Datura

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Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:32
Welcome to another episode of the chemical collective. The chemical collective offers you your weekly dose of Drug Facts while dispelling fiction. Today, we're talking about detour, a flowering plant which causes intense hallucinations and is revered for its medicinal and sacred properties. I am Dr Dustin Hines. I'm Missy bofoll, and I'm April Contreras. I had a brief hiatus last week. I was actually out of the country giving a talk on drugs, but I'm so glad to be back in studio today. Let's jump right into this April. What is detour? Yeah, glad to have you back. Detour is a genus of flowering plants that belong to the solanaceae family, and the solanaces is often referred to as the nightshades. And other nightshades include fruits or vegetables that you might find in your kitchen, like tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes and peppers and tobacco is also a nice shade. There are several species, species of detour, including detour Stramonium, dimsenweed, deter anoxia, often called Moonflower or angels trumpet, and detour metal or Devil's trumpet. And they have a very striking I find them to be beautiful. They feature large, trumpet shaped flowers that can be white, lavender, pink or even pale yellow. And the flowers can grow up to about eight inches long. They have a very sweet but intoxicating scent. They bloom in the evening and can be fully open during the night. And their leaves are dark green, kind of oval shaped, with irregular, toothy or wavy edges. When you rub the leaves, they have a rough texture that emit an unpleasant odor, and the stems are thick, pale green to purplish. Can be more of a bushy formation, and they produce spiky, egg shaped seed pods that start out as a light green but turn brown as they mature. And these pods can be up to two inches in diameter and contain numerous small brownish black seeds. Yeah, I agree. They're very beautiful. They have a very striking appearance. I saw a plant just a couple weeks ago when I was camping near Red Rock.

Unknown Speaker 2:35
You can see them in patches on the side of the road in the Nevada desert. They've been used in the American Southwest and across the world, like in Central America, Europe, South Africa and India for centuries, not just as psychoactive substances, but also as medicinal treatments, poisons, and even for entheogenic or spiritual practices. Yeah, and I'll be the third to chime in. I think it's because radio's the medium, and it's hard for us to get this image out there, but they truly are a beautiful plant. This is one of the few plants that when I'm hiking with my littles, my two boys, I'm like, don't touch it. This is actually a very, very poisonous plant. And I'm really fascinated, actually, about how these plants and other psychiatric plants have these properties that people have learned to use throughout history. I'm scared to touch this like I say it's poisonous, but people have been able to figure this out. We're not really currently even fully in understanding how that was done.

Unknown Speaker 3:31
But you know, April, what are some examples of how detour was traditionally used in California, the American Southwest and everywhere else? With a gain my second rider, please don't touch this plant if you see it. It's very dangerous. Yeah, it's kind of paradoxical how it's got the striking beauty, but it can be potentially very harmful. But

Unknown Speaker 3:52
dutura actually has a rich history of use in the American Southwest, where indigenous cultures have used it for purposes ranging from spiritual and shamanic. So detour was used to induce visions and connect with the spiritual world. And the properties the hallucinogenic and deliriant properties of the plant were believed to facilitate communication with deities, ancestors or spirits. Detour was also used in rites of passage. So amongst some tribes, like the Zuni and the yaki de tourer played a role in initiation ceremonies for young men, and it was consumed as a part of a ritual to induce visions that would guide them into adulthood and help them understand their role within the tribe. And there's actually a very cool paper from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences where they found detour quids at this place called pinwheel cave in California, just to provide further evidence that this has been used for a really, really long time for ceremonial purposes, and deter was also used for health and healing and medicine. Despite its toxicity, it served as a treatment for pain, asthma and anesthesia in some cases, and a.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Yeah, did some indigenous tribes even use them to gain insight to future and answer important questions? You said a word quid? What did you mean when you said that? April, oh, that's a great question. So a quid is like a bundle of the detour plant that they probably used to chew on. And so in this paper that was published in 2020 they found evidence of these little quids scattered around the cave.

