Michael Pollan on Psychedelics, Slacker, and an old favorite in Belltown
1. I’ve spent the last several days narrating a running review of Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind, about the history and current state of research into psychedelic drugs, to anyone who will listen. A fascinating account that includes the largely (until Pollan’s bestseller) unknown story of research into LSD and psilocybin in the 1950s, the book taught me much about the suppression of these drugs in the 1960s, a fate that’s largely blamed on the “antics,” as Pollan repeatedly describes them, of Timothy Leary—the “turn on, tune in, drop out” avatar of the hippy-dippy ‘60s.
Psychedelic compounds have been going through a renaissance of respectability in the US and Europe lately. As Pollan recounts, they’ve been used successfully in medical settings to help people deal with the prospect of dying, heal depression, and address addictions. Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, had his own “spiritual experience” thanks to a dose of psychoactive belladonna, Pollan notes.
This mystical experience—a type of perception that transcends materialism and ego—seems to be a hallmark of transformative psychedelic experiences, and Pollan captures it beautifully, including several descriptions of his own trips that manage to escape the “hands are cool, man” fate that befalls most such recollections. By taking people outside the framework of the individual self, psychedelics seem to shake people from patterns, including both “well” people and those who are working to change behaviors or patterns of thought. Addiction, depression, and obsession (with death, regrets, traumatic experiences, for example) are all characterized by rigid patterns of thinking, Pollan writes, so why shouldn’t psychedelic therapies, in the presence of a doctor or other highly trained guide, help break those patterns?
It’s that “highly trained guide” part, alas, that makes this a Pollan book. Like his admonishments, in his 2008 book In Defense of Food, that poor people ought to cook more, Pollan can’t foresee a future in which the benefits of psychedelics are widely available outside a medicalized environment (one that will be accessible only to people with money or health insurance).
Although Pollan fondly recounts his own unguided use of psychedelic mushrooms at his home, where he was free to wander in nature and sit in his familiar shed, he seems to believe (and asserts) that “people” should never use these drugs outside of what amounts to an office setting, under the tutelage of an expert (typically highly credentialed) guide—lying down, wearing eyeshades, and having an altogether different experience from what he experienced on his own wooded property.
Pollan’s elitism seems to render him incapable of seeing the gates he’s building, and rigorously guarding, in his hope that these substances will be more widely used. Under Pollan’s prescription—which aligns neatly with the desires of some in the psychiatric community—the potentially transformative experiences available through psychedelics are strictly for an “us” who can afford a boutique, professionalized experience, not the “them” who can’t.
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2. Reading this excellent retrospective about Pavement’s perfect 1992 album Slanted and Enchanted reminded me that I recently rewatched Slacker, the legendary 1991 Richard Linklater film that I was probably too young to appreciate when I first saw it in my dorm room at the University of Texas. (On a state-of-the-art combination TV/VCR, no less!)
The film has been endlessly lauded as a perfect example of low-budget filmmaking that captures a subculture that could have only existed at that place and time, but what I didn’t get when I first saw Slacker is how funny it is. Yes, there’s a you-kind-of-had-to-be-there quality to a movie filmed mostly in the West Campus area of Austin in the ‘90s, but you don’t need context to appreciate the absurd humor in a scene like this:
3. After a recent walk around the downtown waterfront, a friend and I—parched and peckish—got turned away by a shall-remain-unnamed downtown bar with sidewalk seating because they couldn’t “give away” a four-top outdoor table to a mere two paying customers. So we marched next door to Black Bottle (2600 First Ave.) and spent a couple hours enjoying cocktails (them) and mocktails (me) from one of the restaurant’s handful of sidewalk tables.
Since the last time I went, years ago, Black Bottle has created a thoughtful and diverse nonalcoholic cocktail list, and even has an N/A white wine (along with the more typical cans of N/A beer from Athletic Brewing). Looking at their food menu, I see that they also accommodate a number of special diets, from paleo to vegan to gluten-free.
As it happened, no one ever showed up to claim the four-top the other bar was “saving” for better customers than us. It’s for the best—Black Bottle was an old but largely forgotten favorite, and I wouldn’t have had remembered why if the place next door hadn’t sent us packing.
