How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

«MIDWAY THROUGH the twentieth century, two unusual new molecules, organic compounds with a striking family resemblance, exploded upon the West.» — Pollan abre datando el asunto del libro en dos moléculas emparentadas que irrumpen en Occidente a mediados del siglo XX; el libro entero se ordena alrededor de esas dos, LSD y psilocibina.

«As it happened, the arrival of these disruptive chemistries coincided with another world historical explosion—that of the atomic bomb. There were people who compared the two events and made much of the cosmic synchronicity. Extraordinary new energies had been loosed upon the world; things would never be quite the same.» — Pollan consigna la coincidencia de fechas entre las dos moléculas y la bomba atómica, y atribuye a otros —no a sí mismo— la lectura de esa coincidencia como sincronicidad cósmica.

«The first of these molecules was an accidental invention of science.» — Pollan distingue el origen de las dos moléculas: la primera, dice, es un invento accidental de la ciencia.

«Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, was first synthesized by Albert Hofmann in 1938, shortly before physicists split an atom of uranium for the first time.» — Pollan data la primera síntesis del LSD en 1938, por Albert Hofmann, y la sitúa poco antes de la primera fisión del uranio.

«Hofmann, who worked for the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Sandoz, had been looking for a drug to stimulate circulation, not a psychoactive compound.» — según Pollan, Hofmann trabajaba para Sandoz y buscaba un estimulante de la circulación, no un psicoactivo: el hallazgo no fue lo buscado.

«It wasn’t until five years later when he accidentally ingested a minuscule quantity of the new chemical that he realized he had created something powerful, at once terrifying and wondrous.» — Pollan fecha cinco años después la ingesta accidental con que Hofmann advirtió lo que tenía entre manos, y califica el efecto con los dos términos a la vez, terrorífico y maravilloso.

«The second molecule had been around for thousands of years, though no one in the developed world was aware of it.» — Pollan contrapone el origen de la segunda molécula: milenaria, e ignorada por el mundo desarrollado.

«Produced not by a chemist but by an inconspicuous little brown mushroom, this molecule, which would come to be known as psilocybin, had been used by the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America for hundreds of years as a sacrament.» — Pollan atribuye la psilocibina a un hongo y no a un químico, y declara su uso sacramental entre los pueblos indígenas de México y Centroamérica.

«Called teonanácatl by the Aztecs, or “flesh of the gods,” the mushroom was brutally suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church after the Spanish conquest and driven underground.» — Pollan da el nombre nahua del hongo con su traducción y sostiene que la Iglesia católica lo suprimió tras la conquista, empujándolo a la clandestinidad.

«In 1955, twelve years after Albert Hofmann’s discovery of LSD, a Manhattan banker and amateur mycologist named R. Gordon Wasson sampled the magic mushroom in the town of Huautla de Jiménez in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.» — según Pollan, el banquero neoyorquino y micólogo aficionado R. Gordon Wasson probó el hongo en Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, en 1955.

«Two years later, he published a fifteen-page account of the “mushrooms that cause strange visions” in Life magazine, marking the moment when news of a new form of consciousness first reached the general public.» — Pollan fija en el reportaje de Wasson en Life el momento en que la noticia de esa forma de consciencia llega al público general; la frase entrecomillada es el título del artículo tal como él lo cita.

«The impact of these two molecules is hard to overestimate.» — Pollan enuncia sin matizar la magnitud del efecto de las dos moléculas, y es de las pocas frases del prólogo donde no se pone límite.

«The advent of LSD can be linked to the revolution in brain science that begins in the 1950s, when scientists discovered the role of neurotransmitters in the brain.» — Pollan liga la llegada del LSD a la revolución de los años cincuenta en las ciencias del cerebro y al descubrimiento del papel de los neurotransmisores.

«That quantities of LSD measured in micrograms could produce symptoms resembling psychosis inspired brain scientists to search for the neurochemical basis of mental disorders previously believed to be psychological in origin.» — según Pollan, que microgramos produjeran síntomas parecidos a la psicosis movió a buscar una base neuroquímica de trastornos que se tenían por psicológicos.

«At the same time, psychedelics found their way into psychotherapy, where they were used to treat a variety of disorders, including alcoholism, anxiety, and depression.» — Pollan consigna el uso terapéutico temprano y enumera los trastornos tratados, que son los mismos que el libro seguirá en el capítulo Six.

«For most of the 1950s and early 1960s, many in the psychiatric establishment regarded LSD and psilocybin as miracle drugs.» — Pollan atribuye a buena parte del establecimiento psiquiátrico de los cincuenta y principios de los sesenta la consideración de estas sustancias como drogas milagrosas.

«The arrival of these two compounds is also linked to the rise of the counterculture during the 1960s and, perhaps especially, to its particular tone and style. For the first time in history, the young had a rite of passage all their own: the “acid trip.”» — Pollan liga la llegada de los dos compuestos al surgimiento de la contracultura y a su tono, y llama rito de paso propio de los jóvenes al viaje de ácido.

«Instead of folding the young into the adult world, as rites of passage have always done, this one landed them in a country of the mind few adults had any idea even existed.» — Pollan invierte la definición clásica del rito de paso: este no integraba al mundo adulto sino que depositaba a los jóvenes en un país mental que los adultos desconocían.

«The effect on society was, to put it mildly, disruptive.» — Pollan resume con atenuación declarada el efecto social de ese rito de paso.

«The dark side of psychedelics began to receive tremendous amounts of publicity—bad trips, psychotic breaks, flashbacks, suicides—and beginning in 1965 the exuberance surrounding these new drugs gave way to moral panic.» — Pollan data en 1965 el vuelco de la euforia al pánico moral, y enumera lo que entonces recibió publicidad: malos viajes, brotes psicóticos, flashbacks, suicidios.

«By the end of the decade, psychedelic drugs—which had been legal in most places—were outlawed and forced underground.» — Pollan consigna que las sustancias eran legales en casi todas partes antes de la prohibición de fines de los sesenta.

«At least one of the twentieth century’s two bombs appeared to have been defused.» — Pollan cierra la metáfora de las dos bombas del siglo XX diciendo que una pareció desactivada, con el verbo en condicional aparente que el capítulo Three desarrolla.

«Beginning in the 1990s, well out of view of most of us, a small group of scientists, psychotherapists, and so-called psychonauts, believing that something precious had been lost from both science and culture, resolved to recover it.» — Pollan atribuye el reinicio a un grupo pequeño de científicos, psicoterapeutas y psiconautas convencidos de que se había perdido algo valioso; el móvil que les adjudica es de recuperación, no de novedad.

«Today, after several decades of suppression and neglect, psychedelics are having a renaissance.» — Pollan nombra renacimiento al estado presente del asunto, que es la tesis que da título al capítulo One.

«A new generation of scientists, many of them inspired by their own personal experience of the compounds, are testing their potential to heal mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction.» — Pollan declara que a muchos de los científicos nuevos los mueve su propia experiencia con los compuestos, dato que el capítulo One convierte en asunto.

«One good way to understand a complex system is to disturb it and then see what happens.» — Pollan formula el principio metodológico con que justifica el uso de los psicodélicos en el laboratorio: perturbar un sistema complejo para entenderlo.

«By smashing atoms, a particle accelerator forces them to yield their secrets.» — la analogía con que Pollan traslada ese principio del acelerador de partículas al cerebro.

«By administering psychedelics in carefully calibrated doses, neuroscientists can profoundly disturb the normal waking consciousness of volunteers, dissolving the structures of the self and occasioning what can be described as a mystical experience.» — Pollan describe la operación del laboratorio como disolución de las estructuras del yo que ocasiona lo que puede describirse como experiencia mística; el rodeo de la última cláusula es suyo y no se le quita.

«Already this work is yielding surprising insights into the “neural correlates” of the sense of self and spiritual experience.» — Pollan sitúa el rendimiento de ese trabajo en los correlatos neurales del sentido del yo y de la experiencia espiritual, y entrecomilla el término técnico.

«The hoary 1960s platitude that psychedelics offered a key to understanding—and “expanding”— consciousness no longer looks quite so preposterous.» — Pollan revisa el lugar común sesentero de la expansión de la consciencia: no lo suscribe, dice que ya no parece tan descabellado.

«Everything I was learning about the third-person history of psychedelic research made me want to explore this novel landscape of the mind in the first person too—to see how the changes in consciousness these molecules wrought actually feel and what, if anything, they had to teach me about my mind and might contribute to my life.» — Pollan cuenta por qué el reportaje se volvió también memoria: la historia en tercera persona lo empujó a la primera; el motivo que declara es de aprendizaje, no de cura.

«THIS WAS, FOR ME, a completely unexpected turn of events. The history of psychedelics I’ve summarized here is not a history I lived.» — Pollan deslinda su propia biografía de la historia que cuenta: nació en 1955 pero no vivió esa historia.

«I was born in 1955, halfway through the decade that psychedelics first burst onto the American scene, but it wasn’t until the prospect of turning sixty had drifted into view that I seriously considered trying LSD for the first time.» — Pollan data su primera consideración seria del LSD en las vísperas de sus sesenta años y la da como improbable en alguien de su generación.

«But I was only twelve years old in 1967, too young to have been more than dimly aware of the Summer of Love or the San Francisco Acid Tests.» — Pollan se excluye de la generación psicodélica por edad: doce años en 1967, demasiado joven para el Verano del Amor.

«I must have been in junior high school when a scientist reported (mistakenly, as it turned out) that LSD scrambled your chromosomes; the entire media, as well as my health-ed teacher, made sure we heard all about it.» — Pollan recuerda el informe —que él marca como equivocado en el paréntesis— de que el LSD dañaba los cromosomas, y el eco que le dieron los medios y su maestra de salud.

«Linkletter began campaigning against LSD, which he blamed for the fact his daughter had jumped out of an apartment window, killing herself.» — según Pollan, el presentador Art Linkletter hizo campaña contra el LSD culpándolo de la muerte de su hija; el libro consigna la atribución de Linkletter sin suscribirla.

«LSD supposedly had something to do with the Manson murders too.» — Pollan consigna con marca explícita de rumor la atribución de los crímenes de Manson al LSD.

«It worked on me: I’m less a child of the psychedelic 1960s than of the moral panic that psychedelics provoked.» — Pollan se coloca a sí mismo: no hijo de los sesenta psicodélicos sino del pánico moral que siguió, lo que fija desde dónde mira el reportaje entero.

«I also had my own personal reason for steering clear of psychedelics: a painfully anxious adolescence that left me (and at least one psychiatrist) doubting my grip on sanity.» — Pollan declara el segundo motivo para haberlos evitado: una adolescencia ansiosa que lo dejó dudando de su cordura, a él y al menos a un psiquiatra.

«Years later, in my late twenties and feeling more settled, I did try magic mushrooms two or three times.» — Pollan cuenta que sí probó hongos dos o tres veces a fines de sus veinte; es el antecedente que el capítulo Four retoma.

«Psychedelic aficionados would probably categorize what we had as a low-dose “aesthetic experience,” rather than a full-blown egodisintegrating trip.» — Pollan clasifica aquellas dos experiencias como de dosis baja y estéticas, y no como el viaje de disolución del yo que el libro estudiará; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *egodisintegrating* donde la fuente imprime *ego-disintegrating*.

«We certainly didn’t take leave of the known universe or have what anyone would call a mystical experience.» — Pollan niega que aquello fuera experiencia mística, distinción que sostiene toda la diferencia del libro entre dosis baja y dosis alta.

«I didn’t know it at the time, but the difference between these two experiences of the same drug demonstrated something important, and special, about psychedelics: the critical influence of “set” and “setting.”» — Pollan deriva de la diferencia entre sus dos viajes el par de términos que gobierna el resto del libro.

«Set is the mind-set or expectation one brings to the experience, and setting is the environment in which it takes place.» — la definición que Pollan da de los dos términos: disposición mental y entorno.

«Compared with other drugs, psychedelics seldom affect people the same way twice, because they tend to magnify whatever’s already going on both inside and outside one’s head.» — Pollan explica la inconstancia de los efectos por la propiedad que atribuye a estos compuestos, la de magnificar lo que ya ocurre dentro y fuera de la cabeza.

«Carl Jung once wrote that it is not the young but people in middle age who need to have an “experience of the numinous” to help them negotiate the second half of their lives.» — según Pollan, Jung sostuvo que quienes necesitan una experiencia de lo numinoso no son los jóvenes sino los de mediana edad; es la razón con que justifica emprender el asunto a los sesenta.

«Fast-forward three decades, and I really wish I hadn’t done that. I’d give a lot to have a whole jar of magic mushrooms now.» — Pollan lamenta haber tirado el frasco de hongos, y de ahí pasa a la sospecha de que estas moléculas rinden más tarde en la vida.

«I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps these remarkable molecules might be wasted on the young, that they may have more to offer us later in life, after the cement of our mental habits and everyday behaviors has set.» — la conjetura de Pollan, enunciada con su duda dentro: que las moléculas estén desperdiciadas en los jóvenes y sirvan más cuando ya fraguó el cemento de los hábitos mentales.

«HERE ARE THE THREE DATA POINTS that persuaded me this was the case.» — Pollan declara la estructura del argumento con que explica su propio cambio: tres datos, que expone uno a uno.

«In the spring of 2010, a front-page story appeared in the New York Times headlined “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again.”» — el primero de los tres datos: la nota de portada del New York Times en la primavera de 2010, que Pollan cita por su titular.

«It reported that researchers had been giving large doses of psilocybin— the active compound in magic mushrooms—to terminal cancer patients as a way to help them deal with their “existential distress” at the approach of death.» — Pollan resume lo que reportaba esa nota: dosis altas de psilocibina a enfermos terminales de cáncer para su angustia existencial ante la muerte.

«These experiments, which were taking place simultaneously at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and New York University, seemed not just improbable but crazy.» — Pollan nombra las tres sedes de aquellos ensayos y declara su primera reacción, que fue de incredulidad.

«Faced with a terminal diagnosis, the very last thing I would want to do is take a psychedelic drug—that is, surrender control of my mind and then in that psychologically vulnerable state stare straight into the abyss.» — Pollan explicita por qué le parecía disparatado, poniéndose en el lugar del paciente.

«Other scientists are using psychedelics in conjunction with new brain-imaging tools to explore» — Pollan enuncia la segunda línea del renacimiento, la que junta los compuestos con la imagen cerebral; el tramo se corta aquí porque cambia la plana, y sigue en la 11 con *the links between brain and mind, hoping to unravel some of the mysteries of consciousness*.

«Several of them said they had lost their fear of death completely.» — según Pollan, varios de esos voluntarios declararon haber perdido del todo el miedo a la muerte.

«The reasons offered for this transformation were intriguing but also somewhat elusive.» — Pollan califica de esquivas las razones que se ofrecían para esa transformación, y ese límite es suyo.

«“Individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states,” one of the researchers was quoted as saying.» — Pollan cita a uno de los investigadores de aquella nota, sin nombrarlo, sobre la trascendencia de la identificación con el cuerpo y los estados sin yo.

«I filed that story away, until a year or two later, when Judith and I found ourselves at a dinner party at a big house in the Berkeley Hills, seated at a long table with a dozen or so people, when a woman at the far end of the table began talking about her acid trips.» — el segundo de los tres datos: una cena en las colinas de Berkeley donde una comensal hablaba de sus viajes de ácido.

«She looked to be about my age and, I learned, was a prominent psychologist.» — según Pollan, quien hablaba era una psicóloga de renombre de su misma edad, dato que le importa porque descarta la anécdota universitaria.

«It soon became clear that the acid trip in question had taken place only days or weeks before, and in fact was one of her first.» — Pollan subraya que aquel viaje era reciente y de los primeros de ella, no un recuerdo de juventud.

«She and her husband, a retired software engineer, had found the occasional use of LSD both intellectually stimulating and of value to their work.» — según Pollan, la psicóloga y su marido ingeniero hallaban el uso ocasional de LSD estimulante para el intelecto y útil para su trabajo.

«Specifically, the psychologist felt that LSD gave her insight into how young children perceive the world.» — la tesis que Pollan le atribuye a ella: que el LSD le daba acceso a cómo perciben el mundo los niños pequeños.

«Kids’ perceptions are not mediated by expectations and conventions in the been-there, done-that way that adult perception is; as adults, she explained, our minds don’t simply take in the world as it is so much as they make educated guesses about it.» — según Pollan, la psicóloga sostiene que la mente adulta no toma el mundo tal cual sino que hace conjeturas informadas sobre él.

«LSD appears to disable such conventionalized, shorthand modes of perception and, by doing so, restores a childlike immediacy, and sense of wonder, to our experience of reality, as if we were seeing everything for the first time.» — la consecuencia que Pollan reporta de esa tesis, con el verbo atenuado: el LSD parece inhabilitar los modos abreviados de percepción y devolver la inmediatez infantil.

«I piped up to ask if she had any plans to write about these ideas, which riveted everyone at the table. She laughed and gave me a look that I took to say, How naive can you be?» — Pollan cuenta que al preguntarle si escribiría sobre ello recibió una mirada que leyó como reproche a su ingenuidad; la lectura de la mirada es suya y la marca como tal.

«LSD is a schedule 1 substance, meaning the government regards it as a drug of abuse with no accepted medical use.» — Pollan explica la clasificación legal que hace temeraria esa publicación: sustancia de lista 1, sin uso médico reconocido.

«Surely it would be foolhardy for someone in her position to suggest, in print, that psychedelics might have anything to contribute to philosophy or psychology—that they might actually be a valuable tool for exploring the mysteries of human consciousness.» — Pollan enuncia el costo profesional de sugerir por escrito que estas sustancias aporten a la filosofía o la psicología, que es el contexto en que sitúa el silencio académico.

«Third data point: The dinner table conversation jogged a vague memory that a few years before somebody had e-mailed me a scientific paper about psilocybin research.» — el tercero de los tres datos: un artículo científico sobre psilocibina que le habían enviado por correo y no había abierto.

«The paper had been sent to me by one of its co-authors, a man I didn’t know by the name of Bob Jesse;» — Pollan nombra a Bob Jesse como el coautor que se lo envió, personaje que el capítulo One desarrolla.

«The article, which was written by the same team at Hopkins that was giving psilocybin to cancer patients, had just been published in the journal Psychopharmacology.» — Pollan sitúa el artículo en el mismo equipo de Hopkins que daba psilocibina a enfermos de cáncer, y en la revista donde salió.

«For a peer-reviewed scientific paper, it had a most unusual title: “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.”» — Pollan cita entero el título del artículo de 2006, que es el documento fundacional del renacimiento tal como él lo cuenta.

«Never mind the word “psilocybin”; it was the words “mystical” and “spiritual” and “meaning” that leaped out from the pages of a pharmacology journal.» — Pollan dice que lo que saltaba del título no era el nombre de la molécula sino las palabras místico, espiritual y significado en una revista de farmacología.

«The title hinted at an intriguing frontier of research, one that seemed to straddle two worlds we’ve grown accustomed to think are irreconcilable: science and spirituality.» — Pollan nombra la frontera que el artículo insinuaba: dos mundos que estamos acostumbrados a tener por irreconciliables, ciencia y espiritualidad.

«Thirty volunteers who had never before used psychedelics had been given a pill containing either a synthetic version of psilocybin or an “active placebo”— methylphenidate, or Ritalin—to fool them into thinking they had received the psychedelic.» — Pollan describe el diseño del ensayo de 2006, con placebo activo de metilfenidato para engañar al voluntario.

«They then lay down on a couch wearing eyeshades and listening to music through headphones, attended the whole time by two therapists. (The eyeshades and headphones encourage a more inward-focused journey.» — el protocolo que Pollan reporta —antifaz, música por auriculares y dos terapeutas presentes— y la razón que da para el antifaz y los auriculares.

«After about thirty minutes, extraordinary things began to happen in the minds of the people who had gotten the psilocybin pill.» — Pollan marca el tiempo de aparición de los efectos y los llama extraordinarios, sin describirlos todavía.

«The study demonstrated that a high dose of psilocybin could be used to safely and reliably “occasion” a mystical experience—typically described as the dissolution of one’s ego followed by a sense of merging with nature or the universe.» — Pollan resume el resultado del estudio y da la descripción típica de la experiencia mística que ahí se maneja: disolución del yo seguida de fusión con la naturaleza o el universo.

«This might not come as news to people who take psychedelic drugs or to the researchers who first studied them back in the 1950s and 1960s.» — Pollan acota el alcance del hallazgo: no era noticia para quienes usan estas sustancias ni para los investigadores de los cincuenta y sesenta.

«But it wasn’t at all obvious to modern science, or to me, in 2006, when the paper was published.» — la segunda mitad de esa acotación, en la que Pollan se incluye entre quienes no lo tenían por obvio en 2006.

«What was most remarkable about the results reported in the article is that participants ranked their psilocybin experience as one of the most meaningful in their lives, comparable “to the birth of a first child or death of a parent.”» — según Pollan, lo más notable del artículo fue que los participantes situaran la sesión entre las experiencias más significativas de su vida, comparable al nacimiento de un primer hijo o a la muerte de un padre.

«Fourteen months later, these ratings had slipped only slightly. The volunteers reported significant improvements in their “personal well-being, life satisfaction and positive behavior change,” changes that were confirmed by their family members and friends.» — Pollan reporta la persistencia a catorce meses y añade que los allegados dijeron ver los mismos cambios, dato que él destaca por venir de fuera del voluntario.

«Though no one knew it at the time, the renaissance of psychedelic research now under way began in earnest with the publication of that paper.» — Pollan fija el arranque del renacimiento en la publicación de ese artículo, con la salvedad de que nadie lo sabía entonces.

«It led directly to a series of trials—at Hopkins and several other universities—using psilocybin to treat a variety of indications, including anxiety and depression in cancer patients, addiction to nicotine and alcohol, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and eating disorders.» — Pollan enumera las indicaciones que siguieron a aquel artículo, que son las que el capítulo Six recorre.

«What is striking about this whole line of clinical research is the premise that it is not the pharmacological effect of the drug itself but the kind of mental experience it occasions—involving the temporary dissolution of one’s ego—that may be the key to changing one’s mind.» — la tesis que Pollan destaca de toda esa línea clínica: que la clave no está en el efecto farmacológico sino en la experiencia mental que ocasiona, con la disolución del yo dentro; el verbo va en potencial y así se conserva.

«AS SOMEONE not at all sure he has ever had a single “spiritually significant” experience, much less enough of them to make a ranking,» — Pollan se declara alguien que no está seguro de haber tenido jamás una experiencia espiritualmente significativa, y desde ahí lee el artículo.

«I found that the 2006 paper piqued my curiosity but also my skepticism.» — Pollan declara la doble reacción que el artículo le produjo, y el escepticismo queda dicho por él mismo.

«Many of the volunteers described being given access to an alternative reality, a “beyond” where the usual physical laws don’t apply and various manifestations of cosmic consciousness or divinity present themselves as unmistakably real.» — Pollan reporta lo que describían los voluntarios —una realidad alterna donde las leyes físicas no rigen y se presentan formas de consciencia cósmica o divinidad— y lo atribuye a ellos, no lo afirma.

«All this I found both a little hard to take (couldn’t this be just a drug-induced hallucination?) and yet at the same time intriguing; part of me wanted it to be true, whatever exactly “it” was.» — Pollan pone por escrito su propia división ante eso: le costaba tomarlo en serio y a la vez parte de él quería que fuera cierto.

«This surprised me, because I have never thought of myself as a particularly spiritual, much less mystical, person.» — Pollan niega de sí mismo el carácter espiritual o místico, y atribuye esa falta en parte a su visión del mundo y en parte a desatención.

«I’ve never devoted much time to exploring spiritual paths and did not have a religious upbringing.» — Pollan declara que no ha dedicado tiempo a las vías espirituales ni tuvo crianza religiosa, dato que fija desde dónde escribe el resto del libro.

«The idea took hold of me. It was a little like being shown a door in a familiar room—the room of your own mind—that you had somehow never noticed before and being told by people you trusted (scientists!) that a whole other way of thinking—of being!—lay waiting on the other side.» — la imagen de la puerta inadvertida en el cuarto de la propia mente, que da nombre al prólogo; Pollan subraya entre paréntesis que quienes se lo decían eran científicos.

«All you had to do was turn the knob and enter.» — el cierre de esa imagen, que el epílogo retoma.

«Now, I already knew something about such doors, having written about psychoactive plants earlier in my career.» — Pollan remite a su propio libro anterior sobre plantas psicoactivas como antecedente de este.

«In The Botany of Desire, I explored at some length what I had been surprised to discover is a universal human desire to change consciousness.» — Pollan declara haber hallado en aquel libro un deseo humano universal de cambiar la consciencia, y dice que el hallazgo lo sorprendió.

«There is not a culture on earth (well, one*) that doesn’t make use of certain plants to change the contents of the mind, whether as a matter of healing, habit, or spiritual practice.» — la formulación de esa universalidad, con la excepción marcada por un asterisco que remite a la nota de la plana 344 sobre los inuit.

«That such a curious and seemingly maladaptive desire should exist alongside our desires for nourishment and beauty and sex—all of which make much more obvious evolutionary sense— cried out for an explanation.» — Pollan plantea el problema evolutivo que le ve al deseo de alterar la consciencia, al lado de los deseos de alimento, belleza y sexo.

«The simplest was that these substances help relieve pain and boredom.» — la explicación más simple que Pollan registra y no adopta.

«Yet the powerful feelings and elaborate taboos and rituals that surround many of these psychoactive species suggest there must be something more to it.» — Pollan objeta esa explicación por los sentimientos, tabúes y rituales que rodean a esas especies, y deja la conclusión en potencial.

«For our species, I learned, plants and fungi with the power to radically alter consciousness have long and widely been used as tools for healing the mind, for facilitating rites of passage, and for serving as a medium for communicating with supernatural realms, or spirit worlds.» — Pollan enumera los tres usos largamente atestiguados que dice haber aprendido: sanar la mente, facilitar ritos de paso y comunicar con reinos sobrenaturales o mundos de espíritus.

«I ventured one other application: to enrich the collective imagination—the culture—with the novel ideas and visions that a select few people bring back from wherever it is they go.» — la aplicación que Pollan dice haber aventurado él mismo: enriquecer la imaginación colectiva con lo que unos pocos traen de vuelta; el verbo marca que es conjetura suya.

«I’m not sure what I was waiting for: courage, maybe, or the right opportunity, which a busy life lived mainly on the right side of the law never quite seemed to afford.» — Pollan confiesa no saber qué esperaba, y nombra el valor y la ocasión como candidatos.

«I was surprised to learn that psychedelics are far more frightening to people than they are dangerous.» — la formulación con que Pollan resume el balance de riesgos: más aterradores que peligrosos.

«But many of the volunteers reported that over the course of a single guided psychedelic “journey” they» — Pollan reporta lo que dijeron los voluntarios de aquellos ensayos; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 14 con *reconceived how they viewed their cancer and the prospect of dying*.

«Serious research into psychedelics had been more or less purged from the university fifty years ago» — Pollan da por expulsada de la universidad la investigación seria cincuenta años atrás; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 15 nombrando el Harvard Psilocybin Project de Leary.

«Leary’s Harvard Psilocybin Project crashed and burned in 1963.» — Pollan data en 1963 el desplome de aquel proyecto, episodio que el capítulo Three recorre entero.

«Two-thirds of the participants rated the session among the top five “most spiritually significant experiences”» — la primera de las cifras que Pollan reporta del artículo de 2006; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 16 con *of their lives; one-third ranked it the most significant such experience in their lives*.

«Was it possible that a single psychedelic experience—something that turned on nothing more than the ingestion of a pill or square of» — la pregunta con que Pollan formula el asunto del libro y de la que sale su título; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 17 con *blotter paper—could put a big dent in such a worldview*.

«notorious perils are either exaggerated or mythical. It is virtually impossible to die from an overdose of LSD or psilocybin, for example, and neither drug is addictive.» — Pollan califica de exagerados o míticos buena parte de los peligros notorios y da dos razones, la imposibilidad práctica de la sobredosis y la falta de adicción; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 17.

«After trying them once, animals will not seek a second dose, and repeated use by people robs the drugs of their effect.» — la evidencia que Pollan aduce contra la adicción: los animales no repiten y el uso reiterado en personas anula el efecto.

«It is true that the terrifying experiences some people have on psychedelics can risk flipping those at risk into psychosis, so no one with a family history or predisposition to mental illness should ever take them.» — Pollan concede el riesgo de psicosis en predispuestos y saca de ahí una contraindicación tajante, que es de las pocas afirmaciones del libro sin atenuante.

«But emergency room admissions involving psychedelics are exceedingly rare, and many of the cases doctors diagnose as psychotic breaks turn out to be merely short-lived panic attacks.» — Pollan acota ese riesgo con la rareza de los ingresos hospitalarios y con la reclasificación de muchos brotes como ataques de pánico breves.

«It is also the case that people on psychedelics are liable to do stupid and dangerous things: walk out into traffic, fall from high places, and, on rare occasions, kill themselves.» — Pollan consigna el otro riesgo, el de las conductas peligrosas bajo el efecto, y lo enumera sin suavizarlo.

«“Bad trips” are very real and can be one of “the most challenging experiences of [a] lifetime,” according to a large survey of psychedelic users asked about their experiences.» — Pollan da por reales los malos viajes y cita una encuesta amplia de usuarios que los sitúa entre las experiencias más difíciles de una vida; la llamada de nota remite a la encuesta de Carbonaro citada en la plana 346.

«But it’s important to distinguish what can happen when these drugs are used in uncontrolled situations, without attention to set and setting, from what happens under clinical conditions, after careful screening and under supervision.» — la distinción que Pollan pone como condición de todo el argumento de riesgo: situación descontrolada frente a condición clínica con cribado y supervisión.

«Since the revival of sanctioned psychedelic research beginning in the 1990s, nearly a thousand volunteers have been dosed, and not a single serious adverse event has been reported.» — la cifra con que Pollan cierra el balance: cerca de mil voluntarios dosificados desde los noventa sin un solo evento adverso grave reportado.

«IT WAS AT THIS POINT that the idea of “shaking the snow globe,” as one neuroscientist described the psychedelic experience, came to seem more attractive to me than frightening, though it was still that too.» — Pollan adopta la imagen de sacudir la bola de nieve, que atribuye a un neurocientífico, y confiesa que el atractivo no le quitó el miedo.

«After more than half a century of its more or less constant companionship, one’s self—this ever-present voice in the head, this ceaselessly commenting, interpreting, labeling, defending I—becomes perhaps a little too familiar.» — Pollan describe el yo como voz permanente que comenta, interpreta, rotula y se defiende, y dice que tras medio siglo se vuelve demasiado familiar.

«I’m not talking about anything as deep as self-knowledge here. No, just about how, over time, we tend to optimize and conventionalize our responses to whatever life brings.» — Pollan acota que no habla de autoconocimiento sino de la optimización y convencionalización de las respuestas.

«Each of us develops our shorthand ways of slotting and processing everyday experiences and solving problems, and while this is no doubt adaptive—it helps us get the job done with a minimum of fuss— eventually it becomes rote.» — Pollan concede que esos atajos son adaptativos y sostiene a la vez que acaban en rutina.

«It dulls us. The muscles of attention atrophy.» — la consecuencia que Pollan atribuye a esa rutina, dicha como atrofia de los músculos de la atención.

«Habits are undeniably useful tools, relieving us of the need to run a complex mental operation every time we’re confronted with a new task or situation.» — Pollan reconoce la utilidad del hábito antes de enunciar su costo.

«Yet they also relieve us of the need to stay awake to the world: to attend, feel, think, and then act in a deliberate manner. (That is, from freedom rather than compulsion.» — el costo del hábito según Pollan: nos releva de estar despiertos al mundo, y la libertad queda del lado del acto deliberado.

«The efficiencies of the adult mind, useful as they are, blind us to the present moment.» — Pollan sostiene que las eficiencias de la mente adulta nos ciegan al presente.

«We approach experience much as an artificial intelligence (AI) program does, with our brains continually translating the data of the present into the terms of the past, reaching back in time for the relevant experience, and then using that to make its best guess as to how to predict and navigate the future.» — la analogía con que Pollan describe el funcionamiento ordinario de la mente, traduciendo el presente a términos del pasado para predecir el futuro.

«One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful—wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing, to which the adult brain has closed itself.» — Pollan pone el viaje, el arte, la naturaleza, el trabajo y ciertas drogas en una misma clase por lo que hacen: bloquear las vías mentales y devolver el asombro de la primera mirada.

«What I am struggling to describe here is what I think of as my default mode of consciousness.» — Pollan nombra modo por defecto de la consciencia a lo que describe, término que el capítulo Five convertirá en la red cerebral homónima.

«It works well enough, certainly gets the job done, but what if it isn’t the only, or necessarily the best, way to go through life?» — la pregunta con que Pollan abre el hueco: que ese modo funcione no lo hace el único ni el mejor.

«The premise of psychedelic research is that this special group of molecules can give us access to other modes of consciousness that might offer us specific benefits, whether therapeutic, spiritual, or creative.» — la premisa que Pollan atribuye a la investigación psicodélica: que ese grupo de moléculas da acceso a otros modos de consciencia con beneficios propios.

«Psychedelics are certainly not the only door to these other forms of consciousness—and I explore some non-pharmacological alternatives in these pages—but they do seem to be one of the easier knobs to take hold of and turn.» — Pollan acota que los psicodélicos no son la única puerta y anuncia que explorará alternativas no farmacológicas, cosa que hace con la meditación en el capítulo Six.

«The whole idea of expanding our repertoire of conscious states is not an entirely new idea: Hinduism and Buddhism are steeped in it, and there are intriguing precedents even in Western science.» — Pollan niega novedad a la idea de ampliar el repertorio de estados de consciencia y la remite al hinduismo, al budismo y a precedentes de la propia ciencia.

«William James, the pioneering American psychologist and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, ventured into these realms more than a century ago.» — Pollan nombra a William James, autor de The Varieties of Religious Experience, como el precedente científico que le importa.

«He returned with the conviction that our everyday waking consciousness “is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.» — Pollan cita la convicción de James de que la consciencia de vigilia es un tipo especial entre otras formas separadas por las más finas de las pantallas.

«James is speaking, I realized, of the unopened door in our minds. For him, the “touch” that could throw open the door and disclose these realms on the other side was nitrous oxide.» — Pollan lee a James en clave de su propia imagen de la puerta y consigna cuál fue el toque que se la abrió a James, el óxido nitroso.

«Mescaline, the psychedelic compound derived from the peyote cactus, was available to researchers at the time, but James was apparently too fearful to try» — Pollan consigna que la mescalina estaba al alcance de los investigadores de la época y atribuye a James el miedo a probarla, marcándolo con adverbio de reserva; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 20 con *it*.

«No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.» — la sentencia de James que Pollan cita: ninguna descripción total del universo puede ser definitiva si deja de lado esas otras formas de consciencia.

«At any rate,” James concluded, these other states, the existence of which he believed was as real as the ink on this page, “forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”» — la segunda cita de James que Pollan trae, sobre el cierre prematuro de nuestras cuentas con la realidad; Pollan añade entre comas que James creía esos estados tan reales como la tinta de la página.

«The first time I read that sentence, I realized James had my number: as a staunch materialist, and as an adult of a certain age, I had pretty much closed my accounts with reality.» — Pollan aplica a sí mismo la frase de James y reconoce haber cerrado sus cuentas con la realidad como materialista convencido.

«IF EVERYDAY WAKING CONSCIOUSNESS is but one of several possible ways to construct a world, then perhaps there is value in cultivating a greater amount of what I’ve come to think of as neural diversity.» — Pollan acuña diversidad neural como el valor que se sigue de admitir que la vigilia es solo uno de varios modos de construir un mundo; es el término que titula el epílogo.

«In the middle of the journey, I also offer an account of my own firsthand research (or perhaps I should say search) in the form of a kind of mental travelogue.» — Pollan anuncia el capítulo Four y lo nombra con su duda dentro, corrigiendo investigación por búsqueda.

«Also in the interest of narrative coherence, I’ve focused on certain drugs to the exclusion of others.» — Pollan declara la segunda exclusión, la de ciertas drogas, y la motiva por coherencia narrativa.

«There is, for example, little here about MDMA (also known as Ecstasy), which is showing great promise in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.» — Pollan nombra la ausencia más notoria, el MDMA, y reconoce su promesa en el estrés postraumático.

«Some researchers count MDMA among the psychedelics, but most do not, and I follow their lead.» — Pollan declara que sigue a la mayoría de los investigadores al no contar el MDMA entre los psicodélicos, y dice que es una decisión prestada.

«MDMA operates through a different set of pathways in the brain and has a substantially different social history from that of the so-called classical psychedelics.» — la razón que Pollan da para esa exclusión: otras vías cerebrales y otra historia social que la de los llamados psicodélicos clásicos.

«Of these, I focus primarily on the ones that are receiving the most attention from scientists—psilocybin and LSD—which means that other psychedelics that are equally interesting and powerful but more difficult to bring into the laboratory—such as ayahuasca—receive less attention.» — Pollan declara el criterio de su foco —la atención que reciben de los científicos— y nombra lo que queda fuera por difícil de llevar al laboratorio, la ayahuasca.

«But they do so many other things (and in fact full-blown hallucinations are fairly uncommon) that researchers soon went looking for more precise and comprehensive terms, a quest chronicled in chapter three.» — Pollan objeta el nombre alucinógeno porque las alucinaciones plenas son poco comunes, y remite la búsqueda de un término mejor al capítulo Three.

«If you need to be reminded how completely mental habit blinds us to experience, just» — la prueba doméstica que Pollan propone del poder cegador del hábito; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 19 con *take a trip to an unfamiliar country*.

«Suddenly you wake up! And the algorithms of everyday life all but start over, as if from scratch. This is why the various travel metaphors for the psychedelic experience are so apt.» — de ese despertar en país ajeno saca Pollan la pertinencia de las metáforas de viaje con que se habla de estas experiencias.

«IF THE START of the modern renaissance of psychedelic research can be dated with any precision, one good place to do it would be the year 2006.» — Pollan data el arranque del renacimiento en 2006, y el verbo condicional marca que es su propuesta de fecha y no un hecho asentado.

«There was no law passed or regulation lifted or discovery announced to mark the historical shift.» — Pollan niega que hubiera ley, reglamento o descubrimiento que marcara el cambio, y por eso lo data con tres sucesos sin relación entre sí.

«But as three unrelated events unfolded during the course of that year—the first in Basel, Switzerland, the second in Washington, D.C., and the third in Baltimore, Maryland— sensitive ears could make out the sound of ice beginning to crack.» — los tres sucesos de 2006 que Pollan enumera por su ciudad, y la imagen del hielo que empieza a quebrarse con que los resume.

«The first event, which looked back but also forward like a kind of historical hinge, was the centennial of the birth of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who, in 1943, accidentally found that he had discovered (five years earlier) the psychoactive molecule that came to be known as LSD.» — el primero de los tres: el centenario de Albert Hofmann, a quien Pollan describe como el químico suizo que en 1943 descubrió lo que había sintetizado cinco años antes.

«This was an unusual centennial in that the man being feted was very much in attendance.» — Pollan hace notar lo insólito del centenario, con el festejado presente.

«Entering his second century, Hofmann appeared in remarkably good shape, physically spry and mentally sharp, and he was able to take an active part in the festivities» — según Pollan, Hofmann entraba en su segundo siglo ágil y lúcido, y participó activamente en los actos.

«The symposium’s opening ceremony was on January 13, two days after Hofmann’s 100th birthday (he would live to be 102» — Pollan fecha la ceremonia dos días después del centésimo cumpleaños y adelanta entre paréntesis que Hofmann viviría hasta los ciento dos.

«Two thousand people packed the hall at the Basel Congress Center, rising to applaud as a stooped stick of a man in a dark suit and a necktie, barely five feet tall, slowly crossed the stage and took his seat.» — la escena que Pollan compone de la entrada de Hofmann en el Congress Center de Basilea ante dos mil personas de pie.

«Two hundred journalists from around the world were in attendance, along with more than a thousand healers, seekers, mystics, psychiatrists, pharmacologists, consciousness researchers, and neuroscientists, most of them people whose lives had been profoundly altered by the remarkable molecule that this man had derived from a fungus half a century before.» — Pollan inventaria quiénes llenaban la sala —sanadores, buscadores, místicos, psiquiatras, farmacólogos, investigadores de la consciencia y neurocientíficos— y dice que a casi todos les había cambiado la vida esa molécula.

