By Therese Oneill
Most drugs today , legal and otherwise , are synthesize in a testing ground . But most medical and recreational drugs originally began in the wild , grow naturally in forests , field , and deserts . Some can still be found there . Here are some of the country ’s better known drugs , in their raw , pre - processed form .
1. Opium poppy (heroin, morphine, codeine)
Morphine is one of the many opiate that add up from the opium poppy ( above ) . The poppy is sliced while still in bud form , and the milky fluid ( latex paint ) that run out is dry , becoming raw opium . Then a long process of adding dangerous chemicals , filtering , and cooking increases the potency of the drug . Heroin is a super - potent , quickly absorbed form of morphine , and the most vivid use of opium . English research worker C.R. Wright accidentally created it for the first metre in 1874 when he boiled morphia and acetic anhydride together on his stove .
2. Blue agave (Tequila)
alcoholic beverage is unique in the world of drugs because it ’s made through the process of fermenting , not a particular introductory ingredient . ferment appears when barm eats the clams of whatever plant you ’re using , the by - product being ethanol ( drinkable alcoholic drink ) . In tequila , named for the Mexican township where it initiate , the sugar fall from the beautiful blue American aloe . The center of the blue agave looks like pineapple . After it ’s roast and mash , it provide the sugar that , once properly decompose , leaves behind intoxicant .
3. Coca leaves (cocaine)
Coca leave , mostly grown in South America , have to go through some pretty ugly steps to become cocaine — powdered cement , gasoline soaking , and battery Zen baths are all involve to condense the course occurring leave-taking into an illegal narcotic . The leaves themselves have been used by native populations for 100 as a ( much milder ) stimulant and medication . Spanish physician and botanist Nicolás Monardes depict the force of the leaf in 1569 : " When they wished to make themselves drunk and out of judgment they chewed a mixture of baccy and coca leafage which make them go as they were out of their wittes . "
4. Ephedra sinica (Sudafed, meth)
This scraggly little Vannevar Bush , also calledma huang , has been used in Chinese music for century . If it vocalise conversant , that ’s because decongestant like Sudafed once synthesise their main ingredient from ephedra ( pseudoephedrine ) . Products containing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine are very knockout to recover now , as the U.S. government consider it a keep in line gist . The alkaloid in the plant can be abused , most commonly in the kind of weight - expiration drugs and meth production . Researching the plant , I could n’t discover out if this works was sound to own . I called the DEA to enquire , and , well , they were n’t certain either . But they courteously researchedtheir documents , and translate them to people - speak for me . Itislegal to grow and own the ephedra sinica plant . You just have to show your herb garden with the government and submit to monitoring if you do .
5. Psilocybin mushroom (shrooms)
Psilocybin , the of course occurring chemical compound that causes the euphoria and psychedelic trips associated with shrooms , can be found in over 200 species of mushrooms , most of which grow wild in Mexico . Different mushrooms have unlike compactness of psilocin , even varying in which part of the fungus you eat . A word of advice to the escapade searcher : Shrooms can be indistinguishable from any act of lethally venomous mushroom cloud . Consuming unknown mushroom may send you on a trip that take you much further than you intend .
6. Willow bark (aspirin)
Salicylic acid , found in willow tree bark , has cooled fevered brows across the world for millennia . Even Hippocrates , the father of medicine , used to recommend chewing the bark to reduce fevers and redness in his patients , around 300 B.C. The willow tree has strains native to Europe , China , and North America , all of which can be used in music . It was from this bark that scientist at the German party Bayer developed St. Joseph in 1897 . An interesting side note : Bayer turn a loss all its patent of invention and trademarks in World War I , when the U.S. government seize the house as spoils of war and auction off it off to an American patent medicament company .
7. Sassafras root (ecstasy)
root word beer and sarsaparilla used to have actual sassafras oil in them for flavor . They do n’t any longer , since the chemical substance in the oil , safrole , is now a controlled marrow . Distilled from the roots and bark of the sassafras tree diagram , safrole is a fundamental factor in the manufacture of ecstasy . Not in its original form , of path . It is the handling with formaldehyde , paint fragile , and drain cleanser that make sassafras oil such a delightful matter to put inside your dead body .
8. Penicillium mold (penicillin)
Penicillin : The mighty , moldy humankind changer . It was the first drug to in effect battle bacterial infections , leading to cures of an untold number of affliction , from strep to syphilis . It was discovered unintentionally by Alexander Fleming in 1928 . He forgot about a petri dish filled with staphylococcus bacteria he ’d leave behind out , and he discovered patrician green penicillium mould growing all over it . Penicillium cast is an implausibly coarse species of mould , apt to grow on constitutive material wherever conditions are dank enough . Wherever the mold touched the staph , the bacterium was gone . Ian Fleming did n’t think it would knead in people and never tried to make medicine out of it . That was done years later by Australian Nobel laureate Howard Walter Florey , together with the German Nobel laureate Ernst Chain and the English biochemist Norman Heatley .
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