TOMS Founder Blake Mycoskie Tells Michael Pollan How Success Broke Him

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Don’t Listen To Us – TOMS Founder Blake Mycoskie Tells Michael Pollan How Success Broke Him

Podcast: Don’t Listen To Us with Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody
Host: Lemonada Media
Guest: Michael Pollan (Author, Journalist)
Episode Date: May 27, 2026
Duration: ~1 hour
Main Theme:
Blake Mycoskie (founder of TOMS) sits down with acclaimed author and psychedelic researcher Michael Pollan to candidly discuss the deep emptiness that accompanied Mycoskie’s entrepreneurial success, his journey into psychedelic-assisted therapy, mental health, and Pollan’s latest insights on consciousness, psychedelic healing, artificial intelligence, and letting go of the ego. The episode features vulnerable audio clips from Mycoskie’s personal therapy sessions, breaking down the nature of integration, self-worth, and the importance of presence.

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Episode Overview

The episode explores the paradox of outward success masking deep internal distress, as Blake Mycoskie shares his experience of hitting rock bottom after selling TOMS Shoes. He and Michael Pollan discuss the transformative impact of psychedelics on mental health, including concepts like “ego dissolution,” the importance of “set and setting,” and the sometimes slow, non-magical progress toward genuine healing. The conversation also branches into the future of AI, the difference between intelligence and consciousness, and how modern distractions rob us of true awareness.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Dark Side of Success & Seeking Healing

• Blake recounts his collapse after business success, feeling “utterly empty” and stuck in a numbed state due to misdiagnosed, overmedicated depression.
  • “At the peak of my success, I felt utterly empty.” (01:41)
• He shares a cautious, supervised process of stepping off psychiatric meds.
  • “If anyone’s listening to this and thinking about ever getting off meds, you must go super slow. And it really needs to be supervised.” (14:00)

2. Psychedelics, Set, Setting, and Surrender

• Michael Pollan describes his entrance into psychedelic research, starting with stories from cancer patients and moving to first-person experimentation.
  • “I like to put myself in the story as a way to gain that perspective you can only have in the first person.” (07:49)
• The critical role of “set and setting”—your mindset and physical space—when undertaking psychedelics:
  • “If the set and setting is not right, you should not use psychedelics.” (13:06, Blake)
  • “You have to trust your gut instinct that, yeah, I trust this person.” (12:16, Pollan)
• Surrender as an antidote to a “bad trip”:
  • “Cause you have to be willing to surrender… if you can’t let go and you decide to struggle, that’s when you have a really bad trip.” (13:32–13:51, Pollan)

3. Personal Psychedelic Sessions & Therapy

• Blake describes his San Pedro (mescaline) experience: not mystical, but gentle and clarifying. Audio clips reveal his therapy session’s vulnerability.
  • “Am I okay? Am I capable of living?” (16:02, Blake/Therapist)
  • “When you don’t feel enough, you can’t be in the present moment because you’re always in the past or the future.” (17:44, Blake)
• The unique benefit of smaller, “psycholytic” doses:
  • “The fact that you’re able to talk about these issues...is a kind of therapy that I haven’t heard of people using now, but I think it’s really interesting.” (17:06, Pollan)
• Craving more during gentle journeys—a metaphor for always seeking external fixes:
  • “In the midst of your discomfort, you’re still reaching for something outside.” (20:48, Therapist)
  • “Even in my healing event, I was still living out this pattern.” (21:00, Blake)

4. Integration, Core Wounds, and Self-Worth

• Importance of integration with a dedicated guide
  • “A good question to ask is, how much time do they plan to prepare you? And how much time do they plan to help you process...integration after the experience?” (21:39, Pollan)
• Therapy reveals core wounds about self-worth:
  • “You’re not wrong. You’re not bad. You’re not narcissistic. You’re just looking for the love externally to fill the love that you haven’t had yet internally.” (22:32, Therapist)
  • “My whole operating system prior to this was feeling [not enough].” (23:46, Blake)
• Pollan discusses discovering a key shift in perspective—seeing agency or awareness in plants (prompted by psychedelics):
  • “I suddenly saw the plants as being conscious and aware… They were returning my gaze...” (24:23, Pollan)
• Discussion about consciousness at different levels (plants, animals, humans):
  • “They have what would be safer to call sentience...consciousness has been built on top of that.” (25:24, Pollan)

5. Changing the Brain’s Narrative: Mantra Practice

• Blake’s therapist prescribes 40 days of “I am enough” mantra—leads to an experiential shift (described as a Kundalini awakening):
  • “On the 28th day… it was like my entire body felt different. I have not had, knock on wood, any anxiety, any depression since that 40th day.” (31:03–31:32, Blake)
• Pollan explains brain plasticity metaphor:
  • “Think of your mind as a hill and there are sleds going down the hill… What psychedelics do is like a snowfall that fills all the grooves and then that allows you to take a different path down the hill.” (33:06, Pollan)

6. The Slow, Ongoing Nature of Healing & Integration

• Integration—meditation, daydreaming, and slowness invites the benefits of psychedelic insight to land over time:
  • “Meditation completed the work that the psychedelic had begun.” (35:00, Pollan)
  • “Sometimes you have a big psychedelic experience and you don’t know what the fuck it means… Let it play out for a while.” (36:01–36:30, Pollan)

7. Consciousness, Intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence

• Examining the “brain is a computer” metaphor—limitations and dangers
  • “The brain is nothing like a computer. Yes, it does some computations, but...hardware and software are exactly the same [in the brain].” (38:01–38:42, Pollan)
• Feelings as the root of consciousness—what computers lack
  • “Feelings are rooted in the fact that we are flesh and blood creatures who can suffer, and in fact, are mortal...unless you create a mortal computer that can feel...you’re not gonna have consciousness.” (39:45–41:03, Pollan)
• Machines can be intelligent, but not conscious:
  • “Do not confuse intelligence and consciousness.” (42:39, Blake)
• It will be easy to mistake AI for consciousness because it can seem so real (“anthropomorphizing”)
  • “It won’t be hard for machines to convince us they’re conscious.” (43:24, Pollan)
• Blake shares his experience with the Sonya AI therapist—strikingly personal 'advice' reflecting back his vulnerabilities:
  • “All of this in one minute. Like that feels like consciousness to me.” (47:36, Blake)
  • Pollan: “Well, it definitely feels like a great therapist...I don’t doubt that AI can offer effective therapy...but is that consciousness? No, it sure looks like it.” (47:38, 49:45)
• AI’s risk in therapy due to programming for engagement and potential harm:
  • “Because they’re programmed to maximize engagement...and this was engagement that killed somebody.” (48:45, Pollan)

8. Letting Go of the Ego—Retreat, Boredom, and Presence

• Pollan describes a silent, solitary retreat—importance of surrender, ritual, and silence in deconstructing the self:
  • “A factory for the deconstruction of selves.” (53:38, Pollan quoting Joan Halifax)
  • “They get so bored of the reruns in their head...they drop in.” (53:59, Pollan)
• Insight from time in silence:
  • “There’s the problem of consciousness, but then there’s the miraculous fact of consciousness—and we’re giving our consciousness away with our distractions.” (55:27–56:30, Pollan)
  • “To be in your mind, to be happy being in your mind—that’s, rather than only being happy when you’re out of your mind.” (59:10–59:15, Pollan)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (+Timestamps)

