A year ago at this point I shared about this flower that I came across in my searches to help someone identify a plant they had encountered. I didn’t identify that plant but I found out about datura which was nothing short of fascinating. A few months later I found out that same plant was growing down at the driveway as it showed it’s first giant bloom on Christmas Eve last year as we were heading to the local Walmart.

Now we’ve been fascinated with this plant but we just haven’t gotten around to even consider experimenting with it. What we did do was put some birds at the base of the plant for a few months to fertilize it and make it grow a lot, which it did. And we’re lucky for it because we’re getting blooms a whole month and a half early and I’m super happy about it. The photos in this post are of our datura which is identified as the variety Datura Maxima and are honestly what spurred me looking into this plant again.

The Huichol people are famous within Mexico for their use of plant medicines specifically psychoactive plant medicines. In modern times they’re known for their relationship with plants like peyote. But before peyote there was Datura and it’s been called many things from “tree of the wind” to the crazy tree due to the effects that they have on people when ingested. There are a lot of varieties with varying characteristics but they all contain varying concentrations of the same three tropine alkaloids: scopolamine, atropine and hyosycamine (and many non-active other alkaloids too in much smaller concentrations).

Supposedly it’s rarely used at this point and only in specific settings by trained shamans. One source mentioned that shamans need 5 years training before they even take the drug which is saying something. It’s known to produce intense vivid hallucinations that can be very frightening for people not prepared for that sort of thing. This isn’t like a nice pleasant acid trip, this is like a delirium inducing hallucinogenic that can cause trips that last more than 24 hours depending on how you ingest it.

When we’ve asked around to local shamans we’ve come in contact with and we’re always told to not do it, which we always find intriguing. Through research I’ve found the least risky way of consumption seems to be smoking the leaves so if and when we ever do try it.

Most modern use of the plant is actually for worship purposes. People pray to the plant before a peyote journey and to ask for things like fertility and creative help. Some cultures suggest just strongly smelling the flowers and other similar rituals for mild effects. Apparently the dew filled drops from flowers are used directly as eye drops to improve vision.

Scopolamine is interesting because isolated it actually has quite a few medicinal purposes depending on the concentrations used. For example it’s used pre-anasthesia as it’s been known to strengthen the effects of morphine. It’s also an anti-spasmodic and is used sometimes for digestive health. This is also the main psychoactive compound of the three and is for the most part responsible for the effects.

So what’s a Datura trip like? From my understanding pretty unpleasant and disorienting all though it’s rumored that one can achieve great knowledge from the plant. It’s a plant commonly referred to as sorcery, black magic or witchcraft. But by others it’s considered the path to mystical and spiritual enlightenment.

In terms of mythology the plant supposedly was originally a god by the name of Keiri which was the god of wind and magic. After time he transformed himself into the tree of the wind which is datura as we know it now to pass knowledge down. But if you ingest this in any way you could find yourself experiencing restlessness, vivid hallucinations with amnesia that makes the hallucinations difficult to remember.

I did some research on people claiming to have had experiences but I’ll admit none of them were reports of the specific plant that we have. From well known jimson weed to datura inoxia there are many ways to get this sort of trip and my variety is just one of them. All reports said it was pretty intense, pretty disorienting and they had a hard time remembering what they experienced. Pretty much all of them said they were likely to leave it alone from there on.

I’m still intrigued by this one especially for the medicinal uses that it has in lower doses. I’ve heard there are ways to consume it where the experience is less intense and I will say that most of the trip reports I read didn’t consume it in those ways, they went for things like tea that are actually not recommended. Eating it and drinking it in tea form has been linked to a more intense experience and that’s not always for the better.

Here’s the link to my older post from a year ago about this:

TIL: Cup of Gold Solandra Grandiflora A Solanacar Plants is Highly Hallucinogenic

Here are my sources and other interesting links I found in my adventures researching this post:

Wikipedia: Cup of Gold Flower

People of the Peyote: Huichol Indian History, Religion and Survival

Wikipedia: Solanda Maxima

Erowid Files: Solandra

Datura: The Scariest Drug I’ve Ever Taken

Erowid Files: Datura Experience