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An interesting question is that if there were plants containing cocaine in Africa, why were they not cultivated and selectively bred like in South America, and
by toomanybeersies 7y ago
An interesting question is that if there were plants containing cocaine in Africa, why were they not cultivated and selectively bred like in South America, and subsequently driven extinct?
Answering my own question, I guess that would possibly by due to the prevalence of coffee. Coca leaves on their own are about as stimulating as caffeine.
The main advantage that Coca leaves (and hence cocaine) have over Coffee beans and caffeine is that large doses of cocaine don't cause the same negative effects as large doses of caffeine. You can rack lines of caffeine like coke, and they do wire you up, but the anxiety and nausea makes it really not worth it.
- rootw0rm 7y agococaine is cardiotoxic, that's a fairly negative effect. serotonin receptors aren't only located in the brain... that's a point which should be considered when evaluating the safety of a psychoactive substance.
- cma 7y agoIt is also used for altitude sickness, maybe less of an issue in Africa with less high altitude mountain areas than South America.
- chawco 7y agoEven a replacement is unnecessary — silphium was a commercially important plant traded in antiquity. It had well known uses in antiquity, was sought after (considered worth its weight in silver), was mentioned in literature of all sorts and appeared on coins. It’s also potentially where we get the heart symbol and its connotations in modern times (it is theorized to have been a contraceptive of some sort). And it went extinct, and a we’re not quite sure why. Plants can be very useful and not survive attempts at cultivation before going extinct in the wild. It doesn’t need to get more complicated than that.
- markdown 7y ago> You can rack lines of caffeine like coke, and they do wire you up, but the anxiety and nausea makes it really not worth it. A teaspoon of caffeine will kill most people, like it did this young man a week or so ago: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/mans-freak-death-from-caffeine-toxicity-sparks-urgent-warning-from-his-devastated-family/news-story/9d96f2d0f7c1e13d7d0cdaa1f46795bd https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/man...
- darkpuma 7y agoExtremely high doses of caffeine are deeply and profoundly unpleasant. The way it makes your head spin and your heart pound make you feel inches away from death, which supposedly you are.
- wil421 7y agoMaybe not an extreme dose but I used to take those pre-workout drinks in college. They contain an enormous amount of caffeine. I would “overdose” if I wasn’t careful and have to go into a dark room for a while. Heat pounding, head racing, and very unpleasant am I gonna die feeling.
- darkpuma 7y agoThe time it happened to me, I though it would be clever to make instant coffee using something like 15x as many scoops. It was not clever.
- Gravityloss 7y agoThe Romans had a widely used spice that went extinct. We only have textual descriptions. It couldn't be transplanted and local people had an interest in having sheep, which ate it. There are probably interesting plants vanishing in ecosystem destruction at a quicker rate right now than in the last ten thousand years.
- tempguy9999 7y agothat's laser, or silphium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoI didn't know that caffeine was worse than cocaine in this regard. Differences in adoption could also be related to the fact that coca leaves can be simply chewed, while coffee beans need to be "processed" to extract coffee.