Teens Turn Legal Plant Into Dangerous Drug

wlky ^ | 11-14-03

[Slicksadick]

Nasty stuff that loco weed

[Experiment 6-2-6]

"Basically, this is just a poison," he said. "It cooks your brains sometimes."

Brains? You means I has gots more than one?

[tallhappy]

This is totally legal but very nasty. The Castaneda garbage is still in print and still influences young people to do stupid things.

[spunkets]

" A German teenager who was reportedly high on the drug recently mutilated himself by cutting off his penis and his tongue."

Locoweed. LOL.

[Billthedrill]

Used to read about hard-up hippies smoking Jimson weed now and then way back when...fact is, Mother Nature will kill the stupid. It's her job.

[Slicksadick]

There was a whole thread on that story. LOL

[martin_fierro]

Jimsonweed

There was a thread on here a few months ago about some Berkeley, CA teens using this stuff at Peoples Park. I'll try to find it.

Here's another similar thread

[buffyt]

In the original article about the German teen who mutiliated himself after getting high on the drug, they said he will be facing many years of therapy. I hope that story gets out to young dumb would-be users. This stuff isn't just pot. This stuff is deadly.

[leadpencil1]

This is what I turned up searching for an Image of Jimsonweed.

[buffyt]

It is pretty. The bloom looks a lot like a Petunia. The plant leaves and stem look like plants I have seen growing on the dunes along the Texas Gulf Coast.

[martin_fierro]

Student cuts off penis and tongue after drinking hallucinogenic tea

[kegler4]

A new drug craze? I knew guys who tried this in college 30 years ago. They got really, really ill. And it grows all around here in the wild.

[Slicksadick]

One of the unique aspects of this drug is its ability to create visions that the user finds IMPOSSIBLE to seperate from reality. It makes for some, an extremely bad time.

[buffyt]

Datura: Angel's Trumpet or Devil's Apple?

p.tnt2 {float: right; width : 275px; padding:1em;} Author: Audrey Stallsmith
Published on: August 1, 2002

Related Subject(s): Not Indexed

But whom do you blame for the will in you
That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed
Jimpson, dandelion or mullen
And which can never use any soil or air
So as to make you jessamine or wisteria?
from "Calvin Campbell" by Edgar Lee Masters

Masters would probably be surprised to learn that the once lowly "Jimpson" (or Jimsonweed) has been transformed into a garden flower as exotic and sweet-scented as jessamine and wisteria. Datura and its twin, brugmansia, were all the rage on garden forums a couple years back. Fads don't last long, however, and the current big thing seems to be unusual morning glories.

Still, datura boasts some of the largest and showiest blooms available on an easy-to-grow annual. Those trumpet-shaped flowers open in the evening to attract moths, and usually remain fresh into the following morning--until the day heats up. I've grown several varieties, and think the prettiest is the double purple, sometimes known as Blackcurrant Swirl. Datura discolor, a single white type with a purple center, is also striking.

The recent popularity of the daturas has sparked a running debate about the differences between them and the brugmansias. If what I've learned is correct, daturas are all annuals or short-lived perennials with no woody growth. Their round, spiny seedpods burst open when ripe, and their blooms face upwards. Brugmansias, on the other hand, grow into woody perennial shrubs or trees in tropical climes. Their blooms dangle downwards, and their longer, narrower, smooth seedpods must be broken open. The "brugs" may all be descendants of the South American tree datura known as arborea.

Daturas tend to have white, purple, or yellow flowers. The brugmansias steer clear of purple, but also run to several shades of orange and pink--even two reds (sanguinea and one of the suaveolens). Although rumors persist that there was once a red datura, it is possible that the plant indicated was really a brug.

Daturas and brugmansias seem to be similar in all other aspects. Both contain the same poisons as belladonna, another member of the solanum family. Those toxins include hyoscyamine, scopolamine (the so-called "truth serum"), and atropine.

The name derives from the Hindu "Dhatura," which was applied to the native type in India--fastuosa, AKA tatorea. Although most other daturas seem to have originated in the Americas, stramonium (the infamous Jimsonweed) is also native to parts of Europe and ferox to China. Stramonium combines the Greek strychnos ("nightshade") and manikos ("mad"). Other nicknames for datura include thorn-apple, devil's apple, devil's trumpet, angel's trumpet, stinkweed, green dragon, apple of Peru, and toloache (the latter probably referring only to datura innoxia).

Datura has crazing and and deadly effects on both livestock and humans. Some believe it to be the Greek hippomanes that drove horses mad. And goats who have consumed it will supposedly try to walk on their hind legs like men. Fortunately, most animals don't like the smell or taste of the foliage, and will avoid the plant unless they have nothing else to eat. Humans are not always that sensible.

The nickname Jimsonweed is supposed to be a corruption of Jamestown weed. Some British soldiers, sent to crush the 1676 Bacon rebellion in the colony, consumed the plant and "turned natural fools upon it." Sources differ as to whether they ate datura as a cooked green, as a spice, or ground the seeds into flour. But the fact that their ill-advised meal turned the men into gibbering idiots for eleven days testifies to the potency of the poison.

At least, the soldiers seem to have consumed the plant out of ignorance. Throughout history, other imprudent persons have taken it deliberately. Datura was frequently used by pagan priests to induce visions. (Frankly, I would have doubts about any god who requires mind-altering chemicals to guide his people!)

Thorn-apple is also reportedly one of the drugs that gave hallucinating witches the impression they could fly. The Thugs of India drugged their victims with datura fastuosa, and new mothers there poisoned unwanted female babies with it. (You can see why "devil" frequently appears in the plant's nicknames.) The whirling dervishes also "fueled" themselves with the plant.

Although sufferers of spasmodic conditions such as asthma and whooping cough once smoked datura to relieve their symptoms, that risky use was banned in the sixties. The plant was also sometimes an ingredient in narcotic ointments for inflammations such as rheumatism, neuralgia, abscesses,and burns.

I am alarmed to note--from a recent episode of C.S.I. and from several web sites I've come across--that datura is regaining popularity as a recreational drug. Since this is one extremely toxic plant, I have to conclude that those rash enough to consume it must be out of their minds-- even before they take it! They certainly will be after. If I am remembering correctly, the young user in the TV show went temporarily insane and killed his best friend. That was fiction, but I'm very much afraid that it could easily become fact.

Datura's combination of beauty and danger caused it to stand for "deceitful charms" in the Language of Flowers. But, as I have frequently pointed out in my articles, plants are not responsible for the foolishness of some humans. Just as the devil was once an angel, all evil is a perversion of something good. Whether datura will be angel or devil to you depends on whether you crave its beauty or its bane.

 

[dubyagee]

Knew a guy in school that was not much of a partier, and pretty much had his act together. After graduation he apparently had a stupid moment and did this stuff. He's never been the same. I couldn't believe it when I saw him again. He sits for hours and doesn't say a word, when he does it's just that, a word. From what I hear, he suffered a complete mental break down. Close to twenty years later and he's never improved. 8 * (

[Wild Irish Rogue]

" One of the unique aspects of this drug is its ability to create visions that the user finds IMPOSSIBLE to seperate from reality "

Now we know what the Democrats have been drinking ! Was this the tea that Wilson was sipping in Niger?

[bk1000]

Thank God they weren't smoking pot!

[Blue Screen of Death]

It has been discovered that the species of crabgrass growing in my back yard causes hallucinations. I sure hope no one opens the unlocked gate beside my house and steals the crabgrass out of my yard.

[Lee Heggy]

Ain't nothing new about this stuff. The blooms open at night and attract big nightfeeding moths. We used to call them 'moon flowers'. Grew all over the place. Hogs wouldn't eat the plant and I alway's figured that if a pig won't touch it then neither would I.