Atropine and Belladonna Alkaloids Last i...

DOPE SCOPE

MATT LAMPE

Atropine and Belladonna Alkaloids

Last issue I referred twice to atropine, once in the text of the article and again in the "correct dose" chart at the end, But I felt really bogue in not explaining a bit more about atropine and what it does. Atropine is a Belladonna alkaloid, derived from the plant Dature Stramonium (jimson weed). Scopolamine is the other well-known Belladonna alkaloid. Belladonna in small doses is used as a medicine. At slightly larger doses, there are psychedelic (of sorts) experiences. At slightly larger doses it is a poison, and has been used to poison many people down through the years.

I put a restriction on the psychedelic experience from Belladonna or atropine or scopolamine because of my own confusion. The best term would be delusional, not psychedelic. Perhaps hallucinogenic would be more accurate as the atropine experience is marked by very vivid (although usually forgotten) hallucinations, both seen and heard.  It is not mind-manifesting or conscious expanding as other psychedelics are sometimes called by any stretch of the imagination. The "tripper" is off in a world totally of his own, with things being very strange and not making much sense at all, but continuing on. The state is very reminiscent of a delirium from a very high fever (with good reason - later!). It makes no sense, and the person is really out of communication with all the other people around them, totally! One sister I know spent 3 hours in a two-way conversation with a Spiderman poster!

The physical manifestations of Atropine poisoning are equally bizarre. The best descriptive phrase I've heard is "hot as a hare, dry as a bone, red as a beet and mad as a wet hen. " They are usually extremely delirious, often very violent and thrashing around, sometimes very incoherent. Their eyes have enormous pupil size, with little or no response to light. Their pulse may easily go up to 120 beats per minute and their body temperature may reach 105 without it being an extreme case. In fact the biggest physical danger (besides the thrashing around in the delirium state with its very self-destructive possibility -- walking in front of cars, etc, all the scare stuff about acid, seeing fire as flowers, cars as a kitty cat to hug and other such garbage is very possible done on atropine), is the danger of hyper-thermia, or damage from the body temperature being too high. The danger is of literally frying your brain as atropine poisoning temperature victims have had fevers higher than 109! The result can be permanent damage.

What do you do if a brother or sister seems to have some of these symptoms?  First, if they are very hot and thrashing around, restrain them well, as their thrashing is likely both to hurt them and drive their temperature up. Second, it is advisable to limit the sound and light as that may help calm them, and lower their temperature. (A call to Drug Help would be advisable as the first sign of any of these symptoms). It is important that you don't give them any kind of down to calm them or slow them down, as the latter stages of the atropine actions depresses their breathing; this effect in combination with other downs could lead to a respiratory arrest. Enough said on the physical actions and what to do about them.

The final point about atropine is that very few of the people who get it, want it or even know that they got it. Atropine is found as a contaminant in street psychedelics, because it can trip you out, sort of. It is a very deadly compound and its entry into street drugs is another manifestation of our people's oppression. The dose listed last week for scopolamine was only listed as a reference for what produces bizarre reactions. With the wide range of personal differences in their reactions to drugs, and with the small difference in dose between the "hallucinogenic" dose and the very dangerous dose, that difference in personal effect could make the trip dose for one lethal to someone else, so that dose should not in any sense be conceived of as a guide to taking atropine.

The chemist who produces it as something else is really a poisoner of the people, but we have seen atropine poisoning (none fatal) here, and some of the street drugs analyzed in the near past were found to contain scopolamine in significant quantities.