«They had come to celebrate him and what his friend the Swiss poet and physician Walter Vogt called “the only joyous invention of the twentieth century.”» — según Pollan, el poeta y médico suizo Walter Vogt llamó al LSD el único invento alegre del siglo XX, y en aquella sala la frase no pasaba por exageración.

«According to one of the American scientists in attendance, many had come “to worship” Albert Hofmann, and indeed the event bore many of the hallmarks of a» — Pollan atribuye a un científico estadounidense presente, sin nombrarlo, la observación de que muchos habían ido a adorar a Hofmann; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 23 con *religious observance*.

«Although virtually every person in that hall knew the story of LSD’s discovery by heart, Hofmann was asked to recite the creation myth one more time.» — Pollan llama mito de creación al relato del descubrimiento del LSD y describe su recitación ritual en el centenario.

«He tells the story, memorably, in his 1979 memoir, LSD, My Problem Child.» — Pollan remite el relato a las memorias de Hofmann de 1979, obra que tiene ficha propia en este corpus.

«As a young chemist working in a unit of Sandoz Laboratories charged with isolating the compounds in medicinal plants to find new drugs, Hofmann had been tasked with synthesizing, one by one, the molecules in the alkaloids produced by ergot.» — según Pollan, el encargo de Hofmann en Sandoz era sintetizar una a una las moléculas de los alcaloides del cornezuelo.

«Ergot is a fungus that can infect grain, often rye, occasionally causing those who consume bread made from it to appear mad or possessed.» — la definición que Pollan da del cornezuelo y del efecto que se le atribuye en quienes comen pan contaminado.

«One theory of the Salem witch trials blames ergot poisoning for the behavior of the women accused.» — Pollan consigna como una teoría, sin suscribirla, la que atribuye al envenenamiento por cornezuelo la conducta de las acusadas en los juicios de Salem.

«But midwives had long used ergot to induce labor and stanch bleeding postpartum, so Sandoz was hoping to isolate a marketable drug from the fungus’s alkaloids.» — Pollan da el uso obstétrico tradicional del cornezuelo como el motivo comercial de Sandoz.

«In the fall of 1938, Hofmann made the twenty-fifth molecule in this series, naming it lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD-25 for short.» — Pollan data y numera la molécula: la vigesimoquinta de la serie, en el otoño de 1938.

«Preliminary testing of the compound on animals did not show much promise (they became restless, but that was about it), so the formula for LSD-25 was put on the shelf.» — según Pollan, las pruebas preliminares en animales no prometían nada y la fórmula quedó archivada.

«And there it remained for five years, until one April day in 1943, in the middle of the war, when Hofmann had “a peculiar presentiment” that LSD-25 deserved a second look.» — Pollan cita de Hofmann el presentimiento peculiar con que volvió a la molécula cinco años después.

«Here his account takes a slightly mystical turn.» — Pollan califica de ligeramente místico el giro del propio relato de Hofmann, y la calificación es suya.

«Normally, when a compound showing no promise was discarded, he explained, it was discarded for good. But Hofmann “liked the chemical structure of the LSD molecule,” and something about it told him that “this substance could possess properties other than those established in the first investigations.”» — según Pollan, Hofmann explicó que un compuesto descartado se descartaba para siempre, y se citan sus palabras sobre por qué esta vez no.

«Another mysterious anomaly occurred when he synthesized LSD-25 for the second time. Despite the meticulous precautions he always took when working with a substance as toxic as ergot, Hofmann must somehow have absorbed a bit of the chemical through his skin, because he “was interrupted in my work by unusual sensations.”» — Pollan reporta la segunda anomalía del relato de Hofmann, la absorción por la piel pese a sus precauciones, y cita la frase con que él la contó.

«Hofmann went home, lay down on a couch, and “in a dreamlike state, with eyes closed . . . I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.”» — la descripción que Hofmann dio, según Pollan, del primer efecto: corriente ininterrumpida de imágenes fantásticas con juego caleidoscópico de colores.

«Thus unfolds the world’s first LSD trip, in neutral Switzerland during the darkest days of World War II. It is also the only LSD trip ever taken that was entirely innocent of expectation.» — Pollan sitúa aquel primer viaje en la Suiza neutral de la guerra y le atribuye una condición que no se repite: ser el único inocente de expectativa.

«Intrigued, Hofmann decided a few days later to conduct an experiment on himself—not an uncommon practice at the time.» — según Pollan, la autoexperimentación no era práctica rara en la época, matiz con que enmarca lo que Hofmann hizo días después.

«Proceeding with what he thought was extreme caution, he ingested 0.25 milligrams—a milligram is one-thousandth of a gram—of LSD dissolved in a glass of water.» — Pollan da la dosis exacta que Hofmann tomó creyéndose extremadamente cauto, con la equivalencia entre paréntesis.

«This surprising fact would soon inspire scientists to look for, and eventually find, the brain receptors and the endogenous chemical—serotonin—that activates them like a key in a lock, as a way to explain how such a small number of molecules could have such a profound effect on the mind.» — según Pollan, esa potencia movió a buscar los receptores cerebrales y la serotonina, con la imagen de la llave en la cerradura.

«In this and other ways, Hofmann’s discovery helped to launch modern brain science in the 1950s.» — Pollan atribuye al descubrimiento de Hofmann parte del arranque de la ciencia moderna del cerebro en los cincuenta.

«Now unfolds the world’s first bad acid trip as Hofmann is plunged into what he is certain is irretrievable madness.» — Pollan llama a lo que siguió el primer mal viaje del mundo, y dice que Hofmann se creyó irremediablemente loco.

«He tells his lab assistant he needs to get home, and with the use of automobiles restricted during wartime, he somehow manages to pedal home by bicycle and lie down while his assistant summons the doctor.» — la escena de la bicicleta, que Pollan cuenta con el detalle de la restricción de automóviles en tiempo de guerra.

«Today LSD devotees celebrate “Bicycle Day” each year on April 19.» — Pollan consigna la fiesta anual que los devotos del LSD hacen de aquel episodio.

«Hofmann describes how “familiar objects and pieces of furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms. They were in continuous motion, animated as if driven by an inner restlessness.”» — la descripción que Hofmann dio, según Pollan, de los objetos familiares vueltos grotescos y en movimiento continuo.

«He experienced the disintegration of the outer world and the dissolution of his own ego.» — Pollan nombra los dos términos que el libro seguirá: desintegración del mundo exterior y disolución del propio yo.

«A demon had invaded me, had taken possession of my body, mind, and soul. I jumped up and screamed, trying to free myself from him, but then sank down again and lay helpless on the sofa.”» — la cita en primera persona de Hofmann sobre el demonio que lo invadió; Pollan la trae como testimonio y no la interpreta.

«Hofmann became convinced he was going to be rendered permanently insane or might actually be dying. “My ego was suspended somewhere in space and I saw my body lying dead on the sofa.”» — según Pollan, Hofmann se creyó condenado a la locura o moribundo, y describió su yo suspendido en el espacio viendo su propio cuerpo muerto.

«When the doctor arrived and examined him, however, he found that all of Hofmann’s vital signs—heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing —were perfectly normal.» — Pollan contrapone el terror narrado con el examen médico, que halló normales todos los signos vitales.

«The only indication something was amiss were his pupils, which were dilated in the extreme.» — el único signo clínico que Pollan reporta de aquel episodio.

«Once the acute effects wore off, Hofmann felt the “afterglow” that frequently follows a psychedelic experience, the exact opposite of a hangover.» — Pollan nombra el rescoldo que sigue a la experiencia y lo define por oposición a la resaca.

«When he walked out into his garden after a spring rain, “everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created.”» — la frase de Hofmann sobre el mundo como recién creado, que Pollan convertirá en marca del género.

«We’ve since learned that the experience of psychedelics is powerfully influenced by one’s expectation; no other class of drugs are more suggestible in their effects.» — Pollan sostiene que ninguna otra clase de drogas es tan sugestionable en sus efectos, lo que da su valor al caso de Hofmann.

«Because Hofmann’s experiences with LSD are the only ones we have that are uncontaminated by previous accounts, it’s interesting to note they exhibit neither the Eastern nor the Christian flavorings that would soon become conventions of the genre.» — el argumento de Pollan: por ser las únicas no contaminadas por relatos previos, las de Hofmann no traen ni el aderezo oriental ni el cristiano que después se volvieron convención.

«However, his experience of familiar objects coming to life and the world “as if newly created”— the same rapturous Adamic moment that Aldous Huxley would describe so vividly a decade later in The Doors of Perception—would become commonplaces of the psychedelic experience.» — Pollan nombra el momento adánico que Huxley describiría una década después en The Doors of Perception y lo da por lugar común del género.

«It never occurred to him that his “problem child,” as he eventually would regard LSD, would also become a “pleasure drug” and a drug of abuse.» — según Pollan, Hofmann no previó que su hijo problemático fuera a volverse droga de placer y de abuso.

«Yet Hofmann also came to regard the youth culture’s adoption of LSD in the 1960s as an understandable response to the emptiness of what he described as a materialist, industrialized, and spiritually impoverished society that had lost its connection to nature.» — según Pollan, Hofmann acabó viendo la adopción del LSD por la cultura juvenil como respuesta comprensible al vacío de una sociedad materialista e industrializada.

«This master of chemistry—perhaps the most materialist of all disciplines— emerged from his experience with LSD-25 convinced the molecule offered civilization not only a potential therapeutic but also a spiritual balm—by opening a crack “in the edifice of materialist rationality.”» — Pollan subraya la paradoja de que un químico saliera de la experiencia convencido de que la molécula ofrecía un bálsamo espiritual, y da la frase de la grieta en el edificio de la racionalidad materialista.

«In the words of his friend and translator, Jonathan Ott.» — Pollan acredita esa formulación a Jonathan Ott, amigo y traductor de Hofmann, y no a Hofmann mismo.

«Like so many who followed after him, the brilliant chemist became something of a mystic, preaching a gospel of spiritual renewal and reconnection with nature.» — Pollan dice que el químico se volvió una suerte de místico predicando renovación espiritual, y lo pone en serie con muchos que vinieron después.

«Presented with a bouquet of roses that 2006 day in Basel, the scientist told the assembled that “the feeling of co-creatureliness with all things alive should enter our consciousness more fully and counterbalance the materialistic and nonsensical technological developments in order to enable us to return to the roses, to the flowers, to nature, where we belong.”» — la frase de Hofmann en Basilea sobre la conciencia de ser criatura entre criaturas, citada por Pollan como el sermón que la sala aplaudió.

«A skeptical witness to the event would not be entirely wrong to regard the little man on the stage as the founder of a new religion and the audience as his congregation.» — Pollan admite la lectura del testigo escéptico —fundador de religión y congregación— sin adoptarla del todo, y de ahí saca su propia comparación.

«But if this is a religion, it’s one with a significant difference.» — Pollan condiciona la comparación religiosa y anuncia en qué falla.

«Typically, only the founder of a religion and perhaps a few early acolytes can lay claim to the kind of authority that flows from a direct experience of the sacred. For everyone coming after, there is the comparatively thin gruel of the stories, the symbolism of the sacrament, and faith.» — el contraste que Pollan traza: en una religión la autoridad de la experiencia directa es del fundador, y a los demás les queda el relato, el símbolo y la fe.

«History attenuates the original power of it all, which now must be mediated by the priests.» — Pollan atribuye a la historia la atenuación de aquel poder original y la mediación sacerdotal.

«But the extraordinary promise on offer in the Church of Psychedelics is that anyone at any time may gain access to the primary religious experience by means of the sacrament, which happens to be a psychoactive molecule. Faith is rendered superfluous.» — la diferencia que Pollan enuncia y que es de las formulaciones más netas del libro: en esa iglesia el sacramento es una molécula psicoactiva y la fe sobra.

«Running alongside the celebration’s spiritual undercurrent, however, there also, perhaps somewhat incongruously, came science.» — Pollan marca la convivencia incongruente entre la corriente espiritual del festejo y la ciencia.

«A handful of research projects, studying the effects of psychedelics on humans, had been approved or were under way in Switzerland and the United States, and scientists at the symposium voiced their hope that the long hiatus in psychedelic research might finally be coming to an end.» — Pollan reporta la esperanza que los científicos del simposio expresaron de que terminara la larga pausa de la investigación.

«Irrational exuberance seems to be an occupational hazard among people working in this area, but in 2006 there was good reason to think the weather might actually be turning.» — Pollan advierte que la exuberancia irracional es riesgo laboral en este campo, y aun así sostiene que en 2006 había razón para creer que el tiempo cambiaba; la reserva sobre sus propias fuentes es suya.

«This would represent a minuscule dose of any other drug, but LSD, it turns out, is one of the most potent» — Pollan explica por qué aquella dosis resultó enorme; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 24 con *psychoactive compounds ever discovered, active at doses measured in micrograms*.

«Hofmann came back from his trip convinced, first, that LSD had» — Pollan enuncia la primera de las dos convicciones con que Hofmann volvió; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 25 con *somehow found him rather than the other way around*.

«somehow found him rather than the other way around and, second, that LSD would someday be of great value to medicine and especially psychiatry, possibly by offering researchers a model of schizophrenia.» — la segunda convicción que Pollan atribuye a Hofmann, que el LSD serviría a la medicina y en especial a la psiquiatría como modelo de esquizofrenia; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 24.

«During the weekend symposium following the observation of Hofmann’s birthday, researchers from a variety of disciplines— including neuroscience, psychiatry, pharmacology, and consciousness studies, as well as the arts—explored the impact of Hofmann’s invention on society and culture and its potential for expanding our» — Pollan inventaria las disciplinas reunidas en el simposio de Basilea; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 26 con *understanding of consciousness and treating several intractable mental disorders*.

«THE SECOND WATERSHED EVENT of 2006 came only five weeks later when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision written by the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., ruled that the UDV, a tiny religious sect that uses a hallucinogenic tea called ayahuasca as its sacrament, could import the drink to the United States, even though it contains the schedule 1 substance dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.» — el segundo de los tres sucesos de 2006: el fallo unánime de la Corte Suprema, escrito por John G. Roberts Jr., que permitió a la secta UDV importar la ayahuasca pese a contener DMT, sustancia de lista 1.

«The ruling was based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which had sought to clarify the right (under the First Amendment’s religious freedom clause) of Native Americans to use peyote in their ceremonies, as they have done for generations.» — Pollan remite el fallo a la ley de restauración de la libertad religiosa de 1993, nacida para el uso del peyote por los pueblos nativos.

«The 1993 law says that only if the government has a “compelling interest” can it interfere with one’s practice of religion.» — la prueba legal que Pollan cita de esa ley: solo un interés imperioso del Estado permite interferir en la práctica religiosa.

«In the UDV case, the Bush administration had argued that only Native Americans, because of their “unique relationship” to the government, had the right» — Pollan reporta el argumento del gobierno de Bush, que reservaba ese derecho a los pueblos nativos por su relación singular con el Estado; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 26 con *could be abridged by the state*.

«The Court soundly rejected the government’s argument, interpreting the 1993 law to mean that, absent a compelling state interest, the federal government cannot prohibit a recognized religious group from using psychedelic substances in their observances.» — Pollan resume la interpretación de la Corte: sin interés imperioso, el gobierno federal no puede prohibir a un grupo religioso reconocido el uso de estas sustancias en su culto.

«Evidently, this includes relatively new and tiny religious groups specifically organized around a psychedelic sacrament, or “plant medicine,” as the ayahuasqueros call their tea.» — Pollan extiende el alcance del fallo a grupos nuevos y pequeños organizados alrededor de un sacramento psicodélico, y da el término con que los ayahuasqueros llaman su bebida.

«The UDV is a Christian spiritist sect founded in 1961 in Brazil by José Gabriel da Costa, a rubber tapper inspired by revelations he experienced after receiving ayahuasca from an Amazonian shaman two years before.» — Pollan describe a la UDV como secta espiritista cristiana fundada en 1961 en Brasil por José Gabriel da Costa, y data su revelación tras recibir ayahuasca de un chamán amazónico.

«The church claims 17,000 members in six countries, but at the time of the ruling there were only 130 American members of the UDV.» — las cifras que Pollan reporta, con la reclamada por la iglesia distinguida de la de miembros estadounidenses al tiempo del fallo.

«The initials stand for União do Vegetal, or Union of the Plants, because ayahuasca is made by brewing together two Amazonian plant species, Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis.» — Pollan explica el nombre de la iglesia por las dos especies amazónicas con que se cuece la bebida, y da sus nombres científicos.

«But the number of Americans participating in ayahuasca ceremonies outside the UDV has also mushroomed in the years since, and any given night there are probably dozens if not hundreds of ceremonies taking place somewhere in America (with concentrations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Brooklyn» — Pollan estima por decenas o centenas las ceremonias nocturnas fuera de la UDV y señala sus dos concentraciones; la estimación va con su marca de probabilidad.

«Federal prosecutions for possession or importation of ayahuasca appear to have stopped, at least for the time being.» — Pollan consigna el cese aparente de los procesos federales, con doble atenuante.

«With its 2006 decision, the Supreme Court seems to have opened up a religious path—narrow, perhaps, but firmly rooted in the Bill of Rights—to the legal recognition of psychedelic drugs, at least when they’re being used as a sacrament by a religious community.» — Pollan lee el fallo como apertura de una vía religiosa al reconocimiento legal de estas sustancias, angosta pero arraigada en la carta de derechos.

«It remains to be seen how wide or well trod that path will become, but it does make you wonder what the government, and the Court, will do when an American José Gabriel da Costa steps forward and attempts to turn his or her own psychedelic revelations into a new religion intent on using a psychoactive chemical as its sacrament.» — Pollan deja abierta la pregunta de qué hará el Estado cuando alguien quiera convertir sus propias revelaciones en religión nueva con sacramento psicoactivo.

«The jurisprudence of “cognitive liberty,” as some in the psychedelic community call it, is still scant and limited (to religion), but now it had been affirmed, opening a new crack in the edifice of the drug war.» — Pollan nombra libertad cognitiva al término que usa parte de la comunidad psicodélica, lo acota como escaso y limitado a lo religioso, y cierra con la imagen de la grieta en el edificio de la guerra contra las drogas.

«OF THE THREE 2006 EVENTS that helped bring psychedelics out of their decades-long slumber, by far the most far-reaching in its impact was the publication that summer of the paper in Psychopharmacology described in the prologue» — Pollan jerarquiza los tres sucesos y da por el de mayor alcance la publicación del artículo en Psychopharmacology.

«This event, too, had a distinctly spiritual cast, even though the experiment it reported was the work of a rigorous and highly regarded scientist: Roland Griffiths.» — Pollan nombra a Roland Griffiths y marca la tensión que le interesa: un experimento de sesgo espiritual hecho por un científico riguroso.

«It just so happens that Griffiths, a most unlikely psychedelic researcher, was inspired to investigate the power of psilocybin to occasion a “mystical-type” experience by a mystical experience of his own.» — Pollan declara el origen del estudio en una experiencia mística del propio Griffiths, que es el dato que estructura el capítulo.

«Griffiths’s landmark paper, “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance,” was the first rigorously designed, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study in more than four decades—if not ever—to examine the psychological effects of a psychedelic.» — Pollan clasifica el artículo como el primer estudio clínico riguroso, doble ciego y con control de placebo en más de cuatro décadas, y deja la duda entre guiones sobre si hubo alguno antes.

«It received a small torrent of press coverage, most of it so enthusiastic as to make you wonder if the moral panic around psychedelics that took hold in the late 1960s might finally have run its course.» — Pollan reporta el entusiasmo de la cobertura y lo lee como señal de que el pánico moral de fines de los sesenta podía haberse agotado.

«All of the commentators treated the publication as a major event.» — Pollan resume la recepción entre los comentaristas invitados.

«Herbert D. Kleber, a former deputy to William Bennett, George H. W. Bush’s drug czar, and later director of the Division on Substance Abuse at Columbia University, applauded the paper for its methodological rigor and acknowledged there might be “major therapeutic possibilities” in psychedelic research “merit[ing] NIH support.”» — según Pollan, Herbert D. Kleber, antiguo adjunto del zar antidrogas de Bush padre y luego director en Columbia, elogió el rigor metodológico y admitió posibilidades terapéuticas mayores dignas de apoyo federal; el corchete de la cita es del original.

«Charles “Bob” Schuster, who had served two Republican presidents as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), noted that the term “psychedelic” implies a mind-expanding experience and expressed his “hope that this landmark paper will also be ‘field expanding.’” He suggested that this “fascinating” class of drugs, and the spiritual experience they occasion, might prove useful in treating addiction.» — según Pollan, Charles Schuster, exdirector del instituto nacional sobre abuso de drogas, jugó con el sentido del término psicodélico al desear que el artículo expandiera el campo, y apuntó al tratamiento de la adicción.

«Griffiths’s paper and its reception served to reinforce an important distinction between the so-called classical psychedelics—psilocybin, LSD, DMT, and mescaline—and the more common drugs of abuse, with their demonstrated toxicity and potential for addiction.» — la distinción que Pollan ve reforzada por aquel artículo: los psicodélicos clásicos —psilocibina, LSD, DMT y mescalina— frente a las drogas de abuso con toxicidad y potencial adictivo ya medidos.

«The American drug research establishment, such as it is, had signaled in the pages of one of its leading journals that these psychedelic drugs deserved to be treated very differently and had demonstrated, in the words of one commentator, “that, when used appropriately, these compounds can produce remarkable, possibly beneficial, effects that certainly deserve further study.”» — Pollan cita a uno de los comentaristas sin nombrarlo sobre los efectos notables y posiblemente benéficos de estos compuestos usados apropiadamente; los dos atenuantes están dentro de la cita.

«The story of how this paper came to be sheds an interesting light on the fraught relationship between science and that other realm of human inquiry that science has historically disdained and generally wants nothing to do with: spirituality.» — Pollan enuncia el asunto de fondo del capítulo: la relación tensa entre la ciencia y la espiritualidad, que dice históricamente desdeñada por aquella.

«For in designing this, the first modern study of psilocybin, Griffiths had decided to focus not on a potential therapeutic application of the drug—the path taken by other researchers hoping to rehabilitate other banned substances, like MDMA—but rather on the spiritual effects of the experience on so-called healthy normals.» — Pollan destaca la decisión de diseño de Griffiths: no una aplicación terapéutica sino los efectos espirituales en voluntarios sanos, al revés de quienes rehabilitaban el MDMA.

«In an editorial accompanying Griffiths’s paper, the University of Chicago psychiatrist and drug abuse expert Harriet de Wit tried to address this tension, pointing out that the quest for experiences that “free oneself of the bounds of everyday perception and thought in a search for universal truths and enlightenment” is an abiding element of our humanity that has nevertheless “enjoyed little credibility in the mainstream scientific world.”» — según Pollan, la psiquiatra Harriet de Wit escribió en el editorial que la búsqueda de experiencias que liberen de los límites de la percepción ordinaria es elemento permanente de lo humano y ha gozado de poca credibilidad científica.

«ROLAND GRIFFITHS might be the last scientist one would ever imagine getting mixed up with psychedelics, which surely helps explain his success in returning psychedelic research to scientific respectability.» — Pollan sostiene que lo improbable del personaje explica su éxito en devolver respetabilidad científica a esta investigación.

«Six feet tall and rail thin, Griffiths, in his seventies, holds himself bolt upright; the only undisciplined thing about him is a thatch of white hair so dense it appears to have held his comb to a draw. At least until you get him talking about the ultimate questions, which light him up, he comes across as the ultimate straight arrow: sober, earnest, and methodical.» — el retrato que Pollan hace de Griffiths, con la salvedad de lo que lo enciende, las preguntas últimas.

«Born in 1944, Griffiths grew up in El Cerrito, California, in the Bay Area, and went to Occidental College for his undergraduate education (majoring in psychology) and then on to the University of Minnesota to study psychopharmacology.» — Pollan da la formación de Griffiths, de la psicología en Occidental a la psicofarmacología en Minnesota.

«At Minnesota in the late 1960s, he came under the influence of B. F. Skinner, the radical behaviorist who helped shift the focus of psychology from the exploration of inner states and subjective experience to the study of outward behavior and how it is conditioned.» — según Pollan, Griffiths se formó bajo la influencia de B. F. Skinner y del conductismo radical, que desplazó el foco de los estados internos a la conducta observable.

«Behaviorism has little interest in plumbing the depths of the human psyche, but the approach proved very useful in studying behaviors like drug use and dependence, which became Griffiths’s specialty.» — Pollan señala la paradoja de partida: el conductismo no sondea la psique, y sin embargo sirvió para estudiar el uso y la dependencia de drogas.

«Psychedelic drugs played no role in either his formal or his informal education. By the time Griffiths got to graduate school, Timothy Leary’s notorious psychedelic research project at Harvard had already collapsed in scandal, and “it was clear from my mentors that these were compounds that had no future.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths dice que sus maestros daban estos compuestos por acabados, tras el escándalo del proyecto de Leary en Harvard.

«In 1972, right out of graduate school, Griffiths was hired at Johns Hopkins, where he has worked ever since, making his mark as a researcher studying the mechanisms of dependence in a variety of legal and illegal drugs, including the opiates, the so-called sedative hypnotics (like Valium), nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine.» — Pollan data el ingreso de Griffiths a Johns Hopkins y enumera las sustancias cuya dependencia estudió.

«Working under grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Griffiths helped pioneer the sorts of experiments in which an animal, often a baboon or a rat, is presented with a lever allowing it to self-administer various drugs intravenously, a powerful tool for researchers studying reinforcement, dependence, preferences (lunch or more cocaine?), and withdrawal.» — Pollan describe los experimentos de autoadministración con palanca que Griffiths ayudó a abrir camino, con el paréntesis sobre la preferencia entre comida y cocaína.

«The fifty-five papers he published exploring the addictive properties of caffeine transformed the field, helping us to see coffee less as a food than as a drug, and led to the listing of “caffeine withdrawal” syndrome in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM 5.» — según Pollan, los cincuenta y cinco artículos de Griffiths sobre la cafeína llevaron a ver el café menos como alimento que como droga y a listar el síndrome de abstinencia en el DSM 5.

«But that year Griffiths’s career took an unexpected turn, the result of two serendipitous introductions.» — Pollan fecha en los cincuenta años de Griffiths el giro de su carrera y lo atribuye a dos presentaciones fortuitas.

«The first came when a friend introduced him to Siddha Yoga.» — la primera de esas dos presentaciones, según Pollan: el Siddha Yoga.

«Despite his behaviorist orientation as a scientist, Griffiths had always been interested in what philosophers call phenomenology—the subjective experience of consciousness.» — Pollan atribuye a Griffiths un interés de siempre por la fenomenología, pese a su formación conductista.

«He had tried meditation as a graduate student but found that “he couldn’t sit still without going stark-raving mad. Three minutes felt like three hours.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths había abandonado la meditación de estudiante por no poder estarse quieto.

«But when he tried it again in 1994, “something opened up for me.” He started meditating regularly, going on retreats, and working his way through a variety of Eastern spiritual traditions. He found himself drawn “deeper and deeper into this mystery.”» — según Pollan, en 1994 la meditación se le abrió a Griffiths y de ahí pasó a recorrer varias tradiciones espirituales orientales.

«Somewhere along the way, Griffiths had what he modestly describes as “a funny kind of awakening”—a mystical experience.» — Pollan nombra experiencia mística lo que Griffiths llamó con modestia una especie de despertar raro.

«I was surprised when Griffiths mentioned this during our first meeting in his office, so I hadn’t followed up, but even after I had gotten to know him a little better, Griffiths was still reluctant to say much more about exactly what happened and, as someone who had never had such an experience, I had trouble gaining any traction with the idea whatsoever.» — Pollan confiesa su propia incapacidad de asir la idea por no haber tenido nunca una experiencia así, y consigna la reticencia de Griffiths a contarla.

«All he would tell me is that the experience, which took place in his meditation practice, acquainted him with “something way, way beyond a material worldview that I can’t really talk to my colleagues about, because it involves metaphors or assumptions that I’m really uncomfortable with as a scientist.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths solo dijo que aquello lo puso en contacto con algo muy más allá de una visión material del mundo, de lo que no puede hablar con sus colegas porque exige metáforas que como científico le incomodan.

«In time, what he was learning about “the mystery of consciousness and existence” in his meditation practice came to seem more compelling to him than his science.» — según Pollan, el misterio de la consciencia y la existencia acabó pesándole a Griffiths más que su propia ciencia.

«He began to feel somewhat alienated: “None of the people I was close to had any interest in entertaining those questions, which fell into the general category of the spiritual, and religious people I just didn’t get.» — según Pollan, Griffiths quedó entre dos silencios: ni sus allegados entraban en esas preguntas ni él entendía a los religiosos.

«Here I am, a full professor, publishing like crazy, running off to important meetings, and thinking I was a fraud.”» — la frase con que Griffiths, según Pollan, se describió a sí mismo en aquel periodo.

«He began to lose interest in the research that had organized his whole adult life. “I could study a new sedative hypnotic, learn something new about brain receptors, be on another FDA [Food and Drug Administration] panel, go to another conference, but so what? I was more emotionally and intellectually curious about where this other path might lead. My drug research began to seem vacuous. I was going through the motions at work, much more interested in going home in the evening to meditate.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths describe cómo su investigación le fue pareciendo vacua frente a la otra vía.

«The only way he could motivate himself to continue writing grants was to think of it as a “service project” for his graduate students and postdocs.» — según Pollan, Griffiths solo se sostenía escribiendo solicitudes de financiamiento como servicio a sus estudiantes.

«But he could see no way to do that with his deepening curiosity about the dimensions of consciousness that meditation had opened up to him. “It never occurred to me there was any way to study it scientifically.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths no veía manera de hacer lo mismo con lo que la meditación le había abierto.

«The Court’s decision inspired something of a religious awakening around ayahuasca in America. Today there are close to 525 American» — Pollan atribuye al fallo un despertar religioso alrededor de la ayahuasca en Estados Unidos; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 27 con *members of the church, with communities in nine locations*.

«No doubt the positive tenor of the coverage owed much to the fact that, at» — Pollan atribuye el tono de la cobertura a una maniobra del propio Griffiths; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 28 con *Griffiths’s urging, the journal had invited several of the world’s most prominent drug researchers*.

«some of them decorated soldiers in the drug war—to comment on the study, giving the journalists covering the study plenty of ideological cover.» — según Pollan, entre los comentaristas invitados había soldados condecorados de la guerra contra las drogas, y eso dio cobertura ideológica a los periodistas; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 27.

«The time had come, she suggested, for science “to recognize these extraordinary subjective experiences . . .» — según Pollan, Harriet de Wit propuso que la ciencia reconociera esas experiencias subjetivas extraordinarias; los puntos suspensivos son del original y el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana, para seguir en la 29 con *even if they sometimes involve claims about ultimate realities that lie outside the purview of science*.

«In the case of his caffeine research, Griffiths had been able to take» — Pollan recuerda que con la cafeína Griffiths supo convertir una curiosidad sobre sí mismo en línea de investigación; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 31 con *his curiosity about a dimension of his own experience*.

«and bored, Griffiths began to entertain thoughts of quitting science and going off to an ashram in India.» — según Pollan, Griffiths llegó a pensar en dejar la ciencia y marcharse a un ashram en India; el tramo arranca a media frase porque el troceo reemite aquí la marca de la plana 31 y parte la palabra del otro lado.

«It was around this time that Bob Schuster, an old friend and colleague who had recently retired as head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, phoned Griffiths to suggest he talk to a young man he had recently met at Esalen named Bob Jesse.» — la segunda presentación fortuita que Pollan cuenta: Schuster pone en contacto a Griffiths con Bob Jesse, a quien había conocido en Esalen.

«Jesse had organized a small gathering of researchers, therapists, and religious scholars at the legendary Big Sur retreat center to discuss the spiritual and therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs and how they might be rehabilitated.» — según Pollan, Jesse había reunido en Big Sur a investigadores, terapeutas y estudiosos de la religión para hablar del potencial espiritual y terapéutico de estas sustancias.

«Jesse himself was neither a medical professional nor a scientist; he was a computer engineer, a vice president of business development at Oracle, who had made it his mission to revive the science of psychedelics—but as a tool not so much of medicine as of spiritual development.» — Pollan describe a Jesse como ingeniero de cómputo y vicepresidente en Oracle cuya misión era revivir esta ciencia, y subraya el giro: como herramienta de desarrollo espiritual más que de medicina.

«They have some interesting ideas about working with entheogens,” he said. “You might have something in common.”» — según Pollan, Schuster usó el término enteógenos al recomendarle a Griffiths que hablara con aquel grupo; el término es el que el prólogo dice haber descartado.

«WHEN THE HISTORY of second-wave psychedelic research is written, Bob Jesse will be seen as one of a pair of scientific outsiders in America— amateurs, really, and brilliant eccentrics—who worked tirelessly, often behind the scenes, to get it off the ground.» — Pollan adjudica a dos aficionados de fuera de la ciencia el mérito de haber echado a andar la segunda ola de investigación.

«Both found their vocation in the wake of transformative psychedelic experiences that convinced them these substances had the potential to heal not only individuals but humankind as a whole and that the best path to their rehabilitation was by way of credible scientific research.» — Pollan atribuye a los dos la misma convicción, nacida de experiencias propias: que estas sustancias podían sanar a la humanidad entera y que la vía era la investigación científica creíble.

«In many cases, these untrained researchers dreamed up the experiments first and then found (and funded) the scientists to conduct them. Often you will find their names on the papers, usually in the last position.» — Pollan señala la inversión del orden habitual: los aficionados idearon y financiaron los experimentos, y su nombre aparece al final de los artículos.

«After experimenting with LSD as an undergraduate, and later with MDMA, Doblin decided his calling in life was to become a psychedelic therapist.» — según Pollan, Doblin decidió que su vocación era ser terapeuta psicodélico tras experimentar con LSD y MDMA.

«But after the banning of MDMA in 1985, that dream became unachievable without a change in federal laws and regulations, so he decided he’d better first get a doctorate in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.» — Pollan explica el rodeo de Doblin por el doctorado en políticas públicas como consecuencia de la prohibición.

«There, he mastered the intricacies of the FDA’s drug approval process, and in his dissertation plotted the laborious path to official acceptance that psilocybin and MDMA are now following.» — según Pollan, la tesis de Doblin trazó la ruta de aprobación que psilocibina y MDMA siguen hoy.

«Some of the memorabilia commemorates the time early in his career when Doblin decided the best way to end sectarian strife would be to mail a group of the world’s spiritual leaders tablets of MDMA, a drug famous for its ability to break down barriers between people and kindle empathy.» — según Pollan, Doblin envió por correo tabletas de MDMA a líderes espirituales del mundo con la idea de acabar con las disputas sectarias.

«Around the same time, he arranged to have a thousand doses of MDMA sent to people in the Soviet military who were working on arms control negotiations with President Reagan.» — el segundo envío que Pollan reporta de Doblin, a militares soviéticos que negociaban control de armas.

«For Doblin, winning FDA approval for the medical use of psychedelics—which he believes is now in view, for both MDMA and psilocybin—is a means to a more ambitious and still more controversial end: the incorporation of psychedelics into American society and culture, not just medicine.» — según Pollan, para Doblin la aprobación médica es medio de un fin más ambicioso, la incorporación de estas sustancias a la sociedad y la cultura.

«This of course is the same winning strategy followed by the campaign to decriminalize marijuana, in which promoting the medical uses of cannabis changed the drug’s image, leading to a more general public acceptance.» — Pollan pone la estrategia de Doblin en paralelo con la de la despenalización de la marihuana, donde el uso médico cambió la imagen de la droga.

«Not surprisingly, this sort of talk rankles more cautious heads in the community (Bob Jesse among them), but Rick Doblin is not one to soft-pedal his agenda or to even think about taking an interview off the record.» — Pollan consigna la discrepancia dentro de la propia comunidad, con Bob Jesse entre los cautos, y no la arbitra.

«MAPS has sponsored several small clinical trials that have demonstrated MDMA’s value in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.» — según Pollan, los ensayos patrocinados por MAPS mostraron el valor del MDMA en el estrés postraumático.

«Doblin defines psychedelics generously, so as to include MDMA and even cannabis, even though their mechanisms of action in the brain are very different from that of the classical psychedelics.» — Pollan registra que Doblin usa una definición amplia de psicodélico que incluye MDMA y cannabis, y marca que los mecanismos cerebrales difieren; es un desacuerdo de términos que el libro consigna sin resolver.

«Doblin believes fervently in the power of psychedelics to improve humankind by disclosing a spiritual dimension of consciousness we all share, regardless of our religious beliefs or lack thereof.» — la convicción que Pollan atribuye a Doblin: que estas sustancias mejoran a la humanidad al revelar una dimensión espiritual de la consciencia común a todos, con creencias religiosas o sin ellas.

«“Mysticism,” he likes to say, “is the antidote to fundamentalism.”» — la fórmula que Pollan atribuye a Doblin y que él repite a menudo.

«COMPARED WITH RICK DOBLIN, Bob Jesse is a monk.» — el contraste con que Pollan presenta a los dos aficionados, que organiza el resto del capítulo.

«Taut, press shy, and disposed to choose his words with a pair of tweezers, Jesse, now in his fifties, prefers to do his work out of public view, and preferably from the oneroom cabin where he lives by himself in the rugged hills north of San Francisco, off the grid except for a fast Internet connection.» — el retrato de Jesse que Pollan compone, con su cabaña de un cuarto al norte de San Francisco; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *oneroom* donde la fuente imprime *one-room*.

«“Bob Jesse is like the puppeteer,” Katherine MacLean told me.» — según Pollan, la psicóloga Katherine MacLean, que trabajó en el laboratorio de Griffiths de 2009 a 2013, llama titiritero a Jesse.

«He’s the visionary guy working behind the scenes.”» — el resto de lo que MacLean dice de Jesse, según Pollan.

«We spent the better part of an early spring day outdoors in his living room, sipping herbal tea and discussing his notably quieter campaign to restore psychedelics to respectability—a master plan in which Roland Griffiths plays a central role.» — Pollan declara el asunto de su entrevista con Jesse y su lugar en el plan que describe.

«I’m a little camera shy,” he began, “so please, no pictures or recordings of any kind.”» — la condición que Jesse puso a la entrevista, según Pollan; el libro la consigna porque explica por qué buena parte de lo que sigue va sin grabación.

«Not only does he choose his own words with great care, but he insists that you do too, so, for example, when I carelessly deployed the term “recreational use,” he stopped me in mid-sentence. “Maybe we need to reexamine that term. Typically, it is used to trivialize an experience. But why? In its literal meaning, the word ‘recreation’ implies something decidedly nontrivial. There is much more to be said, but let’s bookmark this topic for another time. Please go on.”» — según Pollan, Jesse objetó el término uso recreativo por trivializante y recordó el sentido literal de recreación; es una discusión de nomenclatura paralela a la del prólogo.

«My notes show that Jesse took our first conversation on and off the record half a dozen times.» — Pollan declara el límite de su propia fuente: media docena de veces la conversación salió del registro.

«Jesse grew up outside Baltimore and went to Johns Hopkins, where he studied computer science and electrical engineering.» — Pollan da la formación de Jesse y su paso por Johns Hopkins, la misma casa donde luego se haría el estudio.

«During this period, he came out of the closet and persuaded management to recognize the company’s first gay and lesbian employee group.» — según Pollan, Jesse salió del clóset y logró que Bell Labs reconociera su primer grupo de empleados gais y lesbianas.

«This achievement formed Bob Jesse’s political education, impressing on him the value of working behind the scenes without making a lot of noise or demanding credit.» — Pollan deriva de ese episodio la educación política de Jesse: trabajar tras bambalinas sin ruido ni crédito, que es como opera en el resto del libro.

«Jesse moved to Oracle, and the Bay Area, in 1990, becoming employee number 8766—not one of the first, but early enough to have acquired a chunk of stock in the company.» — Pollan da el número de empleado de Jesse en Oracle y la participación accionaria que le permitió después dejar el puesto.

