For years animal rights workers have shaken their heads

at Michael Pollan who hunted a wild boar, bought a calf

and followed his progress including castration for a year,

finally arranging his killing and the eating of his cadaver,

and titled one of his books Conscientious Omnivore.

However, listening to his interview on Terry Gross' Fresh

Air and on OnPoint of WBUR (both audio versions

available online) one is amazed by his awakened

spirituality.

Pollan wrote that an outcome of his research into

LSD, peyote, and magic mushrooms was that

he no longer objectifies animals or nature.

He spoke of cancer patients in psychedelic therapy being given magic mushrooms

and coming out of the experience having lost their fear of death.

and describes Bill Wilson cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous in

a New York hospital in 1934 being given belladonna (deadly

nightshade) in a controlled environment. After that Bill had no desire to drink.

Pollan recounts experiencing an ego dissolution as if

his mind's post it notes were caught in a windstorm.

Another psychonaut (Pollan's term), J Pear, official LSD researcher at Ohio State, wrote "I felt like a ripe orange, deliciously being pulled apart segment by segment." But Pollan

says, to those who are not ready, the experience

of ego dissolution is not blissful but terrorizing.

He warned that the use of these drugs is illegal, and that

no one who is sad or mentally ill should take LSD without

a guide. Art Linkletter's daughter killed herself under

the influence of LSD.

A woman calling into WBUR's On Point spoke

of psychedelics helping her to transcend

limited ideas of right and wrong. It was as if

she lived Rumi's poem "There is a field beyond

the dualities of right and wrong. It is there I shall meet

you."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/05/16/psychedelics-michael-pollan audio of Pollan interview

https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2018/05/15/611301978/fresh-air-fo audio of Pollan on Fresh Air

See also:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/05/16/psychedelics-michael-pollan audio of Pollan interview