If you’re struggling with the idea of another holiday-free summer, Michael Pollan has an idea. Flights may be grounded and the Mediterranean still frustratingly out of reach, but have you considered dropping mescaline?
Possibly not. But Pollan is here to change your mind. As part of the research for his new book, This Is Your Mind on Plants, Pollan had planned to spend part of last summer on the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas at a psychedelic ritual. When that idea ended up on the vast rubbish heap of Covid cancellations, he decided to try mescaline — a naturally occurring psychedelic that grows in the peyote cactus — at home instead.
Peyote cactus
ALAMY
The result was a rather different kind of holiday. “We were