39 replies to this topic

[Severian]

Mixed with some blowfish, this plant partly explains the foundation of the religion of Voodoo, according to some.  Its said that this combination was spread out on the doorstep of an enemy, who when walking over it in bare feet, will dose themselves into a trance that makes them appear dead.  Enough so that they are buried alive and dug up again, taken to the other side of the island and enslaved from then on, because they will not remember anything but the most basic life skills; making them a willing slave to whoever dug them up before they suffocated to death.  Good ol' voodoo.  A religion sprung up around this dark knowledge because no one wanted to be made a mindless slave, and the only protection it would seem, was cutting off rooster heads and not making enemies.     

 

And, depending on how close one's neighboors lived; cutting off roosters heads could be seen as a way of not making enemies.

[Norman]

Really cool book -
https://www.goodread...15-wicked-weeds
on zombie slaves and botanical zombification.

I’d rank wolfsbane and monks hood deadlier but yeah it’s weird how associated with death the tropanes are. Atropos and all that. My favorite is belladonna. Lots of trip reports about seeing dead people or the subject actually thinking that they are dead.

[wildedibles]

Let the pods dry and they’ll likely burst open on their own.
They’ll grow readily from there.
Nice plant!

Yes a paper bag helps lol

[wildedibles]

All parts of the plant contain tropane alkaloids - flowers, stems, leaves, and especially concentrated in the roots. Take care to use gloves while working with the plant so as not to be accidentally "dosed".
 
That being said......
I have experience with this plant and really don't recommend "tripping" with it. The user doesn't really know they're "tripping" while others around them find it obvious. It's not euphoric in any sense and really lead me to no insights. I had a better time using nutmeg (which is mildly euphoric and much like being "stoned").
 
I've heard some real horror stories. A Friend of mine was entering random strangers' houses looking for his jacket after consuming the seeds of this plant. He was lucky he wasn't shot or jailed. There's another article around here where a fellow cut off his own reproductive hardware - news article, photos, and everything.
 
Just sayin'

I had a huge datura finally grow this year because I know better to leave it alone
They are a very attractive plant tho
Ours grew over my head this year
I had to cut it back and remembered to be careful
I have issues with the tomato family too so I don't like cutting them back
It was a beauty to have around lol but took up so much room and really toxic especially having one this big

[wildedibles]

Beautiful, but very deadly. I ate 2 seed pods full of Datura seeds and spent a week in ICU and to be honest because of that experience. After 40 years, there are several times I still have a very hard time distinguishing what is real or hallucinatory. I have problems with figuring if everyday stuff is in my head or if it's real, anyway.
I can go into a extreme trip report about it but it's not something I really care to relive. All I know is that plant changed me in ways I can't describe.

I am grateful for your honesty and forth coming.
Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

That's what we are here for

[wildedibles]

Mixed with some blowfish, this plant partly explains the foundation of the religion of Voodoo, according to some.  Its said that this combination was spread out on the doorstep of an enemy, who when walking over it in bare feet, will dose themselves into a trance that makes them appear dead.  Enough so that they are buried alive and dug up again, taken to the other side of the island and enslaved from then on, because they will not remember anything but the most basic life skills; making them a willing slave to whoever dug them up before they suffocated to death.  Good ol' voodoo.  A religion sprung up around this dark knowledge because no one wanted to be made a mindless slave, and the only protection it would seem, was cutting off rooster heads and not making enemies.

The powers of a plant
Knowledge in the wrong hands can be dangerous
I agree this knowledge needs to be out here
What we choose to do with it is up to us

[happy4nic8r]

When I worked in Bakersfield all the cowboy hot shot framers had stories about they and their friends rites of passage eating a few seeds. I was served a salad with the leaves (peanut butter smell), mixed in.. I knew what it was and questioned the maker of the salad if I needed to have someone taste test all my food from then on, or was this not intentional.

 

I then studied the history of witches use of the plant and found their method of extraction involved a Cauldron and boiling just the roots for many days while conducting their worship.  It was then spread in paste form on, you guessed it, broom handles, which then gave the user the ability to fly through the sky like a bird.  I got the idea that this way of contact absorption through the skin made it somewhat less poisonous, but I wouldn't try that unless there was a huge amount of reward involved and I was dying of terminal cancer.  