«Jesse’s curiosity about psychedelics was first piqued during a drug education unit in his high school science class. This particular class of drugs was neither physically nor psychologically addictive, he was told (correctly); his teacher went on to describe the drugs’ effects, including shifts in consciousness and visual perception that Jesse found intriguing. “I could sense there was even more here than they were telling us,” he recalled. “So I made a mental note.”» — según Pollan, la curiosidad de Jesse nació en una clase escolar de educación sobre drogas, y él mismo marca entre paréntesis que lo que ahí se le dijo era correcto.

«But he would not be ready to see for himself what psychedelics were all about until much later. Why? He answered in the third person: “A closeted gay kid might be afraid of what might come out if he let his guard down.”» — según Pollan, Jesse explica en tercera persona por qué tardó: un chico gay en el clóset teme lo que salga al bajar la guardia.

«It was during one of these Saturday afternoon experiments, in an apartment in Baltimore, that Jesse, twenty-five years old and having ingested a high dose of LSD, had a powerful “non-dual experience” that would prove transformative.» — Pollan data la experiencia no dual de Jesse a los veinticinco años, con dosis alta de LSD, y la da por transformadora.

«I was lying on my back underneath a ficus tree,” he recalls.» — Pollan cede la palabra a Jesse para el relato del episodio; lo que sigue es su testimonio, que el libro reporta sin afirmarlo ni negarlo.

«And the point came where the little I still was just started slipping away.» — según Pollan, Jesse describe el desprendimiento del poco yo que quedaba.

«What opened up before me was, for lack of a better word, a space, but not our ordinary concept of space, just the pure awareness of a realm without form and void of content.» — según Pollan, Jesse describe lo que se le abrió como un espacio que no es el ordinario, un ámbito sin forma y sin contenido, y declara que la palabra le queda corta.

«And into that realm came a celestial entity, which was the emergence of the physical world. It was like the big bang, but without the boom or the blinding light. It was the birth of the physical universe.» — según Pollan, Jesse narra la emergencia del mundo físico como un big bang sin estruendo ni luz cegadora.

«I was a diffusely located observer. I was coextensive with this emergence.» — según Pollan, Jesse se sitúa a sí mismo en aquello como observador difusamente localizado y coextensivo con esa emergencia.

«I’m hesitating because the words are an awkward fit; words seem too constraining.”» — Pollan registra la dificultad de Jesse con las palabras, y la comenta en la línea siguiente como marca de la experiencia mística.

«Ineffability is of course a hallmark of the mystical experience.» — Pollan nombra la inefabilidad como una de las marcas de la experiencia mística, categoría que toma de William James.

«There was no terror, only fascination and awe.” Pause. “Um, maybe a little fear.”» — según Pollan, Jesse enmienda sobre la marcha su propia respuesta; el libro conserva la pausa y la enmienda.

«From here on, Jesse watched (or whatever you call it) the birth of . . . everything, in the unfolding of an epic sequence beginning with the appearance of cosmic dust leading to the creation of the stars and then the solar systems, followed by the emergence of life and from there the arrival of “what we call humans,” then the acquisition of language and the unfolding of awareness» — según Pollan, Jesse narra una secuencia épica del polvo cósmico a las estrellas, los sistemas solares, la vida y lo que llama humanos; el paréntesis con que Pollan duda del verbo es suyo.

«What stands out most for me is the quality of the awareness I experienced, something entirely distinct from what I’ve come to regard as Bob.» — según Pollan, lo que a Jesse le queda de aquello es la cualidad de la conciencia experimentada, distinta de lo que él tiene por sí mismo.

«To the extent I regard the experience as veridical—and about that I’m still not sure—it tells me that consciousness is primary to the physical universe. In fact, it precedes it.”» — según Pollan, Jesse deriva de aquello que la consciencia es primaria respecto del universo físico y que lo precede, y en la misma frase declara que no está seguro de que la experiencia sea verídica; la reserva va dentro de la cita.

«I asked him if he agreed with something I’d read the Dalai Lama had said, that the idea that brains create consciousness—an idea accepted without question by most scientists—“is a metaphysical assumption, not a scientific fact.”» — Pollan trae de segunda mano una frase que atribuye al Dalai Lama, según la cual que el cerebro produzca la consciencia es supuesto metafísico y no hecho científico; declara que la leyó, sin dar la fuente.

«“Bingo,” Jesse said. “And for someone with my orientation”— agnostic, enamored of science—“that changes everything.”» — según Pollan, Jesse suscribe esa formulación y dice que a alguien de su orientación, agnóstico y enamorado de la ciencia, eso se lo cambia todo.

«Doblin founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) all the way back in the dark days of 1986 —the year after MDMA was made illegal and a time when most wiser» — Pollan data en 1986 la fundación de MAPS por Rick Doblin, un año después de la prohibición del MDMA; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 32 con *heads were convinced that restarting research into psychedelics was a cause beyond hopeless*.

«In his twenties, while working at Bell Labs, Jesse fell in with a group of friends in Baltimore who decided, in a most deliberate way, to experiment with psyche» — según Pollan, Jesse experimentó en Baltimore con un grupo que procedía de manera deliberada; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 35 con *Someone would always remain “close to ground level”*.

«consciousness exists outside the brain? He’s not certain. “But to go from being very sure that the opposite is true”—that consciousness is the product of our gray matter—“to be unsure is an immense shift.”» — según Pollan, Jesse no afirma que la consciencia exista fuera del cerebro: dice que pasar de la certeza contraria a la incertidumbre ya es un vuelco inmenso; el tramo arranca a media pregunta porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 35.

«HERE’S WHAT I DON’T GET about an experience like Bob Jesse’s: Why in the world would you ever credit it at all? I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t simply file it under “interesting dream” or “drug-induced fantasy.”» — Pollan declara su propia objeción de escéptico ante el testimonio de Jesse, y dice que no entendía por qué no archivarlo como sueño interesante o fantasía inducida.

«But along with the feeling of ineffability, the conviction that some profound objective truth has been disclosed to you is a hallmark of the mystical experience, regardless of whether it has been occasioned by a drug, meditation, fasting, flagellation, or sensory deprivation.» — Pollan enumera las vías por las que se llega a esa convicción de verdad objetiva —droga, meditación, ayuno, flagelación, privación sensorial— y sostiene que la marca es la misma en todas.

«William James gave a name to this conviction: the noetic quality.» — Pollan toma de William James el nombre de esa marca, la cualidad noética.

«People feel they have been let in on a deep secret of the universe, and they cannot be shaken from that conviction.» — la descripción que Pollan da de la cualidad noética: la sensación de que se ha sido admitido a un secreto profundo del universo, y la imposibilidad de disuadir de ello.

«As James wrote, “Dreams cannot stand this test.”» — la frase de James que Pollan cita contra la reducción del episodio a un sueño.

«I can think of a couple of ways to account for such a phenomenon, neither entirely satisfying.» — Pollan anuncia dos explicaciones posibles y declara de entrada que ninguna lo satisface del todo; el libro las deja coexistiendo sin arbitrar.

«The most straightforward and yet hardest to accept explanation is that it’s simply true: the altered state of consciousness has opened the person up to a truth that the rest of us, imprisoned in ordinary waking consciousness, simply cannot see.» — la primera explicación que Pollan pone sobre la mesa: que sea sencillamente cierto, y que el estado alterado abra a una verdad invisible desde la vigilia.

«Science has trouble with this interpretation, however, because, whatever the perception is, it can’t be verified by its customary tools. It’s an anecdotal report, in effect, and so has no value.» — Pollan explica por qué la ciencia no puede con esa lectura: la percepción no se verifica con sus herramientas y queda como reporte anecdótico.

«Science has little interest in, and tolerance for, the testimony of the individual; in this it is, curiously, much like an organized religion, which has a big problem crediting direct revelation too.» — Pollan iguala en este punto a la ciencia y a la religión organizada: ninguna de las dos acredita el testimonio individual ni la revelación directa.

«But it’s worth pointing out that there are cases where science has no choice but to rely on individual testimony—as in the study of subjective consciousness, which is inaccessible to our scientific tools and so can only be described by the person experiencing it.» — Pollan acota su propio argumento: hay un caso en que la ciencia depende del testimonio individual, el de la consciencia subjetiva.

«Here phenomenology is the all-important data. However, this is not the case when ascertaining truths about the world outside our heads.» — Pollan pone el límite a esa concesión: la fenomenología es el dato decisivo para la consciencia, no para verdades sobre el mundo de fuera.

«This points to the second possible explanation for the noetic sense: when our sense of a subjective “I” disintegrates, as it often does in a high-dose psychedelic experience (as well as in meditation by experienced meditators), it becomes impossible to distinguish between what is subjectively and objectively true.» — la segunda explicación de Pollan: que al desintegrarse el yo subjetivo se vuelve imposible distinguir lo subjetivamente verdadero de lo objetivamente verdadero.

«What’s left to do the doubting if not your I?» — la pregunta con que Pollan cierra esa segunda explicación.

«Living in San Francisco in the early 1990s, he got involved in the rave scene and discovered that the “collective effervescence” of the best all-night dance parties, with or without psychedelic “materials,” could also dissolve the “subject-object duality” and open up new spiritual vistas.» — según Pollan, Jesse halló en las fiestas de baile toda la noche, con sustancias o sin ellas, la misma disolución de la dualidad sujeto-objeto; las palabras entrecomilladas son las que Jesse usa.

«He began to explore various spiritual traditions, from Buddhism to Quakerism to meditation, and found his priorities in life gradually shifting.» — según Pollan, Jesse recorrió el budismo, el cuaquerismo y la meditación, y sus prioridades se le fueron desplazando.

«It began to occur to me that spending time in this area might actually be far more important and far more fulfilling than what I had been doing” as a computer engineer.» — la frase con que Jesse, según Pollan, explica el cambio de oficio.

«While on a sabbatical from Oracle (he would leave for good in 1995), Jesse set up a nonprofit called the Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP), with the aim of “making direct experience of the sacred more available to more people.”» — Pollan data la fundación del Council on Spiritual Practices y cita su objetivo declarado, hacer más accesible la experiencia directa de lo sagrado.

«The website downplays the organization’s interest in promoting entheogens—Bob Jesse’s preferred term for psychedelics—but does describe its mission in suggestive terms: “to identify and develop approaches to primary religious experience that can be used safely and effectively.”» — Pollan señala que el sitio atenúa el interés de la organización en los enteógenos —término que declara preferido por Jesse— y cita la misión en los términos sugerentes con que está escrita.

«CSP would also play a role in supporting the UDV lawsuit that resulted in the 2006 Supreme Court decision.» — Pollan enlaza la organización de Jesse con el primero de los tres sucesos de 2006, el fallo de la Corte Suprema.

«In his highly deliberate, slightly obsessive, and scrupulously polite way, Jesse contacted the region’s numerous “psychedelic elders”—the rich cast of characters who had been deeply involved in research and therapy in the years before most of the drugs were banned in 1970, with the passing of the Controlled Substances Act, and the classification of LSD and psilocybin as schedule 1 substances with a high potential for abuse and no recognized medical use.» — Pollan describe cómo Jesse contactó a los ancianos psicodélicos de la bahía y data en 1970 la prohibición con la ley de sustancias controladas.

«In the early 1960s, there was at least as much psychedelic research going on around Stanford as there was at Harvard; it just didn’t have a character of the wattage of a Timothy Leary out talking about it.» — Pollan objeta el foco habitual en Harvard: dice que alrededor de Stanford había al menos tanta investigación, pero sin un personaje del voltaje de Leary que la publicitara.

«Then there was Fadiman’s colleague at the institute Myron Stolaroff, a prominent Silicon Valley electrical engineer who worked as a senior executive at Ampex, the magnetic recording equipment maker, until an LSD trip inspired him to give up engineering (much like Bob Jesse) for a career as a psychedelic researcher and therapist.» — según Pollan, el ejecutivo de Ampex Myron Stolaroff dejó la ingeniería por la investigación psicodélica tras un viaje de LSD, igual que Jesse.

«Jesse also found his way into the inner circle of Sasha and Ann Shulgin, legendary Bay Area figures who held weekly dinners for a community of therapists, scientists, and others interested in psychedelics.» — según Pollan, Jesse entró al círculo de Sasha y Ann Shulgin, que reunían semanalmente a terapeutas y científicos del ramo.

«Sasha Shulgin, who died in 2014, was a brilliant chemist who held a DEA license allowing him to synthesize novel psychedelic compounds, which he did in prodigious numbers.» — según Pollan, Shulgin tenía licencia de la DEA para sintetizar compuestos psicodélicos nuevos y lo hizo en cantidad.

«He also was the first to synthesize MDMA since it had been patented by Merck in 1912 and forgotten. Recognizing its psychoactive properties, he introduced the so-called empathogen to the Bay Area’s psychotherapy community. Only later, did it become the club drug known as Ecstasy.» — según Pollan, Shulgin resintetizó el MDMA patentado por Merck en 1912 y olvidado, y lo introdujo como empatógeno en la comunidad psicoterapéutica antes de que fuera droga de club.

«Jesse also befriended Huston Smith, the scholar of comparative religion, whose mind had been opened to the spiritual potential of psychedelics when, as an instructor/lecturer at MIT in 1962, he served as a volunteer in the Good Friday Experiment, from which he came away convinced that a mystical experience occasioned by a drug was no different from any other kind.» — según Pollan, el estudioso de religión comparada Huston Smith participó como voluntario en el Experimento del Viernes Santo de 1962 y salió convencido de que una experiencia mística ocasionada por una droga no difiere de cualquier otra.

«By way of these “elders” and his own reading, Jesse began unearthing the rich body of first-wave psychedelic research, much of which had been lost to science.» — Pollan describe el trabajo de Jesse como desenterramiento de un cuerpo de investigación perdido para la ciencia.

«He learned that there had been more than a thousand scientific papers on psychedelic drug therapy before 1965, involving more than forty thousand research subjects.» — las cifras que Pollan reporta de aquella primera ola: más de mil artículos antes de 1965 y más de cuarenta mil sujetos.

«Beginning in the 1950s and continuing into the early 1970s, psychedelic compounds had been used to treat a variety of conditions—including alcoholism, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety at the end of life—frequently with impressive results.» — Pollan enumera las condiciones tratadas en aquella primera ola y califica los resultados de impresionantes.

«But few of the studies were well controlled by modern standards, and some of them were compromised by the enthusiasm of the researchers involved.» — el límite que Pollan pone en la misma página a aquellos resultados: pocos estudios bien controlados y algunos viciados por el entusiasmo de quienes los hacían.

«Of even keener interest to Bob Jesse was the early research exploring the potential of psychedelics to contribute to what, in a striking phrase, he calls “the betterment of well people.”» — Pollan destaca la frase de Jesse sobre el mejoramiento de la gente sana, que es lo que distingue este programa del terapéutico.

«There had been studies in “healthy normals” of artistic and scientific creativity and spirituality.» — Pollan consigna que aquella primera ola ya había estudiado creatividad y espiritualidad en voluntarios sanos.

«In this double-blind experiment, twenty divinity students received a capsule of white powder during a Good Friday service at Marsh Chapel on the Boston University campus, ten of them containing psilocybin, ten an “active placebo”—in this case niacin, which creates a tingling sensation.» — el diseño del experimento según Pollan, con veinte estudiantes de teología y niacina como placebo activo.

«Eight of the ten students receiving psilocybin reported a powerful mystical experience, while only one in the control group did.» — el resultado que Pollan reporta de aquel experimento.

«Telling them apart was not difficult, rendering the double blind a somewhat hollow conceit: those on the placebo sat sedately in their pews while the others lay down or wandered about the chapel, muttering things like “God is everywhere” and “Oh, the Glory!”» — Pollan objeta el doble ciego de aquel experimento describiendo lo fácil que era distinguir los grupos; la objeción es suya y la sostiene con la escena.

«Pahnke concluded that the experiences of those who received the psilocybin were “indistinguishable from, if not identical with,” the classic mystical experiences reported in the literature.» — según Pollan, Pahnke sostuvo que aquellas experiencias eran indistinguibles de las místicas clásicas de la literatura, con la fórmula cauta entre comillas.

«Until the Good Friday Experiment,” he told an interviewer in 1996, “I had had no direct personal encounter with God.”» — la frase de Huston Smith que Pollan cita de una entrevista de 1996.

«In 1986, Rick Doblin conducted a follow-up study of the Good Friday Experiment in which he tracked down and interviewed all but one of the divinity students who received psilocybin at Marsh Chapel.» — Pollan data en 1986 el seguimiento de Doblin, que entrevistó a casi todos los estudiantes que recibieron psilocibina.

«Most reported that the experience had reshaped their lives and work in profound and enduring ways.» — lo que Doblin halló a veinticuatro años de distancia, según Pollan.

«However, Doblin found serious flaws in Pahnke’s published account: Pahnke had failed to mention that several subjects had struggled with acute anxiety during their experience.» — según Pollan, Doblin objetó el informe publicado de Pahnke por omitir la ansiedad aguda de varios sujetos.

«One had to be restrained and given an injection of Thorazine, a powerful antipsychotic, after he fled from the chapel and headed down Commonwealth Avenue, convinced he had been chosen to announce the news of the coming of the Messiah.» — el caso que Pollan reporta del seguimiento de Doblin, con el sujeto contenido e inyectado tras huir de la capilla convencido de haber sido elegido para anunciar la llegada del Mesías.

«In this and a second review of another Timothy Leary–supervised experiment, of recidivism at Concord State Prison, Doblin had raised troubling questions about the quality of the research done in the Harvard Psilocybin Project, suggesting that the enthusiasm of the experimenters had tainted the reported results.» — según Pollan, Doblin objetó también el estudio de reincidencia en la prisión de Concord y planteó que el entusiasmo de los experimentadores viciaba los resultados del Harvard Psilocybin Project.

«If this research were going to be revived and taken seriously, Jesse concluded, it would have to be done with considerably more rigor and objectivity. And yet the results of the Good Friday Experiment were highly suggestive and, as Bob Jesse and Roland Griffiths would soon decide, well worth trying to reproduce.» — la conclusión que Pollan atribuye a Jesse: rigor y objetividad mayores, y a la vez que valía la pena reproducir el Experimento del Viernes Santo.

«No doubt this is why some of the people who have such an experience go on to found religions, changing the course of history or, in a great many more cases, the course of their own lives. “No doubt” is the key.» — Pollan deriva de la cualidad noética el que algunos funden religiones, y señala enseguida su propia fórmula como la clave: lo decisivo es la certeza sin duda.

«The problem with crediting mystical experiences is precisely that» — Pollan localiza en la certeza sin duda la dificultad de acreditar estas experiencias; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 37 con *they often seem to erase the distinction between inside and outside*.

«James Fadiman, the Stanford-trained psychologist who had done pioneering research on psychedelics and problem solving at the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park, until the FDA halted the group’s work in 1966.» — según Pollan, James Fadiman había investigado psicodélicos y resolución de problemas en Menlo Park hasta que la FDA detuvo el trabajo en 1966; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 37.

«The most famous of these was the Good Friday, or Marsh Chapel, Experiment, conducted in 1962 by Walter Pahnke, a» — Pollan data el Experimento del Viernes Santo en 1962 y lo atribuye a Walter Pahnke; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 39 con *psychiatrist and minister working on a PhD dissertation at Harvard under Timothy Leary*.

«However, in this case, considerably less time had elapsed, so the knowledge remained in the brains of people still alive, like James Fadiman and Myron Stolaroff and Willis Harman (another Bay Area engineer turned psychedelic researcher), who merely had to be asked for it, and in scientific papers in libraries and databases, which merely had to be searched.» — Pollan acota su propia analogía: aquí el saber seguía en cabezas vivas y en artículos de biblioteca, y bastaba preguntar y buscar.

«But if there is a modern analogy to the medieval monastery where the world of classical thought was saved from oblivion, a place where the guttering flame of psychedelic knowledge was assiduously fanned during its own dark age, that place would have to be Esalen, the legendary retreat center in Big Sur, California.» — Pollan señala a Esalen como el monasterio moderno donde se atizó la llama del saber psicodélico durante su propia edad oscura.

«Perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific as if barely clinging to the continent, the Esalen Institute was founded in 1962 and ever since has been a center of gravity for the so-called human potential movement in America, serving as the unofficial capital of the New Age.» — Pollan data la fundación de Esalen en 1962 y lo llama capital no oficial de la Nueva Era y centro de gravedad del movimiento del potencial humano.

«Beginning in 1973, Stanislav Grof, the Czech émigré psychiatrist who is one of the pioneers of LSD-assisted psychotherapy, served as scholar in residence at Esalen, but he had conducted workshops there for years before.» — Pollan data la residencia de Stanislav Grof en Esalen y lo nombra uno de los pioneros de la psicoterapia asistida con LSD.

«Grof, who has guided thousands of LSD sessions, once predicted that psychedelics “would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology or the telescope is for astronomy. These tools make it possible to study important processes that under normal circumstances are not available for direct observation.”» — según Pollan, Grof predijo que estas sustancias serían para la psiquiatría lo que el microscopio para la biología y el telescopio para la astronomía, instrumentos para estudiar procesos que de otro modo no se observan.

«Hundreds came to Esalen to peer through that microscope, often in workshops Grof led for psychotherapists who wanted to incorporate psychedelics in their practices. Many if not most of the therapists and guides now doing this work underground learned their craft at the feet of Stan Grof in the Big House at Esalen.» — según Pollan, la mayoría de los terapeutas y guías que hoy trabajan en la clandestinidad aprendieron el oficio con Grof en Esalen.

«Grof began teaching instead something called holotropic breathwork, a technique for inducing a psychedelic state of consciousness without drugs, by means of deep, rapid, and rhythmic breathing, usually accompanied by loud drumming.» — según Pollan, Grof pasó a enseñar respiración holotrópica, técnica que induce un estado psicodélico sin droga mediante respiración profunda y rítmica con tambores.

«Yet Esalen’s role in the history of psychedelics did not end with their prohibition. It became the place where people hoping to bring these molecules back into the culture, whether as an adjunct to therapy or a means of spiritual development, met to plot their campaigns.» — Pollan define la función de Esalen tras la prohibición: el sitio donde se planearon las campañas para devolver estas moléculas a la cultura.

«There were signs that the door Washington, D.C., had slammed shut on research in the late 1960s might be opening, if only a crack: Curtis Wright, a new administrator at the FDA (and, as it happens, a former student of Roland Griffiths’s at Hopkins), had signaled that research protocols for psychedelics would be treated like any other—judged on their merits.» — según Pollan, el administrador de la FDA Curtis Wright señaló que los protocolos con psicodélicos se juzgarían por sus méritos como cualquier otro, y él había sido alumno de Griffiths.

«Testing this new receptivity, a psychiatrist at the University of New Mexico named Rick Strassman had sought and received approval to study the physiological effects of DMT, a powerful psychedelic compound found in many plants. This small trial marked the first federally sanctioned experiment with a psychedelic compound since the 1970s—in retrospect, a watershed event.» — según Pollan, la aprobación a Rick Strassman para estudiar los efectos fisiológicos del DMT fue el primer experimento con un psicodélico sancionado federalmente desde los setenta.

«Around the same time, Rick Doblin and Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at UCLA, had succeeded in persuading the government to approve the first human trial of MDMA.» — según Pollan, Doblin y el psiquiatra Charles Grob lograron la aprobación del primer ensayo en humanos con MDMA.

«Grob is one of the first psychiatrists to advocate for the return of psychedelics to psychotherapy; he later conducted the first modern trial of psilocybin for cancer patients.» — Pollan acredita a Grob el primer ensayo moderno de psilocibina en enfermos de cáncer.

«The year before the Esalen gathering (which Grob and Doblin both attended), David Nichols, a Purdue University chemist and pharmacologist, launched the Heffter Research Institute (named for the German chemist who first identified the mescaline compound in 1897) with the then improbable ambition of funding serious psychedelic science.» — según Pollan, David Nichols fundó el Heffter Research Institute, nombrado por el químico alemán que identificó la mescalina en 1897, con la ambición entonces improbable de financiar ciencia psicodélica seria.

«So there were scattered hopeful signs in the early 1990s that conditions were ripening for a revival of psychedelic research. The tiny community that had sustained such a dream through the dark ages began, tentatively, quietly, to organize.» — Pollan resume el estado de cosas a principios de los noventa y describe cómo aquella comunidad diminuta empezó a organizarse.

«Most of the gathering was taken up with discussions of the potential medical applications of psychedelics, as well as the need for basic research on the neuroscience.» — Pollan reporta de qué se habló en la reunión de Esalen de 1994: aplicaciones médicas e investigación básica.

«Jesse was struck by the fact that so little attention was paid to the spiritual potential of these compounds.» — según Pollan, a Jesse le llamó la atención lo poco que se habló del potencial espiritual, y de ahí sale su propio programa.

«He left the meeting convinced that “okay, there is room to maneuver here. I was hoping one of these people would pick up the ball and run with it, but they were busy with the other ball. So I made a decision to seek a leave of absence from Oracle.”» — la frase con que Jesse, según Pollan, explica su decisión de dejar Oracle: nadie iba a tomar esa pelota.

«Fittingly, the gathering took place in the Maslow Room at Esalen, named for the psychologist whose writings on the hierarchy of human needs underscored the importance of “peak experiences” in selfactualization.» — Pollan hace notar el nombre de la sala y remite a Maslow y a sus experiencias cumbre en la autorrealización; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *selfactualization* donde la fuente imprime *self-actualization*.

«Most of the fifteen in attendance were “psychedelic elders,” therapists and researchers like James Fadiman and Willis Harman, Mark Kleiman, then a drug-policy expert at the Kennedy School (and Rick Doblin’s thesis tutor there), and religious figures like Huston Smith, Brother David Steindl-Rast, and Jeffrey Bronfman, the head of the UDV church in America (and heir to the Seagram’s liquor fortune» — Pollan inventaria a los quince de la reunión de 1996, entre ancianos psicodélicos, un experto en políticas de drogas y figuras religiosas, y nombra al cabeza de la UDV en Estados Unidos.

«But Jesse wisely decided to invite an outsider as well: Charles “Bob” Schuster, who had served both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.» — Pollan destaca la jugada de Jesse de invitar a un extraño, el exdirector del instituto nacional sobre abuso de drogas bajo dos presidentes republicanos.

«Exactly why Bob Schuster—a leading figure in the academic establishment undergirding the drug war—would be open to the idea of coming to Esalen to discuss the spiritual potential of psychedelics was a mystery, at least until I had the opportunity to speak to his widow, Chris-Ellyn Johanson.» — Pollan declara que solo resolvió el enigma de la apertura de Schuster hablando con su viuda, y así nombra su fuente.

«“Bob was open-minded to a fault,” she told me, with a laugh. “He would talk to anyone.”» — según Pollan, Chris-Ellyn Johanson describe a Schuster como abierto hasta el defecto.

«Like many people in the NIDA community, Schuster well understood that psychedelics fit awkwardly into the profile of a drug of abuse; animals, given the choice, will not self-administer a psychedelic more than once, and the classical psychedelics exhibit remarkably little toxicity.» — según Pollan, en la propia comunidad antidrogas se sabía que estas sustancias encajan mal en el perfil de droga de abuso: los animales no repiten y la toxicidad es escasa.

«I asked Johanson if Schuster had ever taken a psychedelic himself; Roland Griffiths had told me he thought it was possible. (“Bob was a jazz musician,” Griffiths told me, “so I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”) But Johanson said no. “He was definitely curious about them,” she told me, “but I think he was too afraid.» — Pollan consigna la divergencia entre sus dos fuentes sobre si Schuster probó alguna vez estas sustancias, y no la armoniza: Griffiths lo creía posible y la viuda lo niega.

«I asked if he was a spiritual man. “Not really, though I think he would have liked to have been.”» — lo que la viuda de Schuster responde sobre su vida espiritual, según Pollan.

«He warned Jesse off working with MDMA, which he believed was toxic to the brain and had by then acquired an unsavory reputation as a club drug.» — según Pollan, Schuster desaconsejó el MDMA por creerlo tóxico para el cerebro y por su fama de droga de club.

«He also suggested that psilocybin was a much better candidate for research than LSD, largely for political reasons: because so many fewer people had heard of it, psilocybin carried none of the political and cultural baggage of LSD.» — el consejo político que Pollan atribuye a Schuster: la psilocibina servía mejor que el LSD por ser menos conocida y no cargar con su lastre cultural.

«By the end of the meeting, the Esalen group had settled on a short list of objectives, some of them modest—to draft a code of ethics for spiritual guides—and others more ambitious: “to get aboveboard, unimpeachable research done, at an institution with investigators beyond reproach,” and, ideally, “do this without any pretext of clinical treatment.”» — los objetivos con que cerró la reunión de 1996 según Pollan, del código ético para guías a una investigación irreprochable y sin pretexto clínico.

«We weren’t sure that was possible,” Jesse told me, but he and his colleagues believed “it would be a big mistake if medicalization is all that happens.”» — según Pollan, Jesse temía que la medicalización fuera lo único que ocurriera.

«Why a mistake? Because Bob Jesse was ultimately less interested in people’s mental problems than with their spiritual well-being—in using entheogens for the betterment of well people.» — Pollan explica el motivo de Jesse: le importa menos el problema mental que el bienestar espiritual, el mejoramiento de la gente sana.

«Shortly after the Esalen meeting, Schuster made what would turn out to be his most important contribution: telling Bob Jesse about his old friend Roland Griffiths, whom he described as exactly “the investigator beyond reproach” Jesse was looking for and “a scientist of the first order.”» — según Pollan, la contribución mayor de Schuster fue presentarle a Jesse al investigador irreprochable que buscaba.

«Everything Roland’s done he’s devoted himself to completely,” Jesse recalls Schuster saying, “including his meditation practice. We think it’s changed him.”» — la frase que Jesse recuerda de Schuster sobre la práctica de meditación de Griffiths, según Pollan.

«After an exchange of e-mails, Jesse flew to Baltimore to have lunch with Griffiths in the cafeteria on the Bayview medical campus, inaugurating a series of conversations and meetings that would eventually lead to their collaboration on the 2006 study of psilocybin and mystical experience at Johns Hopkins.» — Pollan cierra la cadena de encuentros que lleva al estudio de 2006 en Johns Hopkins.

«BOB JESSE SPENT the early 1990s excavating the knowledge about psychedelics that had been lost when formal research was halted and» — Pollan describe el trabajo de Jesse en los primeros noventa como excavación de un saber perdido; el troceo reemite aquí la marca de la plana 39 y el tramo vuelve cortado, para seguir con *informal research went underground*.

«In this, he was a little like those Renaissance scholars who rediscovered the lost world of classical» — la analogía de Pollan entre Jesse y los eruditos del Renacimiento; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 40 con *thought in a handful of manuscripts squirreled away in monasteries*.

«Most of the drug trials Griffiths had run in the past involved baboons and other nonhuman primates; he had much less clinical experience working with humans and realized he needed a skilled therapist to join the project—a “master clinician,” as he put it.» — Pollan señala el hueco del equipo: Griffiths venía de trabajar con babuinos y necesitaba un clínico experto para tratar con personas.

«Still more fortuitous, this psychologist, whose name was Bill Richards, probably has more experience guiding psychedelic journeys in the 1960s and 1970s than anyone alive, with the possible exception of Stan Grof (with whom he had once worked» — Pollan presenta a Bill Richards como quien probablemente guió más viajes psicodélicos en los sesenta y setenta que nadie vivo, con la salvedad de Grof.

«In fact, Bill Richards administered the very last legal dose of psilocybin to an American, at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center at Spring Grove State Hospital in the spring of 1977.» — Pollan data en la primavera de 1977 la última dosis legal de psilocibina administrada a un estadounidense, por Richards en Spring Grove.

«In the decades since, he had been practicing more conventional psychotherapy out of his home in a leafy Baltimore neighborhood called Windsor Hills, biding his time and waiting patiently for the world to come around so that he might work with psychedelics once again.» — Pollan describe las décadas de espera de Richards practicando psicoterapia convencional en Baltimore.

«Bill Richards, a preternaturally cheerful man in his seventies, is a bridge between the two eras of psychedelic therapy.» — Pollan define la función de Richards en el relato: puente entre las dos épocas de la terapia psicodélica.

«Walter Pahnke was the best man at his wedding; he worked closely with Stan Grof at Spring Grove and visited Timothy Leary in Millbrook, New York, where Leary landed after his exile from Harvard.» — Pollan acredita los lazos de Richards con la primera ola: Pahnke padrino de su boda, trabajo con Grof en Spring Grove y visitas a Leary en Millbrook.

«Richards, who holds graduate degrees in both psychology and divinity, had his first psychedelic experience while a divinity student at Yale in 1963. He was spending the year studying in Germany, at the University of Göttingen, and found himself drawn to the Department of Psychiatry, where he learned about a research project involving a drug called psilocybin.» — Pollan data en 1963 la primera experiencia psicodélica de Richards, siendo estudiante de teología de Yale en Gotinga.

«I had no idea what that was, but two friends of mine had participated and had had interesting experiences.” One of them, whose father had been killed in the war, had regressed to childhood to find himself sitting on his father’s lap. The other had hallucinations of SS men marching in the street.» — según Pollan, Richards recuerda las dos experiencias de sus amigos que lo movieron a ofrecerse, una de regresión a la infancia y otra de alucinaciones de las SS.

«I had never had a decent hallucination,” Richards said with a chuckle, “and I was trying to get some insight into my childhood. In those days, I viewed my own mind as a psychological laboratory, so I decided to volunteer.» — según Pollan, Richards declara el motivo con que se ofreció como voluntario: veía su propia mente como laboratorio psicológico.

«A recipe for a bad trip, surely, but Richards had precisely the opposite experience.» — Pollan marca el contraste entre las condiciones y el resultado, que es lo que hace interesante el caso para su propio argumento sobre set y setting.

«I felt immersed in this incredibly detailed imagery that looked like Islamic architecture, with Arabic script, about which I knew nothing. And then I somehow became these exquisitely intricate patterns, losing my usual identity.» — según Pollan, Richards describe la imaginería de arquitectura islámica y escritura árabe, de la que dice no saber nada, y la pérdida de su identidad habitual.

«And all I can say is that the eternal brilliance of mystical consciousness manifested itself. My awareness was flooded with love, beauty, and peace beyond anything I ever had known or imagined to be possible. ‘Awe,’ ‘glory,’ and ‘gratitude’ were the only words that remained relevant.”» — según Pollan, Richards declara que su conciencia se inundó de amor, belleza y paz más allá de lo imaginable, y que solo tres palabras seguían sirviendo.

«Descriptions of such experiences always sound a little thin, at least when compared with the emotional impact people are trying to convey; for a life-transforming event, the words can seem paltry.» — Pollan objeta desde fuera la pobreza de estas descripciones frente al impacto que quieren transmitir; es su propia reserva de reportero.

«You have to imagine a caveman transported into the middle of Manhattan. He sees buses, cell phones, skyscrapers, airplanes. Then zap him back to his cave. What does he say about the experience? ‘It was big, it was impressive, it was loud.’» — según Pollan, Richards responde a esa objeción con el símil del hombre de las cavernas en Manhattan, que vuelve sin vocabulario para lo que vio.

«But there are words we need that don’t yet exist. We’ve got five crayons when we need fifty thousand different shades.» — la conclusión de Richards según Pollan: faltan palabras, y quedan cinco crayones donde harían falta cincuenta mil tonos.

«As the resident tapped his patellar tendon with his little rubber hammer, Richards remembers feeling “compassion for the infancy of science.» — según Pollan, Richards dice haber sentido compasión por la infancia de la ciencia mientras el residente le probaba los reflejos en pleno viaje.

«The researchers had no idea what really was happening in my inner experiential world, of its unspeakable beauty or of its potential importance for all of us.”» — la queja de Richards, según Pollan, de que los investigadores no supieran nada de su mundo interior ni de su posible importancia.

«A few days after the experience, Richards returned to the lab and asked, “What was that drug you gave me? How is it spelled? “And the rest of my life is footnotes!”» — la frase con que Richards, según Pollan, resume el efecto de aquel primer viaje sobre toda su vida.

«Yet after several subsequent psilocybin sessions failed to produce another mystical experience, Richards started to wonder if perhaps he had exaggerated that first trip.» — Pollan consigna la duda que el propio Richards se planteó al no repetirse la experiencia; la objeción viene del testigo y no de fuera.

«It was Richards who gave Pahnke his first psychedelic trip while the two were in Germany; he had apparently never taken LSD or psilocybin at Harvard, thinking it might compromise the objectivity of the Good Friday Experiment.» — según Pollan, Richards le dio a Pahnke su primer viaje en Alemania, y Pahnke no había tomado nada en Harvard por creer que comprometería la objetividad del Experimento del Viernes Santo.

«Pahnke suggested Richards try one more time, but in a room with soft lighting, plants, and music and using a higher dose. Once again, Richards had “an incredibly profound experience. I realized I had not exaggerated the first trip but in fact had forgotten 80 percent of it.» — según Pollan, la segunda sesión con luz suave, plantas, música y dosis mayor le mostró a Richards que no había exagerado sino olvidado la mayor parte; es un antecedente del protocolo que el libro describe después.

«I have never doubted the validity of these experiences,” Richards told me. “This was the realm of mystical consciousness that Shankara was talking about, that Plotinus was writing about, that Saint John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart were writing about.» — según Pollan, Richards no duda de la validez de esas experiencias y las identifica con la conciencia mística de la que hablaban Shankara, Plotino, san Juan de la Cruz y Meister Eckhart.

«It’s also what Abraham Maslow was talking about with his ‘peak experiences,’ though Abe could get there without the drugs.”» — según Pollan, Richards suma a Maslow y sus experiencias cumbre, y anota que él llegaba ahí sin drogas.

«Abe was a natural Jewish mystic. He could just lie down in the backyard and have a mystical experience. Psychedelics are for those of us who aren’t so innately gifted.”» — la fórmula de Richards según Pollan: los psicodélicos son para quienes no tienen ese don natural.

«Richards emerged from those first psychedelic explorations in possession of three unshakable convictions.» — Pollan anuncia las tres convicciones de Richards, que expone una a una.

«The first is that the experience of the sacred reported both by the great mystics and by people on high-dose psychedelic journeys is the same experience and is “real”—that is, not just a figment of the imagination.» — la primera convicción de Richards según Pollan: la experiencia de lo sagrado de los grandes místicos y la del viaje de dosis alta son la misma y son reales.

«You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It’s not something we generate; it’s something out there waiting to be discovered. And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers.”» — según Pollan, Richards sostiene que lo sagrado no se genera sino que está ahí esperando, y que el encuentro ocurre igual en creyentes y no creyentes.

«Second, that, whether occasioned by drugs or other means, these experiences of mystical consciousness are in all likelihood the primal basis of religion.» — la segunda convicción de Richards según Pollan: que estas experiencias son con toda probabilidad la base primordial de la religión; el atenuante está dentro de la frase.

«Partly for this reason Richards believes that psychedelics should be part of a divinity student’s education.» — la consecuencia práctica que Richards saca de esa segunda convicción, según Pollan.

«And third, that consciousness is a property of the universe, not brains.» — la tercera convicción de Richards según Pollan: que la consciencia es propiedad del universo y no de los cerebros.

«On this question, he holds with Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, who conceived of the human mind as a kind of radio receiver, able to tune in to frequencies of energy and information that exist outside it.» — según Pollan, Richards se apoya en Bergson y en su idea de la mente como receptor de radio sintonizado a frecuencias que existen fuera de ella.

«If you wanted to find the blonde who delivered the news last night,” Richards offered by way of an analogy, “you wouldn’t look for her in the TV set.” The television set is, like the human brain, necessary but not sufficient.» — el símil del televisor con que Richards ilustra esa tesis, según Pollan, y la fórmula con que Pollan la resume: necesario pero no suficiente.

«After Richards finished with his graduate studies in the late 1960s, he found work as a research fellow at the Spring Grove State Hospital outside Baltimore, where a most improbable counterfactual history of psychedelic research was quietly unfolding, far from the noise and glare surrounding Timothy Leary.» — Pollan llama historia contrafactual improbable a lo que ocurría en Spring Grove lejos del ruido de Leary.

«Indeed, this is a case where the force of the Leary narrative has bent the received history out of shape, such that many of us assume there was no serious psychedelic research before Leary arrived at Harvard and no serious research after he was fired.» — Pollan objeta el relato heredado: la fuerza de la narrativa de Leary deformó la historia recibida hasta hacer creer que no hubo investigación seria antes ni después de él.

«Several hundred patients and volunteers received psychedelic therapy at Spring Grove between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s.» — la cifra que Pollan da del programa de Spring Grove.

