Sleep, Dreaming, and Drugs
The use of "mind-altering" drugs and intoxicating drinks to hasten the onset of sleep and to enhance the experience of dreaming is a worldwide phenomenon and goes back to prehistory. The ancient Greeks used hallucinatory substances for religious purposes. The priestesses at Delphi, for example, chewed certain leaves while sitting in a smoke-filled chamber and going into a trance. On returning to consciousness, they would bring forth a divine prophecy. The various Dionysian cults encouraged their celebrants into ecstatic dream-like states through the use of wine and perhaps other drugs (Cohen, 1977).
The ancient Hindus imbibed a sacred drink called "soma," and MARIJUANA was used in practices of meditation. For the Arabs, HASHISH (a form of marijuana) was the substance of choice, while the Incas chewed the leaves of the COCA plant (from which COCAINE may be made). The OPIUM poppy was used in Asia, and the ancient Mexicans used a variety of powerful PSYCHOACTIVE substances, including PEYOTE, sacred mushrooms, and seeds from the Mexican MORNING GLORY plant, to enter the realm of dreams. The Australian aboriginals used the pituri, a psychoactive substance, to take them into "dream time," as they referred to it.
Belladonna and OPIATES have historically been used for the specific purpose of producing vivid dreams.
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