How to Change Your Mind is a science and nature limited series released on Netflix on 12 July 2022. It is directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Alison Ellwood and two-time Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Lucy Walker. Based on New York Times best-selling author Michael Polan’s book of the same name, this docuseries explores what psychedelics teach people about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression and transcendence.
There are 4 episodes in the series with a runtime of about 51-55 minutes respectively. Author Michael Pollan leads the way in this docuseries exploring the history and uses of psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline.
Netflix’s synopsis of the series reads:
Author Michael Pollan leads the way in this docuseries exploring the history and uses of psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline.
-How to Change Your Mind Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-
Each episode focuses on a different mind-altering substance, which includes LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline. Michael Pollan works as our guide and host. It takes us on a journey to the frontiers of the new psychedelic renaissance and looks back at the almost-forgotten historical context. It tends to explore the potential of these substances to heal and change minds as well as culture.
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Chapter 1: LSD
LSD which stands for lysergic acid diethylamide was first synthesized on November 16, 1938, by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz (now Novartis) laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. While trying to find a drug to give to women after childbirth, he discovered the drug from the Ergot Fungi. It is commonly used as a recreational drug.
Its effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily in visual, as well as auditory hallucinations. However, the collective term ‘psychedelic’ was coined by Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist working in Canada in the 1950s. He wrote the word in a letter to the writer Aldous Huxley.
This episode shows how the drug was found and used for various medical research to help people dealing with chronic pain and mental health issues. But as it became popular and more accessible, it strayed away from a revolutionary path to a destructive one, where the govt declared a war against drugs.
Chapter 2: Psilocybin
The second episode explores Psilocybin or the magic mushrooms and their effects on cancer patients and people suffering from OCD. When given to cancer patients, the results and their experience showed that the drug alleviates them from the fear of death. It relieves them of anxiety and depression that traps them due to their diagnosis.
Similar effects were seen in OCD patients, where one man claimed to show no clinical signs of OCD after taking a few sessions involving the drug. Magic mushrooms are long considered sacred by the Indigenous Mazatec in Mexico, where it was found first. They were used by the spiritual healers of the community in religious ceremonies to heal other people.
Its discovery by a westerner become the subject of scientific studies measuring their intense effects. But destructive for Maria Sabina, the healer who introduced them. As the studies popularised the place and loads of people started going there in search of it, while completely disrespecting the religious sentiments attached to it in Mazatec.
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Chapter 3: MDMA (Ecstasy)
Also known as ecstasy in layman’s terms, is the subject of study in this episode. The transformative effects of the drugs are visibly seen in people diagnosed with PTSD. As it turns off the part of the brain called the amygdala which is responsible for processing fearful and threatening stimuli.
Thus anxiety and fear get subsided and the drugs give you a flood of serotonin, which makes people feel loved beyond words can describe. However, with the war on drugs campaign, it was banned by falsely claiming that it is neurotoxic and kills off brain cells. However, championed by both therapists and ravers, ecstasy stands out as the first psychedelic likely to become legalized, thanks to passionate advocates.
Chapter 4: Mescaline
Mescaline is the psychoactive molecule found in San Pedro and peyote cacti and is considered a sacred medicine by Native Americans. Similar to the community in Mazatec, the psychedelic cactus is used in religious ceremonies. But with the ban on all psychedelic drugs and the cultivation of such plants, the indigenous people have had to fight for the right to use, as it doesn’t have any pharmaceutical purpose.
The cacti give fewer visual effects than LSD but impact the emotions and feelings of a person. Each cactus takes 15 years to grow and to be used, thus the indigenous people are very protective of its exploitation in the wrong hands. Therefore, they are kept out of the Decriminalise Nature Movement as they want it to remain sacred to the community, out of the larger masses’ reach.
Final Thoughts: Stream It or Skip It?
Drugs inherently aren’t categorised as good or bad, they are in fact highly contextualised and depend on what meaning we put on them or how we are using them. How to Change Your Mind docuseries on Netflix, is an eye-opening watch, especially if you have grown up with drugs are evil propaganda. And it makes Decriminalise Nature movement, sound ridiculous because what crimes has nature done?
It’s the humans and their doings that categorise something in nature as good or bad. It seems like we tend to ban the things we don’t understand, originating from the innate fear of the other. The human consciousness is more vast than being caged in a box of known. Maybe psychedelics could be helpful in dealing with various mental and physical issues (in the right hands), but we would never know if we are at war against them.
How to Change Your Mind is streaming on Netflix.
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