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Author Michael Pollan discusses ego death through psilocybin, intimacy in his 70s, and facing mortality in a new interview with Benjamin Law.
Author Michael Pollan, now in his 70s and married for 50 years, has revealed he once believed sex was finished at 65. In an interview with Benjamin Law for Good Weekend, he said he had thought intimacy was over at that age but now knows it is not.
Ego Death and Psilocybin
Pollan also spoke about his marriage, his use of psilocybin, his thoughts on death, and his Jewish upbringing. He will appear at the Sydney Opera House on November 4 and at Melbourne's Wheeler Centre on November 5. In the interview, Pollan described one experience of ego death with psilocybin. He said: I had this sense that I had exploded into a cloud of blue Post-it Notes.
At the peak of a fairly high-dose psilocybin experience, those notes fluttered to the ground and formed a pool of blue paint. That was me, and I was gone, but I was still conscious.
Then something really interesting happened, which is that I merged with something larger than myself. In this case, it was a piece of music. He said he was the music, and there was no longer the subject-object distinction. That, he said, is what happens when you have ego death.
Pollan has written about terminal cancer patients treated with psilocybin. Many of them describe an experience like that, which eliminates their fear of death because they feel as if they have already been through it. He called that quite a gift. Death rehearsal is something that often happens on psychedelics, and it turns out to be a rather liberating event.
Sex, Marriage and Later Life
He said he is interested in the moment of death: what there might be to learn from it, and what one can rehearse. On sex education, Pollan said he learned through trial and error. In the late 1960s, when he was 13, there were conversations among boys about sex, but they were not frank. It was just guys boasting, and there was a lot of misinformation.
Girls taught me a lot later, he said. He got into long-term relationships pretty early. In high school he had a serious relationship that lasted a couple of years, another one in college, and then he met his wife. He said he has been serially monogamous for a very long time.
Asked what attracted him to his wife, Pollan listed many things. There was a strong physical attraction, but she also seemed a somewhat mysterious person who was not putting all her cards on the table. She was a little elusive. He said there is still physical attraction, without question.
They also have so much to talk about, and she edits all his work. Nothing leaves the house that she has not read and commented on. She is a painter and he regularly goes to her studio to look at her work and offer suggestions too. Pollan said that when you are with someone that long, you either grow together or grow apart because you are going to change.
Rethinking Death in His 70s
He feels very fortunate that they have grown together and changed in all sorts of ways they find compelling. Asked what to expect from sex in one's 70s, he said he thought it was over at 65 or something. He added that hearing it is not over makes him optimistic. On death, Pollan said it has been on his mind more since he turned 70.
It came into view in a way it had not when he turned 50 or 60. It was not so much the prospect of dying as the limits on the time remaining. At a younger age, it looked like life would go on forever, with a horizon you could barely make out. Now I can see the horizon, he said.
When deciding on his next book project, which could be his last, he wants to be very careful that it is important and worth doing. Pollan also has a 97-year-old mother and has been through the death of his father. When you lose your parents, you have this sense that you are up against the cosmos: you no longer have these people standing between you and eternity. You are up next, he said.
Suffering scares me, dying not so much. He is not a believer in an afterlife. On religion, Pollan said he is Jewish but did not have a very religious upbringing. His parents were not observant, yet they wanted him to be bar mitzvahed, completely against his will.
He fought it tooth and nail. His parents were incredibly permissive, but on this point they would not yield. It then became clear to him that this was a marketing opportunity for his father's business, because he was inviting all these clients. In the end, he had a good time at the party.
Consciousness, Meaning and Final Priorities
Pollan noted that the questions asked of him have always been profound and are becoming increasingly so. His latest book about consciousness is about existence and meaning. That is what he meant when talking about death earlier. Why waste time on trivial things when there is so little time left, he said.
He also said he has written extensively about food, though the interview did not include his answer on a last meal.
theage 
smh:‘I thought sex was over at 65’: Michael Pollan on love, ego death and 50 years of marriageThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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