This Is Your Mind on Plants
Three essays, each oriented around a psychotropic drug: poppy growing, coffee drinking and mescaline healing.
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2021–2023years
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What Hacker News says
- Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13547241-unorthodox
If you haven't seen movie yet, check it out. But the book talks about what happened to her before she left her husband and place she grew up.
This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56015023-this-is-your-mi...
Excellent book about plants and they role in our life.
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail by Rusty Young
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43081.Marching_Powder
Excellent book about inside life in one of the most dangerous prisons in the world and what people do to survive it.
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoğlu, James A. Robinson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12158480-why-nations-fai...
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50743767-between-two-kin...
- He is featured prominently in at least two of Michael Pollan’s books. HowTto Change Your Mind; and This Is Your Mind On Plants.
- Michael Pollan on the radio. I believe he discusses it in This is Your Mind on Plants.
- Summary:
- In 1997, Michael Pollan wrote an essay, a section of which was originally "about making opium tea from his home-grown poppies and drinking the tea". He had some "fear that the Drug Enforcement Administration would raid his house and seize his property" if this were published, as he thought it could be viewed as “taunting the government.”
- The published version (available at https://www.wesjones.com/pollan1.htm as pointed out by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27804124), under the title "Opium, Made Easy" in Harper’s Magazine, left out that section.
- Pollan's new (2021) book "This is Your Mind on Plants" restores that material. (Which, incidentally, involved finding a zip drive, and using LibreOffice to read the old Word document.)
- Recently, in a Tim Ferris podcast, Pollan's version of the events of 1997 (see https://tim.blog/2021/06/30/michael-pollan-this-is-your-mind... starting with the phrase "in the ’90s at the height of the drug war") kind of suggests that the section was left out because of the advice he got from the lawyers of Harper’s Magazine.
- (Though he does mention their lawyer saying "you must publish this article for the good of the Republic", and a contract the publisher made saying “If you get arrested, we will not only defend you, we will pay your wife a salary for the whole amount of time it takes for you to defend yourself and if necessary, serve your sentence. And if they take your house, we’ll buy you a comparable new one.”)
- In the posted submission here, John R. "Rick" MacArthur, the president and publisher of Harper's Magazine, points out they did their very best to get him to publish it, and it was Michael Pollan who "insisted on withdrawing the passages about making and drinking the tea".
- It concludes with "Pollan took the easy way out. I don’t blame him for having been afraid. He just now shouldn’t try to lay responsibility for his decision on anyone but himself."
That's the summary, but after having read both the posted article and the transcript of the podcast (Edit: and most of the 1997 article, which is a fine picture of paranoia), it's not clear to me what disagreement there is, if any. Both versions seem to agree almost entirely: both versions point out that the publisher heavily pushed Pollan to publish the article in its entirety, even offering him that amazing contract, and it was Pollan who chickened out.
The main disagreement seems to be about Pollan's speculation in the podcast:
> I mean, he’s a crusading publisher, like a crusading journalist. And I shouldn’t speak for him, but my guess is he was hoping something would happen. He was hoping I would get arrested. This would put Harper’s on the map. This would be a giant case. He would take it to the Supreme Court, and he would. He has bottomless pockets. I mean, and publishing for him is kind of an avocation. And he was always looking for the big story that Harper’s would get involved with. I mean, we saw that just last year with the Harper’s letter around free speech versus the efforts to curb free speech in the name of various woke values. He’s not afraid of controversy.
Here the publisher himself mentions "It was a bitter blow to me, because I have always put the freedom to publish in the forefront of my work, and I lost some respect for Pollan after that", so the entire thing seems a non-issue to me. All we've left of the disagreement is
• the (rich, fearless) publisher encouraging an author in every way possible to publish something controversial,
• the (not-so-rich, not-so-fearless) author thinking/speculating something along the lines of "it's easy for you, but I'm not so bold as to court controversy; it's [not] my cup of tea".
- Somewhat related: In his recent book "This is Your Mind on Plants", Michael Pollan also discusses caffeine addiction. Transcript of an interview with him on Tim Ferriss' blog:
https://tim.blog/2021/06/30/michael-pollan-this-is-your-mind...
I've been off caffeine and yerba mate (of which the yerba I consumed daily for the past 9 or so years) for two weeks. Feels really great, I admit being somewhat less sharp mentally (for now), but I still get everything relevant done. And -- maybe yet I feel kind of more... mentally balanced? Imagine having less thoughts throughout the day, but the ones you have, you'll like more. :)
It's like my energy levels are much more consistent, no sudden drops throughout the day -- and that's even when I'm doing heavy physical work. (I'm a full-time forestry worker, tree planter, brush cutter these days -- now not even thinking about the usual midday yerba mate kick I used to rely on.)
The tiredness that sets in at night also feels much more calming. So IMO it's a highly recommended shift overall -- I guess just the first 4-5-6-7 days without coffee/strong tea may be really hard.
