This Is Your Mind on Plants
Ratings25
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings25
Average rating3.7
The instant New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.” —New York Times Book Review From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants—and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a “drug”? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs—opium, caffeine, and mescaline—and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings? In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively—as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.
Reviews with the most likes.
Ya wouldn't think caffeine would make the list of drugs...and then you read Pollan's book. Alright, Pollan. I may not stop drinking my coffee, but I'll consider my mind on plants when I do :D In all seriousness, and interesting and insightful read.
One word: Dull. A book about three incredibly interesting plants and their effects on the human mind. Or, so I thought when I decided to read it... Instead I was given 10% intriguing information, and 90% the life story of someone who I did not agree to read about. Overall, this was a relatively boring, unnecessary in personal details and not at all what I signed up for. Bleh.
I received an arc copy for review and leave this view voluntarily
I enjoyed this much more than I'd expected to. You might too, even if (like me) you've heard a jillion of his interviews, even if (like me) you haven't found the subject matter calling out to you.
The opium chapter, meh, interesting in a historical sense, mostly serving as a contrast between eras: the nineties and today. But I just couldn't relate: opium seems like such an idiotic, uninteresting drug.
Caffeine, that was more informative and relevant: it's a drug I'm more familiar with. I enjoyed the history and lore, but was surprised at his one-size-fits-all coverage of the effects of caffeine: there's no mention of the completely different way — often genetically determined — that caffeine affects different people. As someone on the less-affected end of the spectrum I found it really weird how much Pollan suffered when he withdrew; I'll confess to questioning whether a little bit of that might have been artistic license.
Mescaline, though: that's what swerved the book solidly into four-star territory. That chapter was informative, insightful, and ever-so-slightly teetering on the edge of discomfort along several dimensions: the cultural-appropriation and overharvesting aspects of the peyote cactus, for a start, then the innerspace effects of the mescaline itself. This is where it gets interesting, because how the hell do you describe that to someone like me who hasn't been there? That kind of communication channel requires a little effort from the reader and a lot from the writer, and I think Pollan pulled it off — at least inasmuch as he's given me a small sense of the kind of healing that's possible with this medicine, and a profound new respect for other life forms and our human interwovenness.
