Nature's Unforgiving Bloom: A Dive into Datura

Datura: a botanical femme fatale. It reels you in with its lavish, trumpet-shaped flowers, then hits you with a toxic cocktail of hallucinogens.

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Jun 05, 2023

I was in bed when I woke up in another dimension; I saw thousands upon thousands of dead bodies stacked up on one another going through into the sky. Screaming lots of screaming bloody screams, and blood was stained onto the walls of brownness. And that’s really all I recall until I woke up with a horrible headache and the doctors telling me I’ll be okay. — Trip report by /u/remarkable-tea3717

Datura is classified as a “deliriant” — which are substances that interfere with one’s ability to interpret reality. It’s more than any classical psychedelic experience, however.

Rather than inducing trippy visuals and introspective thinking, deliriants prevent users from being able to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined.

This plant, and others like it, create hallucinations that are so believable that some have described the experience as “more real than reality itself.” The unfortunate side of this is that these hallucinations are more often terrifying than they are enlightening or euphoric.

This state of botanically induced delirium can last as long as 72 hours.

Datura is dangerous — yes — but it’s also misunderstood. In the right hands (AKA a trained shaman), datura is viewed as a wise plant teacher. It’s held in a similar regard to sacred plants like tobacco.

Tobacco and datura (both members of the Solanaceae family) are used as medicines and tools for divination — they allow shamans to communicate with the spirit world.

These plants draw their power from their closeness to the world of death. Nicotine from tobacco and the various tropane alkaloids in datura are all highly toxic.

The value of plants like datura and tobacco stems from their ability to act as “amplifiers of intent.”

The shaman employs his ability to manifest clear intent, mixed with the amplification of these plants, in order to heal, receive information from the spirit world, and guide users through spiritual experiences produced by other plants, such as ayahuasca or magic mushrooms.

Shamans have a particular way of using Solanaceae plants like datura and tobacco safely. This method leverages a concept called “tolerance,” — which is where the body learns to resist the toxic effect of a substance over long periods of time.

A tabaquero (a shaman specializing in the use of tobacco) harnesses the power of this toxic plant by consuming it frequently.

He starts small and increases the dose over time. As his body becomes tolerant to the toxic effects of nicotine, he can take larger and larger doses. Eventually, he’s able to take enough tobacco to access its spiritual power.

Shamans who deploy datura as part of their practice follow a similar protocol — starting low and increasing the dose over many weeks or months.

Datura has also found a place in European herbalism — ironically, in the treatment of madness and convulsions. More commonly, it was employed as a topical for treating infections and pain.

Culpepper, the famous European herbalist, wrote this about datura:

“The juice pressed out of the fresh plant, and inspissated to an extract, has been taken in doses from half a grain to a dram, in twenty-four hours, in epileptic disorders, convulsions, and madness. An ointment made of the leaves is cooling and repelling.”

I have to point out that none of these traditional uses can be considered “safe” — engaging with datura is inherently risky.

But things get much more dangerous when users remain ignorant of this traditional knowledge and take the plant purely for its psychoactive effects.

Here’s the problem.

Datura grows naturally throughout much of the United States, Canada, and Europe.

It’s legal and is even sold as a common garden variety in gardening shops. Its beautiful white, pink, or purple trumpet-shaped flowers are an excellent addition to the garden.

This widespread availability and stories of its powerful hallucinogenic effects make it a popular choice

for young people looking to experiment with psychoactive substances and altered states of consciousness.

They’re either unaware or choose to ignore the cautions that come with this plant. They take doses that far exceed what their body can handle.

Datura isn’t just hallucinogenic — it’s also extremely toxic. Taking too much of this plant can certainly kill you.

Here’s a little poem used to describe the side effects of datura:

Blind as a bat (blurry vision)
Dry as a bone (dehydrated)
Full as a flask (can’t urinate)
Hot as hell (feverish)
Red as a beet (flushing)
Mad as a hatter (delirium)
Tacky as a leisure suit (tachycardia)

Datura's Double-Edged Sword: How it Works

Datura owes its effects to a group of psychoactive tropane alkaloids — including hyoscyamine, scopolamine, and atropine. These are the same alkaloids found in plants like the Colombian Boracherro Tree, Mandrake, and Belladonna.

Tropane alkaloids act as anticholinergics — which means they block acetylcholine — an important neurotransmitter involved in higher brain functions such as learning, memory, and consciousness.

Anticholinergics also inhibit the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which regulates our “rest and digest” processes. This includes digestive function, urination, and temperature control. It’s also involved with slowing down heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and preparing the mind for sleep.

Blocking the PNS causes distinct physical changes — heart rate and blood pressure increase; users become unable to urinate or defecate, body temperature spikes, and vision becomes blurry as the eyes lose the ability to control ciliary action.

Death from datura is usually caused by dehydration, hyperthermia, heart attack, respiratory failure, or stroke.

Datura's Dizzying Psychedelic Depths

Datura is distinct from “classical” psychedelics like LSD, magic mushrooms, DMT, or salvia. These substances change the way we perceive visual and auditory sensory information.

Datura invents entirely new information, which is seamlessly combined with reality. Users are unable to differentiate between what’s real and what’s imagined.

Common experiences include:

Having full conversations with people who were never there.
Smoking phantom cigarettes — users find themselves smoking cigarettes that mysteriously disappear.
Teleportation — one moment you’re in your home, the next you’re standing in a field or park without any recollection of how you got there.

A curious theme with datura visions is that they’re often dark and disturbing. It’s common to see demons, giant spiders, snakes, or dead bodies.

This could be an ode to the traditional understanding of datura as an allie of death.

Datura Trip Report by Terence McKenna:

The Botany of Datura

Datura is a member of the nightshade family (Solanaceae) — which makes it a relative of tobacco, belladonna, and mandrake. All of these plants contain a series of alkaloids with powerful pharmacological activity in humans.

This family also contains a variety of useful non-psychoactive plants like tomato, eggplant, & potato. All of these plants contain poisonous alkaloids too, but they’re present in the parts of the plant we don’t eat as food. For example, all 3 of these common vegetables contain toxic alkaloids in their leaves.

Datura is botanically very similar to brugemansia, which sports similar trumpet-shaped flowers and contains similar alkaloid profiles. The key difference between datura and brugemansia is that brugemansia forms shrubs or trees and has pendent (downward-facing) flowers, while datura has erect (upward-facing) flowers.

There are at least 11 individual species of datura (taxonomists disagree on a few) — all of them in some way psychoactive/toxic.

List of Datura Species:

Datura arborea
Datura ceratocaula
Datura discolor
Datura ferox
Datura inoxia
Datura metel
Datura quercifolia
Datura reburra
Datura stramonium
Datura suaveolens
Datura wrightii

Images of Datura Flowers & Seed Pods — Datura Images

Persistant Trip: Datura?

Here’s a clip of someone experiencing HPPD (hallucinogen-persisting perception disorder) after taking a plant. The title of this video suggests it may be datura, but more than likely, this person consumed the mandrake root.

He mentions in the video that he “boiled the root as instructed.” The root of the mandrake contains the same tropane alkaloids as datura and produces similar effects — albeit significantly more toxic.

Cultivating Datura

Datura is a common garden variety because of its beautiful flowers. Here’s a video of someone discussing the cultivation of datura.

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