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 teen
Yeee Haaww
Registered: 02/13/04
Posts: 242
Last seen: 18 years, 1 month
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 why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? 
#2388282 - 02/29/04 04:53 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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What purpose to the plant/fungi do these psychoactive chemicals serve? why are they in the plants they are in, and not in others? Have any drugs been discovered growing in other organisms, like animals?
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Don't give me that load of bunk~!
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 DieCommie
Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2388334 - 02/29/04 06:00 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well the colorado river toad has intoxicating venom. Also there is DMT in humans! I think most active chemicals are there as a sort of poisen for defense, or just pure luck that the chemical happens to affect humans the way it does.
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Ravus
Not an EggshellWalker
Registered: 07/18/03
Posts: 7,991
Loc: Cave of the Patriarchs
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: DieCommie]
#2388402 - 02/29/04 07:26 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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Maybe in the case of, say, psilocybin mushrooms or salvia, they weren't intending humans to eat them, rather to keep away more primitive animals who would start hallucinating every time they ate them and then finally stay away from the shrooms like they were cursed. Which, to the animal, it might seem like, as a lot of animals just sit and there and piss on themselves on mushrooms, often unable to walk and unable to defend themselves. Then humans spread throughout the earth, and instead of just pissing on themselves, (well, not all the time, anyway,) they learned how to utilize the power of these hallucinogens through religion and ceremonies. The early humans, with more primitive mindsets and societies, held these hallucinogens in a very different way than we do today. Instead of being gods or tools for shamans, they're just a way to get fucked up, or the most respect we give them are often as "mind-enhancers."
Anyhow, that's my theory. It could be tested if there's a curious scientist, to see if once you feed an animal who normally eats wild mushrooms (of any type) some hallucinogenic shrooms a few times he'll stay away from them and the shrooms' "poisons" will have worked.
And animals, when they eat shrooms, also have a tendency to eat them as food, and therefore eat a lot of them. Enough to satisfy their hunger. I can see how if you feed a newbie 15 or 20 grams of shrooms for his first time he wouldn't want to go back.
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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
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shriek
*********
Registered: 12/13/03
Posts: 3,274
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: Ravus]
#2388423 - 02/29/04 07:49 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Ravus said:
... to keep away more primitive animals who would start hallucinating every time they ate them and then finally stay away from the shrooms like they were cursed. Which, to the animal, it might seem like, as a lot of animals just sit and there and piss on themselves on mushrooms, often unable to walk and unable to defend themselves...
every seen a cow on a field eatin liberty caps? they do it all the time. and it doesnt seem to affect them in a bad way at all. and cats are using the Syringa vulgaris tree gettin its psycoactive kicks, im thinkin you might have a point but there is way more to this than that 
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HarveyWalbanger
Demiurge
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2388426 - 02/29/04 07:55 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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Its the plant's fluke evolutionary advantage. Psilocybin has practically no place in a mushroom's biofunction. But it fits pleasantly into bovine and human neuro-recptors, and is now one of the most widely grown mushrooms in the world....
Cannabis produces THC as a response to sunlight... I've even heard speculation that peyote and san pedro produce mescaline in order to avoid nitrogen burns... if these plants actually needed a defense system, there are easier, MUCH more unpleasant venoms to synthesize...
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necronomicon
journeyman
Registered: 12/22/03
Posts: 95
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2388460 - 02/29/04 08:36 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well many of these alkaloids in plants taste bad, and animals may not eat them if they have too many alkaloids.
Female MJ plants create THC to make itself sticky to help catch male pollen.
I don't think its abnormal at all that so many plants have these wierd alakaloids in them, I think its wierd that they have a drastic effect on our conciousness.
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Ravus
Not an EggshellWalker
Registered: 07/18/03
Posts: 7,991
Loc: Cave of the Patriarchs
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: HarveyWalbanger]
#2388461 - 02/29/04 08:37 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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If what you say is true, there is a lot more to this. How would a mushroom know what fits into human neuro-receptors? I always thought it was more of an accident that one of the chemicals reacts so well with humans, compared to say, datura, which affects humans as a poison rather than a hallucinogen, but if what you say is true than maybe the entire evolutionary process is somehow connected. As if mushroom could be grown because it fits so well with humans, the most technological species that would be the ones to grow mushrooms.
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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
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schmutzen
King of the side-pins
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: Ravus]
#2388503 - 02/29/04 09:01 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I believe entheogens wish for humans to consume them. To develope a relationship, because humans are beneficial to their reproduction 
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"Blow up your TV, throw away your paper. Go to the country, build you a home."
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CerebralFlower
whats left?
Registered: 02/09/04
Posts: 1,326
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2388523 - 02/29/04 09:13 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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You should read Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. Its an awsome awsome book. He asks "Why should evoloution yeild such magic?" - the same question as you. And basically his expalantion is similar to namaste's. Marijuana, etc... has evolved towards humans, or to confuse animals about what they ate so they forget where they were and the plant will live. I really reccomend it!
I think its really hard to answer fully tho.
As for animals, yea Toads contain DMT, right?
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God says dance with your heart
And shake free of you desire
Where theres a will theres always a way
When you get confused listen to the music play
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teen
Yeee Haaww
Registered: 02/13/04
Posts: 242
Last seen: 18 years, 1 month
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: CerebralFlower]
#2389033 - 02/29/04 01:45 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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Some very interesting theories here, thanks for replying.
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Don't give me that load of bunk~!
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the man
still masked
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2389257 - 02/29/04 07:44 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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i think u guys have a coupel crazy theorys. for teh most part plants produce specific alkaloids to prevent being eaten. THC when consumed by some insects screws with there hormones. caffiene and numerous other alkaloids are toxic to us as humans just find some intoxications pleasant. but other animals do not.
imagine a deer on mescaline.
