This Is Your Mind on Plants
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: Jul 06, 2021
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: hardcover
Number of pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9780593296905
Copyright date: 2021
First sentence: Of all the many things human rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to simulate or calm, to fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience.
Description: "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"--

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. Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs-- opium, caffeine, and mescaline-- and explores the cultures that have grown up around these drugs. He examines the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos with which we surround them. The result is a unique blend of history, science, memoir-- and participatory journalism.   -- adapted from jacket
Table of contents: title: Introduction
pagenum: 1; title: Opium
pagenum: 13; title: Prologue
pagenum: 15; title: “Opium, Made Easy”
pagenum: 21; title: Epilogue
pagenum: 83; title: Caffeine
pagenum: 89; title: Mescaline
pagenum: 161; label: 1
title: The Door in the Wall
pagenum: 163; label: 2
title: The Orphan Psychedelic
pagenum: 166; label: 3
title: In Which We Meet the Cacti
pagenum: 174; label: 4
title: The Birth of a New Religion
pagenum: 187; label: 5
title: Peeking Inside the Tepee
pagenum: 199; label: 6
title: An Interlude: On Mescaline
pagenum: 214; label: 7
title: Learning from San Pedro
pagenum: 223; label: 8
title: Drunk at the Wheel
pagenum: 228; label: 9
title: Plan C
pagenum: 230; title: Acknowledgments
pagenum: 294; title: Selected Bibliography
pagenum: 253; title: Index
pagenum: 259