The Trip Treatment: New Research on the Healing Properties of Psychedelics

Part of the End-of-Life Conversations Series

Michael Pollan with Host Michael Lerner

~Co-presented and sponsored by Point Reyes Books~

How are we to judge the veracity of the insights gleaned during a psychedelic journey? It’s one thing to conclude that love is all that matters, but quite another to come away from a therapy convinced that “there is another reality” awaiting us after death, as one volunteer put it, or that there is more to the universe—and to consciousness—than a purely materialist world view would have us believe. Is psychedelic therapy simply foisting a comforting delusion on the sick and dying?

So writes author and journalist Michael Pollan in his recent New Yorker article “The Trip Treatment.” Join New School Host Michael Lerner for a conversation with Michael Pollan about his research and thoughts—on the subject of new research on the healing properties of psychedelics, among others. Read Michael Pollan’s letter about his New Yorker article.

Photo: Ken Light. Illustration: Stephan Doyle.

Listen (audio only)

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Michael Pollan

For the past 25 years, Michael has been writing books and articles about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in the built environment. He is the author of Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (2013) and of four New York Times bestsellers: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (2010); In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008); The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001). The Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by both the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Michael grew up on Long Island and was educated at Bennington College, Oxford University, and Columbia University, from which he received a Master’s in English. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer, and their son, Isaac.

Michael Lerner

Host

Michael is the president emeritus and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work today at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and Commonweal New School. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1984 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).