Cocaine Part 1: I'm in Love With the Coca

We’re back in a BIG way, taking you to a time before posh-goth ravers would bashfully ask for a bump on the dancefloor. In this episode we explore the coca leaf’s nearly 10,000 year history before being synthesized into the crystalline form known as Cocaine.

We begin with high in the Andes Mountains, reading from an account of a coca laden llama fertility ritual, led by members of the Atacameño. Then we do our darnedest reciting funky verse poetry from the 1600's, and get into a trip report from an unhinged Italian doctor who would have traded ETERNITY for a little more time with “this little bush” ;)

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Directly Quoted:

Video showing traditional Coca leaf consumption method: https://www.lacma.org/guides/portableuniverse/02

Stacy Shaefer, "Shamans, peyote, and coca sacraments: a path that maintains indigenous traditions and identity in a time of globalization"

Garcilaso de la Vega translated by Harold Livermore, "Royal Commentaries of the Incas"(Book 8, Chapter 15)

Abraham Cowley "Six Books of Plants" [1689]

Paolo Mantegazza in "The Coca Leaf and Cocaine Papers," edited by George Andrews and David Solomun

Alex on Erowid, "Chewed Coca Leaves in Ceylon"

Background Research:

Melissa Murphy et al., "A Bioarchaeological study of Coca Use and Coca Leaf Chewing at Puruchuco-Huaquerones, Peru"

Dawson M White et al., "The Origins of Coca: Museum Genomics Reveals Multiple Independent Domestications from Progenitor Erythroxylum gracilipes"

Tom Dillehay et al., "Early Holocene coca chewing in northern Peru"

Disclaimer:

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