Michael Pollan
Appearances
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I was surprised too.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, I mean, we wanna control ourselves and our environment. And if we're not completely, if we don't feel completely safe, we're not gonna let our minds travel. And the guide is looking out for your body. Roland Griffith used to say, you're going out to outer space, don't worry, we're right here, we're mission control. We'll keep an eye on your body. Yeah. So your mind can travel.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, I'm very hopeful that that is happening. We have a lot of research. We need more. But all the treatments we have, SSRIs, et cetera, really only deal with symptoms. They don't deal with causes. We have no drugs that deal with causes of mental illness and actually provide cures. And this, at least in these initial studies, And these are trials with a couple hundred people.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
They're not huge yet. We're seeing positive and lasting results. You asked about OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. There was a trial at Yale using psilocybin and people had permanent relief. You know, one of the questions that I had myself is, wait a minute, this is a little suspicious. This one substance works on OCD and anxiety and depression and addiction and anorexia.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
This seems a little too good to be true. And I posed this question to a very well-known psychiatrist who'd been head of the National Institute of Mental Health. And I said, is this a panacea? Is this for real? And he said, well, why do you think all those different things are different illnesses?
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
They may be different manifestations of the same kind of brain, a brain that is stuck in patterns of behavior and thought that it can't get out of. And maybe what the psychedelics are doing... Right? It was like the light bulb went off.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And we are victims of our habits.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And they may just be different symptoms rather than different disorders. So that I understood.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Absolutely. I mean, what's happened since 2018 is I never would have imagined. how many, you know, how many studies are going on, how much research is being done and how many people are seeking psychedelic therapy.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, from a rigidity of thought and what psychedelics do in adults. I saw, Reagan, you had that aha moment too, right?
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I know it does feel like magic. Yes. But I, so I think that what psychedelics seem to do is make the brain more plastic, able to learn. There's a beautiful metaphor that a scientist gave me once that think, think of your mind as a snow covered hill. and your thoughts as sleds going down that hill.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And over time, the grooves get deeper and deeper and you can't go down the hill without falling into one of those grooves. The psychedelics are like a fresh snowfall that fills all the grooves. You can take a new path down the hill. Ooh, I love that metaphor.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
It is a wonderful question. And there's a lot of kind of suspicion and hostility among scientists and medical professionals at the word spiritual. Yet you can make a case that many things we call mental disorders are spiritual diseases. I mean, addiction is a spiritual disease. And what is at the root of a lot of these disorders is a lack of connection.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
a sense of isolation, separation, you know, you're encased in your ego. And so I think we have to educate medical professionals that spiritual approaches have medical value. And that's not the way they think.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And there's one other difficulty about incorporating this in our medical system. And that is that, Psychedelic therapy is not just about taking a psychedelic. It really should be called and often is psychedelic assisted psychotherapy because the support of the guide or the therapist is critical to its success. And the FDA, which regulates drugs in our country, only regulates drugs.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
They don't regulate therapy. So how are they going to deal with this thing? It's a square peg in a round hole. And that's going to be a challenge. I think we can work through it.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yes. And I really didn't think that there was a, you know, large audience for a book on psychedelics. I was just personally fascinated. But yeah, I mean, I think the book, I hear from, especially from scientists, that it became okay to study this after the book came out.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, I mean, I think if you're gonna use a high dose of psychedelics, you need to use a guide. I mean, people can take a couple of mushrooms and wander in the woods and they'll be fine. But at a high dose, there are risks. I mean, we should be realistic about it. Some people do have serious psychological problems. bad trips that last a very long time, guides can help you work through that.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
They give you very specific advice when things get very dark, because I think we should not underplay the fact that these experiences can be very challenging. And that can be productive. But in the process, you can encounter demons.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