Unknown Speaker 5:25
Super cool to talk more about some traditional practices with detour in Europe to start out during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, detour was associated with witchcraft and magic. It was actually used as one of the ingredients in what they called Flying ointments, which which is used to induce hallucinatory experiences that mimicked flying or traveling to other realms in folk medicine, it was used for pain relief asthma and as a sedative, but often with dangerous side effects due to its toxicity, alchemists and occult practitioners included deter in their rituals believing it could facilitate altered states of consciousness and provide insights into mystical knowledge. Again, however, due to the potent effects, it was often used with caution in India, the Torah was used in spiritual and religious practices. It holds a spiritual a sacred place in Hinduism, and is often associated with Lord Shiva. It was often offered to Shiva during religious rituals, as the plant was believed to be a manifestation of his powers.

Unknown Speaker 6:28
Also, it was used in Ayurvedic medicine, and although it's highly toxic, it was used in carefully controlled doses to treat various ailments like asthma, pain, even insanity. The seeds and leaves were sometimes prepared into formulations. But again, this practice required precise knowledge to avoid poisoning, very cool. So I heard something between the two you I just wanted to bridge so I understand. We've heard it's in the southwest and other parts, and now we're hearing it's in India. Where is this? In the world? Practically all over there's evidence of this plant growing pretty much every continent. And then it sounds like, from what Missy just told us, people everywhere are using this as a medicine. So that's absolutely fascinating. So people are using it everywhere. It has many different uses, both medicinal and ritualistic. April, can you tell me more about how this plant is prepared. And then I'm going to keep saying this, don't touch this plant. Don't go near it. It's dangerous. Yeah, the preparation of dutura for both medicinal and ritualistic ceremonies has always required very careful handling due to its really potent and toxic nature, and some examples of how different cultures have prepared him the plant for medicinal purposes includes like creation of a poultice or topical application. So in both the American Southwest and India, there's evidence that the Tura leaves were sometimes crushed and made into like a cream or poultice, some sort of substance to treat external pain, swelling or inflammation, and when applied directly to the skin, the risk of toxicity was bit lower than ingestion, which over a ton of you know, experimentation, they determined that it would be safer in this application to harness the plant's analgesic properties deter leaves can also be smoked or burned to treat respiratory issues like asthma, the bronchodilator effects of the plant could provide temporary relief, though, this method was really risky due to the potential of overdose. That's a rapid rate of administration right and detero for internal use, very small amounts of the seeds or leaves could be boiled in water to create some sort of infusion or decoction. And this was used to treat conditions like fever, pain or digestive issues, because even in tiny amounts, deter could be toxic. This was really only done by experienced healers, because they could strictly control the dosage, sometimes mixing deter with other herbs to dilute its effects. And this knowledge was really passed down over long periods of time. Yeah, I had these great conversations still at the University Dr Liam Frank in sociology about detour. And he made me see that shamans, you know, healed people one, but two, they were also entertainment, he called it. And so shamans would quite often take the detour and then run around and dance for hours, but in that they gain an exquisite experience and evidence and knowledge about how this drug works so fascinating that people knew so much about this.

Unknown Speaker 9:36
So let's talk a little bit more about how this is used in Western culture. Yeah. So detour use has been intertwined with the counterculture and psychedelic movement, but not in the exact way that you might think so, because of its ability to produce hallucinations. During the 1960s counterculture and psychedelic revolution, detour was rediscovered by individuals that.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Experimenting with other substances like LSD or psilocybin, but we'll talk about it a little bit later. The delirian effects of deterra are have some parallels, but are very, are very, very different than those induced by traditional serotonergic psychedelics. And alongside this, there was a growing population of stories that you know, deter trips could be potentially dangerous and even fatal because of the intense Yeah, have you seen some of these videos and trip reports? Yes, you know, I think death is a terrible thing and overdosing is a terrible thing. But locked in syndrome, there's people that have this and have problems for years after is even scarier to me. So, yeah, and so I think that is the major takeaway as we move it into kind of the contemporary use and online subculture like

Unknown Speaker 10:50
websites like Reddit, arrow with psychonaut wiki, where individuals talk about their trip experience. The major theme is that this is a very dangerous type of practice, do not do it again. Yeah, usually that's the kind of tagline going along

Unknown Speaker 11:07
and yeah, that's pretty much the major theme.

