鸦片罂粟、咖啡因，你知多少？--读《植物作用下的心智》

你有没有想过大自然娇艳无比的花朵可以是“罪恶”之花？你有没有想过同样是摘取植物身上的叶片或种子，一个可以被世人推崇，一个却被列入黑名单？茶叶、咖啡豆、鸦片罂粟的种子，同意都是大自然的植物，却可以有着各自不同或截然不同的待遇。

这是作者Michael Pollan在他2021年的新书This is Your Mind on Plants（《植物作用下的心智》）里提出的一个的问题。作者Michael Pollan任教于哈佛伯克利大学，被2010年的《时代》杂志誉为全球最有影响力的100名人物之一，他专注植物、食物研究，出版了好几本这一类的著作。 这本书的切入点新颖独特。作者为写这本书，走访了美国不少地方，也在自己后院尝试种植过鸦片罂粟（btw,这是非法的），他喝过用鸦片罂粟种子泡的茶，吃过含有mescaline的仙人掌，一度身体力行地戒掉多年喝咖啡的习惯，并将这些个人体验一一写进这本书里。

这本250页的书我一星期不到就读完，里面的观点不是我一个对这方面了解甚少的人可以评论或探讨的，但这不妨碍我在此分享他的一家之言。

书分三大部分：鸦片罂粟、咖啡因、麦司克林 （mescaline，从仙人掌中提取的致幻剂)。

一、鸦片罂粟：鸦片罂粟通俗的英文名叫opium poppy,它的学术名是Papaver somniferum。我们常常会把“虞美人”（corn poppy)与“罂粟花”这两个概念混用。实际上，不同于鸦片罂粟，虞美人虽然也含有一些鸦片成分，但主要是用来观赏的。此书描述的是Papaver somniferum，鸦片罂粟，那种可以提取吗啡的鸦片罂粟。

据作者书中所说，Papaver somniferum 的种子是可以合法销售，但是它的种植、收割和使用却是犯法的。作者曾经大胆尝试种植、品尝，并冒着风险在杂志Harper’s上发表文章。众所周知，鸦片有药用价值，能镇定止痛，但同时又会让人产生依赖，上瘾，对身体产生危害。据作者书中说，鸦片罂粟的种子是可以泡茶喝。在中东人的葬礼上，人们用其种子泡的茶招待人，以此帮助人们忘掉悲伤。

书中有这样一句话，概括了鸦片罂粟的作用和地位。“在19世纪，罂粟在事物的（发展）进程中起到关键的作用，正如石油在我们这个世纪起到的作用一样：鸦片是国民经济的基础、常需药品、贸易中的基本物、诗歌中浪漫革命的推动力，甚至是引发战争的导火索。”（我用此句作为美语坛3/14日中译英的练习：）

二、咖啡因：咖啡是公元 850 在埃塞俄比亚发现的，最初货物的交换都是以烤熟后的咖啡豆进行交易的。后来有人偷偷把种子带出来，进行根更广泛地种植。渐渐地，咖啡开始风靡欧洲，代替了酒，成为人们的主要饮品。

咖啡因着其香浓的味道和提神功效得到了人的青睐。咖啡因可以改变人们的作息时间，打破人体内的生物钟。作者甚至说，工业革命的发展离不开咖啡因，因为咖啡因延长了工人的工作时间，让昏昏欲睡的人清醒，让人在原本不可能工作的时间工作，大大提高了生产力和工作效率。这也是雇主愿意在工作场所免费提供咖啡，提供带薪喝咖啡休息时间（coffee break) 的原因。

当然不仅仅是工厂工人，三班倒的工人需要咖啡提神，文学家诗人也需要。一杯咖啡在手如一根香烟在指尖，是可以sharpen one's mind, 激发人的创作灵感，让作者思如泉涌。书中提到，大文豪伏尔泰一天最多能喝上72杯咖啡。伏尔泰和巴尔扎克都是咖啡的狂热爱好者。

茶，也含有咖啡因，只是没有咖啡里的咖啡因含量高。茶发现于公元前1000的中国，最先是当作药用，直至唐朝才被当做娱乐饮品而广泛推崇。真正被西人所接受，我想大概始于丝绸之路，还有鸦片战争前茶叶和鸦片的大量贸易。书中有句话说得有意思： So here was another moral cost of caffeine: in order for the English mind to be sharpened with tea with tea, the Chinese mind had to be clouded with opium.

咖啡因的这个作用，聪明的植物早就意识到了，它们为了自身的繁殖，为了引诱动物昆虫一次次来授粉，有时会在自己的花粉里增加咖啡因成分。很多年后，人类也学会了在饮品中加入咖啡因，比如曾经风靡全球的Coca Cola在饮料里加入咖啡因，就是从大自然得到的启发。

但是咖啡也不是完全没有副作用的。据专门研究睡眠的专家说，咖啡因的作用可以延续12小时以上，也就是说早上喝的咖啡可能会影响你晚上的睡眠质量，即便你感觉不到，它实际上已经影响了你的深度睡眠。有点讽刺的是，人因为前一天睡眠不好，第二天上班要靠喝咖啡打起精神，殊不知，一杯咖啡喝下去，当晚的睡眠又会受影响。

为此，作者尝试着戒咖啡，根据作者的亲身体验，戒咖啡就如得了感冒，浑身不适。作者在成功戒掉咖啡后，最终又自我妥协，允许自己周末喝咖啡，有时因着写作需要也会破例喝上几杯。

另外，作者还亲自去看过咖啡种植园，那些人工一颗颗破开咖啡豆。一杯咖啡需要大约50颗咖啡豆，而期间的辛苦，种植土壤气候的要求，咖啡豆成熟后的人工采摘和剥离，

三、麦司卡林 (mescaline)，仙人球毒碱，是一种从仙人掌中提取的致幻剂。具体说，就是有那么一两种仙人掌，里面含有麦司卡林。一种是Peyote仙人球，植物肉内含有丰富的麦司卡林，Peyote是印第安人发现，并经过长期努力斗争后保存下来的。他们把它当做神灵一样供着，收割后，会召集族人聚集一堂，举行专门的仪式，供他们狂吃/喝，一“醉”方休。在美国，目前也只有印第安人可以合法种植开采使用，其他人种植开采使用都属于犯法。

Peyote仙人球的生长期长，从种子发芽到真正成熟可以采割需要十五年，所以这种仙人掌的产量低，加上印第安人信奉这是上帝所赐的仙物，拒绝人工培育，只接受种子发芽后返回大自然生长的培育方式。据书中数据，美国大约有605公顷的仙人掌生长地。

另一种叫San Pedro的仙人掌，比较常见些，但是里面的麦司卡林的含量要低一些，作者曾经被邀参加过其收割、品尝典礼。

除了咖啡因，作者书中提到的两种植物都有致幻作用 （psychedelic)，它们的种植和品尝是犯法的（除了印第安人拥有合法种植和开采Peyote的权利外）。然而大自然是无罪的，植物本身是无罪的， 它们只是存在着。如果说有罪，那罪在人，人的贪欲，人的滥用，人的无节制，使一个原本是上苍的blessing之物变成了人类的危害。当然，法律是人制定的，法律的制定无非是想惩恶扬善，以保护大众利益，提升人，保证社会的安定和运行，它的制定也非一成不变，也在不断地变化和完善中。

通篇而言，作者对这三类能改变人类心情心智，镇定、激发或给人带来幻觉的“灵药”基本是持肯定态度的，他在描述体验mescaline带给人的感受时，用了这样一个词语来表达，“a sufficiency of reality“，即，在品尝含有mescaline后，他对现实有种满足感。这些“灵药”，只要适量，它们可以像减阀门（reducing valve), 帮助减轻人的负担和痛苦。

读完此书，我联想到的是中国传说中的神农、名医李时珍上山采药遍尝百草的故事，想起的是近年那位因发明提取青蒿素获得诺贝尔奖的屠呦呦，更想起了普通江南人逢春踏青采艾青的一幕幕。。。大自然的植物是神奇，它带给人类的不仅是滋养、是美、是花香、是美味、是药材、是纤维，更是能刺激大脑，改变心智的灵药。而我们所做的只需走近它、敬拜它、享用它、珍惜它！

书中摘句：

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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? (from book cover and Introduction)

Liken the effort to having one so rubbed down with a silk.

A seed of doubt had been planted in my mind.

Korean

caught in the grip of a near nightma. Like a man who had been brought to the end of his tatter edgy and distrustful

adrift on uncharted legal waters.

Swat team，outfitted in a black ninja suits

I had already crossed the line I thought I could safely toe.

Bemused reactiom: “ don't you think that the government has better things to do?“

 Laughing off my worries.

He offered to send me seeds of a stunning jet black of opium popcy.

It was the first week of July when I notice at the end of one slender downward nodding stem a bud, the size of a cherry, covered in the soft heavy down packed as tightly as a parachute

until my poppy patch was a terrific, traffic- stopping blur of color

of red so red as to be platonic.

He spoke of “the poppy‘s red effrontery“: this hue was a shout.“

 the lavender blooms of another variety follow a few days later, a color but no less pure jolt of color. When the sun stood behind them, towards evening, the paddles were as luminous as stained glass.

shed their silken petalsvand display their crowned seed pods

The poppy‘s seed parts are scarcely less arresting than its flowers.

drooping sleepy buds, the brilliant flags of color

 all set agaist the same color backdrop of dusty green foliaoe.

As I admired my poppies in their full mid summer glory, this unexpectedly lavish gift of nature.

Ignorance of the law is never a defense

 indescribably bitter

 His face was handsome but careworn.

 He was dressed all in white, a slender 38 year old with long brown hair gathered in a neat ponytail.

That's why poppy tea is served at the funerals in the Middle East. It can make sadness, go away.

 puncture a set of miss slit.

In the nineteenth century, the poppy played as crucial a role in the course of events as petroleum has played in our own century: opium was the basis of national economies, a staple of medicine, an essential item of trade, a spur to the Romantic revolution in poetry, even a casus belli.

What had been a particularly dreary stretch of Manhattan suddenly erupts into greenery and bloom

I wondered what it would be like to slip underground—not to be able to go home, not to have your stuff around, not even to know exactly where you would be spending the next night, week, month.

Ever-thickening mist of mis- and disinformation swirling around the subject of poppies

A bonfire of self-incrimination

I could see all that effort and income swirling down the drain of my stupidity

An affront

Divulging the recipe

Forming crinkled brown seedpods the size of walnuts

After the novelty of the flavor wore off

Dropped beneath the threshold of my attention

Nothing I would describe an euphoric, but I was suffused body and mind with a distinct feeling of well-being

Poppy tea is a pain killer in every sense

The tea seemed to subtract things: anxiety, melancholy, worry, grief

How the gardener can cause nature to yield up something so specifically attractive to the human eye or nose or taste bud. So it was with these astonishing poppies: how can it be that such an inconsequential speck of seed could yield a fruit in my garden with the power to lift pain, alter consciousness, “make sadness go away”?

Waiting for some shoe to drop

Words I hadn’t laid eyes on in 24 years

Cold turkey: I had quit caffeine, cold turkey

The fog settled over me and would not budge.

I feel like an unsharpened pencil.

Has the discovery of caffeine by humans been a boon or a bane to our civilization?

Cui Bono: to whom is it a benefit

NoDoz as an aid to concentration and used by Sufis in Yemen to keep them from dozing off during their religious observances. (Tea, too, started out as a kind of spiritual NoDoz for Buddhist monks striving to stay awake through long stretch of meditation.)

These new public spaces were hotbeds of news and gossip, as well as places to gather for performances and games

Voltaire was a fervent advocate for coffee, and supposedly drank as many as seventy-two cups a day. (p. 112)

The paper is spread with ink.

To find yourself so sped up mentally that other people appear to you like motionless figures on a train platform, as you blur by them in caffeinated clouds of impatience.

Organize the day into a rhythm of energetic peaks and valleys as the mental tide of caffeine ebbs and flows. The morning surge is a blessing, obviously, but there is also something comforting in the ebb tide of afternoon.

I miss the enveloping aroma and the sounds of coffee, imbibe some hint of mental stimulant

I no longer swim in the same caffeine sea as everyone else. Beached, I can still see the water – but it’s way over there.

Something worthy of admiration

In the throe of caffeine withdrawal

It may depend on the loss of a certain kind of focus, and the freedom to let the mind off the leash of linear thought

Spotlight consciousness/lantern consciousness (mind wandering, free association)

Break the Arab stranglehold

Now the West had taken control of coffee-- and coffee took control of the West

“Always sip tea as if tea were life itself.” – Chajin (18^th century)

Exalted role

“The taste of tea and the taste of Zen are the same.” – Sen Sotan (Japanese tea master)

From society matron to the factory worker

It’s difficult to imagine an Industrial Revolution without it.

Whether caffeine represented a boon or bane to civilization and/or our species

Natural biological rhythm

Trailing off, trade-offs, tractable

The work was exacting and exhausting

The women had the necessary dexterity but lacked endurance to work a full shift

One of the primary factors, if not the prime factor

The decision enshrined the paid coffee break in American life

To fit snugly into

Karmic payback

“The shorter you sleep, the shorter your lifespan. “—Matt Walker

“After all, life is to be lived.” (to a degree)

The principal reason that caffeine is used around the world is to promote wakefulness. But the principal reason that people need that crutch is inadequate sleep. Think about that: we use caffeine to make up for a sleep deficit that is largely the result of using caffeine.

The dam holding back all that pent-up, still mounting adenosine will break.

There is no free lunch.

But it was minuscule by comparison

That their sober and civilized habit rested on the back of such brutality?

The Soda makers have figured out what plants learned to do a long time ago

So here was another moral cost of caffeine: in order for the English mind to be sharpened with tea, the Chinese mind had to be clouded with opium.

As the market does what markets do: scours the world for

Take in the scene

Pocket park

Harness the surge of energy coursing through me

A rutted dirt road

Verdant , sun-drenched hillside, rendering lands no longer viable

My notes are n anarchy of disputations taxonomy I see no need to inflict on the reader. But these were a few intelligible nuggets that shed some light, faint thought it may be, on the mysteries of San Pedro

Peyote—15 years from seed into a harvest button

Whose marriage is on the rocks (difficult, likely to fail)

Rite of passage

Revered as plants with extraordinary powers

Woven deep into the fabric of the participants’ lives

Live itinerant lives

Donning extravagant costumes

Far flung tribes

A road man

This goes on “until daylight begins to glimmer through the canvas”

Her young daughter occasionally darting into frame, angling for her attention

Sometimes the best way to show your respect for something is to leave it alone.

The plant has a gaze. Peyote is an omniscient spirit.

To dull the senses

You always want to know everything. We just experience it.

The pelican lumbering over the water before slowly climbing into the sky

The diamond reflections of sunlight glancing off the ripples in the bay

Devour with my eyes all that there was to see

Zen-like quality of bare presence, immanence

Haiku consciousness –留白 Buddhist cosmology, realized with a jolt

Consciousness as a “reducing valve”, filters of consciousness

The inner floodgates of emotion opened wide

Admitting only the “measly trickle” of information needed for us

To get by rather than the full spectrum of what there is to perceive and think.

Emotions inundates our awareness/a tidal waves of awe

It’s like we’re in an endless car ride with a drunk at the wheel

The work occupied the hands but didn’t demand one’s full attention

Woody core, spine, beguiling set

Festooned with,

a lanky thirtyish apprentice with curly black hair and the palest blue eyes

it has a penetrating gaze

take hold of my mind

it sent a shudder up and down my body

a lethal/additive habit

your mind feels freshly scrubbed

and when the storm subdued, Judith seemed becalmed

the medicine attenuates the bonds of the past, making it easier to let go of regrets.

Handed Judith the Wachuma blossom, faded now but still gorgeous

It is a privilege and a pleasure to work with all of you

I always get something out of our conversions about the work

Whether on the trail or the phone, you make the word we do so much less lonely

Glanced up from my book

A sufficiency of reality