Dear Friends and Readers,
I’m excited to tell you about my new book, coming July 6 and available for pre-order now.
It’s called This is Your Mind on Plants and, as you might guess from the title, it’s about plants, drugs, and the mind. It’s a relatively short book that goes deep to investigate three important psychoactive compounds produced by plants and used extensively by humans: opium, caffeine, and mescaline—a downer, an upper, and what I think of as an outer.
In some ways, this new book follows up on my last, How to Change Your Mind, in that it takes a close look at a psychedelic molecule—mescaline. But this time the focus is less on biomedical research than on the use of such compounds by indigenous peoples in both North and South America, groups who deserve much of the credit for discovering the healing power of psychedelics, in some cases thousands of years ago. But two of the chapters are about very different compounds. There’s a chapter on growing opium, perhaps one of the oldest known psychoactive plants, a tale that became a parable of the drug war. (Originally published in Harper’s Magazine, the story has been extensively updated in light of the opioid crisis.) And there’s another chapter on caffeine, the psychoactive most widely used by our species: 90% of us use caffeine on a daily basis, which is probably why few of us even think of it as a drug.
In many ways the book is a reconsideration of the whole notion of what a drug is. My premise is that, with the fading of the drug war, we have an opportunity to begin a much more interesting, and honest, conversation about these remarkable substances and their role in our lives. Why is it that humans evolved a desire to change consciousness? Why have so many plants evolved to make compounds that interact with human brains in such a curious way? How do these chemicals benefit us and our species, and how, or in what contexts, do they hurt us?
As you might expect, This is Your Mind on Plants looks at its subjects from a wide variety of perspectives: historical, scientific, philosophical, literary and personal. Naturally, I engage in some self-experimentation, though in the case of caffeine that meant abstaining rather than indulging, which turned out to be much harder to do.
Here’s some more information on the book. I do hope you’ll check it out and come to one of my events in July—on Zoom, alas. As usual, I’ll look forward to hearing from you. And watch this space for more information, some preview passages, and the schedule for the virtual book tour.
Cheers,
Michael
I have benefited from working with plant medicines. On the topic of another use for plants, I wrote this article here on Substack: https://melhofmann.substack.com/p/indigo?s=r My Kundalini Journey that started 50 years ago led me to working with psychedelics in 2017 to overcome major depression. Now largely recovered, I have moved back to making my art again in my Berkeley Studio. Hoping that the Psychedelics you are speaking of will become more available to people who need them.
Congratulations on your new book!