Name: Piet Terheyden's review of This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
Item: This Is Your Mind on Plants
Rating: 4.2
Author: Piet Terheyden

Michael Pollan

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.

This Is Your Mind on Plants

From the #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, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is 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. We don't 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, and the equally powerful taboos with which we surround them. 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 such fraught feelings? A unique blend of history, science, 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's 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 written more than 25 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.

🍵

“This is the problem with you whites. You always want to know everything. We just experience it.”

Sometimes the best way to show your respect for something is to just leave it alone.

Sachi

How does the peyote ceremony effect these transformations? Calabrese proposes a psychological explanation that a Native American would no doubt regard as reductive, but which seems plausible to me. Like other psychedelic compounds, the mescaline in peyote induces a state of mental plasticity, one in which you are highly suggestible and therefore open to learning new patterns of thought and behavior. While in this trance state, rigid narratives about yourself ('I can't get through the day without a drink", "I am worthless"; and so on) tend to soften until it becomes possible to construct new ones, typically narratives of transformation or rebirth. Apart from the group setting, this model closely resembles "psychedelic therapy" as it is being practiced today in the West.

But the group setting here is critical. The fact that the healing process is unfolding within a community, with everyone listening to the same music and prayers, gazing into the same fire, and experiencing the same shifts in brain chemistry, serves to reinforce the individual's new narrative, as does the fact that the attention of the Broup is fixed on the recipient of its prayers. It sounds a bit like a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, where stories of transformation and rebirth are crafted and then cemented by the approbation of the community: Except in this case the power of the ritual is immeasurably enhanced by the altered state of consciousness all share.

The idea that the act of sipping tea could be a spiritual practice culminated in the Zen tea ceremony. Here the scrupulous attention to every physical gesture and material detail gave participants an opportunity to step outside the bustle and messiness of daily life, turning their minds instead to the Zen principles of reverence, purity, harmony, and tranquility. Approached in this spirit of transcendence, the tea ceremony held the power to change consciousness. As the seventeenth-century Japanese tea master Sen Sotan put it, "The taste of tea and the taste of Zen are the same."

The first tea plantations in China were cultivated thousands of years ago by monks, who found that sipping tea was an important aid to meditation. In one of the origin stories for the discovery of tea, Bodhidharma, a sixth-century Indian prince seeking enlightenment, was in the midst of a seven-year-long meditation (he had already completed a nine-year stint sitting in front of a wall listening to the ants scream") when, despite his determination to stay awake, he fell asleep. Furious with himself, Bodhidharma cut off his eyelids and threw them on the ground. Tea bushes sprouted where his eyelids landed, a plant with leaves resembling eyelids. From that time forward, the drink would help monks stay awake during the long hours of meditation.

the fact that you needed to boil water to make them meant that they were the safest things a person could drink. (Before that it had been alcohol. which was more sanitary than water, but not as safe as tea or coffee. The tannins in all these beverages also have antimicrobial proper- ries.) The contribution of coffee and tea to public health may help explain why societies that embraced the new hot drinks tended to thrive, as microbial diseases declined.

Within a century, coffeehouses had sprung up in cities across the Arab world. In 1570 there were more than six hundred of them in Constantinople alone, and they spread north and west with the Ottoman Empire. These new public baces were hotbeds of news and gossip, as well as places to her for beral performances and games. Coffeehouses were comparatively institutions where the conversation often turned to politic, and at various times governmental and clerical powers-that-be to close them down, but never for long or with much success. 

 bees will remember and return more reliably to flowers that offer them caffeinated nectar. 

Most of the various plant chemicals, or alkaloids, that people have used to alter the textures of consciousness are chemicals originally selected for defense. 

Caffeine does, in fact, shrink the appetite and discombobulate insect brains. In a famous experiment conducted by NASA in the 1990s, researchers fed a variety of psychoactive substances to spiders to see how they would affect their web-making skills. The caffein- ated spider spun a strangely cubist and utterly ineffective web, with oblique angles, openings big enough to let small birds through, and completely lacking in symmetry or a center. (The web was far more tanciful than the ones spun by spiders given cannabis or LSD.) Intoxicated insects are also, like intoxicated humans, more likely to do reckless things, thereby attracting the attention of birds and other predators that will happily do the plant's bidding by snatching and destroying the helplessly dancing or stumbling bug.

