
Smoking Banana Peels Is the Greatest Drug Hoax of All Time - stock_toaster
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/smoking-banana-peels-1960s-donovan-mellow-yellow-hoax
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drfuchs
Can’t find the image online, but the web remembers:

Mad Magazine #116, January 1968: "A San Francisco Trip". This Don Martin
cartoon shows a hippie preparing some banana peel shavings in a frying pan,
and trying to smoke the result in a pipe. Nothing happens. He angrily stalks
away -- immediately slipping on the peel he cast aside earlier. He bashes his
head (KLANG), and THEN begins seeing paisley-styled hallucinations. - Dbenson

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ToFab123
I tried to smoke banana peels as a teenager. It is still the biggest headache
I have ever had. The pain. For days. On a side note, we tried to smoke almost
everything we could set on fire. Nothing we tried came even close to the pain
inflicted by banana peel. Actually it wasn't the peel we tried to smoke. I
don't know the English term, but it was those long strings on the side of the
banana we dried and smoked. I have been told it they are pure protein and that
was the reason why we got that massive headache. I have not investigated if
that is true.

~~~
andrewflnr
...smoking protein gives you headaches? What? Why?

~~~
kylek
Ripe bananas have a lot of tyramine.....I guess???

~~~
qwerty456127
Which can be active if taken with a MAOIs inhibitor and is outlawed in
Florida.

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blakblakarak
A friend succesfully managed (once) to get it to work when we were 12. First
we lightly grilled and boiled the bananas and mixed it with some reseve
rolling tobacco that his dad kept above a kitchen cabinet in an old biscuit
tin. We smoked one joint and then collapsed onto the sofa. It never worked
again regardless of how many times we tried.

A few years later his dad invited us to smoke a joint with him while his wife
was away - and let us into his secret stash of premix, squestered in an old
biscuit tin, stashed above a kitchen cabinet...

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te_platt
The hoax I wish would get around is that it is really good to smoke is
dandelion roots. I love to imagine groups of teenagers running around at night
digging out dandelions from random people's (especially mine) yards.

~~~
Alex3917
There are a lot of invasive species you can actually (theoretically) get high
on. E.g. Phalaris, white mulberry, mugwort, non-native sweet flag, parsnips,
etc.

Most (but not all) things growing in your lawn you can eat though, _if_ the
area is free from toxins. The reason we have invasive species is because they
came from somewhere else, and usually the reason they came from somewhere else
is because they were what people ate before we discovered/invented better
crops. Or at least this is true in New England and the mid-Atlantic regions, I
can't speak for everywhere else.

~~~
sorokod
"The reason we have invasive species is because they came from somewhere else"

Everything came from " somewhere else" if you take the long view.

~~~
lemonad
Not an answer to parent comments, just wanted to emphasize that coming from
"somewhere else" <=/=> invasive. Not an expert so there are likely edge cases
but one example would be a meadow where many different plants grow, flowering
from early spring to late autumn. Introducing a new plant could mean it finds
its own niche in this system or could mean that it completely takes over the
whole system, reducing the overall flowering period to a limited time and thus
causing problems for pollinators. If the latter is the typical result, the
plant would likely become classed as invasive.

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nixpulvis
It's a conspiracy! The cavendish were a plant by the government designed to
not get you high. The old Gros Michel banana got you super high, I swear ;)

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travis_brooks
This story happened in 1991. Like a lot of kids in high school I tried to
smoke banana peels. They're wet and mushy and it was not at all obvious back
in the days before the internet how you were supposed to process the things
for smoking. The first time I tried it nothing happened, so I was pretty sure
it was a hoax. But the second time me and a friend were bored so he had the
idea to first boil, then microwave, then scrape out the soft bits and pan fry
them until dry enough to smoke. We smoked this awful stuff and coughed for
quite a while, but then discovered we were both extremely high. In 1991 I was
very familiar with marijuana but this was quite different. Its been ages since
I did stuff like that but I'd say it was like a less intense nitrous oxide,
and it lasted for at least 4 hours. We tried several times after this to
reproduce the recipe but had no luck. I have no idea how or why it worked that
one time but it really did.

I know my friend didn't sneak something into the pipe because there is just no
way he'd waste hours mucking around with banana peels if he had some drug to
smoke laying around. Also I saw him attempt to make it again several times,
cough his lungs out and get no happy results. It wasn't a contaminated pipe,
we used a pipe freshly made out of a Coke can because banana peel will ruin
anything you smoke it in. It really happened but I have no explanation for it.

~~~
ThJ
This is exactly the sort of thing you'd say to make people who don't believe
in the myth try to smoke banana peels anyway. "It worked that one time, oh,
what a mystery, we must find the secret..."

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yesenadam
Off-topic: Is it just me, or is there a URL 9206 characters long in the html
of that page? Starting :

    
    
      The lead singer of the band <a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/admin/articles/Drug%20scares%20are%20a%20dimebag%20a%20dozen,
    

Why? Is that a record? I guess not.

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grawprog
Banana peels might be fake but you can get high off nutmeg....if you can stand
to eat enough of it...I have zero personal experience with this.

[https://erowid.org/plants/nutmeg/](https://erowid.org/plants/nutmeg/)

~~~
warent
I'll admit that I tried this once as a dumb teenager. I mixed a huge amount of
nutmeg into some milk and chugged it. The experience was very slightly
psychedelic and mild paranoia, but mostly just a disgustingly, overpoweringly
horrible recurring flavor and scent of nutmeg for hours, which I could only
describe as like being trapped in a prison of nutmeg. The mere thought of
nutmeg made me nauseous for years after that.

~~~
nutmegging
For me at least it wasn't possible to consume enough straight up to feel the
effects, but one time I put ground nutmeg into gel capsules and swallowed a
ton of them. The first night I felt a mild sensation, but upon waking up the
next day I was surprisingly high -- it's a bit like marijuana plus a pleasant
warm feeling. Even in the capsules though I still felt a complete revulsion
toward nutmeg for years afterward.

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snarfy
I remember some friends trying it. It didn't work of course, but then we
discovered nutmeg.

