, and rituals have included psychedelic drugs for centuries. It isn’t enough to acknowledge them; the path forward should be led by them. White people/European colonizers punish Indigenous communities for EVERYTHING they do, not because what they do is wrong, but because those practices don’t fit our agendas and quests for power. Now; however, that white people have realized that psychedelics have immense potential for healing (and profitability), we want to control them again, but this time with FDA approval.
I 1000% support the use of these drugs (clinically or not.) We all have the right to access healing— however it comes. But we can’t ignore the past just because the future looms near. And especially when that future very well could mean healing for certain groups (White people) over BIPOC. Or for the wealthy over the working class. Rather, conversations and decisions around psychedelics need to center Indigenous communities.
One thing psychedelics allow is a new perspective. They promote new pathways in our brains, directing us towards creativity, connectedness, and a stronger sense of meaning. If we want to truly honor what these molecules can do for us, we need to use those perspective-widening effects to build a future that actually works for everyone— not just the white and wealthy.