Other remarkable categories of agents that modify states of minds are vegetables, or herbal varieties, like plants. For instance, people from the Waley of Rivers Tigres and Eufrates (3.000 b.C) consumed Amapola (a plant) to produce euphoria and “well-being” (the same plant was reported in India, 1500 b.C, as a “wonderful plant”) (9). Hallucinogenic Solanaceae use, like Belladonna, Datura and the Mandragora, goes back to old testimonies of Middle and Far East; in Europe, they were bound traditionally with witchcraft, being used in ceremonial and therapeutic contexts. Levitation phenomena are attributed to them, as well as telepathy and fantastic physical feats. In Eurasia the muscaria amanita, a psychoactive fungus used by shamans of Siberia in its rituals was very abundant (12).

The opium, juice of a type of poppy, is one of the most known versatile drugs; due its active ingredient, morphine, the opium induces lower pain, produces joy, induces dream and reduces afflictions; the plant of the poppy, well-known like narcotic, always was used like food, forage and oil, but there are historical registries which their psychotropic functions already were known in 3.000 b.C. (13). The first written signs of Opium existence as a plant and its use overcome to the Sumerian times 3000 years b.C, although it is not but in the Ebers Papyrus in century XVI b.C where is found for the first time the reference to opium name in a product list of medical effects, with the following indication: “For children who shout too much hard” (14). Also, the Greek culture knows the plant entirely and therefore Hesiod in century VIII previously mentions it in his works, and cite Morpheus (that in century XIX would give name to Morphine), and until in the very same Odyssey appears the “Nepenthes” like the “drug of the forgetfulness” (14). However, the principles of their systematic use are tie logically to Hippocrates, Herodotus and Theophrastus in century III b. C., time in which already begins the controversy (that would never leave to us) on the medicinal double slide and of dangerous substance (14). Additionally, the Romans, heirs of the Greek culture, know, indicate and use the Opium with naturalness, and thus Galen in century I b.C. introduces in his “triaca magna” and many great contemporary men used it with therapeutic aims like emperor Marco Aurelio who used it to calm his migraines. After a period of relative silence on its use, in the age it mediates the Arabs (who never let use it) spread the use of opium by all its occupied territories, being known that Avicenna dies intoxicated by himself in 1037 (14).

In Middle East, where he was very employed by medicine, it was extended towards India and, later, in century IX, until China, while in western Europe the opium acquired therapeutic importance in century XVI, after the trips of the doctor and Swiss alchemist Paracelsus, whom its spread for diverse aims in laudanum form or in tinctures (12). Initially, in China, Opium was used orally as medicine, and in the later century XVII, the consumption of smoked opium became popular in that country (7). The consumption was increased in an alarming form and the internal production was not sufficient, so that in century XIX, 16.2 million Chinese citizens was addicted to smoked opium (6% of the adult population) (2). In China opium was well-known from century VIII although it began to be used to obtain medicine as a result of its introduction by the Arabs in Asia towards centuries IX and X (14). However, it was not but towards the century XVI that next to the introduction of the use of tobacco by the Dutch and Portuguese sailors that gradually opened the doors to its consumption like means of enjoyment and pleasure, which locates in century XVIII with an intense commerce of opium with India (14). The business was served and thus the British Empire begins to monopolize the transaction of opium in Asia being happened to sell 300 Tons in 1821 to more than 3000 Tons in 1848. According to several authors the attempt to restrain the opium commerce generated two successive wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1858), between England and China, culminating with the Chinese defeat and the obtaining of a series of privileges on the part of England, as the complete legalization of the commerce of Indian opium and the loss of the administration of Hong Kong (2,7).

In equal way, in Europe, in the heat of century XIX, Opium spreads slow but inexorably wrapped by an important tolerance and animated by intellectuals and essayists: Quincey, Musset, Coleridge, Dickens, Scott, Poe, Baudelaire, Gautier, Balzac, and thus one releases list of illustrious guarantee it; so that in the XX the spirit follows: Apollinaire, Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and thus until the stubborn defense that in 1929 makes Cocteau in its work “Opium” (14). The purification of opium alkaloids, that already the doctors of Napoleon, Derosne and Seguin, plus the invention of the syringe by Pravaz, causes that morphine extends like the analgesic powder like in all the Wars (Crimen, American Succession, etc.), and also by the richer social layers of Europe, where the equipment of injection for morphine becomes sophisticated models of last fashion and the books on the wonders of the injection are multiplied (14). From this to its generalized prohibition in almost the entire occidental world was just a little step.

Other famous hallucinogens have also millenarian foundation. In America, the old indigenous civilizations also had the custom to use hallucinogenic plants in their ceremonies. After century X, b.C. there is stone-fungus between monuments of Izapa culture (actual Guatemala), as well as in Peru (pipes of ceramics of century IV b.C. with a figure of peyote, an hallucinogenic cactus that contains mescaline) (12). Thus Peyote fungus whose active principle is mescaline, goes back to the pre-Columbian American civilizations, and later its use is even very wide-ranging among North American Indians (Mescaleros Apaches, Comanches Kiowas and Cheyenes); Aldous Huxley, being one of the last intellectuals in proving it and spreading it to the own, in his book “In the doors of the perception” describes the effects of the hallucinogen in itself (15-16). Peyote, for the Indians was something religious, mythical, that the same provided invulnerability sensation that served to discover distant and hidden things; its main alkaloid is the mescaline, that produces an own dissociative syndrome like in schizophrenics, originating chromatic visions and hallucinations (17).

