#1678 - Michael Pollan

Jamie (0:14)

All right.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Mr. Pollan.

Michael Pollan (0:15)

Yeah, hey.

Good to be here. Good to be back.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

Good to see you again. And good to see you in the... You're done with the headphones, huh?

Michael Pollan (0:22)

I'm done with the headphones, yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

In and out, instantaneously. Your new book, This is Your Mind on Plants.

Michael Pollan (0:28)

Yeah, right here.

Joe Rogan (0:29)

Yeah, I like it.

Since you've been on, I have to say that out of all of the people that have discussed psychedelics, I think you've been one of the most important ones because you were a respected, esteemed journalist. You're like a real writer already. And for you to introduce the world of psychedelics to people that maybe would have been skeptical of someone's intentions, there's a lot of folks that you read something about drugs and even if it's from someone that has credentials, you sort of assume that they're trying to justify.

Michael Pollan (1:08)

Yeah, so they have an agenda when they're starting out. I think you're right, I think that made a huge difference. I was coming at that world from outside. I'd had very little experience of psychedelics, virtually none as a kid.

I'd heard about this research. I was curious, I was skeptical. And so I went on this journey that brought me into this community, and I think that allowed people to follow me, to come with me. I think people would much rather go on a journey with you than have you lecture at them.

Joe Rogan (1:39)

Oh, for sure.

Michael Pollan (1:39)

And so I always, in all my journalism, that's what I try to do. I start out as unknowing or ignorant as the reader, and then gradually work my way into the world, of whether it's food and agriculture or psychedelics.

So in all my books, I kind of start out like an idiot and gradually move toward a state of knowledge or more knowledge.

Joe Rogan (2:04)

I think that's incredibly relatable to people because it just lets people know what you're learning, how you're learning it, why you're learning it.

Michael Pollan (2:13)

And how you come to your conclusions, that it's the result of having these experiences or talking to these people.

And they see all the armature of journalism. They see how it works, because you're letting them, you're being very transparent about the process. And also, I think that there are lots of, most of the stuff that had been written about psychedelics and most of the stuff I was reading was written from inside the world, already convinced that these were great things that were gonna change human consciousness. And that's a turnoff to people, especially if you have this resistance, which many, many people do. There's so much cultural baggage around psychedelics left over from the 60s. People, the risks, how disruptive it was to society, and people still hold these ideas in their head. People say, well, don't people jump off of buildings? I mean, I hear the, or doesn't it scramble your chromosomes? These are urban legends, by and large, although there were some people who jumped off of buildings. But the chromosome thing was not true, the staring at the sun till you go blind was not true.

But it's amazing, the power of these memes just lingering in our culture.

Joe Rogan (3:24)

Well, there's a great fear of losing your mind. I mean, you know about the guy from Pink Floyd, and people hear about some guy in the neighborhood that did too much acid.

The thing is, they are real. There are real people that have lost.

Michael Pollan (3:37)

And I think we have to acknowledge that. And I think unless we're really frank about the risks, we risk another backlash, because bad shit will happen.

If you're trialing a couple thousand people for depression, which they're doing, these clinical trials to see if psilocybin can help with depression, some of those people are going to commit suicide. That's what depressed people do. And especially if you get them off their SSRIs, that increases the risk. But that narrative, when someone in a clinical trial for depression with psychedelics gets out there, it'll plug into this old narrative about people jumping off of buildings. Whereas people routinely commit suicide on SSRIs, and it doesn't make the news. So there are these, it's when a story plugs into an existing narrative in the culture that it really takes off. It has this incredible power, and that could happen.

So I think we should be, I think the way you inoculate the culture is talking about risk, and say that there were casualties. There are people who did, I don't want to say fry their brains, because it's pretty imprecise, but people had some psychotic breaks on psychedelics. Would they have had them anyway? There's a reason to believe they would. It's not like schizophrenia rates went up during the 60s.