Readalikes: If you enjoyed August's selection . . .

If you enjoyed How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan, then you might also enjoy these books suggested by our discussion group members:

Outside Looking In: A Novel by T. C. Boyle
Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldman

And check out this fabulous list of resources, including further reading and viewing, on Michael Pollan's website: https://michaelpollan.com/resources/psychedelics-resources/.

August Not Fiction Book Discussions

With How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Food Rules, and Cooked, shifts his focus from how we might best feed our bodies to how we could, to paraphrase Jefferson Airplane, feed our heads.

Pollan admits that he is a philosophical materialist and "less a child of the psychedelic 1960s than of the moral panic that psychedelics provoked," yet he was intrigued by research that shows these substances can aid those experiencing addiction, depression, trauma, chronic pain, and the existential fear of dying. He blends incisive journalism and candid memoir to explore the history, politics, science, and potential medical uses of psychedelics as well as his own "ineffable" personal experience of psilocybin, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT. He discovers that, in a carefully controlled environment, with the aid of psychedelics, we can temporarily experience life without the filter of the default mode network of our brain, which relies on habit to help us efficiently navigate the world. Without this filter, we can literally expand our consciousness, cultivating what Pollan thinks of as neural diversity.

What do you think? What were your thoughts and feelings about psychedelics, Timothy Leary, and the 1960s "turn on, tune in, drop out" culture before reading Pollan's book? Have you changed your mind? How? Considering their potential benefits and risks, should psychedelics be regulated for medical use? Should they be available for recreational use? Pollan includes his thoughts and feelings about psychedelics and his own experience with them in his narrative. How did this affect your understanding of the topic? Did he adequately explain both the scientific technicalities and the "ineffable" quality of the experience itself? Pollan notes that there is "a universal desire to change consciousness" and that "[o]ne of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful--wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing to which the adult brain has closed itself." Meditation and prayer can also offer access to this wonder-filled state. Have you ever had an experience of expanded consciousness, of wonder? How would you describe it?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, August 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 15, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.