How to Change Your Mind

we needed to control for Bill’s biases.” 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. 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.
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. These people had big stories to tell; in several cases, these
were the most meaningful experiences of their lives, and they clearly
relished the opportunity to relive them for me in great detail, whether in
person, by Skype, or on the telephone. 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.
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. The sitters work from a set of “flight
instructions” prepared by Bill Richards, based on the hundreds of
psychedelic journeys he has guided. The guides go over the instructions
with the volunteers during the eight hours of preparation all of them
receive before commencing their journeys.
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.”
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.” 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.” 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.