Michael Pollan has built a career and following as a writer by specializing in telling stories about food, and our relationship to it. In past books, he has delved deeply into many aspects of food production: how food can be more sustainably grown, what foods are healthy for us, the problems with industrialized food and how it’s manufactured, interesting ethical discussions about meat as a food source, and the difference between eating meat that you’ve hunted versus meat grown under factory farm conditions.
In his past two books, he has branched out to writing about different kinds of natural things we eat and consume: namely, drugs. His previous book, How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics (2019), discussed the renewed interest by researchers and clinicians in psychedelic drugs as a tool for behavioral and psychological therapy, after the long post-1960s period during which psychedelics were considered anathema (and illegal) by the psycho-therapeutic community, as well as government and law enforcement.
In This is Your Mind on Plants, Pollan focuses on three different naturally-occurring drugs: opium, caffeine and mescaline. The opium section is unusual, in that a portion of it was written by him a quarter century ago, but could not be published until recently because of his fear of falling afoul of law enforcement and politics during the “War on Drugs” period of the 1990s and early 2000s.
This fear was the result of a strange factual and legal situation. As Pollan explains, contrary to popular belief, many types of common poppy plants sold in America as lovely garden flowers do contain the essential pharmacological ingredient of opium, and yet the seeds are legal to sell and grow, but only if you don’t have provable knowledge of the ability to convert the flowers into a narcotic. This paradox put him as a journalist writing about poppy cultivation (along with his readers) in a position where his personal cultivation of poppies could be considered illegal, due to his admitted knowledge that opium production was possible from his otherwise innocent and legally acquired garden plants.
In addition to describing his perilous journey as an investigative journalist and amateur gardener decades ago in experimenting with poppy cultivation, Pollan tells some of the history of the misguided federal efforts to suppress opiates during the War on Drugs period, and shows how these suppression efforts backfired, while causing other collateral social damage. He also reveals something of the history of poppies and opium use in the American colonies and early years of the United States, where during some periods opium (frequently consumed as a tea) was valued for its tranquilizing and pain-relieving qualities, while at the same time in some of those periods, alcohol was being actively discouraged or suppressed.
In the section on caffeine, Pollan dives into the research on the effects of caffeine on individuals as well as on society, going back to its first introduction into Europe in the late middle ages, and continuing up to modern times. As with his other book topics, he also adds a personal experimental element to the story, by going on a months-long “abstinence” program from caffeine, in order to try to determine what changes in his mind and body he experienced as he came off the effects of caffeine, lived for a period without it, and then eventually resumed his morning coffee habit.
The section on mescaline covers many aspects of the history, cultivation and harvesting of mescaline from the cactus plants on which it grows, as well as the spiritual use of it by native peoples, and his own search to learn more about its traditional use, and to sample it in a traditional ceremonial context, without somehow wandering into a state of cultural expropriation of traditions and meanings that are not his own.
As usual, there is much to learn from Pollan about the natural world and the things that grow in it from which we derive meaning, sensations and sustenance. His engaging writing style, historical and sociological perspectives and his own self-reflective personal journeys as he explores his interests and gives rein to his curiosities continue to make for enjoyable and educational reading. Recommended.
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