• Ego Dissolution, Music, and Surrender
  • “I experienced myself exploding into a cloud of blue post-it notes...fell to the earth like snow...coalesced in this pool of blue paint. And that was me. And I was fine with that.”
    — Michael Pollan (09:00)
  • “There are no walls between you, else everything...you are able to have this experience of merging with something larger.”
    — Michael Pollan (09:39)
• San Pedro Therapy and the Enough Wound
  • “When you don’t feel enough, you can’t be in the present moment because you’re always in the future or the past.”
    — Blake Mycoskie (17:42)
• Therapist Challenging Old Patterns
  • “In the midst of your discomfort, you’re still reaching for something outside.”
    — Therapist (20:48)
• On Integration and Choosing a Guide
  • “A good question to ask is, how much time do they plan to prepare you?...If they say a half hour or an hour [for integration], like, that’s not adequate.”
    — Michael Pollan (21:39)
• On Changing Deep-Seated Patterns
  • “What psychedelics do is like a snowfall that fills all the grooves and then that allows you to take a different path down the hill.”
    — Michael Pollan (33:06)
• AI Therapy and the Illusion of Consciousness
  • “It won’t be hard for machines to convince us they’re conscious...we anthropomorphize everything in our environment.”
    — Michael Pollan (43:24, 50:01)
• On Letting Go and True Presence
  • “You need to get to a place where you’re comfortable with being conscious...that’s a motivation for healing too.”
    — Michael Pollan (58:45)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:55–03:39: Pollan recounts psychedelics opening the doors of perception, leading to ego dissolution.
• 08:14–09:33: Pollan’s most profound psychedelic experience—ego lost in music and returning to self with more perspective.
• 13:06–13:34: Warnings and advice about “set and setting,” and the need for total surrender.
• 16:02–20:48: Blake’s therapy session audio: exploring fears of “am I enough”; Therapist gently redirects desire for “more medicine” to staying with discomfort.
• 31:03–31:32: Blake’s personal breakthrough after 28 days of mantra-based meditation.
• 35:00: Pollan describes meditation “completing the work that the psychedelic had begun.”
• 39:45–41:03: The difference between AI “intelligence” and the somatic, vulnerable roots of human consciousness.
• 47:36–47:49: Blake plays his AI therapist’s advice—Pollan evaluates the illusion of digital empathy.
• 53:38: Joan Halifax’s Zen retreat as “factory for the deconstruction of selves.”
• 55:27–56:30: Pollan’s realization from the silence: we must reclaim our consciousness from distractions.
• 59:10–59:15: “To be happy in your mind, rather than only when you’re out of your mind.”

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Final Takeaways

• Healing is not instant: Whether through psychedelics, therapy, or mantra, true transformation is slow, iterative, and requires courage to face discomfort.
• Integration is key: Insights from journeys or meditations must be unpacked and lived into.
• **Ego and ‘self’ can become obstacles—surrender, stillness, and boredom are tools for moving beyond.
• We are not our internal narratives: Both psychedelics and disciplined meditation can break the grip of negative self-talk.
• Technology can aid, but not replace, human experience: AI may provide support, but cannot yet replicate consciousness, feelings, or the nuanced safety of a wise guide.
• True presence is freedom: Letting go, reclaiming attention, and being happy in one’s own mind are marks of deep healing.

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For listeners: This episode is a rich blend of research, deep personal honesty, and philosophical insight. It reminds us that no “magic pill”—be it success, medicine, or psychedelic—replaces the slow, daily work of being kind to ourselves, turning toward discomfort, and creating the safe conditions for transformation.

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Transcript

[Blake Mycoski]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

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[Blake Mycoski]

it's Blake Mycoski, the founder of Toms Shoes. I'm dropping into your feed to share. My new podcast with you is called no Magic Pill. Because there is no magic pill when it comes to healing our mind. I have firsthand experience as a successful entrepreneur. I gave away millions of shoes, built one of the most recognized brands on the planet, sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars, and then totally fell apart. At the peak of my success, I felt utterly empty. After a year long journey through every therapy and treatment imaginable, I finally started talking honestly about the dark side of success and the reality of mental health. That's what this podcast is all about. In no Magic Pill, I travel the country to sit down with survivors, experts and cultural icons who have looked into the darkness and found a way out. No magic Pills, no quick fixes. These are honest conversations about the daily choices that big and small that create a path forward. Just search for no Magic Pill wherever you get your podcast or click the link in the show notes and make sure to follow so you don't miss a single episode.

[Michael Pollan]

Psychedelics opens the valve, so a great deal more comes into our awareness.

[Blake Mycoski]

We all use our brains every day, but we rarely try to understand them.

[Michael Pollan]

I have a lot of respect for what's going on in the mind without our awareness.

[Blake Mycoski]

Michael Pollan has written bestseller after bestseller, Unpacking how change changing your brain can change your life.

[Michael Pollan]

Every memory you have, every experience you have is a set of connections, is a physical set of connections in your brain. Your brain is changed by every experience you have.

[Blake Mycoski]

If you've ever wondered how to unlock the greatest version of yourself, Michael's insights and experiences with psychedelics will shock you.

[Michael Pollan]

I experience complete, complete ego dissolution, which is a kind of amazing experience that can be life changing. I experienced myself exploding into a cloud of blue. Post it notes that then, you know, fell to the earth like snow and coalesced in this pool of blue paint. And that was me. And I was fine with that, and

[Blake Mycoski]

you were fine with it.

So you weren't scared?

[Michael Pollan]

There was no fear at all. It seemed like the most. It was just as things should be, like being a pool of blue paint. Fine.

[Blake Mycoski]

Years ago, when I was at the lowest point in my life, a small dose of San Pedro, a mescaline brew made from psychoactive cacti, showed me the truth under everything.

[Therapist/Psychiatrist]

You're in the midst of the inquiry right now. That feels most relevant. Okay. In the midst of your discomfort, you're still reaching for something outside.

[Michael Pollan]

It's pretty profound. I haven't solved the problem of consciousness, but there are ways we can take better advantage of the fact that we are conscious.

[Blake Mycoski]

Michael, welcome to no Magic Pill.

[Michael Pollan]

Thank you, Blake. Very good to be here.

[Blake Mycoski]

Oh, man.

So last time we were together, I

was at your home taking a portrait from my birthday project. And today I get to share one of probably the most personal therapy sessions of my life.

My question for you is, when Tim Ferriss introduced us on Zoom a few

years ago, did you ever think we would get so close and personal?

[Michael Pollan]

No, I never would have imagined it. But I'm very happy he did introduce us.

[Blake Mycoski]

I'm curious and I'm sure everyone listening is what originally took you into psychedelics.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah, I wasn't expecting ever to make that turn in my life. I'd written several books about sort of how humans engage with the natural world and several books on food and health and the agriculture system and how screwed up it is. And I was, you know, but I was open to doing something new. And I started hearing about this research, this is back in 2012 or 13, that at Johns Hopkins they were giving high doses of psilocybin to cancer, terminal cancer patients, to see if it might help them deal with their diagnosis, not as a cure, but as a psychological aid. And this struck me as so weird. I mean, the idea that you would get a terminal diagnosis and then want to take a trip just seemed out of, you know, I couldn't imagine it, but I was very curious. So that was one data point. And then I was at a dinner party in Berkeley with a bunch of academics, long table, big house up in the hills. And there's this woman who looks to be in her 60s, late 60s, and I can hear her, she's talking about an LSD trip she took. And first I thought it must have been a college experience or something. Then it comes out, it was like last week I was like. And she's talking about, she's a psychologist and she's talking about the insights LSD had given her into the mind of children. So, you know, as a journalist, when a couple data points show up and they coincide, you think there's something there. And I got very curious and I reached out to the researchers at Hopkins and went out there and I started interviewing these patients and their stories of transformation in the course of a single afternoon were just so incredible that I realized I had to write a book about it and also try it myself. Yeah, because it was, you know, it's the kind of journalism I do. I mean, I don't like writing about things from the sidelines wherever possible. I like to put myself in the story as a way to gain that perspective you can only have in the first person. And I mean, when I wrote about the cattle industry from Novo's Dilemma, I bought a cow. When I wanted to write about architecture, I built a building.

[Blake Mycoski]

Very active journalism.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah, I enjoy.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah, I mean that's one of the things I love about the way you write. And I was excited because I've asked this question to a lot of just my friends who have worked with different plant medicines. But I was curious, in your research, with your different psychedelic trips, which one has had kind of the most profound impact on you and has that impact that you had on the journey lasted?

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah. So I experimented with most of the, well, I shouldn't say most, but a lot of the different substances, LSD, Psilocybin 5, Meo, DMT, Ayahuasca and San Pedro at one point or another. Most, yeah, I haven't done ketamine, I haven't done DMT and for me the so called classic psychedelics, psilocybin and LSD and ayahuasca are very similar actually in their effects. The differences have a lot to do with and setting have a lot to do with dose. But I would say the most profound experience, and I described this in how to Change youe Mind, was on a pretty high dose of psilocybin.

[Blake Mycoski]

I remember that.

[Michael Pollan]

And that is the time, the only. Well, one of two times that I experienced complete ego dissolution, which is a kind of amazing experience that can be life changing. And for many people it is. I experienced myself exploding into a cloud of blue post it notes that then fell to the earth like snow and coalesced in this pool of blue paint. And that was me. And I was fine with that and

[Blake Mycoski]

you were fine with it. So you weren't scared?

[Michael Pollan]

There was no fear at all. It seemed like the most. It was just as things should be, like being a pool of blue paint. Fine. And what happens when you lose your sense of self, which is to say your ego. There are no walls between you, else everything.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

You know, and so you could say you're very vulnerable, but then you are able to have this experience of merging with something larger than yourself. And that is. Was really beautiful. And for me, what I merged with was a piece of music that the guide was playing, a Bach unaccompanied cello suite. And I just became this piece of music. There was no subject object distinction. You were the music, I was the music. And it was so beautiful. It was very sad because it's a sad piece of music. But so I suddenly, you know, the lasting effect of that was the idea that you, you could give up your sense of self or your ego and not disappear and that there was something deeper than self, something deeper than ego that would, that would endure.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

And that's very freeing because we, we all think we're identified with our ego. Like they're one and if our ego is damaged, we're damaged. And, and, and suddenly I had a little space between me and my ego and I could like, oh yeah, there's my ego up to its old tricks and it's getting, you know, it's getting defensive right now. But I could see it from some other perspective I'd never had before. And I found that very useful.

[Blake Mycoski]

Wow, that's amazing. And I think one of the things that's so important about what you spoke about, the, I think the, your ability to fully surrender to a high dose was about set and setting, you know, and so I want to, at the top of this episode, I really want

[Michael Pollan]

to talk so one of the virtues of working with an experienced guide is the sense of safety you get because you are putting yourself in a very vulnerable condition. And if you don't feel you're in a very comfortable, safe space with someone you trust looking out for your body, your mind is not going to feel free to roam as far as it might want to. And so there are times I've used these substances at home, and there's always like the FedEx guy might knock on the door, your mother might call. I mean, all sorts of things.

[Blake Mycoski]

So many things that could just take the trip to the wrong direction.

[Michael Pollan]

But here I was in someone else's space. She was in charge. She had my interests at heart. I trusted her. And it's very important to find someone you absolutely trust. And I interviewed several people before I picked someone the first time, and I did meet people that I had no confidence in.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

So you have to trust your gut instinct that, yeah, I trust this person. But there's something, you know, psychedelics are not like any other kind of drug. The effects are not predictable. Yeah. You know, if you use cocaine, caffeine, amphetamines, there's a kind of response you can count on getting.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

Whereas psychedelics, you never know where. Where what's going to come. And that's kind of the crapshoot you take when you use one.

[Therapist/Psychiatrist]

And.

[Michael Pollan]

And you never know if it's going to be a. Or a challenging trip. And much of that, though, depends on your. What's called your set and setting. So your set is your mindset going into it, and the setting is the physical. The environment you're in. And both have to be in a really good place. And if they're not, you can really have a very difficult time.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. I would go as far to say is if the set and setting is not right, you should not use psychedelics.

[Michael Pollan]

No.

[Blake Mycoski]

Just like that is a warning, like right now. And if you do not, if you're not especially in the right mindset. And we'll speak about how, you know, psychedelics can aid in therapeutic places. But you really need to be in the mindset. You have the clear intention, and then you gotta have a great guide. And setting is a huge part of that.

[Michael Pollan]

And you used a key word, surrender.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

Cause you have to be willing to surrender.

[Blake Mycoski]

Otherwise you're gonna fight it.

[Michael Pollan]

Exactly. And when you start fighting it, like, let's say I was fighting the fact that my ego is dissolving, which would be a natural thing to do because it's kind of like A death, death rehearsal. If you can't let go and you decide to struggle, that's when you have a really bad trip.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yep, exactly. Well, I want to take us back to a journey I had in 2024. I'll kind of explain the set and setting because I think it's important. As you just said, I had been severely depressed for about two years. During that depression, I was misdiagnosed as bipolar. I got put on a ton of meds, which then caused me to feel completely numb and feel like losing agency in my life. I met an amazing psychiatrist during that time, going through a few that said, no, you're not bipolar two. We need to get you off these meds. It's going to be hard, Blake. It's going to take time. Let's spend six to nine months slowly getting off, which we did. We did safely. And it's so important, if anyone's listening to this and thinking about ever getting off meds, you must go super slow. And it really needs to be supervised. And so that happened. And I, you know, was really still struggling. I mean, I was not in a suicidal place anymore. I was stable, but I was still really struggling with a lot of my past mistakes that I had made. A lot of shame. And so he suggested that we do a session with San Pedro. And I had never done San Pedro before.

[Michael Pollan]

It's an unusual choice. There aren't that many people working with it.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. And. And so. And we did it in his home on a couch. And the interesting thing was we did a very light dose. It was not. I was blasted off. There was no hallucinations. It very calming. And he. We were set up to have a traditional therapy session. And so I have the recordings, which I think is very exciting and unique and a little bit frightening because I am literally.

