The world today is obsessed with anti-drug "clean living." Everywhere from government-sponsored radio programs to the pamphlets published by most human resource departments, everywhere you will hear the message that drugs destroy the body and mind. The only sanctioned and official message is that intoxicating substances cause life problems. Such a message varies, and when the tide is low they say that it only destroys motivation, but when the storm is roaring, they tell you that you will lose everything you value in life if you get high.

     There is a significant problem with all of this propaganda: your food is full of drugs. Every day of your life, there is a good likelihood that you're ingesting intoxicants through your food. Bread, for instance, is made with yeast, the same fungus used in the production of alcohol. How is alcohol made? By yeast consuming sugar. How is bread made? The same exact way. The process leaves a trace amount of alcohol in the bread, which is often reduced even further by the evaporation process caused by the heat of the oven. But, there is still a small amount of alcohol in the bread. [*1]

     Every single day, millions of Muslims break the rules of their religion and their governments by consuming alcohol-laden bread, without even knowing it. In time, hopefully they will learn to enjoy it. Former-drinkers who adhere to the strict and religious policies of Alcoholics Anonymous also break the rules of their group by consuming bread. Many Christian sects fall into the same contradictory position, including Baptists and Evangelicals. To quote Billy Graham, "God doesn't want us to cloud or confuse our minds in any way, whether with drugs, alcohol or anything else." [*2] And then two seconds later, he swallows the wafer that represents the body of Christ, even though it's just alcohol encapsulated with bread.

     Chocolate is one of the more well-known drugs that are easily obtainable. Chocolate often contains caffeine, but besides that, it also contains Theobromine, a mild stimulant. [*3] This drug Theobromine can also be found in the leaves of tea. [*4] How unsettling that must be for people who have given alcohol because it was a drug, only to fall into the awful, drug-addicted habit of tea-drinking. Imagine that -- you're completely drug-free and uninfluenced by intoxicants, as an order of god. But you're actually still using drugs, just as before, except they're not quite as enjoyable. You're still a heretic to those who condemn drug use, whether the terms of condemnation are religious or social.

     Bread is not the only food humans eat that require alcoholic fermentation. Many foods from Southeast Asian fall into this category. Kimchi is a Korean food, made up of cabbage and other green vegetables, mixed together and fermented. [*5] Tempeh is a food from India, made with fermented soybeans. [*6] Soy Sauce, a delicacy from ancient China, is made from fermenting soybeans and special enzymes. [*7] Vinegar, likewise, is the produce of fermentation of fruit. [*8] Sauerkraut, another ancient food, is made through fermentation, as well. [*9] You can't go very far anywhere without finding some vegetable, fruit, or wheat jarred for the purposes of fermenting it.

     Yeast provides for human health by encouraging many of these wonderful foods, but it also provides that intoxicant, alcohol, to each one of them. Sometimes bread with traces of spirits is not enough, and one needs to give it a bit more strength in touching the soul. Often, to make that bread product into a pastry, one must add Nutmeg -- but this, too, is an intoxicant, classified as a "deliriant." Like the alcohol that appears in bread, it's often so little that it's hard to tell that there are drugs in the food at all. To quote Erowid...

"Since the seventh century A.D., Arab physicians have used it for digestive disorders, kidney disease and lymphatic ailments. Yemeni men are said to consume nutmeg to increase and maintain their sexual vigor." [*10]

     If nutmeg and alcohol aren't enough, some bakers like to throw on some poppy seeds onto their buns and cakes -- there is little thought that they're taking the primary ingredient of heroin and all powerful painkillers and placing it into a food. Tea made from poppy seeds can even be dangerous, since it technically contains Hydrocodone, Codeine, and Morphine. Consuming poppy-seed bread, though, is unlikely to cause much intoxication, and it may only cause you to fail a drug test. In one case, where tea was made with about three pounds of poppy seeds, chemists found 519 milligrams of morphine -- or roughly 50 times the amount normally given to patients in the hospital. [*11] But even if only a few seeds are ingested, there is still likely to be some minor intoxication.

     If you're having a sandwich that only has a few poppy seeds, you may be ingesting too little alcohol and too few opiates to really get any feeling out of it. You need to ramp it up by adding more foods that are also packed full of drugs. Why don't you throw some lettuce on there? But then you'd be ingesting even more opiates! Lettuce contains the ingredients Lactucin and Lactucopicrin, both of which cause sedative effects similar to opium. [*12] In fact, one can even harvest an opium-like substance from lettuce by using the same exact process for extracting opium from poppy plants for heroin production. [*13]

     If you want to spice up the sandwich with a bit of spinach, either straight or in the sauce, don't forget that spinach also contains an opiate. This opiate is called Rubiscolin, which is classified as an Opioid Peptide. [*14] And let's hope that the bread and its filling had absolutely no contact at all with an environment that might have germs. The byproduct of Phyllomedusa, a common bacteria, is Dermorphin, another opiate that's considered to be even stronger than Morphine. [*15]

     In the 1960's, there was a myth about getting high off of bananas from the drug in them called Bananadine. To quote the Straight Dope website, "The whole thing was a hoax first publicized in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967." [*14] However, there is a bit of truth to the statement actually. First, the drug that occurs in bananas is Tyramine, which causes the release of dopamine in the brain. This drug is found all throughout nature, from beans to plums to peanuts. [*15] Second, Tyramine is psychologically inactive unless the person who ingested it is also taking a Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor (MAOI), a drug which disables certain natural defense mechanisms against foreign substances. [*16] For this reason, the Tyramine that naturally occurs isn't readily usable as an intoxicant, but it is still a drug and there are ways to consume it.

     Ergot is a naturally occurring fungus, which often attaches itself to rye grains or forms in rye bread [*17] [*18] However, Ergot produces a chemical known as Lysergic Acid Amides (LSA), which is often used in the production of LSD. On its own, however, it is capable of producing an LSD-like intoxication, with all of the hallucinations and deep, personal reflections one would imagine with a psychedelic. [*19] When buying rye bread in the stores, and looking through the day-old bread shelves, you're exposing yourself to greater and greater chance of ingesting LSA. [*20] But it's not just you, it's everyone -- everyone's buying it, and everyone's eating it. Everyone is taking a molecule that is the prototype version of LSD.

     There you are standing in a sandwich shop while on break for lunch from work. A group of police officers stands behind you and the respectable teachers of a nearby elementary school are in front of you. Of course, when it comes time to order, you say, "The alcohol in the rye bread is nice, but add some poppy seeds, lettuce, and spinach, because I need at least five different types of intoxicants and painkillers to get it on with my sandwich." Even if the teachers and the cops eat the same thing, and sit their enjoying their sense of satisfaction from eating, they probably won't be able to mentally connect that feeling with the drugs in their veins. Chemically, we all eat drugs, and we're all going to keep on eating drugs since it's the most healthy way to live -- unless you want to cut out fruit, vegetables, and grains from your diet.

"Those who wish to know the whole truth take joy in doing the work and service that comes to them. Having completed it, they take joy in cleansing and feeding themselves."
          --Lao Tzu, ~600 BC
          "Hua Hu Ching," Part 1