Quote:
Originally Posted by Colonel Flagg
Speaking of drugs, what's this I hear about scopolamine being used to turn people into zombies?
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Scopolamine is one of the principal deliriant alkaloids found in datura stramonium, commonly known as jimson weed or loco weed, easily the most powerful deliriant drug in the history of ever.
It's believed that it might be useful as both a truth serum and a zombie drug because if you gave it to someone and asked them questions or told them to do shit, they'd be far, far too fucked up to know not to tell you or to argue with you. The downside is that they could easily be too fucked up to even hear you, so most real-world instances of datura/scopolamine poisoning involve people being drugged, robbed/whatever, and tossed into a ditch. Even if it works as a truth serum, it's going to be far from reliable due to the effects of the drug, and probably nobody's going to check because making a person eat this stuff just to test a stupid urban myth wouldn't be nice at all.
The short of what it actually does is, basically, all of the "bad acid trips" you see portrayed in the movies where characters run around getting chased by imaginary monsters and watching maggots crawl out of their noses? Datura actually does stuff like this. You'll see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and generally interact with shit that isn't there, commonly creepy shit like rats, spiders,
giant spiders, dinosaurs, shadow people, and shit that looks like it belongs in Silent Hill. The cultist drug mentioned in the first SH game, White Claudia, is a pretty clear analogue to datura. I've never tried datura itself, but I have tripped on weaker deliriants before, and I would describe the experience as "like visiting Silent Hill while drunk." The really fun part is that, save for fleeting moments of clarity, users often completely forget that they have taken drugs at all, and will be unable to tell whether the army of scorpions crawling out of the eyes of the painting of baby Jesus are real or not. All told, this is an extremely unpleasant class of drugs.
Fun facts about datura: the high has been reported as lasting for about three days, and unless watched and cared for users will typically wander far away from their starting point and either end up naked and covered in shit in a ditch in Mexico, or in the hospital. The potency of the alkaloids in datura varies from batch to batch, making it difficult to judge doses properly. It'll kill the shit out of you if you take too much, or if you decide to try driving after taking it, which is entirely possible because you'll be so fucked up under this stuff that you won't even know not to play in your own shit.
It's also unscheduled in a lot of places, which is hilarious.
http://www.erowid.org/plants/datura/datura_law.shtml