Opinion – Psychedelic Turn: Michael Pollan’s TV Miniseries Omits Ayahuasca

Don’t be fooled by the reviews that follow: the miniseries on psychedelics “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan, author of the best seller of the same title, is worth watching. It’s pretty good — more for what it shows than what it doesn’t, like ayahuasca and ibogaine.

There are three strengths in what the documentary presents to the public. First, and most importantly, the touching testimonials from people with profound mental disorders who are cured with psychedelics. They are rightly given the foreground, to the detriment of the author’s experiences with substances.

Then comes the admirable archival research, which unearthed several images and scenes from the history of psychedelia, before and after the bans were lifted in the 1970s and 1980s. last day 9), Rick Doblin and Annie and Michael Mithoefer.

There are four episodes, dedicated respectively to LSD (acid), psilocybin (‘magic’ mushrooms), MDMA (ecstasy) and mescaline (peyote cactus). The fourth and final chapter is not derived from that 2018 book, but from Pollan’s follow-up work, “This Is Your Mind Under Plants” (2021).

Nothing better than LSD to introduce context and retrace the path that stigmatized psychedelics. After its lysergic properties were discovered in 1943 by chemist Albert Hofmann, the drug was widely distributed by the Swiss laboratory Sandoz to anyone who wanted to do scientific and clinical experiments with it.

Thousands of patients took the acid for treatment, legally, in the 1950s and 1960s, with good results. Even the CIA took an interest in LSD, and was almost certainly responsible, in origin, for its adoption by the hippie movement. The protest vogue thus unleashed led to prohibition and, in 1970, to Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs.

This scientific prehistory of psychedelics needs to be known, so that the public understands why there is talk of a psychedelic renaissance today and that research into these powerful substances of millennial use was aborted by authoritarian political motivation.

The miniseries really takes off in the second chapter, about psilocybin. Another rich story, told with copious archival material, but it is with the testimony of a patient with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) that the documentary proves to be captivating.

The boy says he suffered a lot, as a teenager, with the death of a close friend. Under the influence of the psychedelic, he saw himself falling with him into the abyss, until the other fell to the ground, while the psychonaut continued to fall, crossing the floor that seemed to him to be concrete.

When he arrives at the floor of another reality, he is reborn as a tree seedling that grows and, as a plant, he contemplates his own family taking a walk. He then understands the unimportance of the manias that afflict him. With a single dose of psilocybin, OCD symptoms go months without reappearing.

The next episode, about MDMA, brings the most shocking testimony, from a woman with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Her brother died of an overdose, her mother killed two people and then committed suicide, the girl saw her home destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, then she was raped, pregnant and miscarried.

With the help of MDMA, he manages to rebuild his life. It seems like a miracle, and in fact the series fails to convey a perhaps overly positive view of the potential of psychedelics to treat mental illness.

Pollan has reservations, true. He mentions that they shouldn’t be used by people with psychotic tendencies and that not everyone benefits in clinical trials, but some additional emphasis on limitations would come in handy.

Another weakness is the narrow, North American perspective. Cameras and microphones only leave US territory on short trips to Mexico, to talk about the cultural and ecological damage of the discovery of consciousness-altering mushrooms and cacti by Pollan’s countrymen.

The documentary makes an exception for the UK as well, with the excellent interview with Ben Sessa, from Imperial College London, explaining the mechanism of action of MDMA. Nothing that doesn’t sound familiar to Americans, accent included.

It is regrettable that the miniseries passes over other psychedelic continents, such as the domains of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), in South America, and of ibogaine, originally from Africa and widely used in Brazil to treat chemical dependence. Unless I’m mistaken, the word “ayahuasca” is only spoken once in almost four hours.

Those who have already had the opportunity to travel with psychedelics may be bothered by the animations and image-shattering effects that the documentary uses to illustrate testimonies about the experiences of patients and Pollan himself. It’s not uncommon for them to look almost childish, if not kitsch.

More annoyance can arise from Pollan’s mention of “irresponsible” uses of psychedelics, whether in the hippie days or in clandestine adult use (“recreational”, say those who align with the legal prohibition still in force). Of course, they are not without psychological and even physical risks, however small and controllable, but the perorations sound somewhat moralistic.

These are notable defects. Who knows, the price to pay to make a visual product viable that appeals to a broad and naive audience about psychedelics, if not prejudiced, after half a century of prohibitionist propaganda.

This does not, however, justify giving priority to the American-style medicalization of psychedelics. They have much deeper history and roots outside the US.

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To learn more about the history and new developments of science in this area, including in Brazil, look for my book “Psiconautas – Travels with Brazilian Psychedelic Science”