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On 5 May 2016, a British tabloid ran a headline with an alarming concern: Are FLOWER SEEDS the new party drug? The question was the result of a local news story from Seekonk, Massachuchets, whose police department issued a warning about youths purchasing morning glory seeds from Home Depot as a substitute for LSD, and subsequently having a bad time: The headline misleadingly makes the practice sound like an epidemic, but Home Depot did confirm to us that they temporarily moved the seeds from their Seekonk store in response to a warning from the local police department, but that it was not a permanent move nor a move that affected any other stores. The Seekonk incident, however, highlights a common claim made of these seeds: that they contain a plausible chemical substitute to the hallucinogenic drug LSD called lysergic acid amide (LSA, also known as ergine). For example, The Anarchist’s Cookbook, a controversial counterculture publication from the 1970s, includes a recipe for Making LSD in the Kitchen which claims to extract the lysergic acid amides either from morning glory seeds or Hawaiian woodrose seeds. Indeed, the seeds of these and some other plants in the family Convolvulaceae (a broad classification of plants) do contain LSA. These plants, especially Hawaiian woodrose, have been used by numerous cultures as a traditional medicine and as an intoxicant for ceremonial practices. A 2014 paper investigating the psychoactive effects of the seeds of Hawaiian baby woodrose described the effects, which the authors attributed primarily to LSA: While preliminary, that study attempted to uncover the neurologic mechanism behind LSA's effects using chemical tests to predict which receptors in the brain the chemical targets, revealing that they likely occur through mechanisms that are biologically different the ones that cause LSD's more famous psychedelic effects. Instead, LSA primarily promotes the less spiritually fulfilling and potentially more dangerous vegetative side effects: In fact, a small-scale 2012 study which attempted to investigate the effects of LSA on human subjects had to be cancelled due to adverse side effects: While it is accurate to state that the LSA contained in some convolvulaceae seeds could potentially create (unpleasant) psychoactive effects, both the way the chemical produces those effects as well as the prevalence of separate dangerous physical side effects mean that it is far from an alternative for LSD.
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