Michael Pollan talks farm-to-table food – and LSD
LSD and psilocybin are not creations of the sixties. Psilocybin, the chemical in magic mushrooms, has been used in the Americas going back at least a thousand years, and possibly a lot more, as part of religious rituals. It may be that these chemicals are where we developed our religious impulse. Our sense that there is a beyond or another world besides the one right in front of us.
We had a big backlash against LSD in the 1960s. We had a very productive period of research in the fifties and into the sixties and it was showing some really encouraging results. Then there was this powerful backlash, in part because [LSD] had become the counter-culture drug of choice. You had this yawning generation gap, that I think the drugs contributed to. You had all these young people having this powerful experience, almost a rite of passage, that the adults in the society thought was really weird and scary. That exacerbated the sense that these two generations were moving apart. That won’t happen again. The people who are in charge of our institutions are more familiar with psychedelics. Many of them have taken them. I interviewed a past president of the American Psychiatric Association about his use of psychedelics and how it affected his intellectual development. We’re at a different point.
Original Article (Austin Monthly):
Michael Pollan talk farm-to-table food – and LSD
Artwork Fair Use: Benjah-bmm27
