Welcome to Litsy!

I‘m a plant nerd, especially for poisons. This book was very interesting. The author shares his experiences with all three plants: opium poppy, coffee, and mescaline. I found his year of growing opium poppies to be quite interesting. He raises good points about the legislation of growing things. He points out the cleverness of the coffee plant, how we are owned by it, now. With mescaline, he speaks on the injustices from the US government ⬇️

Some people call it the flesh of our ancestors, because that‘s what it is, you know, and at the same time it‘s spirit. Different people have different experiences with the medicine. It talks to you at different levels: about what it is you need to see, what it is that you need to feel, or experience.The medicine knows you before you even know yourself. It is like a mirror. When people get up and look in the mirror, they can fix themselves, brush⬇️

It was in pursuit of precisely this freedom, of course, that the American colonialists originally fled Europe, coming to the Indian lands they rechristened New England. That their descendants would now seek to suppress the Indians‘ own religious freedom was an irony apparently lost on most Americans, including the justices of the US Supreme Court.

Remember the goats that were said to have inspired that curious herder to taste his first coffee berry? But that‘s how evolution works: nature‘s most propitious accidents become evolutionary strategies for world domination. Who could have guessed that a secondary metabolite produced by plants to poison insects would also deliver an energizing bolt of pleasure to a human brain, and then turn out to alter that brain‘s neurochemistry in a way⬇️

You really have to give this plant a lot of credit. In less than a thousand years it has managed to get itself from its evolutionary birthplace in Ethiopia all the way here to the mountains of South America and beyond, using our species as its vector. Consider all we‘ve done on this plant‘s behalf: allotted it more than 27 million acres of new habitat, assigned 25 million humans to carefully tend it, and bid up its price until it became one of⬇️

Almost from the start, the blessings of coffee and tea in the West were inextricably bound up with the sins of slavery and imperialism, in a global system of production organized with such brutal rationality that it could only have been fueled by—-what else?—caffeine itself.

In 1616, a wily Dutchman managed to break the Arab stranglehold on Coffea arabica. He smuggled live coffee plants out of Mocha, the Yemeni port city, and took them to the botanical garden in Amsterdam, where they were grown under glass and additional plants were eventually propagated by cutting. (You can create a new, genetically identical plant by rooting a shoot or branch in soil). One of those clones ended up in the Dutch-controlled⬇️

In 1714 two descendants of the Dutchman‘s larcenous coffee bush were given to King Luis XIV, who had it planted in the Jardin du Roi, in Paris. A few years later, a former French naval officer named Gabriel de Clieu dreamed up a scheme to establish coffee production in the French colony of Martinique, where he lived. In a second momentous coffee theft, he claimed to have recruited a woman at court to purloin a cutting of the king‘s plant.⬇️

Curiously, the current campaign against tobacco dwells less on cigarettes‘ addictiveness than on their threat to our health. So is it toxicity that renders a substance a public menace? Well, my garden is full of plants—datura and euphorbia, castor beans, and even the leaves of my rhubarb—that would sicken and possibly kill me if I ingested them, but the government trusts me to be careful. Is it, then, the prospect of pleasure—of “recreational⬇️

Not far from my garden stands a very old apple tree, planted early in this century by the farmer who used to live here, a man named Matyas, who bought this land in 1915. The tree still produces a small crop of apples each fall, but they‘re not very good to eat. From what I‘ve been able to learn, the farmer grew them for the sole purpose of making hard cider, something most American farmers had done since Colonial times; indeed, until this ⬇️

Ever since I took up gardening as a teenager and attempted to grow cannabis, I have been fascinated by our attraction to these powerful plants as well as by the equally powerful taboos and fraught feelings with which we surround them. I‘ve come to appreciate that when we take these plants into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways possible.

Very interesting look into 3 plants/drugs (opium, caffeine, and mescaline). Pollan also provides background on botany, neuroscience, history, and politics while discussing these plants.

An interesting look into how some plants affect your brain. The author looks at opium, and how he grew his own and the legality of that. He looks at coffee and caffeine. Then he looks at peyote/mescaline.
The author is a garden writer which gives a good background to writing on plants. I liked how he went at the stories/articles. He didn‘t just write about things he experienced them. He quit caffeine. He tried mescaline. He made opium tea. 4 ⭐️s

Up next in audiobook land

148/150 This book is hard to describe. Its divided into three sections, dealing with the authors experiences with opium (growing poppy seed plants), caffeine and mescaline. The author isn't a drug dealer or user, but instead a gardener, whose interests border on the semi-illegal at times. 4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
4th book finished for #WinterReadathon @Andrew65 @GHABI4ROSES @DieAReader

Helped me learn more about the psychoactive substances I use (ie caffeine) and those I may use in the future. Also helped me me understand the concept of “set and setting” which I plan on taking into consideration in the future

A look in to different plants that alter our mental state: the poppy/opium, coffee beans & tealeaves/caffeine and cacti/peyote & mescaline. 🌺☕️🌵

And he‘s kinda just Hunter S Thomson‘ing around in a Ned Flanders way. The book takes look at the use throughout cultures &ages, impact of the war on drugs and his own experiences.

