Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances (9781466886001) by Rudgley Richard

Author:Rudgley, Richard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466886001
Publisher: Macmillan

L

LAGOCHILUS INEBRIANS

There are some thirty-five species of the Lagochilus genus that grow in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Lagochilus inebrians is a small shrub that grows on the steppes of Central Asia. It is made into a hallucinogenic tea by many of the native peoples of the region, including the Tatars, Turkmen, Tajiks and Uzbeks. These people collect the plant around October time and use the stems, leaves and fruiting tops to make the beverage and, as the plant has a markedly bitter taste, honey or sugar is usually added to it. Russian pharmacologists have been studying the plant since the Second World War and found it to have a number of medical applications, including the treatment of certain skin diseases and allergies, nervous problems and glaucoma. It is also used as a sedative.

Sources: Schultes 1977, Schultes and Hofmann 1980a, Schultes and Hofmann 1980b, Tyler 1966.

LAUDANUM see Opium

LAUGHING MUSHROOMS see Fungi

LETTUCE

Species of lettuce (Lactuca sativa and L. virosa) were sacred plants to the ancient Egyptians and under the auspices of Min, the fertility god. Min was often depicted with an erect phallus and the milky exudation of the lettuce was identified with semen. For this reason lettuce seeds were used by the Egyptians as an aphrodisiac. The Greeks, on the other hand, believed it to have anaphrodisiac effects, and for this reason it was used by the ascetic followers of Pythagoras. Lettuce seeds were used in European narcotic preparations and in the seventeenth century William Salmon noted that lettuce seeds are an effective anodyne and soporific. Its psychoactive qualities are due to lactucin, a morphine-like substance present in the sap. It was one of the constituents used by the European witches (see Witches’ Ointments) and its leaves and roots are reportedly smoked by contemporary sex magicians for their aphrodisiac effects. It is not yet clear how the plant can be considered to both suppress and encourage erotic desire.

Sources: Manniche 1989, Rätsch 1992, Salmon 1693.

LICHENS

Although there are reports of psychoactive lichens from Alaska these are yet to be substantiated. It has been suggested that the lichen Gyrophora esculenta is one of the agents of immortality of the Taoists.

Sources: Needham SCC 5/3, Schultes and Hofmann 1980b.

LSD

The accidental discovery of the hallucinogenic effects of LSD by Albert Hofmann is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, incidents in the modern history of drug use. Before and during the Second World War Dr Hofmann was a research chemist for the Sandoz pharmaceutical company in Basle, Switzerland. For a number of years he had been involved in research on the parasitic fungus ergot (see Ergot) and had succeeded in synthesising a number of ergotamine molecules considered to have potential in the development of medicines. He named one such chemical that he had initially discovered in 1938 LSD-25, but at that stage had no idea of its psychoactive properties nor the amazing social consequences that it would have. On Friday 16 April 1943, whilst he was making up some more LSD-25, he drank a crystalline preparation of it in a glass of water.

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