Full disclosure I’m on a journey back from Meth addiction. I’ve just always found it interesting how people will smoke Marijuana or eat Mushrooms but will refuse to do a line of coke or a tab of Acid. The logic is always that some substances occur naturally and are therefore fine for human consumption.
But wouldn’t human-made compounds and chemicals also eventually occur in nature given enough time and the right environment? Or are these chemicals 100% unnatural?
In: Chemistry
There are naturally occurring substances that will totally kill you, hemlock comes to mind but I’m sure someone will reply with a list of 10 more poisonous plants.
Evolution selects for chemicals that provide benefit in excess of the cost to chemically form them. Nicotine is produced by the tobacco plant to kill caterpillars that are eating its big, soft, delicious leaves. Similarly, coniine, the poison in hemlock, is produced by the plant to keep mammals like bears from eating the tasty berries. Bears have tougher digestive systems than people, so enough to make them sick can kill a person.
If there was a “meth weed”, it would have to get some benefit that offsets the work to produce it. Addicting animals to eating it seems like, well, the opposite from what a plant would want. Barrenwort, sometimes called horny goat weed, produces a chemical that stimulates blood flow to sex organs to distract the animal that eats it from continuing to eat more. That sounds like a better sort of strategy.
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