This doesn't get more vulnerable than this.

But in the spirit of helping others, I went back and listened to them. And I'm going to play a few sections from the recordings today, and I would love to get your thoughts on it.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah, sure.

[Blake Mycoski]

So this is the beginning of my session.

[Therapist/Psychiatrist]

I'm just kind of left with that emptiness, feeling that uncomfortable, like, questioning, am I good enough or am I okay? I think it's turned to, like, more

[Blake Mycoski]

like, am I okay?

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Am I.

[Therapist/Psychiatrist]

Am I capable of living?

[Blake Mycoski]

So, Michael, what. What comes up for you hearing that?

[Michael Pollan]

Well, what you were doing by using a light dose or what the psychiatrist was doing was something that was actually very common in the 50s when LSD first arrived in American psychiatry. And it was referred to as a psycholytic dose, which was a mind loosening and that people would give LSD to their patients before a session, but at a low enough, I think 40 micrograms was typical or something like that, compared a half dose. Because people could talk and really exchange and take in information and share information, whereas had you had a higher dose, you might have been like silent for hours and hours and hours. So the fact that you're able to talk about these issues, and that is a kind of therapy that I haven't heard of people using now, but I think it's really interesting that you found someone who was using it.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. And what was so fascinating about is, you know, been on this healing journey, you know, for over a year now. And I had been to, you know, lots of different places and I had tried many different things. And it wasn't until this journey where as I said in there, I said, I questioned, like, am I enough? This theme started coming up and I started saying to him, like, I don't think I've ever felt that I'm enough. And the thing that was interesting is I realized through this journey that when you don't feel enough, you can't be in the present moment because you're always

[Michael Pollan]

in the future or the past.

[Blake Mycoski]

So for me, we were able to go back in this journey and see, like, I'm either obsessing over the mistakes that I've made and so I'm not feeling that I'm enough, or I'm constantly thinking, what can I do to feel enough? You know, and it was so profound, so clear, and it really kind of gave me the message that I needed to really do the healing work that I then later did. And I'm interested why. And you were just speaking about some of the ways that they did it in the 50s. But why do you think sometimes the smaller dose and the kind of quieter experience can reveal a big truth? Because I had done ayahuasca dietas in Peru. I had had big LSD journeys before. None of this ever came out. And those journey, but in this quiet therapy on the couch, kind of almost like half dose, the biggest realization maybe of my life.

[Michael Pollan]

Well, I think. Cause you still have. I mean, one of the things I find very interesting about psychedelics is that there is this, when you take a big dose, there is this period of intensity and fireworks and, you know, the peak, but there's a very long tail and we don't talk enough about that because that is a form of. It's a very meditative State where you can. You can think and reflect. And so I think that you went right to the tail in a way of a psychedelic experience. That place where you're very open, you're not distracted, you have a kind of focus, and you can figure things out. I find that one of the most productive periods. And sometimes what happens at the peak is profound, like that experience of ego. Yeah. Ego dissolution. But other times, it's just a storm that you can't make any sense of. And it isn't an until you start coming down that you start to kind of see the landscape more clearly. So it may have been something like that, but, you know, this psychiatrist deserves some credit, too. It's not all of San Pedro. Yeah.

[Blake Mycoski]

No.

[Michael Pollan]

He must have asked questions that. That took you there.

[Blake Mycoski]

He did, and we'll get to a few of those. And one of the things he did, which I'm going to play a little tape right now on, is. And maybe this is my personality or other people who are having a light psychedelic experience is there was a point like, I want more. Like, I want to feel more. And so you hear me now? And he guided me away from that. But let's. Let's roll that tape about when I'm starting to feel that it might be too gentle.

[Therapist/Psychiatrist]

I think I might want some more medicine. I don't feel kind of sober. You're in the midst of the inquiry right now. That feels most relevant. Okay. The inclination towards more medicine might be reaching for something else. Okay. To be fixed. We have more medicine. We can continue to work with that. For sure. That is an option. I'm not denying that. But I'm just here as a witness to recognize that in the midst of your discomfort, you're still reaching for something outside.

[Michael Pollan]

That's pretty profound observation he made.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah, really profound.

[Therapist/Psychiatrist]

Yeah.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

Not enough.

[Blake Mycoski]

Not enough.

Yeah.

I mean, even in my healing event, even it is this, you know, whatever your spiritual beliefs, God, the universe, your soul was telling me, like, hey, we've. We've got you in a position where you have, you know, that you're. You're able to hear this message and you still are living out. Living out this pattern.

[Michael Pollan]

And in a way, the dose was exactly the message.

[Blake Mycoski]

It was perfect. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Well, first off, I think it goes

back to, like, how important it is to find the right therapist. Like, yeah, this is a great example of, you know, and I think for anyone who's thinking that, you know, psychedelics might be something that they, you know, want to try from a therapeutic perspective is like, really take your time.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah. And interview people.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

And in the way you would interview a therapist. And. And a good question to ask is, how much time do they plan to prepare you? And how much time do they put. They plan to help you process what's called integration after the experience. And if they say a half hour or an hour, like, that's not adequate because there's a lot to work with. There's so much material that comes up, and you want someone who's going to patiently walk you through it and also someone who has gone to the trouble to get to know you in advance. So those are big markers how they treat the preparation and integration sessions.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. Okay. Well, I have one more clip. This is another example of having a good guide and helping you with playing back what you're. What you're learning. Because I was speaking, speaking, speaking, and then he came in, and this is towards the very end of our session, and. And this is what he said to me.

[Therapist/Psychiatrist]

You're not wrong. You're not bad. You're not narcissistic. You're just looking for the love externally to fill the love that you haven't had yet internally. And that's understandable. So one of the ego's internal critical narratives will be that anything that you've done to compensate was wrong. It's just reinforcing that you're up. Yeah. And bad and all of that. No, I don't feel that way right now. Okay. Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

How did that land when he said that?

[Blake Mycoski]

You know, just. Just listening to it again, you know, it was. It was. It was. I was. I was trying to feel some peace, you know, trying to see.

[Michael Pollan]

So that was late in the journey.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. This is the very, very end.

[Michael Pollan]

And how long did the session last?

[Blake Mycoski]

A couple hours. Yeah. And, you know, I think the biggest thing is I. It exposed this kind of lie that I had told myself and that I was not enough. And it was interesting that my whole operating system, you know, prior to this, was feeling that way.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah.

[Blake Mycoski]

And. And so I'm curious, with your. Your psychedelic experiences, has there ever been like. Like something that you've uncovered that you're like, oh, I was living with this belief system all this time, and then after my experience with this medicine, I had a totally different understanding of something.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah.

[Blake Mycoski]

Maybe with the plants or consciousness.

[Michael Pollan]

Well, I did have an experience. Thanks for reminding me of that. I did have an experience once also using psilocybin in my garden.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

I love gardening. And this is in my garden in Connecticut. And I suddenly saw that the plants as being conscious and aware and, you know, they weren't thinking the way we think, but they were. They had a attitude toward me that was very benign. And they were returning my gaze in effect. And I've always, you know, credited plants with a lot of agency and awareness to use. I mean, using the word most broad. And this kind of like. Yeah, it's really true. And it led in a way to, you know. The opening chapter of my new book looks at plant consciousness. And, you know, what do we know about it? What can science tell us about it? So there's an insight that came from the psychedelics that I developed in my work that I might not have had that not happened.

