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On magic mushrooms, cancer patients lose their fear of death. Others like Pollan experience a blissful ego dissolution. Pollan describes his odyssey in the world of magic mushrooms, peyote and psilocybin
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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
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment