The writer Michael Pollan says he tried psychedelics for the same reasons that people his age – he is 67 now, but became a “psychonaut” in his late fifties – might take a sabbatical or go travelling. There was nothing wrong, but equally nothing felt “fresh”. He needed to “shake the snow globe”, as a scientist once put it to him.
Pollan had also started researching psychedelics, having spotted early signs of a resurgence. There was an intriguing New York Times story in 2010 on how psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) could help cancer patients overcome a fear of death, and a few years later, at a dinner party near his home in California, a psychologist his age spoke about the professional insight she was getting from LSD. He began speaking to psychedelic researchers and spiritual guides, and soon found he envied them. “They were having these big, spiritual experiences. And I don’t think I’d ever had a spiritual experience. I was kind of jealous,” Pollan told me.
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