Unknown Speaker 11:14
Yeah. In more recent times, dutura has gained a bit of what you could call a cult status. It's experienced a resurgence in some neopagan, occult and shamanistic circles, but its reputation as an unpredictable and dangerous substance means it's far from mainstream. Okay, so we've been hinting at that this is psychoactive. It's not quite hallucinogenic. It's not quite the same thing, but on the same pathway. What are the chemicals in detour the typical tropane alkaloids, etc, in plants like this. What? What is the prominent mover of, you know, the effects of deterrent, yeah, there are three major tropane alkaloids found in deterra. The prominent motor mover would be scopolamine. This alkaloid is known for its strong hallucinogenic and delirium effects. This is what causes the vivid hallucinations, confusion and a loss of sense of reality, and in some cases, it produces an amnesic effect, making it difficult for the individuals to recall their experiences. There's also atropine, which affects the central nervous system and can cause symptoms like increased heart rate, dry mouth, blurred vision and hallucinations. It's also responsible for the deliriant properties leading to these intense and unsettling visions. And then there's hyoscisme. This compound has effects similar to both atropine and scopolamine. It can induce hallucinations, confusion and alter perception, along with physical symptoms like increased heart rate and dry mucous membranes, yeah. So I'm quite familiar with scopolamine, atropine, but this oscamine is interesting. I don't really know a lot about it, but it looks similar to the other two. Can you tell me more about these alkaloids and what they do to the brain? And obviously some people are taking these in via smoking, so the lungs and then also the gut Missy, yeah, so the alkaloids April mentioned, scopolamine, atropine and hyoscamine. How did you say that hyoskamine, so they're anticholinergic agents. So we're going to talk about how the cholinergic system its receptors, and what actions at these receptors, how they induce psychoactive effects. So the mechanism of action of deterra, or do the alkaloids, like I said, and they antagonize muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, so they block the action of acetylcholine, which is a key neurotransmitter for cognitive and autonomic functions. Scopolamine and atropine primarily target m1 m2 and m4 receptor subtypes, and when deterra blocks the m1 receptors that will disrupt normal cognitive processing, leading to confusion, impaired memory and disorientation, often described as an anticholinergic delirium, the vivid, dreamlike hallucinations are due to the blockade of m1 receptors in the brain's cortical And limbic areas, which are involved in perception and memory. So you can imagine, when we have perception and memory receptors, that when they're blocked, that then produces hallucinations, and they can be so realistic that users are unable to distinguish the hallucinations from reality, which can lead to dangerous behaviors or interactions with their environment,

Unknown Speaker 14:20
and then deters effects on m2, receptors in the heart can result in tachycardia or a rapid heart rate, while the blockade of m3 receptors cause symptoms like dry mouth, dilated pupils and urinary retention. These autonomic effects are classic examples of deterrence, strong anticholinergic action. And while deterrence primary action is on muscarinic receptors. Its anticholinergic effects indirectly influence other neurotransmitter systems like dopamine and serotonin, so inhibition of acetylcholine leads to altered dopamine release, which contributes to the intense hallucinations and psychotic symptoms experienced by deterior users and the.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Change in dopamine activity can make hallucinations feel more vivid and emotionally charged, and although deterior does not directly act on serotonin receptors, like the canonical five HT to a receptor associated with psychedelic experience, the disruption in acetylcholine and dopamine balance can indirectly alter serotonin signaling, which may explain the intense mood changes, feelings of euphoria or even paranoia, repeat reported by users and deterrence, potent anticholinergic effects are what actually make it highly dangerous, and its impact on multiple neurotransmitter systems often results in severe cognitive, perceptual and autonomic disturbances, and In extreme cases, ingestion can lead to some life threatening symptoms like seizure, extreme agitation, or even coma and death. Okay, so you're scaring me now, but how much is typically taken or needed, or how much when people take this? Are they taking? Are they taking, like a whole plant? Yeah, so people have, over a long period of time, reported from, you know, their trip experiences and places like Reddit, arrowwood and psychonaut to provide the examples of their experience with different doses. But it's important to emphasize that these encounters are also anecdotal and inconsistent due to the plant's unpredictable alkaloid content. And for some context, this trip's gonna last anywhere from 12 to 72 hours, depending on the dose. Time for that, no three days, three day weekend.

