🔬 Science Jun 25, 2026 · Ben Sullivan

Why Plants, Fungi and Toads All Learned to Make the Same Mind-Altering Molecules

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The peyote cactus tastes terrible. Bite into one and your mouth fills with a bitterness that seems engineered to make you stop, and in a sense it was. The compound responsible, mescaline, is the same molecule that has sent generations of seekers into kaleidoscopic visions. A team of Chinese researchers now thinks those two facts are not a coincidence at all. The bitterness came first. The visions are an accident.
That, broadly, is the argument running through a Perspective published in the Proce

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