# Hallucinogenic Plants in the Philippines



## berkeleyjake (Mar 23, 2021)

I have characters in a story I'm writing who will be going on a type of vision quest on an island in the Philippines.

I'm looking for some type of plant or fungus, but preferably a plant, that is native to the region.

I've already done some research and I've found ones with minor effects, but I'm looking for full-on hallucinations and it is very important that it is native to the region and not imported.

Any help would be great.


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## Chasejxyz (Mar 23, 2021)

I saw your other post, is this for a HP fanfic? Because you can just....make something up. There's already a bunch of made-up magic plants in that universe.

Also, why is this character doing it? A "vision quest" is an important cultural tradition for Native Americans, so A: doing it in the Phillippines and B: a (presumably) non-Native character doing that is not very good. Again, if this is your HP fanfic, you can just make something up and have it not be appropriative. One of the nice things about fanfics is that you can "fix" the problems in the source material, and one of the issues HP suffers from is that it's really disrespectful to Native Americans any other cultures. Every culture is going to have their own wizarding sub-culture, so you could have something _like_ a vision quest in this made-up Fillipino wizarding community, but it's distinctly different (and it can have whatever things you want to fit your fic, like if it allows you to actually talk to dead people or fantastic beasts or it allows you to do a new class of spells). 

If this isn't about the HP fanfic and this is a totally original thing......I strongly suggest you reconsider why it is you're writing this type of story and what you're trying to accomplish. I'm not saying you _can't_ do it, but, ethically, should you? If you want to write about a white stoner/hippie who's all about new age mysticism and picking and choosing things from cool cultures and they end up in a bad situation because they're disrespectful (you do NOT want to anger spirits), that could be an interesting story. It would take a tropey character and force them to reconsider their actions, which would also have your readers do the same. Subvert those expectations. Or maybe your character fell for a scam to trap drug-seeking tourists and they end up in a Hostel-esque situation. 

If you NEED your character to hallucinate, they can just do LSD, shrooms, or even get into a sensory deprivation tank (those are all over the place). There are a metric buttload of species that produce psilocybin, and they can be grown anywhere, just like how you can grow cannabis anywhere. If your character NEEDS to hallucinate in the PHILLIPPINES, maybe there's some rogue chemist that has created a new LSD-like compound and they can only be met in person. Same thing with the shrooms, or maybe they don't ship well and they need to be consumed fresh.

If you're hellbent on being as accurate to real life as possible, also keep in mind that you need to orally ingest psilocybin so your body can metabolize it to psilocin, which is the compound that gets you high (which is why you can't inject shroom tea, lest you want to turn into a mushroom farm). It reacts on the serotonin receptors in the brain, and anything that does runs the risk of putting you into serotonin syndrome, which essentially puts you into a hyper-everything state, and you will die of seizures/hyperthermia. There's also no way to remove serotonin from your system or to neutralize it, so the only treatment is the management of the symptoms (slowing heart rate, seizure management, icing your body) and letting your body process it all. So if you're at, saying, Burning Man or in the middle of the jungle you're probably going to die. You're more likely to have this happen if you're taking other things that put more serotonin in you*, such as many types of anti-depressents, lithium, dxm, coke, meth, fentanyl, even stuff like ondansetron (common anti-nausea med, esp after surgery) and St John's wort, which if your character is very into recreational drugs and/or is taking psychiatric medication, this is something that might crop up. Also fentanyl is really good at finding its way into other drugs so they can unknowingly ingest it pretty easily (always get your stuff tested, kids!). 


*yes I know this technically isn't how reputake inhibitors work but this is getting technical enough already


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## berkeleyjake (Mar 23, 2021)

It's for an animagi potion.

In canon, one needs to keep a mandrake leave in their mouth for a whole month as the first step in the process. Mandrake leaves would be toxic for a regular person to keep in their mouths and it is a popular fanon trope that magical mandrakes would cause hallucinations. Since part of my story takes place on an island in the Philippines, I wanted to use something from the region.

I've already used a lot of local flora and fauna as well as local myths and legends. So as the added touches of realism, since I couldn't find something from the mandrake genus that is native to the region, I wanted to look into it and ask for some assistance.

