Front of Mind for Michael Pollan: Psychedelics

Author with an experimental side says new generation of researchers will inform medicinal, religious, recreational use

At more than a dozen U.S. universities, a new generation is researching constructive uses of mushrooms, ecstasy, and other consciousness-altering drugs.

Most are focused on hardcore scientific and medical applications, said Michael Pollan, the Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer and a professor of the practice of nonfiction writing. “But there are other ways in which I think psychedelics are going to re-enter our society,” he added.

Pollan appeared last Wednesday at Fong Auditorium at something of a kickoff for Harvard’s Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture initiative, which was established earlier this year with a $16 million gift from the Gracias Family Foundation. An overflow crowd packed the room to hear a preview of the interdisciplinary program, which includes fellowships Pollan will help oversee. But the author of “How to Change Your Mind” (2018) and “This Is Your Mind on Plants” (2021) spent most of the evening answering audience questions on psychedelics, which were criminalized by the U.S. following an initial wave of academic inquiry in the 1950s and ’60s.

Pollan described three possible applications — what he called “containers” — for the drugs today. The first and foremost concerns medicinal benefits, but religious and recreational containers also demand attention, he said.

Within a year, he predicted, the Food and Drug Administration will approve MDMA (aka ecstasy) as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Approval for Psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) for those suffering from depression should follow in a couple of years. “Presumably, once it’s approved — and we have good evidence that it works — it will be covered by insurance,” Pollan said.