The relation between witches with ointments (drugs) is a constant since an interrelation its supposed and was appraised and the spoor that suffered; one of the first that occurred account of this was doctor Andrés Laguna and more recently it has been shown by M.J. Harner, that has studied thorough the ointments that used, reaching the conclusion that if not all, the majority contain atropine, powerful alkaloid at least; the cane or broom on which many witches said to fly served to apply the plants that contained it to the sensible vaginal membranes and that that alkaloid produced a deep lethargy to those who of them were worth, to the way of our present drugs - “trips” also denominate the artificial paradises in which the drug addicts submerge day today is something in which they agree who approach the subject with rigor and seriousness (17).

The popular nicotine also has some remarkable evidences. The acclimatization of the plant Nicotiana tabacum in Cuba was developed by the aravacas Indians 2,000 years old before Christ (18). Although some authors have affirmed that it was already present in the old organizations of the east, their most known origin is the American, being accepted that the first culture in using tobacco leaves to smoke them was the Mayan, from 2,000 b.C.(19).

Tobacco is a solanachea plant that grows mainly in the Eastern hemisphere, also cultivated in Turkey, Russia and other countries of Europe (20). Columbus and the conquerors that followed saw it the Indians of the Antillean islands, Mexico, Central America and Brazil smoking tobacco rolls. In a wake of Uaxactún, Guatemala, that dates from century X is the figure of a Mayan priest smoking, who demonstrates that the use of tobacco was well established long before the discovery of America, which also was confirmed by Sahagún (20). The Indians of North America also smoked, in the region of Ontario in a zone called Tionontati (Tobacco Nation) (20). In Europe tobacco was first described in Chronicles of Colombian discoveries as well as India’s adventures. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdez (Historia General de las Indias, Sevilla, 1535), states “Among other reprobables customs the Indians have one is specially injurious and that consists of the absorption of a certain class of smoke to which some call “tobacco” to produce a stupor state (...) absorb the smoke by means of a hollow cane, that is what the Indians call “tobacco” and not to the grass”(18). Also, Columbus was surprised by the use of tobacco in religious and social ceremonies, like those of peace and purification of the spirit, because for the Indians the tobacco had magical powers and pleased the Gods.

Tobacco was considered a panacea, since it was used to fight the asthma, the fevers and convulsions, the intestinal and nervous upheavals and bites of animals (18). There are reports that supports that early in 1560 a.C. tobacco was known in Spain and Portugal. The author stresses the origin of the name Nicotine. According to him, the ambassador of France in Portugal, Jean Nicot, was interested in the use of the plant and when he returned to its country he took tobacco leaves with himself to offer to queen Catherine de Médicis. For that reason, tobacco was called “grass of the queen”, “nicotiana” or “grass of the ambassador”. Catherine de Médicis suffered from strong migraine and the ambassador recommended taking the plant inhaling it by the nose. The pains disappeared and the tobacco began to be used like medicine in France and the rest of Europe. When Linnaeus published its Species Plantorum, he chose the scientific name of Nicotiana tabacum in tribute to Nicot (18). In 1584, Walter Raleigh founded on North America the colony of Virginia, copied from natives the custom to smoke in pipe and the culture of the famous tobacco in Virginia, that was introduced in England in Isabel the Ist Era (18).

The possible therapeutic virtues of tobacco, took the conquerors of Hispanic America to transfer the seeds for their culture to the old continent at the beginning of century XVI; the Spaniards also took their culture towards Prusia and Philippines (from where he moved towards China) and the Portuguese scattered it by Africa, Italy, Iran, Java, India and Japan (2). Rapidly tobacco become the main economic resource of the English colonies and for that, the great marine trips of centuries XVI, XVII and XVIII around the world contributed to take tobacco and the habit to smoke until the coasts of Asia, Africa and the Australian Continent (18). In several oriental countries like Japan, Russia, China and Turkey tobacco’s use was strongly fought initially with drastic measures; for instance, Sultan Murad IV ordered the execution of numerous smokers and, in 1638, the Chinese authorities threatened beheading the tobacco dealers; Turks got up themselves to the world-wide market of tobacco and became heavy smokers, like the Chinese(18).

The earliest reference of the medicinal properties of the cannabis dates from 2700 b. C., when in China was used for the treatment of flue, rheumatic malaria, pains and menstrual upheavals. After that, was widespread throughout history in India, Middle East, South Africa and South America (21). Hemp (sativa cannabis, Marihuana) has been cultivated in China for 4,000 years(6). The Ancient Greeks, and particularly Galen make references about cannabis. Also, Galen in his De alimentorum facultatibus (6, 549-550), write about cannabis’ seed, compared to the seed of agnocastus; jointly with the reference in De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus and in De victu attenuante (22).