Dear Friends,
For half a century, the biggest business in my county, Mendocino, was functioning outside of federal law. Marijuana.
Charlie Harris, a British historian from Oxford’s Global History of Capitalism Project, who put in his seasons as a marijuana trimmer here on our North Coast, has memorialized that history. His new book, Mendo, published in June by Counterpoint Press, tells how Mendocino County went from logging and fishing to the cannabis capital of the Americas, known as the Emerald Triangle. Charlie was recently on Mind Body Health & Politics, where he told me things about my own neighborhood that were delightfully new.
The Mendocino story begins with the young people of the 1960s Back to the Land movement, who came north to live off the cheap land, and learned, as one ex-commune member put it, that “we couldn’t grow gasoline.” The one crop the hippies could grow became the county’s currency, marijuana — people paid rent with it, bought food with it, and had their cars fixed with it. And when the loggers’ sawmills closed and hundreds of logging families were suddenly out of work, many of them went into the business alongside the hippies they had long been feuding with. The rednecks joined the hippies, and they all became hipnecks.
Then came Reagan’s helicopters. The Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) was at the time the largest domestic law-enforcement operation in the country. Charlie’s exhaustive research indicated that CAMP turned a profit every single year it flew — the raids kept what they seized, and asset forfeiture itself was invented right here in Mendocino County.
Every plant the government cut down simply made the rest worth more, and prices rocketed. But eventually marijuana legalization accomplished what forty years of helicopters could not: a pound that brought $5,000 in the eighties now sells for under $500. However, as I reminded Charlie, you still don’t pay $500/pound for garlic.
I started coming to Mendocino County in 1975 and experienced much of this story happening around me. Many of my patients were in the marijuana business. And so I had inside information.
Charlie also left me with a genuine health concern about what today’s high-potency products are doing to us — I will let him tell you that part himself.
Please listen to our conversation, and just below, I offer a brief health practice drawn from what Charlie did for Mendocino County. If you want the whole story, Mendo is available from Counterpoint, Amazon, and your local bookstore. Charlie asks that you try the independent first.
Today’s Practice: The Phone Call Revolution
A simple thing to take with you from this week’s conversation.
Charlie wrote his book because the people who lived this history were getting older and nobody had recorded their stories. Every family and every town has the same problem.
This week, ask the oldest person you know to tell you one story — how they earned their first paycheck, how they met their partner, what their street looked like fifty years ago. Take out your phone and record it, or write it down while they talk. Save it somewhere the family can find it.
One story, saved. If you do it, write back and tell me whose story you kept.
Golden light,
Dr. Richard Louis Miller
Resources mentioned
Charlie Harris, Mendo: How an Unlikely Group of Rebels Turned Cannabis into California’s Cash Crop (Counterpoint Press, June 23, 2026) | Amazon | Author page
Mind, Body, Health & Politics archive — mindbodyhealthpolitics.org (20 years, open source)
A note on working together
I offer a small number of one-on-one sessions for those who want to work with me directly.
This is not traditional therapy. You bring whatever is troubling you, and we practice the simple tools I have used with patients for six decades — ways of quieting the mind and easing anxiety that you can carry into daily life.
We go at your pace, and we work on what helps.
My New Book
The Adverse Effects and Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Medicines was recently reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies. I was honored by it. Read the review here.
A few words from the front of the book:
Dr. Richard Louis Miller is a true elder and wisdom keeper of the psychedelic community, and his credentials come honestly, through hard-won experience. In this book, he continues his role as an educator by sharing his knowledge of both the perils and the promise of psychedelic substances. The reader will find valuable advice on how to avoid pitfalls while realizing the maximum benefits from the thoughtful and safe use of these remarkable medicines.
— Dr. Dennis McKenna, ethnopharmacologist and author of The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss
Putting forth the adverse effects of these substances in readable form contributes to their understanding and separates psychedelic scientists from those who would cover over, or even hide, negative effects of pharmaceuticals.
— Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco
It’s the fifth book in my series on psychedelic medicine. You can find it on Amazon.
My Other Books
Master Your Mind: Practical Tools to Calm Anxiety, Silence Your Inner Critic and Stop Overthinking
Freeing Sexuality: Psychologists, Consent Teachers, Polyamory Experts, and Sex Workers Speak Out
Psychedelic Wisdom: The Astonishing Rewards of Mind-Altering Substances
Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca
Integral Psychedelic Therapy (co-edited with Jason A. Butler & Genesee Herzberg)
