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Datura users are also commonly reported by observers to act out hallucinations involving insects. While the user often recalls an entirely different mental experience, it's common for their physical selves to be seen picking at imaginary bugs on the floor in a primal manner (among other reflexive actions, such as convincingly smoking imaginary cigarettes).

It is interesting and darkly humorous (keep in mind that datura is very dangerous) to read the Erowid trip reports for datura. Quite a few of them are along the lines of "I took datura, I had vivid hallucinations for three days with no relation to reality, and then I woke up naked in a hospital / jail".

https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Datura.shtml

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A long time ago I had an experience not with datura, but a close relative - benedryl (both are dissociatives).

Came home after rolling on ecstasy all night and wanted to go to bed. It's not that easy though after taking a bunch of stimulants. So I took a little bit of a lot of benedryl (iirc ~200mg or 8 pills). Ripped my bong for a bit and felt nice and chilled out. About 30 minutes later though, things started to get weird. Was taking a piss and all these really vivid tears started appearing, like someone ripping the movie screen of my vision with intense psychedelic swirls and stuff behind it. These weren't like lsd or mushroom hallucinations, they were far more real and vivid. It wasn't anything overwhelming though, just small little pockets here and there.

I went back to my room, and holy shit, there were thousands of flies pouring out of my blinds. Like this amorphous mass of flies dripping from between the slats. All the other hallucinations were gone. It was just the flies, and I cannot stress enough how real it was. I went up to it and could get in real close and see all their little wings and glittery eyes. I got in bed and now there were hundreds of spiders crawling on my computer chair. I just laid in bed watching in awe of how real it looked. Then huge spiders started crawling on my ceiling, like the ones from jumanji. It was unsettling, but I was oddly sober (mentally) and knew how common reports of insects and dissociatives were. Except for the psychedelic rips, there were no other hallucinations besides the bugs. I don't even have a fear of spiders or bugs, and always assumed that was the underlying cause.

Isn't it technically the deliriant effect that causes these hallucinations (and not the dissociative effect)?

I read somewhere (erowid perhaps?) that a dissociatives are very dangerous precisely because it's very hard to tell which things are real.and which aren't so people get hurt trying to escape from these very real images.

Scary as fuck...

It's not just Datura, either. Belladonna/Nightshade and anti-histamines like Benadryl/diphenhydramine/dimenhydrinate do the exact same things: you see lots of bugs, hear and talk to people who aren't there, smokers tend to smoke imaginary cigarettes, your body feels very heavy, and it screws with your vision.

The most horrifying aspect of the whole experience is that, no matter how much you warn yourself going in, you'll always believe you're completely sober and rational during the experience. It's not until after it wears off completely that you were basically completely schizophrenic during the experience.

Just for anyone thinking this sounds interesting ... even for an entomologist, there is not one single microscopic ounce of euphoria from this experience. Don't try it. There's a reason those who do never try it a second time.

This needs to be said over and over again. There's two different species of plants commonly known as Datura: Jimsonweed, Datura stramonium, and Sacred Thronapple, Datura wrightii. It's Datura wrightii that the Native Americans used as a hallucinogen, while Datura stramonium seems to have only been used as medicine or poison.

People don't bother making this important distinction anymore and end up foolishly taking the more common D. stramonium. This is probably why Datura has become so infamous, not that D. wrightii is "safe", but it certainly appears to be safer than D. stramonium.

From the Native American Ethnobotany Database:

Datura wrightii: http://naeb.brit.org/uses/species/1244/

Datura stramonium: http://naeb.brit.org/uses/species/1243/

When I was 17, I had a cold and the doctor prescribed some homeopathic remedy containing Atropine. Now, the whole point of homeopathy, of course, is to dilute any ingredients to the point where you are lucky to find even a single molecule of it in a given pill. (In my defense, I did not know anything about medicine back then.)

But I think I must have gotten a package from a batch where they forgot a couple of dilution steps or something. Also I may have misread the instructions. Anyway, it took me about six days to go through the pills, and during that whole time, I could not help but grin almost the entire time. Also, two or three times, I very clearly heard someone talking to me who was not there. I did recognize the voices, they belonged to people I knew. Then again, I looked around, did not see the person and figured that it must have been in my head, which apparently people hallucinating from Atropine are rather incapable of.

OTOH, I had none of the side effects Atropine has according to Wikipedia, so who knows what was going on with me back then. But I understood something was off, and the only thing that had changed from the weeks before were those homeopathic pills. (Just to be clear, all in all the experience was pleasant.)

There's bee a bit of fuss over here in the UK recently about homeopathic medicines, which are supposed to be ridiculously over-diluted, containing dangerous amounts of various substances.

The basic idea that tiny amounts of substances that harm you in various ways might benefit you in a related way is magical thinking. But when you can't rely on the 'tiny amounts' part, you're in pretty nasty territory.

Indeed. I remember reading about some event in the UK where people deliberately "overdosed" on homeopathic "medicine" to demonstrate it has no effect. That could end badly if the stuff is not diluted as much as the label says.

Come to think of it, the company I work at does process engineering and plant design/construction mainly for companies in the food industry, but we have a a couple of customers from the pharmaceutical industry as well.

And the impression I got so far (being the in-house IT admin, I can only watch it from a distance), is that the pharmaceutical customers are extremely meticulous. And with good reason, of course. Imagine if a batch of paracetamol/acetaminophen tablets contained 5g instead of 0.5g.

But if the engineering and QA at homeopathic companies is as scientific as homeopathy itself, that is not surprising. :(

Magical Thinking, eh?

Vaccines and the entire concept of hormesis is something you should research when you get the chance.

Vaccines operate on a completely different principle....You get exposed to live but neutered or dead bacteria/viruses so your immunoresponse mechanisms learn how to fight it if you ever come across the full strength version. It has nothing to do with homeopathy.

Sadly, there is no vaccination against stupidity

Oh, that's hilarious. Wow!

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