> Therefore, the 3rd molecule detected in the brain tissues of our subjects, hygrine (an alkaloid present in the leaves of Erythroxylum spp. only), was essential to determine that the molecules detected in these human remains derived from the chewing of coca leaves or from leaves brewed as a tea, consistent with the historical period.
If I'm reading this right, they checked for a number of markers and one of those is found only in coca leaves.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544032...
The first reference on that page is "The role of hygrine in the biosynthesis of cuscohygrine and hyoscyamine"
Cuscohygrine does occur in those plants yet it's precursor hygrine does not. How it then gets there without us being able to detect hygrine could be because it only occurs in very small concentrations or is produced and then quickly and wholly converted in to its cusco metabolite, or that it's produced through a different biosynthetic pathway.
"Forensic toxicological analyses reveal the use of cannabis in Milano (Italy) in the 1600's (2023)"
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Forensic-toxicological...
It's rare to see 70-80 year olds with a casual cocaine habit, and of the people I've known who have been interested in cocaine - the consequences caught up to them by the time they turned 30 with a consequence peak in their mid-20s.
I've seen the use of "party drugs" lessen or cease as people I know get older. It gets harder to fit those drugs into your life when you have increased responsibilities and fewer opportunities. Opioids are not party drugs for the most part. Alcohol is obviously a party drug, but like opioids it can become an acute addiction and a maintenance issue (even more so than opioids due to the uniquely dangerous withdrawal symptoms). A drug like cocaine is, to me, similar to molly/ecstasy. It's not fun to do maintenance amounts or to do a lot solo. So use seems to wax/wane with lifestyle. A pattern I have seen a lot is people who used/abused cocaine and alcohol frequently when partying, eventually stopped with the cocaine, and continued on as alcoholics into their 30s/40s/50s.
One interesting things about cocaine addiction is it has one of the strongest genetic/hereditary links of any addiction...
We won’t talk about crack, of course
Here are other printings as well, in case anyone else wants to pick up a copy.
[1] fedup movie (sundance 2014)
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
There is at least one person who disagrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henut_Taui
Had they found the cocaine in the mummies, I suspect there would be less reason to suspect contamination after they were dug up.
The leaves contain the base. The base has a low melting point and can be smoked (crack).
Cocaine hydrochloride is created chemically from the base. It is water soluble and can snorted. Because of the PH of the blood it decomposes into the base.
Chemically there is no difference once the drug is in the blood stream
Two different Popes drank Vin Mariani!
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)
I remember one of the online smartshops used to sell it, it was actually rather pleasant as a caffeine alternative.
The Stepan Company plant in New Jersey is the only place in the USA authorized to import coca.
"Equality before the law" is unfortunately a farce in this country, if you didn't already know.
To be fair, it's not like they're letting them do whatever they want with the plants. They use them for a very specific purpose, and I'm sure there's very strict accounting involved, as is done with factories that produce solvents and their customers.
The question is whether a new business could be started that had a legitimate use for coca and could get a similar exception extended to it.
It's actually a fascinating example of where government backs a private monopoly as opposed to breaking it up, which is often a case for having a strong government apparatus.
Well, that's exactly the question, isn't it. You can't presume this because the answer to the question turns on the actual fact of the matter.
Like that the idea "equality before the law" doesn't exist in this country, unfortunately.
Also, you're asking for evidence no one can produce. How convenient.
I was being hyperbolic to point out that the "evidenced-based" culture has gone too far, to the point where you need obviously unobtainable evidence to prove something that is obviously true.
Now it is possible that the paperwork required means hundreds of companies never even tried, and evidence of that chilling effect is hard to produce. However that is not the claim.
I'm not claiming the US is perfect, but you are making a strong statement that is either completely false, or is true but only with pages of fine print (and it may turn out that if I read all those details I'd be fine with that as a place where we shouldn't allow equality in the first place)
You’re unsure our government and institutions are corrupt?
Your claim that no one has ever wanted to import coca leaves requires a laughably impossible amount of evidence
No, no. I made no claim, I just asked a question.
>Could a new business be started that had a legitimate use for coca and could get a similar exception extended to it?
Instead of saying something you know for a fact, such as "I don't know", you made a specific claim:
>there's been presumably hundreds of applicants (at least) who have tried the same and been rejected
You've admitted you can't possibly know this. Don't try to shift the burden of proof onto me. I don't need to provide evidence for something I didn't claim. Maybe some businesses have tried to obtain that exception, maybe none has. I don't know, and you don't know either.
Just admit you said something dumb and move on.
Knowing the answer to this would be like knowing if anyone ever wanted to make a watch with a Rolex like movement.
Is this actually true? A quick search gives me a lot of sources like "Natural News" and similarly dubious sources. What do they actually use the Coca leaves for?
"In the late 1800s cocaine was used as a primary ingredient for flavor in Coca-Cola. In the early 1900s cocaine in its crude form was removed. Today the extract of the coca leaves, a de-cocainized version, is manufactured in the United States and used in the flavoring for Coca-Cola."
