Netflix’s weighty new show follows thumpingly authoritative author Michael Pollan as he outlines the benefits of psychedelic drugs such as MDMA and mescaline. It’s hugely eloquent and convincing
just landed on Netflix. And if it doesn’t spark a giant uptick in Border Force letters, I don’t know what will.
Based on his 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, the series offers a God’s eye view of the creation, prohibition and resurgence of four different psychedelic drugs: LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline.
We’re told that these compounds can help terminal cancer patients lose their fear of death. It’s that profound Aside from an opening scene that seems designed to weed out the wrong type of viewer – it sees Pollan, a man in his 60s, taking a tobacco trip where he snorts it as part of a ritual while a woman who bills herself as a “wisdom keeper” chants in Spanish and special effects make his body look like it’s pulsating with lightning – How to Change Your Mind sensibly skews away from the counterculture.
When he does step in, though, it’s usually at the end of each episode, where he describes his experiences on each drug. This has the potential to be extraordinarily excruciating – nothing is quite as dull as listening to people tell their drug stories – but Pollan’s innate eloquence means that it’s both erudite and convincing. He is a man of such thumping authority that, when he explains the feeling of childlike awe he experienced on LSD, you can’t help but take him seriously.
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