Anodyne

Well "all substances" is a pretty broad net - it's probably not wildly cost-efficient to train dogs to detect DiPT, say - while for other drugs like some fentanyl analogues a "dose" might be below detection threshold. And assuming that cops train their dogs similarly to how customs train theirs - the dogs are being trained to detect street drugs, not pure compounds - which sometimes means that the compound(s) the dog is sniffing out is a synthetic-byproduct or breakdown product of the actual scheduled drug.... In practice, there are several factors which all encourage police drug dogs to give false-positive indications, so there's a good chance you'll get flagged for searching anyway, regardless of what you smell like. I'm pretty bloody sure that the dogs don't indicate what drug they're supposed to have detected (at least, the human officers have never answered this question when I've asked), so in effect this comes down to a cop leading a dog up to you while 5 of his mates surround you and then say "you've been flagged by the drug dog, do you give us permission to search you ?" The "...or would you like to continue this conversation under these stairs where there are no security cameras" bit is usually just left implied, as is the "we know the dog didn't sit down, but six police officers will swear in court that it did - so do you want to try your "scruffy hippy" testimony against that with an overworked free legal-aid lawyer, or do you want to take your shirt off?" So yes you're correct - while they're understandably cagey about releasing [any more] details of the limitations of their drug dogs - there's a good chance the dogs can't (or just aren't trained to) detect many, many different psychoactive substances. Doesn't mean you won't be searched anyway - so those mushrooms had better look 100% supermarket-ready AND be going into a BYO food venue if you want to try the "food stuff" defence.

This is some shady, shady shit right here. At first when I heard of this strategy I just assumed it was a festival organiser working a con - sell 2000 tickets to an 1800-head venue, make sure there's both a "morals clause" & a "no refunds, ref's decision is final" section in the ticket fineprint... and then just get the dog squad (who you have to pay for anyway to get your event permit) to moonlight as your bouncers and thin down the herd... But no, the organisers are [supposedly] refunding those tickets. So they are paying the cops to kick people out, even when there were no drugs & those people will need to be reimbursed. As far as all the legal claims... these are private events, right? So can't they pretty much make up whatever rules they like about who gets to attend? I didn't think discrimination law covered stuff like this. I'm curious to know exactly what argument these civil-rights/legal-aid people are using. The six-month ban from Olympic Park though, that is complete bullshit. I understand now why they wanted to trial their awful new scheme at this event in particular - so they would have all of the Park-specific regs to fall back on wherever their sniffer-dog-powers were insufficient. Because yeah, Aussie cops need more petty bullshit laws to invoke until that "lookin' at me funny" one gets hammered out properly... SYDNEY OLYMPIC PARK AUTHORITY REGULATION 2012 is a captivating read, here's some highlights: (b) behave in an offensive or indecent manner, (c) cause serious alarm or affront to a person by disorderly conduct, (d) obstruct a person in the performance of the person's work or duties, (e) fail to comply with a reasonable request or direction given for the purpose of securing good order and management and enjoyment of Sydney Olympic Park, or any part of Sydney Olympic Park, by the Authority, a police officer or an authorised person. Maximum penalty: 10 penalty units. (2) Without limiting subclause (1) (e), it is reasonable for the Authority, a police officer or an authorised person to request a person: (a) to open any bag, container or other thing in the person's possession in order that its contents may be inspected, and (b) to permit any thing in the person's possession, and the contents of any such thing, to be inspected. (2) A person who has been banned from entering any part of Sydney Olympic Park must not attempt to enter that part during the period of that ban. Maximum penalty: 20 penalty units. A "penalty unit" is $110, btw. So if you were banned from the Park (because you dared to question why you still being denied entry to the event after the negative strip-search, for instance), you can then be fined $2,200 if you try to come back in at any time during that ban. Six months is apparently also the maximum period they're allowed to ban someone for just looking at a cop funny - for longer bans they actually need you to run out onto the track/field during an event. So whaddya reckon, did those thirteen drunk-&-disorderlies all get slapped with the max penalties as well? $1,100 fine & a 6-month ban? Or did the people who smelled a bit like [unspecified drugs] get punished worse than the people who were actually intoxicated nuisances? And if you sometimes have work duties in Olympic Park? Well, I guess you're unemployed now.

Festival-goer barred for six months despite testing negative for drugs Ben Graham, June 11, 20183:43pm WHEN a festival-goer was stripsearched after a sniffer dog approached him at a music festival this weekend, he was stunned to find out he was being kicked out despite having no drugs on him. He was even more shocked when he was handed a notice from NSW Police saying he was barred from Sydney Olympic Park for six months. An image of the intimidating-looking document, handed out at Saturday’s Above & Beyond dance music festival, is sparking a massive backlash against police as it spreads on social media. The picture, which has been shared thousands of times, has stoked an angry reaction among music fans who say it is an abuse of police power. NSW Police told news.com.au this afternoon the festival-goer was handed the notice not because of being stopped by a sniffer dog, but because of “bad behaviour”. He also didn’t have a ticket for the event, the police alleged. However, a spokeswoman for anti-drug dog campaigners Sniff Off, who saw the booted-out music fan shortly after was handed the notice, rejected the police version of events. She said the festival-goer and his four friends had been arguing with the officers who conducted the strip search, which is why he was given the notice. Greens MP David Shoebridge told news.com.au his office had been contacted by five other festival attendees who were refused entry or kicked out simply because a police sniffer dog approached them. When police searched those who had been approached by the dogs, they had nothing incriminating on them. He said he has heard of “many more” music fans who were penalised on the night, which he called an “appalling attack on civil liberties”. “We’ve now seen two appalling attacks on civil liberties in the one night,” he said. “People have been refused entry to a cultural event due to the judgement of a dog and then the police have doubled down on that by banning them for the entire Olympic Precinct for six months. “It is a new, noxious development. “We have known for over a decade, that these dogs get it wrong up to 75 per cent of the time. But, up until now, people haven’t been punished for them getting it wrong.” Above & Beyond tickets cost upwards of $128. News.com.au has tried to contact the festival organisers to ascertain whether those wrongly tested and booted out would be offered a refund. However, a spokeswoman for Sniff Off said the organisation was now “seeking legal counsel” on behalf of those affected to challenge what it calls an “abuse of police powers”. Thousands shared and commented on a picture of the six-month ban notice on social media — with many accusing the police of being too harsh. “NSW cops are the definition of the fun police,” said one Facebook commenter. “This is a clear abuse of power,” wrote another. Police have not released any information about how many people, if any, were arrested on drugs charges at Above & Beyond. Thirteen people were ejected for drunkenness. Mr Shoebridge said the “extraordinarily strong” online backlash against the notices had effectively silenced NSW Police. “This the first time ever that I’ve seen the police not put out a press release or a social media post after a drug operation at a music festival,” he said. “They have been utterly silenced and I think they have been shamed into silence.” Before the event, NSW Police warned punters that drug detection dogs will be out in full force, stating that they would deny entry to anyone found to have illicit substances on them. They also said patrons would be refused entry if a dog detected the presence of prohibited drugs on them — even if no drugs were actually found in a search. “Police will exclude any person from the venue that the drug dog indicates has or who has recently had drugs on them, regardless of whether drugs are located,” South West Metropolitan Region commander Assistant Commissioner Peter Thurtell said. “Quite simply, if you handle or use drugs you will not be permitted to remain at the venue.” It’s understood that this is the third time NSW Police have used this strategy at a Sydney music festival, after State of Trance in April and Midnight Mafia in May.

Though I'm not sure why you chose meth & heroin particularly. Since you've said that it's not about the ethics, does that mean that you're looking for a pharmacological effect - some physical mechanism that links a person's drug use to their food choices? And if so, why those drugs? If you're trying to compare psychedelics to an "opposite" - wouldn't it make more sense to look at things like dopamine-blocking antipsychotics?

In my experience, people who are deep into either of those addictions don't tend to eat a lot of anything. There are some direct drug effects on appetite + digestion, but also just shifting priorities - when you need the money for Other Things, grocery shopping might take a backseat. Especially if you're able to scavenge free food - that way you can reallocate your entire food budget AND not starve. Have your Cake & eat too! Speaking only for myself, I found that having a serious drug habit drastically decreased my unethical food consumption - can't support unsustainable farming/harvesting practices if you're not spending money on food!