 

I just recently cleaned a sand filter that had 5 foot tall plants growing only where the septic tank outlets were watering them.  Didn't wear gloves, pulled out at least 50 big plants, no effects whatsoever.  Was tempted to save some just in case I run into that one person you think the world would like you to remove, but I don't keep a list like that any more, so It's all good.  

[TVCasualty]

Paging BuckarooBanzai, your input is needed for another Datura thread... (seriously though, where are you? Hope all is well and that we'll see you drop back in again at some point)

 

Some recommended reading:

 

https://mycotopia.ne...ra-experiences/

 

https://mycotopia.ne...e-4#entry236138 (the whole thread is worth a read)

 

https://mycotopia.ne...and-other-info/

[Coopdog]

Happy4nicator it is very good to see you brother

[TVCasualty]

I recently stumbled across a fascinating new paper about indigenous Datura use in California.

 

One of the details that that surprised me was that the dating of the finds only goes back to around the year 1300 AD, and extends into the very late 1800's: Datura quids at Pinwheel Cave, California, provide unambiguous confirmation of the ingestion of hallucinogens at a rock art site
 

 

Clearly, there is significant usage of the site in postcontact periods, including Spanish and Mexican into the American Periods (61). This continuation of Datura use shows the resilience of Native practice in the use of an entheogen through successive colonial regimes.

 
 

It's fairly long, but the study was extensive and worth a read.

 

 

That new paper is especially interesting to me in light of a hypothesis I've pondered about the reason for such vast historic cultural differences in artistic expression:

 

Tropane alkaloids were widely used in medieval Europe as has been well-established, and I'd noticed a possible correlation between a culture's style of artistic expression and the dominant visionary drug of the region.

In Central Mexico and extending into South America, there are bright colors and geometric patterns everywhere, just like you might see after eating the mushrooms and/or peyote that grows there (or Ayahuasca, and although some tribes did add some form of datura to their brews, or used it alone, it wasn't the primary visionary drug in the region). Same with India with it's mushrooms and cannabis; bright colors and a vibrant energy are all over the place. Africa also had mushrooms, among other entheogens, and is likewise brightly colorful.

But when you look at the aesthetic of a region where datura was the primary visionary drug (i.e. Europe), you get the Gothic style; intimidating buildings decorated in various shades of gray, and gargoyles and such. You get Heironymous Bosch paintings, and the world his paintings depict. The indigenous culture (pagans, etc.) colliding with Christianity seems to have created the Gothic style, and IMO it's dark and occultish and not what I want to be surrounded by. I think the old datura aesthetic combined with the carefully cut-and-pasted relatively new religion called Christianity gave birth to what eventually became the Puritans and similar cults, and we're still dealing with the social residue of that fucked-up mindset (guilt burdens for pre-marital sex, anyone?). So, pre-Christian datura use may be a large part of the reason many Americans have such screwed up ideas about morality and religion.

I don't have much of a point here, just that it seems you can judge a drug by the art produced by a culture that uses it. I don't mean a value judgement exactly, just an educated guess about what the drug's effects may be like. So, I'm sticking with bright and colorful and upbeat because to me, Gothic represents death-culture and I don't want those kind of molecules in my head.

 

 

The cave art found with the Datura quids in California seems to contradict this hypothesis, though they weren't consuming the exact same plants as people in Europe so differing alkaloid profiles might have something to do with it.

 

 

Still, a proven history of ingesting this class of drug for sacred/spiritual purposes doesn't mean it's a good idea for any of us to try it. If pre-Xtian Europeans (or indigenous tribes in what became California) had widespread access to one of the tryptamines or phenethylamines used in other regions then they probably would have used that instead and never bothered with any plants in the Solanaceae family (or A. muscaria for that matter).

[Norman]

My experience with tropanes is limited and I intend for it to stay that way but I find these plants fascinating.
What is going on with the mental state these plants induce?
Tryptamines always make me feel like I’m experiencing another reality just as real as this one. Is that the deal with datura? Or is it just mental farts? The visions - for lack of a better word - seem different in nature as well as content. More like dreams.

[TVCasualty]

My experience with tropanes is limited and I intend for it to stay that way but I find these plants fascinating.
What is going on with the mental state these plants induce?
Tryptamines always make me feel like I’m experiencing another reality just as real as this one. Is that the deal with datura? Or is it just mental farts? The visions - for lack of a better word - seem different in nature as well as content. More like dreams.

 

A friend of mine was bitten by a black widow spider and spent a couple of days in a hallucinatory delirium wandering around his apartment.

