Coca Erythoxylum coca Lam.

Names:

E. truxillense, (From the Erythroxylacea family) - erythoxylum novogranatense (Columbian coca), personified by the Incas as "Mama Coca", Huanuco cola (Bolivia), L.O.Linaceae.

History:

In South America, coca leaf hasbeen used traditionally as a chew, in comb-ination with the lime of roasted seashells (Colombia)or with amaranth stalk, which is high in calcium (Huancavalca,Peru).

Coca is clipped to 2 metres in height as shrubs and the leaves collected and sun-dried, then packed in bags. Shrubs are productive for over fifty years.

Before fears about narcotics, coca was used in Coca Cola drink.Cocaine was extracted fom the leaf tea used after 1904. Coca Cola was first made in wine, and called "an intellectual beverage'. When sugar syrup replaced the wine it became known as "the Temperance Drink".

Sigmund Freud,in the early twentieth century, used cocaine for hysterical frigidity in his female patients.

Constituents:

hygrine, hygroline, cuscohygrine, dihydrocuscohygrine, tropacocaine (3b benzoyloxytropane),crystalline glycosides,cocatannic acid,leaf contains several alkaloids, the most important: cocaine, cinamyl-cocaine, x and b truxilline, vitamins C, B1, and Riboflavin, proteins, mineral salts, anamyl cocaine, cocamine.

Uses:

fresh or dried leaf:
stimulant or tonic. With lime or ash, chewed for: fatigue, feelings of hunger, relief of gastric pain, nausea or vomiting.
Cerebral and muscular stimulant, chew, wine, lozenges, may prevent scurvy, to relieve pain of arthritis, headache and rheumatism.
Cocaine is used in ear, nose and throat surgery only.
Novocaine is used in Dentistry.
Illegal recreational drug, tonic in neurasthenia.

Contra-Indications:

Cocaine habituates and causes quite massive brain injury. Use of the leaf is dangerous.

cocaine is a general protoplasmic poison, it has a special affinity for nerve tissue.
It is used as a powerful local anaesthetic, therefore when used to excess causes convulsions, tremors, hallucinations and restlessness.
Coca addicts suffer from emaciation, loss of memory, sleeplessness and delusions.

Addiction can cause occipital lobe damage with ghastly visual associations, (nb: this is from meditation on cokers plus third year biopsychology: They get lacey occipital lobes from brain injury and end up seeing SH all over their faces.) Do you really need that effect?

Cool References

www.peruvian-journey.com/piplants.htm Far out (imagine!) magic herb business

www.lamp.ac.uk/tairona/a8coca.html good article with bio-references on coca principles and health

www.cocacola.com really nice web design, connections to Heritage Coke arts

www.herbs.org/greenpapers/stimulant.html pros and cons-the beverage

www.enchantedencounters.com/herbs.htm more herb concepts

www.antiquebottles.com/wants.html Reggie and Steve are looking for you!! (but, the page is under construction at present)