Michael Pollan’s New Book Wades Deeper Into Substances That Shape Our Lives

by MADELINE FERGUSON

Michael Pollan’s book “How To Change Your Mind” was a bombshell moment for plant medicine and psychedelics when it came out in 2018. It ignited an interest in plant medicine similar to that of the 60s and 70s, only this time; there was scientific research backing up the use of plant medicines.

His newest book, “This Is Your Mind On Plants,” is the ideal follow-up for people who want to wade a little deeper into lesser-known plant substances, some of which influence the daily lives of almost every single one of us. 

Pollan attempts to examine whether or not these plants are medicines, substances, or “drugs,” most of the time landing on “it depends.”

The book is split into three chapters, opium (focusing on poppy tea), caffeine, and mescaline (cacti and synthetic). 

Pollan strung a common point through the piece: the where, when, or why the government got involved in outlawing or regulating the three plants. This piece of the book showed parallels and comparisons to government overreach when it comes to LSD, psilocybin, and cannabis, even if the chapters weren’t directly about those plant medicines. 

Opium (Poppy Tea)

The book’s introductory chapter focused less on opium from at-home gardens as a medicine and more on the quiet war against poppy growers while pharmaceutical companies were creating highly addictive opiate pain medications with no consequences or thought of the future. 

Pollan published a piece he had written for Harpers in 1997 that was never fully published for fear of legal trouble. The article is a deep dive into his experienceof growing and producing a batch of poppy tea to experiment with how the opium would make him feel. The experiment quickly turned into an evaluation of a quieter part of the war of drugs, the war against homegrown poppies to produce opium. 

Around the time and before the 1997 article, the FBI was quietly cracking down on flower shops and seed distributors' ability to sell certain varieties of poppy flowers and seeds, but that wasn’t public knowledge at the time. The FBI was also shutting down publications and writers who wrote about opium. With the article, Pollan found himself in the thick of it. 

The undertone of the section focuses on the government's ability to come down on the wrong segment of people when looking to solve a problem. During this time period, people were being punished for growing poppies and making tea with their seeds (which can be addictive, but not as likely because of the minimal potency) pharmaceutical companies were developing and producing Oxycontin, a highly addictive synthetic version of opium, that single-handedly caused today’s opioid crisis. 

Caffeine

Almost everyone will relate to this section of the book, and it might make half of the readers cry. First, Pollan’s analysis of the history of the world’s caffeine obsession (based on coffee and tea) was fascinating, one of my favorite parts of the book. He teaches readers about coffee replacing alcohol and being the catalyst for the industrial revolution and new-aged thinking. 

Now, how do you truly “experience” a substance that is already your baseline in functioning? You have to give it up, unlike Pollan’s other documented experiences. 

Most of us function best when caffeinated and have even experienced the effects of skipping that morning cup of coffee; you know, the headache and brain fog? Pollan’s experience of quitting caffeine for a few months scared me to ever try; he described full withdrawal symptoms, making me realize I probably would too. 

Pollan dove into caffeine’s impacts on your quality of sleep, referencing the book “Why We Sleep,” which I highly recommend reading. The moment you realize the way you feel when you first wake up in the morning may not be grogginess from sleep, but withdrawal from caffeine is the moment you’ll consider quitting, but then you’ll keep coming up with excuses about why this is the “wrong time” to try. An amusing self-evaluation takes place while reading this chapter about Pollan giving up caffeine, but I think I will let the experience be his and not mine for now. 

The book described what the first hit of caffeine was like after giving it up for a few months, and Pollan’s description of the euphoric “trip” will never make you doubt the effects of caffeine, even if you don’t feel them anymore. 

I’ll leave you with my final takeaway from this chapter. The government never intervened with caffeine (even though the substance is both strong and addictive) because it fuels capitalism and America’s “hard work” mentality. It’s infuriating to consider how psychedelics could profoundly impact the world, but they don’t fit the narrative, so they are heavily regulated and outlawed. 

Mescaline

Pollan ends the book on a promising plant medicine and psychedelic called mescaline, lesser-known than LSD or psilocybin but still just as fascinating. 

First, to understand the substance, you should know where it comes from. Mescaline can come from two types of cacti (one more well-known, peyote) and can also be synthetically produced. 

The book section focuses heavily on the fine line of cultural appropriation and colonization when a non-Native American person seeks out or uses peyote. Peyote is legal for use in the Native American church but illegal for anyone else to use. The goal of protecting peyote (the plant is becoming scarce) is not to become another thing taken from the Native American population. 

Pollan goes into detail about how Native people use peyote and how most Americans use substances. The bottom line he gets to is that Natives use it to heal and go within, while others tend to use substances to get away or escape. That’s not to say EVERYONE uses substances that way; in my opinion, when it comes to using psychedelics as medicines, we are progressing to a place of using them for healing. 

While the use of the peyote cactus for mescaline must be evaluated from a cultural perspective and not used by anyone but Native Americas using it to heal from colonization and practice in the Native American church (according to the book), synthetic mescaline is a way for scientific research on the subject to progress. Synthetic mescaline can be pro experience conducted in a lab, no foraging for cacti required.

In the book, Pollan talks about his experience with taking mescaline; he was respectful of the wishes of the Native American tribe-members he spoke with and pointed out the appropriation that could be happening without his careful approach. 

I’ll leave you with a segment of the book about Pollan’s experience with mescaline that hit me hard and sparked my curiosity. 

“I wondered if perhaps I had found a hidden path out of the labyrinth of anxiety in which the virus and the fires had trapped us, that simply by lowering the horizon of my attention from the future - for the virus and the fires existed mostly there for us - I had recovered some of the beauty and pleasure in living that had been lost since the pandemic began.”