Thread: Lobster
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> "Ergot, caused by the fungus Claviceps purpurea, is a disease of
> cereal crops and grasses....Human poisoning was common in Europe in
> the Middle Ages when ergoty rye bread was often consumed."
>
> http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/pla...ops/pp551w.htm
>
> Ergotamine is an abortifacient and a vaso-constrictor. Ergotamine
> tartrate is the primary ingredient of LSD.


It isn't. It's a chemical from whch LSD can be made. It's commonly
prescribed as an anti-migraine drug; the standard dose is 2mg, which
is 8 times larger than a 1960s-level LSD dose and about 50 times the
LSD dose people usually take these days. That is, if there were any
significant LSD-like effects from ergotamine tartrate there'd be a
lot of migraine sufferers noticing it.

It takes complicated chemical processing to make anything hallucinogenic
from ergotamine, and your own metabolism can't do it. The idea that the
effects of ergot on rye have anything to do with LSD is a 1960s urban
legend. Mouldy rye might well make your fingers and toes drop off with
gangrene, but that's no hallucination. Goodman and Gilman's "The
Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics" describes the toxic effects of
crude ergot in some detail.

You or your source are also mixed up about the abortifacient properties
of ergot. There are several oxytocic chemicals in it; the one used in
obstetrics is ergometrine, which is chemically related to ergotamine but
isn't the same thing.

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