Originally, they didn’t. They would just eat the leaf, brew it in tea, smoke it, etc. This would give them _some_ of the benefits of the drug, but obviously not as much as the modern version.
From there, people would experiment with different techniques. Maybe eating it was good, but the tea was _better_, so they would move to making tea. Maybe tea with fresh leaves was good, but tea with dried leaves was _better_, so they would dry the leaves first. Maybe making tea with water was good, but making tea with alcohol was _better_, so they switched.
Over time, and as science improved, so did the techniques used to refine and purify the drugs.
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