I enjoyed this much more than I’d expected to. You might too, even if (like me) you’ve heard a jillion of his interviews, even if (like me) you haven’t found the subject matter calling out to you.

The opium chapter, meh, interesting in a historical sense, mostly serving as a contrast between eras: the nineties and today. But I just couldn’t relate: opium seems like such an idiotic, uninteresting drug.

Caffeine, that was more informative and relevant: it’s a drug I’m more familiar with. I enjoyed the history and lore, but was surprised at his one-size-fits-all coverage of the effects of caffeine: there’s no mention of the completely different way — often genetically determined — that caffeine affects different people. As someone on the less-affected end of the spectrum I found it really weird how much Pollan suffered when he withdrew; I’ll confess to questioning whether a little bit of that might have been artistic license.

Mescaline, though: that’s what swerved the book solidly into four-star territory. That chapter was informative, insightful, and ever-so-slightly teetering on the edge of discomfort along several dimensions: the cultural-appropriation and overharvesting aspects of the peyote cactus, for a start, then the innerspace effects of the mescaline itself. This is where it gets interesting, because how the hell do you describe that to someone like me who hasn’t been there? That kind of communication channel requires a little effort from the reader and a lot from the writer, and I think Pollan pulled it off — at least inasmuch as he’s given me a small sense of the kind of healing that’s possible with this medicine, and a profound new respect for other life forms and our human interwovenness.