A Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants

Boing Boing reader Kenneth is a weird-and-rare book lover who is painstakingly scanning and posting online some of his favorite obscurities. Among the Golden Guides he's posted (dig the iconic visual style!) is the exceedingly hard-to-find and out of print "Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants" from 1976. I haven't seen it in the wild in ages; it's as rare as an Amanita Muscaria in Siberia. Where, by the way, the native people once ritually drank each other's pee so multiple people could trip off a single 'shroom.

Do check out the rest of his Golden Guide collection, while it lasts.

Update: Pesco has blogged about the "Hallucinogenic Plants" one before.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: Book • books • drugs • graphic design • hallucinogens

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

The bulbous green one in the middle, with the pink flower on top?

One of them killed my Level 4 Ranger/Cleric.

Bastard.
- http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin
  
  LOL
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Tsk tsk, not a very good ranger now was he?
- http://twitter.com/TranslatedWebEn TranslatedWebEn
  
  It’s Peyote
http://sinthetik.com/ SushiSpook

I am upset that this was not, as it seemed first glance via my rss reader, a book about hallucinogenic pants. Reality has failed me again.
Antinous / Moderator

Those were the days, my friend.
We thought they’d never end.
- zuludaddy
  
  Time is all, like, relative , maaaan…
- zuludaddy
  
  or perhaps:
  
  We’d sing and dance
  Forever and a day.
http://drjeffblog.blogspot.com/ Dr. Jeff

Having been to Siberia, I’m here to tell you that I”m not remotely shocked at the pee-sharing. They were very generous with their vodka, so I guess that’s just the next logical step.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  If you didn’t see the spirits of your dead relatives or think you had turned into an eagle then it was just vodka.
EvilSpirit

Well, as long as they drank it _ritually_, okay then.
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

Apparently, the trip gets more potent the more people it has passed through.
- http://twitter.com/tobymgraves Toby Graves
  
  So that’s why Sasha Grey drank her own piss.
  - http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch
    
    I’m not really sure of the context of Miss Grey doing that, and am rather reluctant to type “Sasha Grey drinks own urine” into google, for fear the internet might think ill of me.
- elix
  
  I would love to convince a bunch of homeopathic stoners to keep “recycling” the same single dose of a drug through its excreted products.
  
  Okay, I wouldn’t, but a little snarky fun on Monday never hurt anyone.
  - Ipo
    
    Exhaling is a form of excreting?
    Shotgun.
    - elix
      
      If you shotgun back and forth between the same two people (in a group) more than twice, it’s making out, not toking.
      - 2crudedudes
        
        You’re right. Your idea of sharing urine is better.
- http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
  
  It only works until the 5th person, then the magic wears off…….or so I’m told.
solstice2005

“I haven’t seen it in the wild in ages; it’s as rare as an Amanita Muscaria in Siberia.” Really? From Wikipedia: ” Amanita muscaria is now primarily famed for its hallucinogenic properties, with its main psychoactive constituent being the compound muscimol. It was used as an intoxicant and entheogen by the peoples of Siberia and has a religious significance in these cultures. There has been much speculation on traditional use of this mushroom as an intoxicant in places other than Siberia; however, such traditions are far less well documented.significance in these cultures
- 2crudedudes
  
  thatwasthejoke.jpg
bnschlz

What’s the plant in the top left with the round orange flowers?
- Beanolini
  
  Heimia salicifolia.
Pamela Caldwell

Plant on top left looks like an ordinary zinnia to me.
cannibalpeas

Interestingly, the precedent for hallucinogenic pee drinking is actually ancient. The four Vedas have entire sections with poems and texts about the Soma, which is believed by some to have been the Amanita Muscaria. By accounts it was common for lower-class (caste?) citizens to sit outside the assemblies where it was consumed to wait for a… um… “donor”. I rememeber reading a translation somewhere that read “In the belly of India, soma is filtered.” I could believe that this practice would easily have made its way into north Asia. In fact, it may be one of the reasons that the assumption that Soma was actually the Amanita is made. That’s purely speculation on my part. Some interesting reading:
http://www.erowid.org/plants/amanitas/amanitas_writings1.shtml
- AviSolomon
  
  Now you know why Morarji Desai lived so long :)
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morarji_Desai
  - cannibalpeas
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWFXf2qjXeg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
danegeld

Seeing e topic, I thought that perhaps Pesco. had posted under the wrong name??,!
http://twitter.com/ColumbusArea Adolph Marx

There’s one on ebay now.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hallucinogenic-Plants-A-Golden-Guide-rare-out-print-1976-good-condition-/170760085435
teapot

Can someone please up the pdf somewhere for me to d/l?

I don’t need yet another account, and I certainly ain’t gonna log in to Facefuck.
- http://twitter.com/PsychicWhoosh Michael W.
  
  It’s been available on Erowid for years. Here is the link: http://www.erowid.org/library/books/hallucinogenic_plants.shtml
  
  Edit: I thought they had the PDF there but it is an online read with the added option of downloading a rather clunky version which is a mix of jpgs and html links.
bo1n6bo1n6

I had this book, good stuff. The part with the Amazonian tribesmen blowing things up each others noses always seemed extreme, I was only 15 though…
librtee_dot_com

Here’s a useful rule of thumb to see if a drug is generally safe and has a useful self-knowledge purpose, or is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs:

Check the DEA drug scheduling classification.