Unknown Speaker 16:31
And so we're gonna start from like a small dose, a very threshold dose, which would be about one to two seeds from these spiky pods or a very small piece of the leaves. Seeds are small too. I've seen them. So that's crazy, and it's it's crazy, yeah, so with a special dose, people report very mild effects, like slight dry mouth. Their pupils might be dilated and see some subtle changes in vision. The cognitive effects are pretty minimal at this stage, but there's going to be a sense of unease or potential confusion. And experienced users on Reddit describe this as like a starting point to gage their sensitivity, but the effects can definitely still be unpredictable, especially considering the age of the seed that they decide to take from more of a light dose will be about three to five seeds, or a larger portion of the leaf or flower, these symptoms are more noticeable, so very severe, dry mouth, more of a blurry vision, difficulty focusing and slight euphoria. Some users report mild hallucinations like seeing faint shadowy figures or hearing whispers, along with mild confusion and memory gaps. And even at this range, side effects can be really unpleasant, and there's higher risk of dangerous behavior, because these trips are very difficult to

Unknown Speaker 17:51
tease apart, like, what's actual reality than that at a moderate dose, six to 12 seeds, there's pronounced confusion, vivid hallucinations, the delirium is becoming more intense, and users often experience conversations with imaginary people. Difficulty distinguishing the hallucination from reality, and they exhibit episodes of wandering. There's also tachycardia, severe dry mouth and inability to urinate and dehydration are common. This is associated with a very high risk. A heavy dose, which is about 13 to 20 seeds, is going to be a very intense experience. And these intense and uncontrollable hallucinations are accompanied with complete delirium, extreme confusion, physical symptoms like a rapid heart rate and high body temperature and an overdose would be, which would be at at least 20 seeds or more experiencers. Users are experiencing severe anticholinergic toxicity like seizures and respiratory distress, hyperthermia, coma or even death, and these hallucinations are extremely intense, and the users are very unaware. Yeah, and again, overdose has happened as little as four or five seats. So this, this is like not a plant to play with at all. Some key themes from forums like April mentioned from Reddit, arrowwood and psycho not wiki, are unpredictability, a delayed onset and dangerous behavior. So

Unknown Speaker 19:21
sounds like a good Friday night. Yeah, users consistently highlight the unpredictable nature of detour. So two seeds from the same plant can have vastly different potencies, making it nearly impossible to do safely, but delayed onset, many users report the effects. Can take one or two hours to begin, and then can last for 24 to 48 hours or even longer, and that delayed onset often leads to accidental overdosing, as users mistakenly think I'm not feeling it. I haven't taken enough. Let me take another seed, and then you're feeling it for three days. Yeah. So that was tongue in cheek. This is a good idea. This is very concerning. And.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Aspects of deterra really blur the line between reality and hallucination. It's not like a happy hallucination. Can we maybe discuss the mechanism,

Unknown Speaker 20:10
as far as the brain and other things, the receptors of these intense experiences? What I'm basically asking is, how does deter exert its effects on our brain. Yeah, this was really interesting to kind of tease apart in the research for this episode, and so the intense reality blurring experiences are actually like a lot of users report some of similar phenomenon, like smoking phantom cigarettes or eating phantom food, seeing people or entities that they know or seeing, like insects or parasites crawling around. And so these effects are involved tightly with a disruption in acetylcholine signaling. And so some examples of how this inability to distinguish reality from hallucinations involves the m1 cholinergic receptor. So the m1 subtype is heavily involved in cognition, learning, memory and sensory processing, and when deter blocks these receptors in brain areas like the hippocampus, cortex and other regions, it really interferes with the brain's ability to form coherent thoughts and integrate sensory information, and this disruption likely contributes to these vivid and immersive hallucinations, where users experience kind of dreamlike visions and conversations with people or objects that appear very real. Have you seen the video on this story of there's two kids that are overdosing terrible on this plant, but they're smoking an imaginary cigarette really, and they're handing it back and forth to each other. Have either of you seen that? Yeah, that's crazy. What did you think when you saw that?

