ZUMTHOR

Whether we’re feeling good or bad, every perception begins in the mind. So what if we rewire our brain and learn to evaluate things differently? That’s what Michael Pollan advocates in his bestseller “How to Change Your Mind,” the basis for the Netflix documentary of the same name. But it’s the long subtitle that packs a punch: “What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.” It’s about LSD, mushrooms, ayahuasca and other substances that have hitherto been criminalized as narcotics and which various neuroscientists and therapists are currently working to rehabilitate. It’s the breaking of a taboo. Trailblazers in Silicon Valley are said to have been enhancing their performance and ego with psychedelic microdosing for years – illegally. In the Netherlands, the “trip retreats” that are popping up like mushrooms are entirely legal. “Some scientists are convinced psychedelics could revolutionize mental healthcare and our understanding of the mind,” says Pollan. And having tested them on himself, so is he.

Michael Pollan

When the former First Lady of the United States was advertising her book “Becoming” in 2018, she set off a bombshell: ­Michelle Obama was one of the first VIPs to talk openly about the agonies of infertility, miscarriages and the fact that her daughters Malia and Sasha were conceived through in vitro fertilization – and gave millions of women the courage to overcome their shame. “It’s the worst thing we do to each other as women: Not share the truth about our bodies and how they work and how they don’t work,” said Obama in a nationally aired TV interview. Angelina Jolie had already broken the taboo about what goes on inside the female body back in 2013 when, at the age of 37, fear of cancer prompted her to have her breasts removed after discovering she carried a genetic mutation, and two years later, her ovaries. Her decision triggered a global “Angelina Effect” – a major increase in demand for genetic testing.