Is it labelled ‘I’, having no value whatsoever and highly dangerous?

It’s A-OK!

Is it labelled ‘II’, having some medical value and general safety?

Be warned, son! Steer clear!

That rule applies to pretty much every drug in both category…
http://twitter.com/heyaudy Austin Richardson

I have one of these! Just looked it up on Amazon. Not bad.
http://whimsicalacious.tumblr.com/ Patrick McGorrill

I know this book. A wise and noble bookstore clerk pulled it out from behind the counter to give it to a friend of mine, a really smiley, teenage, long-hair boy. Fascinating stuff for sure.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

For anyone at all remotely interested in this topic, I highly recommend “Supernatural” by Graham Hancock. Just finished it and it is an incredible book.
lost feliz

I used to have this book. I must’ve lost it during one the mad purges.
geech

So bummed that someone stole my copy many years ago. So psyched the scanning is underway!
vermontrav

aha! I have this book. I will certainly keep much better care of it knowing how rare it is. It really is a gem.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

I used to have a ton of these little books when I was a kid. I remember seeing this one in the title list in the back of the books when I was a kid and asking my mom about it. I asked my mom said I wouldn’t be interested in that. So I looked up “hallucinogenic” in the Britannica index and found out more than I needed to know.

Bus really, what is the orange flower in the upper left. Looks like lantana, but the leaves are wrong. I recognize the morning glory and datura flowers, but what is that orange thing?

Word of warning: Do NOT mess with morning glory, bindweed, moon flower. or datura. That shit will fuck you up and you won’t even remember what happened. I got enough wild morning glory to incapacitate a platoon growing on my patio wall.

OTOH, datura is not so strong that it can be used as a date rape drug simply by handing someone a datura soaked business card, as is rumored in Columbia. Whoever believes this must not know what datura does. Yes, it causes memory loss, but you have to ingest quite a bit. But it in no way incapacitates. It’s kinda like PCP in that it makes people unpredictable.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  OMG, I still have this book. My mom would buy me these little books regularly. I guess she didn’t check this one out too carefully.
  
  I always thought the scene of the Amazonian tribesmen blowing hallucinogenic tree bark snuff up each others nose was especially bizarre.
  
  Some of these plants are hallucinogenic like a sledgehammer will make you see stars. They work in a pretty blunt fashion and probably cause some damage.
- puzzlingevidence
  
  My experience with morning glory was very pleasant, fun, and relatively clear-headed, after the initial nausea. Lots of wonderful visual effects!
- dragonfrog
  
  Re morning glory – if by “fuck you up and you won’t even remember what happened” you mean “you’ll have a mild, pleasant trip accompanied by a stomach ache”, that’s about right in my experience. Unless you go way overboard with dosage, presumably.
  
  I understand there are ways of preparing the seeds so as to eliminate or at least reduce the stomach ache.
@man

The plant at the top left is Sinicuichi (Heimia salicifolia) according to the book. The illustrations inside the book have more accurate coloring (the flower is actually yellow). I can even verify this as I have the plant growing in my yard. It is listed as an auditory hallucinogen, but I’ve never tried it (“Either deafness or auditory hallucinations may result, with voices or sounds distorted and seeming to come from a distance.”) It grows surprisingly well with little water on the central California coast.
- bnschlz
  
  Thanks! I didn’t get that far through the book…
  
  It sounds like an interesting one, but it’s a bit curious that it made the front cover.
E T

Mind-Altering and Poisonous Plants of the World may have more accurate information than a Golden Guide.Xeni: it’s Amanita muscaria, not Muscaria
speleothem

I’ve still got this book too along with a fairly full collection of other Golden Guides. I think I bought my copy back in 1979 at a B Daltons in San Bernardino along with the “Herbs and Spices” guide which I think is still in print. I wonder what year all the copies were pulled from the shelves?
Mr Belm

Am I the first person to notice that the author of this guide is Richard Evans Schultes, the father of modern ethnobotany?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Evans_Schultes
- @man
  
  In one of Terence McKenna’s talks regarding books about hallucinogenic plants, he felt that the Golden book was an excellent condensed version of Schultes book “Plants of the Gods”.
Rick Berry

I made a slight revision to the PDF, marking the first page as “Cover” to correct the Two-Page view so that the two-page illustrations work correctly.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/77804899/Hallucinogenic-Plants-a-Golden-Guide
- kbryan44
  
  Actually, not necessary. Viewing the cover as a single page and then the following pages as two page spreads is a setting in the PDF reader. In Acrobat it’s
  
  View->Page Display->Show Cover Page in Two-Page View
Hans Henrik Lichtenberg

Reminds me of these Public Domain ebooks on the subject:
http://www.holybooks.com/mushrooms-russia-and-history/
http://www.holybooks.com/psychedelic-shamanism-jim-dekorne/
http://www.holybooks.com/food-gods-terence-mckenna/
http://www.holybooks.com/techniques-of-modern-shamanism-vol-1-3-by-phil-hine/
kbryan44

Actually, they’re posted on Scribd, not Facebook. Scribd asks for a FB login, but it’s not necessary. You can view without logging in, but you create a Scribd login to download. Just click the “I Don’t have a Facebook Account” link right below the massive Facebook button.
If anyone has suggestions for a better place than Scribd to post these, please let me know. Scribd isn’t ideal, but it seemed like the best option.