[amazon template=image&asin=0375760393]I recently read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. In this book, Pollan examines the relationship between plants and people, not only how people shape plants, but how plants shape people. I found the book fascinating. Pollan presents ideas (about plants and about humanity) I had never before considered.

In examining the relationships between plants and people, Pollan considers the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato.

One of the ideas in the chapter on cannabis struck me to the extent that I wanted to write it down, contemplate it further, and share it.

“…Andrew Weil describes marijuana as an ‘active placebo.’ He contends that cannabis does not itself create but merely triggers the mental state we identify as ‘being high.’ The very same mental state, minus the ‘physiological noise’ of the drug itself can be triggered in other ways, such as meditation or breathing exercises. Weil believes it is an error of modern materialist thinking to believe…that the ‘high’ smokers experience is somehow a product of the plant itself (or TCH), rather than a creation of the mind…”