![]() The dose is very difficult to get right – different parts of the plants contain widely different concentrations of active ingredients, and even a single specimen’s chemistry varies with the season and time of day. On very rare occasions, an experience will fall between these two extremes – neither overwhelming nor dull, with sensations of flight and bizarre hyper-realistic waking dreams. At such low doses, the user tends to conclude that the nightshades are over-hyped. Overall it’s not unpleasant, they report, but nothing special either. They describe the high as “woozy,” “relaxed,” a bit like drunkenness, but “more lucid.” Visual effects are limited to slight blurriness. Other users, erring on the side of caution, take a small dose and experience minor effects. Those who take enough to enter a genuine delirium – but, crucially, not enough to paralyze or kill themselves – frequently describe the experience as hellish, terrifying, and demonic. Just witnessing someone’s delirious episode is enough to put many people off these plants permanently.ĭescriptions of the experience tend to fall into two categories. Among those brave enough to give them a try, few choose to repeat the ordeal, and many emphatically warn against it. Understandably, the nightshades are among the least popular recreational substances. Witch feeding her familiars with blood, 1579 By morning, you’ve forgotten what transpired. The demonic and threating visions pursue the dreamer until the drug wears off hours later. The nightshades offer more of a Nightmare on Elm Street: you’re already awake, and falling asleep offers no escape. With a typical nightmare, you can wake up and realize it wasn’t real. It’s often described as a waking nightmare, where fact and fiction intermingle in surreal and utterly convincing ways.Ĭombine that with extreme dry mouth, dizziness, sexual arousal, and agitation, and you have a recipe for a terrible evening. Because of the user’s bewildered state, even the most preposterous visions are accepted as real. ![]() The main problem with delirium is the inability to tell hallucinations from reality. ![]() Deliriants produce visions in high doses but they also cause – you guessed it – delirium. Though undoubtedly hallucinogenic, the nightshades vary so widely from classical psychedelics like peyote and psilocybin mushrooms that they’ve earned the more sinister moniker of deliriants. The risk of poisoning has been recognized for centuries in a botany text published in 1597, herbalist John Gerarde said of nightshade: “It causeth sleep, troubleth the mind, bringeth madness, if a few of the berries be inwardly taken.” The tropanes boast a wide variety of legitimate medical uses, ranging from pupil dilation to treating motion sickness, but at higher doses their mental and physical effects are almost universally described as unpleasant.īecause of the high toxicity of these compounds – especially atropine, which is most plentiful in belladonna – accidental overdose is all too easy and extremely dangerous. Mandrake, henbane, and belladonna all contain tropane alkaloids – a group of chemicals including atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine which cause a variety of strange effects on humans and animals. Harry Potter fans will recall the ugly critters from the wizard’s Herbology class, where students had to wear soundproof earmuffs to avoid injury. An old legend, often perpetuated in herbal texts through the centuries, insists that mandrakes scream when pulled up from the earth, and that their cries are fatal to all within earshot. The roots twist in a somewhat humanoid fashion, resembling misshapen dolls with spindly limbs. Mandrake’s appearance is perhaps strangest of all. Its epithet of “deadly” is well deserved – every part of the plant is poisonous, and as few as five of its deceptively sweet berries can kill an adult. The overall impression is of a jaundiced, bloodshot eye.ĭeadly nightshade, or belladonna, offers seductively dark, shiny berries alongside its star-shaped purple flowers. ![]() Each flower sports a dark, pupil-like center surrounded by pale yellow petals crisscrossed by networks of purple veins. The seedpods of black henbane resemble a jaw full of jagged teeth protruding from a thick and hairy stalk. Their appearance, though darkly alluring, does little to mitigate their reputation as devil’s plants. The best-known witches’ potion is the infamous “flying ointment.” Applied to the skin, the ointment supposedly enabled witches to fly through the night to attend the Black Sabbath and consort with the Devil himself.
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