DOSE: T+ 0:00	1.5 g	insufflated	Datura	(roots)
T+ 0:45	1.0 g	oral	Datura	(roots)
T+ 1:15	3.0 g	oral	Datura	(roots)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

I'm 19 years old. I started trying out different drugs for the first time when I was on the road in August of this year. I've tried DXM (that was the first thing I tried, and probably the second most powerful), morning glory seeds, stadol (a kappa opioid agonist synthetic opiate that is snorted in 1 mg doses, causes dysphoria instead of typical opiate euphoria, very strange), vicodin, salvia, and most recently, datura. Datura is by far the most powerful drug I've tried thus far, and my experience with it is making me seriously consider whether I will ever use psychoactives again.

Please note, before I continue, that I have never used marijuana. I'm not particularly religious about my drug experiments, but I'm not very interested in being messed up or high. If you're considering taking datura because you don't have enough cash for a dime, then read this account, or just take my word for it and don't do it.

About a week ago, I was out walking at night, and I came across a datura plant. I live in Southern California, in the desert, and I think that the thornapples in my area are D. Inoxia, as that is the species that Mexican shamans used. The plant was large, and had not flowered yet. I was aware of the fact that daturas bear tropane alkaloids, and that they can be used to induce delerium and hallucinations. I pulled up the plant and twisted off the root, which was white and about the size of a medium carrot. I carried it home and went to bed.

The next day I got up and did some research on the plant. To my dismay, I could not find any accounts of people who had consumed the root (I'm sure there are some here, but I haven't looked that hard). References differ as to whether the root or the leaves are stronger, and also, interestingly, belladonna roots may bear more apoatropane than the rest of the plant, and I think apoatropane is even more toxic than scopalamine. So I just assumed that the roots were as strong as the seeds on a weight basis, and proceeded with caution.

First I tried smoking small shavings from the root, mixed with pipe tobacco in a pipe. I used the tobacco to keep it lit. It made me feel rather sick, but I think that was mostly the tobacco, as I am not used to inhaling tobacco smoke and the blend was rather strong. A few minutes later I noted my pulse was around 90, my pupils were dilated, and I felt a little weird. These symptoms wore away after about ninety minutes. I was wary of the plant, but felt positive enough to proceed. Over the next few days I cut up the root and dried it in the fridge so that it would keep, and tried increasely larger doses of it orally, getting up to around two grams maybe. The symptoms, even the dilation of the pupils, wore away after a few hours each time, and I never felt as though I'd reached the dose that causes delirium. On Wednesday night (October 15th) at 9:30 P.M. I decided I was going to hit it harder and get it over with.

I thought that perhaps the alkaloids were similar enough to nicotine to be snorted like snuff. I knew that snorting snuff was incredibly more powerful than smoking tobacco, so I decided that doing the same thing with datura would be an interesting experiment. I took a strip of the dried root, and ran it through a coffee grinder till it was quite shredded (I'd better clean that thing out before my dad uses it for coffee), then ground it into a powder with my mortar and pestle. At 9:45 , I snorted half of it up one nostril, then the rest up the other. I sat down in bed to read Dracula (I often read on drugs now, and I have finished quite a few books that way), and waited hopefully for about twenty minutes. It didn't do anything to me that I observed, except burn my nose quite a bit. So far as I can tell, this probably just contributed to the oral dose.

Then, at 10:30, I consumed 1 gram of the dried root, chewing the vile stuff and washing it down with water. At 11:00, I decided that wasn't enough and ate 3 more grams of it. I nearly retched it was so bitter but I got it down. I DO NOT RECOMMEND DOING THIS, ESPECIALLY WITHOUT A SITTER. When you consume datura, it can make your intestines stop pushing food forward, and thus remain in your system for days, continuously building up in your bloodstream as it is all absorbed. If your intestines stop working when they are full of food and large quantities of poisonous plants, then you are SERIOUSLY risking DEATH. THIS WAS EXTREMELY STUPID OF ME! However, in my wisdom's meager defense, I did take a small amount, I fasted all day, and I drank a lot of water.

So, long about 12:30 reading began to become impossible. Not only could I no longer understand the book, but my vision began to be distorted. I am normally nearsighted, and I wear about 350 prescription glasses. Well, with my glasses on, they still made far vision clear, like they normally do, but they made near vision so blurry that I couldn't make out the words in the book. When I took them off, near vision became clear, and far vision was blurry, like normal. All peripheral vision was quite blurry.
I gave up reading and simply laid down for the experience.

Suddenly (in the proverbial blink-of-an-eye), it was about 1:15 A.M. My mouth was completely dry, and my eyes stung. I was tremendously hungry, but knew that I shouldn't eat. I made for the kitchen, intending to drink a little bit of milk. I got up and set out for the hallway, and I ran right into the doorframe of my bedroom, and fell down on my ass. I soon discovered this was going to be the norm for the rest of the night. Whenever I chose a path I could never possibly follow it. It was as though the wall and furniture jumped into my path. I held my hands out in front of me like a blind man, and stumbled through my house in a frantic daze. I live with my family, but they were all asleep, or at least I thought they were. When I got to the kitchen, I decided I was far too queasy to eat or drink anything but water. I returned to my bedroom, but a while later I went to the kitchen again, again decided I was too queasy, and again returned to my room. I knew I'd already done this once, but didn't have the sense to not try it again.

