How to Change Your Mind

turned yellow. By 2010, the cancer had spread to Patrick’s lungs, and he
was buckling under the weight of an especially debilitating chemotherapy
regime and the dawning realization that he might not survive. The article,
headlined “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again,” briefly
mentioned research at NYU, where psilocybin was being tested to relieve
existential distress in cancer patients. According to Lisa, Patrick had no
experience with psychedelics, but he immediately determined to call NYU
and volunteer.
Lisa was against the idea. “I didn’t want there to be an easy way out,”
she told me. “I wanted him to fight.”
Patrick placed the call anyway and, after filling out some forms and
answering a long list of questions, was accepted into the trial. He was
assigned to Tony Bossis. Tony was roughly the same age as Patrick; he is
also a soulful man of uncommon warmth and compassion, and the two
immediately hit it off.
At their first meeting, Bossis told Patrick what to expect. After three or
four preparatory sessions of talking therapy, Patrick would be scheduled
for two dosings—one of them an “active placebo” (in this case a high dose
of niacin, which produces a tingling sensation), and the other a capsule
containing twenty-five milligrams of psilocybin. Both sessions would take
place in the treatment room where I met Bossis and Ross. During each
session, which would last the better part of a day, Patrick would lie on the
couch wearing eyeshades and listening through headphones to a playlist
of carefully curated music—Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Pat Metheny, and
Ravi Shankar, as well as some classical and New Age compositions. Two
sitters—one of them male (Bossis) and the other female (Krystallia
Kalliontzi)—would be in attendance for the duration, saying very little but
available to help should he run into any trouble. In preparation, the two
shared with Patrick the set of “flight instructions” written by the Hopkins
researcher Bill Richards.
Bossis suggested that Patrick use the phrase “Trust and let go” as a
kind of mantra for his journey. Go wherever it takes you, he advised:
“Climb staircases, open doors, explore paths, fly over landscapes.” But the
most important advice for the journey he offered is always to move
toward, rather than try to flee, anything truly threatening or monstrous
you encounter—look it straight in the eyes. “Dig in your heels and ask,
‘What are you doing in my mind?’ Or, ‘What can I learn from you?’”