10 June 2019 đź”—
John Crace:
On Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of interviewing the bestselling US author Michael Pollan at a packed event in Westminster about his new book How to Change Your Mind, a study of the new science of psychedelics. It turns out that under controlled conditions LSD and psilocybin have proved beneficial in the treatment of conditions such as depression, OCD and addiction. Personally, I will be giving this a swerve — my mental health is already rather too fragile and I took enough psychedelics in the late 1970s to put me off for a lifetime — but the evidence Pollan put forward that LSD can help people who are stuck in their lives was compelling. I did wonder whether we should be feeding psychedelics to our politicians to resolve Brexit, an idea that was overwhelmingly endorsed by the audience. At best, it could effect a change of thinking. And if it gave some of them a bad trip, they would at least know how the rest of us are feeling.
I didn’t even know what a Sketch writer in the UK was until hearing John Crace on the Guardian’s Today In Focus. In fact, I kept looking for videos from Crace on the Guardian website. But since then, I’ve been following Crace in the Guardian’s app and have enjoyed his writing.
It seems ever since Pollan’s book was released a little over a year ago(?), talk of both psilocybin and LSD has been a focus in a lot of places. That has expedited in the last month. It was touched on in this week’s Economist, legalization and/or decriminalization has happened or is being put on ballots, and it all seems a bit wild to me.
How long did it take society to except marijuana? It is still illegal in places and thousands of people are locked up for it. Now we are already jumping to shrooms and LSD.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great. If they are helping people we should be moving forward. I’d love to give ’em a spin myself when legalized. I just wish we’d focus on legalizing weed at a federal level and getting all of those people who are currently locked up over it finally released. Then we can move to psilocybin and LSD.
Let’s face it, our government isn’t great at walking and talking at the same time. Especially when you factor in who is currently running things.