The following is an excerpt from p. 27-28 of Chapter 1, “Precious Crystals: What Salt Teaches Us About Drugs” from my book, Drugism (2022):
The War on Drugs was nothing new. We had seen it all before with salt.
Really? You may wonder. Salt? Why have I never heard of the war on salt?
That’s a great question. And I would be wondering the same thing, were it not for the guidance of four cacao beans and a couple of psilocybin mushrooms. They found their way into my belly and over the course of the resulting trip, my relationship to salt changed drastically.
Going into the experience, I pondered the history of cacao (which chocolate is made from). I had spent years studying cacao, coffee, tobacco, and other botanical drugs as the predecessors to today’s refined drugs. I suspected that by studying drugs deemed legitimate, I could further understand those deemed illegitimate, and vice versa. Accordingly, I constantly pondered the connections between legal drugs like chocolate, and illegal drugs like magic mushrooms. That day, the cacao and mushrooms opened my eyes to another precious, bioactive substance: sodium chloride, or common salt.
During the experience, I had to pee numerous times, far more than usual even for my well-hydrated self. Nearly every time I felt a major wave of effects, as it subsided, I needed to pee. I noticed this and wondered what the cause might be. In that bemushroomed state, I remembered a health-conscious friend of mine had recently explained to me that excessive salt consumption can have a diuretic effect. Had I consumed too much salt that day?
As I pondered salt the mushrooms and cacao posed a question to me: You wish to understand drugs? Yes, I responded. Then study salt, they said. Why? I wondered. Salt is the original refined drug, the mushrooms and cacao explained. In the history of salt, you will find the history of all drugs.
It mentally clicked as I realized that salt is a fine crystal that is uniquely valued and exorbitantly consumed...like a drug. I wanted to understand this connection more deeply. How does salt figure into the history of drugs? The cacao and mushrooms encouraged me to read up on the history of salt. There, I would find my answers, they assured me.
This hit me as a revelation. I wanted to explore the idea more, but I knew almost nothing about salt. I decided then and there to learn as much as I possibly could about salt. From this, I would learn about all drugs. As the intensity of this realization subsided, I once again needed to pee. I had been eating too much salt.