Psychoactive Plants: Curious what a trip like this feels like

Michael Pollan talks about psychoactive plants that have made great appearances in our cultural history. It is also about the insincerity of a drug policy that has only been partially corrected in recent years.

Esome plants produce toxic alkaloids. It is clear that they serve not least to protect against predators. What is less clear is why many of these substances are also psychoactive molecules that, below lethal doses, induce neuronal confusion in brains—whether those of animals that must have provided the initial evolutionary pressures toward such chemical defenses or those of humans people who eat pieces of a “magic mushroom” or a peyote cactus, which come into play much later. One explanation offered for the plants’ production of these molecules is that the psychoactive effects exerted are perhaps a better protection than mundane toxins that create selection pressures toward resistance among predators.

But it can’t be that simple, as demonstrated by plants that mix the psychoactive alkaloid caffeine into their nectar. It is true that caffeine can throw insect brains off track – spiders, for example, weave frizzy stuff under its influence instead of suitable webs – but in the case of bees, which taste the caffeinated nectar, the effect is different: they remember this nectar better and sweep return to these plants more often than to others.