Book Review: This is your Mind on Plants

This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan

This is the Tori Amos album of Michael Pollan books. It’s okay material, but 2/3rds of it I’d already heard or read elsewhere, so I was disappointed to have so little fresh content. It’s divided into three sections, which I’ll discuss.

The section on poppies was interesting, but I’d already read the article years ago. It had an added section, but I didn’t have any major enlightenments so I don’t know if I read that as well. It’s interesting to learn that the war on drugs was so blatantly a war on liberals and Black Americans, and that Pollan being terrified about the war on backyard gardeners who might be growing poppies was happening at the same time the Oxycontin drug epidemic was starting to bloom in America. If you didn’t read the article when it came out a few years ago, you’ll find this interesting from a botanical and historical perspective.

I’d gotten the caffeine section as a free offering from audible already, so this was a complete repeat. I read a book years ago called “Buzz” that talked about caffeine in depth, so not only did this not offer much new, it seemed a little oversimplified. For example, in Buzz, they said that chocolate doesn’t have caffeine in it, it has a chemical which is similar but not identical to caffeine. I believe this to be true for two reasons. One, Buzz had a robust bibliography and talked more about the chemistry of these drugs. Two, I’m very sensitive to caffeine and chocolate doesn’t keep me up at night. Most articles you find on line will corroborate the “chocolate has caffeine in it” because it’s easier than saying “chocolate has a chemical which is similar to caffeine and has the same effects on some people but it is more powerful but it’s at lower doses so it evens it out.” It’s fine for a WebMd or Slate article to gloss that over, but I’d hope for a little more academic rigor in a book-length work. Like, he talks about tea and coffee but ignores yaupon holly? Not as many people know about yaupon so that could have been a fresh angle. I did like his descriptions of what it was like to go without caffeine and what it felt like to taste it again. The sections on how the popularization of coffee affected modern life were the kind of botanical-sociological discourse Pollan is great at–except it wasn’t really new to me, since I’ve read other books about it.

The section of new material covered peyote and other psychotropic drugs, specifically mescaline. Pollan’s chapter about marijuana in The Botany of Desire was inspired reading that changed how I felt about spirituality and its dearth in western society. While this was the most original section in the book, it didn’t blow me away the way The Botany of Desire did when I first read it. The chapter, to grossly oversimplify, was Pollan trying to find out what the big deal is with peyote and being told politely but firmly by the Native Americans, “butt out.” The story of how and why he was told no was not as compelling as learning more about “what’s the deal with peyote?” but then, from what I’ve read about other people’s drug trips, hallucinogenic experiences don’t lend themselves well to descriptive narration. I feel like this chapter was a documentary of a possibly interesting club, and a close up view of all its closed and locked doors. It was ultimately unsatisfying. There were other angles to take from this, such as the doctors who are using MDMA and variants of ayahuasca as part of psychological therapies, or how psilocybin mushrooms are cultivated and shipped, but Pollan stayed doggedly on the “what’s the deal with peyote” even when answers weren’t forthcoming. Even the narration of his drug trip at the end wasn’t that interesting.

I’m a big fan of Pollan’s work, but this is not one I’d recommend to others. Even the first time I read the material, it wasn’t especially original because caffeine and opium are subjects which many authors have covered at length.




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