Unknown Speaker 21:47
It's almost like they're dreaming, but together, yeah, it was like a pantomime, and just absolutely bizarre. And then in that later in that video, he starts to comb his hair, but there's no comb, and he's not really combing his hair, but he's so into it. So, very different, very unique. Yeah, it's very unique one to have these two people having this experience together, but that also people at different times are reporting like similar types of experiences. So that's probably related to the impact on the thalamus and sensory processing. So disrupting the thalamus, which is a key region in relaying sensory information and directing it to appropriate cortical areas. So muscarinic receptors are essential for the normal functioning of the thalamus, and when deterior disrupts cholinergic signaling in this brain region, it can cause a breakdown in sensory gating, so the brain's ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli, which leads to overload, whether visual, auditory or tactile, and these hallucinations then become overwhelming, and stimulus sleep blend with other real world stimuli, and there's also impaired memory formation and retrieval. So the hippocampus is crucial for memory formation and retrieval and relies on acetylcholine to encode new experiences, so deters antagonism of muscarinic receptors in this region really impair short term memory, which leads to memory gaps, disorientation. And users often report losing hours of time or being unable to distinguish between what they imagined, when it happened, and what actually occurred. So I think I know the answer to this already, but we always ask them, you know, a similar template of questions that are important. I know I would want to do this drug, and I think if I did it once, I wouldn't want to do it again. Missy, is it considered addictive?

Unknown Speaker 23:32
Oh, no. So it's not considered addictive in the traditional sense. It's not, doesn't directly stimulate the brain's reward pathways in the way substances like opioids, nicotine or stimulants do because of the unpleasant, delirious and potentially dangerous effects. Users don't usually

Unknown Speaker 23:50
do it again and again. You can think of after 12 hours, let alone 36 hours. You're not looking to experience that again.

Unknown Speaker 23:58
Some research on anticholinergic substances like scopolamine, which was found in deterra, as we were saying, showed that these compounds produce a state of delirium characterized by confusion, agitation and hallucinations, like we've said again and again. So these effects are aversive, and they typically discourage repeated use, so it doesn't usually lead to addiction. Okay? So let's now explore whether it has any potential clinical treatment or research. Missy, have you seen any papers or seen anything like we know, LSD has that a rich history of research? How about deterra? Yeah, unlike classical psychedelics, like you said, LSD or psilocybin or MDMA, which have shown therapeutic potential in clinical practice, deters use in a therapeutic context is highly limited and controversial due to the dangers and unpredictable effects, but yeah, let's look into deters potential and the challenges it presents. So scopolamine, the primary alkaloid in deterra, has some established clinical uses, particularly in the treatment.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Of motion sickness and as a preoperative sedative. Again, it's due to the anticholinergic effects that can reduce nausea, vomiting and secretions. There's some evidence that scopolamine has rapid acting antidepressant effects. Clinical studies have demonstrated that low doses of scopolamine can produce rapid mood improvements in patients with major depressive disorder. Okay, so,

Unknown Speaker 25:27
April, can we summarize any of the potential health benefits, like, what? What is good about this drug? Yeah, I'd say that what is good about this drug is composed of the psychoactive constituents which are within the deter plant, which don't have anything to do with like the deliriant properties. So

Unknown Speaker 25:48
some examples are analgesia, analgesic properties. So in some cultures, deter can really be a pain reliever. Its components, specifically scopolamine and atropine, are known to act as muscle relaxants and anti spaz and have anti spasmodic effects. So the plant can be applied topically for muscle pain and joint inflammation. It's also used to treat asthma and respiratory issues. So smoking the deter a plant helps relieve these symptoms and other respiratory symptoms by acting as a bronchodilator. Yeah, and I know that one actually in India is still used. I was surprised when I found out there's deterra cigarettes that are slight amount of deter for asthma. Wow. I didn't know that. I'm glad that I have my albuterol for my asthma

Unknown Speaker 26:35
smoke. And there is some other evidence too, but not as much as the analgesia and asthma properties that it could be antimicrobial, so helping with skin infections, boils and wounds, and I think that's interesting, because even just touching the leaf can kind of be irritating onto the skin, and deter has been shown to help relieve GI or gastrointestinal cramps and spasms, probably because of the anticholinergic effects. Yeah. So while deterra has some historical medicinal uses, again, the extreme toxicity and unpredictability makes it really, really, really unsafe for self medicating, modern medicine generally advises against its use outside of carefully controlled and research settings. And if you're considering any alternative medicines for health conditions, definitely consult a healthcare provider first. Don't touch deterra.

Unknown Speaker 27:25
Okay. Thank you both for this insightful discussion. I really did miss this last week. It's clear that duter is a plant with a fascinating but very dangerous history. I like that. It's not to be taken at all or even lightly. Well, thanks for listening to the chemical collective to get your weekly dose of Drug Facts while dispelling fiction.

Unknown Speaker 27:50
Move, I've never been a winner.

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