«In many cases, the researchers were getting very good results in well-designed studies that were being regularly published in peer-reviewed journals such as JAMA and the Archives of General Psychiatry.» — Pollan consigna que aquellos resultados se publicaban en revistas revisadas por pares y nombra dos.

«Roland Griffiths is of the opinion that much of this research is “suspect,” but Richards told me, “These studies weren’t as bad as people like Roland might imply.”» — Pollan pone frente a frente la sospecha de Griffiths sobre aquella investigación y la objeción de Richards, y deja el desacuerdo sin arbitrar.

«It is remarkable just how much of the work being done today, at Hopkins and NYU and other places, was prefigured at Spring Grove; indeed, it is hard to find a contemporary experiment with psychedelics that wasn’t already done in Maryland in the 1960s or 1970s.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre la continuidad: cuesta hallar un experimento contemporáneo que no estuviera ya prefigurado en Maryland.

«In 1965, CBS News broadcast an admiring hour-long “special report” on the hospital’s work with alcoholics, called LSD: The Spring Grove Experiment.» — Pollan data en 1965 el reportaje admirativo de CBS sobre el trabajo con alcohólicos, como prueba del apoyo público de entonces.

«The response to the program was so positive that the Maryland state legislature established a multimillion-dollar research facility on the campus of the Spring Grove State Hospital, called the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center.» — según Pollan, la buena recepción del programa llevó al legislativo estatal a fundar un centro de investigación multimillonario.

«whenever we hired someone, they would receive a couple of LSD sessions as part of their training to do the work. We had authorization! How else could you be sensitive to what was going on in the mind of the patient? I wish we could do that at Hopkins.”» — según Pollan, Richards cuenta que el personal recibía sesiones de LSD como parte de su formación, con autorización, y lamenta que hoy no se pueda.

«The fact that such an ambitious research program continued at Spring Grove well into the 1970s suggests the story of the suppression of psychedelic research is a little more complicated than the conventional narrative would indicate.» — Pollan objeta la narrativa convencional de la supresión y la llama más complicada de lo que se dice.

«While it is true that some research projects—such as Jim Fadiman’s creativity trials in Palo Alto —received orders from Washington to stop, other projects on long-term grants were allowed to continue until the money ran out, as it eventually did.» — la enmienda que Pollan propone: no se cerró todo, se dificultaron las aprobaciones y el dinero se fue secando.

«As time went on, researchers found that on top of all the bureaucratic and financial hurdles they also had to deal with “the snicker test”: How would your colleagues react when you told them you were running experiments with LSD?» — Pollan nombra la prueba de la risita como el obstáculo añadido a los burocráticos y financieros.

«By the mid-1970s, psychedelics had become something of a scientific embarrassment— not because they were a failure, but because they had become identified with the counterculture and with disgraced scientists such» — Pollan fija la causa del descrédito en la asociación con la contracultura y no en el fracaso científico; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 48 con *as Timothy Leary*.

«We thought this was the most incredible frontier in psychiatry,” Richards recalls.» — según Pollan, Richards recuerda aquel momento como la frontera más asombrosa de la psiquiatría.

«There were international conferences on psychedelic research, and we had colleagues throughout Europe doing similar work. The field was taking off. But in the end the societal forces were stronger than we were.”» — según Pollan, Richards describe un campo en despegue y cierra atribuyendo el final a fuerzas sociales más fuertes que ellos.

«In 1971, Richard Nixon declared Timothy Leary, a washed-up psychology professor, “the most dangerous man in America.”» — Pollan data en 1971 la declaración de Nixon sobre Leary y la cita.

«Psychedelics were nourishing the counterculture, and the counterculture was sapping the willingness of America’s young to fight. The Nixon administration sought to blunt the counterculture by attacking its neurochemical infrastructure.» — la explicación política que Pollan da de la represión: la contracultura minaba la disposición de los jóvenes a pelear, y el gobierno atacó su infraestructura neuroquímica.

«Was the suppression of psychedelic research inevitable? Many of the researchers I interviewed feel that it might have been avoided had the drugs not leaped the laboratory walls—a contingency that, fairly or not, most of them blame squarely on the “antics,” “misbehavior,” and “evangelism” of Timothy Leary.» — Pollan atribuye a los investigadores que entrevistó la culpa que echan sobre Leary, y marca con un inciso que no se hace cargo de si es justo.

«Stanislav Grof believes that psychedelics loosed “the Dionysian element” on 1960s America, posing a threat to the country’s puritan values that was bound to be repulsed.» — según Pollan, Grof sostiene que estas sustancias soltaron el elemento dionisíaco sobre la América de los sesenta, amenazando valores puritanos.

«He told me he also thinks the same thing could happen again.» — la advertencia que Pollan recoge de Grof sobre la posible repetición.

«Roland Griffiths points out that ours is not the first culture to feel threatened by psychedelics: the reason R. Gordon Wasson had to rediscover magic mushrooms in Mexico was that the Spanish had suppressed them so effectively, deeming them» — según Pollan, Griffiths recuerda que la nuestra no es la primera cultura amenazada por estas sustancias, y pone el caso de la supresión española en México; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 48 con *dangerous instruments of paganism*.

«That says something important about how reluctant cultures are to expose themselves to the changes these kinds of compounds can occasion,” he told me the first time we met. “There is so much authority that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it can be threatening to existing hierarchical structures.”» — la tesis de Griffiths según Pollan: de la experiencia mística primaria sale una autoridad que amenaza a las estructuras jerárquicas existentes.

«In the big picture,” he told me the first time we met in his home office, “these drugs have been around at least five thousand years, and» — según Pollan, Richards sitúa el asunto en cinco mil años de ciclos de afloramiento y represión; el troceo reemite aquí la marca de la plana 44 y el tramo vuelve cortado, para seguir con *many times they have surfaced and have been repressed*.

«many times they have surfaced and have been repressed, so this was another cycle. But the mushroom still grows, and eventually this work would come around again. Or so I hoped.”» — la segunda mitad de esa frase de Richards, con su reserva final: el hongo sigue creciendo y el trabajo volvería, o eso esperaba; el tramo arranca a media frase por el corte del troceo en la plana 44.

«This was before the importance of set and setting was unders» — según Pollan, Richards subraya que aquello ocurrió antes de que se entendiera la importancia de set y setting; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 45 con *I was brought to a basement room, given an injection, and left alone*.

«I was brought to a basement room, given an injection, and left alone.”» — las condiciones de aquella primera sesión de Richards según Pollan, que el libro llama enseguida receta para un mal viaje; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 44.

«But until Bill Richards administered psilocybin to his last volunteer in 1977, Spring Grove was actively (and without much controversy) conducting an ambitious» — Pollan data en 1977 el final del programa de Spring Grove y lo describe como activo y sin mucha controversia; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 46 con *program of psychedelic research*.

«BY THE MID-1970S, the LSD work at Spring Grove, much of which was state funded, had become a political hot potato in Annapolis.» — Pollan data a mediados de los setenta el momento en que el trabajo con LSD de Spring Grove se volvió asunto político incómodo por estar financiado por el estado.

«In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission investigating the CIA disclosed that the agency had also been running LSD experiments in Maryland, at Fort Detrick, as part of a mind-control project called MK-Ultra.» — Pollan data en 1975 la revelación de que la CIA hacía sus propios experimentos con LSD en Fort Detrick dentro del proyecto MK-Ultra.

«Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?”» — el memorando interno que Pollan cita del objetivo de aquel proyecto, sobre controlar a un individuo hasta hacerlo obrar contra su voluntad y contra la autoconservación.

«It was revealed that the CIA was dosing both government employees and civilians without their knowledge; at least one person had died.» — Pollan consigna que la CIA dosificaba a empleados y civiles sin su conocimiento y que hubo al menos un muerto.

«The news that Maryland taxpayers were also supporting research with LSD promptly blew up into a scandal, and pressure to close down psychedelic research at Spring Grove became irresistible.» — Pollan encadena el escándalo con el cierre: la presión sobre Spring Grove se volvió irresistible.

«Pretty soon it was just me and two secretaries,” Richards recalls. “And then it was over.”» — la frase con que Richards, según Pollan, describe el final del programa.

«Today Roland Griffiths, who would pick up the thread of research that was dropped when the work at Spring Grove ended, marvels at the fact that the first wave of psychedelic research, promising as it was, would end for reasons having nothing to do with science.» — según Pollan, a Griffiths le asombra que aquella primera ola terminara por razones ajenas a la ciencia.

«We ended up demonizing these compounds. Can you think of another area of science thought to be so dangerous and taboo that all research gets shut down for decades? It’s unprecedented in modern science.”» — la pregunta con que Griffiths, según Pollan, plantea lo excepcional del caso: ningún otro campo se cerró por décadas por tabú.

«So too, perhaps, is the sheer amount of scientific knowledge that was simply erased.» — Pollan añade, con su propio atenuante, que también es sin precedente la cantidad de saber científico borrado.

«In 1998, Griffiths, Jesse, and Richards began designing a pilot study loosely based on the Good Friday Experiment.» — Pollan data en 1998 el diseño del estudio piloto y lo declara basado holgadamente en el Experimento del Viernes Santo.

«It wasn’t a psychotherapy study,” Richards points out. “It was a study designed to determine whether psilocybin can elicit a transcendental experience.» — según Pollan, Richards precisa que aquel no era un estudio de psicoterapia sino de si la psilocibina puede provocar una experiencia trascendental.

«That we were able to obtain permission to give it to healthy normals is a tribute to Roland’s long history of commanding respect both at Hopkins and in Washington.”» — según Pollan, Richards atribuye el permiso para dosificar a voluntarios sanos al prestigio acumulado por Griffiths.

«In 1999, the protocol was approved, but only after wending its way through five layers of review at Hopkins as well as the FDA and the DEA.» — Pollan data en 1999 la aprobación del protocolo y cuenta las capas de revisión que tuvo que atravesar.

«Many of Griffiths’s Hopkins colleagues were skeptical of the proposal, worried psychedelic research might jeopardize federal funding; one told me there were “people in the Department of Psychiatry and the broader institution who questioned the work, because this class of compounds carries a lot of baggage from the ’60s.”» — Pollan cita a un colega no nombrado de Hopkins sobre el escepticismo interno y el temor a perder financiamiento federal.

«We had faith that the people on all these committees would be good scientists,” Richards told me. “And with luck maybe a few of them had tried mushrooms in college!”» — la broma de Richards según Pollan sobre la composición de aquellos comités.

«Roland Griffiths became the principal investigator of the trial, Bill Richards became the clinical director, and Bob Jesse continued to work behind the scenes.» — Pollan reparte los papeles del equipo: Griffiths investigador principal, Richards director clínico y Jesse tras bambalinas.

«I can vividly remember the first session I ran after that long twenty-two-year hiatus,” Richards recalled.» — según Pollan, Richards recuerda con nitidez la primera sesión tras veintidós años de pausa.

«The room feels more like a den or living room than a room in a laboratory, with a plush sofa, vaguely spiritual paintings on the walls, a sculpture of the Buddha on a side table, and shelves holding a giant stone mushroom and various other nondenominational spiritual artifacts, as well as the small chalice in which the volunteers receive their pills.» — Pollan describe la sala de sesiones de Hopkins, con su sofá, su Buda, su hongo de piedra y el cáliz de las pastillas; el decorado es parte de lo que él llamará después artefacto del experimento.

«This guy is lying on the couch right there where you are, with tears streaming down his face, and I’m thinking, how absolutely beautiful and meaningful this experience is. How sacred.» — según Pollan, Richards recuerda la primera sesión y la califica de sagrada.

«How can this ever have been illegal? It’s as if we made entering Gothic cathedrals illegal, or museums, or sunsets!» — la objeción de Richards a la ilegalidad, según Pollan, con el símil de prohibir las catedrales góticas, los museos o los atardeceres.

«IN 1999, an odd but intriguing advertisement began appearing in weeklies in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., area, under the headline “Interested in the Spiritual Life?”» — Pollan data en 1999 el anuncio con que se reclutó a los primeros voluntarios y da su encabezado.

«University research with entheogens (roughly, Godevoking substances such as peyote and sacred mushrooms) has returned. The field of study includes pharmacology, psychology, creativity enhancement, and spirituality.» — el texto del anuncio, que usa el término enteógenos con su glosa entre paréntesis y enumera los campos del estudio; Pollan lo reproduce como documento; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *Godevoking* donde la fuente imprime *God-evoking*.

«Not long after, Bill Richards and Mary Cosimano, a social worker and school guidance counselor Richards recruited to help him guide psychedelic sessions, administered the first legal dose of psilocybin to an American in twenty-two years.» — según Pollan, Richards y la trabajadora social Mary Cosimano administraron la primera dosis legal de psilocibina a un estadounidense en veintidós años.

«In the years since, the Hopkins team has conducted more than three hundred psilocybin sessions, working in a variety of populations, including healthy normals, long-term and novice meditators, cancer patients, smokers seeking to break their habit, and religious professionals.» — Pollan da la cifra de sesiones de Hopkins y enumera las poblaciones estudiadas.

«I was curious to get the volunteer’s-eye view of the experience from all these types, but especially from that first cohort of healthy normals, partly because they were participants in a study that would turn out to be historically important and partly because I figured they would be the most like, well, me.» — Pollan declara por qué eligió entrevistar al primer grupo de voluntarios sanos, y lo dice con su propio motivo dentro.

«Yet the volunteers in the first experiments were not exactly like me, because at the time I doubt I would have read past “Interested in the Spiritual Life?”» — Pollan matiza de inmediato esa identificación: él no habría pasado del encabezado del anuncio.

«There were no stone-cold atheists in the original group, and interviews with nearly a dozen of them suggested many if not most of them came into the study with spiritual leanings to one degree or another. There was an energy healer, a man who’d done the whole Iron John trip, a former Franciscan friar, and an herbalist. There was also a physicist with an interest in Zen and a philosophy professor with an interest in theology.» — Pollan inventaria las inclinaciones espirituales del primer grupo, dato con que acota el valor del resultado.

«Roland Griffiths acknowledged, “We were interested in a spiritual effect and were biasing the condition initially [in that direction].”» — según Pollan, Griffiths admite que el diseño sesgaba la condición hacia el efecto espiritual; el corchete es del original.

«That said, Griffiths went to great lengths in the design of the study to control for “expectancy effects.”» — Pollan contrapesa esa admisión con el cuidado del diseño contra los efectos de expectativa.

«In part this owed to Griffiths’s skepticism that a drug could occasion the same kind of mystical experience he had had in his meditation: “This is all truth to Bill and hypothesis to me. So we needed to control for Bill’s biases.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths declara la diferencia entre él y Richards: para Richards es verdad y para él hipótesis, y por eso hubo que controlar los sesgos de Richards.

«All of the volunteers were “hallucinogen naive,” so had no idea what psilocybin felt like, and neither they nor their monitors knew in any given session whether they were getting psilocybin or a placebo, and whether that placebo was a sugar pill or any one of half a dozen different psychoactive drugs.» — Pollan describe el doble ciego del estudio y la incertidumbre deliberada sobre qué placebo podía tocar.

«In fact the placebo was Ritalin, and as it turned out, the monitors guessed wrong nearly a quarter of the time as to what was in the pill a volunteer had received.» — Pollan da la cifra de aciertos de los monitores como medida de la solidez del ciego.

«Even years after their experiences in the trials, the volunteers I spoke to recalled them in vivid detail and at considerable length; the interviews lasted hours.» — Pollan declara su método con los voluntarios y la duración de las entrevistas.

«The volunteers were also required to write a report of their experiences soon after they occurred, and all of the ones I interviewed were happy to share these reports, which made for strange and fascinating reading.» — Pollan nombra la segunda de sus fuentes, los informes escritos por los propios voluntarios poco después de las sesiones.

«Many of the volunteers I spoke to reported initial episodes of intense fear and anxiety before surrendering themselves to the experience—as the sitters encourage them to do.» — Pollan reporta el patrón que halló en los voluntarios: miedo y ansiedad iniciales antes de la entrega.

«The sitters work from a set of “flight instructions” prepared by Bill Richards, based on the hundreds of psychedelic journeys he has guided.» — Pollan nombra las instrucciones de vuelo de Richards, destiladas de cientos de viajes guiados.

«The flight instructions advise guides to use mantras like “Trust the trajectory” and “TLO—Trust, Let Go, Be Open.” Some guides like to quote John Lennon: “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.”» — las fórmulas que Pollan cita de esas instrucciones, con la de Lennon que algunos guías añaden.

«Volunteers are told they may experience the “death/transcendence of your ego or everyday self,” but this is “always followed by Rebirth/ Return to the normative world of space & time. Safest way to return to normal is to entrust self unconditionally to the emerging experiences.”» — el texto de las instrucciones de vuelo sobre la muerte del yo y el retorno, con la regla de entregarse incondicionalmente como vía más segura.

«Guides are instructed to remind volunteers they’ll never be left alone and not to worry about the body while journeying because the guides are there to keep an eye on it. If you feel as if you are “dying, melting, dissolving, exploding, going crazy etc.—go ahead.”» — la instrucción que Pollan cita sobre qué decir ante la sensación de morir, derretirse, disolverse, estallar o enloquecer.

«Volunteers are quizzed: “If you see a door, what do you do? If you see a staircase, what do you do?” “Open it” and “climb up it” are of course the right answers.» — el interrogatorio de preparación que Pollan reproduce, con las respuestas correctas.

«This careful preparation means that a certain expectancy effect is probably unavoidable.» — Pollan saca su propia conclusión de esa preparación: cierto efecto de expectativa es probablemente inevitable.

«It would be irresponsible not to warn volunteers these things could happen,” Griffiths pointed out when I asked if his volunteers were being “primed” for a certain kind of experience.» — la respuesta de Griffiths a esa objeción, según Pollan: no advertir sería irresponsable.

«One volunteer—the physicist—told me that the “mystical experience questionnaire” he filled out after every session also planted expectations.» — según Pollan, el voluntario físico señaló que el propio cuestionario sembraba expectativas.

«I long to see some of the stuff hinted at in the questionnaire,” he wrote after an underwhelming session—perhaps on the placebo. “Seeing everything as alive and connected, meeting the void, or some embodiment of deities and things like that.”» — lo que ese voluntario escribió tras una sesión deslucida, que Pollan supone de placebo; la suposición va marcada como suya.

«In this and so many other ways, it seems, the Hopkins psilocybin experience is the artifact not only of this powerful molecule but also of the preparation and expectations of the volunteer, the skills and worldviews of the sitters, Bill Richards’s flight instructions, the decor of the room, the inward focus encouraged by the eyeshades and the music (and the music itself, much of which to my ears sounds notably religious), and, though they might not be pleased to hear it, the minds of the designers of the experiments.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre el experimento: la experiencia de Hopkins es artefacto de la molécula y a la vez de la preparación, los guías, el decorado, la música y las mentes de quienes lo diseñaron.

«The sheer suggestibility of psychedelics is one of their defining characteristics, so in one sense it is no wonder that so many of the first cohort of volunteers at Hopkins had powerful mystical experiences: the experiment was designed by three men intensely interested in mystical states of consciousness.» — Pollan cierra el argumento de la sugestión: el experimento lo diseñaron tres hombres intensamente interesados en los estados místicos.

«And it is likewise no wonder that the European researchers I interviewed all failed to see as many instances of mystical experience in their subjects as the Americans did in theirs.» — el dato comparativo con que Pollan apuntala esa tesis: los investigadores europeos que entrevistó no vieron tantos casos de experiencia mística.

«And yet, for all the priming going on, the fact remains that the people who received a placebo simply didn’t have the kinds of experiences that volunteer after volunteer described to me as the most meaningful or significant in their lives.» — el contrapeso que Pollan pone a su propia objeción: quienes recibieron placebo simplemente no tuvieron esas experiencias.

«Think of yourself as an astronaut being blasted into outer space,” Richard Boothby recalled him saying.» — la metáfora del astronauta que Griffiths usa con los voluntarios, recordada por el profesor de filosofía Richard Boothby según Pollan.

«You’re going way out there to take it all in and engage with whatever you find there, but you can be confident that we’ll be here keeping an eye on things. Think of us as ground control. We’ve got you covered.”» — el resto de esa metáfora según Pollan: los guías como control de tierra.

«I could feel my body dissolving, beginning with my feet, until it all disappeared but the left side of my jaw. It was really unpleasant; I could count only a few teeth left and the bottom part of my jaw. I knew that if that went away I would be gone.» — según Pollan, el físico Brian Turner describe la disolución de su cuerpo empezando por los pies; el relato es suyo y el libro lo reporta sin afirmar ni negar lo ocurrido.

«Then I remembered what they told me, that whenever you encounter anything scary, go toward it. So instead of being afraid of dying I got curious about what was going on. I was no longer trying to avoid dying. Instead of recoiling from the experience, I began to interrogate it. And with that, the whole situation dissolved into this pleasant floaty feeling, and I became the music for a while.» — según Pollan, Turner cuenta que aplicó la instrucción de ir hacia lo temible, y que al dejar de evitar la muerte la escena se disolvió.

«in a large cave where all my past relationships were hanging down as icicles: the person who sat next to me in second grade, high school friends, my first girlfriend, all of them were there, encased in ice. It was very cool. I thought about each of them in turn, remembering everything about our relationship. It was a review—something about the trajectory of my life. All these people had made me what I had become.”» — según Pollan, Turner describe una cueva con sus relaciones pasadas colgando como carámbanos y la llama un repaso de la trayectoria de su vida.

«Amy Charnay, a nutritionist and herbalist in her thirties, came to Hopkins after a crisis. An avid runner, she had been studying forest ecology when she fell from a tree and shattered her ankle, ending both her running and her forestry careers.» — Pollan presenta a la voluntaria Amy Charnay y la crisis con que llegó a Hopkins.

«And I remember Bill asking, ‘What’s going on?’ “‘I’m experiencing a lot of guilt.’ Bill replied, ‘That’s a very common human experience,’ and with that, the whole image of being hanged pixilated and then just disappeared, to be replaced by this tremendous sensation of freedom and interconnectedness.» — según Pollan, la intervención del guía —decirle que la culpa es experiencia humana común— deshizo la imagen y la sustituyó por libertad e interconexión; el episodio muestra el papel del guía dentro de la sesión.

«This was huge for me. I saw that if I can name and admit a feeling, confess it to someone, it would let go. A little older and wiser, now I can do this for myself.”» — la lección que Charnay dice haber sacado, según Pollan: nombrar y confesar un sentimiento lo suelta.

«Some time later, Charnay found herself flying around the world and through time perched on the back of a bird. “I was aware enough to know my body was on the couch, but I was leaving my body and experiencing these things firsthand.» — según Pollan, Charnay narra haber volado por el mundo y por el tiempo sobre un pájaro, sabiendo a la vez que su cuerpo estaba en el sofá.

«I found myself in a drumming circle with an indigenous tribe somewhere, and I was being healed but was also being the healer.» — según Pollan, Charnay se describe a la vez sanada y sanadora en un círculo de tambores.

«Not having that traditional lineage [of a healer], I had always felt like I was a phony doing plant medicine, but this made me see I was connected to the plants and to people who use plants, whether for rituals or psychedelics or salad!”» — según Pollan, Charnay dice que la falta de linaje de sanadora la hacía sentirse impostora con la medicina de plantas, y que aquello le mostró su conexión; el corchete es del original.

«During a subsequent session, Charnay reconnected with a boyfriend from her youth who had died in a car accident at nineteen. “All of a sudden there is a piece of Phil living in my left shoulder. I’ve never had an experience like that, but it was so real. I don’t know why he’s yellow and lives in my left shoulder—what does that even mean?— but I don’t care. He’s back with me.”» — según Pollan, Charnay narra el reencuentro con un novio muerto a los diecinueve y no explica su propio símbolo; la declaración de no saber qué significa va dentro de la cita.

«Such reconnections with the dead are not uncommon. Richard Boothby, whose twenty-three-year-old son had committed suicide a year earlier after years of drug addiction, told me, “Oliver was more present to me now than he had ever been before.”» — Pollan generaliza ese tipo de reencuentro y trae el de Richard Boothby con su hijo Oliver, muerto por suicidio un año antes.

«The supreme importance of surrendering to the experience, however frightening or bizarre, is stressed in the preparatory sessions and figures largely in many people’s journeys, and beyond.» — Pollan señala la entrega como la instrucción decisiva del protocolo y la que más reaparece en los relatos.

«Early on I began to perceive that the effects of the drug respond strikingly to my own subjective determination. If, in response to the swelling intensity of the whole experience, I began to tense up with anxiety, the whole scene appears to tighten in some way. But if I then consciously remind myself to relax, to let myself go into the experience, the effect is dramatic.» — según Pollan, Boothby escribe que el efecto de la droga respondía a su propia determinación subjetiva: la tensión cerraba la escena y la relajación la abría.

«I joked to my wife as she drove me home that I felt as if I had been repeatedly sucked into the asshole of God.» — la broma con que Boothby, según Pollan, resumió la experiencia a su esposa.

«Boothby had what sounds very much like a classic mystical experience, though he may be the first in the long line of Western mystics to enter the divine realm through that particular aperture.» — Pollan clasifica el relato de Boothby como experiencia mística clásica y remata con ironía sobre la vía de entrada.

«At the depths of this delirium I conceived that I was either dying or, most bizarrely, I was already dead. All points of secure attachment to a trustworthy sense of reality had fallen away. Why not think that I am dead? And if this is dying, I thought, then so be it. How can I say no to this?» — según Pollan, Boothby escribe que en lo hondo se creyó muriendo o ya muerto, y que aceptó la posibilidad.

«At this point, at the greatest depth of the experience, I felt all my organizing categories of opposition—dreaming and wakefulness, life and death, inside and outside, self and other—collapse into each other . . . Reality appeared to fold in on itself, to implode in a kind of ecstatic catastrophe of logic.» — según Pollan, Boothby describe el colapso de sus categorías de oposición —sueño y vigilia, vida y muerte, dentro y fuera, yo y otro— y llama a eso catástrofe extática de la lógica; los puntos suspensivos son del original.

«And I remember repeating to myself again and again, “Nothing matters, nothing matters any more. I see the point! Nothing matters at all.”» — la frase que Boothby dice haberse repetido, según Pollan, y que él mismo presenta como comprensión y no como desesperanza.

«During the last few hours, reality began slowly, effortlessly, to stitch itself back together. In sync with some particularly wowing choral music, I had an incredibly moving sense of triumphant reawakening, as if a new day were dawning after a long and harrowing night.» — según Pollan, Boothby describe la recomposición de la realidad al final de la sesión, acompasada con la música coral.

«James prefaced his discussion of mystical states of consciousness by admitting that “my own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely.”» — Pollan cita la declaración de James de que su propia constitución lo excluía casi por completo de esos estados; el casi es lo que Pollan explota enseguida.

«Almost entirely: what James knows about mystical states was gleaned not just from his reading but also from his own experiments with drugs, including nitrous oxide.» — Pollan hace notar que lo que James sabía venía también de sus propios ensayos con drogas.

«Rather than attempt to define something as difficult to grab hold of as a mystical experience, James offers four “marks” by which we may recognize one.» — Pollan adopta la estrategia de James: cuatro marcas de reconocimiento en vez de una definición.

«The first and, to his mind, “handiest” is ineffability: “The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.”» — la primera marca de James según Pollan, la inefabilidad, citada en sus propios términos.

«With the possible exception of Boothby, all the volunteers I spoke to at one point or another despaired of conveying the full force of what they had experienced, gamely though they tried. “You had to be there” was a regular refrain.» — Pollan coteja esa primera marca contra sus entrevistas y da la fórmula que se repetía.

«The noetic quality is James’s second mark: “Mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge . . . They are illuminations, revelations full of significance and importance . . . and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority.”» — la segunda marca de James según Pollan, la cualidad noética, con los estados místicos como estados de conocimiento; los puntos suspensivos son del original.

«For every volunteer I’ve interviewed, the experience yielded many more answers than questions, and—curiously for what is after all a drug experience—these answers had about them a remarkable sturdiness and durability.» — Pollan coteja la segunda marca contra sus entrevistas y destaca lo curioso del caso, que las respuestas de una experiencia con droga resulten firmes y duraderas.

«felt like mysteries were being unveiled and yet it all felt familiar and more like I was being reminded of things I had already known. I had a sense of initiation into dimensions of existence most people never know exist, including the distinct sense that death was illusory, in the sense that it is a door we walk through into another plane of existence, that we’re sprung from an eternity to which we will return.» — según Pollan, el psicoterapeuta John Hayes describe la experiencia como un recordar lo ya sabido y declara ilusoria la muerte; el testimonio es suyo y el libro lo consigna sin suscribirlo.

«Which is true enough, I suppose, but to someone having a mystical experience, such an insight acquires the force of revealed truth.» — Pollan marca su propia distancia con un doble atenuante y señala lo que le interesa: que para quien la vive el discernimiento adquiere fuerza de verdad revelada.

«So many of the specific insights gleaned during the psychedelic journey exist on a knife-edge poised between profundity and utter banality.» — la observación de Pollan sobre el filo entre profundidad y banalidad en que se sostienen estos discernimientos.

«I have at times been almost embarrassed by them, as if they give voice to a cosmic vision of the triumph of love that one associates derisively with the platitudes of Hallmark cards. All the same, the basic insights afforded to me during the session still seem for the most part compelling.» — según Pollan, Boothby confiesa vergüenza por lo que se le reveló, como si fueran lugares comunes de tarjeta de felicitación, y aun así lo sostiene.

«What was the philosophy professor’s compelling insight? “Love conquers all.”» — Pollan remata el pasaje con la fórmula entera que Boothby trajo de vuelta.

«James touches on the banality of these mystical insights: “that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one. ‘I’ve heard that said all my life,’ we exclaim, ‘but I never realized its full meaning until now.’”» — Pollan cita a James sobre el sentido ahondado de una máxima que uno creía conocer.

«The mystical journey seems to offer a graduate education in the obvious.» — la fórmula con que Pollan resume ese efecto.

«Yet people come out of the experience understanding these platitudes in a new way; what was merely known is now felt, takes on the authority of a deeply rooted conviction. And, more often than not, that conviction concerns the supreme importance of love.» — Pollan precisa en qué consiste el cambio: lo que se sabía pasa a sentirse y adquiere autoridad de convicción arraigada, y casi siempre recae sobre el amor.

«Karin Sokel, a life coach and energy healer in her fifties, described an experience “that changed everything and opened me profoundly.”» — Pollan presenta a la voluntaria Karin Sokel y su declaración sobre el alcance de la experiencia.

«At the climax of her journey, she had an encounter with a god who called himself “I Am.”» — según Pollan, Sokel narra un encuentro con un dios que se nombró a sí mismo; el libro consigna el nombre tal como ella lo reporta.

«In its presence, she recalled, “every one of my chakras was exploding. And then there was this light, it was the pure light of love and divinity, and it was with me and no words were needed. I was in the presence of this absolute pure divine love and I was merging with it, in this explosion of energy» — según Pollan, Sokel describe sus chakras estallando y la fusión con una luz de amor y divinidad sin palabras.

«The core of our being, I now knew, is love. At the peak of the experience, I was literally holding the face of Osama bin Laden, looking into his eyes, feeling pure love from him and giving it to him. The core is not evil, it is love.» — según Pollan, Sokel narra haber sostenido el rostro de Osama bin Laden sintiendo amor puro, y deriva de ahí que el núcleo del ser no es el mal sino el amor.

«I had the same experience with Hitler, and then someone from North Korea. So I think we are divine. This is not intellectual, this is a core knowingness.”» — según Pollan, Sokel extiende esa experiencia a Hitler y concluye que somos divinos, marcando que no es conclusión intelectual sino un saber de fondo.

«I asked Sokel what made her so sure this wasn’t a dream or drug-induced fantasy—a suggestion that proved no match for her noetic sense.» — Pollan plantea a la voluntaria su propia objeción de escéptico y declara que no hizo mella.

«This was no dream. This was as real as you and I having this conversation. I wouldn’t have understood it either if I hadn’t had the direct experience. Now it is hardwired in my brain so I can connect to it and do often.”» — la respuesta de Sokel según Pollan, que apela a la realidad de la conversación misma como medida.

«This last point James alludes to in his discussion of the third mark of mystical consciousness, which is “transiency.”» — la tercera marca de James según Pollan, la transitoriedad; el troceo reemite aquí la marca de la plana 58 y el tramo se lee a los dos lados del corte.

«The fourth and last mark in James’s typology is the essential “passivity” of the mystical experience. “The mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.”» — la cuarta marca de James según Pollan, la pasividad, con la voluntad en suspenso y la sensación de ser asido por un poder superior.

«This sense of having temporarily surrendered to a superior force often leaves the person feeling as if he or she has been permanently transformed.» — Pollan enlaza esa cuarta marca con la sensación de transformación permanente.

«For most of the Hopkins volunteers I interviewed, their psilocybin journeys had taken place ten or fifteen years earlier, and yet their effects were still keenly felt, in some cases on a daily basis.» — Pollan mide la persistencia de los efectos a diez o quince años de distancia entre sus entrevistados.

«Psilocybin awakened my loving compassion and gratitude in a way I had never experienced before,” a psychologist who asked not to be named told me when I asked her about lasting effects. “Trust, Letting go, Openness, and Being were the touchstones of the experience for me. Now I know these things instead of just believing.”» — según Pollan, una psicóloga que pidió no ser nombrada distingue saber de solo creer; la reserva de anonimato es de la fuente.

«She had turned Bill Richards’s flight instructions into a manual for living.» — la observación de Pollan sobre lo que aquella voluntaria hizo con las instrucciones de vuelo.

«During my session this art of relaxation itself became the basis of an immense revelation, as it suddenly appeared to me that something in the spirit of this relaxation, something in the achievement of a perfect, trusting and loving openness of spirit, is the very essence and purpose of life.» — según Pollan, Boothby convierte el arte de relajarse en una ética y lo declara la esencia y el propósito de la vida.

«Our task in life consists precisely in a form of letting go of fear and expectations, an attempt to purely give oneself to the impact of the present.» — la formulación de esa ética según Boothby, citado por Pollan: soltar el miedo y las expectativas y darse al impacto del presente.

«John Hayes, the psychotherapist, emerged with “his sense of the concrete destabilized,” replaced by a conviction “that there’s a reality beneath the reality of ordinary perceptions. It informed my cosmology —that there is a world beyond this one.”» — según Pollan, Hayes salió con la convicción de que hay una realidad bajo la de la percepción ordinaria, y lo dice como cosmología propia.

«Hayes particularly recommends the experience to people in middle age for whom, as Carl Jung suggested, experience of the numinous can help them negotiate the second half of their lives. Hayes added, “I would not recommend it to young people.”» — según Pollan, Hayes recomienda la experiencia a la mediana edad por la razón junguiana y la desaconseja a los jóvenes; es el mismo argumento que Pollan usó para sí en el prólogo.

«Soon after a volunteer takes her pill from the little chalice, but before she feels any effects, Roland Griffiths will usually drop by the» — Pollan describe la costumbre de Griffiths de pasar a despedir al voluntario antes de que el efecto empiece; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 53 con *session room to wish her bon voyage*.

«For the astronaut being blasted into space, the shudder of liftoff» — Pollan extiende al despegue la metáfora del astronauta; el troceo reemite aquí la marca de la plana 53 y el tramo vuelve cortado, para seguir con *and strain of escaping Earth’s gravitational field can be wrenching*.

«and strain of escaping Earth’s gravitational field can be wrenching— even terrifying. Several volunteers describe trying to hold on for dear life as they felt their sense of self rapidly disintegrating.» — Pollan reporta que varios voluntarios describen aferrarse mientras su sentido del yo se desintegra; el tramo arranca a media frase por el corte del troceo en la plana 53.

«The visual I had was from the 1800s and I was up on this stage. Two people next to me were slipping a noose around my neck while a» — según Pollan, Charnay describe una escena de horca del siglo XIX; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 54 con *crowd of people watched, cheering for my death*.

«crowd of people watched, cheering for my death. I felt drenched with guilt, just terrified. I was in a hell realm.» — el resto de esa escena según Charnay, citada por Pollan, que ella llama un reino infernal; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 53.

«AT THE SAME TIME I was interviewing Richard Boothby and his fellow» — Pollan declara que leía a James mientras entrevistaba a los voluntarios; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 56 con *volunteers, I was reading William James’s account of mystical consciousness in The Varieties of Religious Experience*.

«volunteers, I was reading William James’s account of mystical consciousness in The Varieties of Religious Experience in the hope of orienting myself.» — Pollan nombra la herramienta con que ordenó lo que recogía, la exposición de James sobre la consciencia mística; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 55.

«seem to find myself, already enormous, suddenly yawns open even further and the shapes that undulate before my eyes appear to explode with new and even more extravagant patterns. Over and over again I had the overwhelming sense of infinity being multiplied by another infinity.» — según Pollan, Boothby describe un espacio ya enorme que se abre más y patrones que estallan, con la sensación repetida de un infinito multiplicado por otro; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 54.

«Charnay’s journey at Hopkins solidified her commitment to herbal medicine (she now works for a supplement maker in Northern California); it also confirmed her in a decision to divorce her husband.» — Pollan mide el efecto de la experiencia de Charnay en dos decisiones de su vida, la profesional y la conyugal.

«To listen to these people describe the changes in their lives inspired by their psilocybin journeys is to wonder if the Hopkins session room isn’t a kind of “human transformation factory,” as Mary Cosimano, the guide who has probably spent more time there than anyone else, described it to me.» — Pollan toma de la guía Mary Cosimano la fórmula de fábrica de transformación humana para la sala de sesiones, y la atribuye a ella.

«From now on,” one volunteer told me, “I think of my life as before and after psilocybin.”» — la manera en que un voluntario no nombrado, según Pollan, parte en dos su propia biografía.

«Soon after his psilocybin experience, Brian Turner, the physicist, quit his job with the military contractor and moved to Colorado to study Zen.» — Pollan reporta el cambio de vida del físico Brian Turner tras la sesión.

«He had had a meditation practice before psilocybin, but “now I had the motivation, because I had tasted the destination”» — según Pollan, Turner dice que la sesión no le dio la práctica sino el motivo: había probado el destino.

«Turner is now an ordained Zen monk, yet he is also still a physicist, working for a company that makes helium neon lasers.» — Pollan consigna que Turner es a la vez monje zen ordenado y físico en activo.

«I don’t feel there’s a contradiction. Yet what happened at Hopkins has influenced my physics. I realize there are just some domains that science will not penetrate. Science can bring you to the big bang, but it can’t take you beyond it. You need a different kind of apparatus to peer into that.”» — según Pollan, Turner niega contradicción entre su ciencia y su práctica y sostiene que hay dominios donde la ciencia no entra, con el símil del aparato distinto.

«These anecdotal reports of personal transformation found strong support in a follow-up study done on the first groups of healthy normals studied at Hopkins.» — Pollan contrapone a los relatos anecdóticos el estudio de seguimiento, y así marca el límite de los testimonios que acaba de reportar.

«Katherine MacLean, a psychologist on the Hopkins team, crunched the survey data produced by fifty-two volunteers, including follow-up interviews with friends and family members they had designated, and discovered that in many cases the psilocybin experience had led to lasting changes in their personalities.» — según Pollan, MacLean procesó los datos de cincuenta y dos voluntarios, con entrevistas a allegados, y halló cambios duraderos de personalidad.

«Specifically, those volunteers who had “complete mystical experiences” (as determined by their scores on the Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire) showed, in addition to lasting improvements in well-being, long-term increases in the personality trait of “openness to experience.”» — el resultado preciso que Pollan reporta: quienes tuvieron experiencias místicas completas según el cuestionario de Pahnke y Richards subieron de forma duradera en apertura a la experiencia.

«One of the five traits psychologists use to assess personality (the other four are conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), openness encompasses aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity, fantasy and imagination, as well as tolerance of others’ viewpoints and values; it also predicts creativity in both the arts and the sciences, as well as, presumably, a willingness to entertain ideas at odds with those of current science.» — Pollan define el rasgo de apertura dentro del modelo de cinco factores y enumera lo que abarca y lo que predice.

«Such pronounced and lasting changes in the personalities of adults are rare.» — Pollan subraya por qué el hallazgo importa: los cambios así de marcados y duraderos en adultos son raros.