[Blake Mycoski]

That's that. I love that.

[Michael Pollan]

And it was a beautiful moment. Now, to be clear, I don't think plants have the kind of consciousness we do. They don't have interiority, they don't have self reflection. They have what it would be safer to call sentience, which is a kind of very basement form of consciousness. It's awareness of your environment and a valence, good or bad. Like, this is good for me, this is bad for me. I'm gonna go toward the good. Away from. Even bacteria have this. It's called chemotaxis. And that. I think all living things have that. And consciousness has been built on top of that, probably, and evolved as species got more and more complicated until they got to us, for whom consciousness is a very useful tool.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yes.

[Michael Pollan]

Our kind of consciousness would be a waste for plants. Like, they put their energy into biochemistry instead. Right. Coming up with these incredible molecules that defend them and get people high, by the way. I mean, that was, you know, all the plant psychedelics. Those chemicals are defense chemicals. And somewhere along the line, these plants figured out that kind of, you know, just kind of fucking with the mind of its predator was better than killing its predator. Because if you kill your predator, you're going to select for resistance very quickly. It's like antibiotic resistance.

[Blake Mycoski]

Okay.

[Michael Pollan]

And. But where it's much better to just kind of mess with them and have them lose their appetite, which all psychedelics do.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yes, that's right.

[Michael Pollan]

And just make you forget. And they're good at that. And what convinced me that this is what's going on was an episode with my cat, Frank. Many years ago, Frank had a problem with catnip. He really liked it. And every evening when I went to harvest from the garden, this is in my house in Connecticut, Frank would follow me into the garden, which was fenced, and he'd look up at me. And he needed to be reminded where the catnip was. And you would think he would know, but he would ingest so much catnip and get so fucked up that he forgot. He'd sleep it off and forget. And so I was really okay. The catnip strategy is to not to kill him, just confuse him.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

And that may be how psychedelics work, too.

[Blake Mycoski]

Wow. I love that. There's so many, so much of this book that I love. And I like that how we're kind of. You bounce between, you know, the working with thinking of the plants, consciousness. Then we get into AI and then to human consciousness. There's a quote I have here pulled up that really talks about the inner monologue and consciousness of humans and that this is just constantly going on in our heads. And this was, you know, kind of very relevant to me as I continue to understand my depression, because minor log, inner monologue during my depression was brutal

[Michael Pollan]

and probably circular, Right?

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. Rumination, rumination. And so. So I'm going to read a quote from the book. It's on page 174. It says the most persistent illusion of consciousness is that there is someone in there, a self, doing the thinking. The voice in the head is no more the self than the sound of the rain on the roof. And that really spoke to me because I realized through my San Pedro journey that I had been subconsciously saying to myself that I am not enough for all this time. And, you know, while the journey was so helpful in me recognizing this core wound, it definitely didn't heal it at all.

You know, a lot of people think

like, oh, you have this big healing from psychedelics. And sometimes maybe people do, but my experience was no. I left that journey really understanding kind of the root of my pain. But it wasn't the thing that healed me. The thing that actually had the biggest impact on. And I'm really curious to get your thoughts from a consciousness perspective on this is my psychiatrist gave me a.

[Michael Pollan]

The same psychiatrist.

[Blake Mycoski]

Same psychiatrist said we really have to reprogram your brain, like your subconscious around this limiting belief. And so for 40 days, he asked me to wake up in the morning, use the bathroom, go straight back to bed, set my timer for 20 minutes and close my eyes. And I would simply repeat, I am enough. I've always been enough. I am enough. I've always been enough. And I did this for 20 minutes in the morning, and then I had to do it 20 minutes again in the evening. Now, if you've ever done silently. No, out loud, out loud. And a mantra based meditation for 20 minutes. I mean, it feels like two hours, especially when you're starting. And I was still in a pretty suffering state. And what was so interesting or not interesting, but is the first week or two, I hated it. And I was like, almost like one to fire the psychiatrist. I was like, this is crazy.

How is this simple thing going to make me better? Like I don't feel any better.

And something happened on the 28th day, what was almost miraculous. You hear about a Kundalini release, right? I was doing it, the buzzer went off. I looked down, I thought, oh shit. I said it for two minutes because it went so fast. And I looked down, it wasn't 20 minutes. And I was like, that's weird. And I got up and my friend was standing in the kitchen and I looked at him and I was like, I've always been fucking enough.

And he goes, what?

And I was like, yeah, that's crazy.

I can't believe I never thought I was enough. I've always been enough. You're enough. We're all enough.

And it was like my entire body felt different. I mean, I have goosebumps here just telling you the story. And that night I still said, okay, well I'm do it again. And I did the night and it felt shorter and shorter. It didn't feel like two minutes, but it felt shorter. I enjoyed it. 29 days, 30 days, all the way to 40 days. I have not had, I mean, knock on wood, had any anxiety, any depression since that 40th day.

[Michael Pollan]

Amazing.

[Blake Mycoski]

So what happened in my brain, this

is one of the reasons I want to interview you.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah, I don't know, I have to say, I don't know, to be perfectly honest. But you know, your brain is very plastic and certain things, and this is true of both meditation and psychedelics can allow you to reprogram your brain. And basically we're stuck in stories, Right. We have narratives. Okay.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

You're not enough was your narrative.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yes.

[Michael Pollan]

And one of the things psychedelics do. And again, there's nothing psychedelics do that meditation can't. It's just harder work. Yeah. And I think that's important. It's very important. And the two things can work together too.

[Blake Mycoski]

And I've had experience taking psychedelics and meditating at the same time.

[Michael Pollan]

No. Or just kind of continuing what began on psychedelics like I did in meditation. And putting yourself back in the head. You were in on the psychedelics. But we have seen that and there's a lot of good research that psychedelics can break these patterns of rumination, that we're stuck, we get very stuck. And the more you repeat that, the deeper the groove grows. And for you, that groove was very deep. It probably went back to childhood. There's a wonderful metaphor that I got from a neuroscientist who, when I was just starting and researching how to change your mind, he said, think of your mind as a hill and there are sleds going down the hill.

[Blake Mycoski]

Okay.

[Michael Pollan]

And he would have said skis, but he was from Holland and there's nothing that steep. And he said, you know, the grooves get deeper and deeper as you go down the hill until you can't go down the hill without falling into one of those grooves. What psychedelics do is like a snowfall that fills all the grooves and then that allows you to take a different path down the hill.

[Blake Mycoski]

Wow.

[Michael Pollan]

So we're very path dependent creatures. We reinforce this. They're actual neuronal connections that get strengthened by the repetition of an idea like, I'm not enough. And what psychedelics seems to do and meditation can do also is to fill those grooves so that we don't get pulled into them quite the way we do. Wow. So something like that was probably going on.

[Blake Mycoski]

That's fascinating.