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And Moses Said "Let my mushrooms grow!"
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HarveyWalbanger
Demiurge
Registered: 06/24/02
Posts: 3,076
Loc: 8b
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: the man]
#2389566 - 02/29/04 09:07 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I think its reindeer that eat amanitas.... presumably for fun....
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psi
TOAST N' JAM
Registered: 09/05/99
Posts: 31,569
Loc: 613 
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: CerebralFlower]
#2389727 - 02/29/04 10:03 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I could be mistaken but I don't think DMT is found in toad venom. Bufo alvarius toads produce 5-OH-DMT (bufotenine) and 5-MEO-DMT but not straight up DMT in any appreciable amount, as far as I know.
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HidingInPlainSight
Registered: 01/27/03
Posts: 2,077
Loc: Oklahoma City , OK, USA 
Last seen: 1 year, 10 months
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 Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2390088 - 03/01/04 02:05 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I believe these chemicals are God's gifts to human, and plants are a great way of distributing these chemicals.
Edited by HidingInPlainSight (03/01/04 02:05 AM)
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YellowSubmarine
Soviet Pig
Registered: 10/09/02
Posts: 946
Loc: U.S.S.R.
Last seen: 18 years, 24 days
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Sheep in England die off by the hundreds upon consuming the dmt containing phalarius plant. I agree with Mckenna and Strassman on the theory that if extra-terrestial life wanted to communicate and evolve humans, they would do so by slipping it into our food supply. Or maybe the Earth really is one big supercomputer and we're all the computer bleeps and the plants are all the computer bloops that theoretically keep this place running. 
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neuro
Phytophiliac
Registered: 08/10/99
Posts: 6,633
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: HarveyWalbanger]
#2390427 - 03/01/04 07:37 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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some birds seek out fermented grapes purposely, i know it's not a plant alkaloid per se, but it's just another example of intentional intoxication. Some monkeys have been shown to eat fermented fruit as well as intoxicating mushrooms.
There's probably a multitude of "reasons why," I put that in quotes because there is no "reason" because that would imply consciousness or a thought process to evolution to which there really is none. If a plant evolves chemicals in it they are probably for any one or combination of a number of reasons. Defense, proliferation and spreading, or internal needs of environmental protection from drought or heat or cold etc...
If one plant produces a fruit that is very delectable to birds the birds will eat it and pass the seeds spreading and proliferating the plant. Same with compounds some happen to produce a chemical that's an intoxicant, if it's like it could be spread, if it's disliked it could be left out of a certain animal's diet. Etc.. etc.. you can't really come up with one single reason for all plants. Because there is no "reason" really and it's just "whatever works"
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psi
TOAST N' JAM
Registered: 09/05/99
Posts: 31,569
Loc: 613
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: neuro]
#2391266 - 03/01/04 12:55 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I think it does make a certain amout of sense though to look at life/evolution in general as having a sort of intelligence or even consciousness. The ability to "think outside the box" (I know, the expression is severely overused) and find novel solutions to problems is what I think of as being a defining characteristic of intelligence, and this is certainly a property of evolution. Neural intelligence certainly works a lot faster at adapting than evolution does, but I think that if you ignore time scale there are a lot af similarities. Humans can use their intelligence (itself a product of evolution) to adapt to living in just about any conditions the planet has to offer, but pretty much wherever we go, the problems of living in a particular environment have already been solved.
I guess you could argue that evolution isn't intelligent because it doesn't make intelligent guesses when solving problems, it just kind of fumbles in the dark with randomness until new, usable proteins are produced. I don't believe this sort of cropping process is really that different from what our brains do in coming up with new ideas. Look at polar bears in the Arctic for example. From what I gather, polar bears are a pretty new species, and have only existed for something like ten or twenty thousand years. Bears are already pretty well suited to living in cold climates, having lots of warm fur and the ability to store large amounts of insulating fat. The colder the conditions are, the less competition there will be for food, so the proto-polar bears spread as far north as possible. When new adaptations to cold arise, the bears with those traits are able to move further north, and eventually give rise to modern polar bears.
The point I was trying to make is that although the individual mutations involved are random, the presence of the bears there in the first place is not.
When we come up with new ideas, we start out by looking into our past experiences/thoughts (= the collective genome of all organisms). As the proto-idea progresses, we test out variations on it mentally and see how they work out(= mutations). While randomness plays a part in the process, the process as a whole is not random, but intelligent (it makes informed guesses, modifies them and comes up with better ones).
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SixCee
keep rolling
Registered: 06/12/02
Posts: 3,720
Loc: US, Chicago
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2392263 - 03/01/04 06:41 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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The human mind uses drugs to reward us for things. For example, the slight euphoric uplift you get after getting a good grade on a paper.
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KthxBye
bandito furioso
Registered: 04/03/02
Posts: 1,197
Loc: bottom of the noob barrel
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Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2392280 - 03/01/04 06:47 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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The tobacco plant must have developed nicotine
to prevent itself form being eaten
so now it is burned
but widely propagated....
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I know what he wants: a drag of smooth tobbacco blended with the finest Turkish Turkweed. Here, have a toke on me you dumb beast.
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felixhigh
Scientist
Registered: 06/24/01
Posts: 7,565
Loc: Ly
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 Re: why do plants and stuff have drugs in them? [Re: teen]
#2392510 - 03/01/04 08:18 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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split a homo sapiens sapiens brain open and ask a cientist if are there drugs and 'substances' in it.
humans are said to taste bad, only new and dumb sharks bite us.
FH
Edited by felixhigh (03/01/04 08:19 PM)
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