«Yet not all these shifts in the direction of greater openness were confined to the volunteers in the Hopkins experiments; the sitters, too, speak of having been changed by the experience of witnessing these journeys, sometimes in surprising ways.» — Pollan extiende el efecto a los propios guías, que dicen haber cambiado por presenciar estos viajes.

«I started out on the atheist side, but I began seeing things every day in my work that were at odds with this belief. My world became more and more mysterious as I sat with people on psilocybin.”» — según Pollan, Katherine MacLean cuenta su propio desplazamiento desde el ateísmo por lo que vio en las sesiones.

«I don’t blame you for being envious.”» — la frase con que Boothby, según Pollan, cierra la última entrevista; el libro la consigna con la mezcla de fervor y lástima que Pollan le atribuye.

«MY ENCOUNTERS with the Hopkins volunteers had indeed left me feeling somewhat envious, but also with a great many more questions than answers.» — Pollan hace el balance de sus entrevistas y declara que le dejaron más preguntas que respuestas.

«How are we to evaluate the “insights” these people bring back from their psychedelic journeys? What sort of authority should we grant them? Where in the world does the material that makes up these waking dreams or, as one volunteer put it, “intrapsychic movies,” come from? The unconscious? From the suggestions of their guides and the setting of the experiment? Or, as many of the volunteers believe, from somewhere “out there” or “beyond”? What do these mystical states of consciousness ultimately mean for our understanding of either the human mind or the universe?» — la serie de preguntas con que Pollan cierra el capítulo, sobre la autoridad de estos discernimientos y la procedencia del material de estos sueños despiertos.

«For his part, Roland Griffiths’s own encounters with the volunteers in the 2006 study reignited his passion for science, but they also left him with a deeper respect for all that science does not know—for what he is content to call “the mysteries.”» — Pollan reporta el efecto del estudio sobre Griffiths: reavivó su pasión científica y le dejó mayor respeto por lo que la ciencia no sabe.

«I’ve given lots of drugs to lots of people, and what you get are drug experiences. What’s unique about the psychedelics is the meaning that comes out of the experience.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths distingue estos compuestos de los demás por el significado que sale de la experiencia y no por el efecto farmacológico.

«Yet how real is that meaning? Griffiths himself is agnostic, but strikingly open-minded, even about his volunteers’ firsthand reports of a “beyond,” however they define it. “I’m willing to hold the possibility these experiences may or may not be true,” he told me. “The exciting part is to use the tools we have to explore and pick apart this mystery.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths se declara agnóstico y dispuesto a sostener que esas experiencias pueden ser ciertas o no; la abstención es su posición declarada.

«Not all of his colleagues share his open-mindedness. During one of our meetings, over breakfast on the sunporch of his modest ranch house in suburban Baltimore, Griffiths mentioned a colleague at Hopkins, a prominent psychiatrist named Paul McHugh, who dismisses the psychedelic experience as nothing more than a form of “toxic delirium.”» — Pollan trae la voz contraria dentro de la propia casa: el psiquiatra Paul McHugh, de Hopkins, que llama delirio tóxico a la experiencia psicodélica.

«Doctors encounter this strange and colorful state of mind in patients suffering from advanced hepatic, renal, or pulmonary disease, in which toxic products accumulate in the body and do to the brain and mind just what LSD does,” McHugh had written in a review of a book about the Harvard Psilocybin Project in Commentary.» — según Pollan, McHugh equipara el efecto del LSD con el de los productos tóxicos acumulados en enfermedades hepáticas, renales o pulmonares.

«The vividness of color perception, the merging of physical sensations, the hallucinations, the disorientation and loss of a sense of time, the delusional joys and terrors that come and go evoking unpredictable feelings and behaviors—are sadly familiar symptoms doctors are called to treat in hospitals every day.”» — el inventario de síntomas con que McHugh, según Pollan, iguala la experiencia psicodélica a lo que los médicos tratan a diario.

«Griffiths admits it is possible that what he’s seeing is some form of temporary psychosis, and he plans to test for delirium in an upcoming experiment, but he seriously doubts that diagnosis accurately describes what is going on with his volunteers.» — Pollan consigna que Griffiths admite la posibilidad de la psicosis temporal y planea medirla, y a la vez duda del diagnóstico; el desacuerdo con McHugh queda sin arbitrar.

«Patients suffering from delirium find it really unpleasant,” he points out, “and they certainly don’t report months later, ‘Wow, that was one of the greatest and most meaningful experiences of my life.’”» — la objeción de Griffiths a McHugh según Pollan, sostenida en que los pacientes con delirio no lo recuerdan meses después como lo más significativo de su vida.

«William James grappled with these questions of veracity in his discussion on mystical states of consciousness. He concluded that the import of these experiences is, and should be, “authoritative over the individuals to whom they come” but that there is no reason the rest of us must “accept their revelations uncritically.”» — según Pollan, James concluyó que estas experiencias son y deben ser autoritativas para quien las tiene, sin que los demás debamos aceptar sus revelaciones acríticamente.

«And yet he believed that the very possibility people can experience these states of consciousness should bear on our understanding of the mind and world: “The existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe.”» — la segunda mitad de la posición de James según Pollan: la existencia de estados místicos derriba la pretensión de los no místicos de ser los únicos árbitros de lo que puede creerse.

«These alternate forms of consciousness “might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable stages in our approach to the final fullness of the truth.”» — la conjetura de James que Pollan cita, con su atenuante dentro: esas formas podrían ser etapas indispensables hacia la plenitud de la verdad.

«He detected in such experiences, in which the mind “ascend[s] to a more enveloping point of view,” hints of a grand metaphysical “reconciliation”: “It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity.”» — según Pollan, James detectó indicios de una reconciliación metafísica en que los opuestos del mundo se funden en unidad; el corchete es del original.

«This ultimate unity, he suspected, was no mere delusion.» — la posición de James que Pollan le atribuye sobre esa unidad última, con el verbo de sospecha que él conserva.

«I’m more interested in the final questions and existential truths and with the sense of well-being, compassion, and love that come from these practices. Now I’m bringing these gifts to the laboratory. And it feels great.”» — según Pollan, Griffiths dice llevar al laboratorio los dones de esas prácticas: las preguntas últimas, el bienestar, la compasión y el amor.

«As a scientific phenomenon, if you can create a condition in which 70 percent of people will say they have had one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives . . . well, as a scientist that’s just incredible.”» — la formulación con que Griffiths, según Pollan, enuncia lo que le parece asombroso como fenómeno científico; los puntos suspensivos son del original.

«For him the import of the 2006 result is that it proved “we can now do prospective studies” of mystical states of consciousness “because we can occasion them with a high degree of probability. That’s the way science gains real traction.”» — según Pollan, para Griffiths lo que el resultado de 2006 probó es que los estados místicos pueden estudiarse prospectivamente porque se pueden ocasionar con alta probabilidad.

«He believes the psilocybin work has opened a whole new frontier of human consciousness to scientific exploration. “I describe myself as a kid in a candy shop.”» — Pollan reporta la convicción de Griffiths de haber abierto una frontera nueva de la consciencia a la exploración científica.

«The gamble Roland Griffiths took with his career in 1998, when he decided to devote himself to the investigation of psychedelics and mystical experience, has already paid off.» — Pollan hace el balance de la apuesta de Griffiths y la da por rendida; el troceo reemite aquí la marca de la plana 62 y el tramo se lee a los dos lados del corte.

«The nominators all cited Griffiths’s psychedelic work as one of his signal contributions.» — según Pollan, quienes lo postularon al premio Eddy citaron su trabajo psicodélico entre sus contribuciones señaladas.

«Not since Spring Grove has there been such strong institutional support for the study of psychedelics, and never before has an institution of Hopkins’s reputation devoted so many resources to what is, after all, the study of mystical states of consciousness.» — Pollan mide el apoyo institucional de Hopkins contra el de Spring Grove y subraya lo insólito de que una casa así dedique recursos al estudio de estados místicos.

«The Hopkins lab remains keenly interested in exploring spirituality and the “betterment of well people”—there are trials under way giving psilocybin to long-term meditators and religious professionals— but the transformative effect of the mystical experience has obvious therapeutic implications that the lab has been investigating.» — Pollan describe las dos líneas del laboratorio, la del mejoramiento de la gente sana y la terapéutica.

«Completed studies suggest that psilocybin—or rather the mystical state of consciousness that psilocybin occasions—may be useful in treating both addiction (a pilot study in smoking cessation achieved an 80 percent success rate, which is unprecedented) and the existential distress that often debilitates people facing a terminal diagnosis.» — Pollan resume los resultados completados, con la corrección que él mismo introduce: no la molécula sino el estado místico que ocasiona; la cifra del ensayo de tabaquismo va con la calificación de sin precedente.

«the study found one of the largest treatment effects ever demonstrated for a psychiatric intervention.» — según Pollan, el ensayo con enfermos de cáncer halló uno de los mayores efectos de tratamiento jamás mostrados para una intervención psiquiátrica; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 62.

«The majority of volunteers who had a mystical experience reported that their fear of death had either greatly diminished or completely disappeared.» — el resultado de ese ensayo sobre el miedo a la muerte según Pollan.

«Once again, hard questions arise about the meaning and authority of such experiences, especially ones that appear to convince people that consciousness is not confined to brains and might somehow survive our deaths.» — Pollan repone su propia pregunta sobre la autoridad de experiencias que convencen a la gente de que la consciencia no está confinada al cerebro.

«The phenomenology of these experiences is so profoundly reorganizing and profoundly compelling that I’m willing to hold there’s a mystery here we can’t understand.”» — la posición que Griffiths sostiene según Pollan: está dispuesto a sostener que hay aquí un misterio que no podemos entender.

«Griffiths has clearly traveled a long way from the strict behaviorism that once informed his scientific worldview; the experience of alternate states of consciousness, both his own and those of his volunteers, has opened him to possibilities about which few scientists will dare speak openly.» — Pollan mide la distancia recorrida por Griffiths desde el conductismo estricto.

«So what happens after you die? All I need is one percent [of uncertainty]. I can’t think of anything more interesting than what I may or may not discover at the time I die. That’s the most interesting question going.”» — según Pollan, a Griffiths le basta un uno por ciento de incertidumbre para tener por la pregunta más interesante lo que descubra al morir; el corchete es del original.

«Western materialism says the switch gets turned off and that’s it. But there are so many other descriptions. It could be a beginning! Wouldn’t that be amazing?”» — según Pollan, Griffiths contrapone al materialismo occidental la posibilidad de que la muerte sea un comienzo, y lo dice en potencial.

«This is when Griffiths turned the tables and started asking me about my own spiritual outlook, questions for which I was completely unprepared.» — Pollan cuenta que el entrevistado le devolvió la pregunta y lo halló desprevenido; el episodio expone su propia posición ante la muerte.

«Oh, I don’t know,” I stammered. “Two or three percent?” To this day I have no idea where that estimate came from» — Pollan da su propia cifra ante la pregunta por el después de la muerte y declara no saber de dónde le salió.

«I don’t know if I want to answer it,” he said with a laugh, glancing at my tape recorder. “It depends on which hat I’m wearing.”» — la respuesta con que Griffiths, según Pollan, elude devolver la cifra, y que Pollan lee como tener más de un sombrero.

«Compared with many scientists—or for that matter many spiritual types—Roland Griffiths possesses a large measure of what Keats, referring to Shakespeare, described as “negative capability,” the ability to exist amid uncertainties, mysteries, and doubt without» — Pollan aplica a Griffiths el término de Keats, capacidad negativa, para la habilidad de estar entre incertidumbres sin echar mano de absolutos; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 64 con *reaching for absolutes*.

«It makes no more sense to say I’m 100 percent convinced of a material worldview than to say I’m 100 percent convinced of the literal version of the Bible.”» — la simetría con que Griffiths, según Pollan, iguala las dos certezas absolutas, la materialista y la literalista bíblica.

«I asked him if he agreed with E. O. Wilson, who has written that all of us must ultimately choose: either the path of science or the path of spirituality.» — Pollan trae la tesis de E. O. Wilson sobre la elección forzosa entre ciencia y espiritualidad, y la pone a prueba con Griffiths.

«But Griffiths doesn’t see the two ways of knowing as mutually exclusive and has little patience for absolutists on either side of the supposed divide. Rather, he hopes the two ways can inform each other and correct each other’s defects, and in that exchange help us to pose and then, possibly, answer the big questions we face.» — la posición de Griffiths ante esa disyuntiva según Pollan: que los dos modos de conocer se informen y se corrijan mutuamente.

«The Johns Hopkins experiment shows—proves—that under controlled, experimental conditions, psilocybin can occasion genuine mystical experiences.» — según Pollan, Huston Smith escribió a Bob Jesse que el experimento muestra, y prueba, que en condiciones controladas la psilocibina ocasiona experiencias místicas genuinas; el verbo enfático es de Smith.

«It uses science, which modernity trusts, to undermine modernity’s secularism. In doing so, it offers hope of nothing less than a re-sacralization of the natural and social world, a spiritual revival that is our best defense against not only soullessness, but against religious fanaticism. And it does so in the very teeth of the unscientific prejudices built into our current drug laws.”» — el resto de la carta de Smith según Pollan: usar la ciencia en que la modernidad confía para minar su secularismo, con la esperanza de una resacralización del mundo natural y social.

«As I read Smith’s letter aloud, a smile bloomed across Griffiths’s face; he was clearly moved but had little to add except to say, “That’s beautiful.”» — la reacción de Griffiths a esa carta según Pollan, que cierra el capítulo.

«ROLAND GRIFFITHS today sounds like a scientist deeply commit» — Pollan describe a Griffiths como científico recomprometido con su investigación; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 62 con *rather recommitted—to his research*.

«rather recommitted—to his research. “I described to you how when I first got into meditation, I felt disconnected from my work life and considered dropping it entirely. I would say I’m now reengaged in a way that’s more integrated than it has ever been.» — según Pollan, Griffiths describe su propia reintegración entre la meditación y el trabajo de laboratorio; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 61.

«At this moment,” Griffiths began, locking me in firm eye contact, “are you aware that you are aware?”» — la pregunta con que Griffiths, según Pollan, condiciona la entrega del medallón; es la pregunta que abre el capítulo Two.

«On one side was a quartet of tall, slender, curving Psilocybe cubensis, one of the more common species of magic mushroom. On the back was a quotation from William Blake that, it occurred to me later, neatly aligned the way of the scientist with that of the mystic: “The true method of knowledge is experiment.”» — Pollan describe las dos caras del medallón y lee en la frase de Blake un alineamiento entre la vía del científico y la del místico; la lectura es suya.

«It seems that the previous summer Roland Griffiths had gone for the first time to Burning Man (had I heard of it?), and when he learned that no money is exchanged in the temporary city, only gifts, he had the mushroom medallions minted so he would have something suitable to give away or trade.» — según Pollan, Griffiths mandó acuñar los medallones para el festival de Burning Man, donde no hay dinero sino regalos.

«No one I spoke to at Hopkins ever mentioned the rather astonishing fact that the life-changing experiences their volunteers were reporting owed to the action of a chemical compound found in nature—in a mushroom.» — Pollan señala lo que nadie mencionaba en el laboratorio: que aquellas experiencias venían de un compuesto hallado en un hongo.

«All of the scientists doing psychedelic research today work exclusively with a synthetic version of the psilocybin molecule.» — Pollan consigna que toda la investigación actual trabaja con la molécula sintética y no con el hongo.

«The mushroom’s psychoactive compound was first identified, synthesized, and named in the late 1950s by Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD.» — Pollan acredita a Hofmann la identificación, síntesis y nombre del compuesto a fines de los cincuenta.

«I suppose this is the usual distancing effect of modern science at work, but here it is compounded by a specific desire to distance psilocybin from its tangled roots (or I should say, mycelia) in the worlds of 1960s counterculture, Native American shamanism, and, perhaps, nature itself.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre ese distanciamiento: además del efecto habitual de la ciencia moderna, aquí hay el deseo de alejar la psilocibina de la contracultura, del chamanismo nativo y de la naturaleza misma.

«For it is there—in nature—that we bump up against the mystery of a little brown mushroom with the power to change the consciousness of the animals that eat it.» — Pollan sitúa el misterio del capítulo en la naturaleza: un hongo pardo con poder de cambiar la consciencia de los animales que lo comen.

«LSD too, it is easy to forget, was derived from a fungus, Claviceps purpurea, or ergot.» — Pollan recuerda que el LSD también sale de un hongo y da su nombre científico.

«Somehow, for some reason, these remarkable mushrooms produce, in addition to spores, meanings in human minds.» — la formulación con que Pollan enuncia el enigma del capítulo: que estos hongos produzcan, además de esporas, significados en mentes humanas.

«Where did these mushrooms grow, and how? Why did they evolve the ability to produce a chemical compound so closely related to serotonin, the neurotransmitter, that it can slip across the blood-brain barrier and temporarily take charge of the mammalian brain?» — las preguntas de historia natural con que Pollan abre el capítulo, incluida la del parecido de la molécula con la serotonina.

«Was it a defense chemical, intended to poison mushroom eaters? That would seem to be the most straightforward explanation, yet it is undermined by the fact the fungus produces the hallucinogen almost exclusively in its “fruiting body”—that part of the organism it is happiest to have eaten.» — Pollan objeta la explicación defensiva porque el hongo produce el alucinógeno casi solo en el cuerpo fructífero, la parte que le conviene que se coman.

«There were also the more philosophical questions posed by the existence of a fungus that could not only change consciousness but occasion a profound mystical experience in humans. This fact can be interpreted in two completely different ways.» — Pollan anuncia la paradoja filosófica del capítulo y declara que el mismo hecho admite dos lecturas opuestas.

«the mind-altering power of psilocybin argues for a firmly materialist understanding of consciousness and spirituality, because the changes observed in the mind can be traced directly to the presence of a chemical—psilocybin. What is more material than a chemical? One could reasonably conclude from the action of psychedelics that the gods are nothing more than chemically induced figments of the hominid imagination.» — la primera lectura según Pollan: que el efecto rastreable a un químico apoya una comprensión materialista de la consciencia y de lo espiritual.

«Yet, surprisingly, most of the people who have had these experiences don’t see the matter that way at all. Even the most secular among them come away from their journeys convinced there exists something that transcends a material understanding of reality: some sort of a “Beyond.” It’s not that they deny a naturalistic basis for this revelation; they just interpret it differently.» — Pollan reporta que quienes tuvieron la experiencia no la leen así: no niegan la base naturalista, la interpretan de otro modo.

«If the experience of transcendence is mediated by molecules that flow through both our brains and the natural world of plants and fungi, then perhaps nature is not as mute as Science has told us, and “Spirit,” however defined, exists out there—is immanent in nature, in other words, just as countless premodern cultures have believed.» — la segunda lectura según Pollan: si la trascendencia la median moléculas que corren por el cerebro y por plantas y hongos, quizá la naturaleza no sea muda y el espíritu sea inmanente a ella, como han creído innumerables culturas premodernas.

«What to my (spiritually impoverished) mind seemed to constitute a good case for the disenchantment of the world becomes in the minds of the more psychedelically experienced irrefutable proof of its fundamental enchantment. Flesh of the gods, indeed.» — Pollan contrapone su propia lectura —que él marca entre paréntesis como empobrecida— a la de los más experimentados, para quienes el mismo hecho prueba el encantamiento del mundo.

«So here was a curious paradox. The same phenomenon that pointed to a materialist explanation for spiritual and religious belief gave people an experience so powerful it convinced them of the existence of a nonmaterial reality—the very basis of religious belief.» — la paradoja tal como Pollan la formula: el fenómeno que apunta a una explicación materialista de la creencia religiosa da a la vez la experiencia que convence de una realidad no material.

«I hoped that getting to know the psychoactive LBMs (mycologist shorthand for “little brown mushrooms”) at the bottom of this paradox might clarify the matter or, perhaps, somehow dissolve it.» — Pollan declara el plan del capítulo, con el término de los micólogos para los hongos pardos pequeños.

«I was already something of a mushroom hunter, secure in my ability to identify a handful of edible woodland species (chanterelles, morels, black trumpets, and porcini) with a high enough degree of confidence to eat what I found.» — Pollan declara su propia competencia previa como recolector y sus límites.

«However, I had been told by all my teachers that the world of LBMs was far more daunting in its complexity and peril; many if not most of the species that can kill you are LBMs.» — la advertencia que Pollan reporta de sus maestros sobre la peligrosidad del grupo.

«Stamets has himself “published”—that is, identified and described in a peer-reviewed journal—four new species of Psilocybe, including azurescens, named for his son Azureus* and the most potent species yet known.» — Pollan acredita a Stamets cuatro especies nuevas descritas en revista arbitrada, entre ellas azurescens, nombrada por su hijo y la más potente conocida.

«But while Stamets is one of the country’s most respected mycologists, he works entirely outside the academy, has no graduate degree, funds most of his own research,* and holds views of the role of fungi in nature that are well outside the scientific mainstream and that, he will gladly tell you, owe to insights granted to him by the mushrooms themselves, in the course of both close study and regular ingestion.» — Pollan sitúa a Stamets fuera de la academia y consigna que él mismo atribuye sus ideas a lo que los hongos le han revelado por estudio e ingesta regular.

«I’ve known Stamets for years, though not very well and always from what I confess has been a somewhat skeptical distance.» — Pollan declara su propia relación previa con el entrevistado y la distancia escéptica desde la que lo miraba.

«His extravagant claims for the powers of mushrooms and eyebrowelevating boasts about his mushroom work with institutions like DARPA (the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and NIH (the National Institutes of Health) are bound to set off a journalist’s bullshit detector, rightly or—as often happens in his case —wrongly.» — Pollan declara que las afirmaciones de Stamets disparan el detector de embustes de un periodista, y enseguida acota que a menudo se dispara sin razón; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *eyebrowelevating* donde la fuente imprime *eyebrow-elevating*.

«Over the years, we’ve found ourselves at some of the same conferences, so I’ve had several opportunities to hear his talks, which consist of a beguiling (often brilliant) mash-up of hard science and visionary speculation, with the line between the two often impossible to discern.» — la caracterización que Pollan hace de las charlas de Stamets: mezcla de ciencia dura y especulación visionaria con la línea entre ambas imposible de trazar.

«Stamets, who was born in 1955 in Salem, Ohio, is a big hairy man with a beard and a bearish mien; I was not surprised to learn he once worked as a lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest.» — el retrato de Stamets que Pollan compone, con su oficio anterior de leñador.

«Onstage, he usually wears what appears to be a felt hat in the alpine style but which, as he’ll explain, is in fact made in Transylvania from something called amadou, the spongy inner layer of the horse’s hoof fungus (Fomes fomentarius), a polypore that grows on several species of dead or dying trees.» — según Pollan, el sombrero de Stamets está hecho de amadou, la capa interior esponjosa del hongo de la pezuña de caballo, cuyo nombre científico da.

«Amadou is flammable and in ancient times was used to start and transport fires. Ötzi, the five-thousand-year-old “Ice Man” found mummified in an alpine glacier in 1991, was carrying a pouch in which he had a piece of amadou.» — Pollan da los usos antiguos del amadou y el dato del hombre de hielo de hace cinco mil años que llevaba un trozo.

«Because of its antimicrobial properties, Fomes fomentarius was also used to dress wounds and preserve food.» — el segundo uso del hongo según Pollan, por sus propiedades antimicrobianas.

«Fungi constitute the most poorly understood and underappreciated kingdom of life on earth. Though indispensable to the health of the planet (as recyclers of organic matter and builders of soil), they are the victims not only of our disregard but of a deep-seated ill will, a mycophobia that Stamets deems a form of “biological racism.”» — según Pollan, Stamets llama racismo biológico a la micofobia; la etiqueta es de Stamets y el libro la atribuye a él.

«Leaving aside their reputation for poisoning us, this is surprising in that we are closer, genetically speaking, to the fungal kingdom than to that of the plants.» — el dato con que Pollan subraya lo extraño de esa aversión: estamos genéticamente más cerca de los hongos que de las plantas.

«Stamets has made it his life’s work to right this wrong, by speaking out on their behalf and by demonstrating the potential of mushrooms to solve a great many of the world’s problems.» — Pollan define la obra de vida de Stamets como reparación de ese agravio.

«Indeed, the title of his most popular lecture, and the subtitle of his 2005 book, Mycelium Running, is “How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.” By the end of his presentation, this claim no longer sounds hyperbolic.» — Pollan da el título de la conferencia y del libro de 2005 de Stamets y declara que al final de la charla deja de sonar exagerado.

«I can remember the first time I heard Stamets talk about “mycoremediation”—his term for the use of mushrooms to clean up pollution and industrial waste.» — Pollan da el término de Stamets para el uso de hongos en la limpieza de contaminación y residuos industriales.

«One of the jobs of fungi in nature is to break down complex organic molecules; without them, the earth would long ago have become a vast, uninhabitable waste heap of dead but undecomposed plants and animals.» — la función de los hongos en la naturaleza según Pollan: sin ellos la tierra sería un basurero de plantas y animales muertos sin descomponer.

«So after the Exxon Valdez ran aground off the coast of Alaska in 1989, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound, Stamets revived a long-standing idea of putting fungi to work breaking down petrochemical waste.» — Pollan data en 1989 el derrame del Exxon Valdez y consigna que Stamets revivió una idea antigua de poner hongos a degradar residuos petroquímicos.

«He showed a slide of a steaming heap of oily black sludge before inoculating it with the spores of oyster mushrooms, and then a second photograph of the same pile taken four weeks later, when it was reduced by a third and covered in a thick mantle of snowy white oyster mushrooms. It was a performance, and a feat of alchemy, I» — Pollan describe las dos diapositivas de Stamets y llama alquimia a lo que muestran; el tramo se corta al reemitirse la marca de la plana 69 y sigue con *won’t soon forget*.

«But Stamets’s aspirations for the fungal kingdom go well beyond turning petrochemical sludge into arable soil. Indeed, in his view there is scarcely an ecological or medical problem that mushrooms can’t help solve.» — Pollan resume la ambición de Stamets: no hay problema ecológico o médico que los hongos no ayuden a resolver.

«Cancer? Stamets’s extract of turkey tail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor) has been shown to help cancer patients by stimulating their immune systems.» — según Pollan, el extracto de cola de pavo de Stamets ha mostrado ayudar a enfermos de cáncer estimulando el sistema inmune.

«Stamets claims to have used it to help cure his mother’s stage 4 breast cancer.» — Pollan marca como afirmación de Stamets, y no como hecho, la curación del cáncer de su madre.

«Bioterrorism? After 9/11, the federal government’s Bioshield program asked to screen hundreds of the rare mushroom strains in Stamets’s collection and found several that showed strong activity against SARS, smallpox, herpes, and bird and swine flu.» — según Pollan, el programa federal Bioshield halló en la colección de Stamets cepas con actividad contra varios virus.

«If this strikes you as implausible, remember that penicillin is the product of a fungus.» — el recordatorio con que Pollan sale al paso de la incredulidad del lector.

«Colony collapse disorder (CCD)? After watching honeybees visiting a woodpile to nibble on mycelium, Stamets identified several species of fungus that bolster the bees’ resistance to infection and CCD.» — según Pollan, Stamets identificó hongos que refuerzan la resistencia de las abejas tras verlas comer micelio en un montón de leña.

«Both the mushroom and its psychoactive compound were unknown to science until the 1950s, when the psilocybin mushroom was discovered in southern Mexico, where M» — Pollan data en los cincuenta el descubrimiento científico del hongo y de su compuesto; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 66 con *the gods,” in secret, for healing and divination since before the Spanish conquest*.

«Paul Stamets, a mycologist from Washington State who literally wrote the book on the genus Psilocybe,* in the form» — Pollan presenta a Paul Stamets como el micólogo que literalmente escribió el libro sobre el género; el asterisco es la llamada de una nota del autor recogida al final, y el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana para seguir en la 68 con el título de la guía de 1996.

«of the authoritative 1996 field guide Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World.» — el título y el año de la guía de campo de Stamets, que Pollan da por autoritativa; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 67.

«Insect infestation? A few years ago, Stamets won a patent for a “mycopesticide”—a mutant mycelium from a species of Cordyceps that, after being eaten by carpenter ants, colonizes their bodies and» — Pollan describe el micopesticida patentado por Stamets, un Cordyceps que coloniza el cuerpo de las hormigas carpinteras; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 70 con *kills them, but not before chemically inducing the ant to climb to the highest point in its environment*.

«The second or third time I watched Stamets show a video of a Cordyceps doing its diabolical thing to an ant—commandeering its body, making it do its bidding, and then exploding a mushroom from its brain in order to disseminate its genes—it occurred to me that Stamets and that poor ant had rather a lot in common.» — la lectura con que Pollan devuelve el Cordyceps sobre su propio entrevistado, y la marca como ocurrencia suya.

«But it’s also true that this man’s life—his brain!— has been utterly taken over by fungi; he has dedicated himself to their cause, speaking for the mushrooms in the same way that Dr. Seuss’s Lorax speaks for the trees.» — Pollan describe a Stamets como tomado por los hongos y vocero suyo, con el símil del Lorax de Dr. Seuss.

«He disseminates fungal spores far and wide, helping them, whether by mail order or sheer dint of his enthusiasm, to vastly expand their range and spread their message.» — Pollan cierra la analogía: Stamets disemina esporas por correo o por entusiasmo y les expande el área y el mensaje.

«He writes in his book that mycelia—the vast, cobwebby whitish net of single-celled filaments, called hyphae, with which fungi weave their way through the soil—are intelligent, forming “a sentient membrane” and “the neurological network of nature.”» — según Pollan, Stamets escribe que los micelios son inteligentes y los llama membrana sintiente y red neurológica de la naturaleza; las dos fórmulas son de Stamets.

«The title of his book Mycelium Running can be read in two ways.» — Pollan anuncia la doble lectura del título de Stamets.

«The mycelium is indeed always running through the ground, where it plays a critical role in forming soils, keeping plants and animals in good health, and knitting together the forest.» — la primera lectura del título según Pollan: el micelio corriendo por el suelo, formando suelos y tejiendo el bosque.

«But the mycelium are also, in Stamets’s view, running the show—that of nature in general and, like a neural software program, the minds of certain creatures, including, he would be the first to tell you, Paul Stamets himself.» — la segunda lectura según Pollan: en la visión de Stamets el micelio lleva la batuta de la naturaleza y de las mentes de ciertas criaturas, él incluido.

«Mushrooms are bringing us a message from nature,” he likes to say. “This is a call I’m hearing.”» — la fórmula que Pollan atribuye a Stamets sobre el mensaje de los hongos y el llamado que dice oír.

«Yet even some of Stamets’s airier notions turn out to have a scientific foundation beneath them.» — Pollan enmienda su propio escepticismo: incluso las nociones más etéreas de Stamets tienen fundamento científico debajo.

«For years now, Stamets has been talking about the vast web of mycelia in the soil as “Earth’s natural Internet”—a redundant, complexly branched, self-repairing, and scalable communications network linking many species over tremendous distances.» — según Pollan, Stamets llama internet natural de la Tierra a la red de micelios del suelo y la describe como red de comunicaciones redundante, autorreparable y escalable.

«The biggest organism on earth is not a whale or a tree but a mushroom—a honey fungus in Oregon that is 2.4 miles wide.» — el dato con que Pollan apuntala la escala de esa red: el mayor organismo de la Tierra es un hongo de miel en Oregón.

«Stamets contends that these mycelial networks are in some sense “conscious”: aware of their environment and able to respond to challenges accordingly.» — Pollan atribuye a Stamets la tesis de que esas redes son en algún sentido conscientes, con el entrecomillado que marca la reserva.

«When I first heard these ideas, I thought they were, at best, fanciful metaphors. Yet in the years since, I’ve watched as a growing body of scientific research has emerged to suggest they are much more than metaphors.» — Pollan declara haber cambiado de opinión sobre esas ideas por la investigación científica aparecida desde entonces.

«The mycelia in a forest do link the trees in it, root to root, not only supplying them with nutrients, but serving as a medium that conveys information about environmental threats and allows trees to selectively send nutrients to other trees in the forest.» — la segunda evidencia según Pollan: los micelios enlazan los árboles raíz con raíz, les pasan nutrientes y transmiten información sobre amenazas.

«A forest is a far more complex, sociable, and intelligent entity than we knew, and it is fungi that organize the arboreal society.» — la conclusión que Pollan saca de esas evidencias, que es la tesis de Stamets asumida por él.

«Stamets’s ideas and theories have turned out to be far more durable, and practicable, than I ever would have guessed.» — Pollan consigna por escrito la revisión de su propio juicio sobre Stamets.

«I was curious to find out how his own experience with psilocybin had colored his thinking and lifework.» — Pollan declara la pregunta con que va a ver a Stamets: cómo tiñó su experiencia con psilocibina su pensamiento y su obra.

«In the more recent interviews and lectures I could find online, he seldom talked about psilocybin and often omitted mention of the field guide from his list of publications.» — Pollan mide el silencio reciente de Stamets sobre el asunto y la omisión de la guía de campo en su lista de publicaciones.

«Paul Stamets, it seemed, had gone legit. Bad timing for me.» — la conclusión que Pollan temía antes de la llamada, y que la plana siguiente deja sin sostén.

«THANKFULLY, I WAS WRONG. When I reached Stamets at his home in Kamilche, Washington, and told him what I was up to, he couldn’t have been more forthcoming or cooperative.» — Pollan enmienda su previsión y declara la disposición de Stamets a hablar.

«He knew all about the work going on at Hopkins—in fact had consulted with the Hopkins team when they were first looking for a source of psilocybin.» — según Pollan, Stamets había asesorado al equipo de Hopkins cuando buscaban una fuente de psilocibina.

«My impression was that the revival of legitimate university research had made Stamets more comfortable reopening this particular chapter in his life.» — la hipótesis con que Pollan explica la disposición de Stamets, y la marca como impresión suya.

«The only discordant note in the conversation came when I casually dropped the slang expression for psilocybin when asking him about going hunting for ’shrooms. “I really, really hate that word,” he said, almost gravely, adopting the tone of a parent upbraiding a potty-mouthed child.» — Pollan consigna la reacción de Stamets al término coloquial para la psilocibina; es la tercera discusión de nomenclatura del libro, tras la del prólogo y la de Jesse.

«But if you come right after Thanksgiving, and the weather’s right, I can take you to the only place in the world where Psilocybe azurescens has been consistently found, at the mouth of the Columbia River.”» — según Pollan, Stamets le ofrece el único sitio del mundo donde se ha hallado consistentemente Psilocybe azurescens.

«He mentioned the name of the park where he had found them in the past and told me to book a yurt there, adding, “Probably best not to use my name.”» — la precaución que Stamets pide según Pollan, que marca el estatus legal del asunto.

«It seems there are more than two hundred species of Psilocybe, distributed all over the world; it’s not clear whether that’s always been the case, or if the mushrooms have followed in the footsteps of the animals who have taken such a keen interest in them.» — Pollan da la cifra de especies del género y deja abierta la pregunta de si su distribución mundial es antigua o sigue los pasos de los animales que se interesan por ellas.

«Humans have been using psilocybin mushrooms sacramentally for at least seven thousand years, according to Stamets. But animals sometimes ingest them too, for reasons that remain obscure.» — según Pollan, Stamets data en siete mil años el uso sacramental de estos hongos, y el libro añade que también los ingieren animales por razones que siguen oscuras.

«Psilocybes are saprophytes, living off dead plant matter and dung.» — la definición ecológica que Pollan da del género.

«They are denizens of disturbed land, popping up most often in the habitats created by ecological catastrophe, such as landslides, floods, storms, and volcanoes.» — Pollan describe el hábitat del género: tierra removida por catástrofe ecológica.

«They also prosper in the ecological catastrophes caused by our species: clear-cut forests, road cuts, the wakes of bulldozers, and agriculture.» — la segunda mitad de esa descripción: las catástrofes que causa nuestra propia especie.

«Curiously, or perhaps not so curiously, the most potent species occur less often in the wild than in cities and towns; their predilection for habitats disturbed by us has allowed them to travel widely, “following streams of debris,” including our own.» — Pollan hace notar que las especies más potentes abundan más en ciudades que en la naturaleza, por su predilección por los hábitats que nosotros perturbamos.

«In recent years, the practice of mulching with wood chips has vastly expanded the range of a handful of potent Psilocybes once confined to the Pacific Northwest. They now thrive in all those places we humans now “landscape”: suburban gardens, nurseries, city parks, churchyards, highway rest stops, prisons, college campuses, even, as Stamets likes to point out, on the grounds of courthouses and police stations.» — según Pollan, el acolchado con astillas expandió el área de varias especies potentes, que ahora prosperan en jardines, parques y campus, y hasta en juzgados y estaciones de policía.

«“Psilocybe mushrooms and civilization continue to coevolve,” Stamets writes.» — la fórmula que Pollan cita de Stamets sobre la coevolución de estos hongos y la civilización; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *coevolve* donde la fuente imprime *co-evolve*.

«In fact after I published an article about psilocybin research, I was informed by a student that after the December rains Psilocybes can be found on the Berkeley campus, where I teach. “Look in the wood chips,” he advised.» — el dato que Pollan reporta de un estudiante sobre dónde hallarlos en el campus donde él enseña.

«To judge from the pictures, the genus is just a big bunch of little brown mushrooms, most of them utterly nondescript.» — Pollan describe la dificultad de identificación del género tras estudiar la guía.

«Yes, all the Psilocybes have gills, but that isn’t much help, because thousands of other mushrooms have gills, too.» — Pollan explica por qué el carácter más visible no sirve para identificar el género.

«Some Psilocybes have a little nipple-like knob or protrusion on top—it’s called an umbo, I learned; others don’t. Some were “viscid”—slippery or slimy when wet, giving them a shiny appearance. Others were dull and matte gray; some, like azurescens, were a milky caramel color.» — el inventario de caracteres que Pollan aprendió de la guía, con el vocabulario técnico que va adoptando.

«Many but not all Psilocybes sport a “pellicle”—a condom-like layer of gelatinous material covering the cap that can be peeled off.» — el último de esos caracteres según Pollan, con su acotación de que no lo tienen todas.

«Mistakes in mushroom identification can be lethal,” Stamets begins, before displaying a photograph in which a Psilocybe stuntzii is seen growing cheek by jowl with a trio of indistinguishable Galerina autumnalis, an unremarkable little mushroom that, when eaten, “can result in an agonizing death.”» — según Pollan, Stamets abre su capítulo cuarto advirtiendo que el error de identificación puede ser letal, y lo ilustra con dos especies indistinguibles creciendo juntas.

«But while Stamets urges extreme circumspection in amateurs hoping to identify Psilocybes, he also equips the mushroom hunter who hasn’t been completely discouraged with something he calls “The Stametsian Rule”: a three-pronged test that, he (sort of) assures us, can head off death and disaster.» — Pollan nombra la regla de tres puntas que Stamets ofrece al aficionado, con el inciso que marca su propia reserva.

«If a gilled mushroom has purplish brown to black spores, and the flesh bruises bluish, the mushroom in question is very likely a psilocybin-producing species.”» — el enunciado de esa regla según Pollan, con el atenuante de Stamets dentro.

«This is definitely a big help, though I wouldn’t mind something more categorical than “very likely.”» — la objeción de Pollan al atenuante de esa regla.

«He then offers a sobering caveat. “I know of no exceptions to this rule,” he adds, “but that does not mean there are none!”» — la salvedad con que Stamets acota su propia regla, según Pollan; citarla sin ella la falsearía.

«After committing to memory the Stametsian Rule, I began picking promising-looking gilled LBMs—in my neighbors’ yards, on my walk to work, in the parking lot of the bank—and then roughing them up a bit to see if they would turn black and blue.» — Pollan cuenta cómo aplicó la regla en su propio vecindario.

«The blue pigment is in fact evidence of oxidized psilocin, one of the two main psychoactive compounds in a Psilocybe.» — Pollan explica el fundamento químico del azuleo: psilocina oxidada, uno de los dos compuestos psicoactivos del género.

«demonstrated these organisms can navigate mazes in search of food— sensing its location and then growing in that direction.» — la primera evidencia que Pollan aduce para la inteligencia del reino fúngico: los mohos mucilaginosos que recorren laberintos hacia el alimento; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 70.

«To determine if the mushroom in question had purplish-brown or black spores, I began making spore prints.» — Pollan describe el segundo paso de la regla, la impresión de esporas; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 73.

