The flowering plant, Convolvulaceae, or more commonly know as, Morning Glory has always been known as somewhat of a nuisance in the eyes of many people. From the death of beloved family pets, to kids tripping on its seeds, the plant itself often remains a mystery of what it actually is. It's flowers can range from a pearly white color, or even “heavenly blue”, and people often grow these plants for merely ornamental purposes. However, there are others out their whom believe that the psychotropic effects of the plants is the primary reason for cultivation. As such, I will be focussing on these various plant alkaloids and their entheogenic uses throughout the ages.
This plant has recently become a point of interest to many people due to its varying colors of its flowers, and the alkaloids found both in the plant and its seeds. In particular to the different colors of the plant is a result of the presence of a Helitron named Hel-It1 being present in the flowers, due to the Pearly White variety having little to no Hel-It1 found in its flowers, meaning that Hel-IT1 would be linked to the color(Shigeru Iida,2011). By understanding this they were able to realize what actually caused the tremendous variation in the color of the flowers. Another major point of interest for many people are the ergot based alkaloids found in the seeds of morning glories.
Use of the plant really dates back to the Ancient civilization of Mexico, such as the Aztecs and various other tribes surrounding the area (Hoffman, 2011). The seeds of local variety of Morning Glory were known as Ololiuqui by the native people, and often considered sacred by them. However much of the Western world hadn't known much about these plants until “Francisco Hernandez, a...
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Morning Glory Seeds. Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol & Addictive Behavior. Ed. Pamela Korsmeyer and Henry R. Kranzler. Vol. 3. 3rd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2009. p78-79. Word Count: 181.
Wasson, Gordon R. "Erowid Psychoactive Vaults : "Status of Ololiuhqui in Mexico" by R. Gordon Wasson." Erowid. 22 Nov. 1963. Web. 19 Nov. 2011. .
Shigeru Iida, et al. "Spontaneous Mutations Caused By A Helitron Transposon, Hel-It1, In Morning Glory, Ipomoea Tricolor." Plant Journal 49.5 (2007): 924-934. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Nov. 2011.
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Boyer, B., Boyer, R., & Basehart, H. 1973. Hallucinogens and Shamanism M. Hamer, Ed.. England: Oxford University Press.
2)Strassman, R. Human Hallucinogenic Drug Research: Regulatory, Clinical and Scientific Issues. Brain Res. 162. 1990.
Credibility material: Its intake results in adverse medical conditions that are further exalted by its addiction properties that ensure a continued intake of the substance. The drug can be abused through multiple means and is medically recorded to produce short-term joy, energy , and other effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure. This ultimately results in numerous psychiatric and social problems; factors that played a major role in its illegalization after multiple and widespread cases of its effects were reported in the country during the 1900s. In addition to this, the drug results in immediate euphoric effect, a property which the National Institute of Drug Abuse (2010) attributes to be the root cause for its increased po...
Gootenberg, Paul. Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Fackelmann, Kathleen. “Marijuana: Useful medicine or dangerous drug?” Consumers’ Research Magazine May 1997: Vol.80 Issue 5 page 15. http://ehostvgw8.epnet.com/delivery.asp?…&startHitNum= 10&rlStartHit=10&delType=FT.
Marijuana in America became a popular ingredient in many medicinal products and was openly sold in pharmacies in the late nineteenth century (“Busted-America’s War on Marijuana Timeline”). The National Institute of Drug Abuse defines marijuana as, “The dried leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa, which contains the psychoactive (mind-altering) chemical delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), as well as other related compounds” (“DrugFacts: Marijuana”). It was not until the Food and Drug act of 19...
Brecher, Edward M. (1972) Licit and Illicit Drugs; The Consumers Union Report on narcotics, stimulants, depressants, inhalants, Hallucinogens, and marijuana- including caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. New York, 291-390
Drug use and abuse is as old as mankind itself. Human beings have always had a desire to eat or drink substances that make them feel relaxed, stimulated, or euphoric. Wine was used at least from the time of the early Egyptians; narcotics from 4000 B.C.; and medicinal use of marijuana has been dated to 2737 B.C. in China. But it was not until the nineteenth century that the active substances in drugs were extracted. There was a time in history when some of these newly discovered substances, such as morphine, laudanum, cocaine, were completely unregulated and prescribed freely by physicians for a wide variety of ailments.
On September 21, 2016, I attended my first Narcotic’s Anonymous (NA) meeting at Cana Lutheran Church. Before attending this meeting, I had some preconceived views on what an ordinary NA meeting might be like. I originally thought of the meeting only as a group of individuals seated in a circle while sharing their feelings. I imagined that these people might be forced to attend the meeting by a spouse or some other influence in their lives. However, I was certainly mistaken. This meeting was much more; in fact, it is an essential part of the recovery process for many.
Native Americans are probably the people most known for their use of psychedelic drugs. Being a very religious people, their entire society revolved around the spirit world, and some believed that access to this world was possible by eating certain plants that were abundant in their surroundings. In what are now Mexico and the Southwestern United States, tribes familiarized themselves with mescaline, the active ingredient in the peyote cactus. Another drug that was used by tribes in these and many other areas was psilocybin, the active hallucinogenic ingredient of the mushroom Psilocybe mexicana and other psilocybe and conocybe species that grow on the pacific coast of North, South, and Central America. Ritual use of psilocybin and mesca...
It is said that everybody has their own type of medicine that works for them, however on certain occasions not all of these medicines are prescribed and many strongly oppose for this type of medicine to be used. John Lennon was one of the many who used un-prescribed medicine. Lennon and many others agree that the use of hallucinogenic drugs peacefully cleared their mind and made them understand what they meant to the world and connected them to everything around them in a deeper level. Which lead to the creation of the well-known Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. quote “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimension’s”. No medicine had ever helped them achieve that inner peace and understanding that they were looking for until they tried hallucinogens in a medicinal way. After what is known as the “hippie era” Hallucinogenic drugs were made illegal and societies view went from the drug that made a person peaceful and lovable to the drug that was repugnant and awfully dangerous. Although hallucinogens are considered dangerous drugs not to be dabbled with by the average person, it has recently been proven to work as a successful therapy proving that they are safe and raising the question if they should be recognized as a way of therapy.
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Stanley, Janet E., Stanley J. Watson, and John A. Benson. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Washington D.C.: National Academy P, 1999.
Many plants and plant derived products are used in cancer therapy as cytotoxic agents. Examples include Taxol that is used for breast cancer (which gets its active constituent from Pacific Yew tree) and the vinca alkaloids used for leukaemia (from the Madagascar ...
Pre-Columbian Mexicans used many substances, from tobacco to mind-expanding (hallucinogenic) plants, in their medicinal collections. The most fascinating of these substances are sacred mushrooms, used in religious ceremonies to induce altered states of mind, not just drunkenness.