That's right. And the guides know exactly what to tell you to get through that. I mean, they're very specific. They call them flight instructions. And they'll tell you, if you see a monster, don't turn and run away. Go right up to it and say, what do you have to teach me? Why are you in my mind? And you will pass through that dark into a lighter place.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And that attitude of curiosity rather than fear and anxiety changes everything.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, right. In and through is the other thing guides are always saying. In and through.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
So microdosing is a very different approach to using psychedelics. It's not guided. It's a very tiny dose. It's like... a 10% of a normal dose. And people do it not every single day, they'll do it a couple of days and then a day off because you build up a tolerance. And many people report relief from depression from it. There is not a lot of science yet on it.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
It's very hard to study because no university institutional review board is gonna let you give any amount of LSD to somebody and let them drive off in their car. It's a dose that you don't even feel. It's sub perceptual. Where is everybody getting this stuff anyway? Well, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know that. Okay.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Thank you.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
But it's around and people are selling gummies with psilocybin, even though it's not legal. They're around, they're on the internet. So- Microdosing may be a placebo effect. It may be, and the placebo effect is real. Make no mistake, people get better. If you have back trouble and I hand you a sugar pill, you will feel better. It's a very powerful effect.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And it multiplies when you are microdosing something like LSD, which already has this magic aura about it. So it may be that, but we don't know yet. The science is not in yet.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
It's a big promise. That's a big promise. But what got me really interested and making me realize, so I had had very little experience of psychedelics personally. I was afraid of them. I didn't think I was sturdy enough psychologically to have a big psychedelic trip. And I didn't do it when I was in college.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Who passed in 2018, in fact.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And it's such a valuable lesson because you don't, it teaches you, I'm not identical to my ego, so I don't have to listen to that voice in my head. It's like, all right, that's that voice. Yeah. Disregard. Yeah.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Legally. Legally. Well, there is a way to do it legally. Well, there are two ways. One is there are many, many trials going on around this country, universities and other institutions. And you can go on trials.gov. and search psilocybin or MDMA, and you may find a trial that you qualify for. The other way is to go to Oregon or Colorado.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
But I wrote an article about a study where they were giving psychedelics to people who had cancer diagnoses, many of them terminal.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
These are two states that have made guided psilocybin experiences I can't say legal because it's still a federal crime, but it's state legal and fairly safe from a legal point of view. And there are people there who have to get licenses as guides. The growers are licensed. The facilities where they're administered is licensed.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I know. That's an amazing interview. Yes.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
You know, I always saw myself as not a spiritual person. And I also had a misunderstanding of what spiritual meant.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I know. Well, because I thought to be spiritual meant believing in the supernatural. And I was, you know, not. I was very grounded. You know, I had a very material view of reality. But I realized that was wrong, that you can be spiritual without believing in the supernatural. And that the essence of spiritual... is connection, deep, profound connection with something other than yourself.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And so when I redefine it that way, yeah, these were powerful spiritual experiences. And I came to understand the opposite of spiritual is not material or materialistic. The opposite of spiritual is egotistical.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
That is so darn true. It is the ego that stands in the way of our spiritual development.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
There's a reason we have all these egos. You know, it gets books written. It gets TV shows produced. Yes. But it also gets in the way of connecting to others.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I think people do it through meditation.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I think psychedelics in some way are a shortcut. A lot of people have trouble meditating. They're not sure they're doing it right. They can't. They can't.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
That's right. Or if you have OCD, you're going to have intrusive thoughts when you're meditating. So I think it kind of breaks people through to a place where they can meditate successfully, but without question. And people have had these mystical, spiritual experiences without drugs. Experiences of nature can do it. Experiences of art can do it.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
The mystical experience, which is what this technically is called in the literature, can be approached from a lot of different doors. Psychedelics are just one of them.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
So he was doing a study, he hadn't published it yet, giving psychedelics, psilocybin specifically, magic mushrooms in pill form, to people who had cancer diagnoses. And I interviewed about a dozen of them. And they told me stories of personal- May I just tell people who he was?
