27 Feb The Psychedelic Cover-Up: Propaganda is the Drug

Book Review: How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

“No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.”
— William James

When I was a little boy, my parents’ orders were clear: stay away from drugs. It wasn’t just the usual advice or admonishment I’d hear (like “don’t speak with your mouth full”); they said it with an unusually threatening tone. You knew they were dead serious.

Growing up in the ’80s, this warning felt even more real because of the heroin epidemic. I didn’t fully understand what that was, but I often saw used syringes on the streets where I lived and in the gardens where I played. Naturally, I was scared of the whole world of drugs, and that fear stayed with me for a long time.

Later, I realized that fear had silently mutated into a political preference—a preference toward prohibition. If these drugs were so bad, what’s wrong with waging war on them?

As I grew older, the fear remained, but I also discovered something else: I had been manipulated, and I was far from alone.

To explain why, you need to understand the power of categories and labels.

Our brain is not up to the task

When you study communication—especially behavioral science—you quickly see that the brain is an incredible tool, but it’s constantly facing a series of impossible tasks. Surrounded by infinite complexity and having only limited capacity, it relies on shortcuts to prevent overwhelm and paralysis—shortcuts that are invisible to us. The brain’s job is to help you survive, not to find the truth. Sometimes those two goals align; often, they don’t.

From an evolutionary standpoint, shortcuts really paid off. If our ancestors were walking through a dark forest and heard something rustling in the bushes, their instinctive reaction would have been: movement = animal = danger = escape. No time for curiosity or nuance.

But the same mental shortcuts persist in non-survival situations. To cope with endless stimuli, the mind simplifies the world by mapping it into simple ideas, attaching neat labels—small buckets of pre-built knowledge—that let us skip most effort of understanding and jump straight to action (or conclusion).

This process shapes our lives in countless, subtle ways. If I told you I wanted to introduce you to a surgeon, you’d immediately form an image or expectation in your head. Had I said teacher, the image would have shifted entirely. Categories don’t just describe reality—they filter it, determining what we notice and how open we are to seeing the world as it truly is. These shortcuts are so powerful that they often blindside us, even when we’re fully aware of them. (If you want to explore this further, read about Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s experiments—the Linda problem is a particularly striking example.)

And of course, once a tool is discovered, someone will inevitably use it to their advantage. This is why labels and mental shortcuts are so often weaponized for manipulation. Communication experts know this tactic well: attach your message to pre-existing, emotionally charged ideas, and you’ll trigger desires, fears, or outrage, and people will be far more likely to act without question.

Some categories are stronger than others

Now, consider one of the most powerful labels in modern culture: DRUGS.

What came to mind when you read that word? Maybe wild parties. Maybe life-saving medication prescribed by a doctor. Or addicts lying unconscious on the street. Powerful images that usually involve alteration to someone’s body and mind, often evoking danger and lack of control.

That’s the association used to manipulate Western society half a century ago. When psychedelics began to challenge societal norms and power structures, governments didn’t engage with them scientifically. They fought them by lumping them into the same category the population already feared—dangerous drugs.

Michael Pollan’s book brilliantly covers this history filled with lies and deception. He reveals how psychedelics—substances with entirely different risk profiles and potential benefits—were grouped into the “Class A” category, sharing legal status with heroin and crystal meth.

Letting politics interfere with medicine has never produced anything good, and this time was no exception. Indigenous societies that had safely used psychedelics like peyote for centuries were criminalized. Promising medical research ground to a halt. And, perhaps most tragically, society lost decades of potential breakthroughs in treating conditions like depression, PTSD, and addiction.

“Good drugs led to opioid epidemics; bad drugs cure PTSD.” Our definitions need to change.

Skepticism & openness

Pollan, a journalist and professor, wrote this book in his late 60s—not exactly the typical hippie. He is skeptical but open-minded. He questions how much authority we should grant altered states of consciousness, acknowledges the limitations of past studies, and remains wary of both hype and moral panic.

