review of michael pollan's latest book in the TLS
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/this-is-your-mind-on-plants-michael-pollan-book-review-josh-raymond/ Horticulture | Book Review Seed no evil Psychoactive stimulants and the modern world By Josh Raymond IN THIS REVIEW THIS IS YOUR MIND ON PLANTS Opium – caffeine – mescaline 274pp. Allen Lane. £20. Michael Pollan Michael Pollan knows a lot about plants. The Botany of Desire (2001) explored how four of them – apples, tulips, cannabis and potatoes – were bred to satisfy four basic human desires: for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control. In This Is Your Mind on Plants he has turned his attention to three more, or rather, the psychoactive chemicals they contain: opium from poppies, caffeine from coffee and tea, and mescaline from the peyote and San Pedro cacti. Pollan is no stranger to the psychoactive, having tried several psychedelics of increasing potency for How to Change Your Mind (2017), culminating with 5-MeO-DMT, derived from smoking the venom of the Sonoran Desert