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A Recommended Read: How to Change Your Mind
Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind is the most accessible mainstream introduction to contemporary psychedelic therapy and remains worth reading, with some important caveats about what's changed in the field since 2018. A therapist's recommendation and a note on how to read it well.
Consciousness Begins with Feeling
Neuropsychoanalyst Mark Solms argues that consciousness doesn't begin with thinking — it begins with feeling, generated by ancient brainstem structures that monitor the body and produce the affective signals that motivate all behavior. A therapist on what this framework means for healing, why thinking alone often fails to reach what hurts, and why depth-oriented and psychedelic work aim at the feeling layer rather than the thinking one.
The Mind Is Not a Window: What Huxley Got Right About Psychedelics
In 1954, Aldous Huxley proposed that the mind is a filter, not a window — and that psychedelics temporarily loosen that filter, with consequences that can be heavenly or hellish. A therapist on what Huxley got right, what modern neuroscience has refined, and where the field actually is right now in the messy work of bringing these substances into mainstream medicine.
Can Psychedelics Reveal Truth, or Just Change Your Mind?
When someone has a profound psychedelic experience and emerges with strong convictions about the nature of reality, what should they do with those convictions? A therapist on philosopher Chris Letheby's careful argument that psychedelic experiences can produce genuine insight — particularly into the constructed nature of the self — without requiring the metaphysical claims that often accompany them.
You Are a Controlled Hallucination: What This Means for Suffering and Healing
Neuroscientist Anil Seth argues that consciousness isn't passive reception of reality — it's an active, ongoing construction your brain produces moment by moment, including your sense of being a self. A therapist on what this framework reveals about trauma, depression, psychedelic therapy, and why understanding yourself as a process rather than a fixed thing opens up new possibilities for healing.