Curated playlist
Entheogens
- Cannabis (drug)Uruguay became the first country in the modern era to legalize recreational cannabis in December 2013.
- LSDThe CIA bought the entire world supply of LSD for $240,000. It then sent the drug to hospitals and prisons.
- CannabisA shaman in northwest China was buried with 789 grams of cannabis. Researchers later confirmed it still held THC.
- TobaccoChina approved the first commercial GM crop in 1993, and it was tobacco.
- PsilocybinPsilocybin is a compound found in more than 200 species of mushrooms, and its safety record is oddly lopsided. Only two deaths from overdosing on hallucinogenic mushrooms alone have ever been reported in the scientific literature. Even…
- Hyoscyamus nigerHenbane's medieval name meant roughly "thing that causes death", yet people sought it out.
- DimethyltryptamineDimethyltryptamine, better known as DMT, picked up a nickname in 1960s America: the "businessman's trip." The label stuck because of speed. A user could reach the full depth of a psychedelic experience in far less time than LSD or…
- Papaver somniferumPapaver somniferum, known as the opium poppy or breadseed poppy, is the one plant that supplies both morphine and the seeds that decorate baked goods. In 1987, agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration raided Thomas Jefferson's…
- Atropa bella-donnaAtropa bella-donna, better known as deadly nightshade, put one adult woman into severe poisoning in 2009 after she mistook its berries for blueberries. She ate six. Doctors documented the result as a severe anticholinergic syndrome, a…
- CocaCoca is a shrub native to western South America, and one of the oldest clues to its history was found in the floors of ancient houses in Peru's Nanchoc Valley. Archaeologists recovered coca leaves there together with calcite, which shows…
- Amanita muscariaBefore 1256, Albertus Magnus wrote that powdering Amanita muscaria in milk kills flies.
- KhatKhat is a shrub from the highlands of eastern Africa, and one daily bag of its leaves takes an estimated 500 litres of water to grow. Farmers sell the fresh leaves to be chewed, and millions of people treat them as a daily ritual. The…
- MeadMead, a drink made by fermenting honey with water, has a founding legend in Norse mythology. In that story, the Mead of Poetry was crafted from the blood of Kvasir. Anyone who drank it became a poet or a scholar. Real mead is humbler,…