It’s 22 March 2020, and I am self-sequestered at home and doing my part to avoid contracting or spreading coronavirus. To keep busy, I figured to share with all of you an interesting thought about the parallels we are experiencing, as compared with past reaction to similar infections involving psychedelics.
No, there never was any psychedelic pandemic. However, throughout history, even as recent as the 1950s, there have been pockets of sickness in human populations brought about from ergot poisoning.
For example, on August 15, 1951, dozens of people took ill in Pont-Saint-Esprit, France from an outbreak of ergot poisoning. In the days that followed, hundreds joined them, complaining of nausea and stomach pain, weak blood pressure and faint pulses, cold sweats and low temperatures. The afflicted suffered insomnia but also, a “state of giddiness persisted accompanied by abundant sweating and a disagreeable odour,” [the odor was described to be like dead mice] reported the British Medical Journal.
Dreadful as the experience was for many in Pont-Saint-Esprit, several of the afflicted had deep and meaningful psychedelic experiences brought about by the ergot’s hallucinogenic properties. The New York Times reported that many “heard heavenly choruses, saw brilliant colors … the world looked beautiful to them.” The poisoning even led the head of a local farmers’ co-op to writing hundreds of pages of what was described as luminous poetry. The lead theory for the cause of the outbreak is an ergot-contaminated batch of rye flour.
Ergot is a fungus that is fond of ryegrass that grows in temperate climates that exist throughout Europe and the temperate portions of North America. In medieval times, right through the time of the original American colonies, mass breakouts of ergot poisoning were not uncommon. The condition, popularly known as Saint Anthony’s Fire or Saint Anthony’s Dance, is brought about through consumption of ergot that infiltrated Rye grain stores or that infected live rye crops. Mixed into rye grain, the ergot occasionally was ground with the rye into flour and baked into bread by the village baker. Consumption of the ergot-laced bread led to spontaneous and widespread outbreaks.
Compounds in ergot can cause great damage including dry gangrenous conditions that required many amputations. The ergot alkaloids also have a hallucinogenic property, leading to visions and other-worldly experiences.
[SIDE NOTE: The hallucinogenic properties of ergot would eventually be isolated and explored in experiments that brought the discovery of LSD-25. Swiss chemist, Albert Hofmann, discovered LSD-25 in 1938 when he was doing research on the fungus for medicinal purposes. Lysergic Acid is an isolate derived from ergot.]
St. Anthony’s Fire’s namesake is Saint Anthony (c.251-356) an Egypt Christian hermitic monk considered the founder and father of organized Christian monasticism. His order was the first to take on responsibility for care and treatment of persons with ergot poisoning, known today as ergotism. Often, this meant amputation of gangrenous limbs. For those in hallucinatory state, St. Anthony and his fellow monks also likely served as unwitting trip sitters.
What does ergot have to do with coronavirus? Perspective and experience.
We live in a time of incredible technology that enables us to communicate instantaneously across vast distances. It also enables us more quickly to understand the source of disease symptoms, and we more easily and more accurately now diagnose such conditions. With all this marvel and wonder of our so-called modern age, we still have seen an explosion of coronavirus cases and death, and the worst has not yet happened. As gracelessly as we may seem today in the face of epidemic or pandemic – toilet paper hoarders, Spring Breakers, and executive level racism notwithstanding – we still could react much worse. For example, ergotism in the American colonies of the 1600s is now a lead theory behind some of the odd behaviors testified to in the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Between February 1692 and May 1693, more than two hundred people (mostly women) were accused of witchcraft, thirty found guilty, nineteen executed by hanging, and one pressed to death for refusing to plead. Five others died in jail. A lesson one might take from this is to act rationally in time of crisis. Otherwise, people needlessly die.
In my research I stumbled upon Ergot: the story of a parasitic fungus (1958). It is produced by the Wellcome Foundation years before LSD hit the market. The 24-minute film offers a fascinating explanation of the infection cycle of ergot on rye grass, which also greatly parallels the concepts of infection we are seeing right now with coronavirus. The film also reminds that while ergot may have some undesirable properties, it also produces essential medicines including compounds that stimulate uterine contractions, making childbirth safer – a fact known and practiced in medieval times and validated hundreds for years later by modern medical science. In this sense, ergot also teaches a second important lesson, i.e., there is duality in everything – good and bad. Ergot can save lives but can also harm. Better to live with it in respect and reverence than to spite ourselves in the name of arbitrary superstition or failure on our own part to understand.
Certainly, virii and fungi are not alike. Coronavirus is in most respects nothing like ergot. But ergot has something to teach. Mass sickness can arise anywhere at any time. How we react in crisis towards one another is what makes the difference. We can freak out in reaction, or we can be calm and rational.
Stay safe out there. I am going to the kitchen to enjoy a loaf of fresh-from-the-oven rye bread my wife just baked.
Gary Michael Smith is an attorney and arbitrator and founding member of the Phoenix Arizona-based Guidant Law Firm. He is also a founding director and current president of the Arizona Cannabis Bar Association, board member of the Arizona Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, and contributing author to GreenEntrepreneur.