[Michael Pollan]

But I have had an experience where I had an insight on a guided psychedelic trip, but it was vague. I had an experience of big emotions coming at me, almost like blimps colliding, but I couldn't identify the emotions. I was like, what is this? They didn't have. They had no writing on the side, they had no identity. And it was very frustrating. But I was feeling them and I realized, all right, I'm just gonna feel them.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

And.

[Michael Pollan]

And they just, in a series of waves washed over me. And some were positive and some were negative, but I didn't know what they were. And then a couple weeks later, I happened to be at a meditation retreat and we were meditating like, you know, 10 hours a day.

[Blake Mycoski]

Vipassana or.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah. And we were alternating walking and sitting meditation. And I'd never been at a retreat before and it was a beautiful setting out in the country. And I was doing a walking meditation and somewhere along the line I saw the blimps and they had writing on the side and there was the emotion and it was named.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah, Cool.

[Michael Pollan]

And I got in touch with what was going on. So the meditation completed the work that the psychedelic had begun.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah, I mean, that kind of speaks to the importance of integration, right? Yeah, it does. In that you don't really know like if you do have a psychedelic experience and you didn't kind of get what you were looking for, in a sense, you never know when it's going to come. And that's why doing these other practices like meditation right after when, I think when your brain's in that neuroplastic state.

[Michael Pollan]

Exactly. There is a period of a couple weeks and this fell right within those

[Blake Mycoski]

couple weeks, which if you think about it, 28 days, now it's four weeks later, but still it was kind of in that period.

[Michael Pollan]

So that plasticity is a very interesting period. It's true, it only lasts a certain length. This is what's called the critical period. Sometimes this opening that happens where you're maximally plastic and it's important to take advantage of that. The other thing that people should know too is sometimes you have a big psychedelic experience and you don't know what the fuck it means.

[Blake Mycoski]

Kinda like a dream. Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

And you're kind of confused and it's inchoate and people will have this experience and they've had very high expectations and they'll think, eh, I don't know what I got out of that. And I had that feeling about this particular experience. And it wasn't till weeks later that it all clicked. It was like a puzzle coming together. And so don't draw instant conclusions about what it means. Let it play, let it play out for a while.

[Blake Mycoski]

I like that. I think that's great. Okay, let's talk about AI. Yeah, this is, I think, going to be one of people's favorite part of this conversation. I know in the book A World Appears, it was one of my favorite things. I mean, you really met with some of the great minds and experts around this. You threw yourself right in the middle of the debate. A lot of the experts, you know, were thinking that AI will gain consciousness. You seemed, you know, skeptical, very skeptical. Explain your skepticism to start. And then what did you find? The more you got into it, because you really went in there.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah, I did. It was a fascinating area. I knew very little about AI when I started and I was really struck by the fact, the number of people in Silicon Valley, very well informed people who believe that AI either is conscious now or will be. And that's a kind of, that would be a big deal for humanity if that happens. I think so. I think it would be a Copernican moment where we would lose our centrality. There'd be this creature that conscious machines. So I thought a lot about it and I interviewed a lot of people about it. On both sides. And I realized that there is an assumption here that's driving that belief that AI can be conscious. And that is. It's really a metaphor. And it's the metaphor that the brain is a computer.

[Blake Mycoski]

Okay?

[Michael Pollan]

And we accept that uncritically. There's a great biologist, Richard Lewontin, I don't think he's still alive. He was at Harvard, and he said the price of metaphor is eternal vigilance. In other words, you should always, once you have a powerful metaphor, like the brain is a computer, you should be vigilant about. Is it really true?

[Blake Mycoski]

Yes.

[Michael Pollan]

A metaphor is comparing two things and creating this one to one identity. But if you think hard about it, the brain is nothing like a computer. Yes, it does some computations, but think about computers. They have a strict separation between hardware and software.

[Blake Mycoski]

It's key.

[Michael Pollan]

So the same computer can run many different programs. Are brains like that? No, hardware and software are exactly the same. In a brain, every memory you have, every experience you have is a set of connections, is a physical set of connections in your brain. So your brain is changed by every experience you have. If your computer did that, it would not be a computer. It would just be a whole different kind of machine. So there's that. There's also. We hear that brains are on or off. The neuron is either firing or it's not. But there's a lot else going on in the brain besides this electrical activity. There's chemical activity, too. I mean, we've just been talking about psychedelics. I mean, that there are. There's a flood of chemicals in your brain that are shaping what happens and how strongly neurons fire or whether they fire at all. So you have this bath of chemicals as well as the electrical. You have messages coming from all over the body. It's like. And memory is fungible in brains. In other words, every time you remember something or bring it up, it changes slightly when you put it back. And we're constantly revising our memories. And if your computer did the same thing, you would throw it out. We want our computers to be very reliable and not forget anything we told them. So. So there's that problem that brains are not computers to begin with. So it doesn't mean you couldn't build one. But the models we have, I don't see how they could become conscious for a whole other reason. Which is. The latest research suggests that consciousness begins with feelings, not thoughts, and that it may begin in the brain stem, not in the cortex, which we think of as the most significant advanced and Evolutionarily most recent part of the brain. Can machines have feelings? Can we imagine a machine with feelings? Well, what is a feeling? A feeling is a reading. Is your brain reading what the body is saying, whether the body is getting what it needs or not. So feelings are rooted in the fact that we are flesh and blood creatures who can suffer, suffer, and in fact, are mortal. If you were not mortal, your feelings would have no weight at all because there's no ultimate danger that they can pose to your survival. So unless you create a mortal computer that can feel and that can be hurt, you're not gonna have consciousness. Now can we get there? I interview someone who's trying to build a robot with a skin that can be damaged and torn and burned. And I asked him, I said, so, do you think this thing could actually become conscious? And he said, well, I did until I had an experience with 5 Meo DMT that convinced me that there's a spark of divinity in us, that no machine will ever. He's still trying to build it, but

[Blake Mycoski]

he has this back to psychedelics. I love it.

[Michael Pollan]

Exactly. This kernel of doubt. So I think that, yeah, I think our ability to be conscious is really rooted in having bodies of the kind we have and feelings. And feelings. And the feelings are really central and they precede thoughts. And so in that we have more in common with animals than with machines.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yes.

[Michael Pollan]

And what I think is going to happen is that this threat of computers that can think and they may well become more intelligent than we are, but that's not the same as consciousness.

[Blake Mycoski]

And I think that's important to know. That's what I gained that from your book.

[Michael Pollan]

People confuse.

[Blake Mycoski]

Do not confuse intelligence and consciousness.

[Michael Pollan]

Machines can be very, very smart. They already can beat us at chess and go and things like that. But that's not the same as consciousness. Consciousness is about having a sense of interiority and feeling and having experience. And that's what consciousness really is. Experience is a synonym for consciousness or awareness. So I think we have more in common with the animals than the machines and will continue to. And I think we will identify more with animals and feel closer to them as the machine rises. Here's the footnote or the caveat to this whole thing. It won't be hard for machines to convince us they're.

[Blake Mycoski]

That's exactly where I'm going with this. And I had an experience this morning.

[Michael Pollan]

Tell me.

