Want a shortcut to better living? Psychedelics may be it. | Michael Pollan

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- Tripping on psychedelics may turn banal insights into "sticky" and "revealed truths" that change the way we live our lives.

- For instance, LSD may be able to help smokers cut their addiction. How so? By allowing them to have a perspective shift on its effects.

- Sometimes the insights made during psychotherapy, after years of counseling, can be made with an LSD trip in a single afternoon.

Michael Pollan is the author of How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence ( and seven previous books including Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, which received the Borders Original Voices Award for the best non-fiction work of 2001, and was recognized as a best book of the year by the American Booksellers Association and Amazon.com. PBS premiered a two-hour special documentary based on The Botany of Desire in fall 2009.

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