 

Another friend of mine used to like to go SCUBA diving and as soon as he hit the water he would dive deep quickly to induce a little nitrogen narcosis, which is like huffing whip-its under water (and is insanely dangerous). He eventually grew out of that, fortunately.

 

Some people sniff glue to alter their reality.

 

Partaking in a Sun Dance will bring profound visions the hard way, too.

 

It looks like there are a lot of different ways to induce altered states of consciousness that can inspire insights or new perspectives or sublime visionary experiences if we're lucky, or shatter our minds with hellish visions or outright kill us if we're not.

 

If I get bitten by a spider, come close to drowning, huff paint, or intentionally endure intense pain and happen to gain beneficial insights or induce profound visionary/pleasurable experiences from such experiences then do they qualify as "spiritual practices" or "entheogenic experiences?" I don't really know (might just be semantics), but it seems to me that there's a line or two that ought to be drawn and not crossed for the sake of one's own health and sanity. I hear death itself is pretty trippy, too.

 

 

One consideration that I think is very important for all experienced and aspiring psychonauts to be aware of is that certain chemicals or experiences can profoundly alter our consciousness, but do so at the price of damaging our bodies, harming our health, or putting ourselves at extreme risk of losing our lives while other chemicals or experiences can accomplish the same goals while improving our physical performance, increasing our awareness, and making us healthier with no direct risk of killing us in the process.

 

One of the keys to mainstreaming psychedelics is getting that across to as many people as possible since it's otherwise the kind of lesson that's generally learned the hard and sometimes the tragic/irrecoverable way (meaning too late; someone ends up dead or permanently damaged). Datura and similar kinds of extremely dangerous experiences generate the kinds of stories that keep all the demonstrably-beneficial and safe molecules illegal while remaining legal themselves, ironically.

 

Kids that drank datura tea, lost their shit, and never fully recovered (or huffed too much paint, etc.) only did so because they didn't know about or understand this distinction, and IMO anyone who promotes altering consciousness for mind expansion has a duty and obligation to make sure this is conveyed, especially to those new to the scene.

 

Looking back, I'd have to say it was only by pure luck my first psychedelic experience involved mushrooms I paid for and not the free-for-the-taking jimson weed growing wild all around where I was living at the time that other kids were messing with occasionally. That is a terrible and arguably-crazy way to raise kids, especially since I can remember being propagandized about the evils of "marijuana" in Junior High and High School while no mention was ever made of the jimson weed growing wild in the area even though everyone knew about kids who'd taken some and weren't seen at school again.

[Norman]

Yes I realize all that but what I’m wondering is - physical harm aside- what is the altered reality experienced on a tropane alkaloid versus the reality experienced on a tryptamine? Is the chemical allowing us access to a free standing reality beyond our five sense perception as I believe tryptamines and other do or is it just an interior perturbation of our brains from interrupting its physical functioning?

[TVCasualty]

Yes I realize all that but what I’m wondering is - physical harm aside- what is the altered reality experienced on a tropane alkaloid versus the reality experienced on a tryptamine? Is the chemical allowing us access to a free standing reality beyond our five sense perception as I believe tryptamines and other do or is it just an interior perturbation of our brains from interrupting its physical functioning?

 

I can’t seem to shake the problem of implicit tone when I explore topics like this. It’s unfortunate because the tone that usually comes across is one of varying degrees of condescension (which is almost never the intent behind anything I write, and when it is I try to make it obvious).

 

I don’t include all the details that I do because I’m assuming the reader isn’t aware of them but because they detail how I arrived at whatever conclusion I’ve come to about whatever it is I’m writing about. There’s often some point along the rhetorical trail where my experiences or data or interpretations diverge from those of whomever I’m discussing something with, but I don’t know where that point will be for a given discussion so I just include it all.

 

 

 

 

Questions about the nature of the reality (or realities, rather) that these drugs confront us with are probably unanswerable in the same sense that we'll never really be able to see our own eyes directly (not that we really see anything directly, so it's more like seeing our own eyes with a single reflection of light vs. two or more like is the case with a mirror).

 

 

I guess we can ask the "separate reality" vs. "just a brain fart" question about all mind-altering drugs. Salvia-space sure felt like a reality separate from myself, even though it was utterly empty except for my perception of it, aka "the Void." It's scary as hell. But DMT has also often been scary as hell for me, too. I'm just going to assume that a tropane experience would probably be reliably regrettable.

