Join number-one New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, and discover his radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and his exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants — and the equally powerful taboos.

Since the 2018 publication of his instant New York Times bestseller How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan’s work on psychedelics has steered the national conversation on the medical potential and stigmas surrounding some of the most powerful, naturally-derived drugs. This is Your Mind on Plants (on-sale July 6) is in part a follow-up to the last book, with a chapter that takes a close look at the psychedelic molecule mescaline.

• Michael explores its biomedical effects and reveals how the compound has been used as a healing tool by indigenous peoples of North and South America for thousands of years.
• There’s a chapter on his experiences growing opium in the 1990s at the height of the War on Drugs (originally published in Harper’s Magazine, but here extensively updated in light of the opioid crisis).
• And there’s a chapter on caffeine, the psychoactive compound that’s used by 90% of our species on a daily basis, which he has now expanded from his Audible Original audiobook.

As you might expect, Michael engaged in some self-experimentation with these three drugs, and he shares his experience in the book. (In the case of caffeine, it was a matter of abstaining rather than indulging, which proved much harder for him to do!)

Juxtaposing these three compounds from the taboo to the everyday, This is Your Mind on Plants asks us to reconsider the whole notion of what a drug is.

Michael Pollan writes books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. Pollan is the author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers; three of them (including his latest, How to Change Your Mind) were immediate #1 New York Times bestsellers. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine since 1987, Pollan’s writing has received numerous awards and in 2010 he was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer.