While this may seem paradoxical on the face of it, it is only by selective forgetting that we are able to focus our attention, and so to love, achieve, and create. The book that helped make Michael Pollan, theNew York Timesbestselling author ofCookedandThe Omnivore s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts. I would suggest to the scientists studying endogenous cannabinoids that they may enable concentration, as well as forgetting. Anyone who has ever tried to “act straight” to fool a cop or parent, however, knows that the monitoring function can sometimes be reactivated by a great effort or a great scare. Marijuana leaves little or no room for the survival-oriented “monitoring” function of the straight mind.

I also became aware of my mind as skating on two-dimensional ice while my consciousness, ancient as a coelacanth, watched impassively from beneath. I remember wandering around in the architecture of jazz, or bathing my whole being in vanilla ice cream. Marijuana enables a powerful, spot-lit concentration every competing sense or thought goes dark. But it also makes our experience blurred and vague the course of our thoughts is constantly corrected by different perceptions. This is practical in the Darwinian sense, as it enables us to shift our attention quickly if one particular sight or sound becomes a threat. Normally we tune in to a lot of things at once.

Marijuana allowed my mind to focus totally on one sensation or train of thought. I attribute this to two facts: 1) I first smoked it when I was twenty, not twelve and 2) I never smoked it daily, or even weekly. I always learned something from it - every time. I was an occasional user (parties only) who last smoked fifteen years ago. Reading Michael Pollan on the effects of marijuana has inspired me to share my own experience of what the drug does.

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan