Thanks for posting that oobycoo. interesting viewing...before one sets out to harvest poppies, with a fairly varied selection of intoxicants within his veins:D

Although there are one or two points I would argue with there, one of them being that san pedro has the highest mescaline content of any cactus...that is shite, utter shite. Both peruvian torch (T.peruvianus) and peyote have higher contents of that alkaloid, peyote having by far the larger (and very likely more varied) content.

The other being that with traditional use, both addictiveness and safety are always increased. I would agree on the former point, but on the latter? your fucking kidding me. just look at those shamen, who use Daturas, or the other nightshades in their practises. There is a hair-thin line there between the dose one would take for shamanic purposes, and that which can, and will kill the user.

Or perhaps some of the more toxic, lesser known herbal entheogens out there.....I would be very surprised if for instance, kwashi were not much safer (if there can be a safe use, I don't know quite what the active constituents of the bulb are but I strongly suspect the raw plant product is quite toxic, and the mode of administration traditionally used, by rubbing the cut bulb onto cuts hacked into the head...there has to be something better than THAT with modern scientific technique, heck, not even that modern, just simple extraction of alkaloids, glycosides, saponins, terpenoids, whatever is responsible for kwashi's psychotropic properties)

I think it was good quality info, although it didn't go deeper into most of them.

I would have been interested to learn more about the traditional uses of yopo and parika/epena/yakee. I grew some trees, of the variety that supply the former drug actually. That was when I got busted, and they died after the person appointed by agreement to tend them did not. I wouldn't have got seed from them to use for quite some years, but under my loving care, they had shot up to maybe 3-4 feet tall, in my bedroom, facing the window, on the side that catches all the sun, real beauties they were, absolutely stunning plants. One of them for some reason grew in a ring shape and then upwards, so possibly would have remained forever a bonsai, which would have been really neat, and I very much doubt thats reproducible under any circumstances of artifice.

Lost my peruvian torch cactus, and my Daturas too

Not sure of the Datura species, but I think D.metel, or possibly D.stramonium, they were a gift, of sorts, given in trade, along with some tobacco seed. I still have more seed though I need to plant. Have some khat seed, and if I can get it to bloody germinate, belladonna. Seeds for that are a couple of years old, after having found a well established belladonna bush growing on a canal towpath in full fruit. I have someone who wants fresh seed though, so its a good excuse to go down there, if I can find it, and look for more. Can't remember where, only that it was very far along the way to the nearest city, a long, long walk. Still, its good excersise, its people free, and at least its...sort of....at least not TOO far removed from nature. In a way.

Can go ergot hunting, check the huge mass of hop vines for cones (I fancy making myself some homecrafted essential oil from them) and oh boy, oh boy, its blackberry season. That, to me, means 'pie' and also means 'tsathoggua stuffs his face'
Nice wherever they come from, but for quality and taste, a blackberry pie made from blackberries one spends several hours picking oneself, complete with the virulent maledictions leveled at the multiple lacerations and embedded thorns one has to remove from one's tender flesh, eaten as soon as a slice has been cut from it, after taking straight out of the oven when done baking, served with fresh double cream....slice? make that the second, third, fourth and fifth pies!

Wouldn't do to accidentally get a few ergot mixed in there though, that could turn nasty, at least if the prolonged baking didn't denature the ergolines, although given the fact that medieval peasants got shafted by their local knights and left with the shitty, ergot-laden wheat to make their bread with, and the notorious results thereof, I am inclined to think biting into an ergot-laden pie wouldn't be the best plan.

I was under the impression that Tatula was a species in its own right...or is this not correct, or has the taxonomy changed?

I am more used to fungal taxonomy...and oh boy, oh boy, you should see how fucking chaotic it is, and how fast it twists, and spins, and twines and twirls (sort of like me, in that respect, but of course autie is, as autie does )

Rant? what do you mean? that wasn't a rant, that was just me remarking on some useless bastard, and my getting locked up, coming together to mean the death of my yopo plants. I loved those plants a great deal, bought some seed from some vendor or other, carefully, using a scalpel, sliced around the edges, avoiding the embryo, and cut the hard seed coat from the seeds, put them on tissue semi-sterilized with boiling water, left to cool to germinate, then planted them once they had grown a proper inch or so of root and a shoot.

Nurtured them until they were three feet high, getting well on the way to four in some cases. Yes, that really fucked  me off. But my post, that was most certainly not a rant. You would know it if I ranted. Believe you me, oobycoo, you would know if I ranted

I was absolutely GUTTED me, losing those. Wasn't anywhere nearly as bothered about losing my peruvian torch, it was very young, and small, only grown an inch or so (and that inch and a bit was a mere 1.5cm ish wide), so those can be replaced easily, as can Datura, the wormwood, or other plants I had. But one cannot just conjure up a near four foot tree native to the amazon basin with a click of the fingers and a wave of a 20 quid note.

And even so, it would not be the same, as having the same plants that you worked like a dog to nurture, and see them day by day shooting up and growing stronger. It might seem odd, they are just plants, but that really hurt when it happened, really stung me, getting out, coming back wanting to see how my plants were doing now I was free again, one of the things, apart from having to fight to keep my food and baccy (I quit smoking cigarettes actually thanks to the help of AMT just a week or so ago, and haven't smoked a single fag since), having to fight in general just to avoid getting the shit kicked out of me, having to poison a guy intent on doing me some serious grivous bodily harm, having to eat shit food, and having to share the company of a bunch of filthy, gutter scum, with no intellect, and no real availability of things worth reading and learning from. Fucking fantasy novels and the like....no scientific textbooks, nothing on particle physics, christ, and one of the worst things...not a stray patch of actual real ground to grow even an 'innocent' non psychoactive plant, , all cast iron, concrete, and steel. The only plants toady ever got hold of, or even SAW, were th apples and oranges Tsathoggua ripped to pieces and did one of the two lone excersises of his scientific abilities, one of them the ancient of fermentation of simple sugars to C2H5OH, and the second, the deployment of a mixture of nicotine, unknown chlorate salt and jam, to neutralise the former mentioned thug's potential to do Toady the aforementioned grevious bodily harm. He was really PISSED after he tried thumping the ol' amorphous slithering amphibian god, only to have a huge chunk ripped out of his arm, leaving some teeth-shaped markings behind. Hospital wing-grade injuries heaped on the fuckwit's head in pay for the temerity to defile his dignity and personal space with a chokehold.


That sort of shite for 8 months, when one KNOWS one did nothing wrong, and one at the time is not even convicted, coming out, knowing someone agreed to keep your much loved plants safe, only to find grey-brown sticks, with their fine leaflets hanging down dismally, falling to dust at a touch....that is like a suckerpunch in the stellate ganglion.


Tell you one thing though....he never again had the chance to raise a single finger to the Toad God. He had to inject the tinest scraps of soil he could find from deep down, into jam packets, seal the tiny hole, wait for them to balloon with gas, indicative of anaerobic fermentation, vent them so as to look normal, then spike each with a quantity of extracted nicotine from tobacco...by no means pure, very, very impure, and recrystallised potassium or sodium chlorate from match heads (probably potassium given its greater safety over sodium chlorate or perchlorate). Smuggled into this arsehole's pad, and switched, by a helpful somebody, as close to a friend as toady would tolerate in there, decent enough guy at any rate, out with the fresh jam for scumsucker's morning breakfast toast and cereal...in with the thyroid-fucking, nicotine-spiked, anarobe lucky fucking dip!

Doesn't matter where you are...brains win over brawn. Toady isn't a hardcase, but he knows how to fight, not much use though if one gets taken out by surprise while eating, by some big fucking ox of a cunt. LOL, toady told him, after biting a great slice out of him 'welcome to HIV, motherfucker'

Oh damn, if you could only SEE the look on his face!

I bought a cactus yesterday, sadly it seems to contain no active alkaloids (Red flowered Trichocereus grandiflorus), but for some reason I get happy every time I look at it.

I think I might need professional help.

I understand the guy killed your plants, but do you really feel he deserved to be poisoned?  That's a little much IMO.

Ohhhh, ok well then that's totally understandable.  I misunderstood you sorry, I thought you poisoned the plant babysitter... not the dude in the klink.