«This involves cutting the cap off a mushroom and placing it, gill side down, on a piece of white paper. (Or black paper if you have reason to believe the mushroom has white spores.) Within hours, the mushroom cap releases its microscopic spores, which will form a pretty, shadowy pattern on the paper (reminiscent of a lipstick kiss) that you can then try to decide is purplish brown or black—or rust colored, in which case you might have a deadly Galerina on your hands.» — el procedimiento de la impresión de esporas según Pollan, con el color herrumbre como señal de peligro mortal.

«Certain things are perhaps best learned in person, rather than from a book. I decided I should probably wait before making any irreversible decisions until I had spent some time in the company of my mycological Virgil.» — Pollan nombra a Stamets su Virgilio micológico y declara por qué no decidió nada irreversible por su cuenta.

«This was the house that mushrooms built, Stamets explained, launching into its story before I had a chance to unpack my bag. It replaced a rickety old farmhouse on the site that, when Stamets moved in, was slowly succumbing to an infestation of carpenter ants.» — Pollan cuenta el origen de la casa de Stamets, levantada con lo que le dio la patente del hongo.

«He knew precisely which species of Cordyceps could wipe out the ant colony, but so did the ants: they scrupulously inspect every returning member for Cordyceps spores and promptly chew off the head of any ant bearing spores, dumping the body far away from the colony.» — según Pollan, las hormigas inspeccionan a cada miembro que vuelve y decapitan al que trae esporas, lo que hacía inútil el remedio evidente.

«Stamets outwitted the ants’ defense by breeding a mutant Cordycepslike fungus that postponed sporulation. He put some of its mycelium in his daughter’s dollhouse bowl, left that on the floor of the kitchen, and during the night watched as a parade of ants carried the mycelium into the nest—having mistaken it for a safe food source.» — según Pollan, Stamets burló esa defensa criando un hongo mutante de esporulación retardada y dejándolo donde las hormigas lo cargaran al nido; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *Cordycepslike* donde la fuente imprime *Cordyceps-like*.

«When the fungus eventually sporulated, it was already deep inside the colony and the ants were done for: the Cordyceps colonized their bodies and sent fruiting bodies bursting forth from their heads.» — el desenlace de esa operación según Pollan.

«A painting of Albert Hofmann hangs over the fireplace.» — el detalle con que Pollan señala a quién honra la casa de Stamets.

«Overhead, beneath the peak, is a massive round stained glass depicting “The Universality of the Mycelial Archetype”—an intricate tracery of blue lines on a night sky, the lines representing at once mycelium, roots, neurons, the Internet, and dark matter.» — Pollan describe el vitral de la casa y lo que sus líneas representan a la vez: micelio, raíces, neuronas, internet y materia oscura; la enumeración es la clave de la visión de Stamets.

«Displayed on the walls heading upstairs from the living room are framed artworks, photographs, and keepsakes, including a diploma signifying the successful completion of one of the Merry Pranksters’ Acid Tests, signed by Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady.» — Pollan inventaria lo colgado en la escalera, incluido el diploma de una de las pruebas de ácido de los Merry Pranksters.

«The print is Grey’s interpretation of the so-called stoned ape theory, depicting an early, electrifiedlooking hominid clutching a Psilocybe while a cyclone of abstractions flies out of its mouth and forehead.» — Pollan describe la estampa de Alex Grey sobre la llamada teoría del simio drogado; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *electrifiedlooking* donde la fuente imprime *electrified-looking*.

«I want to discuss the high likelihood that the Stoned Ape Theory, first presented by Roland Fischer and then popularized/restated by Terence McKenna, is probably true—[ingestion of psilocybin] causing a rapid development of the hominid brain for analytical thinking and societal bonding.» — Pollan cita el correo de Stamets, que atribuye la teoría primero a Roland Fischer y luego a Terence McKenna, y la da por probablemente cierta; el corchete es del original y la atribución doble se consigna tal cual.

«Did you know that 23 primates (including humans) consume mushrooms and know how to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’?”» — el dato que Stamets aduce en ese correo, según Pollan, y que él declara no conocer.

«But the brief, elliptical e-mail nicely prefigured the tenor of my weekend with Stamets as I struggled to absorb a torrent of mycological fact and speculation that, like a rushing river, is impossible to ford without being knocked sideways.» — Pollan declara cómo fue el fin de semana con Stamets y con qué símil lo resume.

«The sheer brilliance of Stamets’s mushroom’s-eye view of the world can be dazzling, but after a while it can also make you feel claustrophobic, as only the true monomaniac or autodidact—and Stamets is both—can do.» — Pollan mide a la vez el brillo y el encierro de la visión de Stamets, y lo clasifica como monomaníaco y autodidacta.

«Everything is connected is ever the subtext with such people; in this case what connects everything you could possibly think of just happens to be fungal mycelia.» — la objeción de Pollan al tipo de pensamiento de Stamets, dicha como subtexto que se repite en esa clase de personas.

«Stamets grew up in an Ohio town outside Youngstown called Columbiana, the youngest of five children. His father’s engineering company went belly-up when Paul was a boy, the family “going from riches to rags pretty quickly.”» — Pollan da el origen familiar de Stamets y la quiebra de la empresa del padre.

«Five years his senior, John was an aspiring scientist—he would receive a scholarship to study neurophysiology—who kept “an exquisite laboratory in the basement,” a realm that was Paul’s idea of heaven, but to which John seldom granted his little brother admittance.» — según Pollan, el hermano mayor de Stamets tenía un laboratorio en el sótano al que casi no lo dejaba entrar.

«I thought all houses had laboratories, so whenever I went over to a friend’s house, I would ask where the laboratory was. I didn’t understand why they would always point me to the bathroom instead —the lavatory.”» — la anécdota de infancia que Stamets cuenta, según Pollan.

«Winning John’s approval became a motive force in Paul’s life, which perhaps explains the value Stamets places on mainstream scientific recognition of work.» — la explicación que Pollan propone del apego de Stamets al reconocimiento científico, y la marca como conjetura suya.

«John had died, of a heart attack, six months before my visit and, as it happened, on the same day Paul received word of his AAAS honor.» — Pollan fecha la muerte del hermano y hace notar la coincidencia con el día del honor científico.

«When Paul was fourteen, John told him about magic mushrooms, and when he went off to Yale, John left behind a book, Altered States of Consciousness, that made a tremendous impression on Paul.» — Pollan data en los catorce años de Stamets la primera noticia de los hongos y nombra el libro que le dejó el hermano.

«Edited by Charles T. Tart, a psychologist, the book is a doorstop of an anthology of scholarly writings about non-ordinary mental states, covering the spectrum from dreaming and hypnosis to meditation and psychedelics.» — Pollan describe la antología de Tart y el espectro que cubre, del sueño y la hipnosis a la meditación y los psicodélicos.

«But the reason the book made such a lasting impression on Stamets had less to do with its contents, provocative as these were, than with the reaction the book elicited in certain adults.» — Pollan enmienda de inmediato: lo que marcó a Stamets no fue el contenido sino la reacción que el libro provocó.

«My parents found it and they burned it.’» — lo que el amigo de Stamets le confesó, según Pollan.

«They burned my book?!? That was a pivotal moment for me. I saw the Snyders as the enemy, trying to suppress the exploration of consciousness. But if this was such powerful information that they felt compelled to destroy it, then this was powerful information I now had to have. So I owe them a debt of gratitude.”» — según Pollan, Stamets cuenta cómo la quema del libro le indicó que la información era poderosa y lo decidió a buscarla; el agradecimiento final es suyo.

«Stamets went off to Kenyon College, where, as a freshman, he had “a profound psychedelic experience” that set his course in life.» — Pollan data en el primer año de universidad la experiencia que fijó el rumbo de Stamets.

«As long as he could remember, Stamets had been stymied by a debilitating stutter.» — Pollan presenta el tartamudeo de Stamets como el dato sin el cual no se entiende lo que sigue.

«One spring afternoon toward the end of his freshman year, walking alone along the wooded ridgeline above campus, Stamets ate a whole bag of mushrooms, perhaps ten grams, thinking that was a proper dose.» — Pollan cuenta la dosis que Stamets tomó y añade entre paréntesis la medida de referencia, con lo que marca el exceso sin decirlo.

«As I’m climbing the tree, I’m literally getting higher as I’m climbing higher.”» — el juego de palabras con que Stamets cuenta el ascenso al roble, según Pollan.

«I’m getting vertigo but I can’t climb down, I’m too high, so I just wrapped my arms around the tree and held on, hugging it tightly. The tree became the axis mundi, rooting me to the earth. ‘This is the tree of life,’ I thought; it was expanding into the sky and connecting me to the universe.» — según Pollan, Stamets narra haber abrazado el árbol y haberlo tomado por axis mundi y árbol de la vida; el relato es suyo y el libro lo consigna sin afirmarlo.

«And then it hits me: I’m going to be struck by lightning! Every few seconds there’s another strike, here, then there, all around me. On the verge of enlightenment, I’m going to be electrocuted. This is my destiny! The whole time, I’m being washed by warm rains. I am crying now, there is liquid everywhere, but I also feel one with the universe.» — según Pollan, Stamets narra el terror del rayo y a la vez el sentimiento de unidad con el universo.

«And then I say to myself, what are my issues if I survive this? Paul, I said, you’re not stupid, but stuttering is holding you back. You can’t look women in the eyes. What should I do? Stop stuttering now— that became my mantra. Stop stuttering now, I said it over and over and over.» — según Pollan, Stamets cuenta que se dio a sí mismo una consigna bajo la tormenta: dejar de tartamudear.

«The storm eventually passed. I climbed down from the tree and walked back to my room and went to sleep. That was the most important experience of my life to that point, and here’s why:» — según Pollan, Stamets declara aquella la experiencia más importante de su vida hasta entonces y anuncia la razón.

«The next morning, I’m walking down the sidewalk, and here comes this girl I was attracted to. She’s way beyond my reach. She’s walking toward me, and she says, ‘Good morning, Paul. How are you?’ I look at her and say, ‘I’m doing great.’ I wasn’t stuttering! And I have hardly ever stuttered since.» — según Pollan, Stamets fecha al día siguiente el cese de su tartamudeo; el testimonio es suyo y el libro no lo adjudica a la sustancia.

«And that’s when I realized I wanted to look into these mushrooms.”» — la frase con que Stamets, según Pollan, data ahí el comienzo de su oficio.

«IN A REMARKABLY SHORT SPAN of time, Stamets made himself into one of the country’s leading experts on the genus Psilocybe.» — Pollan mide la rapidez con que Stamets se hizo experto en el género.

«In 1978, at the age of twenty-three, he published his first book, Psilocybe Mushrooms and Their Allies—their allies understood to be us, the animal that had done the most to spread their genes and, as Stamets now saw as his calling, their planetary gospel.» — Pollan data el primer libro de Stamets en 1978 y juega con el título: los aliados del hongo somos nosotros, que más hemos hecho por sus genes.

«I was always looking down at the ground because I was afraid people would try to speak to me. In fact, one of the reasons I got so good at finding mushrooms was» — según Pollan, Stamets atribuye su pericia para hallar hongos al hábito de mirar al suelo que le dio el tartamudeo; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 77 con *because I was always looking down*.

«Stamets got his mycological education not at Kenyon, which he left after one year, but at the Evergreen State College, which in the mid-1970s was a new experimental college in Olympia, Washington, where students could design their own course of independent study.» — Pollan sitúa la formación micológica de Stamets en Evergreen State College y no en Kenyon.

«A young professor named Michael Beug, who had a degree in environmental chemistry, agreed to take under his wing Stamets and two other equally promising mycologically obsessed students: Jeremy Bigwood and Jonathan Ott.» — Pollan nombra al profesor y a los dos condiscípulos con quienes Stamets se formó.

«Beug was not himself a mycologist by training, but the four of them mastered the subject together, with the help of an electron microscope and a DEA license that Beug had somehow secured. Thus armed, the four trained their attention on a genus that the rest of the field generally chose to pass over in uncomfortable silence.» — según Pollan, los cuatro se hicieron micólogos juntos con un microscopio electrónico y una licencia de la DEA, y trabajaron un género que el resto del campo prefería callar.

«Illegal since 1970, psilocybin mushrooms were at the time chiefly of interest to the counterculture, as a gentler, more natural alternative to LSD, but very little was known about their habitat, distribution, life» — Pollan describe el estado del saber sobre estos hongos en los setenta y su lugar en la contracultura como alternativa más suave que el LSD; el tramo se corta al reemitirse la marca de la plana 78 y sigue con *cycle, or potency*.

«It was believed that psychedelic mushrooms were native to southern Mexico, where R. Gordon Wasson had “discovered” them in 1955.» — Pollan consigna la creencia de entonces sobre el origen mexicano de estos hongos, y entrecomilla el verbo del descubrimiento de Wasson.

«By the 1970s, most of the psilocybin in circulation in America was being imported from Latin America or grown domestically from spores of Latin American species, mainly cubensis.» — Pollan describe de dónde venía la psilocibina que circulaba en los setenta.

«The Evergreen group chalked up several notable accomplishments: they identified and published three new psilocybin species, perfected methods for growing them indoors, and developed techniques for measuring levels of psilocin and psilocybin in mushrooms.» — los tres logros que Pollan acredita al grupo de Evergreen.

«But perhaps the group’s most important contribution was to shift the focus of attention among people who cared about Psilocybes from southern Mexico to the Pacific Northwest.» — la contribución que Pollan tiene por mayor del grupo: desplazar el foco del sur de México al noroeste del Pacífico.

«Stamets and his colleagues were finding new species of psilocybin mushrooms all around them and publishing their findings. “You could almost feel the earth’s axis tilting to this corner of the world.”» — la frase de Stamets sobre el eje de la Tierra inclinándose hacia esa esquina del mundo, según Pollan.

«Anywhere you went in the Pacific Northwest, Stamets recalls, you could see people tracing peculiar patterns through farm fields and lawns, bent over in what he calls “the psilocybin stoop.”» — la escena que Stamets recuerda según Pollan, con el nombre que da a la postura del buscador.

«During this period, the Pacific Northwest emerged as a new center of gravity in American psychedelic culture, with the Evergreen State College serving as its de facto intellectual hub and R&D facility.» — Pollan sitúa el nuevo centro de gravedad de la cultura psicodélica estadounidense y nombra a Evergreen su núcleo intelectual.

«Beginning in 1976, Stamets and his Evergreen colleagues organized a series of now-legendary mushroom conferences, bringing together the leading lights of both the credentialed and the amateur wings of the psychedelic world» — Pollan data en 1976 el arranque de las conferencias de hongos que reunían a las alas titulada y aficionada de ese mundo.

«We watched as several of the attendees—I spotted Dr. Andrew Weil, best known for his books on holistic medicine; the psychedelic chemist Sasha Shulgin and his wife, Ann; and the New York Botanical Garden mycologist Gary Lincoff—arrived to great fanfare in a psychedelically painted school bus piloted by Ken Kesey.» — Pollan nombra a los asistentes que reconoció en aquel material y su llegada en un autobús escolar pintado que conducía Ken Kesey.

«The proceedings looked more like a Dionysian revel than a conference, yet there were some serious talks.» — el juicio de Pollan sobre aquellas jornadas, con su propia salvedad.

«Jonathan Ott delivered a brilliant lecture on the history of “entheogens”—a term he helped coin.» — Pollan acredita a Jonathan Ott la acuñación del término enteógenos, dato que completa la discusión de nomenclatura del prólogo.

«He traced their use all the way back to the Eleusinian mysteries of the Greeks, through the “pharmocratic inquisition,” when the Spanish conquest suppressed the Mesoamerican mushroom cults, and forward to the “entheogenic reformation” that has been under way since R. Gordon Wasson’s discovery that those cults had survived in Mexico.» — según Pollan, Ott trazó el uso de estas sustancias desde los misterios de Eleusis hasta lo que llamó reforma enteogénica, pasando por lo que nombró inquisición farmacrática.

«Along the way, Ott made an offhand reference to the “placebo sacraments” of the Catholic Eucharist.» — la fórmula que Pollan recoge de Ott sobre la eucaristía católica; es voz de Ott y el libro la consigna sin suscribirla.

«Then came footage of a big costume ball with lingering close-ups of a giant punch bowl that had been spiked with dozens of different kinds of psychedelic mushrooms.» — la escena del baile de disfraces que Pollan describe de aquel material.

«Stamets pointed out several prominent mycologists and ethnobotanists among the revelers; many of them dressed as specific kinds of fungus—Amanita muscaria, button mushrooms, and so on. Stamets himself appeared dressed as a bear.» — Pollan consigna que los asistentes iban disfrazados de especies de hongo y que Stamets iba de oso.

«In 1977, for instance, Stamets had the opportunity to play host to two of his heroes: Albert Hofmann and R. Gordon Wasson» — Pollan data en 1977 el encuentro de Stamets con sus dos héroes, Hofmann y Wasson.

«whose 1957 article in Life magazine describing the first psilocybin journey ever taken by a Westerner—his own—helped launch the psychedelic revolution in America.» — Pollan atribuye al artículo de Wasson en Life de 1957 el arranque de la revolución psicodélica en Estados Unidos, precisando que describía el primer viaje de psilocibina de un occidental, el suyo propio.

«The issue was dated May 13, 1957, and Bert Lahr was on the cover, mugging for the camera in a morning suit and a bowler hat. But the most prominent cover line was devoted to Wasson’s notorious article: “The Discovery of Mushrooms That Cause Strange Visions.”» — Pollan describe el ejemplar de Life que Stamets colecciona y da su titular de portada.

«FROM THE VANTAGE OF TODAY, it is hard to believe that psilocybin was introduced to the West by a vice president of J. P. Morgan in the pages of a mass-circulation magazine owned by Henry Luce; two more establishment characters it would be difficult to dream up.» — Pollan subraya la paradoja del origen: la psilocibina entró a Occidente por un vicepresidente de J. P. Morgan en una revista de Henry Luce.

«But in 1957, psychedelic drugs had not yet acquired any of the cultural and political stigmas that, a decade later, would weigh on our attitudes toward them.» — Pollan explica esa paradoja por la fecha: en 1957 no pesaban aún los estigmas culturales y políticos.

«At the time, LSD was not well known outside the small community of medical professionals who regarded it as a potential miracle drug for psychiatric illness and alcohol addiction.» — Pollan mide lo poco conocido que era el LSD fuera del ámbito médico, donde se lo tenía por droga milagrosa.

«As it happened, the Time-Life founder and editor in chief, Henry Luce, along with his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, had personal knowledge of psychedelic drugs, and they shared the enthusiasm of the medical and cultural elites who had embraced them in the 1950s.» — Pollan consigna que el fundador de Time-Life y su esposa conocían de primera mano estas sustancias.

«In 1964, Luce told a gathering of his staff that he and his wife had been taking LSD “under doctor’s supervision”; Clare Boothe Luce recalled that during her first trip in the 1950s she saw the world “through the eyes of a happy and gifted child.”» — según Pollan, Luce dijo a su personal en 1964 que él y su esposa tomaban LSD bajo supervisión médica, y ella recordaba haber visto el mundo con ojos de niña feliz y dotada.

«Before 1965, when a moral panic erupted over LSD, Time-Life publications were enthusiastic boosters of psychedelics, and Luce took a personal interest in directing his magazine’s coverage of them.» — Pollan consigna que antes de 1965 las publicaciones de Time-Life promovían estas sustancias con entusiasmo y que Luce dirigía personalmente esa cobertura.

«So when R. Gordon Wasson approached Life magazine with his story, he could not have knocked on a more receptive door.» — la conclusión que Pollan saca de ese contexto para explicar la acogida del artículo de Wasson.

«Life gave him a generous contract that, in addition to the princely sum of eighty-five hundred dollars, granted him final approval on the editing of his article, as well as the wording of headlines and captions.» — Pollan da las condiciones del contrato de Wasson con Life, incluida la aprobación final de la edición y de los titulares; el dato importa para lo que sigue sobre quién acuñó la frase.

«It specified that Wasson’s account include a “description of your own sensations and fantasies under the influence of the mushroom.”» — la cláusula del contrato que Pollan cita, y que obligaba a Wasson a narrar sus propias sensaciones.

«Life magazine was a mass medium in 1957, with a circulation of 5.7 million.» — la cifra con que Pollan mide el alcance de aquella publicación.

«“Seeking the Magic Mushroom,” in which “a New York banker goes to Mexico’s mountains to participate in the age-old rituals of Indians who chew strange growths that produce visions,” opened on a spread with a full-page color photograph of a Mazatec woman turning a mushroom over a smoky fire and goes on for no fewer than fifteen pages.» — Pollan da el título y la bajada del artículo de Wasson y describe su despliegue.

«The headline is the first known reference to “magic mushrooms,” a phrase that, it turns out, was coined not by a stoned hippie but by a Time-Life headline writer.» — el hallazgo que Pollan consigna: la expresión hongos mágicos la acuñó un titulista de Time-Life y no la contracultura.

«We chewed and swallowed these acrid mushrooms, saw visions, and emerged from the experience awestruck,”» — la primera frase del artículo de Wasson según Pollan, que él califica de algo jadeante.

«We had come from afar to attend a mushroom rite but had expected nothing so staggering as the virtuosity of the performing curanderas [healers] and the astonishing effects of the mushrooms. [The photographer] and I were the first white men in recorded history to eat the divine mushrooms, which for centuries had been a secret of certain Indian peoples living far from the great world in southern Mexico.”» — según Pollan, Wasson se declara junto con el fotógrafo el primer hombre blanco en la historia registrada en comer los hongos divinos; la afirmación es de Wasson y el libro la consigna como suya.

«Wasson then proceeds to tell the improbable tale of how someone like him, “a banker by occupation,” would end up eating magic mushrooms in the dirt-floored basement of a thatch-roofed, adobewalled home in a Oaxacan town so remote it could only be reached by means of an eleven-hour trek through the mountains by mule.» — Pollan resume el marco del relato de Wasson y la lejanía del pueblo oaxaqueño; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *adobewalled* donde la fuente imprime *adobe-walled*.

«The story begins in 1927, during Wasson’s honeymoon in the Catskills. During an afternoon stroll in the autumn woods, his bride, a Russian physician named Valentina, spotted a patch of wild mushrooms, before which “she knelt in poses of adoration.”» — Pollan data en 1927 el origen del interés de los Wasson, con la reacción de Valentina ante un corro de hongos silvestres.

«Wasson knew nothing of “those putrid, treacherous excrescences” and was alarmed when Valentina proposed to cook them for dinner. He refused to partake.» — según Pollan, Wasson no sabía nada de los hongos y se alarmó cuando su esposa propuso cocinarlos.

«Not long married,” Wasson wrote, “I thought to wake up the next morning a widower.”» — la frase de Wasson que Pollan cita sobre aquella primera noche.

«The couple became curious as to how two cultures could hold such diametrically opposed attitudes toward mushrooms. They soon embarked on a research project to understand the origins of both “mycophobia” and “mycophilia,” terms that the Wassons introduced.» — Pollan acredita a los Wasson los dos términos con que nombraron las dos actitudes ante los hongos.

«They concluded that each Indo-European people is by cultural inheritance either mycophobic (for example, the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, and Scandinavians) or mycophilic (the Russians, Catalans, and Slavs» — Pollan expone la clasificación de los Wasson por herencia cultural, con sus ejemplos de cada bando.

«Was it not probable that, long ago, long before the beginnings of written history, our ancestors had worshipped a divine mushroom? This would explain the aura of the supernatural in which all fungi seem to be bathed.”» — la conjetura de los Wasson que Pollan cita: que nuestros antepasados adoraran un hongo divino, y que de ahí venga el aura sobrenatural de los hongos; la pregunta va en potencial y así se conserva.

«The logical next question presented itself to the Wassons—“What kind of mushroom was once worshipped, and why?”—and with that question in hand they embarked on a thirty-year quest to find the divine mushroom.» — Pollan mide en treinta años la búsqueda que siguió a esa pregunta.

«They hoped to obtain evidence for the audacious theory that Wasson had developed and that would occupy him until his death: that the religious impulse in humankind had been first kindled by the visions inspired by a psychoactive mushroom.» — la tesis que Pollan atribuye a Wasson y que lo ocupó hasta su muerte: que el impulso religioso se encendió por primera vez con las visiones de un hongo psicoactivo.

«As a prominent financier, R. Gordon Wasson had the resources and the connections to enlist all manner of experts and scholars in his quest.» — Pollan explica por qué Wasson pudo reclutar expertos: su posición como financiero.

«One of these was the poet Robert Graves, who shared the Wassons’ interest in the role of mushrooms in history and in the common origins of the world’s myths and religions.» — Pollan nombra al poeta Robert Graves entre los reclutados y da el interés que compartía con los Wasson.

«The article was based on research done in Central America by Richard Evans Schultes, a Harvard ethnobotanist who studied the uses of psychoactive plants and fungi by indigenous cultures.» — Pollan acredita a Richard Evans Schultes la investigación en que se basaba aquel recorte.

«Schultes was a revered professor whom students recall shooting blowguns in class and keeping a basket of peyote buttons outside his Harvard office; he trained a generation of American ethnobotanists, including Wade Davis, Mark Plotkin, Michael Balick, Tim Plowman, and Andrew Weil.» — el retrato de Schultes que Pollan hace y la lista de etnobotánicos que formó.

«Along with Wasson, Schultes is one of a handful of figures whose role in bringing psychedelics to the West has gone underappreciated; indeed, some of the first seeds of that movement have quite literally sat in the Harvard herbarium since the 1930s, more than a quarter century before Timothy Leary set foot on the campus.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre la historia recibida: las primeras semillas del movimiento estaban en el herbario de Harvard desde los treinta, más de un cuarto de siglo antes de Leary.

«For it was Schultes who first identified teonanácatl—the sacred mushroom of the Aztecs and their descendants—as well as ololiuqui, the seeds of the morning glory, which the Aztecs also consumed sacramentally and which contain an alkaloid closely related to LSD.» — Pollan acredita a Schultes la identificación del teonanácatl y del ololiuqui, las semillas de la dondiego que también se consumían sacramentalmente.

«Up to this point, the Wassons had been looking toward Asia for their divine mushroom; Schultes reoriented their quest, pointing them toward the Americas, where there were scattered reports, from missionaries and anthropologists, suggesting that an ancient mushroom cult might yet survive in the remote mountain villages of southern Mexico.» — según Pollan, Schultes reorientó la búsqueda de los Wasson de Asia a América.

«In 1953, Wasson made the first of ten trips to Mexico and Central America, several of them to the village of Huautla de Jiménez, deep in the mountains of Oaxaca, where one of his informants—a missionary —had told him healers were using mushrooms.» — Pollan data en 1953 el primero de los diez viajes de Wasson y nombra su informante, un misionero.

«At first the locals were tight-lipped. Some told Wasson they had never heard of the mushrooms, or that they were no longer used, or that the practice survived only in some other, distant village.» — Pollan reporta la reticencia de los lugareños y las tres respuestas con que despachaban a Wasson.

«Their reticence was not surprising. The sacramental use of psychoactive mushrooms had been kept secret from Westerners for four hundred years, since shortly after the Spanish conquest» — Pollan explica esa reticencia por cuatro siglos de secreto ante los occidentales.

«The footage had been shot by Les Blank, but as often happened with coverage of such psychedelic gatherings, no one could ever quite get it» — Pollan consigna que el material filmado por Les Blank nunca se editó; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 79 con *together to edit the raw footage, so raw it remains*.

«sent Wasson a clipping from a pharmaceutical journal that made reference to a psychoactive mushroom used by sixteenth-century Mesoamerican Indians.» — según Pollan, Graves envió a Wasson en 1952 un recorte de revista farmacéutica sobre un hongo psicoactivo usado por indígenas mesoamericanos; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 81.

«was driven underground. The best account we have of the practice is that of the Spanish missionary priest Bernardino de Sahagún, who in the sixteenth century described the use of mushrooms in an Aztec religious observance:» — Pollan nombra al misionero Bernardino de Sahagún como la mejor fuente que tenemos del uso mexica de los hongos; el tramo arranca a media frase por el corte del troceo en la plana 82.

«These they ate before dawn with honey, and they also drank cacao before dawn. The mushrooms they ate with honey when they began to get heated from them, they began to dance, and some sang, and some wept» — Pollan cita a Sahagún sobre el rito: se comían antes del alba con miel y con cacao, y al calentarse empezaban a danzar, a cantar y a llorar; los puntos suspensivos de la cita son del original.

«And some saw in a vision that they were dying, and they wept, and others saw in a vision that some wild beast was eating them, others saw in a vision that they were taking captives in war . . . others saw in a vision that they were to commit adultery and that their heads were to be bashed in therefor . . . Then when the drunkenness of the mushrooms had passed, they spoke one with another about the visions that they had seen.» — la segunda mitad de la cita de Sahagún según Pollan, con el inventario de visiones y el coloquio posterior; el texto va como lo imprime el volumen, con sus puntos suspensivos.

«The Spanish sought to crush the mushroom cults, viewing them, rightly, as a mortal threat to the authority of the church.» — Pollan consigna el propósito español de aplastar los cultos del hongo y añade de su cosecha el adverbio que da por acertada la percepción de amenaza.

«One of the first priests Cortés brought to Mexico to Christianize the Aztecs declared that the mushrooms were the flesh of “the devil that they worshipped, and . . . with this bitter food they received their cruel god in communion.”» — según Pollan, uno de los primeros sacerdotes que Cortés llevó a México declaró que los hongos eran la carne del demonio que adoraban.

«Indians were interrogated and tortured into confessing the practice, and mushroom stones—many of them foot-tall chiseled basalt sculptures of the sacred fungi, presumably used in religious ceremonies—were smashed.» — Pollan reporta la tortura para arrancar confesiones y la destrucción de las piedras hongo, que describe como esculturas de basalto de casi un pie.

«The Inquisition would bring dozens of charges against Native Americans for crimes involving both peyote and psilocybin, in what amounted to an early battle in the war on drugs—or, to be more precise, the war on certain plants and fungi.» — Pollan llama a las causas inquisitoriales por peyote y psilocibina una batalla temprana de la guerra contra las drogas, y enmienda enseguida el término a guerra contra ciertas plantas y hongos.

«In 1620, the Roman Catholic Church declared that the use of plants for divination was “an act of superstition condemned as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic Faith.”» — Pollan data en 1620 la declaración eclesiástica contra el uso adivinatorio de plantas y la cita.

«It’s not hard to see why the church would have reacted so violently to the sacramental use of mushrooms. The Nahuatl word for the mushrooms—flesh of the gods—must have sounded to Spanish ears like a direct challenge to the Christian Sacrament, which of course was also understood to be the flesh of the gods, or rather of the one God.» — la explicación que Pollan da de la violencia de esa reacción: el nombre nahua sonaba a desafío directo al sacramento cristiano, que también es carne de dios.

«Yet the mushroom sacrament enjoyed an undeniable advantage over the Christian version. It took an act of faith to believe that eating the bread and wine of the Eucharist gave the worshipper access to the divine, an access that had to be mediated by a priest and the church liturgy. Compare that with the Aztec sacrament, a psychoactive mushroom that granted anyone who ate it direct, unmediated access to the divine—to visions of another world, a realm of the gods.» — la comparación de Pollan entre los dos sacramentos: el cristiano exige fe y mediación sacerdotal, y el otro da acceso directo y sin mediación.

«So who had the more powerful sacrament? As a Mazatec Indian told Wasson, the mushrooms “carry you there where god is.”» — Pollan deja la pregunta abierta y la responde con la frase de un mazateco a Wasson.

«The Roman Catholic Church might have been the first institution to fully recognize the threat to its authority posed by a psychedelic plant, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.» — la generalización con que Pollan cierra el pasaje, y que anticipa la reacción estadounidense de los sesenta.

«ON THE NIGHT OF JUNE 29–30, 1955, R. Gordon Wasson experienced the sacred mushrooms firsthand. On his third trip to Huautla, he had persuaded María Sabina, a sixty-one-year-old Mazatec and a respected curandera in the village, to let him and his photographer not only observe but take part in a ceremony in which no outsider had ever participated.» — Pollan fecha con precisión la noche en que Wasson participó en la velada de María Sabina, a quien presenta como curandera mazateca de sesenta y un años.

«The velada, as the ceremony was called, took place after dark in the basement of the home of a local official Wasson had enlisted in his cause, before a simple altar “adorned with Christian images.”» — Pollan describe el marco de la velada, con su altar adornado de imágenes cristianas; el detalle importa para la objeción que hará después.

«To protect her identity, Wasson called Sabina “Eva Mendez,” discerning “a spirituality in her expression that struck us at once.”» — Pollan consigna el seudónimo con que Wasson protegió a Sabina y la frase con que la describió.

«After cleaning the mushrooms and passing them through the purifying smoke of incense, Sabina handed Wasson a cup containing six pairs of mushrooms; she called them “the little children.”» — Pollan describe la entrega de los hongos y da el nombre que Sabina les daba.

«They tasted awful: “acrid with a rancid odor that repeated itself.” Even so, “I could not have been happier: this was the culmination of six years of pursuit.”» — Pollan cita a Wasson sobre el sabor y sobre su propia dicha al cabo de seis años de búsqueda.

«The visions that now arrived “were in vivid color, always harmonious. They began with art motifs, angular such as might decorate carpets or textiles or wallpaper . . . Then they evolved into palaces with courts, arcades, gardens—resplendent palaces all laid over with semiprecious stone. Then I saw a mythological beast drawing a regal chariot.”» — la descripción que Wasson dio de sus visiones según Pollan, de los motivos ornamentales a los palacios y la bestia mitológica; los puntos suspensivos son del original.

«Wasson’s original field notebooks are in the botanical library at Harvard. In a neat but somewhat idiosyncratic hand, he kept meticulous track of the time that night, from arrival (8:15) to ingestion (10:40) to the snuffing out of the last candle (10:45).» — Pollan declara haber consultado los cuadernos de campo de Wasson en Harvard y da los tiempos que anotó aquella noche.

«After that, the handwriting disintegrates. Some sentences now appear upside down, and Wasson’s descriptions of what he felt and saw gradually break into fragments:» — el hallazgo de Pollan en esos cuadernos: la letra se desintegra y las frases se vuelven fragmentos.

«Nausea as vision distorted. Touching wall—made the world of visions seem to crumble. Light from above door and below—moon. Table took new forms—creatures, great processional vehicle, architectural patterns of radiant color. Nausea. No photos once the [illegible] seized us. Architectural Eyes out of focus—the candles we saw them double. Oriental splendor—Alhambra—chariot Table transformed Contrast vision and reality—I touch wall.» — los fragmentos del cuaderno de Wasson tal como Pollan los transcribe, con el corchete de ilegibilidad del original y la maquetación entrecortada.

«The visions were not blurred or uncertain,” he writes. Indeed, “they seemed more real to me than anything I had ever seen with my own eyes.”» — la afirmación de Wasson que Pollan cita: las visiones le parecieron más reales que cuanto había visto con sus ojos.

«At this point, the reader begins to feel the literary hand of Aldous Huxley exerting a certain pressure on both Wasson’s prose and his perceptions: “I felt that I was now seeing plain, whereas ordinary vision gives us an imperfect view.”» — la observación crítica de Pollan: se siente la mano de Huxley presionando la prosa y la percepción de Wasson.

«Wasson’s own doors of perception had been flung wide open: “I was seeing the archetypes, the Platonic ideas, that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life.”» — la frase de Wasson sobre los arquetipos y las ideas platónicas que Pollan cita, con el juego del título de Huxley.

«To read Wasson is to feel as if you were witnessing the still-fresh and malleable conventions of the psychedelic narrative gradually solidifying before your eyes.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre el texto de Wasson: ahí se ven solidificarse las convenciones del relato psicodélico.

«Whether Aldous Huxley invented these tropes, or was merely their stenographer, is hard to say, but they would inform the genre, as well as the experience, from here on.» — Pollan deja sin resolver si Huxley inventó esos tropos o solo los taquigrafió, y sostiene que en adelante moldearon el género y la experiencia.

«For the first time the word ecstasy took on real meaning,” Wasson recalls. “For the first time it did not mean someone else’s state of mind.”» — la frase de Wasson sobre el sentido que la palabra éxtasis cobró para él.

«Wasson concluded from his experience that his working hypothesis about the roots of the religious experience in psychoactive fungi had been vindicated.» — Pollan consigna que Wasson dio por vindicada su hipótesis a partir de su propia experiencia, lo que prepara la objeción de la plana siguiente.

«In man’s evolutionary past . . . there must have come a moment in time when he discovered the secret of the hallucinatory mushrooms. Their effect on him, as I see it, could only have been profound, a detonator to new ideas. For the mushrooms revealed to him worlds beyond the horizons known to him, in space and time, even worlds on a different plane of being, a heaven and perhaps a hell . . . One is emboldened to the point of asking whether they may not have planted in primitive man the very idea of a God.”» — la tesis de Wasson que Pollan cita entera: que el hallazgo de los hongos alucinatorios fue un detonador de ideas nuevas y quizá plantó en el hombre primitivo la idea misma de un Dios; el condicional final es de Wasson.

«Whatever one thinks about this idea, it’s worth pointing out that Wasson came to Huautla with it already firmly planted and he was willing to subtly twist various elements of his experience there in order to confirm it.» — la objeción de Pollan a Wasson: llegó a Huautla con la tesis ya plantada y torció elementos de su experiencia para apuntalarla.

«As much as he wants us to see María Sabina as a religious figure, and her ceremony as a form of what he calls “Holy communion,” she saw herself quite differently.» — Pollan contrapone la lectura de Wasson a la que Sabina tenía de sí misma, y no armoniza las dos.

«The mushroom might well have served as a sacrament five hundred years earlier, but by 1955 many Mazatecs had become devout Catholics, and they now used mushrooms not for worship but for healing and divination—to locate missing people and important items.» — el dato con que Pollan sostiene esa objeción: en 1955 muchos mazatecos eran católicos devotos y usaban los hongos para sanar y adivinar, no para el culto.

«Wasson knew this perfectly well, which is why he employed the ruse he did to gain access to a ceremony: he told María Sabina he was worried about his son back home and wanted information about his whereabouts and well-being.» — Pollan consigna el ardid con que Wasson obtuvo acceso a la ceremonia: decir que le preocupaba su hijo.

«Spookily enough, he received what he discovered on his return to New York to be accurate information on both counts.» — Pollan consigna el desenlace de aquel ardid y lo marca con un adverbio que no explica.

«Wasson was distorting a complex indigenous practice in order to fit a preconceived theory and conflating the historical significance of that practice with its contemporary meaning.» — la formulación con que Pollan enuncia su objeción a Wasson: confundir el significado histórico de la práctica con su significado contemporáneo.

«As one of Wasson’s harsher critics, the English writer Andy Letcher, acidly put it, “To find God, Sabina—like all good Catholics—went to Mass.”» — Pollan cita al escritor inglés Andy Letcher, a quien presenta como uno de los críticos más ácidos de Wasson.

«As Sabina told an interviewer some years later, “Before Wasson nobody took the mushrooms only to» — Pollan cita a María Sabina de una entrevista posterior, y esa voz es la que enmienda a Wasson; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 86 con *find God. They were always taken for the sick to get well*.

«WASSON’S ARTICLE IN LIFE was read by millions of people (including a psychology professor on his way to Harvard named Timothy Leary» — Pollan mide el alcance del artículo de Wasson y consigna que entre sus lectores estuvo Leary.

«Wasson’s story reached tens of millions more when he shared it on the popular CBS news program Person to Person, and in the months to follow several other magazines, including True: The Man’s Magazine, ran first-person accounts of magic mushroom journeys (“The Vegetable That Drives Men Mad”» — Pollan sigue la difusión del relato por televisión y por otras revistas, con el título de una de ellas.

«journeys for which Wasson supplied the mushrooms. (He had brought back a supply and would conduct ceremonies in his Manhattan apartment.» — Pollan consigna que Wasson surtía los hongos de esos relatos y oficiaba ceremonias en su departamento de Manhattan.

«Shortly after the article in Life was published, Wasson arranged to have some specimens of the Mexican mushrooms sent to Albert Hofmann in Switzerland for analysis.» — Pollan encadena el artículo con el envío de especímenes a Hofmann para su análisis.

«In 1958, Hofmann isolated and named the two psychoactive compounds, psilocybin and psilocin, and developed the synthetic version of psilocybin used in the current research.» — Pollan data en 1958 el aislamiento y la denominación de psilocibina y psilocina por Hofmann, y el desarrollo de la versión sintética que se usa hoy.