~~~
code_duck
Why not scorpions?

[https://www.dawn.com/news/1252264](https://www.dawn.com/news/1252264)

~~~
snarfy
That's terrifying.

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pennaMan
The US prohibition of cannabis is by far the greatest drug related hoax of all
time

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numbsafari
It’s also a bitchin’ Dead Milkmen song, but then maybe I’m just way too much
into Philly culture...

~~~
otterley
Mellow.... it's so mellow.....

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jcampbell1
The thin red skins from peanuts was another one from my childhood. Turns out
they burn hotter than thermite and don't get you high. Not recommended.

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monochromatic
I remember reading about this in the Anarchist’s Cookbook as a kid. I never
tried it, and I never learned that it was a hoax.

~~~
sevensor
One of my friends in middle school who had CompuServe downloaded the
Anarchist's Cookbook and found this gem. We all believed it. But then he got
into MOD files and forgot about banana peels before we got around to trying
it.

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ravenstine
Not jenkem?

~~~
tcoff91
Yeah jenkem is way funnier.

For those that don’t remember Jenkem, the hoax was that you can get high by
combining shit and piss in a bottle then putting a balloon on the opening and
letting the baloon fill up with gasses for several days, and then inhaling
that gas.

Absolutely foul and extremely lulzy.

~~~
ravenstine
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkem)

> On September 26, 2007, the Sheriff's Department of Collier County, Florida
> issued an internal bulletin about jenkem based on a TOTSE internet forum
> post by user "Pickwick", which included purported photos of the manufacture
> and use.[6] "Pickwick" confessed it was a hoax around the time of the
> internal bulletin.[14] In November of that year, officials at the Drug
> Enforcement Administration said no reports of jenkem use had been confirmed
> in the United States.[15]

~~~
csorrell
I always thought it was a meme too, and surely no one was dumb enough to
believe or try it... then I volunteered at the med tent at a Rainbow Gathering
in Wyoming. I can confirm at least one use of jenkum in the United States.

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peter_retief
My older siblings used to have little packets of "beadies" (Packaged dry
banana skins rolled into thin tubes) that I used to try every now and then.
Packaging looked a bit like incense. Then of course we have nutmeg..
[https://abcnews.go.com/Health/large-doses-nutmeg-
hallucinoge...](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/large-doses-nutmeg-
hallucinogenic-high/story?id=12347815)

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inlined
Maybe that’s why there was always money in the banana stand.

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mikeymz
It started with the Donavon song "Mellow Yellow". But he was singing about a
vibrator which you definitely don't want to smoke

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Fnoord
I've always wondered if the hoax was due to (or inspired by) an ingredient of
a variant of Ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi).

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infradig
We used to smoke dried banana leaves as kids back in the early 70's. Never
heard of anyone smoking the peels.

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mirimir
Hey, you get a little high from the CO ;)

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crispytx
I did this when I was 14 after reading The Anarchist's Cookbook :)

~~~
marpstar
I never actually did it, but I was around the same age when I read about this
on TOTSE
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOTSE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOTSE))
back in 2000-2001.

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DonHopkins
I thought it was a Born Again Christian plot to get more Atheist Nightmares
into the hands of hippies.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A)

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hugh4life
I tried this when I was 12 or 13... from textfiles.com.

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wrycoder
“They call it mellow yellow.” “Quite rightly.”

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zunzun
Smoking composted tomato peels is much better!

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JoeAltmaier
Not statins?

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newname2018
Anarchist cookbook also said that nutmeg would make you fry. Didn't work
though for me, However thier morning Glory seed recipe was right on the money

~~~
caf
The nutmeg thing is true, but you do have to eat a considerable amount of
freshly ground stuff, which is revolting. And it's not a good trip, either.

~~~
bunderbunder
That, and the stuff is straight-up toxic in the kinds of doses that can get
you high.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037907380...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379073800003698)

~~~
kakarot
Most deliriants/anticholinergics are toxic at the doses you need to take for
strong psychoactive effects.

It's a dangerous game to play around with such substances. Very interesting
results however if you're willing to take the plunge. You have full-fledged
hallucinations of objects and events, and dear god the spiders.

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newname2018
FYI instead of the recipe in that ancient Rome I have personal experience that
30 grams of clean washed seeds ground up in a blender to " black pepper "
consistency then mixed into a ice cream shake ( in the same blender) will
produce a desirable result. Collect the seeds yourself , this plant is a weed
in cali, it's everywhere and once you have learned to identify it you will be
happy you did I've had the best luck with the brilliant violet colored flowers
although there is a cream colored variety that works well too, it's just not
as agressive as a noxious weed as the violet type. The cream colored variety
is a much smaller vine

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exabrial
Other than CBD oil.

~~~
whttheuuu
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2503660/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2503660/)

