9 votes

Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once.

4 comments

  1. [3]
    C-Cab
    Link
    Food for thought: I don't really have anything insightful to add, but I'm imagining smoking a cigarette and getting your ego totally obliterated by the combination of DMT, psilocin, and bufotenine.

    Food for thought: I don't really have anything insightful to add, but I'm imagining smoking a cigarette and getting your ego totally obliterated by the combination of DMT, psilocin, and bufotenine.

    5 votes
    1. [2]
      JCPhoenix
      Link Parent
      That might be one helluva way to get someone to quit smoking. Or conversely, that's all they do from then on. Though could you imagine a pack a day of those? Oof.

      That might be one helluva way to get someone to quit smoking.

      Or conversely, that's all they do from then on. Though could you imagine a pack a day of those? Oof.

      1 vote
      1. C-Cab
        Link Parent
        After coming down from the most intense trip of your life, you forget where and when (and who?) you are. You find a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, and having the urge you light one up and take...

        After coming down from the most intense trip of your life, you forget where and when (and who?) you are. You find a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, and having the urge you light one up and take a drag...

        1 vote
  2. C-Cab
    Link
    ...

    “Magic mushrooms” make psilocybin. Tropical plants make the ingredients of the psychoactive ayahuasca. And toads secrete the mind-altering bufotenin. Now, the tobacco plant makes them all.

    ...

    One reason for the success is that tobacco plants make abundant tryptophan, so there was no shortage of the starting material. This inspired Berman and Aharoni to try making other tryptophan-based psychoactives in tobacco, such as psilocybin and its precursor. They also tweaked the plants to produce bufotenin and 5-methoxy-DMT, hallucinogens that the Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius alvarius) secretes from glands behind its eyes.

    4 votes