Cloudscape

It might be that many psychoactive plants, such as coca, used as stimulant, or Saint John's wort, used as an antidepressant, did not evolve their psychoactive substances through mere coincidence. If it was coincidental, it might have occurred in a few plant specimens, but it wouldn't have come to be present in every single specimen of the species. Evolution does not happen without reason. If a mutation occurs and it is useful, then there's a chance that it is passed on onto next generations, but if it has no use at all for the species, then it will disappear.

Obviously, it must have been some use for these substances. Thus, either the psychoactive effect of these substances on animals was useful for the plant, or the psychoactive effect of these substances is a side effect of the substance's real use to the plant. However, as no other use of these substances has been observed, and the plant only wastes energy on producing them, it is obvious that we should assume otherwise.

Moreover, most plants containing psychoactives contain several psychoactives with a similar effect, even though these psychoactives are very different in structure and composition, so that they are unlikely to have been produced in the same chemical pathways. For instance, compare the substances hyperforin and hypericin found in Saint John's wort: hyperforin is aliphatic, whereas hypericin is cyclic. Hyperforin is derived from phloroglucinol, while hypericin is derived from anthraquinone. Either psychopharmaceutical cannot be produced through the combination of the other with other molecules present in the plant, contrary, for instance, to the substances found in Rhodiola rosea, an antidepressant and alleged adaptogen.

Why would a plant produce two different psychoactives with similar effects in entirely different ways? It might therefore be that for some reason, their psychoactive effect increased their odds of survival.

Perhaps these plants, much like the silk worm do today, have always depended upon human cultivation, and developed their psychoactive effect from the artificial selection of humans, much like livestock developed their increased body mass from human selective breeding, or like dogs developed their obedience. As selective breeding shows, human influence can cause evolution to accelerate dramatically, so that it is very well possible for thousands of medical and psychoactive plants to evolve in only tens of thousands of years. What is clear is that herbalism has existed for at least 5.300 years, based on a body found in the Swiss Alps with medicinal herbs among his personal effects.

When some plants of a species developed a mutation causing them to produce psychoactives, someone would have discovered it eventually, especially if their effects were short-term. If the effect was pleasant or interesting, the discoverer might have decided to find more of the plant, and grow some for later. As the plants which were grown were selected according to their potency, they became more and more distinct from their original species generation after generation, so that they eventually formed an altogether separate species.

It is also likely that many medicinal plants evolved in this way. However, it might also be that certain plants containing medicinal substances might themselves have had uses for it, for although plants have no nervous system which might react to psychoactives, they do have a biochemistry, which, though it differs immensely from that of animals, nonetheless also has many things in common with it.

Plants whose effects were long-term were probably only cultivated in later periods, in the Neolithic, since it was unlikely for anyone to discover the effects of long-term working psychoactive or medicinal plants unless they happened to grow amidst the crops. In this case, the plants were likely to be reaped along with the crops, and parts of the plant may have been eaten by accident, or their substances where inhaled during threshing.

While the first Agrarian Revolution happened only 10.000 years ago, a more primitive form of cultivation might have been possible much earlier, since it requires no actual agriculture to grow psychoactive plants for consumption. After all, psychoactive plants can be used at relatively low amounts to have their desired effect, whereas agricultural plants need to be grown in much higher quantities to provide for food. The Amazonians have almost no agriculture, yet they cultivate ayahuasca using cuttings. In fact, despite their lack of agriculture, they call the Amazon a "cultivated forest," that is, a forest that they helped shape. The existence of ayahuasca might be an indicator that to some extent, the Amazon might indeed be called a cultivated forest. It seems that, at the least, they did help one particular plant to come into being, though the liana, as one might expect, is rare.

Among the psychoactive plants, there are two types: some are symbiotic, and some are parasitic. Basically, a psychoactive plant is parasitic if it is addictive, because the cultivators then no longer use the plant out of their own volition, and therefore, it no longer matters whether the plant has any actual benefit to them; whether it benefits them or not, it is already ascertained that they will continue to cultivate it. The cultivators do not base their selection of addictive plants on whether or not it is healthy, but merely on how well it satisfies their addiction. It might therefore be said that, as a rule, addictive psychoactive plants are never healthy.

The symbiotic plants are the kind that are cultivated because they are of benefit to the users, and are invariably not (or barely) addictive. Most of these plants either act on long-term, such as herbal antidepressants. Among the short-term acting varieties, the overwhelming majority are entheogens.

For instance, the Amazonians use ayahuasca as a medicine for physical and mental illness, enabling the user to find the cause of the illness. Similar plants are found to be used by other Native American tribes for the same reason, such as the San Pedro cactus. Because of the medicinal use of these plants, it was, of course, important in their selection that they were healthy, and relatively safe to use. Those who cultivated these plants for medical use or as a means of self-improvement obviously choose those strains that proved to be the least harmful and most beneficial.