You may have seen this already, but I caught a showing of this doco a while back (I don't think it's available for free yet) & found it interesting, specifically in how they were bridging the social stigma of psychoactive drugs to introduce them to non-trippers & still create a positive experience. A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin

Ah cheers Torsten - there was a hot mess of security layers set up on the computer I was using, wasn't sure where to even start. For anyone else encountering the same problems, the fix (on Firefox at least) seemed to just be: allow shaman-australis cookies, but delete any old ones. I still needed to choose a shipping option (both=zero $) to proceed, but could get to the checkout/payment screens after that. Success! I'm not used to having software issues that can be resolved so easily (or at all) - I'm torn between feeling relieved about it, and being a bit nonplussed because at this point, if I didn't need to reinstall the OS &/or build a unstable scaffold of third-party hacks to fix/circumvent the problem, then it kinda feels like Firefox isn't even trying...it just doesn't seem sporting. The easy victory makes me suspect a feint, and wonder what the 'orrible thing is really up to...

ah ok, we have pictures now! I'll withdraw my "semiglobata" vote then, as we seem to have different ideas of "very golden". Panaeolus seconded, and I'd probably lean towards antillarum over the other options on Berengar's shortlist just on the basis of that silvery sheen plus the pale stem on that older specimen - cyanescens & acuminatus stems *tend to* go darker than that as they age (acuminatus ->brown, cyanescens->dark blue streaks). I'd want to see more specimens though, and would still bruise them to be sure. Average cap sizes could help ID too, as antillarum *tend to* be several times the size of those other pan species. But if they're antillarum, yes they're supposedly edible but don't have any amazing flavour (I think I saw them described as "watery-tasting" once, which seemed apt) - I only learned that relatively recently though so what with the "meh" taste descriptions & the fact that there are usually much better edibles to be found around wherever antillarum are - I've never bothered. There have been reports of psychoactivity, but I think all of those turned out to be based on various people (including mycologists) mis-identifying pan cyans: Southcott, R. V. l974. Notes on Some Poisonings and other Clinical. Effects Following Ingestion of Australian Fungi. South Australian Clinics 6(5):442

Just in case unattributed quotes bother anyone else, here is the paper I think Alchemica is quoting (or at least, an early edition of it): Masculine Spirituality by Richard Rohr - "Masculine spirituality is not just for men, although it is men who are most likely going to have to rediscover & exemplify it." I think he makes some great points, and all respect to anyone who is questioning this stuff and trying to make themselves a better person*. Just maybe keep in mind, especially when quoting his older work on the internet, that it was written 30 years ago and some of the terminology & examples he uses have aged poorly & been co-opted by groups with very different ideas & goals to those of Friar Rohr. I mean, I think Rohr does a pretty good job of clarifying them all in the Q&A at the end, but they could still be taken out-of-context (especially when adding the 3 decades of invisible gender-debate-baggage & connotations) to make some points completely antithetical to the ones he's trying to make. *I'm not just saying that as a counterpoint to my inevitable "but..", I really do want to take a moment out of this specific topic to say @Alchemica just how much I've been enjoying your posts lately (also just in general, but particularly from the last few months), as you document your journey of healing & self-discovery, including all the research & experiments & course-corrections along the way. I can't properly describe how heartening I find it to see people who will question harmful social structures & values, not only in an external finger-pointing way, but those who are willing to follow through with this even when they find these things within themselves, and questioning them might mean that they have to change their beliefs/behaviours, and admit they'd been wrong... this kind of intellectual honesty is something I aspire to & regularly fail at, and watching someone else do it well... it's a rare pleasure. Hats off @Alchemica, you're an inspiration.

@aguacolla thanks for the tips, but I can't seem to get that working from this computer - Firefox can't find the checkout at all, and Chrome *might* be able to find it, but I can't get there because it insists on shipping options for this item (even as guest, with no other items in the cart, which Firefox didn't do) & also won't let me checkout as a guest. I even tried adding other things from the store to see if that might trigger the payment screen to work, but it doesn't. I'll try from another computer when I get a chance, and if that doesn't work I'm sure I can just send cash to one of you lovely people who can see the checkout screen to buy a ticket for me. Or if it came to it Torsten would probably accept a postal order with "PLZ GIMME CAMP TIX" scrawled in crayon on the back, so long as it arrived before the deadline - so I wasn't real worried about that. I was just curious what was happening to other people, because the entire store payment section looks broken from my end, but it breaking in all different ways with different browsers/settings made me wonder if there was some configuration that was functional for other people, or if SAB store is actually broken.

