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On May 23, food activist Michael Pollan will be in Portland talking about shrooms, LSD, Ayahuasca and DMT—and how the mind-altering substances can "relieve mental suffering."
Pollan's early works—The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma—catapulted him into food writing fame. His blend of science, nutrition, memoir and travel writing, and his palatably radical opinions on what people should be eating, solidified him as a household name.
Then in 2015, he entered the world of psychedelics with a New York Times piece about microdosing.
"The Trip Treatment," followed terminal cancer patients through experimental psilocybin treatments, and examined how the hallucinogen helped them process their fear of dying.
Pollan's new book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence, grew out of the research he did for that article.
"I like to immerse myself in whatever subject I'm reporting," Pollan writes on his website. "What began as a third-person journalistic inquiry ended up a first-person quest to learn what these medicines had to teach me about not only the mind but also my mind, and specifically about the nature of spiritual experience. This book has taken me places I've never been—indeed, places I didn't know existed."
In Portland, a city that's been described as "the psychedelic underbelly of America," Pollan's talk should be well-received.
Related: We're Entering A New Golden Age of Psychedelics, and Portland is Leading the Way
Tickets to see Pollan's talk went on sale today, and can be purchased here.
SEE IT: Michael Pollan speaks at Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, Portland, 800-273-1530, Portland5.com, on Wednesday, May 23. 7:30 pm.