Rabaelthazar

Ha ha... Amazonian, I thought you were a fella all this time. Funny side effect of internet forums. My wife suffers, by her own admission and by my astute observations, pretty horrible PMS including cramps, skin outbreaks and most of all lashing out at her lovely husband. When I notice her getting pre-menstrual-narcy, my main method of dealing with it is giving her plenty of space, not initiating arguments and trying to let her rage slide off my back. Also, I make her a pot of Damiana tea. She says it helps (although I still walk on eggshells). Good luck... I can't imagine what it must be like to actually suffer from it.

Works for me.

Alright! Just got a new job that doesn't involve weekends, thank the gourd, so I'll be there for sure.

How about creating a filterable spreadsheet so that one document would hold all the info? Might be a bit of a task, but it would be one hell of a resource. For instance, for each plant you could include a toxicity rating, whether it has been used traditionally, the active compounds, medicinal uses etc... The user of the document could then filter to get a list of all plants that, say, produce psychedelic effects or a list of plants that aid liver function or have been known to cause deaths. Now that would be really useful. I find your lists interesting and informative and, in reality, if you want to be really comprehensive, you'll need to make a hell of a lot of lists. A spreadsheet you could create and build further as you discover new plants. Just an idea.

We sow the seeds, nature grows the seeds and then we eat the seeds.

I just had a thought.... could any of these poisonings be attributed to some sort of pesticide spraying by council workers? I don't know what it was, but I found a patch of various mushrooms including subs this year but there was a green hue to everything around the area, woodchips looked slightly green, every mushroom looked slightly green almost as if coated in a very subtly tinted green paint. I drew the conclusion that some sort of spraying had been done. I'm not sure who or what had been sprayed but it was enough for me to leave everything in the ground where I found it. Does anyone know of woodchip beds being sprayed? If indeed the spray was a poison of kinds, how much of that poison would be be transferred in to the body of someone who eats from said woodchip bed?

Forgive me if this has been discussed here before, I tried the search engine but couldn't find any hits on the words I searched for. If it has been discussed, if someone could post a link that would be great. Basically, I've been wondering recently why specific entheogenic alkaloids are found in such diverse plant types. Psilocybin, for example, is found in a whole lot of different mushrooms. Ok, I can imagine a possible history being something along the lines of one mushroom develops a chemical as a defense mechanism to give animals a message, DO NOT EAT THESE MUSHROOMS AGAIN (until humans came along, that is). That mushroom becomes a successful survivor due to its new defense mechanism and flourishes, mutating and evolving over time into the many different varieties around today. Here's where I'm stumped. Take our favourite tryptamine... it's found in grasses, succulents, hardwoods... I find it hard to imagine that all these different plants had a common ancestor (although botanists, please feel free to tell me otherwise). Combined with the fact that this chemical is orally inactive, what purpose does it serve other than to give humans profound insight into alternative dimensions? Is the tryptamine molecule just a very natural arrangement of atoms? Did one plant share the secret with another plant of a different genus? It's one of those things, I guess, that we will never be able to know for sure, but I'm looking here for any theories. Scientific theories through to wacked-out hippy theories and anything in between. Any thoughts?

Ha ha. That was actually my first thought when the show started. Reminded me of a family guys episode where they got Morgan Freeman in to narrate something mundane, can't remember what. The premise of the show (in a nutshell) was presenting different scientist's view of god. The first episode had the neurologist from the clip above, two quantum mathematicians with differing beliefs based on what they had gleamed from their math, a computer programmer who ruled out the possibility of god and another who was all for it. The ideas presented on the show are hugely simplified, but it was a nice cross section of ideas, each of which was backed up by some amount of scientific evidence. Looking forward to episode 2. Yeah, I treated this section with a healthy dose of skepticism myself. I don't think his experiment proves anything beyond a doubt, but I think it relates very closely to our discussions on this forum about entities in the spice space. Are the entities real or figments of our imagination? Same question for god. I think it was Mutant who referred to the "God Circuit" or something similar in another thread. This neurologist has identified where the god circuit is, but it doesn't clarify whether we access a true divinity/other world through this section of our brain or whether our concept of divinity is wholly contained within this section of our brains. I'm personally of the opinion that we will never be able to answer this question with 100% confidence, at least while we are alive in these bodies, but there are people who disagree with me on that. Great thing to ponder though.