The night wore on, and I frankly don't know very much of what happened. I wandered about the house more, and decided I hadn't taken enough of the drug, because I was sure I wasn't hallucinating. Boy, was I wrong.

Because I was sure I hadn't taken enough of the drug, I decided to sleep off the rest of the trip. I turned off the lights in my room and tried to go to sleep. I gave up trying to sleep when I realized that I was pounding my pillow in a regular rhythm and singing softly, and reached up over my bed to where my reading lamp is. I hit the switch, and there was a blue flash, indicating that the incandescent bulb had burned out. This angered me very much, but I decided to try and get back up anyway, because I had run out of water and my lips were cracking from dryness. So, I tried very hard to cross my room in the dark, and ran into my trashcan, which is nearly in the opposite direction from the door. I knocked it over, and it spilled across my floor, and made quite a bit of noise. Of course, my room was pitch black, so I practically had to feel for the doorknob. On the way back to my room I ran my forehead right into a wall, quite hard.

Thus, with a good-sized bump on my head, I went back to my room and begged my body to fall asleep. I desperately wanted the whole thing to be over. I was flushed and cold and overstimulated, and I passed in and out of sleep. I had an incredible number of dreams, so vivid that I sometimes spoke aloud in reply to them or sat up suddenly from surprise. Eventually, I woke up at about 11 A.M. This is where things got weird.

First of all, my trashcan was knocked over and I had a bump on my forehead, but my reading light wasn't burned out. I always turn it on when I get up at night, and it illuminates my entire bedroom, but I had knocked over my trashcan in complete darkness. Second of all, there were five water cups on my nightstand, and I had only started with one. They were all partly full. And most importantly, I'd had conversations with my dad and my sister, which I only have the most fleeting recollection of. My sister had said something to me at about 2:30, and I'd mumbled a reply to her which was completely unintelligible, but also I'd motioned to my forehead, where I'd bumped myself. Then my dad found me, at 4:30 in the morning, standing in the middle of my room. He had come in because he had heard a loud crashing sound. He told me that I should be in bed and I yelled at him that I was going to be in a minute. I have a very vague recollection of deciding to try and use the computer and seeing him, but it seems less real than many of the dreams. the current story that my family believes is that I was sleepwalking, and I can't bring myself to tell them the truth.

That was Thursday morning. Now it is 11 A.M. Friday morning. When I got up yesterday morning, I was still seeing things, mostly of a sort of blurry movement variety, like there were insects crawling around on things, but I found that I could walk around without hitting walls. I was incapable of typing, as though my fingers were all thumbs, or like the keys moved when I reached for them. I had a sore throat and a fever, and simply felt generally sick. My glasses were still making near vision extremely blurry, and they did that all day. And I couldn't see anything outside without sunglasses, it was so bright. Even now, Friday morning, even though all of the other effects have passed, my pupils are still dilated, and I still feel queasy.

I learned more about safety than anything else from this trip. I was a damned fool to not take datura in the presence of someone who could sit for me. I could have easily tripped over my trashcan and landed head-first on the tile floor, or injured myself in any of a variety of other ways, not to mention that my pulse was probably about 130 for 8 hours.
I have come to a personal conclusion about this substance. In light of what it did to me. Here it is--
Datura makes you nuts, absolutely crazy, and anyone who is considering doing it should:

1. Study, then study some more. Consider it from the point of view of your physical and mental health, and figure out what the risks are. Are you really sure that you want to take something that belongs to a class of drugs known as deleriants? You can buy salvia in most paraphernalia shops nowadays, worst thing anyone's ever gotten from moderate doses of that is a headache (Larger doses and you may wander about, get a sitter for that).

2. Find a sample that you want. The roots, leaves, and seeds all have differing alkaloid compositions, and one might do something very different from the other. For instance, atropine is a stimulant and scopalamine is a depressant, so the dominance of one over the other in a sample from a nightshade could mean an extremely different trip. Also, scopalamine has a much lower LD50 than atropine. Have a way to measure your sample; with seeds this is somewhat easy because you count them (CAUTION: POTENCY MAY VARY TREMENDOUSLY FROM PLANT TO PLANT, you may weigh more than me, and take less than me, and have a much more intense trip than I did), but with other parts of the plant you need a scale. I used a balance my mom bought for pottery glazes.

3. Get a sitter. Since you've read my account, it should be obvious that you absolutely need one. Even if you didn't have to worry about injuring yourself, you might have an insight that you'd forget if you didn't tell it to someone immediately. You may have a medical crisis, as well. It is far from unheard of to end up in the emergency room from datura or any of the other nigtshades.

Finally, be absolutely sure that you want to do this. Take it from me (or from virtually all of the rest of the accounts of using it on the Internet), datura is both absolutely no fun and thoroughly dangerous.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 27654
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 18, 2003	Views: 38,427
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