Last Christmas somebody gave me a whole Jimson weed--the root must have weighed two pounds; enough for a year--but I ate the whole goddamn thing in about twenty minutes!
Luckily, I vomited most of it right back up,
he said, But even so, I went blind for three days. Christ I couldn't even walk! My whole body turned to wax. I was such a mess they had to haul me back to the ranch house in a wheelbarrow...they said I was trying to talk, but I sounded like a raccoon.
--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Datura is far more than a hallucinogen, it is a sacred being which is part of prayers, utilized for cleansing, as well as healing.
--Devlin Gandy
The Jamestown weed (which resembles the thorny apple of Peru, and I take to be the plant so called) is supposed to be one of the greatest coolers in the world. This being an early plant, was gathered very young for a boiled salad, by some of the soldiers sent thither to quell the rebellion of Bacon; and some of them eat plentifully of it, the effect of which was a very pleasant comedy; for they turned natural fools upon it for several days: one would blow up a feather in the air; another would dart straws at it with much fury; and another stark naked was sitting up in a corner, like a monkey, grinning and making mows at them; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his companions, and snear in their faces, with a countenance more antic than any in a Dutch droll. In this frantic condition they were confined, lest they should in their folly destroy themselves; though it was observed that all their actions were full of innocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly, for they would have wallowed in their own excrements if they had not been prevented. A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after eleven days returned to themselves again, not remembering anything that had passed.
Perhaps this was the same herb that Mark Antony's army met with in his retreat from the Parthian war and siege of Phraata, when such as had eaten thereof employed themselves with much earnestness and industry in grubbing up stones, and removing them from one place to another, as if it had been a business of the greatest consequence. Wine, as the story says, was found a sovereign remedy for it, which is likely enough, the malignity of this herb being cold.
--Robert Beverly, The History and Present State of Virginia, 1705
She is as powerful as the best of allies, but there is something I personally don't like about her. She distorts men. She gives them a taste of power too soon without fortifying their hearts and makes them domineering and unpredictable. She makes them weak in the middle of their great power.
--Don Juan Matus (as told to Carlos Castaneda), The Teachings of Don Juan
The New Testament Greek word that is translated as "trumpet", σαλπιγ, is also the ancient Greek word for Daturas. Which leads me to a crazy-ass conspiracy theory: What if every New Testament reference to trumpets was actually a reference to Datura?
--buckyogi