Occidentalis... thankyou, thankyou, thankyou. That was a very tasty meal of brain-food. Got a big smile on my face after that one.

Thanks Auxin. Your whole post was really interesting and informative. I'm glad I posted this topic... I've learned a few nice new tidbits.

I found it funny because of the unexpectedness of the answer. "Why do women wear make-up and perfume?"... you expect some witty pun or something and instead you get a deadpan ordinary answer (which I don't agree with BTW) and that's what made it amusing. I've heard infinitely more offensive jokes... I'm sure we all have. Plenty of them make derogatory comments about women or about race or religion. If we were to take them seriously we'd have few jokes left and many of them would be lame, although lame can be good. ie: "What do you call a donkey with 3 legs?" "A Wonky" hmm... lame, but I dig it.

Nice post, YM. My group of friends (including me, of course) when I was a teenager would rant and rave about the way society was destroying the planet but would flick their ciggie butts into the gutter. Would talk about Peace, love, unity, respect and then discuss how to get revenge on the guy who ripped them off in a dodgy deal. Complain about kids in poverty and go and spend all their money on clothes and drugs. I like to think I've come a long way since then and I try to make a difference in my immediate surrounds. I'm not at zero carbon footprint, but I make little changes where I can. Still spend most of my money on stuff for myself, but make sure some goes overseas to kids who need it. I think you're right in terms of people sitting back and allowing stuff to happen. It's unfortunately a natural instinct now to not put yourself in a potentially dangerous situation. I've narrowly avoided a few beatings by stepping in to help someone getting hassled, but it's the situations that I haven't stepped in for that I regret. Still growing in my ability to do the right thing all the time, but getting better all the time. Thanks for posting this... good for us to think about.

Tintin

Kobayashi

goings

phonebook

Milk

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/strychnine/basics/pdf/facts.pdf This document states that it has "uncommonly... mixed with street drugs". Reading about the effects makes you really wonder why anyone would choose strychnine as an additive?!? I'd guess (sorry, still no proof) that that statement in the document was due to these unconfirmed urban myths, just to be safe. I got told this story as well, in fact when I was a teenager I stayed away from mushrooms believing strychnine to be the active ingredient, opting for the safer drugs like acid, speed and E. Good to see the propaganda worked.

Hey Hutch, I started a post sort-of along these lines a while ago. I'm with you on how similar these experiences are. http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=24210&view=&hl=&fromsearch=1 In a nutshell, check out the book "Journey of Souls" **nice link, by the way, just read through it all.**

It would be great if you could choose the "flavour" of your box when ordering something.

Thanks for the link Psili... most of that's too complex for me to grapple, but I can see what you're referring to. Nice. I like this quote. Is the magic of these substances co-incidental or divine? Either way, I'm happy. If they are accidental, then that's almost divine in itself. Occidentalis, thank you for your reply. I think your post basically satisfies me in terms of a physical world answer to my question. When you say all plants had a common ancestor, are you speaking about back at the time of the beginning of life on earth? Would you hypothesize that animals, plants and fungi then would also have had a common ancestor, or is that taking it too far? Thanks for the explanation of convergent and divergent evolution too. Heya Mutant. I remember reading about some trees that contain mesc. Not sure if that was from that dubious wiki page or somewhere more reliable.... perhaps an acacia or similar?!? I won't get into the discussion with you of whether mesc. is a superior entheogen or not, otherwise this post will end up 7 pages long Good questions.

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Lord Mayonaise, is photography something you do professionally, or are you a hobbyist? I'm gobsmacked by the clarity of your shots and I guess I'm wondering whether I'd be able to achieve anything close to that just by buying a really nice SLR, or is there some magic or skill happening behind the lens too? Some of those shrooms are amazing!!! The Mycena sp. growing up the tree in your eighth post are so beautiful and the Dermocybe austroveneta in your 4th post look like freshly cut limes. Respect!!!

Thanks Psili, this is the kind of sciency stuff I'm really keen to hear about. More please... and bring on the hippy theories too.