«Thirty minutes after my taking the mushrooms,” he wrote, “the exterior world began to undergo a strange transformation. Everything assumed a Mexican character.”» — la frase de Hofmann que Pollan cita de su propia prueba con los hongos mexicanos.

«In 1962, Hofmann joined Wasson on one of his return trips to Huautla, during which the chemist gave María Sabina psilocybin in pill form. She took two of the pills and declared they did indeed contain the spirit of the mushroom.» — según Pollan, Hofmann dio a María Sabina psilocibina en pastilla en 1962 y ella declaró que en efecto contenía el espíritu del hongo.

«It didn’t take long for thousands of other people—including, eventually, celebrities such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Mick Jagger—to find their way to Huautla and to María Sabina’s door.» — Pollan consigna la peregrinación a Huautla que siguió, con los nombres que la volvieron célebre.

«For María Sabina and her village, the attention was ruinous.» — el juicio de Pollan sobre el efecto de aquella atención en Sabina y en su pueblo.

«Wasson would later hold himself responsible for “unleash[ing] on lovely Huautla a torrent of commercial exploitation of the vilest kind,” as he wrote in a plaintive 1970 New York Times op-ed.» — según Pollan, Wasson se responsabilizó después de haber desatado sobre Huautla una explotación comercial de la peor especie; el corchete es del original.

«Huautla had become first a beatnik, then a hippie mecca, and the sacred mushrooms, once a closely guarded secret, were now being sold openly on the street.» — Pollan describe la transformación de Huautla y la venta abierta de los hongos sagrados.

«María Sabina’s neighbors blamed her for what was happening to their village; her home was burned down, and she was briefly jailed.» — Pollan consigna lo que le costó a Sabina: la culpa de sus vecinos, la casa quemada y la cárcel.

«Thousands of these stones were smashed by the Spanish, but two hundred are known to survive, and Stamets owns sixteen of them. Most of the surviving stones have been found in the Guatemalan highlands, often when farmers are plowing their fields; some have been dated to at least 1000 B.C.» — Pollan da la cifra de piedras hongo sobrevivientes, las que posee Stamets y la datación de algunas.

«As Stamets carried the heavy stones, one by one, from their cabinet to the coffee table, where he arranged them with great care, he looked like an altar boy, handling them with the sobriety appropriate to» — Pollan describe el manejo de las piedras por Stamets como el de un monaguillo; el tramo se corta al reemitirse la marca de la plana 87 y sigue con *irreplaceable sacred objects*.

«It occurred to me Paul Stamets is R. Gordon Wasson’s rightful heir.» — la tesis que Pollan enuncia del capítulo: Stamets es el heredero legítimo de Wasson; el tramo arranca tras el corte del troceo en la plana 87.

«He shares his radically mycocentric cosmology and sees evidence wherever he looks for the centrality of psychoactive mushrooms in culture, religion, and nature.» — Pollan precisa en qué consiste esa herencia: la cosmología micocéntrica y el ver evidencia por todas partes.

«Stamets’s laptop is crammed with images of Psilocybes taken not only from nature (he’s a superb photographer) but also from cave paintings, North African petroglyphs, medieval church architecture, and Islamic designs, some of which recall the forms of mushrooms or, with their fractal geometric patternings, mushroom experiences.» — Pollan inventaria las fuentes de donde Stamets saca sus imágenes de hongos, de las pinturas rupestres a los diseños islámicos.

«I confess that try as I might, I often failed to find the mushrooms lurking in the pictures.» — Pollan declara su propia incapacidad de ver los hongos en esas imágenes, y así marca el límite del argumento de Stamets.

«This brings us to Terence McKenna’s stoned ape theory, the epitome of all mycocentric speculation, which Stamets had wanted to make sure we discussed.» — Pollan nombra la teoría del simio drogado de Terence McKenna y la califica de epítome de toda especulación micocéntrica.

«he summarizes it in Food of the Gods (1992): Psilocybes gave our hominid ancestors “access to realms of supernatural power,” “catalyzed the emergence of human self-reflection,” and “brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.”» — Pollan resume por sus propias frases la tesis que McKenna expone en Food of the Gods, sobre el acceso a poderes sobrenaturales y la emergencia de la autorreflexión humana; el tramo trae el año entre paréntesis del propio cuerpo, que dispara la guarda anticosido, y se releyó entero en el crudo antes de citarlo.

«This last hypothesis about the invention of language turns on the concept of synesthesia, the conflation of the senses that psychedelics are known to induce: under the influence of psilocybin, numbers can take on colors, colors attach to sounds, and so on.» — Pollan explica el mecanismo que McKenna propone para la invención del lenguaje, la sinestesia que estas sustancias inducen.

«Hence, the stoned ape: by giving us the gifts of language and self-reflection psilocybin mushrooms made us who we are, transforming our primate ancestors into Homo sapiens.» — la conclusión de la teoría según Pollan: los hongos nos hicieron quienes somos al darnos lenguaje y autorreflexión.

«The stoned ape theory is not really susceptible to proof or disproof.» — el juicio de Pollan sobre el estatus de esa teoría, que no adjudica ni verdadera ni falsa sino inverificable.

«The consumption of mushrooms by early hominids would be unlikely to leave any trace in the fossil record, because the mushrooms are soft tissue and can be eaten fresh, requiring no special tools or processing methods that might have survived.» — la razón que Pollan da para esa inverificabilidad: los hongos no dejan rastro fósil ni exigen herramientas.

«McKenna never really explains how the consumption of psychoactive mushrooms could have influenced biological evolution—that is, selected for changes at the level of the genome.» — la objeción de Pollan a McKenna: nunca explica cómo el consumo influiría en la evolución biológica, es decir en el genoma.

«It would have been easier for him to make an argument for psychoactive fungi’s influence on cultural evolution— such as the one Wasson made—but evidently the fungi had more ambitious plans for the mind of Terence McKenna, and Terence McKenna was more than happy to oblige.» — Pollan señala que a McKenna le habría sido más fácil el argumento cultural, el de Wasson, y remata con ironía sobre los planes que los hongos tenían para su mente.

«Stamets became good friends with McKenna during the last few years of his life, and ever since McKenna’s death (at age fifty-three, from brain cancer), he has been carrying the stoned ape’s torch, recounting McKenna’s theory in many of his talks.» — Pollan consigna la amistad tardía entre Stamets y McKenna y la continuidad de la teoría en las charlas del primero.

«Stamets acknowledges the challenges of ever proving it to anyone’s satisfaction yet deems it “more likely than not” that psilocybin “was pivotal in human evolution.”» — Pollan consigna a la vez la admisión de Stamets de que la teoría no se puede probar y su juicio de que es más probable que no.

«What is it about these mushrooms, I wondered, and the experience they sponsor in the minds of men, that fires this kind of intellectual extravagance and conviction?» — la pregunta con que Pollan cierra el pasaje sobre la teoría, y que le interesa más que la teoría misma.

«The stories of myco-evangelists like McKenna read like conversion narratives, in which certain people who have felt the power of these mushrooms firsthand emerge from the experience convinced that these fungi are prime movers—gods, of a sort—that can explain everything. Their prophetic mission in life becomes clear: bring this news to the world!» — Pollan clasifica los relatos de los micoevangelistas como narraciones de conversión, con los hongos por motores primeros.

«Now consider all this from the mushroom’s point of view: what might have started as a biochemical accident has turned into an ingenious strategy for enlarging the species’ range and number, by winning the fervent devotion of an animal as ingenious and well traveled (and well spoken!) as Homo sapiens.» — el giro con que Pollan invierte la perspectiva: lo que empezó como accidente bioquímico se volvió estrategia para ampliar el área y el número de la especie.

«In McKenna’s vision, it is the mushroom itself that helped form precisely the kind of mind— endowed with the tools of language and fired by imagination—that could best advance its interests. How diabolically brilliant! No wonder Paul Stamets is convinced of their intelligence.» — Pollan lleva la visión de McKenna a su consecuencia y dice por qué a Stamets le resulta convincente la inteligencia de los hongos.

«Stamets requested that I not publish the exact location where we went hunting for Psilocybe azurescens. But what I can say is that there are three public parks bordering the wide-open mouth of the Columbia— Fort Stevens, Cape Disappointment, and the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park—and we stayed at one of them.» — Pollan declara el límite que su fuente le puso y nombra los tres parques posibles sin decir cuál.

«Stamets, who has been coming here to hunt azzies for years, was mildly paranoid about being recognized by a ranger, so he stayed in the car while I checked in at the office and picked up a map giving directions to our yurt.» — Pollan describe la cautela de Stamets ante los guardabosques, que marca el estatus legal de la recolección.

«Foraging mushrooms is prohibited in most state parks, and being in possession of psilocybin mushrooms is both a state and a federal crime.» — Pollan consigna la doble ilegalidad de lo que estaban haciendo.

«Stamets suspects that Psilocybe azurescens might originally have ridden out of the forest in the flesh of those logs and found its way here to the mouth of the Columbia—thus far the only place the species has ever been found.» — la hipótesis de Stamets según Pollan sobre cómo llegó la especie a la desembocadura del Columbia, el único sitio donde se ha hallado.

«Some mycelium will actually insinuate itself into the grain of trees, taking up residence and forming a symbiotic relationship with the tree.» — Pollan describe el micelio que se instala en la veta del árbol y entabla con él una relación simbiótica.

«Little brown mushrooms are notoriously difficult to identify, but Stamets almost always had its Latin binomial and a few interesting facts about it at his fingertips.» — Pollan mide la pericia de Stamets en campo contra la dificultad notoria del grupo.

«Once we register on our retinas the visual pattern of the object we’re searching for, it’s much more likely to pop out of the visual field. (In fact the technical name for this phenomenon is “the pop-out effect.» — Pollan explica el fenómeno perceptivo que los recolectores llaman ponerse los ojos y da su nombre técnico.

«It was a handsome little mushroom, with a smooth, slightly glossy caramel-colored cap. Stamets let me pick it; it had a surprisingly tenacious grip, and when it came out of the ground, it brought with it some leaf litter, soil, and a little knot of bright white mycelium.» — Pollan describe el primer azzie que recogió con su propia mano.

«Bruise the stipe a bit,” Stamets suggested. I did, and within minutes a blue tinge appeared where I’d rubbed it. “That’s the psilocin.” I never expected to actually see the chemical I had read so much about.» — Pollan cuenta cómo vio aparecer el azul de la psilocina, el compuesto sobre el que tanto había leído.

«Stamets says that like many psilocybin species “azzies are organisms of the ecological edge. Look at where we are: at the edge of the continent, the edge of an ecosystem, the edge of civilization, and of course these mushrooms bring us to the edge of consciousness.”» — la fórmula de Stamets según Pollan, que encadena los bordes: del continente, del ecosistema, de la civilización y de la consciencia.

«You know one of the best indicator species for Psilocybe azurescens are Winnebagos.”» — el chiste de Stamets que Pollan consigna como el primero que le oyó.

«I had been looking forward to trying an azzie, but before the evening was over, Stamets had dampened my enthusiasm. “I find azurescens almost too strong,” he told me» — Pollan consigna que el propio Stamets le enfrió el entusiasmo por probar la especie.

«Not much of an advertisement for azurescens, especially coming from the man who discovered the species and named it. I was suddenly in much less of a hurry to try one.» — la ironía de Pollan sobre quién le estaba desaconsejando la especie que él mismo nombró.

«Nearing the end of her life, she had nothing but regret for having shared the divine mushrooms with R. Gordon Wasson and, in turn, the world. “From the moment the foreigners arrived,” she told a visitor» — Pollan consigna el arrepentimiento final de María Sabina por haber compartido los hongos divinos; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 87 con *the saint children lost their purity*.

«foreigners spoiled them. From now on they won’t be any good.”» — el cierre de esa declaración de María Sabina según Pollan; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 86.

«Language, he contends, represents a special case of synesthesia, in» — según Pollan, McKenna sostiene que el lenguaje es un caso especial de sinestesia; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 88 con *which otherwise meaningless sounds become linked to concepts*.

«Stamets believes the mycelium functions as» — Pollan anuncia la función que Stamets atribuye al micelio en el árbol; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 90 con *a kind of immune system for its arboreal host*.

«a kind of immune system for its arboreal host, secreting antibacterial, antiviral, and insecticidal compounds that protect the trees from diseases and pests, in exchange for nourishment and habitat.» — según Pollan, Stamets tiene al micelio por sistema inmune de su hospedero arbóreo, que lo paga con alimento y hábitat; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 89.

«We’re obviously not the first people to hunt for azzies in this park, and anyone who picks a mushroom trails an invisible cloud of its spore behind him» — según Pollan, quien recoge un hongo arrastra una nube invisible de esporas; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 91 con *believes, is the origin of the idea of fairy dust*.

«Temporary paralysis,” he said matter-of-factly. He explained that some people on azzies find they can’t move their muscles for a period» — según Pollan, Stamets describe la parálisis temporal como efecto secundario posible de esa especie; el tramo se corta al reemitirse la marca de la plana 91 y sigue con *of time*.

«THE QUESTION I KEPT returning to that weekend is this: Why in the world would a fungus go to the trouble of producing a chemical compound that has such a radical effect on the minds of the animals that eat it? What, if anything, did this peculiar chemical do for the mushroom?» — la pregunta de historia natural a la que Pollan vuelve todo el capítulo: para qué le sirve al hongo un compuesto que altera la mente de quien lo come.

«But this strikes me as more of a poetic conceit than a scientific theory.» — el juicio de Pollan sobre esa explicación: ocurrencia poética antes que teoría científica.

«The best answer I’ve managed to find arrived a few weeks later courtesy of Paul Stamets’s professor at Evergreen State, Michael Beug, the chemist. When I reached him by phone at his home in the Columbia River Gorge, 160 miles upriver of our campsite, Beug said he was retired from teaching and hadn’t spent much time thinking about Psilocybes recently, but he was intrigued by my question.» — Pollan nombra su mejor fuente para esa pregunta, el químico Michael Beug, que fue profesor de Stamets.

«Defense against pests and diseases is the most common function of the so-called secondary metabolites produced in plants.» — Pollan da la función más común de los metabolitos secundarios de las plantas.

«Curiously, many plant toxins don’t directly kill pests, but often act as psychostimulants as well as poisons, which is why we use many of them as drugs to alter consciousness.» — Pollan hace notar que muchas toxinas vegetales actúan como psicoestimulantes además de venenos, y que por eso las usamos como drogas.

«Why wouldn’t plants just kill their predators outright? Perhaps because that would quickly select for resistance, whereas messing with its neurotransmitter networks can distract the predator or, better still, lead it to engage in risky behaviors likely to shorten its life. Think of an inebriated insect behaving in a way that attracts the attention of a hungry bird.» — la explicación evolutiva que Pollan propone, con su marca de conjetura: matar seleccionaría resistencia, y enredar la red de neurotransmisores lleva al depredador a conductas riesgosas.

«But Beug pointed out that if psilocybin were a defense chemical, “my former student Paul Stamets would have jumped on it long ago and found a use for it as an antifungal, antibacterial, or insecticide.”» — la objeción de Beug a la hipótesis defensiva según Pollan, apoyada en que Stamets ya le habría hallado uso.

«In fact Beug has tested fungi for psilocybin and psilocin levels and found that they occur only in minute quantities in the mycelium—the part of the organism most likely to be well defended. “Instead the chemicals are in the fruiting bodies—sometimes at over two percent by dry weight!”—a stupendous quantity, and in a part of the organism it is not a priority to defend.» — el dato de medición que Beug aporta según Pollan: los compuestos están en el cuerpo fructífero y casi no en el micelio, al revés de lo que exigiría una función defensiva.

«Even if psilocybin in mushrooms began as “an accident of a metabolic pathway,” the fact that it wasn’t discarded during the course of the species’ evolution suggests it must have offered some benefit.» — el argumento de Beug según Pollan: aunque empezara como accidente metabólico, no haber sido descartado sugiere algún beneficio.

«My best guess,” Beug says, “is that the mushrooms that produced the most psilocybin got selectively eaten and so their spores got more widely disseminated.”» — la hipótesis de Beug según Pollan, enunciada por él mismo como conjetura: los que más psilocibina producían fueron más comidos y sus esporas más diseminadas.

«Beug says that many animals are known to eat psilocybin mushrooms, including horses, cattle, and dogs. Some, like cows, appear unaffected, but many animals appear to enjoy an occasional change in consciousness too. Beug is in charge of gathering mushroom-poisoning reports for the North American Mycological Association and over the years has seen accounts of horses tripping in their paddocks and dogs that “zero in on Psilocybes and appear to be hallucinating.”» — según Pollan, Beug reporta el consumo por caballos, ganado y perros, y los informes de caballos y perros que parecen alucinar.

«Presumably animals with a taste for altered states of consciousness have helped spread psilocybin far and wide. “The strains of a species that produced more rather than less psilocybin and psilocin would tend to be favored and so gradually become more widespread.”» — la conclusión de Beug según Pollan, con el adverbio de conjetura que Pollan añade al principio.

«Eaten in small doses, psychedelic mushrooms might well increase fitness in animals, by increasing sensory acuity and possibly focus as well. A 2015 review article in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology reported that several tribes around the world feed psychoactive plants to their dogs in order to improve their hunting ability.» — Pollan aduce el dato de un artículo de 2015 sobre tribus que dan plantas psicoactivas a sus perros para mejorar su caza, y lo pone en potencial.

«At higher doses, however, one would think that animals tripping on psychedelic mushrooms would be at a distinct disadvantage for survival, and no doubt many of them are.» — Pollan pone el contrapeso a esa hipótesis: a dosis altas el animal quedaría en desventaja.

«But for a select few, the effects may offer some adaptive value, not only for themselves, but also possibly for the group and even the species.» — la salvedad con que Pollan abre paso a la teoría de Samorini, con dos atenuantes dentro.

«Here we venture out onto highly speculative, slightly squishy ground, guided by an Italian ethnobotanist named Giorgio Samorini.» — Pollan declara el terreno especulativo en que entra y nombra a su guía, el etnobotánico Giorgio Samorini.

«Samorini hypothesizes that during times of rapid environmental change or crisis it may avail the survival of a group when a few of its members abandon their accustomed conditioned responses and experiment with some radically new and different behaviors.» — la hipótesis de Samorini según Pollan: en tiempos de cambio rápido conviene al grupo que unos pocos abandonen sus respuestas condicionadas.

«Much like genetic mutations, most of these novelties will prove disastrous and be discarded by natural selection. But the laws of probability suggest that a few of the novel behaviors might end up being useful, helping the individual, the group, and possibly the species to adapt to rapid changes in their environment.» — la analogía de Samorini con la mutación genética según Pollan, y el cálculo de probabilidades que la sostiene.

«Samorini calls this a “depatterning factor.” There are times in the evolution of a species when the old patterns no longer avail, and the radical, potentially innovative perceptions and behaviors that psychedelics sometimes inspire may offer the best chance for adaptation.» — Pollan da el término de Samorini y su alcance: hay momentos en que los viejos patrones ya no sirven.

«Think of it as a neurochemically induced source of variation in a population.» — la fórmula con que Pollan traduce esa teoría al vocabulario de la variación poblacional.

«It is difficult to read about Samorini’s lovely theory without thinking about our own species and the challenging circumstances in which we find ourselves today. Homo sapiens might have arrived at one of those periods of crisis that calls for some mental and behavioral depatterning. Could that be why nature has sent us these psychedelic molecules now?» — Pollan aplica esa teoría a nuestra propia especie y cierra con una pregunta que deja abierta, sin afirmar el propósito que sugiere.

«He was expansive, eloquent, grandiose, and, at times, in acute danger of slipping the surly bonds of plausibility.» — el juicio que Pollan pone antes de citar a Stamets, y que acota todo lo que sigue.

«We had had a few beers, and while we hadn’t touched our tiny stash of azzies, we had smoked a little pot.» — Pollan declara en qué estado transcurrió aquella conversación, dato que él mismo aporta como límite de su reporte.

«Stamets dilated on the idea of psilocybin as a chemical messenger sent from Earth, and how we had been elected, by virtue of the gift of consciousness and language, to hear its call and act before it’s too late.» — Pollan resume la tesis de Stamets: la psilocibina como mensajero químico de la Tierra y nosotros elegidos por el lenguaje para oír su llamado.

«Plants and mushrooms have intelligence, and they want us to take care of the environment, and so they communicate that to us in a way we can understand.”» — la afirmación de Stamets según Pollan sobre la inteligencia de plantas y hongos y su voluntad de que cuidemos el ambiente.

«We humans are the most populous bipedal organisms walking around, so some plants and fungi are especially interested in enlisting our support. I think they have a consciousness and are constantly trying to direct our evolution by speaking out to us biochemically. We just need to be better listeners.”» — según Pollan, Stamets sostiene que plantas y hongos tienen consciencia y dirigen nuestra evolución hablándonos bioquímicamente.

«Mushrooms have taught me the interconnectedness of all life-forms and the molecular matrix that we share,” he explains in another one. “I no longer feel that I am in this envelope of a human life called Paul Stamets. I am part of the stream of molecules that are flowing through nature. I am given a voice, given consciousness for a time, but I feel that I am part of this continuum of stardust into which I am born and to which I will return at the end of this life.”» — la declaración de Stamets que Pollan cita de otra charla, donde dice no sentirse ya dentro del sobre de una vida humana sino parte de un continuo de polvo de estrellas.

«Stamets sounded very much like the volunteers I met at Hopkins who had had full-blown mystical experiences, people whose sense of themselves as individuals had been subsumed into a larger whole—a form of “unitive consciousness,” which, in Stamets’s case, had folded him into the web of nature, as its not so humble servant.» — Pollan equipara el testimonio de Stamets con el de los voluntarios de Hopkins y lo clasifica como consciencia unitiva, con la ironía final sobre su humildad.

«I think Psilocybes have given me new insights that may allow me to help steer and speed fungal evolution so that we can find solutions to our problems.”» — según Pollan, Stamets dice que estos hongos le dieron discernimientos para acelerar la evolución fúngica hacia soluciones.

«Especially in a time of ecological crisis, he suggests, we can’t afford to wait for evolution, unfolding at its normal pace, to put forth these solutions in time. Let the depatterning begin.» — Pollan cierra el pasaje enlazando la urgencia ecológica de Stamets con el término de Samorini.

«So much of what Stamets has to say treads a perilously narrow ledge, perched between the autodidact’s soaring speculative flights and the stoned crank’s late night riffings that eventually send everyone in earshot off to bed.» — el juicio más duro de Pollan sobre Stamets, entre el vuelo especulativo del autodidacta y el divague del chiflado.

«But just when I was beginning to grow impatient with his meanders, and could hear the call of my sleeping bag from inside the yurt, he, or I, turned a corner, and his mycological prophecies suddenly appeared to me in a more generous light.» — Pollan declara el giro de su propio juicio, y marca que no sabe si el que dobló la esquina fue Stamets o él.

«Amid the torrent of words, what I observed in these buildings was a salutary reminder that while Stamets is surely a big talker, he is not just a talker.» — lo que Pollan saca de la visita a los laboratorios de Stamets: que además de hablador es hacedor.

«He is a big doer too, a successful researcher and entrepreneur who is using fungi to make original contributions across a remarkably wide range of fields, from medicine and environmental restoration to agriculture and forestry and even national defense. Stamets is in fact a scientist, albeit of a special kind.» — Pollan declara que Stamets es un científico, de una clase especial, y enumera los campos donde contribuye.

«Humboldt believed it is only with our feelings, our senses, and our imaginations—that is, with the faculties of human subjectivity—that we can ever penetrate nature’s secrets.» — según Pollan, Humboldt sostenía que solo con los sentidos, los sentimientos y la imaginación se penetran los secretos de la naturaleza.

«“Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice” that is “familiar to his soul.”» — la frase de Humboldt que Pollan cita, y que enlaza con el llamado que Stamets dice oír.

«There is an order and beauty organizing the system of nature—a system that Humboldt, after briefly considering the name “Gaia,” chose to call “Cosmos”—but it would never have revealed itself to us if not for the human imagination, which is itself of course a product of nature, of the very system it allows us to comprehend.» — según Pollan, Humboldt consideró el nombre Gaia y eligió Cosmos, y sostuvo que ese orden no se revelaría sin la imaginación humana, que es producto de la naturaleza misma.

«The modern conceit of the scientist attempting to observe nature with perfect objectivity, as if from a vantage located outside it, would have been anathema to Humboldt. “I myself am identical with nature.”» — Pollan declara anatema para Humboldt la pretensión moderna de observar la naturaleza desde fuera, y cierra con la frase con que él se identificaba con ella.

«If Stamets is a scientist, as I believe he is, it is in the Humboldtian mold, making him something of a throwback.» — la clasificación que Pollan propone para Stamets: científico de molde humboldtiano y por tanto un rezagado.

«But he too is an amateur in the best sense, self-taught, uncredentialed, and blithe about trespassing disciplinary borders.» — Pollan enumera los rasgos que comparten Stamets y Humboldt, con la acotación previa de que no compara sus obras.

«He too hears nature’s voice, and it is his imagination—wild as it often is—that allows him to see systems where others have not, such as what is going on beneath our feet in a forest.» — Pollan acredita a la imaginación de Stamets el ver sistemas donde otros no los vieron, y conserva su propia salvedad entre guiones.

«What strikes me about both Stamets and many of the so-called Romantic scientists (like Humboldt and Goethe, Joseph Banks, Erasmus Darwin, and I would include Thoreau) is how very much more alive nature seems in their hands than it would soon become in the cooler hands of the professionals.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre los llamados científicos románticos: la naturaleza parece más viva en sus manos que en las de los profesionales.

«These more specialized scientists (a word that wasn’t coined until 1834) gradually moved science indoors and increasingly gazed at nature through devices that allowed them to observe it at scales invisible to the human eye. These moves subtly changed the object of study—indeed, made it more of an object.» — Pollan describe el movimiento que atribuye a la ciencia especializada, que llevó el estudio adentro y volvió objeto a lo estudiado; el dato de la acuñación de la palabra va entre paréntesis.

«Instead of seeing nature as a collection of discrete objects, the Romantic scientists—and I include Stamets in their number—saw a densely tangled web of subjects, each acting on the other in the great dance that would come to be called coevolution.» — la contraposición que Pollan traza: una red de sujetos actuando unos sobre otros frente a una colección de objetos.

«“Everything,” Humboldt said, “is interaction and reciprocal.”» — la frase de Humboldt que Pollan retomará al narrar su propio viaje.

«They could see this dance of subjectivities because they cultivated the plant’s-eye view, the animal’s-eye view, the microbe’s-eye view, and the fungus’s-eye view—perspectives that depend as much on imagination as observation.» — Pollan nombra las perspectivas que aquellos científicos cultivaban y declara que dependen tanto de la imaginación como de la observación.

«I suspect that imaginative leap has become harder for us moderns to make. Our science and technology encourage us in precisely the opposite direction, toward the objectification of nature and of all species other than our own.» — Pollan sostiene que ese salto imaginativo se nos ha vuelto más difícil y culpa a la dirección de nuestra ciencia y nuestra técnica.

«Surely we need to acknowledge the practical power of this perspective, which has given us so much, but we should at the same time acknowledge its costs, material as well as spiritual.» — Pollan reconoce el poder práctico de esa perspectiva y exige reconocer a la vez sus costos, materiales y espirituales.

«Yet that older, more enchanted way of seeing may still pay dividends, as it does (to cite just one small example) when it allows Paul Stamets to figure out that the reason honeybees like to visit woodpiles is to medicate themselves, by nibbling on a saprophytic mycelium that produces just the right antimicrobial compound that the hive needs to survive, a gift the fungus is trading for . . . what? Something yet to be imagined.» — Pollan cierra el capítulo con el ejemplo de las abejas que se automedican con micelio, y deja en suspenso qué recibe el hongo a cambio.

«One could construct a quasi-mystical explanation for this phenomenon, as Stamets and McKenna have done: both suggest that» — Pollan anuncia la explicación cuasimística de Stamets y McKenna; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 92 con *neurochemistry is the language in which nature communicates with us*.

«neurochemistry is the language in which nature communicates with us, and it’s trying to tell us something important by way of psilocybin.» — el contenido de esa explicación según Pollan: la neuroquímica como lengua en que la naturaleza nos habla; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 91.

«Several primate species (aside from» — Pollan consigna que otras especies de primates también consumen estos hongos; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 93 con *our own) are also known to enjoy psychedelic mushrooms*.

«SUCH A NOTION would not strike Paul Stamets as the least bit far-fetched. As we stood around the fire pit, the warm light flickering» — Pollan devuelve la palabra a Stamets alrededor del fuego; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 94 con *across our faces while our dinner sizzled in its pan*.

«across our faces while our dinner sizzled in its pan, Stamets talked about what mushrooms have taught him about nature.» — Pollan declara el asunto de aquella conversación nocturna; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 93.

«You are probably wondering what ever happened to the azzies Stamets and I found that weekend. Many months later, in the middle of a summer week spent in the house in New England where we used to live, a place freighted with memories, I ate them, with Judith.» — Pollan abre la coda del capítulo con el relato de su primer viaje del libro, hecho con su esposa en la casa de Nueva Inglaterra donde vivieron.

«I crumbled two little mushrooms in each of two glasses and poured hot water over them to make a tea; Stamets had recommended that I “cook” the mushrooms to destroy the compounds that can upset the» — Pollan describe la preparación del té y atribuye a Stamets el consejo de cocinarlos; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 97 con *stomach*.

«However, after only about twenty minutes or so, Judith reported she was “feeling things,” none of them pleasant.» — según Pollan, su esposa empezó a sentir cosas desagradables a los veinte minutos; el relato es de ella y él lo reporta.

«She told me her mind and her body seemed to be drifting apart and then that her mind had flown out of her head and up into the trees, like a bird or insect.» — según Pollan, Judith describió su mente separándose del cuerpo y volando a los árboles.

«I need to get home and feel safe,” she said, now with some urgency. I tried to reassure her as we abruptly turned around and picked up our pace.» — Pollan cuenta la urgencia de volver a casa, que ilustra el peso del entorno sobre la experiencia.

«I still felt more or less myself, but it may be that Judith’s distress was keeping me from feeling the mushrooms; somebody had to be ready to act normally» — Pollan conjetura que la angustia de su esposa le impedía sentir el efecto, y marca la conjetura como suya.

«In fact shortly before we got back to home base—so it now felt to both of us—we spotted a neighbor’s pickup truck bearing down on us and, like guilty children, we ducked into the woods until it passed.» — la escena con que Pollan ilustra la clandestinidad del asunto: esconderse en el bosque como niños culpables al paso de una camioneta.

«Judith made a beeline for the couch in the living room, where she lay down with the shades drawn, while I went into the kitchen to polish off my cup of mushroom tea, because I wasn’t yet feeling very much. I was a little worried about her, but once she reached her base on the living room couch, her mood lightened and she said she was fine.» — Pollan consigna que el ánimo de su esposa mejoró al llegar a su sitio, dato que apoya lo que el libro sostiene sobre el entorno.

«I couldn’t understand her desire to be indoors. I went out and sat on the screened porch for a while, listening to the sounds in the garden, which suddenly grew very loud, as if the volume had been turned way up. The air was stock-still, but the desultory sounds of flying insects and the digital buzz of hummingbirds rose to form a cacophony I had never heard before.» — Pollan describe el aumento de volumen de los sonidos del jardín, que él narra como lo que percibió.

«It began to grate on my nerves, until I decided I would be better off regarding the sound as beautiful, and then all at once it was.» — Pollan cuenta cómo el solo decidir que el sonido era bello lo volvió bello, y así ilustra desde dentro lo que el libro llama disposición mental.

«I lifted an arm, then a foot, and noted with relief that I wasn’t paralyzed, though I also didn’t feel like moving a muscle.» — Pollan comprueba que no está paralizado, recordando la advertencia de Stamets sobre esa especie.

«Whenever I closed my eyes, random images erupted as if the insides of my lids were a screen. My notes record: Fractal patterns, tunnels plunging through foliage, ropy vines forming grids.» — Pollan cita sus propias notas de aquella tarde con las imágenes que le surgían con los ojos cerrados.

«But when I started to feel panic rise at the lack of control I had over my visual field, I discovered that all I needed to do to restore a sense of seminormalcy was to open my eyes. To open or close my eyes was like changing the channel.» — Pollan describe el recurso con que manejó el pánico, abrir y cerrar los ojos, y lo compara con cambiar de canal; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *seminormalcy* donde la fuente imprime *semi-normalcy*.

«Much happened, or seemed to happen, during the course of that August afternoon, but I want to focus here on just one element of the experience, because it bears on the questions of nature and our place in it that psilocybin seems to provoke, at least for me.» — Pollan acota su propio relato con un inciso de duda sobre lo ocurrido y declara qué elemento va a destacar.

«I decided I wanted to walk out to my writing house, a little structure I had built myself twenty-five years ago, in what is now another life, and which holds a great many memories.» — Pollan sitúa el escenario de lo que sigue, la casita de escribir que él mismo construyó.

«I’m having these very interesting visuals,” she said, something having to do with the stains on the coffee table coming to life, swirling and transforming and rising from the surface in ways she found compelling.» — según Pollan, su esposa describía las manchas de la mesa cobrando vida; el relato es de ella.

«She made it clear she wanted to be left alone to sink more deeply into the images—she is a painter. The phrase “parallel play” popped into my mind, and so it would be for the rest of the afternoon.» — Pollan nombra juego paralelo a lo que fue aquella tarde entre los dos.

«The garden was thrumming with activity, dragonflies tracing complicated patterns in the air, the seed heads of plume poppies rattling like snakes as I brushed by, the phlox perfuming the air with its sweet, heavy scent, and the air itself so palpably dense it had to be forded.» — la descripción que Pollan hace del jardín al salir, con el aire tan denso que había que vadearlo.

«The word and sense of “poignance” flooded over me during the walk through the garden, and it would return later.» — Pollan nombra el sentimiento que lo inundó en el jardín y anuncia que volverá.

«Maybe because we no longer live here, and this garden, where we spent so many summers as a couple and then a family, and which at this moment seemed so acutely present, was in fact now part of an irretrievable past.» — la explicación que Pollan propone de ese sentimiento, marcada como conjetura: el jardín presentísimo y a la vez ya pasado.

«It was as if a precious memory had not just been recalled but had actually come back to life, in a reincarnation both beautiful and cruel.» — la fórmula con que Pollan describe aquel retorno de la memoria, bella y cruel a la vez.

«Also heartrending was the fleetingness of this moment in time, the ripeness of a New England garden in late August on the verge of turning the corner of the season. Before dawn one cloudless night very soon and without warning, the thrum and bloom and perfume would end all at once, with the arrival of the killing frost.» — Pollan describe la fugacidad del jardín de Nueva Inglaterra a fines de agosto y la helada que lo cerrará.

«I felt wide open emotionally, undefended.» — el estado en que Pollan dice haber quedado, y que explica lo que ocurre enseguida.

«It seemed to me these were the most beautiful leaves I had ever seen. It was as if they were emitting their own soft green glow.» — Pollan describe las hojas de la hortensia trepadora como las más bellas que había visto, con su propio resplandor.

«And it felt like a kind of privilege to gaze out at the world through their eyes, as it were, as the leaves drank up the last draughts of sunlight, transforming those photons into new matter.» — Pollan narra haber mirado el mundo por los ojos de las hojas mientras bebían la última luz.

«A plant’s-eye view of the world—it was that, and for real! But the leaves were also looking back at me, fixing me with this utterly benign gaze.» — Pollan reconoce en lo que le ocurría el título de su propio libro anterior y narra que las hojas le devolvían la mirada.

«I could feel their curiosity and what I was certain was an attitude of utter benevolence toward me and my kind. (Do I need to say that I know how crazy this sounds? I do!» — Pollan narra la certeza de una benevolencia de las hojas hacia él y se adelanta entre paréntesis a la objeción del lector; el paréntesis es su propio deslinde.

«I felt as though I were communing directly with a plant for the first time and that certain ideas I had long thought about and written about—having to do with the subjectivity of other species and the way they act upon us in ways we’re too self-regarding to appreciate—had taken on the flesh of feeling and reality.» — Pollan dice que ideas sobre la subjetividad de otras especies que había escrito antes tomaron ahí carne de sentimiento; el verbo sigue siendo de percepción suya.

«I looked through the negative spaces formed by the hydrangea leaves to fix my gaze on the swamp maple in the middle of the meadow beyond, and it too was now more alive than I’d ever known a tree to be, infused with some kind of spirit —this one, too, benevolent.» — Pollan extiende esa percepción al arce del prado, que dice infundido de un espíritu también benévolo.

«The idea that there had ever been a disagreement between matter and spirit seemed risible, and I felt as though whatever it is that usually divides me from the world out there had begun to fall away.» — según lo que Pollan narra, le pareció risible la disputa entre materia y espíritu y sintió caer lo que suele separarlo del mundo.

«Not completely: the battlements of ego had not fallen; this was not what the researchers would deem a “complete” mystical experience, because I retained the sense of an observing I.» — Pollan acota su propio relato con el criterio de los investigadores: no fue experiencia mística completa porque conservó el yo que observa.

«But the doors and windows of perception had opened wide, and they were admitting more of the world and its myriad nonhuman personalities than ever before.» — la fórmula con que Pollan describe el alcance de aquello, con el eco del título de Huxley.

«As I gazed at the two trees I had gazed at so many times before from my desk, it suddenly dawned on me that these trees were— obviously!—my parents: the stolid ash my father, the elegant oak my mother.» — Pollan narra haber reconocido a sus padres en los dos árboles que enmarcan la vista desde su escritorio.

«I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, except that thinking about those trees became identical to thinking about my parents. They were completely, indelibly, present in those trees.» — Pollan declara no saber del todo qué quiere decir con eso, y lo deja dicho así.

«That parents die is not exactly the stuff of epiphany, but the prospect, no longer distant or abstract, pierced me more deeply than it ever had, and I was disarmed yet again by the pervasive sense of poignancy that trailed me all that afternoon.» — Pollan acota el alcance de su propia epifanía y a la vez consigna cuánto lo atravesó.

«Yet I must have still had some wits about me, because I made a note to call the arborist tomorrow; maybe something could be done to reduce the weight on the leaning side of the oak, in order to prevent it from falling, if only for a while longer.» — el detalle con que Pollan mide su propia lucidez en pleno viaje: tomar nota de llamar al arbolista.

«My walk back to the house was, I think, the peak of the experience and comes back to me now in the colors and tones of a dream.» — Pollan sitúa el punto alto de la experiencia en el camino de vuelta, con su atenuante dentro.

«These were more dragonflies than I had ever seen in one place, so many in fact that I wasn’t completely sure if they were real. (Judith later confirmed the sighting when I got her to come outside.» — Pollan pone a prueba su propia percepción con el testimonio de su esposa, y consigna que ella dijo haberlas visto también.

«And as they executed their flight patterns, they left behind them contrails that persisted in the air, or so at least it appeared.» — Pollan describe las estelas que dejaban las libélulas y marca con una salvedad que solo lo parecía.

«Dusk now approaching, the air traffic in the garden had built to a riotous crescendo: the pollinators making their last rounds of the day, the plants still signifying to them with their flowers: me, me, me!» — la escena del jardín al anochecer según Pollan, con las flores señalando a los polinizadores.

«In one way I knew this scene well—the garden coming briefly back to life after the heat of a summer day has relented —but never had I felt so integral to it.» — Pollan contrapone lo conocido de la escena con lo inédito de sentirse parte de ella.

«I was no longer the alienated human observer, gazing at the garden from a distance, whether literal or figural, but rather felt part and parcel of all that was transpiring here.» — Pollan describe el desplazamiento de su propia posición: de observador humano alienado a parte implicada.

«So the flowers were addressing me as much as the pollinators, and perhaps because the very air that afternoon was such a felt presence, one’s usual sense of oneself as a subject observing objects in space—objects that have been thrown into relief and rendered discrete by the apparent void that surrounds them—gave way to a sense of being deep inside and fully implicated in this scene, one more being in relation to the myriad other beings and to the whole.» — la formulación con que Pollan describe el cambio de su sentido de sí: de sujeto que observa objetos a un ser entre otros y en relación con el todo.

