Loved A World Appears by for wonder balanced with investigative rigor? Follow the clinical trials into Acid Test by .
Buy on AmazonWhy It's Your Next Read
- Investigative deep-dive into actual clinical trials
- Patient stories balanced w/ hard neuroscience
- Policy + ethics debate grounded in data
- Skeptical tone—no mysticism, no hype allowed
If How to Change Your Mind taught you to read wonder through the lens of rigor, Tom Shroder's Acid Test takes that investigative discipline into the clinical trenches—tracing PTSD trials, parsing consent protocols, and profiling the patients whose breakthroughs arrive tangled with setback. Shroder refuses mysticism but honors awe, embedding himself in labs and integration sessions to ask the hardest question Pollan left you with: how does peak insight survive ordinary life?
You'll find the same moral seriousness about access, commercialization, and who benefits—plus the institutional portraits and policy thickets that made Pollan's work feel like grown-up reporting, not psychedelic boosterism.
Wonder is always weighed against social consequences, and that's exactly the restraint you need next.
What Readers Are Saying
"If I could give this book six stars, I would... Incredibly well researched and written... This has changed my life and given me hope that I may one day find what I thoroughly need." — Patrick, Goodreads
"Acid Test is a very fun look at the historical fight for the medical legalization of psychedelic therapies...one of the best nonfiction books you will read this year, but one that has a real chance to provoke positive change." — Jason Schofield, Goodreads
"A page-turner about the story of psychedelic research and its therapeutic promise... this book should be read by doctors, politicians, and all soldiers and their families. Highly recommended." — Henrik Akselsen, Goodreads
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