"newsb" wrote in message
...
In article , Nick Maclaren
writes

In article ,
"Des Higgins" writes:
|
| I think it may have some psychotropic (is that the right word)
peoperties
| but you would have to eat it or make tea with it at a guess. It did
|feature
| in the daft Carlos Castaneda books about as something that native
Americans
| used to ehhhhhh become religious but now that I think about it, that
does
| not neccessarily mean anything.

Yes. It was used medicinally and religiously, but you have to be
VERY careful not to overdose, and the effects are not necessarily
pleasant.

It is a common weed in hotter, drier countries, and people brush
against it with bare skin a great deal. Almost all such people
know better than to eat it.


Many years ago I witnessed a number of people eating the contents of seed
pods. I think they had between a half and two pods each but I can't be
sure.

The effects are pretty bizarre. First comes a feeling of incredible
heaviness and something feeling almost like paralysis. At this stage,
they were fully conscious and lying down flat on the floor. This changes.
Boy does it change.

The effects seemed to be very long lived - and the results seemed to be an
amlost total loss of normal consciousness - with intermittent flashes back
to it when made to concentrate on something. (Very intermittent).

Hallucinations were major and very real. Seashores in

etc.
Holey Saint Imelda!!!!
I am glad I never bloody well ate that then.
During one daft undergraduate phase, I tried smoking Carroway seeds
(disgusting), dried banana skins
and eating nutmeg. All disguting and a waste of time, I am happy to point
out although very cheap should it ever
have become habit forming. I had heard of Datura and someone even gave me
some but it was dried leaves and I tried smoking it and it was basically (as
usual; wait for it) disgusting. It sounds like I was lucky. What you
described above
was serious. I later heard of one guy who took some (by ingestion of one
kind or another; I do not know) who woke up a day after taking it, not able
to remember anything and whose eyes remained out of focus for another day.
Makes Guinness sound almost harmless.