Please Help: Atropa Belladonna

[Madhatter4]

I would advise you not to fuck around with Deadly Nightshade but if you do............... Record the whole thing and post it on YOUTUBE, I need a good laugh

 

[JJ-180]

A while back you could get a supposed "herbal" anti asthma mixture that had a substantial amount of Datura in it.I had a conversation with a train conductor who wasn't there and spent an afternoon trying to answer the telephones ringing all over the beach.I got off lightly I think. I have a large Bulgarian(?) Mandrake (scopola carniolica)in my back garden,and no desire to go anywhere near these alkaloids again.

 

[bloodshed344]

I don't think that's biased at all. I've read the reports for these types of plants on erowid several times. Granted I haven't re-read them in the last few years but I don't recall a single positive experience, nor do I know of any positive experiences here on Bluelight.

I was pretty specific with the caveat that I haven't done belladonna or datura, and so I couldn't definitively say from firsthand experience how negative or positive it could be. There's a great preponderance of evidence that the vast majority of people not only fail to enjoy deleriants in any way, but further wish they could take it back due to one variety or another of trouble they got into / harm they caused themselves or somebody else.

I'd happily read any positive reports you know of if you could kindly direct me there, or suggest a google search etc. I believe that if one or two reports that are positive indeed exist (I'm *not* calling you a liar, I'm just speaking in hypothetical terms here since I have yet to see such reports in person) they would still fail to outweigh the overwhelmingly larger number of negative reports. I'm totally open to reexamining the evidence though, and I'd be interested to read any positive reports simply because I haven't read any before.

I apologize if that post came across as biased. I think I weighed the evidence fairly, and I specifically put in caveats about a lack of firsthand experience, and a form of 'YMMV', to preempt the idea that there was bias there. I don't dispute that I have a negative view of deleriants and will warn people away from them, but considering how many people have had seriously bad experiences do you really think such an opinion is unwise? I guess I see it as heeding all due caution, and caution would be advised with these plants I think, to a much greater degree than most other types of drugs.

I'm sure I read multiple extremely strong, positive experiences but I do not feel like finding them as that is a lot of monotonous work because I came upon them by accident in the first place. However let me make one point, if someone tries the substance in low doses and gets familiar with the effects-dose range then it becomes much much safer. I'm only saying that I believe this plant can be used positively by the right people, and I believe those people will find it anyway.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

Mandrake is Mandragora, not Scopolia, although the latter does contain a very large quantity of scopolamine and hyoscyamine.

As for belladonna....where should you start? the obvious answer, is you probably shouldn't. Its extremely toxic.

It IS useful though, in the tiny doses mentioned, I use it to treat nausea, to reduce sweating in excessive heat, or for GI cramps and it works really well. Too much though WILL fuck you up and not in a good way. In a train-wreck-and-pigs type way. Never done it, but read all over, or on erowid. Antimuscarinic toxicity ain't a pretty sight.

Its a poisoning that causes (often truly horrifying) hallucinations, amnesia, and psychotic delirium, rather than anything pleasant, with a ton of peripheral symptoms.

Do not use the root, for any reason, it is extremely toxic, containing apoatropine, which is more toxic than most of the belladonna alkaloids, iirc, quite significantly so.

 

[Deinonychus]

I'm sure I read multiple extremely strong, positive experiences but I do not feel like finding them as that is a lot of monotonous work because I came upon them by accident in the first place. However let me make one point, if someone tries the substance in low doses and gets familiar with the effects-dose range then it becomes much much safer. I'm only saying that I believe this plant can be used positively by the right people, and I believe those people will find it anyway.

Okay, that's cool dude, I'll take your word for it about positive reports as you don't post nonsense from what I have seen. I don't doubt that these compounds can be used medicinally, or perhaps even recreationally. My opinion remains that plant sources aren't the best idea if somebody with the requisite amount of caution wishes to experiment with deleriants. Sure it would be harder to find pure alkaloids as medicinal preparations, but a middle ground position of using a very diluted 'tea' so as to homogenize the differences in dose between leaves is the minimum safe precaution I think for low-dose experimentation if somebody wants to go there.

I'm not trying to knock your own opinion though, that wasn't the point, that's why I make a point to say such and such is opinion instead of trying to pass it off as absolute truth. As I said, reliably there will be somebody in every deleriants thread that says you can use them recreationally. The point being not that whoever takes that position, yourself in this case, is a wackjob, but the opposite, that it happens in pretty much every deleriants thread I've seen so its likely not a fluke of a person simply getting lucky. I don't see advocating caution with a quite-potentially lethal plant to be an adversarial position, the dose-response curve is steep as can be, and the therapeutic ratio of effective dose to harmful/lethal dose makes it so that there's little room for error. Add in the variation in levels of alkaloids even within one plant and you have a dangerous thing that I would not recommend.

But that doesn't invalidate or attempt to invalidate your experience. Let me put it this way: I'm on heroin, all day every day. I would warn somebody off of using it just as strongly, but for different reasons (ie addictive potential not acute harm, etc). That doesn't make doing heroin or using deleriants recreationally wrong at all, just risky as all hell. I would rather turn away people that might enjoy either of these things by accident than risk making either one look any less dangerous than it really is. But that's not a value judgement, either on the drugs or their users.

 

[JJ-180]

Yeah, the classic mandrake is Mandragora officianalis, mine's a Bulgarian Mandrake. Early part of last century they used to use it in medicine ( see Margaret Grieve's book) as it had a far more predictable alkaloid content than most of the tropane-plants. If I had to name a personal favourite of these plants I'd go with Henbane.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

I like belladonna myself. It just has that mysterious, dark kind of aura around it. Speaks its nature in its appearance. Very, very beautiful plant.

I just managed to get hold of some of the var.alba white flowering strain myself. Can't wait to get it growing. Any tips? I've had no luck with regular belladonna. Tis a right fucker to get to germinate.


Hyoscyamus, they are rank, and sinister looking lil fuckers. Although neat in their own way.

Do you have a photo of the scopolia? Grieve's 'a modern herbal' ? old school that one is . My copy is somewhat dog-eared though, missing the covers and a few of the front pages, from having been read, read, studied and re-read and re-studied cover to cover repeatedly over the years.

 

[JJ-180]

"Grieve's 'a modern herbal' ? old school that one is . My copy is somewhat dog-eared though, missing the covers and a few of the front pages, from having been read, read, studied and re-read and re-studied cover to cover repeatedly over the years."

That's the one. Sounds like your copy's pretty much identical to mine.

 

[Morphling]

You have to do soak the seeds, followed by stratification and acid scarification. Takes bout a month in the fridge. Yeah it's a pain.