How to Change Your Mind

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. “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.” 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. 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. His
death was a loss from which Paul hadn’t yet recovered.
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. 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.
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.
“My friend Ryan Snyder wanted to borrow it. His parents were really
conservative. A week later, when I told him I wanted it back, he stalls and
delays. Another week goes by, I ask him again, and he finally confesses
what happened. ‘My parents found it and they burned it.’
“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.”
Stamets went off to Kenyon College, where, as a freshman, he had “a
profound psychedelic experience” that set his course in life. As long as he
could remember, Stamets had been stymied by a debilitating stutter.
“This was a huge issue for me. 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 because I was always
looking down.”