«I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW what to make of this experience. In a certain light at certain moments, I feel as though I had had some kind of spiritual experience.» — Pollan declara no saber qué hacer con lo que vivió, y solo en cierta luz y en ciertos momentos lo llama experiencia espiritual.

«I had felt the personhood of other beings in a way I hadn’t before; whatever it is that keeps us from feeling our full implication in nature had been temporarily in abeyance.» — lo que Pollan sí afirma haber sentido, con el término de personeidad aplicado a otros seres.

«There had also been, I felt, an opening of the heart, toward my parents, yes, and toward Judith, but also, weirdly, toward some of the plants and trees and birds and even the damn bugs on our property. Some of this openness has persisted. I think back on it now as an experience of wonder and immanence.» — Pollan consigna la apertura de corazón que dice haber sentido y lo que de ella persistió, y nombra la experiencia por asombro e inmanencia.

«The fact that this transformation of my familiar world into something I can only describe as numinous was occasioned by the eating of a little brown mushroom that Stamets and I had found growing on the edge of a parking lot in a state park on the Pacific coast—well, that fact can be viewed in one of two ways: either as an additional wonder or as support for a more prosaic and materialist interpretation of what happened to me that August afternoon.» — Pollan devuelve la paradoja del capítulo a su propio caso: el hongo como maravilla adicional o como apoyo de la lectura materialista.

«According to one interpretation, I had had “a drug experience,” plain and simple. It was a kind of waking dream, interesting and pleasurable but signifying nothing.» — la primera de las dos interpretaciones aplicada a sí mismo: un sueño despierto agradable que no significa nada.

«The psilocin in that mushroom unlocked the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2-A receptors in my brain, causing them to fire wildly and set off a cascade of disordered mental events that, among other things, permitted some thoughts and feelings, presumably from my subconscious (and, perhaps, my reading too), to get cross-wired with my visual cortex as it was processing images of the trees and plants and insects in my field of vision.» — Pollan da la versión neuroquímica de lo que le pasó, con los receptores y el cruce con la corteza visual.

«Not quite a hallucination, “projection” is probably the psychological term for this phenomenon: when we mix our emotions with certain objects that then reflect those feelings back to us so that they appear to glisten with meaning.» — Pollan nombra proyección al término psicológico que describiría el fenómeno, con su atenuante dentro.

«T. S. Eliot called these things and situations the “objective correlatives” of human emotion.» — Pollan trae el término de T. S. Eliot para ese mismo fenómeno.

«Emerson had a similar phenomenon in mind when he said that “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit,” suggesting it is our minds that dress her in such significance.» — Pollan trae la frase de Emerson sobre los colores del espíritu que la naturaleza viste, y la lee como que es nuestra mente la que la inviste.

«I’m struck by the fact there was nothing supernatural about my heightened perceptions that afternoon, nothing that I needed an idea of magic or a divinity to explain.» — Pollan declara que nada de lo que percibió exigía lo sobrenatural; es su propia adjudicación y la hace explícita.

«Nature does in fact teem with subjectivities—call them spirits if you like—other than our own; it is only the human ego, with its imagined monopoly on subjectivity, that keeps us from recognizing them all, our kith and kin.» — lo que Pollan sí sostiene como conclusión propia: que la naturaleza rebosa de subjetividades y que el ego humano nos impide reconocerlas.

«In this sense, I guess Paul Stamets is right to think the mushrooms are bringing us messages from nature, or at least helping us to open up and read them.» — Pollan concede a Stamets, con su atenuante dentro y acotado por la cláusula final, que los hongos traen mensajes de la naturaleza.

«Before this afternoon, I had always assumed access to a spiritual dimension hinged on one’s acceptance of the supernatural—of God, of a Beyond—but now I’m not so sure.» — el cambio que Pollan declara en su propio supuesto: creía que lo espiritual exigía aceptar lo sobrenatural.

«The Beyond, whatever it consists of, might not be nearly as far away or inaccessible as we think.» — la conjetura con que Pollan reformula el más allá, con dos atenuantes dentro.

«Huston Smith, the scholar of religion, once described a spiritually “realized being” as simply a person with “an acute sense of the astonishing mystery of everything.”» — la definición de Huston Smith que Pollan cita: un ser realizado es quien tiene un sentido agudo del misterio asombroso de todo.

«Faith need not figure. Maybe to be in a garden and feel awe, or wonder, in the presence of an astonishing mystery, is nothing more than a recovery of a misplaced perspective, perhaps the child’s-eye view; maybe we regain it by means of a neurochemical change that disables the filters (of convention, of ego) that prevent us in ordinary hours from seeing what is, like those lovely leaves, staring us in the face.» — Pollan propone que el asombro en un jardín sea la recuperación de una perspectiva extraviada, quizá la del niño, y lo enuncia dos veces en potencial.

«I don’t know. But if those dried-up little scraps of fungus taught me anything, it is that there are other, stranger forms of consciousness available to us, and, whatever they mean, their very existence, to quote William James again, “forbid[s] a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”» — Pollan cierra el capítulo con su declaración de no saber y con la frase de James contra el cierre prematuro de nuestras cuentas con la realidad.

«Open-minded. And bemushroomed. That was me, now, ready to reopen my own accounts with reality.» — la frase final del capítulo, que juega con el término del título de la sección y con el de James.

«To open or close my eyes was like changing the channel. I thought, “I am learning how to manage this» — Pollan compara con cambiar de canal el recurso de abrir y cerrar los ojos, y se dice a sí mismo que está aprendiendo a manejar la experiencia; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 98 con *experience*.

«“Everything is interaction and reciprocal,” wrote Humboldt, and» — Pollan cierra el relato de su viaje con la primera frase de Humboldt; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 101 con *that felt very much the case*.

«that felt very much the case, and so, for the first time I can remember, did this: “I myself am identical with nature.”» — Pollan declara que por primera vez sintió cierta la segunda frase de Humboldt; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 100.

«No, all it took was another perceptual slant on the same old reality, a lens or mode of consciousness that invented nothing but merely (merely!) italicized the» — la explicación que Pollan adopta de lo que le pasó: un sesgo perceptivo que no inventó nada; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 102 con *prose of ordinary experience, disclosing the wonder that is always there in a garden or wood*.

«prose of ordinary experience, disclosing the wonder that is always there in a garden or wood, hidden in plain sight—another form of consciousness “parted from [us],” as William James put it, “by the filmiest of screens.”» — la segunda mitad de esa explicación, cerrada con la frase de James sobre las pantallas más finas; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 101.

«WHEN THE FEDERAL AUTHORITIES CAME down hard on Timothy Leary in the mid-1960s, hitting him with a thirty-year sentence for attempting to bring a small amount of marijuana over the border at Laredo, Texas, in 1966,* the embattled former psychology professor turned to Marshall McLuhan for some advice.» — Pollan abre el capítulo histórico con la condena de treinta años a Leary por marihuana en 1966 y su consulta a Marshall McLuhan.

«The country was in the throes of a moral panic about LSD, inspired in no small part by Leary’s own promotion of psychedelic drugs as a means of personal and cultural transformation and by his recommendation to America’s youth that they “turn on, tune in, drop out.”» — Pollan atribuye buena parte del pánico moral a la propia promoción de Leary y cita su consigna.

«Dated and goofy as those words sound to our ears, there was a moment when they were treated as a credible threat to the social order, an invitation to America’s children not only to take mind-altering drugs but to reject the path laid out for them by their parents and their government—including the path taking young men to Vietnam.» — Pollan explica por qué aquella consigna se tomó como amenaza al orden social, con la vía a Vietnam incluida.

«Also in 1966, Leary was called before a committee of the U.S. Senate to defend his notorious slogan, which he gamely if not very persuasively attempted to do.» — Pollan consigna la comparecencia de Leary ante el Senado y juzga poco persuasiva su defensa.

«In the midst of the national storm raging around him—a storm, it should be said, he quite enjoyed—Leary met with Marshall McLuhan over lunch at the Plaza hotel in New York, the LSD guru betting that the media guru might have some tips on how best to handle the public and the press.» — Pollan describe el almuerzo entre el gurú del LSD y el gurú de los medios, con el inciso de que a Leary la tormenta le gustaba.

«Dreary Senate hearing and courtrooms are not the platforms for your message, Tim,” McLuhan advised, in a conversation that Leary recounts in Flashbacks, one of his many autobiographies. (Leary would write another one every time legal fees and alimony payments threatened to empty his bank account.) “To dispel fear you must use your public image. You are the basic product endorser.”» — el consejo de McLuhan que Pollan cita de las memorias de Leary: usar la imagen pública y presentarse como el aval del producto.

«Whenever you are photographed, smile. Wave reassuringly. Radiate courage. Never complain or appear angry. It’s okay if you come off as flamboyant and eccentric. You’re a professor after all. But a confident attitude is the best advertisement. You must be known for your smile.”» — el resto del consejo de McLuhan según Pollan: sonreír, no quejarse nunca y hacerse conocido por la sonrisa.

«So, ever smiling, the charismatic figure of Timothy Leary looms large over the history of psychedelics in America. Yet it doesn’t take many hours in the library before you begin to wonder if maybe Timothy Leary looms a little too large in that history, or at least in our popular understanding of it.» — Pollan plantea su objeción al lugar de Leary en la historia: quizá demasiado grande, al menos en la comprensión popular.

«I was hardly alone in assuming that the Harvard Psilocybin Project—launched by Leary in the fall of 1960, immediately after his first life-changing experience with psilocybin in Mexico—represented the beginning of serious academic research into these substances or that Leary’s dismissal from Harvard in 1963 marked the end of that research. But in fact neither proposition is even remotely true.» — Pollan niega las dos proposiciones heredadas: que el proyecto de Harvard abriera la investigación seria y que su despido la cerrara.

«Leary played an important role in the modern history of psychedelics, but it’s not at all the pioneering role he wrote for himself. His success in shaping the popular narrative of psychedelics in the 1960s obscures as much as it reveals, creating a kind of reality distortion field that makes it difficult to see everything that came either before or after his big moment onstage.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre Leary: su éxito al moldear el relato popular oculta tanto como revela, con un campo de distorsión alrededor.

«In a truer telling of the history, the Harvard Psilocybin Project would appear more like the beginning of the end of what had been a remarkably fertile and promising period of research that unfolded during the previous decade far from Cambridge, in places as far flung as Saskatchewan, Vancouver, California, and England, and, everywhere, with a lot less sound and fury or countercultural baggage.» — la enmienda que Pollan propone: el proyecto de Harvard sería el principio del fin de una década fértil que ocurrió lejos de Cambridge.

«The larger-than-life figure of Leary has also obscured from view the role of a dedicated but little-known group of scientists, therapists, and passionate amateurs who, long before Leary had ever tried psilocybin or LSD, developed the theoretical framework to make sense of these unusual chemicals and devised the therapeutic protocols to put them to use healing people.» — Pollan nombra lo que la figura de Leary oculta: el grupo que antes que él construyó el marco teórico y los protocolos terapéuticos.

«Many of these researchers eventually watched in dismay as Leary (and his “antics,” as they inevitably referred to his various stunts and pronouncements) ignited what would become a public bonfire of all their hard-won knowledge and experience.» — Pollan reporta el término con que aquellos investigadores se referían a las bufonadas de Leary y la hoguera que dicen que encendió.

«In telling the modern history of psychedelics, I want to put aside the Leary saga, at least until the crack-up where it properly belongs, to see if we can’t recover some of that knowledge and the experience that produced it without passing it through the light-bending prism of the “Psychedelic Sixties.”» — Pollan declara el método del capítulo: dejar la saga de Leary para el desplome y recuperar el saber sin pasarlo por el prisma de los sesenta psicodélicos.

«Stephen Ross is one such researcher. A psychiatrist specializing in addiction at Bellevue, he directed an NYU trial using psilocybin to treat the existential distress of cancer patients, to which I will return later; since then, he has turned to the treatment of alcoholics with psychedelics, what had been perhaps the single most promising area of clinical research in the 1950s.» — Pollan presenta al psiquiatra Stephen Ross y sus dos líneas, la angustia existencial en cáncer y el tratamiento del alcoholismo.

«When several years ago an NYU colleague mentioned to Ross that LSD had once been used to treat thousands of alcoholics in Canada and the United States (and that Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had sought to introduce LSD therapy into AA in the 1950s), Ross, who was in his thirties at the time, did some research and was “flabbergasted” by all that he—as an expert on the treatment of alcoholism—did not know and hadn’t been told.» — según Pollan, Ross quedó atónito ante lo que como experto en alcoholismo no sabía, incluido que el fundador de Alcohólicos Anónimos buscó llevar la terapia con LSD a esa organización.

«His own field had a secret history.» — la fórmula con que Pollan resume el caso de Ross.

«I felt a little like an archaeologist, unearthing a completely buried body of knowledge. Beginning in the early fifties, psychedelics had been used to treat a whole host of conditions,” including addiction, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, autism, and end-of-life anxiety.» — según Pollan, Ross se describe como arqueólogo de un cuerpo de saber enterrado y enumera las condiciones que se trataban.

«There had been forty thousand research participants and more than a thousand clinical papers! The American Psychiatric Association had whole meetings centered around LSD, this new wonder drug.”» — las cifras que Ross da según Pollan, con las reuniones de la asociación psiquiátrica americana dedicadas al LSD.

«In fact, there were six international scientific meetings devoted to psychedelics between 1950 and 1965.» — el dato con que Pollan apuntala el testimonio de Ross.

«But after the culture and the psychiatric establishment turned against psychedelics in the mid-1960s, an entire body of knowledge was effectively erased from the field, as if all that research and clinical experience had never happened. “By the time I got to medical school in the 1990s, no one even talked about it.”» — según Pollan, Ross describe el borrado de ese cuerpo de saber y su propio paso por la escuela de medicina sin oír hablar de él.

«WHEN LSD BURST onto the psychiatric scene in 1950, the drug’s effects on patients (and researchers, who routinely tried the drug on themselves) were so novel and strange that scientists struggled for the better part of a decade to figure out what these extraordinary experiences were or meant.» — Pollan data en 1950 la irrupción del LSD en la psiquiatría y consigna que los investigadores la probaban en sí mismos.

«How, exactly, did this new mind-altering drug fit into the existing paradigms for understanding the mind and the prevailing modes of psychiatry and psychotherapy? A lively debate over these questions went on for more than a decade.» — la pregunta que Pollan pone como eje de aquella década de debate.

«While it left him uncertain whether he had experienced madness or transcendence, Hofmann immediately sensed the potential importance of this compound for neurology and psychiatry.» — Pollan consigna que Hofmann quedó sin saber si había vivido locura o trascendencia y aun así intuyó la importancia del compuesto.

«So Sandoz, the pharmaceutical company for which he worked at the time of his discovery, did something unusual: in effect, it crowd-sourced a worldwide research effort to figure out what in the world Delysid—its brand name for LSD-25—might be good for.» — Pollan describe la maniobra insólita de Sandoz: abrir a cualquiera la investigación sobre para qué servía su compuesto.

«Hoping someone somewhere would hit upon a commercial application for its spookily powerful new compound, Sandoz offered to supply, free of charge, however much LSD any researcher requested.» — la política de Sandoz según Pollan: surtir gratis todo el LSD que pidiera cualquier investigador.

«The company defined the term “researcher” liberally enough to include any therapist who promised to write up his or her clinical observations.» — Pollan precisa lo laxo de la definición de investigador que Sandoz manejaba.

«This policy remained more or less unchanged from 1949 to 1966 and was in large part responsible for setting off the first wave of psychedelic research— the one that crashed in 1966, when Sandoz, alarmed at the controversy that had erupted around its experimental drug, abruptly withdrew Delysid from circulation.» — Pollan fecha la vigencia de esa política y su retiro abrupto en 1966, que cierra la primera ola.

«As the literary theorists would say, the psychedelic experience is highly “constructed.”» — Pollan aplica a la experiencia psicodélica el término de los teóricos literarios, y esa construcción es la clave del capítulo.

«If you are told you will have a spiritual experience, chances are pretty good that you will, and, likewise, if you are told the drug may drive you temporarily insane, or acquaint you with the collective unconscious, or help you access “cosmic consciousness,” or revisit the trauma of your birth, you stand a good chance of having exactly that kind of experience.» — Pollan enumera las expectativas que se cumplen a sí mismas, de la experiencia espiritual a la locura temporal y al trauma del nacimiento.

«Psychologists call these self-fulfilling prophecies “expectancy effects,” and they turn out to be especially powerful in the case of psychedelics.» — Pollan nombra el término técnico de esas profecías autocumplidas y las declara especialmente poderosas aquí.

«So, for example, if you have ever read Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, which was published in 1954, your own psychedelic experience has probably been influenced by the author’s mysticism and, specifically, the mysticism of the East to which Huxley was inclined.» — el ejemplo con que Pollan sostiene esa tesis: el misticismo oriental de Huxley moldeando las experiencias de quienes lo leyeron.

«Indeed, even if you have never read Huxley, his construction of the experience has probably influenced your own, for that Eastern flavoring—think of the Beatles song “Tomorrow Never Knows”—would come to characterize the LSD experience from 1954» — Pollan extiende el efecto a quienes no leyeron a Huxley, por el aderezo oriental que caracterizó la experiencia desde 1954; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 107 con *on*.

«Leary would pick up this psychedelic orientalism from Huxley and then greatly amplify it when he and his Harvard colleagues wrote a bestselling manual for psychedelic experience based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.» — Pollan consigna que Leary tomó ese orientalismo de Huxley y lo amplificó en un manual basado en el Libro tibetano de los muertos.

«Further complicating the story and adding another feedback loop, Huxley was inspired to try psychedelics and write about the experience by a scientist who gave him mescaline in the explicit hope that a great writer’s descriptions and metaphors would help him and his colleagues make sense of an experience they were struggling to interpret.» — el segundo bucle que Pollan señala: a Huxley lo empujó a probar y a escribir un científico que esperaba que sus metáforas ayudaran a interpretar la experiencia.

«So did Aldous Huxley “make sense” of the modern psychedelic experience, or did he in some sense invent it?» — la pregunta con que Pollan deja abierto el papel de Huxley, sin resolverla.

«This hall of epistemological mirrors was just one of the many challenges facing the researchers who wanted to bring LSD into the field of psychiatry and psychotherapy: psychedelic therapy could look more like shamanism or faith healing than medicine.» — Pollan nombra sala de espejos epistemológicos a ese problema y da el primer desafío: que la terapia psicodélica pareciera chamanismo o curación por fe.

«Another challenge was the irrational exuberance that seemed to infect any researchers who got involved with LSD, an enthusiasm that might have improved the results of their experiments at the same time it fueled the skepticism of colleagues who remained psychedelic virgins.» — el segundo desafío según Pollan: la exuberancia irracional que contagiaba a los investigadores y alimentaba el escepticismo de los demás.

«Yet a third challenge was how to fit psychedelics into the existing structures of science and psychiatry, if indeed that was possible. How do you do a controlled experiment with a psychedelic?» — el tercer desafío que Pollan plantea, el del encaje con la estructura del experimento controlado.

«Leary took McLuhan’s advice to heart. In virtually all of the many thousands of photographs taken of him from that lunch date forward,» — Pollan consigna que Leary siguió el consejo de McLuhan; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 104 con *Leary made sure to present the gift of his most winning grin to the camera*.

«wasn’t known at the time is that beginning in 1953, the CIA was conducting its own (classified) research into psychedelics and was struggling with similar issues of interpretation and application: Was LSD best regarded as a potential truth serum, or a mind-control agent, or a chemical weapon?» — Pollan consigna que desde 1953 la CIA hacía su propia investigación clasificada y enumera las tres lecturas que barajaba: suero de la verdad, agente de control mental o arma química; el tramo arranca a media frase porque la anterior queda del otro lado del corte de plana, en la 105.

«The drugs weren’t called “psychedelics” at the beginning; that term» — Pollan abre la historia de la nomenclatura del capítulo Three; el tramo se corta al reemitirse la marca de la plana 108 y sigue con *wasn’t introduced until 1957*.

«wasn’t introduced until 1957. In the same way that Sandoz couldn’t figure out what it had on its hands with LSD, the researchers experimenting with the drug couldn’t figure out what to call it.» — Pollan data en 1957 la aparición del término y enlaza la indecisión de Sandoz con la de los investigadores; el tramo arranca a media frase por el corte del troceo en la plana 108.

«Over the course of the 1950s, this class of drugs underwent a succession of name changes as our understanding of the chemicals and their action evolved, each new name reflecting the shifting interpretation—or was it a construction?—of what these strange and powerful molecules meant and did.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre los nombres: cada uno refleja una interpretación distinta, y él mismo pone en duda la palabra entre guiones.

«The first name was perhaps the most awkward: beginning around 1950, shortly after LSD was made available to researchers, the compound was known as a psychotomimetic, which is to say, a mind drug that mimicked psychoses.» — Pollan da el primer nombre, psicotomimético, y su sentido.

«This was the most obvious and parsimonious interpretation of a psychedelic’s effects. Viewed from the outside, people given doses of LSD and, later, psilocybin exhibited many of the signs of a temporary psychosis.» — Pollan explica por qué ese nombre era la lectura más obvia: vistos desde fuera, los sujetos exhibían signos de psicosis pasajera.

«Early researchers reported a range of disturbing symptoms in their LSD volunteers, including depersonalization, loss of ego boundaries, distorted body image, synesthesia (seeing sounds or hearing sights), emotional lability, giggling and weeping, distortion of the sense of time, delirium, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and, in the words of one writer, “a tantalizing sense of portentousness.”» — el inventario de síntomas que Pollan reporta de aquellos primeros estudios, con la fórmula que cita de un autor no nombrado.

«When researchers administered standardized psychiatric tests to volunteers on LSD—such as the Rorschach ink blots or the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test—the results mirrored those of psychotics and, specifically, schizophrenics. Volunteers on LSD appeared to be losing their minds.» — Pollan consigna que las pruebas psiquiátricas estandarizadas daban resultados propios de psicóticos.

«This suggested to some researchers that LSD held promise as a tool for understanding psychosis, which is precisely how Sandoz initially marketed Delysid.» — Pollan consigna la primera aplicación que Sandoz dio a su compuesto: herramienta para entender la psicosis.

«Although the drug might not cure anything, the resemblance of its effects to the symptoms of schizophrenia suggested that the mental disorder might have a chemical basis that LSD could somehow illuminate.» — el razonamiento que Pollan atribuye a aquellos investigadores: el parecido con la esquizofrenia sugería una base química del trastorno.

«For clinicians, the drug promised to help them better understand and empathize with their schizophrenic patients.» — la segunda promesa de aquel modelo según Pollan: que el clínico entendiera y empatizara con su paciente.

«That of course meant taking the drug themselves, which seems odd, even scandalous, to us today. But in the years before 1962, when Congress passed a law giving the FDA authority to regulate new “investigational” drugs, this was in fact common practice.» — Pollan consigna que antes de 1962 era práctica común que el investigador tomara la droga, y data ahí la ley que dio a la FDA autoridad sobre los fármacos en investigación.

«Humphry Osmond wrote that the extraordinary promise of LSD was to allow the therapist who took it to “enter the illness and see with a madman’s eyes, hear with his ears, and feel with his skin.”» — la fórmula de Humphry Osmond que Pollan cita sobre entrar en la enfermedad y ver con los ojos del loco.

«Born in Surrey, England, in 1917, Osmond is a little-known but pivotal figure in the history of psychedelic research,* probably contributing more to our understanding of these compounds and their therapeutic potential than any other single researcher.» — Pollan sitúa a Osmond como figura pivote y poco conocida, y le adjudica más contribución que a ningún otro investigador.

«In the years following World War II, Osmond, a tall reed of a man with raucous teeth, was practicing psychiatry at St. George’s Hospital in London when a colleague named John Smythies introduced him to an obscure body of medical literature about mescaline.» — Pollan cuenta cómo Osmond llegó a la mescalina, por un colega llamado John Smythies.

«After learning that mescaline induced hallucinations much like those reported by schizophrenics, the two researchers began to explore the idea that the disease was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.» — según Pollan, del parecido entre mescalina y esquizofrenia salió la hipótesis de un desequilibrio químico cerebral.

«At a time when the role of brain chemistry in mental illness had not yet been established, this was a radical hypothesis.» — Pollan mide lo radical de esa hipótesis para su época.

«The two psychiatrists had observed that the molecular structure of mescaline closely resembled that of adrenaline. Could schizophrenia result from some kind of dysfunction in the metabolism of adrenaline, transforming it into a compound that produced the schizophrenic rupture with reality?» — la conjetura concreta de Osmond y Smythies según Pollan, a partir del parecido entre mescalina y adrenalina.

«No, as it would turn out. But it was a productive hypothesis even so, and Osmond’s research into the biochemical basis of mental illness contributed to the rise of neurochemistry in the 1950s.» — Pollan consigna que la hipótesis era falsa y aun así productiva, y le acredita parte del auge de la neuroquímica.

«The fact that such a vanishingly small number of LSD molecules could exert such a profound effect on the mind was an important clue that a system of neurotransmitters with dedicated receptors might play a role in organizing our mental experience. This insight eventually led to the discovery of serotonin and the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs.» — Pollan encadena la potencia del LSD con el descubrimiento de la serotonina y de los antidepresivos que hoy se recetan.

«But the powers that be at St. George’s Hospital were unsupportive of Osmond’s research on mescaline. In frustration, the young doctor went looking for a more hospitable institution in which to conduct it. This he found in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan, of all places.» — Pollan cuenta el traslado de Osmond a Saskatchewan por falta de apoyo en Londres.

«Beginning in the mid-1940s, the province’s leftist government had instituted several radical reforms in public policy, including the nation’s first system of publicly funded health care. (It became the model for the system Canada would adopt in 1966.» — Pollan da el contexto político de esa provincia, con el primer sistema público de salud del país.

«Hoping to make the province a center of cutting-edge medical research, the government offered generous funding and a rare degree of freedom to lure researchers to the frozen wastes of the Canadian prairies.» — la explicación que Pollan da de por qué Saskatchewan pudo atraer a Osmond: financiamiento generoso y libertad rara.

«The Saskatchewan Mental Hospital in Weyburn would soon become the world’s most important hub of research into psychedelics—or rather, into the class of compounds still known as psychotomimetics.» — Pollan declara a Weyburn el centro mundial de esta investigación, con la corrección de que entonces se llamaban psicotomiméticos; el tramo cruza el corte de plana entre la 109 y la 110.

«That paradigm still ruled the thinking of Osmond and his new, likeminded colleague and research director, a Canadian psychiatrist named Abram Hoffer, as they began conducting experiments using a supply of LSD-25 obtained from Sandoz.» — Pollan nombra al psiquiatra canadiense Abram Hoffer como el compañero de Osmond en aquellos experimentos; el troceo funde aquí el guion de fin de renglón y devuelve *likeminded* donde la fuente imprime *like-minded*.

«The psychotomimetic model was introduced to the general public in 1953, when Maclean’s, the popular Canadian magazine, published a harrowing account of a journalist’s experience on LSD titled “My 12 Hours as a Madman.”» — Pollan data en 1953 la entrada del modelo psicotomimético al público, con el título del reportaje canadiense.

«Katz had been led to expect madness, and madness he duly experienced: “I saw faces of familiar friends turn into fleshless skulls and the heads of menacing witches, pigs and weasels. The gaily patterned carpet at my feet was transformed into a fabulous heaving mass of living matter, part vegetable, part animal.”» — Pollan hace ver el efecto de expectativa en aquel reportaje: se le prometió locura y locura tuvo; siguen las imágenes que el periodista describió.

«Katz’s article, which was illustrated with an artist’s rendering of chairs flying through a collapsing room, reads like the work of a fervent anti-LSD propagandist circa 1965: “I was repeatedly held in the grip of a terrifying hallucination in which I could feel and see my body convulse and shrink until all that remained was a hard sickly stone.”» — Pollan compara aquel artículo con la propaganda antipsicodélica de una década después, y cita el pasaje de la convulsión.

«Yet, curiously, his twelve hours of insanity “were not all filled with horror,” he reported. “At times I beheld visions of dazzling beauty—visions so rapturous, so unearthly, that no artist will ever paint them.”» — Pollan destaca la grieta dentro del propio reportaje: no todas aquellas horas fueron de horror.

«During this period, Osmond and Hoffer administered Sandoz LSD to dozens of people, including colleagues, friends, family members, volunteers, and, of course, themselves.» — Pollan inventaria a quiénes dosificaron Osmond y Hoffer en aquel periodo.

«Their focus on LSD as a window into the biochemistry of mental illness gradually gave way to a deepening curiosity about the power of the experience itself and whether the perceptual disturbances produced by the drug might themselves confer some therapeutic benefit.» — Pollan data ahí el desplazamiento del interés: de la bioquímica de la enfermedad al poder de la experiencia misma.

«During a late night brainstorming session in an Ottawa hotel room in 1953, Osmond and Hoffer noted that the LSD experience appeared to share many features with the descriptions of delirium tremens reported by alcoholics—the hellish, days-long bout of madness alcoholics often suffer while in the throes of withdrawal.» — Pollan fecha y sitúa la ocurrencia de Osmond y Hoffer: que la experiencia con LSD se pareciera al delirium tremens del alcohólico.

«Many recovering alcoholics look back on the hallucinatory horrors of the DTs as a conversion experience and the basis of the spiritual awakening that allows them to remain sober.» — el dato en que se apoyaba aquella ocurrencia según Pollan: que muchos alcohólicos recuerdan el delirium como experiencia de conversión.

«Here was an arresting application of the psychotomimetic paradigm: use a single high-dose LSD session to induce an episode of madness in an alcoholic that would simulate delirium tremens, shocking the patient into sobriety.» — Pollan formula la aplicación que salía del modelo psicotomimético: inducir un episodio de locura que sacudiera al paciente hacia la sobriedad.

«Over the next decade, Osmond and Hoffer tested this hypothesis on more than seven hundred alcoholics, and in roughly half the cases, they reported, the treatment worked: the volunteers got sober and remained so for at least several months.» — las cifras que Pollan reporta de aquel programa, con el verbo que marca que es lo que ellos reportaron.

«Not only was the new approach more effective than other therapies, but it suggested a whole new way to think about psychopharmacology. “From the first,” Hoffer wrote, “we considered not the chemical, but the experience as a key factor in therapy.”» — según Pollan, Hoffer escribió que desde el principio tuvieron por factor clave la experiencia y no el químico.

«This novel idea would become a central tenet of psychedelic therapy.» — Pollan declara esa idea principio central de la terapia psicodélica, y es la misma que Griffiths sostiene medio siglo después.

«The emphasis on what subjects felt represented a major break with the prevailing ideas of behaviorism in psychology, in which only observable and measurable outcomes counted and subjective experience was deemed irrelevant.» — Pollan mide esa idea contra el conductismo dominante, donde solo contaba lo observable.

«The analysis of these subjective experiences, sometimes called phenomenology, had of course been the basis of Freudian psychoanalysis, which behaviorism had rejected as insufficiently rigorous or scientific.» — Pollan sitúa la fenomenología en la historia de la disciplina, como base del psicoanálisis que el conductismo rechazó.

«There was no point in trying to get inside the mind; it was, in B. F. Skinner’s famous phrase, “a black box.” Instead, you measured what you could measure, which was outward behavior.» — Pollan cita la fórmula de Skinner sobre la caja negra para resumir la posición conductista.

«The work with psychedelics would eventually spark a revival of interest in the subjective dimensions of the mind—in consciousness. How ironic that it took, of all things, a chemical— LSD-25—to bring interiority back into psychology.» — la ironía que Pollan subraya: hizo falta un químico para devolver la interioridad a la psicología.

«And yet, successful as the new therapy seemed to be, there was a nagging little problem with the theoretical model on which it was based.» — Pollan anuncia la grieta del modelo, que es lo que hará cambiar el nombre de estas sustancias.

«When the therapists began to analyze the reports of volunteers, their subjective experiences while on LSD bore little if any resemblance to the horrors of the DTs, or to madness of any kind. To the contrary, their experiences were, for the most part, incredibly— and bafflingly—positive.» — el hallazgo que desarmó el modelo según Pollan: los informes de los voluntarios no se parecían al delirium ni a ninguna locura.

«When Osmond and Hoffer began to catalog their volunteers’ session reports, “psychotic changes”—hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety—sometimes occurred, but there were also descriptions of, say, “a transcendental feeling of being united with the world,” one of the most common feelings reported. Rather than madness, most volunteers described sensations such as a new ability “to see oneself objectively”; “enhancement in the sensory fields”; profound new understandings “in the field of philosophy or religion”; and “increased sensitivity to the feelings of others.”» — Pollan contrapone los cambios psicóticos que a veces ocurrían con las descripciones más comunes, del sentimiento trascendental de unión con el mundo al verse a uno mismo objetivamente.

«In spite of the powerful expectancy effect, symptoms that looked nothing like those of insanity were busting through the researchers’ preconceptions.» — la conclusión de Pollan sobre ese hallazgo: síntomas que no se parecían a la locura reventaban las preconcepciones pese al efecto de expectativa.

«Indeed, it was considered the ethical thing to do, for to not take the drug» — Pollan invierte el juicio que hoy parecería escandaloso; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 109 con *yourself was tantamount to treating your patients as guinea pigs*.

«The idea that an LSD experience could mimic the DTs “seemed so bizarre that we laughed uproariously,” Hoffer recalled years later. “But when our laughter subsided, the question seemed less comical» — según Pollan, Hoffer recuerda que primero se rieron a carcajadas; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana y sigue en la 111 con la hipótesis formulada.

«and we formed our hypothesis . . . : would a controlled LSD-produced delirium help alcoholics stay sober?”» — la hipótesis que Osmond y Hoffer formularon según Pollan, sobre si un delirio controlado por LSD ayudaría al alcohólico a mantenerse sobrio; los puntos suspensivos son del original y el tramo arranca a media frase por el corte de plana en la 110.

«They received a strong push in that direction from Aldous Huxley after his mescaline experience, which he declared bore scant resemblance to psychosis.» — según Pollan, Huxley empujó a Osmond y Hoffer a abandonar el modelo psicotomimético declarando que su experiencia con mescalina no se parecía a la psicosis.

«What a psychiatrist might diagnose as depersonalization, hallucinations, or mania might better be thought of as instances of mystical union, visionary experience, or ecstasy.» — la reinterpretación que Pollan formula de los mismos síntomas: unión mística, experiencia visionaria o éxtasis.

«Could it be that the doctors were mistaking transcendence for insanity?» — la pregunta con que Pollan enuncia el vuelco de paradigma del capítulo.

«At the same time, Osmond and Hoffer were learning from their volunteers that the environment in which the LSD session took place exerted a powerful effect on the kinds of experiences people had and that one of the best ways to avoid a bad session was the presence of an engaged and empathetic therapist, ideally someone who had had his or her own LSD experience.» — Pollan consigna que Osmond y Hoffer aprendieron de sus voluntarios el peso del entorno y del terapeuta empático.

«They came to suspect that the few psychotic reactions they did observe might actually be an artifact of the metaphorical white room and white-coated clinician.» — la sospecha que Pollan les atribuye: que las pocas reacciones psicóticas fueran artefacto del cuarto blanco y la bata.

«Though the terms “set” and “setting” would not be used in this context for several more years (and became closely identified with Timothy Leary’s work at Harvard a decade later), Osmond and Hoffer were already coming to appreciate the supreme importance of those factors in the success of their treatment.» — Pollan adelanta que Osmond y Hoffer ya apreciaban esos factores una década antes de que los términos se asociaran a Leary.

«IN THE MID-1950S, Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, learned about Osmond and Hoffer’s work with alcoholics.» — Pollan enlaza a Bill Wilson, cofundador de Alcohólicos Anónimos, con el trabajo de Osmond y Hoffer.

«He credited his own sobriety to a mystical experience he had on belladonna, a plant-derived alkaloid with hallucinogenic properties that was administered to him at Towns Hospital in Manhattan in 1934.» — según Pollan, Bill W. atribuía su propia sobriedad a una experiencia mística con belladona en 1934.

«Few members of AA realize that the whole idea of a spiritual awakening leading one to surrender to a “higher power”—a cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous—can be traced to a psychedelic drug trip.» — la tesis de Pollan sobre el origen de la piedra angular de Alcohólicos Anónimos, el despertar espiritual y la entrega a un poder superior.

«Twenty years later, Bill W. became curious to see if LSD, this new wonder drug, might prove useful in helping recovering alcoholics have such an awakening.» — Pollan cuenta el interés posterior de Bill W. por el LSD como vía a ese mismo despertar.

«Beginning in 1956, Bill W. had several LSD sessions in Los Angeles with Sidney Cohen and Betty Eisner, a young psychologist who had recently completed her doctorate at UCLA.» — Pollan data las sesiones de Bill W. en Los Ángeles y nombra a quienes se las dieron.

«By the mid-1950s, there were perhaps a dozen such hubs in North America and Europe; most of them kept in close contact with one another, sharing techniques, discoveries, and, sometimes, drugs, in a spirit that was generally more cooperative than competitive.» — Pollan describe la red de centros de investigación de entonces y el espíritu cooperativo que les atribuye.

«Bill W.’s sessions with Cohen and Eisner convinced him that LSD could reliably occasion the kind of spiritual awakening he believed one needed in order to get sober; however, he did not believe the LSD experience was anything like the DTs, thus driving another nail in the coffin of that idea.» — según Pollan, Bill W. quedó convencido del despertar y a la vez negó el parecido con el delirium tremens, lo que restó apoyo a aquel modelo.

«Bill W. thought there might be a place for LSD therapy in AA, but his colleagues on the board of the fellowship strongly disagreed, believing that to condone the use of any mind-altering substance risked muddying the organization’s brand and message.» — Pollan consigna el desacuerdo entre Bill W. y el consejo de su propia organización, y no lo arbitra.

«Yet when Cohen finally tried LSD himself in October 1955, he “was taken by surprise.” Expecting to find himself trapped inside the mind of a madman, Cohen instead experienced a profound, even transcendent sense of tranquillity, as if “the problems and strivings, the worries and frustrations of everyday life [had] vanished; in their place was a majestic, sunlit, heavenly inner quietude . . . I seemed to have finally arrived at the contemplation of eternal truth.”» — según Pollan, Sidney Cohen esperaba la mente de un loco y halló una quietud interior que llamó contemplación de la verdad eterna; los puntos suspensivos y el corchete son del original.

«Whatever this was, he felt certain it wasn’t a temporary psychosis. Betty Eisner wrote that Cohen came to think of it instead as something he called “unsanity”: “a state beyond the control of the ego.”» — según Pollan, Betty Eisner escribió que Cohen acuñó el término insanidad para ese estado fuera del control del yo.

«As often happens in science when a theoretical paradigm comes under the pressure of contrary evidence, the paradigm totters for a period of time as researchers attempt to prop it up with various amendments and adjustments, and then, often quite suddenly and swiftly, it collapses as a new paradigm rises to take its place.» — Pollan describe la mecánica del cambio de paradigma que va a aplicar al caso.

«Certainly, a number of volunteers were reporting challenging and sometimes even harrowing trips, but remarkably few were having the full-on psychosis the paradigm promised.» — el dato que hundía el modelo según Pollan: muy pocos tenían la psicosis plena que el paradigma prometía.

«As it happened, the psychotomimetic paradigm was replaced not by one but by two distinct new theoretical models: the psycholytic and, later, the psychedelic model.» — Pollan nombra los dos modelos que sustituyeron al psicotomimético.

«The two models weren’t at odds with each other, exactly, and some researchers explored both at various times, but they did represent profoundly different approaches to understanding the psyche, as well as to psychotherapy and, ultimately, science itself.» — Pollan acota la relación entre los dos modelos: no reñidos, y a la vez con enfoques hondamente distintos de la psique y de la ciencia.

«Therapists who administered doses of LSD as low as 25 micrograms (and seldom higher than 150 micrograms) reported that their patients’ ego defenses relaxed, allowing them to bring up and discuss difficult or repressed material with relative ease.» — Pollan da el rango de dosis del modelo psicolítico y lo que los terapeutas reportaban, defensas del yo relajadas.

«This suggested that the drugs could be used as an aid to talking therapy, because at these doses the patients’ egos remained sufficiently intact to allow them to converse with a therapist and later recall what was discussed.» — Pollan explica por qué ese modelo encajaba con la terapia de palabra: el yo quedaba bastante intacto para conversar y recordar.