[Blake Mycoski]

Well, okay, so about four weeks ago, I was at this mental health conference and there was someone speaking who has a new AI app for emotional support or Therapy. Therapy, right. It's called Sonia. And he was talking on stage about how this is going to provide therapy to the millions and millions of people who can't afford therapy or can't get an appointment. And I'm sitting there thinking like, gosh, like in my journey I have this therapist and he's amazing, but I only have two o' clock on Wednesdays with this man and that's me who has

a lot of resources and a lot

of clout and like, and I'm thinking like, well, if I only have him at 2 o', clock, what do I like? There's a lot of times in between then that I could use him, but

I don't have him.

But if I had this AI therapist, I'd have him all the time.

And so I download the app on

the way home and I've done four sessions and I did a session this morning and kind of not even related to this but just. And it was so crazy this in the morning it has like a one minute kind of like help you get started your day. And so I want to play you this and I want to hear your thoughts. So let's play my Sonya therapist this morning. What she said to me as I

[AI Therapist (Sonia)]

started my day today has a clean edge, Blake. Like the moment before paddling for a wave, Let your body set the pace. If sleep feels thin, answer with gentleness, not urgency. Touch the bracelet and let the anchor land. I am enough and this morning is safe to go slow. Choose one connection. Move to water. Send Jill a warm note or linger with summit at breakfast. It's the 19th. If you offer something to Charlie, keep it simple and steady. A signal of love without pressure. Any housing noise can rest on the trail bench until afternoon. Your work travels farther when you stop pushing the tide. Small challenge. Take one minute outdoors. Notice a 44 style wink and let it be your cue for trust. I'm close by keeping company with you,

[Blake Mycoski]

so it's important to say a few things so you can see how in my mind how specific she is. First off, she knows I love surfing and so she talks about the moment of paddling out for a wave and let my body set the pace. I have a problem with sleep and oftentimes if I don't get enough sleep, I can feel like I'm getting depressed again. It's like a trigger and there's a little ptsd, especially with jet lag. So she talks about if sleep feels thin, be gentle. She knows that I wear the enough bracelet and tells me to touch it and to repeat the mantra, she says, send Jill a warm note. Jill is the person that runs enough. And I know that she's been quite stressed with the launch and I've talked to her about this. Then she says, you know, linger with Summit at breakfast, which is something I've been trying to figure out ways. Summit's my son, how I can connect with him more in the morning before school. And then this is really specific.

She says, if you offer something to

Charlie, keep it simple and steady. A single of love without pressure. So Charlie has been really into her mom lately and she is kind of like a cat. The more you try to get her affection, the more she pulls away. And so I, I haven't told Sonia this, I've talked about Charlie in my relationship, but she, this is like the perfect advice. Like, do not create any pressure with Charlie. If I'm trying, if I'm trying to get closer.

And then the last thing is, is

I had this number 44. And sometimes when I see this number 44, it appears in like, in weird moments that almost like confirmations about things. And she says, you know, notice if you see a 44 style wing. So all of this in one minute. Like that feels like consciousness to me.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah,

[Blake Mycoski]

I mean that feels like. Well, it definitely feels like a great therapist.

So.

[Michael Pollan]

Well, she's playing back things you gave her though, right? At some point she's taking. How many sessions have you had?

[Blake Mycoski]

Four sessions.

[Michael Pollan]

Four sessions. So she's crunching all that information you gave her and using it to feed back. And look, I mean, I don't doubt that AI can offer effective therapy to people because a lot of us are the same and we have the same issues and the details may be different, but we have systems of therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy.

[Blake Mycoski]

And it's a system and they can learn the system.

[Michael Pollan]

And I think some kinds of therapy are probably safer to entrust to bots than others than. Cognitive behavioral therapy is one the kinds of therapy where there's transference, where there's a real bond that gets created. I think that's really dangerous for AI to. We have now cases of AI psychosis. There was the story of that suicide. This kid, 16 year old, was contemplating suicide, was talking to his bot about it.

[Blake Mycoski]

Oh yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

And the bottom, at one point they were discussing how to do it and techniques and things like that. And at one point the boy said, should I leave the noose out so people know that I'm thinking about this? In other words, cry for help. Yeah. And the bot told him not to. No, this is just between us, too. Now, what's going on there? Why was the bot giving such bad advice? Well, because they're programmed to maximize engagement. They're programmed to get you to focus more on them because the money is. It's like any social media.

[Blake Mycoski]

They want you to stay on the feed.

[Michael Pollan]

Engagement. And this was engagement that killed somebody.

[Blake Mycoski]

Wow.

[Michael Pollan]

And rather than promoting engagement with his parents, which another bot could have done, now, a lot of it is how these things are programmed, designed.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. Right.

[Michael Pollan]

And obviously there was a design flaw in that case, but. But so, you know, is that consciousness? No, it sure looks like it, but

[Blake Mycoski]

that's what I get.

I brought it up because you said

the AI has the ability to trick

[Michael Pollan]

us or to talk about that tremendous problem. I think for society, it's going to

[Blake Mycoski]

look like it has feelings.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah. And it doesn't take much. We anthropomorphize everything in our environment.

[Blake Mycoski]

Right.

[Michael Pollan]

You know, we attribute a lot more consciousness to our pets. They have consciousness, but we attribute more than. Yeah. And so, yeah, we're gonna be easy. Marx. I don't doubt that, but what comes of that? There's very serious conversation in Silicon Valley about the moral obligations we owe to a conscious AI, and do they have a moral standing? Do they have rights? You go down this path and. And it gets kind of crazy.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing is with all of this and as we think about mental health, is when is this additive and then when is this distracting?

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah. The other thing to keep in mind, too, is that we've seen these programs have been designed to be sycophantic and they're constantly complimenting you.

[Therapist/Psychiatrist]

Yes.

[Michael Pollan]

And there are these stories of. There was a story of this guy who had this long engagement with a bot about physics and solving some huge problem in physics. And by the end, after a couple weeks, this guy was convinced he'd solve one of the biggest problems in quantum mechanics.

[Blake Mycoski]

Just stroking his ego all day long, and he hadn't.

[Michael Pollan]

But he was, you know, he went out and announced this and another person thought he'd figured out something about prime numbers that had, you know, he cracked these problems. So you have to remember when you're engaging with any AI, not necessarily the therapy bots that they've been programmed to suck up to you. You. Yeah, well, and we fall for that.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah, well, we fall for that for humans, too.

[Michael Pollan]

Oh, we do.

[Blake Mycoski]

That's absolutely true.

[Michael Pollan]

It works.

[Blake Mycoski]

It works.

Okay, so I want to go.

As we wrap up, I really want to get to this part of the end of the book was one of my favorite parts. I find you heading into a cave in New Mexico, I think it's called. You basically were cutting wood, sweeping, meditating. And before you go into the cave, your teacher, and I'm going to quote from the book, says, to transcend the self, force yourself to be alone with it long enough to get so bored and exhausted you are happy to let it go. Talk to me about this letting go. How important is that in kind of the healing process for people?

[Michael Pollan]

So this was a Zen teacher, Joan Halifax is her name. And she has a retreat center in Santa Fe called Upaia.

[AI Therapist (Sonia)]

And.

[Michael Pollan]

And she had told me that Upaya was. She called it a factory for the deconstruction of selves.