 

One thing I find interesting about the different "places" that various molecules seem to take us to is that they all correspond to "places" that exist in the conception of the spirit world that many if not most traditions that involve direct experience contain in their teachings.

 

In the one I was taught there's a band of darkness, where what we call "evil" comes from and whose nature corresponds nicely with datura trip reports (and meth or cocaine psychosis). Popular conceptions of "Hell" (Dante's Inferno, etc.) are infantile in comparison to the Dark. There's a band beyond darkness that if I could reach right now I can't imagine it feeling any more intensely sublime and beautiful than the best tryptamine experiences I've had (crumbs from Heaven, if you will). And there's the Void that exists beyond all the rest, including darkness OR light. All three felt as real as any place my physical body has ever been (sometimes more so).

 

A lot of this stuff seems to fit and work better if I assume that our physical brains are equivalent to antennas or radios tuned to the unique frequency of awareness that we call our Self. If you damage a radio it will start to sound funny, and if you break it it will stop making any sounds at all. A fascinating topic for another discussion is the often-overlooked fact that our "radio" can transmit as well as receive.

 

In this model, even if your radio is damaged beyond repair the source of the transmission it was receiving (your "awareness field") would not be affected, and your field would still permeate reality even if it lacked any means of being tuned in and focused (reincarnation would then involve building a new receiver for our respective awareness fields).

 

So I guess I'd say these chemicals do both; they allow access to alternate realities (or expand our awareness of it if there's only one; might just be semantics) and they also perturb the interior circuitry of our physical brains, causing the typical sensory distortions such drugs induce. Some also happen to cause damage to the radio in the process of perturbing, and those happen to correlate to the one "place" in the spirit world that no one should ever try to get to or explore on their own.

 

 

Pain and fear are important and useful tools that we evolved because we need them to help us navigate reality by warning us of things or places to avoid. So when a drug terrifies with no corresponding insight or benefit, causes damage to our mind, body, or spirit, (or kills us outright) then IMO the reality it reveals might be as real as any but it's one I do whatever it takes to avoid.

Edited by TVCasualty, 27 December 2020 - 11:54 AM.

[Myc]

I would say that datura did take me to an altered reality. It just seemed so parallel and similar to this one that I barely noticed the difference.

One common theme that I see with a huge number of trip reports - and I shared this experience too.

I was smoking cigarettes - that didn't exist. i went around puffing on my empty fingers and talking to folks that weren't there. Folks that I hadn't seen in years were riding along with me and my actual friends (who warned me not to eat those seeds). I kept wandering off with those folks while having conversations.

What was really going on to those who were not "tripping":

We (three friends) were actually out in the middle of the night - in the middle of no-where. We had hunting access to lands which allowed us to get way-out from civilization. We were probably 50 miles from the nearest dwelling in any direction and were spot-lighting coyotes for shooting with a long-range rifle. I was "smoking", having animated conversations with people who weren't there, and kept walking off into the darkness with those "folks" when we stopped. It became very annoying to my friends who had to track me down and convince me to come back to the truck.

I kept seeing hair and fuzz - individual hairs and pieces of fuzz - individually gathering from all points of the compass to form a large fuzz ball. Made no sense to me at the time and still makes no sense.

And I'll also admit that my brain chemistry was permanently altered. I have never been the same since "tripping" on datura seeds. There is always some weird doorway that I can see through which makes "reality" seem to be somehow staged and fake - like a movie set. I also sometimes feel like the script is all about me - that everyone else is "in on it" and I am somehow like Jim Carrey in "The Truman Show".

[TVCasualty]

Being out in the middle of nowhere in the dark and wandering off to talk to hallucinations in a state of delirium while there's a high-powered rifle in play is about as dangerous a context for tripping as I can think of. Particularly if everyone involved ate some seeds (it wasn't apparent in your post if you were the only one who did on that outing or if your friends ate some, too).

 

Were there really coyotes around?

 

Who's to know?

[Myc]

The other two friends were "only" drinking beer as was our usual. 'Cause beer and firearms go hand-in-hand ..... right?

 

In the late afternoon as the sun was waning for the day, I had this sudden, uncontrollable urge to trip. LSD and mushrooms are not readily available in Bumfuck Egypt - where I lived at the time. I learned about the plant because a friend of mine was growing one in his backyard and he told me about the hallucinogenic properties while he himself was not aware of the potential dangers.