Many of the psychoactive molecules plants produce are toxic, but as Paracelsus famously said, the dose makes the poison. What kills at one dose may do something more subtle and interesting at another. 

(In fact, it is possible to germinate poppy seeds bought from the super- market's spice aisle. Also, eating such seeds prior to taking a drug test can produce a positive result.)

Nate

Piet Terheyden

I learned so freaking much from this, it has made me think about things I have never considered and really opened my eyes about drug use. this was so fascinating! I think what surprised me most is that it is personal critical essays, not as much textbook information; there are heavily researched sections but combined with personal experiences, interviewed testimony, and critical theory. my favorite section was the opiate section because it’s not a drug I knew much about and because it was written during the beginning of the war on drugs, which was a bit before my time. I now want to read more of his books and also more about drugs 👍

fris🐝

Susan

Honestly this book surprised me - it was more of a social commentary & the author’s storytelling of his own experience with these plant drugs as opposed to an “educational crashcourse” on the biomedical / physiological effects of these drugs. learned a lot, also enjoyed Pollan’s easy-to-understand writing style.

Lord Aragorn

Interesting to read about the different plant compounds but what really got my attention was the changing attitudes of the US government to drugs.

Keven Wang

Pollan is leading the charge in educating the public about psychedelics

Vanessa Arenas

Meh, not what I was expecting. It was more of an opinion book on poppy, coffee and tea, and mezcaline.

The book has changed the way I look at the world at large. But it also showed me how the western world is ruled by greed, and the eastern world by spirituality.

Laura Mei

I enjoyed listening to this book immensely, though I was expecting more of a scientific overview of the three categories of psychoactive plants described. Instead, the majority of the book was devoted to the author's experiences with growing opium poppies, or 𝘗𝘢𝘱𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘶𝘮. I particularly enjoyed the sections on caffeine and mescaline.

Hooman Askari

You may not like the subject matter, but the author is a master of storytelling which makes this a very pleasant read.

Loren Botica

It was interesting. It really should be titled 'This is My Mind...Kinda on Plants'.
What I got out of the book were the ways government attempt to control these substances and the surrounding history. Religion and culture, especially indigenous, provide sobering context around how Western cultures and institutions think they have any say over the use and distribution of substances like mescaline. I think I need to read a fantasy novel now. 

I listened to this as an audiobook, read by Michael Pollan himself. For anyone interested in learning about the basic history and effects of some selected drugs with quite different characteristics and potencies (opium, caffeine and mescaline), I can only recommend it. I personally love the language the author uses to describe his personal experiences with the plants.
I especially enjoyed the story on how he grew poppies in his backyard until finding out he could be in serious legal trouble because it's a federal crime when done with the intent to turn it into opium.

Jacqueline Bzdyk

sangeet anand

Madison

Trip Dunham 

Martin

Elizabeth Jones

Trinity Vorm

Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate, calm, or completely alter the qualities of our mental experience. In This Is Your Mind On Plants, Michael Pollan explores three very different drugs - opium, caffeine and mescaline - and throws the fundamental strangeness 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, and the equally powerful taboos. In a unique blend of history, science, memoir and reportage, Pollan shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively. In doing so, he proves that there is much more to say about these plants than simply debating their regulation, 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. This ground-breaking and singular book holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds and our entanglement with the natural world.

Opium—Caffeine—Mescaline

This Is Your Mind On Plants

Adam Becker

Justin

Caffeine-Opium-Mescaline

Karolina

Aaron Long

Denis

Sven Schmidt

the person that we identify as ourselves is actually a drug induced state. Just think on that for a moment.

Define drug? Does caffeine alter our "induced state"? Does sugar, proteins, hormons do? Water does for sure. Is that a drug? 

This is the quote we were talking about @sven @nathan 

✨Tyler ✨

I'm a strength athlete and the crazy levels of caffeine folks (of all levels) feel they need to consume to lift is wild. i personally i have an anxiety disorder and have to be careful the amount I consume or it will be a very bad day for me lol

I think, regardless of the content of the book, which may not interest some people, the author is a master of storytelling, which is the best part about this book.

Piet Terheyden &
This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan

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Piet Terheyden &This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan

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Join the club

Piet Terheyden &
This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan