Kpt._Rob said:
Once you got it down though, and dealt with the nausea, there was a sense of clarity that came with it which I haven't experienced anywhere else. Still, if you can legally get the live plant over there, it might be worth having a mother plant from which you could grow buds. Here in its native homeland the peyote cactus borders on extinction because unlike the native americans, kids who are looking for a trip will uproot the mother plant instead of just taking the buds, meaning that it can't reproduce.
Aye, but you could always at least try and graft it or otherwise keep live specimen around if you were so inclined. Knowledge is king, and keeping live cacti is something mindblowingly beautiful, psychonautic braintrip or not.
Also, Salvia in its natural form is potent but it doesn't grow naturally at the 100x or whatever insane strengths I've seen it sold as. Salvia in its natural form consists of leaves, and you enjoy it as a tea or by munching on the (bitter) leaves. You can indeed smoke it, but I think that requires a healthy dose of knowledge and respect and shouldn't be done alone.
I think it's important to acknowledge that the Salvia Divinorum plant seems extinct in nature, if it ever did grow there. All I know is the plants around here rely on humans to tend and look after them, and the only way to give one to your friends and loved ones is to clone it.
And yes, I've smoked datura stramonium seeds and lived to tell the tale. See, I did not smoke those seeds for the hell and trip and fun of it, I smoked them because the alternatives were a short and/or sucky life, so my becoming friends with plants went something like this:
It wasn't like I had much choice, really, as the doctors had pretty much given up on failing lungs me. I had asthma, constant lack of oxygen, cough and hack attacks until I was lying on the floor in my own vomit on an almost daily basis, I woke in the middle of the night with blue lips crawling to the toilet and I had blood flowing from both nose and mouth as if someone forgot to fix the tap.
And oh, did I mention the allergies I developed? I was pretty much allergic to everything, so life wasn't exactly sweet. The allergy test at some local expert doctor turned my whole arm into something from Akira and I was soon surrounded by a dozen friendly folks in white who were eager to take pictures, ask me questions and document my case while I was rather busy with agony and getting some air into my blood, and keeping some of my blood inside me, as I heard about the concept of blood being vital and of more use inside our blood vessels than on the floor, where it did little more than add that metallic smell to the floral bouquet of expensive room aroma mixed with Sterillium.
Smoking datura seeds was suggested to me by a shaman-kind-of-guy that also happened to have studied medicine, as in PhD.
So, since replacement lungs were not an option back then, I decided to give it a go, and I smoked datura stramonium seeds about twice a week, mixed not with tobacco but pure homegrown weed to ease the pain I got from frickin' breathing alone. There was no hallucinogenic effect whatsoever.
Miracle cure was acknowledged by the doctors and I could skip all the inhalables, injectables, pills and powders and I really wouldn't want to go back.
Your very intellectual approach is good and acknowledged, but my aim was to seek a cure for my crap lungs that did not consist of opting out to try my luck with reincarnation. Before I did it, I tried everything else, and research before the internet and Erowid meant buying books and going down to the local library, putting on gloves and fingering tomes some centuries old. Also, it made me travel a bit, but that was less enjoyable before I got the ability to breathe properly back.
Did you know datura leaves were rolled up and stuffed into horses bottoms so that even the most sickly and anaemic mare could be sold as a hot stallion back in the Medieval days? Sure enough the animals tended to die soon after, but it shows that datura was and is a potent cocktail of substances, some of which we've meanwhile figured out.
Of the 100+ alkaloids in the plants, we're almost all friends with a chosen few amongst them. Scopolamine might have been in that travel sickness inhibitor, Hyoscyamine might have been given to that relative with Parkinson's disease and Atropine dilates your pupils into cute uselessness, but makes your ophthalmologists job so much easier.
Yes, we did explore the 'other' uses of datura stramonium after my successful therapy and being reborn into a healthier self, but, again, we made sure we knew what to do, how to do it and what to expect. Some of the recipes were centuries old (and worked like a charm), some others came from Shulgin and friends. We also made sure we had emergency antagonists around, and we always had one dedicated guide/guardian around to keep the others from trying to fly or eating the cat or wearing the dog as a hat. It was well worth it.
Plus, for twenty years and counting, all our gardens feature various datura plants, henbane and "deadly" nightshade, which are all marvelous plants.
Also, we learned to respect flies, as datura stramonium develops a very specific smell that does not attract bees and butterflies, but flies. It's a bit of a shock at first, but it eventually all comes together right before it gets really cool.