I'm planning on making the potion a little more efficient because there are Death's Head Moths in the region, but these are larger and called Greater Death's Head Moths, so their chrysalis stage would be larger as well. If you know the process of everything in canon, then there are other parts of it that make the process potentially more powerful that I can make into my story.

I'm not doing anything that could be considered cultural appropriation, since the cultures in my story are wizards, dwarves, and magical monkeys (demiguises). Though if you represent any of those groups, please let me know.

It needs to be fresh as that is how it works in my world-building, so I'm looking for something native to the setting of the story.

Are you able to help with my research?


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## Chasejxyz (Mar 23, 2021)

As a queer person, I have 0 interest in helping to allow HP to continue to exist in any form, so no, I will not be able to help you further with your research.


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## berkeleyjake (Mar 23, 2021)

Chasejxyz said:


> As a queer person, I have 0 interest in helping to allow HP to continue to exist in any form, so no, I will not be able to help you further with your research.



I'm curious, does that have to do with JKR's transphobic statements she's made over the last couple of years or something prior?


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## Chasejxyz (Mar 23, 2021)

Yes, along with other things she has done, such as:
-saying that lycanthropy is a metaphor for AIDs
-"Dumbledore is totally gay, trust me"
-Harry/Ron making fun of Hermionie for wanting to end slavery
--and Dobby is Totally Happy to be a Slave, because some slave owners are good, actually
-"yes I know Johnny Depp did some Bad Stuff but I like him as an actor so I'll still work with him"
-everything about Native Americans she's done
-everything about the banking goblins


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## berkeleyjake (Mar 23, 2021)

Chasejxyz said:


> Yes, along with other things she has done, such as:
> -saying that lycanthropy is a metaphor for AIDs
> -"Dumbledore is totally gay, trust me"
> -Harry/Ron making fun of Hermionie for wanting to end slavery
> ...



I didn't see any problem with Dumbledore being gay.
Same with the lycanthropy as a metaphor, was the reason you didn't like the metaphor because of the way it is transmitted in the story? Do you also have an issue with X-Men and mutants being a metaphor for racism?

What's wrong with banking goblins? Some people see it as antisemitic, but as an Israeli Jew myself, I don't see it at all. The only problem I have with the goblins is that they kinda suck compared to Tolkien goblins.

I'm genuinely curious about your opinions, so please don't dismiss me right away for asking questions about them.


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## Chasejxyz (Mar 23, 2021)

The problem isn't that Dumbledore is gay, it's that there's nothing about it in canon and she uses it as a "oh actually there is diversity in my story! See!" She has creative control of the Fantastic Beasts movies and she chose for it to not go further into the Dumbledore/Grindelwald relationship....even though she totally could have. Maybe she was more concerned about $$$ from foreign markets than she did showing her characters truthfully to their character. Or maybe she doesn't actually think of Dumbledore as gay. I wonder what it is.

The problem with the lycanthropy metaphor is that almost all werewolves are vicious, bloodthirsty creatures that attack and kill people, especially children, and forcibly turn them into werewolves. The gay community has been demonized for decades, saying that they shouldn't be around people, especially children, because they'll sexually assault them. The conversation has since shifted to trans people, more specifically trans women, and how they are just men in disguise in order to get closer to women to sexually assault them. This is something that JKR believes is a thing that actually happens, when there has literally been 0 cases of this happening, despite well over 100 years of history of trans people being out and visibly trans. 

What you find antisemitic and what other Jews find antisemitic doesn't have to be the same thing. Different people take offense to different things, so your experiences and opinions are not any more (or less) valid than anyone else's. They are designed on harmful, racist tropes and are designed (especially in the movies) to be exaggerated caricatures of greedy Jewish bankers. JKR has 100% control of her works, so every design and creative decision in any HP product has to be greenlit by her. 