Is anyone else having trouble buying a ticket? I have tried doing the registration/payment screens in every order I can think, using the different "checkout" buttons (in case one is broken or something), refreshing, logging-out-then-in-again, attempting this transaction as a signed-in customer & not...and I just can't get it to progress past the "Cart contents" page to actually finalise the bloody transaction. At first it was insisting that I select a shipping method, but I traced that to an ancient "please notify me when you have stock" item that I must've left in the cart last time (& which was still demanding shipping selection even though it was still unavailable), and removed that. So now it shows "camp site booking fee" as the sole item in the cart, but the checkout/proceed-to-checkout buttons just don't do anything. Actually, on further fucking around, it seems that I'm having this problem even on regular items from the store - none of them can find the checkout afterwards. Any ideas? Is this a temporary/known issue with the store & certain browsers or somesuch - eg. if paypal is just Having Issues today or something & that's fucking up the store payment page & I should just try again tomorrow when it'll all be better again? Or is this some weird isolated problem caused by technology being allergic to me? (seriously I'm a kind of chaotic attractor of unique awful technical issues). Because I think I can circumvent either of those things given time, but it would help to know which is the likely culprit.

For those southerners driving up, I'm preparing a "midway" campsite as well, ~40min from Kempsey, on private property. So if you feel like breaking up the drive to/from NNSW, you're welcome to stay a night or few on your way there/back. Pretty basic - water, firewood, sheltered areas for camp kitchen, gas cooker. No power, but nearby general store has ice. If there's enough interest maybe we can pass the hat around for another gas bottle & get some hot showers happening as well. Post in this thread or PM me if you're keen, we can start a group PM convo for the details.

If you were going for quick/easy/food-safe with min ingredients, then.. maybe? Some folks have suggested that boiling might actually denature the enzymes which are mostly responsible for that conversion though - I'm not sure if there was any research to back that up, but if your goal was maximum breakdown, then it might be best to let the leaves sit in a bag (in the fridge?) for a few days or something before boiling, just to give those enzymes extra time to work their mischief? I seem to recall researchers running simple reduction reactions to give the results you describe, but that would've been using isolated cathinone - I'm guessing that trying to do the same thing on a crude extract would likely get messy fast & cause a whole heap of unintended reactions & byproducts.

Correction - that should have said "0.1%" - so 100g fresh leaves yields around 100mg* cathinone. Some researchers have gotten ~1% yields from dried material. Sorry about that! (*anywhere between 30-300mg seems pretty standard - though the lower yields tend to have much higher ratios of cathine+norephedrine, suggesting that their cathinone yields could've been higher with less destructive storage/extraction methods.) I also shoulda mentioned that the cathinone->cathine conversion isn't limited only to harvested leaves - the older leaves on the plant will also contain cathine (ref). Again the data is sketchy & results vary depending how they went about it, but lets say 50:50 with cathinone. So even though older leaves aren't as good to chew (not just because of the lower cathinone levels, but also because they're full of saponins, tannins, & tough fibres), they work just fine for making tea, as the cathine is heat-stable. The effects (less euphoric, more straight-up stimulant) may not be as nice as chewing high-cathinone fresh material, but it's one way to make use of old leaves. Kind of a middle-ground between tea (cathinone-destroying) & chewing quids (which is not really socially-accepted in Oz as a drug ROA) might be this method where they just chuck fresh leaves & cold water (1g/ml) into a high-speed blender, strain thru a cloth, and then freeze the "juice" until needed. They were only storing it for a short time, but it'd be interesting to see how the cathinone held up in frozen juice prepared this way. I'm guessing you'd actually be speeding up the degradation reactions (as all those enzymes would end up in your extract, plus extra oxygen+light, less protective cell walls...) if you left the juice sitting around at room/fridge temp, and probably even at freezer temps some breakdown would continue... but it might be ok for an immediate-use situation, especially if quid-chewing wasn't your thing? As a side note, "khatamines" (I guess coined by these researchers) is a great term & should be used more often.

Damn, vodka-khittie-sours sounds like a dangerous mix. Freeze-dried leaves may be more stable/high-yielding/whatever, but also contain significantly less delicious counteractive drug combo. I wonder if my plants are big enough to massacre for an experiment? Any reports, people? (also someone please bring back OTC codeine so catha-booze stops sounding like a good idea. Pre-mixed drinks are never a good idea.)

About the study Alchemica linked to (this one) suggesting "anti-depressant-like" effects, there are some real problems with their study design that you should consider before accepting their conclusions, especially these bits: In the first part, they seem to actually mean "anxiolytic" and just using "sedative" as a synonym, which it isn't. I can't even work out where the "muscle-relaxant" claim is coming from at all - unless it's mentioned in one of the other papers they reference - they seem to just be pulling that out of their arse. That they didn't make a quantitative analysis of their extract is also an issue, as it makes duplication difficult - they confirmed that cathinone was present, but we have no idea how much. But the major issue is the tests they've used to screen for "anti-depressant-like" activity, and their limitations: the forced-swim-test (FST), tail-suspension-test (TST) & hole-board-test (HBT). In the first two, the rodents are deliberately put into an uncomfortable/stressful situation, then the researchers time how long they keep struggling or trying to escape. The test ends when they stop moving, and that time is recorded. It is assumed that they stop moving because they've given up & lost hope of escaping. Leaving aside the problems of acute-vs-chronic-depression-models (which this article covers well: Doubt about antidepressant-like effect ), a big issue when using these tests for any kind of stimulant drug is that the rodents might keep moving around longer just because of the stimulant effects, and not because of any anti-depressant actions. This isn't to say these tests have no value, just that in the particular case of investigating stimulants (or depressants), they should be paired with other tests which take that into account, and try to separate the drugs effects on locomotor activity from its effects on mood. Given that this limitation was mentioned in the very first discussion of the TST in 1985, the fact that it's completely ignored in this 2017 paper (not only in their study design, which could be due to time/cost limitations, but also in their discussion/conclusion) is pretty inexcusable. Here's a few more recent papers which also discuss this problem & suggest some possible ways to account for it: Tail suspension test does not detect antidepressant-like properties of atypical antipsychotics Anti-immobility activity of different antidepressant drugs using the tail suspension test in normal or reserpinized mice - "Comparison of anti-immobility activities of putative anti-depressants in non-pre-treated and in reserpine-pre-treated mice, using the tail suspension test, may be useful to discriminate amphetamines from antidepressant drugs and to differentiate between categories of amine re-uptake blockers" Utility of ethological analysis to overcome locomotor confounds in elevated maze models of anxiety - "These results confirm that under certain test conditions, psychostimulants are capable of producing "false-positives" in elevated maze models, and that both traditional methods and the ethological measures used in this study fail to unequivocally dissociate drug effects on anxiety from effects on locomotor activity." (different test, but maybe applicable) And the other test used (which measures how much the animals will explore an unfamiliar environment, and assumes a link between this behaviour & anxiety levels) has similar limitations: Some doubts about the basic concept of hole-board test - "It is concluded, that the inverse relation between anxiety state and head-dipping activity is true only in a certain range of anxiety level. In more aversive situations, when the anxiety level of the animals is high, the holes nay represent a possible way to escape from the aversive environment instead of an explorable object." The exploratory behaviour of rats in the hole-board apparatus: Is head-dipping a valid measure of neophilia? - "Many unconditioned tests, such as the open field, potentially confound general locomotor activity with exploration. The hole-board apparatus appears to avoid this confound, as head-dipping into holes in the floor is assumed to be a valid measure of the subject's attraction towards novelty (neophilia).... Rather than being a measure of neophilia, these results support the hypothesis that head-dipping represents an escape response, which declines as the subject becomes less fearful." Summary version is that it seems more likely to me that the behaviour observed in that 2017 study could be attributed to khat's stimulant effects, rather than any anxiolytic/anti-depressant action.

Fresh khat might contain around 1% (wrong - see correction below) cathinone by weight (it's hard to get accurate numbers as many extraction methods hasten the breakdown). If dried poorly, nearly all of that can be converted to other compounds like cathine - stored at room temp one study ( Degradation of cathinone from Catha edulis (khat) leaves ) observed that 50% of the cathinone was lost by the 2nd day, and almost all of it was gone by day 3. But if you can prevent these reactions, then the cathinone stays cathinone (it's stable once extracted, or well-dried), and you don't need to worry about separating out the breakdown products, as they just won't be there! The trick to preserving the cathinone seems to be to dry the leaves as quickly as possible, or freeze them: Using a little heat (sun or oven) to speed up the drying process might not be ideal, but is probably better than leaving half-dried leaves sitting around (eg. in a humid climate where they won't dry in a day) - keeping a third of the cathinone is still better than losing all of it.

