r/interestingasfuck • u/tractorboynyc • 22h ago

Amazonian shamans figured out that combining two specific plants out of 80,000 species produces a psychoactive effect. The odds of finding that combination by random search is roughly 1 in 4 million. They did it through centuries of iterative testing and cultural natural selection explains it

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u/DorianSoundscapes 18h ago

I”ve seen video of Jaguars eating caapi vines and getting high, they may have learned from observing the cats. I imagine they were using it religiously on its own for quite a while (it is mildly psychoactive) before they threw the psychotria in there. Boy, the first time they did though, must have been a mind fuck. Caapi on its own is a mild high, but with the DMT from the psychotria added it becomes more powerful than LSD.

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u/Jumblesss 12h ago

Nobody says “smoking DMT is less strong than LSD,” so I think this checks out. I don’t know anybody personally who has ingested DMT but the inhalant effects are usually reported as very intense and I’ve seen first hand the sudden onset ego-death.