Interesting, I had always heard that they had to "de-cocainize" the extract outside the US and import the resulting product.
It has a step-by-step description of cocaine extraction process further down the page.
I mean you can probably find the same on the YT, but seeing it on a DEA site is still a bit jarring.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Drug Enforcement Administration
[Docket No. DEA-1335]
Importer of Controlled Substances Application: Stepan Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_Simply_Cola#Cocaine_c...
This specific case seems like it's more about the law grandfathering in an existing product vs whatever conspiracy theory you have in mind.
Why wasn't it grandfathered for traditional users of the leaves?
It's amazing the moment you point out that massive institutions care more about each other than the little guy, you get called a conspiracy theorist.
“... a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.”
― Sigmund Freud
"Woe to you, my Princess, when I come. I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward, you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn't eat enough, or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body" - a letter to his fiance.
I'd think we'd already know, because there would be historical (literature and records) references.
Unfortunately, the author of this article is the one who is confused. Cocaine is the name of the alkaloid present in the coca leaf, much like the coffee bean contains caffeine. If they were using coca leaf, they were using cocaine.
It gives the wrong idea to say these 17th century people were doing cocaïne.
Does the molecule C17H21NO4 exist in both the raw, dried leaves of the coca plant, and a powdered, refined extract from the same plant?
What's also humorous to me is this entire discussion is centered around vernacular usage of a word versus the scientific definition. Cocaine is cocaine, but "cocaine" means different things to some people and not to others.
I was going to say this is pedantically correct, but on closer inspection, it's not even that. Cocaine, the chemical, is present in both coca leaves and cocaine, the drug. When people say cocaine--particularly in this context--they're referring to cocaine the drug, not cocaine the chemical.
Cocaine the drug and cocaine the chemical are homonyms, and it's incorrect--fully technically--to confuse their use.
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.
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.
Furthermore, the most purified form of drinking ethanol actually is called “grain alcohol”; Everclear is a popular brand.
Yes. This is true colloquially and legally.
When people eat poppyseed bagels they don't say they're doing codeine or morphine.
It's generally understood that "smoking weed" is likely to be a different experience than "taking THC"
When it comes to coffee, people are generally aware that caffeine is the active ingredient. If you ask someone, “have you had any caffeine today?”, they’re not going to say “no” if they’ve had six cups of coffee. They’re going to say, “yes, I’ve had six cups of coffee”. They’re not going to try and pick a tedious argument that they didn’t really have caffeine because they drank coffee instead of snorting crushed up caffeine pills.
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.
That is, it sounds like you're trying to bend over backwards to invent a coherent meaning to impose on the utterances of people who are just confused and ignorant, with the result that your own utterances are losing meaning. The reason people say things like "crack isn't cocaine, the drug" and "coca leaves don't contain cocaine" isn't that their utterances refer to some coherent entity called "cocaine, the drug", which consists of some arbitrary collection of cocaine salts but excludes the hydroxide. They're just wrong, because being wrong is a thing that people do a lot, especially when they're talking about things they don't know about, like chemistry.
Yes. So does the DEA. We had separate charges for “cocaine” and “crack” for decades, with the former referring to the powdered salt and the latter to the base. The fact that the active compound is identical is irrelevant.
> They're just wrong, because being wrong is a thing that people do a lot, especially when they're talking about things they don't know about, like chemistry
We’re talking about language. Not chemistry per se.
Someone saying someone doing crack is doing cocaine is simply incorrect in a colloquial context. Sort of like how tomatoes are culinarily a vegetable even if botanically they are fruits.
Someone saying that doing crack is doing cocaine is simply correct in a colloquial context. If the DEA says they are incorrect, they are simply bullshitting due to political incentives.
Crack is "crack cocaine". It is a Form of cocaine.
The separation of "cocaine" and "crack" was a policy and marketing choice, in order to make it possible that a black person would get 20 years for dealing the same drug that would only get a white person 5 years.
The people chewing coca leaves before the 1800s were doing so in order to consume the cocaine within.
Cocaine makes me feel like a new man. And he wants some too!
You would be expected to read it this way because the article explicitly elaborates on how cocaine hydrochloride is isolated from leaves (that alone should have stopped you from trying to "inform" anyone), and uses that to drive the main thesis about the industrialization and democratization of drugs.
And that's an entirely self-contained pathway to the correct reading, nevermind what you already knew going into the exercise.
The caffeine analogy is useless because there is no common sense of people using caffeine to very different effect the way there is for cocaïne.
That comports well with my contemporary and anecdotal understanding of cocaine's most popular effects.
Really? I've never seen it. Were you in a northern province? Reading the comments I became curious and figured I could probably find it somewhere, but I wouldn't expect to find it in a supermarket.
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.
I drank a lot of coca tea and couldn't feel anything different.
