This is Your Mind on Plants

"Broken into sections on caffeine, mescaline and opium, this book might (briefly) persuade you to switch to decaf or change how you look at that cactus in your neighbor’s yard. But the heart of this book is an old magazine article Pollan wrote when he was a gardening columnist during the mid-’90s War on Drugs. He had colorful poppies in his backyard and wondered whether he could homebrew an opium tea. What could possibly go wrong? Now that attitudes toward drugs have become a bit looser and with the benefit of 2021 hindsight (hello, Purdue Pharma!), it is well worth picking up a copy for that section alone. It’ll get you thinking, in that gentle Michael Pollan way, about where society draws the line between good/bad, natural/synthetic, challenging/threatening."