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March 04, 2008

5-MeO-DMT in the Pharmaecopia:

Heavy metal noiseniks Mudvayne have a song called 'Pharmaecopia' where they list off a load of drugs in a possibly ironic, possibly celebratory way. It's a bit of a confused list with serotonin and "dopeamine" listed among a rather odd list of street drugs, hallucinogenic plants and commercial pharmaceuticals.

Curiously though, they mention 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a drug also known as 5-MeO-DMT that was originally synthesised by legendary psychedelics researcher Alexander Shulgin.

Halcium and morphine,
5-methoxy-n, n-dimethyltryptamine,
Psilocybin, mescaline, aspirin, histomine,
Brushite, darvaset, valium, caffeine, cannabis, and LSD,
Ayahuasca, harmine, give it all to me, I want it

Looking at what's happened to your hair thus far, it's probably best not eh?

Presumably, this is the first and only time the full chemical name of a hallucinogenic drug has made it into a song lyric.


Link to audio of song (no, I can't make out the words either).
Link to lyrics.
Link to Shulgin's notes on 5-MeO-DMT.

—Vaughan.

Posted at March 4, 2008 11:00 PM

Comments

DLende says:

Vaughn, my class on Alcohol and Drugs just spent a whole day on music lyrics and drug use. Great fun, as well as great anthropology. Here's another song one group found, Lil Wyte's Oxy Cotton, which runs through a gamut of pharmaceuticals such as Xanax, oxycontin, percocet, and loritab. Not quite a full chemical name, however.
Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lq6GB48IpA

And the other group found a useful article on drug-related music lyrics over time, John Markert's Sing A Song of Drug Use-Abuse. Here's the link to the abstract: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2001.tb01108.x

Best, Daniel

Comment posted at March 5, 2008 02:08 PM

tenyen says:

The "Queens of the Stone Age" track "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" is quite succinct:

"Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstasy and Alcohol; C-c-c-c-c-cocaine"


Comment posted at March 12, 2008 01:07 AM

Subkabuto says:

Actually 5-MeO-DMT was first synthesized by Toshio Hoshino & Kenya Shimodaira in 1936. (Published in German in the Bull Chem Soc Japan 11: 221-224.)

Sasha was still in elementary school.

Comment posted at March 27, 2008 10:23 PM

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