This is Your Mind on Plants / Michael Pollan

 

3.25 out of 5 stars

I've enjoyed Michael Pollan's work in the past and this one sounded intriguing, inspiring me to add it to this year's reading list. It seemed to be a good follow-up to reading Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception earlier this summer (and Pollan does talk about Huxley in the final section of the book).

Unfortunately, I found the first third of the book, on opium, to be tough sledding. It is the oldest piece of the book and ends up being far more about the author's worries about potential law enforcement actions than about opium. He does restore the section of his manuscript that dealt with the preparation and experience of making an opium tea. I'm afraid that my minimal experience with archives focused me on the storage method used for that information: he had to find someone who maintains antique technology and then utilize special software, summoning these pages from the past like a sorcerer summoning a being from an alternate dimension! As Pollan concludes, for preservation paper works best.

I had much more interest in the caffeine section, as I am one of the many people devoted to this substance. The links between caffeine consumption and the development of our current worldview were fascinating. In conjunction with the progress of agriculture in Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal, these books give a very different way to interpret our history and an elucidating outlook.

The mescaline portion finished up the book. I had no idea that the peyote cactus was gravely endangered! And I have to agree with the indigenous people that Pollan interviewed—as much Caucasian people want to participate in this experience, it is only fitting that they butt out and leave the sacred plant to those who know how to use it and frankly have much greater need of it. There are other plants and substances for use by the non-indigenous folk.

So, not quite as interesting to me as I hoped, but certainly not a waste of time. Next year I hope to have time to peruse his How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, a book of a similar vein concerning psychedelics.