From Opium to Saffron, the Ancients Knew a Thing or Two About Drugs | Hacker News Reader

From Opium to Saffron, the Ancients Knew a Thing or Two About Drugs

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43 pointsNoRagrets15 comments

Good read is The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51174256-the-immortality...

Good interview with the author:

https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/346...

I love this topic. I helped with a book chapter about psychedelics in human cultural history. We discuss the 118 mushroom-shaped carvings on Stonehenge (more likely to be amanita muscaria than psilocybin mushrooms). Another story we explore is the chemical evidence for cannabis use by ancient Judaism. The holy anointing oil given to Moses in exodus may have contained cannabis!

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363178879_The_Enigm...

> The holy anointing oil given to Moses in exodus may have contained cannabis!

Human history makes a lot more coherent sense if the people in power were high or tripping balls all the time.

Surprisingly the main groups that didn’t trip balls for most of what we know are the sub Saharan Africans, the native aboriginal Australians and Native Americans for the most part except in the south. There must be something about sedentary civilization that makes tripping balls necessary.

Boredom lol?

Deep knowledge of plants and fungi?

Less boredom, more the time to sit and study in a place where compounding variables are more constrained.

Also, maybe the availability of drugs. If there are no safe substances available in the area and limited trade options, then people won't trip balls, or they will trip balls and die, which is not very encouraging.

Pituri is a native Australian tobacco relative (the only widely used old world tobacco) and was a hallucination in high doses.

Seasonal psilocybin mushroom usage in the south west corner of Australia predates european settlement.

To this day, it persists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5YiszoAvOk

Some Banjulung people also respect shrooms traditionally. There as psilocybin mushrooms through most of the non-arid parts of Australia.

Great documentary on 80s magic mushroom users in Australia. Worth a watch. Nothing on indigenous use, though…

It's purely contemporary, well, Acceptable in the 80s ... anything else yu'd have touch grass with the pelopolees

Indigenous Australians really really like drugs. There are rules about how often you can trip, and with whom, but there are magic shrooms over much of Oz, as well as plants with opioid-like effects, such as pituri.

Iboga and datura in Subsaharan Africa, too.

This is a great read https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331622659_Getting_h...

> This article collects evidence from psychopharmacology, scripture, and archeology to explore several preparations for consumption described in the Old Testament: Manna, Showbread, the Holy Ointment, and the Tabernacle Incense. The Ointment and the Incense are herbal preparations used by the priestly caste to facilitate a direct experience of the Israelite God. A wide variety of psychoactive components are found in these preparations, including GABA-receptor agonists and modulators, opioid receptor agonists, and other agents. They are normally broken down by the body’s enzymes, and therefore orally inactive, but the Holy Ointment also contains inhibitors specific to the enzymes in question. The preparations indicate that the ancient Israelites had a profound understanding of synergism, and the way they are consumed and the taboos around them are highly suggestive of their use as psychoactive agents.

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