Is a Plant a Drug?

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When is a plant a plant, and when is it a drug? And why does it even matter? I think that what's really striking is that so many plants have evolved the the particular neuro chemistry to to change what goes on in our mindand find the exact key to unlock neuro transmitters in your brain. Yesi just find that just so exciting, totally. We still are very dependent on being able to discover new medications by what's available out there in the natural world. There're hundreds of psychoactives in the amazon, for example. And we've just begun to scratch the surface of what what's out there. Totally.

When you start your day with a cup of tea or coffee you are ingesting a consciousness-altering drug, which you are quite likely to be addicted to. That drug of course is caffeine, the stimulant used by 90 per cent of people on earth, and it is one of three mind-altering molecules that bestselling author Michael Pollan has been investigating for his new book This Is Your Mind on Plants, alongside morphine, produced by the opium poppy, and mescaline, found in certain cacti. In conversation with the medical doctor and broadcaster Guddi Singh, Pollan explores humanity’s longstanding and powerful attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and why do we then hedge this desire with laws, customs and fraught feelings? And why do we categorise these compounds so reductively – calling them either a licit or an illicit drug? For, as Pollan will argue, when we take these psychoactive plants into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways possible. Click here to get the Intelligence Squared discount on the book: https://www.primrosehillbooks.com/product/this-is-your-mind-on-plants-michael-pollan/

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