From On Freedom, which was published last month by Graywolf Press.

Time and time again, users testify in drug literature to a sense that substances are imbued with things we might call agency, liberty, or desire. As the writer and artist Henri Michaux put it: “Mescaline wanted my full consent.” To convey this sense, writers frequently make recourse to personification: the Mazatec curandera María Sabina refers to psilocybin mushrooms as the “saint children”; Billie Holiday laments the loss of her “lover man,” which some have taken to mean heroin. The frequency with which drugs come alive in drug writing…