Are the fungi pretty much dried at this point - but just mouldy? Though not common, there are some really nasty mycotoxins out there, which can be concentrated in either the spores or the mycelia of the mould fungus (i.e. inside the infected material, not just on the surface). The problems are that: 1) you have no way of telling if your mould is one of the toxic ones (& some people will react even to non-toxic moulds just via immune response to the spores) 2) many mycotoxins are stable to heat, oxidation & acidic conditions (at least when compared to the alks you're interested in) - so boiling them in vinegar might kill the mould fungus, but it is also a great way to extract those toxins straight into your solution. So it's up to you whether you think it's worth the risk. If you're hellbent on proceeding, you could try washing the whole mushrooms in a water/vinegar mix to remove the surface mould at least. If the mushrooms are mostly dry/sound (i.e. not already rotting & breaking down), then this should only remove a fraction of your alks - and you could then grind up the rinsed mushies & go ahead with your extraction. As to extracting with vinegar, the main issues with this method are: 3) it converts the psilocybin (which will be the main active in dried mushrooms) into psilocin, which is less stable & will degrade more quickly/easily. 4) if you want to skip the basification/non-polar-solvent part and still end up with a concentrated extract, it would involve evaporating off a lot of vinegar solution - and (unless you have a rotavap) this will expose the extract to a lot of heat/light/air, whichever way you go about it. In summary, it's not a good way to extract these alkaloids for storage. What you could do instead (this is just setting aside the potentially-toxic mould situation) is just make a tea - acidify some water slightly (keep it palatable, you don't need a lot) using some kitchen ingredient (ascorbic/citric/tartaric acid, lemon juice, etc), and then throw the pulverised (or if using fresh, you can freeze & then thaw to break down cell walls) mushrooms. Warm but don't boil - keep it under 70-80'C if you can - cool, strain. Then drink immediately or freeze for later use. Maybe not the highest-yielding extraction method, but it's ultra-simple, cheap, quick, uses no nasty solvents/reagents, and the resulting product should be much more stable than the vinegar-extracted one.

Nice work spooge! Those are some funky fungi indeed. So how much did it cost you to have each of these samples tested? I found their pricing page, but am still a bit unclear on which items you chose and what you would do differently next time. Just to give us a rough idea of the cost, waiting time, and level of sample-prep needed from our end - a little more info on this would be great! I'm confused - I thought this was what you'd done! The files are labelled "1F +ITS4". Or did you just mean using a more specific ITS primers? I gather that ITS1/ITS4 combo is kinda general (the "universal fungal primers") - and others may work better with particular fungal families or testing/sampling conditions. I guess if there's an existing database of reference samples then you'd want to match their methods so you got comparable results (maybe?)... but what are those? And how important are the differences?

No, it's been S4 since 2015 or thereabouts - I don't think anything has changed on that front, has it? Here is the most recent "poisons list" from the TGA with a complete list of all scheduled drugs... the specific description under schedule 4 is "CANNABIDIOL in preparations for therapeutic use containing 2 per cent or less of other cannabinoids found in cannabis", so I guess that not just any ol' oil will do. Plus all those other hoops that waterboy mentioned. They are supposedly starting to figure out domestic supply situation [finally!], but that isn't up & running yet, and doesn't look like it will ease any of the restrictions involved in getting a script anyway - you still need to be dying (or suffering one of the approved conditions) AND find a sympathetic doctor who is willing to scale the mountain of paperwork involved.

dontcha hate.... bloody bloody PAWS. C'mon brain, you can get through this. Just look at all the practice you've had.

I'd have thought that you'd have better luck searching for cubensis in that area at this time of year? I know subs (aka: australiana) have been found up around those parts as well, but thought they were comparatively-rare and cubes were the MUCH more common species. There'll be pockets of pan cyans around in the warm/wet weather too. Try to befriend some cattle farmers.

I had another few bad injuries & health crises after I wrote that, and only got back on my feet properly a few months ago. So... not much shack progress, the termites are winning that one. But I am smashing the hermit side of things.

Never looked into the psychoactive ones, but I know some Tagetes (mainly T.patula) are used in Georgian cooking - dried ground petals are used to give certain spice blends their yellow colour & earthy flavour - a little like turmeric is used in Indian curries, I gather? The petals have also been used to make fake saffron threads. I also remember reading that certain of the [pesticidal?] compounds are photo-activated, and can cause photosensitive skin reactions on some people - that may be something to watch out for if handling fresh material. And if you ever have leftover tea, you can always use it to germinate seeds in: "...results showed that marigold species can be used as a potential organic priming agent"