HP is a franchise aimed at kids, and kids aren't born racist or hateful. Media that depicts queer people as sexual predators, slavery as okay sometimes etc signals to them that things are that way. HP is a huge franchise, wildly successful, and influences a lot of other media, and people copy harmful tropes and stereotypes because they do not realize they are harmful. It teaches them to be hateful when they don't even realize. It also signals to queer kids, kids from other races or faiths that they don't belong in this magical world they love so much, that they can't be heroes, they have to be monsters or minor characters compared to Some White Kid. 

Plenty of people have done videos/think pieces about this and if you still have questions I strongly suggest that you check those out. Ultimately, the more money/attention HP gets, the more the franchise continues, and JKR makes more money which she will continue to use to lobby to strip the rights of people like me. As long as people read her and listen to her, the more opportunities she has to convince people that we're all secretly just men looking to sexually assault women (or women who want an easy way out of misogyny). Over the past few years the UK went from one of the best to one of the worst places to be transgender _because_ of people like her amplifying harmful, hateful rhetoric. Denying trans people access to health care, legal protections, or the ability to change legal name//gender leads to trans deaths. This is a fact, and she knows that, and she still does what she does. I do not want to go onto this topic further, because that wasn't the point of this thread, and it is not very enjoyable to have to explain to someone why something that is clearly harmful is harmful to you.


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## Devor (Mar 23, 2021)

I think it might be best if this conversation went back to topic before a swarm of people start fighting over this and saying things we'll all regret.


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## pmmg (Mar 23, 2021)

I don't know anything about hallucinogens in the Philippines, but I might be willing to go there to find out. With a quick Google search, I came up with Betel Nut.


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## berkeleyjake (Mar 23, 2021)

pmmg said:


> I don't know anything about hallucinogens in the Philippines, but I might be willing to go there to find out. With a quick Google search, I came up with Betel Nut.



Yeah, that was the first thing I came across as well, but it doesn't cause hallucinations, unless it is with habitual use. Otherwise it's just a burst of energy or euphoria.


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## berkeleyjake (Mar 23, 2021)

Devor said:


> I think it might be best if this conversation went back to topic before a swarm of people start fighting over this and saying things we'll all regret.


Yeah, I agree. This wasn't a conversation I wanted to turn into a debate, I just wanted to hear that person's background on their reasoning. I may or may not agree with the same things that they do, but in either case it's always good to hear what people think of controversial issues.


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## Rosemary Tea (Mar 24, 2021)

Mandrake leaf may be toxic, but mandrake root is medicinal. It's also toxic if used incorrectly, but if used correctly, poison is medicine.

Thinking in that vein, you don't necessarily have to use a heavily hallucinogenic plant. Any medicinal plant will do. The Philippines has plenty of native medicinal plants, as does every part of Earth where plants grow.

So, looking up Philippine medicinal plants should give you some ideas.


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## Prince of Spires (Mar 25, 2021)

Google gives me Psilocybin mushroom as hallucogenic mushrooms which should occur in the Phillipines.

There's also Morning Glory seeds (also called water spinach). Coleus blumei (aka Painted Nettle) is another one. As is the Brugmansia or Angels Trumpet. Nutmeg is also halluciogenic. If should be noted that for some of these, you need either high quantities or to extract the halluciogenic elements if you want any real effect. 

I'll go clean up my search and browser history now...


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## Rosemary Tea (Mar 25, 2021)

Prince of Spires said:


> Google gives me Psilocybin mushroom as hallucogenic mushrooms which should occur in the Phillipines.
> 
> There's also Morning Glory seeds (also called water spinach). Coleus blumei (aka Painted Nettle) is another one. As is the Brugmansia or Angels Trumpet. Nutmeg is also halluciogenic. If should be noted that for some of these, you need either high quantities or to extract the halluciogenic elements if you want any real effect.
> 
> I'll go clean up my search and browser history now...


If the idea is to use a toxic plant--as mandrake leaf is, toxic but not necessarily known for being hallucinogenic--then any toxic or mildly hallucinogenic plant would probably do.

Apparently, angel's trumpet is a Philippine medicinal plant. Not only that, its flower essence qualities include surrender at times of deep transformation. While literally transforming into an animal is probably not what they mean, it should work for the purpose fo your story.


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