It is all to easy to dismiss what unfolds in our minds during a psychedelic journey as simply a “drug experience,” and that is precisely what our culture encourages us to do. (…)
Yet even a moment’s reflection tells you that attributing the content of the psychedelic experience to “drugs” explains virtually nothing about it. The images and the narratives and the insights don’t come from nowhere, and they certainly don’t come from a chemical. They come from inside our minds, and at the very least have something to tell us about that. If dreams and fantasies and free associations are worth interpreting, then surely so is the more vivid and detailed material with which the psychedelic journey presents us. It opens a new door on one’s mind.
—Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind, Allen Lane, 2018