One could say that this could be vaguely compared to a clinical trial, except that the guinea pigs were actual humans, usually the shamans or the natives themselves, and without the procedures of scientific method, such as double-blindness or follow-ups. Moreover, the results were only passed on through folklore and were never written down, and because there was never a careful analysis of the users' health, only the significant findings were noticed: in people who lived in such primitive conditions, such petty symptoms as a skin rash were easily overlooked. Despite all these drawbacks, however, I believe that these trials were not without merit, for they were repeated countless times over thousands of years. Because any strain of the plants that proved to be less toxic than the rest, they evolved until they became of the very low toxicity of which they are today.

For instance, cannabis, unlike tobacco, causes no lung cancer, and there even appears to be a negative link between cannabis use and lung cancer, indicating a protective effect. It has been hypothesized that cannabis contains substances which protect the lungs, because any inhalation of smoke would normally cause an increased risk of lung cancer. It seems very unlikely that a plant which is smoked would spontaneously develop substances which negate the damage caused by smoking by pure chance.

Also, it has been found that marihuana contains substances, such as cannabidiol, which are antipsychotic. Heavy use of marihuana can increase the risk of developing psychosis, and the presence of cannabidiol in marihuana could counter this effect. Unfortunately, modern commercial cultivation of dealers, unlike the wiser cultivation of the shamans, has overlooked this danger. Instead of choosing the strains of cannabis based both on safety and potency, they based it solely on potency, ignoring safety altogether. Because of this, the ratio of cannabidiol to the other cannabinoids in marihuana has decreased, which might in part be responsible for the increase of psychosis among seen among heavier users of marihuana today. That this ratio has changed again so quickly because of human cultivation is an indication that the selective breeding of marihuana had once been based on the presence of the cannabidiol, for if it would always have been based solely on the concentration of THC in the thousands of years it had been cultivated, as it is now, the cannabidiol would by now have disappeared or nearly disappeared.

Ironically, another way in which some plants proved to be safer than others was through a bitter taste. Almost any psychedelic plant there is known tastes extremely bitter: kratom, san pedro, peyote, psilocybe, salvia divinorum and ayahuasca are all renowned to be thoroughly disgusting. Marihuana is very bitter when eaten, which might have been how the plant was originally used. Of all psychedelic plants, the most disgusting of all is ayahuasca, and it is accordingly also the most potent. In addition, the psychedelics can also cause vomiting if too much is used, and new users of ayahuasca almost invariably vomit, although more experienced users are able to keep from vomiting the brew. It appears that this bitterness is meant as a warning to those who use it. New users are more likely to be stop eating early, repelled by the taste, while experienced users, being more used to the taste, would be better able to conquer their disgust for it. Aside from this, the bitterness is also an indicator of the plant's potency and the dosage the user takes in. To unprepared users, it can be a foretaste of the suffering it might bring about if they are not ready for the experience.

A German and Dutch proverb actually says that what tastes bitter is healthy: "Was bitter dem Mund, ist dem Herzen gesund," translated in Dutch as "Bitter in de mond maakt het hart gezond." While it is true that many medicines taste bad, this is only an issue in herbal medicines, which need to be eaten or swallowed as a brew, and most of all for psychedelic plants. It is very likely that this bitterness is meant to ensure that the right dosage is used. It seems too coincidental that practically every psychedelic plant there is is bitter in proportion to their potency.

Most psychoactive plants which aren't addictive appear to be harmless or even beneficial. On the other hand, some plants might also use psychoactives as a poison like any other, either to warn animals not to eat them them or to kill those that did. Datura stramonium, for instance, is quite dangerous, and none that were so bold as to try to use it thought the experience so pleasant as to even consider cultivating the plant. Hallucinogens as a warning might be a pretty drastic warning compared to nettle sting, for instance, but may imprint a permanent traumatic memory even on an animal's inefficient memory. It is possible that the Amanite uses this same strategy, as an addition to its physical toxicity.

Aside from those meant either to keep animals from eating the plant or psychoactives meant to coerce the user into cultivating the plant through addiction, however, most psychoactives found in plants seem to be largely beneficial.

The notion that these plants live in symbiosis with humans is reminiscent of the Gaia hypothesis, which posits that all organisms in the biosphere are part of a greater superorganism; and although there is clearly not by far as much union between the organisms of the biosphere and the cells of a single organism, there do seem to many symbiotic relations between different species. In the end, any species depends on countlessly many others, and many depend even on us.