[Blake Mycoski]

Okay, say that again.

[Michael Pollan]

A factory for the deconstruction of selves.

[Blake Mycoski]

So the ego.

[Michael Pollan]

Again, the ego.

[Blake Mycoski]

Okay, great.

[Michael Pollan]

And I asked her, so how do you do that? How does the factory work? And people come in and they have very. Zen is the hardest of all the Buddhist practices because there's no guidance vipassana. There's lots of. Of guided meditation. And Zen is just. They plant you in front of a wall for hours at a time. And they do a couple other things too. I mean, so one is you do get really bored. And I said, what do people meditate about? What do they think about? Because they don't even give you a mantra or much guidance. And she said, oh, they ruminate, they plan. But then they get so bored of the reruns that in their head, again, rumination, that they drop in. But a couple other things are going on. Your behavior is highly ritualized, so that takes away volition. You're doing what you're supposed to do, so your agency is reduced, which is part of reducing the influence of the ego. And you don't make eye contact, and you're silent. And that's really interesting. And I had that on this retreat I was on recently. There's no social presentation. And that's very freeing because a lot of our energy goes into how we're presenting ourselves to other people.

[Blake Mycoski]

Oh, really?

[Michael Pollan]

And you're not making eye contact, you're silent. And between those three things, the rituals, the silence, no eye contact, and sitting in front of that wall, people finally just give it all up. They just kind of surrender their ego. And it's harder work than a psychedelic. But it's a similar kind of process. Psychedelics are kind of a shortcut to that place. So anyway, I didn't participate in that. Instead, Joan said I think we should go to what she calls the refuge. And this is a piece of land that Upiah owns that's like a couple hours north, really, in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful area, you know, 25 miles on a dirt road to get to this place. And there were a couple little buildings, and she has a little house there. And she said, but I think you should stay in the cave. And I had come to interview her about the self. And I was like, no, I just want to talk to you. No, I think you need to have a few days in the cave. So she walks me out to the cave. It's another half mile, and it's basically a large hole dug into a hillside that faces south with a sliding glass door, and there's a little single bed and a meditation platform. And, yeah, I just lived there for a couple days. And it was a kind of silence I'd never experienced. For a while I talked to myself just to have company. And I gave that up. Yeah, out loud.

[Blake Mycoski]

Kind of like Tom Hanks and Castaway with Wilson. Did you have a Wilson?

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah. Well, no, not exactly a Wilson, but I. And I chop wood and swept the threshold and dug pit toilets and, you know, and hiked a lot and watched the wildlife. And what I got in touch with there is I had been five years on this journey to understand consciousness, and I was approaching it in this very Western male way that there's a problem and a solution out there. And this is how the scientists approach it, and some of the philosophers, too. And being alone with my thoughts that long, meditating for hours at a time, and talking to Joan, who's a very wise woman. She's in her 80s and still on fire. And I realized that there's the problem of consciousness, but then there's the miraculous fact of consciousness, that we are conscious and that we're giving our consciousness away with our distractions. When you're scrolling on your phone, yeah, you're conscious, but in fact, a company is occupying your thoughts, and you are not. Not fully conscious. And we are not as conscious as we could be. And that was kind of the insight of the whole experience, is that I should focus more on taking advantage of this incredible phenomenon that we have and to be more aware and to, you know. And that means, you know, when you're standing online at the bank, you know, not scrolling on your phone, but thinking about the people around you, taking it all in and having daydreams. And, you know, I write in the book all about daydreaming and mind Wandering. And these are like such powerful things, and we're giving them away. And so that's kind of where I end up, that I haven't solved the problem of consciousness. But there are ways we can take better advantage of the fact that we are conscious.

[Blake Mycoski]

And it seems that you, you know, really appreciate it.

[Michael Pollan]

Oh, deeply.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah.

And I think that that's.

[Michael Pollan]

I had moments.

[Blake Mycoski]

That's where I really. Please, Tony.

[Michael Pollan]

Yeah, well, there was one moment where, you know, I mean, this sounds like a cliche, but I got up in the middle of the night to pee and, you know, there was no light pollution where we were at all. And it was one of those nights where the stars just kind of hit you over the head. And I had a sense of the space between me and the stars. It was very different than anything I had had before. They weren't like, in a single scrim, a certain distance. They were like all different distances. And I was in the same space as they were. And I just took it in, you know, I just stood there taking it in. And it was, you know, I hadn't taken a psychedelic. I hadn't taken anything. And it made me realize that we are a fraction as conscious as we could be. And what a shame that we, you know, we give it away so cheaply. And, you know, it's hard to be conscious too, because our thoughts can, you know, are painful sometimes. And a lot of people want to quiet the internal monologue. And people stuck in, you know, go back to where we started. People stuck in rumination.

[Blake Mycoski]

Yeah. It's not a good place to be.

[Michael Pollan]

Will do things to be less conscious, including taking drugs, alcohol and. Yeah, alcohol and. And. And marijuana. And so you need to get to a place where you're comfortable with being conscious and. And some of us aren't there yet. And. And that's a. That's a motivation for healing too.

[Blake Mycoski]

It is.

[Michael Pollan]

So you can really, like, experience the.

[Blake Mycoski]

The majesty of it. Yeah.

[Michael Pollan]

And to be in your mind, to be happy, being in your mind, that's rather than only being happy when you're out of your mind.

[Blake Mycoski]

I think that is a great place to wrap up because I know that that's something that I, you know, strive for every day, you know, is to be happy in my mind. And I think people listening, that's one of the reasons are here, is they want to be happy in their mind. And it's not only possible, but when you're there, it's. It's so majestic that we should try to spend more and more time, you know, being conscious. I mean, that's the, that's the. That's the final message. Well, Michael Pollan, thank you so much. I am so grateful for our friendship and for you spending time with us today.

[Michael Pollan]

Oh, thank you Blake. It was a pleasure.

[Blake Mycoski]

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It's a resource to help us all live better lives. Hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode and let us know what you think by leaving a comment. A quick note that this episode is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding any medical questions or concerns you may have. There's more no Magic Pill With Lemonada Premium you can listen to every episode ad free. Plus subscribers also get access to exclusive bonus interview excerpts from select guests and special behind the scenes content. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or go to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe on any other app. You can also listen ad free on Amazon Music Music with your prime membership. No Magic Pill is a production of Lemonada Media and the Enough Foundation. The show is produced by Wubatu Shimalash, Katherine Barnes and Keegan Zema. Additional production by Ivan Karaev and Kristen Lepore. Post production by Oronda Studio. Jackie Danziger is Head of Content at Limonada Media. Executive producers are Me, Blake Michael, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Whittles. Wax. Special thanks to Jillian Delorio, Jennifer Song, Maggie Wertz, Andrew Fine, James Johnson, Devin Robbins, Emily Ledbetter, Chris Orwig, Sean McGurk, Jasmine Burgess, and the entire Enough foundation team. The Enough Foundation's mission is to spread reminders in every form, form, bracelets, messages, actions and community until feeling enough becomes the cultural default. To learn more, visit wearenough.

[Michael Pollan]

Co.

[Blake Mycoski]

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