This Is Your Mind on Plants

Shelf wear. Creasing to spine. Cover worn. Barcode on back cover worn off. Foxing.

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?