It just so happened that I stumbled upon this memorable looking (and smelling) plant with its unique thorny pods that very afternoon. One of my friends saw me picking a dried thorn apple and came to investigate. I told him what I knew about the plant ..... and then he told me what he knew and tried to discourage me from eating the seeds. I ignored his story of caution and proceeded to consume roughly two level teaspoons worth of the tiny black seeds.

I drank beer for another hour or so and when the sun set.......that's when things started to get weird. My vision was very clear. I could see exceedingly well by the weak moonlight and had no problems navigating in the "dark". The wold had a clarity to it which was weird - I kept thinking "we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto". I didn't realize that I was "smoking" without actually lighting cigarettes by this point and my friends were casting me some odd, sidelong glances - as if I had said something really off-color or farted silently. Shortly after, I forgot all about my real-life companions as my hallucinatory companions began to strike up conversations which were much more interesting. It was as if my flesh and blood buddies weren't even present (and we were riding in a single-cab pickup - shoulder to shoulder).

The rest is really just a mix of my aggravated real-life friends trying to compete for attention with the hallucinations. And they were growing angrier by the encounter as I became increasingly more disconnected and harder to "bring back to reality" as the trip wore on. It's a blind wonder they didn't just drive off and abandon me out there.

The next day I was still altered but more rational. Those friends told me that if I chose to eat those seeds again that I had better not do it around them as they were not going to take care of me. That was the last time for me but then I'm not sure you have to eat them more than once ........

[Baphom3t]

@Myc, you are more than correct about doing it more than once.
Once is definitely enough, and more likely more than most people would be looking or asking for. I'm still not the same, I'll never be the same after my experience with datura. To this day I still have problems with what I see and do in everyday life and if it is actually real.

[Norman]

 
 
One thing I find interesting about the different "places" that various molecules seem to take us to is that they all correspond to "places" that exist in the conception of the spirit world that many if not most traditions that involve direct experience contain in their teachings.
 

 
Pain and fear are important and useful tools that we evolved because we need them to help us navigate reality by warning us of things or places to avoid. So when a drug terrifies with no corresponding insight or benefit, causes damage to our mind, body, or spirit, (or kills us outright) then IMO the reality it reveals might be as real as any but it's one I do whatever it takes to avoid.

Yes that’s what I’m talking about - it’s all the same place. I’ll see some piece of ancient religious art and it will be the same place I was last night with a head full of mushrooms. Tropanes seem to have the same similarity of experience but it’s an experience of somewhere different than that of tryptamines. Actually salvinorin ketamine and tryptamines have all landed me in that same space despite their differences. Same world different continents I guess. The tropanes are another world altogether and I wonder if it’s a separate independently existing reality that we access with the chemical - as I believe the tryptamine reality is - or just psychosis land due to a malfunctioning brain?

On my first ayahuasca trip I met several non material entities who were all thrilled to interact with a flesh and blood creature. They were all in a rush to show me things and take me places - like children wanting to play with a new puppy. When things would get a little too heavy to handle they’d back off and give me a shot of pure bliss to calm me down. They had no concept of fear and pain because they had never had a physical body that they needed to protect. I wonder if there is a fear and pain connection to the different realities revealed by substances that are actually physically harmful versus those that are mostly benign?

[TVCasualty]

Those are the kinds of questions that are fascinating to ask but probably not a good idea to actually try to answer; "Yes, it turns out that it's just psychosis resulting from brain damage! Now please excuse me while go try to deal with my brain damage-induced psychosis..."

 

Maybe the danger is not in the place itself but rather in how we choose to get to it? Is the ingestion of a molecule the same as a statement of Intent? I suspect so.

 

Or perhaps if consciousness is fundamental to reality (as opposed to matter and energy) then the various tryptamine or tropane (etc.) molecules might represent conscious spiritual entities with different corresponding intentions towards us. If that's the case then I guess I must have pissed off Mr. or Mrs. DMT pretty bad at some point, lol.

 

 

I generally think of psychedelic molecules as different lenses to see the world through, so it's all part of the same world just like how my room is filled with frequencies of light I can't see without an exceptional means of doing so (such as a thermal imager). When we put down our psychedelic imager then the world looks like it usually does through our familiar serotonin lenses.

 

All of this is probably wrong, of course.

 

 

When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are

you will keep saying again and again,

'This is certainly not like we thought it was!'

 

-Rumi, This Longing (trans. by Coleman Barks)