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Comment by selimthegrim | Hacker News Reader

Do they cover datura?

Datura is a deliriant. I'm a strong advocate of psychedelics and have used almost everything, but Datura isn't something people should touch, it's very dangerous.

>>Datura is a deliriant.

Such definition includes very little context. You should try more functional, mindful set&setting based approaches.

Here is some context:

https://www.bionity.com/en/encyclopedia/Psychedelics%2C_diss...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliriant

Cocaine is anesthetic in one context and stimulant in another. Meth can be sedative in specific contexts (according to dr. Andrew Weil). The classification above may be partially useful, but obviously not effective.

Erowid stories of Datura are some of the more terrifying ones on the website. Example:

https://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=17700

Read the repair trip reports for datura, brugmansia and belladonna.

I’m fascinated by the breadth of different experiences offered by plant and chemical mind alteration, and encountered more things than most people have heard of. Reading those reports was enough to make me not want to seek out these deleriants in any way at all.

I have read pretty much all the reports on Erowid on the three mentioned too and I don't remember a single one that sounded like a good experience.

I think the problem is being poisoned by atropine. It is not like you can just relax and go with the flow while literally being poisoned.

I believe the movie Hellraiser is inspired by datura too.

Repair == erowid

You win again autocorrect…

In my experience, Datura isn't something I'd use for healing, it's something I'd use to break down myself. The experience with that is unlike others, and not in a good way.

I'd liken it to the salvia experience.

I'd respectfully disagree. For the first part, datura is an anticholinergic neurotoxin, a deliriant. Salvia is a kappa-opioid dissociative, without any known toxicities. The important thing to keep in mind with salvia is minimalism. It has no tolerance to speak of, so nothing is lost by starting small, well smaller than you know will give noticeable effect. Then build up from there. (An effect of salvia overdose is 'automatic action', where your body moves on impulse without the intervention of your waking mind)

Though toxicity seems the main difference, comment above is talking about experience and not molecular mechanisms of action.

In a similar vein, if someone would ask a distinguished professor of neuroscience to provide a full description of the exact brain molecular state that "generates" an exact salvia experience (including any communicative content), s/he would fail.

> Though toxicity seems the main difference, comment above is talking about experience and not molecular mechanisms of action.

As someone who has done both, in similar settings, I'd still disagree with this. Datura was devilish like none other and probably one of the few psychedelics I'd never do again.

Datura being anticholinergic degrades the effect of acetylcholine, which is one of the components of (regular) attention. So no wonder it seems scary. But would you have the same experience after, for example, 10 days of continuous mindfulness/focusing meditation? Or after 30 days?

Having used both, salvia is something I’ve gone back to multiple times and find value in. If you treat salvia with respect, it’s useful.

Datura taught me a valuable lesson exactly once, about hubris.

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