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I wish the US would legalize coca leaves. Our nation's drug laws are so goddamn stupid. Two different Popes drank Vin Mariani! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani
There is also this one from Italy: https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_Buton (Which is a actually buyable product that appearantly is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, coke leaf import company in europe. It's a lovely liqueur)
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Cocaine, the chemical, is the active drug ingredient in coca leaves the same way caffeine, the chemical, is the active ingredient in coffee and ethanol, the chemical, is the active ingredient in beer. Powder and crack cocaine deliver much higher doses of cocaine than raw coca leaves, much like liquor is more potent than beer, but the chemical is the drug here. It’s not like it’s chemically transformed from one substa…
> It’s not like it’s chemically transformed from one substance into another like with fermentation Banks, the financial institutions, are not transformed into banks, exposed riverbeds, when they're proximate to water. Cocaine, the drug, and cocaine, the chemical, are simply homonyms. Claiming the Inca did cocaine is a dad joke, not serious argument.
Anyone here ever actually try coca leaves? Going to guess its effects are somewhere between coffee and cocaine
I often wonder why nobody has CRISPR-ed the genes from the Coca plant that make the alkaloids into yeast by now… given the $100bn market you’d expect someone to give this or another process a go.
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> It’s not like it’s chemically transformed from one substance into another like with fermentation Banks, the financial institutions, are not transformed into banks, exposed riverbeds, when they're proximate to water. Cocaine, the drug, and cocaine, the chemical, are simply homonyms. Claiming the Inca did cocaine is a dad joke, not serious argument.
While I see sense in articulating that cocaine use was different in 17th c. compared to now, I don't believe that you'd argue the same against someone saying that a person drinking beer is drinking alcohol, because beer has less alcohol than vodka.
And that if we interpret the sentence like that (which we should if that's how it's generally understood) then it is not true that people were doing cocaine in the 17th century.
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Caffeine affects people differently… it has very intense effects on me- I would never call it “very very mild”
If I’ve gone a long time without caffeine a single coffee could keep me awake up for two consecutive all nighters. As a regular drinker I still cannot handle more than one cup of coffee per day. It turns out that I have a number of genes that increase the intensity and the duration of effect. I think genes explain most of the differences in experiences with caffeine.
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> Cocaine, the drug, is cocaine, the chemical Nope. Cocaine, the drug, is a cocaine salt. Commonly cocaine hydrochloride, but Wikipedia seems convinced it's also neutralised into sulfates and nitrates. Crack contains cocaine, the chemical, but is not cocaine, the drug.
I’m genuinely flabbergasted by these posts.
Anyone here ever actually try coca leaves? Going to guess its effects are somewhere between coffee and cocaine
The leaves are readily available everywhere, like right beside the chewing gum at the checkout in supermarkets and the like. I tried chewing some to help offset altitude problems; it didn't help with the altitude problems but it made half my face go numb and other than that, nothing. I understand the local combine it with limestone or something to release different alkaloids but I did not.
Anyone here ever actually try coca leaves? Going to guess its effects are somewhere between coffee and cocaine
I used them while hiking in Peru. It's better than caffeine, because it comes with a mild euphoria. Nothing crazy, just enough to have energy and not feel like hiking at altitude is work. When I hike with coffee I just feel determined to finish. With Coca it just felt natural to keep walking.
My wife and I drank coca tea during the whole stay in Peru, and the altitude didn't bother us at all, which I presume was because of the coca.
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I used them while hiking in Peru. It's better than caffeine, because it comes with a mild euphoria. Nothing crazy, just enough to have energy and not feel like hiking at altitude is work. When I hike with coffee I just feel determined to finish. With Coca it just felt natural to keep walking.
Hiking in altitude is hands down the hardest thing I did in my life. On the first day I almost died of an altitude sickness. On the following days, climbing 5 meters up the mountain felt like climbing the whole mountain twice. After every 10 steps I had to stop for 30-60 seconds and catch my breath. I drank a lot of coca tea and couldn't feel anything different. Peru, especially cordillera negra/blanca is the most sp…
HOw much preparation did you do before hand ? I'm looking at a himalayan trip next year to around a 23k feet summit (over the course of 30 days or so). I'm taking a year to train for it, but I have no way to train for 'altitude', and as I understand it reaction to altitude doesn't correlate that much with overall fitness. You can apparently be super fit but still get altitude sick, which is concerning me.
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They were using cocaine. It was a less concentrated form, sure, but it’s still using the same substance for a psychoactive effect.
It definitely seems misleading to talk about coca leaf use as cocaine use, given the common expectation for what that means. People reading the newspaper probably don't know all these details, and it isn't spelled out. I can't imagine some guy in a club not feeling like he was robbed after paying for a powdery drug and then receiving a handful of leaves. I can't imagine an Andean woman sitting down for morning tea be…
Does the molecule C17H21NO4 exist in both the raw, dried leaves of the coca plant, and a powdered, refined extract from the same plant?