Peru, especially cordillera negra/blanca is the most special place on earth I've ever been too. Everything is magical in a weird way. It's literally breathtaking. I can't really describe it. It feels mystical, even with no drugs involved.
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.
The altitude impact was no joke, but for whatever reason it affected all of us to different degrees. I just felt a little more winded than usual, had to take my time a bit but was overall fine, whereas one of the group had a rough go of it, needed frequent breaks and vomited a couple times. The other two were somewhere in between.
So I'm sure being fit helps, but it seems there's more to it than that.
You will suffer regardless, acclimatization just makes things possible and over time mentally more bearable experience. But prepare for 3-5 steps and rest routine in higher parts, pushing through is actually pretty stupid and will fire back quickly and badly, listen to your body.
That being said, what others say is correct - a lot of endurance training helps a lot reaching the limit of your body. Plus train carrying medium backpack uphill a lot (10-15kg).
I've camped 6000m high on Aconcagua, but I couldn't sleep well above 3000m, almost nothing above 4000m, regardless of what mild medicine/support I took. Some sleep up there like babies. High mountains are just not for me, but I am happy with European alps though, they have it all apart from that much altitude suffering. Higher peaks just for hiking below/around them like Annapurna or Everest, loaded multi week 5500m hikes are not easy neither and you actually experience way more in 3-4 weeks rather than progressing slowly up one empty valley to the top.
This is something of an enduring medical mystery despite efforts to find related genes, etc. I think part of it is the compounding of second order effects, like who can say whether individual performance one week into an expedition will be more affected by bad sleep, bad digestion, or bad headaches? If one is immune to some side effects, how long before the others really take a toll? The team member who is strongest one day may be weakest the next depending on how the schedule of different kinds of attrition and reserves all line up, so it’s really hard to predict in advance without some direct experience. Even then it’s a moving target as we train or age.
Now why the number is as it is in altitude while next guy was more fit down below, but now vomiting furiously is another question, I agree not very clear. Maybe red blood cell pace of production but even that is not a complete picture.
1) cardio fitness (ability to do x amount of work)
2) altitude adaptation (ability to exist at altitude)
It takes from several days to several months to adapt to altitude, depending on exactly what you mean by adapt. The first 24-72 are the highest risk for altitude sickness (which can be life threatening).
Both factor into performance at altitude.
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.
Apparently they already knew about these new things called 'coca leaves' at the border because they took them away from her.
This is a true story. Friggin hippies man.
https://cluj24.ro/pictor-clujean-condamnat-la-inchisoare-pen...
Why don't you try it next time, let us know how it went :)
Now seriously I think they must have had some dogs or devices to sniff up the drug, otherwise I can't explain how they isolated him from the crowd.
The only interesting side effect was that both my wife and I experienced tingling feet when combining coca leaves with acetazolamide, the altitude sickness meds we were taking (tingling feet is apparently a side effect of those meds). I wonder if on some level it does have a similar mechanism for altitude sickness?
As a side note coca tea (or chewed leaves) are often recommended for managing altitude, and chewing leaves did seem to help with headaches I was having at > 12k feet, but again it was fairly subtle, and I am not convinced it's not just placebo/a nice distraction.
I have only done 23andme not a WGS like you, but I have at least one liver enzyme SNP that dramatically slows down caffeine metabolism. It took me quite a while to realize that the advice of "no caffeine after 5pm" or whatever needed to be something more like - no more than one cup of coffee before dawn.
Of course, knowing for sure specific facts showing that you are different in some way such that general advice doesn't apply is super useful because it saves you the effort of having to solve the problem on your own- you will always find new ones that nobody has already solved.
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.
Actually quite effective as an alternative to ADHD medicine.
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.
I got some anesthetic effects in my mouth in the place I kept chewing them. Wasn't checking whether it made me more alert, even coffee normally doesn't have much effect on me and I drink it for the taste.
Other than that, 0 effect. But I've never used any variant of cocaine so can't even compare.
This is a really interesting use of the word "democratize." I've seen it used in many other contexts (usually in a business sense), and some have been more ominous than others.
0 - just google define: democratize
If you look at the Google search recommendations after typing in the word "democratize," for example, you get people trying to understand what it means to "democratize finance" (initially, the solution was almost exclusively paired with words like "unbanked", "cryptocurrency," and a rush to bring these products to Africa - rarely a particular place for a particular reason, just Africa in general).
Other phrases like "democratize data" are used in a corporate sense. Apparently "democratize AI" is a huge one too, which is appropriate because Sam Altman of OpenAI fame is one of the people who wanted to "democratize finance" by expanding his Worldcoin project into Kenya. More recently, I've seen the phrase "democratize art" thrown around by people who support generative AI as a form of art.
If you look at the Google search recommendations after typing in the word "democratize," for example, you get people trying to understand what it means to "democratize finance"
I don't see these results (Google search results are personalized). I guess I took for granted that the meaning of the word was well understood or that people would look up words they thought were being used in an odd way.