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I think being present for it. We spend so much of our time worrying, thinking about the future, thinking about the past that we let the present go by. And for me, that's one of the, not to say I've mastered this at all, but my psychedelic experience and which has been followed by a meditation practice. That's kind of like psychedelics are not a practice.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
You can't, you're not gonna do it that many times. But you need a practice to reinforce it.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Exactly, exactly. But after the door is open, you want to keep this way of thinking and these memories alive. One of the things I meditate about very often are psychedelic experiences I've had. They're... They're the stories of you and they're endlessly, you can replay them endlessly. One of the interesting things about psychedelic experiences, it's not like dreams, which are hard to remember.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
You remember these. These experiences are indelible. I can summon images from my experiences on psychedelics.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yes, he really got what's called the psychedelic renaissance started with his research.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, in 2006. And that really launched the whole revival of psychedelic research, which had been a big thing in the 50s and 60s. I didn't realize it. But in the 50s, LSD was considered a wonder drug. There were six international conferences on LSD alone. There were- In the 50s. In the 50s, up till 1965, from 50 to, yeah.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
So we think of psychedelics- And then it just got banned and also people said- Yeah, the drug war. to the drug war. Yeah, and President Nixon who starts the drug war said that the drug war, there's a quote that he gave to John Ehrlichman, his domestic policy advisor, that we're going after LSD to get the hippies and cannabis to get the blacks. And those were his two enemies.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And that's what the drug war was really about. And so anyway, there had been all this very promising research. LSD was being used to treat alcoholism with a lot of success. So I didn't know this whole backstory. I thought of psychedelics as a 60s thing, but actually it's really a 50s thing.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And there was this promising research that gets shut down and we lose like 30 years of research that is just now resumed.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, there are definitely people who shouldn't mess around with these substances. People at any risk of schizophrenia, you know, if you have a relative that has schizophrenia. Yes. Usually bipolar, they don't want you in the studies. You need to leave these drugs alone. Yeah, but people struggling with addiction, anxiety, OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, trauma. Trauma.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, those are mental disorders that- PTSD, we're gonna talk to somebody later.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, I mean, people, you know, people, the term recreational is regarded as a negative. I mean, to recreate ourselves doesn't seem that bad. But yeah, there are people who are just doing it for thrills, going to concerts.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, it does change consciousness. But the set and setting are very important. So the context in which you do it, you know, if you do it to go to a Grateful Dead concert, it's one thing. If you do it in a room, the way psychedelic therapy is done is you're lying down, you're on a couch, you're wearing eye shades, you're listening to music. It's a very internal journey.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
It's very different than kids taking mushrooms and walking in the woods where it's all about the sensory thrills.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
It's a completely different experience.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Right. And the guide is really important.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yes. Yes. Yes. I was scared for a lot of reasons. One was would I discover some deep, dark secret about myself? Because people do discover traumas that they're not looking for. Yes. That definitely comes up.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah. But I also found that doing it with a guide creates this safe envelope, this container in which you can really let go.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Oh, yeah.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I was doing a dose of LSD.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
It's a very powerful drug, it's measured in micrograms, not milligrams and you take a very, very tiny amount and it's usually on a piece of paper. So is it a pill or a powder? It's usually on a piece of blotter paper, they just put a little drop and you put the piece of paper on your tongue and that's enough.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And the experience was, I saw my son, I saw my wife, I saw my parents and there was this, it was like a tree house being built layer by layer by layer by layer. And it was a kind of a life review. And I emerged from it with this just surge of compassion for these people in my life.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And I had this realization, which like 90% of people on Psychedelic seem to have, which is the most important thing in the world is love. Now that's obvious,
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
With a conviction that I hadn't had before.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yes, exactly. You really hit on it. The kinds of insights you have on psychedelics for reasons we don't really understand are really sticky. This isn't just an opinion or an insight. This is like a revealed truth of the universe. It's a knowing.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
It comes through. It's revealed knowledge.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
I know what episode you're talking about. Yeah. So I... Years ago, I built a little studio where I write and I've written my books. And... it faces two trees. And one is a very elegant white oak that's kind of leaning. And the other is this kind of stolid ash tree. And having taken, in this case, psilocybin in my garden, I had this power. I mean, you know I love plants.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
And I've been writing about plants for a long time. And I'm a gardener and you are too. That the plants were conscious and they were awake. I had this sense that the plants in my garden were kind of like, looking at me and there were these two trees and I suddenly realized- So I think that, and I'm not on psilocybin.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
On psilocybin, they'll say hello back. So, and these two trees I hadn't realized before, oh, that's my mother and that's my father. And the one that was my father, that tree had just had fallen, a giant limb had fallen off and he was sick at the time. And I realized that they were both gonna go eventually. And it was very moving and they were embodied.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, I think a key word for what psychedelics do is connect you. And for me, it's about connecting to nature. It was connecting to people. And the reason that happens, I think is that psychedelics soften your ego. And the ego is, you know, ego is a walled structure, right? It's a barrier. It's a defensive structure.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
That's right. They feel they're identical to their ego. But you're not. You're not. It's just one voice and it can get quiet. And one of the things that happens on psychedelics And we understand this neuroscientifically. There's a structure and a network in the brain called- You're not the voice, you're actually the observer.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
There's a lot in common actually.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
Yeah, but having done psychedelics, I became a better meditator because I understood, oh, this is where I'm trying to go. But this sense of, you know, your ego softening and in one case I had completely disappearing. I had a ego death experience, which I can tell you about.
The Oprah Podcast
Can Psychedelics Heal Mental Trauma? With Harvard Professor Michael Pollan
When the ego goes down, there's nothing between you and nature or you and other people or you and the universe, and you feel like the sense of oneness.