Chewed leaves, cooked roots, fermented seeds, grated bark, smoked flowers. When it comes to the consumption of psychoactive plants, we humans have always been creative and experimental, in every era and in every part of the world. Jakob Hein, a practicing psychiatrist and doctor medicinae, has compiled a colorful bouquet of curious, exotic, and common representatives of this psychotropic fauna.
But beware: In many cases, consuming them is strongly discouraged, even if entire cultures have grown up around them. Sumerian cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia already included references to the art of brewing beer. Among the Maya, on the other hand, cocoa was so popular that it was considered “food of the gods,” with not only its own annual festival but even a patron saint.
In this book, we encounter a wide variety of plants and substances familiar to us from our local spice rack or flower store.