Yet the evidence he uncovers is compelling. In clinical trials, 70% of participants report their psychedelic experiences as among the most meaningful of their lives. Another trial: 62% report reduced depression symptoms. And in one study, 80% of smokers were able to quit—a success rate unheard of with conventional treatments.

Why, then, are we still blocking progress? In the United States alone, 21 million adults experienced a major depressive episode last year—8.3% of the U.S. adult population (source). Our treatments are falling incredibly short. What, exactly, is society so afraid of?

To a better future

There’s also reason for optimism. While reading, you’ll discover an underground movement that survived 50 years of government crackdowns and never lost its hope. And today, it’s gathering momentum—through rigorous clinical trials and strong advocacy.

Seeing Pollan’s own experiments and the stories from other patients was at times deeply touching. The lucidity he used in his reports and the insights others were able to gather made me feel less afraid and more connected—not just to him, but to the broader human experience.

How to Change Your Mind isn’t just about psychedelics; it’s about how fear, propaganda, and the weaponization of categories can stifle progress.

Fortunately, culture is changing. This book, the Netflix series it inspired, and the growing body of research are clear signs of a shift. My hope is that, within this generation, we’ll avoid past mistakes and find healthy, responsible ways to integrate these powerful substances into our lives.

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Some reflections and things you may find while reading this book

The history: fear, power, and suppression

• The big threat. See what happens to a society when deep fears get triggered—like the threat to puritan values and existing hierarchical structures. Psychedelics encouraged people to question authority, and truth became a threat to those in power: “These kids aren’t going to fight your wars. They’re not joining your corporations.” It’s incredible that society’s fear of nonconformity blocked potential cures for millions.
• Eerie double standards. While psychedelics were removed from public research, the CIA was quietly running military experiments—see the infamous MK-Ultra program. Their objective: “Can we control an individual to the point where they will do our bidding against their will—even against fundamental laws of nature, like self-preservation?”
• Inspiring modern neuroscience. The discovery of LSD inspired scientists to look at the brain in a new way. Researchers, intrigued by the effects of a substance in minuscule amounts, discovered serotonin receptors—effectively launching modern neuroscience and reshaping our understanding of mental health.
• Albert Hofmann’s vision. The father of LSD, Albert Hofmann, lived to 102, remarkably lucid after countless psychedelic experiences. In his centennial speech, he said:
  “The feeling of co-creatureliness with all things alive should enter our consciousness more fully and counterbalance the materialistic and nonsensical technological developments, enabling us to return to the roses, the flowers, to nature—where we belong.”
• Indigenous wisdom. Psychedelics were also taken from indigenous cultures, where substances like peyote played a fundamental role in holding society together through spiritual practice. Drugs have to be contextualized, and there’s a lot we can learn from these traditions: community. guidance from elders. clear intention. a sense of the sacred.
• Teonanácatl – the food of the gods. It’s not the first time centuries of tradition were crushed by fear. In ancient Central American societies, psilocybin mushrooms were known as teonanácatl—”the food of the gods.” To early conquistadores, this sacrament clashed directly with Catholic tradition and couldn’t be allowed to survive.
• The stoned ape theory. Terence McKenna’s theory—the idea that our religious impulse may have been born from visions inspired by psychedelic mushrooms.
• Society’s hypocrisy and double standards. Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson, Steve Jobs—many of the people society admires credited psychedelics for personal breakthroughs. Jobs described taking LSD as “a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life.”

Reflections on western societies

• What we can’t measure can still be true. How much progress we’ve made with science, and yet how little we understand about things we can’t easily measure—like our conscious states. Our fixation with objectively measurable metrics has made us lose track of things that are real but too difficult to quantify. This applies to the science of happiness too.
• Destroying what we touch. This reminded me of over-tourism. We seem to be destroying so much of what we touch. Psilocybin was introduced to the West by a JP Morgan vice president and his wife (the Wassons), both passionate mycologists. They published their findings in Life magazine, and a flood of enthusiasts flocked to the village where Maria Sabina, the curandera, had opened her ritual to the Wassons. She paid an incredible price, and it ruined her life. The same pattern repeated with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert later on—which triggered moral panic and a 180-degree turn from the media, including Life itself.
• Romantic scientists vs. detached researchers. Pollan covers early naturalists—Humboldt, Goethe, Darwin—exploring nature not just through observation but through feelings, emotion, and all the senses. Whereas today we mostly use a detached, lab-based approach, looking at nature like an object under a microscope. Humboldt once said, “I am myself identical with nature.” A holistic view that modern science seems to have lost.
• The wisdom of the shamanic approach. Indigenous traditions emphasize “extrapharmacological variables”—the psychological, social, and environmental factors that influence healing. Western medicine often ignores these. And so, the conflict between biologically based treatments and psychodynamic approaches continues, each fighting for legitimacy and resources.

