Psychedelics plant forms

Psychedelics are the newest addition to drug technology in our culture. While the use of many of these substances in their plant form is very old, their use in our culture is... 

In most aboriginal cultures, the extraction process for psychedelic plants is quite simple as often as not, the shaman just boils down the raw materials in a pot and then drinks the concentrated brew. We come from a different tradition with different beliefs and expectations. For one thing, our civilized" tastes have been refined to the point where we have difficulty in ingesting anything we perceive as bitter or repulsive- this,unfortunately, applies to most psychoactive botanicals. I know of no plant hallucinogen that actually tastes good, which I would want to eat even if it weren t a psychedelic. Westerners generally prefer pure compounds in the form of pills or capsules that can be easily swallowed, an efficiency which makes up in acceleration what it loses in verisimilitude. 

The superiority of the synthetics over the natural MDA-like sources is pronounced. "Aminization (chemical conversion to amine form) of plant oils heightens and clarifies mental effects and all but eliminates physical side effects often accompanying use of the botanicals. Users of the synthetics generally report increased relaxation, empathy and mental fluency, and many prefer this experience for being without the "distractions of the psychedelic visuals that are characteristic of LSD and mescaline. 

Probably the most important alkaloids are some of the potent habit-forming narcotic and hallucinogenic substances extracted from coca, opium, and peyote cactus plants. These include cocaine, morphine, heroin, and mescaline. LSD, an amide derivative of lysergic acid, first synthesized three decades ago, is among the most potent psychedelic drugs. Halo derivatives of mescaline are several times as potent as mescaline. 

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