Articles Published in The Times of London
Review: How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan — turn on, tune in and lick a toad
In the past decade, as Pollan shows, there has been a psychedelic renaissance led by scientists. Working in places such as Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and Imperial College London, they have been studying the brains of those given psychedelic drugs in controlled situations, and their hypotheses are fascinating — although they are still hypotheses. Professor David Nutt at Imperial, for example, believes that what the trials are revealing is the existence of an inhibiting, efficient shortcut he calls the “brain’s default network”, or DMN, which, when switched off by psychedelics, allows the mind to wander into extraordinary places.
Border Whores
SOWING seeds is pleasant, desultory, not terribly challenging work; there’s plenty of space left over for thinking about other things while you are doing it. On this particular May afternoon, I happened to be sowing rows in the neighbourhood of a flowering apple tree that was fairly vibrating with bees. And I found myself thinking what existential difference is there between the human being’s role in this (or any) garden and the bumblebee’s.