The incredible potential benefits

• The rarity of adult transformation and progress. How often we get stuck in our patterns, without questioning our choices and paths. The beauty of tools that could provide lasting improvements in the trait openness to experience—which includes tolerance of others’ viewpoints and values and is also a predictor of creativity. How much hate could disappear through this?
• The power of habits. They shape our lives, making us functional but also preventing us from being truly awake in the world. Psychedelics offer the chance to “shake the snow globe,” disrupting old patterns and building new pathways.
• Brain travel and childlike wonder. If travel can make us see things and notice details in a different way, brain “travel” does something similar—bringing back that incredible, kid-like appreciation for the present moment, something we lost as adults.
• “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” Emerson’s words. It’s our mind dressing the world in significance, and psychedelics make that incredibly clear.
• Promising results. A 1967 meta-review of psychedelics studies from the ’50s and ’60s reported success rates of 70% for anxiety neurosis, 62% for depression, and 42% for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Meanwhile, 10% of Americans are depressed, and there are 43,000 suicides a year. What are we doing?
• Excessive order patterns. Carhart-Harris’s insight: mental disorders often stem from excessive order—rigid thought patterns that fuel addiction, depression, obsessions, and eating disorders. Psychedelics disintegrate these patterns. Depression is a response to past loss; anxiety is a response to future loss. Both trap the mind in rumination—one dwelling on what’s gone, the other worrying about what’s coming.
• Lantern vs. spotlight consciousness. Young children have lantern consciousness—expansive, diffuse attention—while adults operate with spotlight consciousness, narrowed by preconceptions. It’s like high-temperature vs. low-temperature searches in AI: adults default to low-temp searches, efficient but limited. Children outperform adults when solutions are non-obvious and lie outside the usual space of possibilities.
• Addressing existential pain. There’s a lack of tools for coping with the existential dread of a terminal diagnosis. Patrick Mettes’s story is incredibly touching—slowly dying of cancer, yet “the happiest I’ve ever been.” Dying, yet beaming with life, unafraid. How powerful is that?

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Finally, some of my favourite quotes:

William James:

“One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”

Bertrand Russell:

“The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.”

Boothby (a patient):

“I have at times been almost embarrassed by them, as if they give voice to a cosmic vision of the triumph of love that one associates derisively with the platitudes of Hallmark cards. All the same, the basic insights afforded to me during the session still seem for the most part compelling.”

What was his compelling insight? “Love conquers all.”

Matt Johnson (professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins):

“So much of human suffering stems from having this self that needs to be psychologically defended at all costs. We’re trapped in a story that sees ourselves as independent, isolated agents acting in the world. But that self is an illusion. It can be a useful illusion, when you’re swinging through the trees or escaping from a cheetah or trying to do your taxes. But at the systems level, there is no truth to it. You can take any number of more accurate perspectives: that we’re a swarm of genes, vehicles for passing on DNA; that we’re social creatures through and through, unable to survive alone; that we’re organisms in an ecosystem, linked together on this planet floating in the middle of nowhere. Wherever you look, you see that the level of interconnectedness is truly amazing, and yet we insist on thinking of ourselves as individual agents.”

Rick Doblin:

“Mysticism is the antidote to fundamentalism.”

Bill Richards (clinical director of the psychedelics-research program at Johns Hopkins):

“How can this ever have been illegal? It’s as if we made entering Gothic cathedrals illegal, or museums, or sunsets!”

Steve Jobs:

“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”