Michael Pollan is the author of eight books, including How to Change Your Mind, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. He is also the author of the audiobook Caffeine: How Coffee and Tea Made the Modern World. A longtime contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Pollan teaches writing at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.

• #1 NYT BESTSELLING AUTHOR: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND was an instant #1 NYT Bestseller. Pollan's previous books, COOKED, FOOD RULES, IN DEFENSE OF FOOD, THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA, and THE BOTANY OF DESIRE were all NYT Bestsellers.• NEW MATERIAL ALONGSIDE REVISTED PIECES: Pollan's essay on mescaline will appear for the first time in this book, alongside a substantial introduction. "Opium Made Easy," published originally in 1997, is one of Pollan's most popular pieces, and the most visited page on his website. Here, he expands on his original essay, touching on the legal problems raised by its publication, and discusses it in light of the opiate crisis and drug war. "Caffeine" is the updated and expanded version of CAFFEINE, an Audible Original, which was downloaded more than half a million times in the first two months of publication, and is the fastest selling AUDIBLE ORIGINAL.• SENSATIONAL AND ILLICIT: Opium is a depressant (and pain killer), caffeine a stimulant, and mescaline a psychedelic (or, depending on your culture, a sacrament, entheogen or medicine). Each section of this book is centered around Pollan's own adventures as he consumes these drugs (or in the case of caffeine try not to consume them), and, in several cases, cultivate them in his garden.• SINGULAR NARRATIVE STYLE: Combining history and science with memoir, reflection, and episodes of participatory journalism, Pollan writes with a style all his own.• TIMELY: The "Decriminalize Nature" movement (inspired by HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND) has taken off nationally, with Denver, Oakland and Santa Cruz voting to legalize plant-based psychoactives. This movement has reframed the drug policy reform movement, arguing that use of certain visionary or healing plants is a spiritual matter that should be beyond the reach of the government, tantamount to freedom to worship.

The instant New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of the Year

Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways. New York Times Book Review

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants and the equally powerful taboos.

Of all the things humans rely on plants for sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a drug ? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime?

In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs opium, caffeine, and mescaline and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings?

In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.