I haven‘t read one of his since Omnivore‘s Dilemma (2006) which I didn‘t love. But this was good, fun and informative.

Just learned that it‘s legal to grow a mescaline cactus 🌵 probably wouldn‘t work in Massachusetts though, right?
☮️🤪

…this story where the author is growing poppies is so wild. Call everyone, including the cops & someone arrested for possessing dried poppies, that he is growing poppies.

An interesting look at the plants that produce caffeine, opium and mescaline.

so many houseplants! 🙈
My #bookspin for March was educational and entertaining. I listened to the audiobook which Pollan narrated.
Three substances from plants are featured in the book: caffeine (coffee and tea), opium (from poppies), and mescaline (from peyote plants)
He spends a majority of the section on opium discussing the legality of growing poppies and his own legal fears when publishing an article years ago on the subject.

This #libraryhaul looks so pretty together. A mini garden from books! 📚 🌱 🌼🐝

Amazing and insightful! And makes me want to eat cacti and poppies 😜 great gardening tips and discussion of what makes possession of certain plants illegal. Really enjoyed this listen!

An interesting listen! The Omnivore‘s Dilemma was pretty life-changing to me, and this book was definitely not life-changing. But it was interesting for those who like reading about nature, the body, and science in an accessible way!

Pollan explores the asinine laws surrounding poppies and the varied world of psychedelics. This was informative and quite often humorous.

Not totally what I expected but I definitely think about our relationship to plants and nature differently than I had before! I feel more open and curious about natural drugs rather than judgmental or fearful. My favorite thought to mull over was the notion that we can learn a lot about what a culture values based on what plants they celebrate or prohibit. Worth a read or listen!

Sometimes Michael Pollan annoys me, but I can‘t quit his books and always enjoy them. I like his recent explorations of mind-altering substances at least as much as his food writing. Lines like these keep me coming back for more: “I came to see how integral caffeine is to the daily work of knitting ourselves back together after the fraying of consciousness during sleep. That reconsolidation of self - the daily sharpening of the mental pencil.“

Very interesting!

Michael Pollan looks at human interactions and attitudes towards three psychoactive substances found in plants: a stimulant (caffeine); a sedative (opium); and a hallucinogenic (mescaline). I enjoyed this whole audiobook, which is narrated by the author, but my favourite part is the section about poppies. I learned you can sell the seeds in the USA but it‘s illegal to grow them there! Even florists break the law by selling dried stems.

The peyote cactus hugs the ground like a stone, a roundish blue-green pillow. It reminded me of a pincushion segmented into lobes arranged in a geometric pattern, each with a little furry white nipple where the spine should be. The flower bud emerges from the center. They‘re modest, thornless plants, easy to overlook, yet their intricate patterning suggests a mystical object of some power.
(Internet photo)

Jim Hogshire was fortunate enough to come before a judge who raised a skeptical eyebrow at the charges filed against him. The hearing had its comic moments. In support of the government‘s assertion that Hogshire had intent to distribute, the prosecutor, apparently unfamiliar with the literary reference, cited the title of his book. ⬇️

Between a So-So & Pick. Pollan writing about his experiences cultivating and using licit and illicit plants: poppy seed tea (opiates), caffeine, and mescaline. I appreciate the care taken to respect the religious aspect of indigenous use, and its eye-opening just how convoluted the laws are regarding plant cultivation in order to work it into the now failed war on drugs. Good audiobook read by the author.

This might be more of a 3.5/5, but Pollan‘s writing is so calming, I rounded up. This book is like a memoir about poppies, caffeine and mescaline with random information thrown in. It wasn‘t at all what I was expecting, and the caffeine portion was good. I‘m not considering taking psychedelics, but I was impressed that Pollan could take them and have the wherewithal to record the experience for those us who kind of wonder what‘s it‘s like.

Pollan expands previous work and tries peyote during the pandemic in his new book.

In 1996, Pollan wrote an article for Harper‘s about brewing homemade poppy tea. He expands on this and adds never before seen material that was cut due to legal issues. He admits missing the story of the millions of OxyContin prescriptions while worrying about the feds going after home growers of poppies.

Next he looks at caffeine. There is overlap with his ⬇️

New in from the library for when I finish The Other Black Girl! 😁 I have a love/hate relationship with Pollan. Interested to see which this will be! The Five Wounds was an impulse checkout. 🤔