The Trip of a Lifetime
In the context of some recent reads on psychedelic drugs, Laura Miller looks at Michael Pollan’s new book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. In it, Pollan says that drugs such as psilocybin and LSD got a bad rap after some flawed scientific experimentation and images of burned-out, ’60s counter-culture hippies soured Americans on exploring the medical benefits these drugs might offer, suggesting that their mind-altering abilities might help free us from cognitive patterns that are holding us back.
Someday Never Comes
On Marie Kondo and our own mortality.
Just Write It! A Fantasy Author and His Impatient Fans
George R. R. Martin has now sold more than fifteen million books worldwide, and his readership will likely multiply exponentially after the launch, this month, of “Game of Thrones,” a lavish HBO series based on “A Song of Ice and Fire.” He is committed to nurturing his audience, no matter how vast it gets. “It behooves a writer to be good to his fans,” he says. Still, a close relationship with one’s audience has its drawbacks. As Martin puts it, “The more readers you have, the harder it is to keep up, and then you can’t get any writing done.”
Why we say yes to drugs
Resistance to mind-altering substances is futile, according to a new “Secret History of Getting High in America”
White male seeking sexy Asian women
What is the deal with Western men’s erotic obsession with the East?