FAMILY :: SOLANACEAE
Daturas are listed for reference only.
Thorn apple, Toloache, Devil’s Trumpet, Datura…

“… in a shady, damp, secret place, the sacred datura, moon flower, moonlily, thornapple blooms in the night, soft white trumpet shaped flowers that open only in darkness and close with the coming of the heat. The datura is sacred (to certain cultists) because of its content of atropine, a powerful narcotic of an alkaloid group capable of inducing visual hallucinations, as the Indians discovered long before the psychedelic craze began. How they could have made such a discovery without poisoning themselves to death nobody knows; but then nobody knows how so-called primitive man made his many other discoveries. We must concede that science is nothing new, that research, empirical logic, the courage to experiment are as old as humanity.”
— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

NOTE: I have been criticized by many people for selling such a ‘dangerous’ family of plants. I have read and heard of many accounts of the use of these plants by those seeking inebriation, but nothing substitutes for first-hand experience, so I had to try for myself a combination of datura and brugmansia, hoping to fly or to see gods or to understand the danger others were warning me about.

Making a tea of 3 datura leaves and some seeds and 2 large brugmansia leaves and one brugmansia flower, I let it brew for a while and drank it over a period of a couple of hours.

I didn’t see god. Didn’t hallucinate in a traditional sense. I probably would not have passed a sobriety test; my walk was very unsteady, my legs and arms seemingly dissociated from my body (or mind), but this wasn’t a “high.”

Sometimes when I dream, I have to do a check to see if I am dreaming or awake. With these plants, I was awake, but had to do reality checks to see if I was dreaming. Had to piss a lot. My throat became so dry that I knew what it would be like to die of thirst in the desert.

But the scariest part of this trip was that I stopped breathing automatically and had to physically make myself breathe with my diaphragm. This condition lasted all night. There was no hangover. Can’t say I recommend using these plants for use in this manner.

Christian Rätsch (an author and researcher that I have personally met and consider to be a very realistic scientist) has said “A mild dosage produces medicinal and healing effects, a moderate dosage produces aphrodisiac effects, and high dosages are used for shamanic purposes.” The problem with this description is determining dosage which is often influenced by climate and growing conditions.

Bernardino de Sahagún, in around 1569, called attention to Datura in the following words: “It is administered in potions in order to cause harm to those who are objects of hatred. Those who eat it have visions of fearful things. Magicians or those who wish to harm someone administer it in food or drink. This herb is medicinal and its seed is used as a remedy for gout, ground up and applied to the part affected.”

The chemicals in Datura and Brugmansia, scopolamine and atropine, are used in commercial cough syrups.

This family of plants has a diverse and strange history.
 
#datura #thornapple #medicinalnightshades
 
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