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Belladonna (Atropa belladona)
Chemistry, Medical, And Recreational Uses
Chemistry Of Belladonna

Belladonna is a member of the potato or nightshade family of plants which includes plants such as Jimsonweed, Mandrake, and the edible Potato.

The chief medical ingredients of belladonna are:
Atropine (C17H23NO3)
Hyoscyamine (C17H23NO3)
Atropamine (C17H21NO2)
Belladonnine (C17H21NO2)
Hyoscine (Cl7H17NO4)

Belladonna can be fatal to most carnivorous animals and humans, but the same doses have very little effect upon most birds and plant eating animals. Children are often poisoned by the berries, mistaking them for cherries or other sweet fruit.

In large doses, it acts upon the cerebro-spinal system, as showing such symptoms as dilatation of the pupils (mydriasis), presbyopia, or long-sightedness with obscurity of vision, or absolute blindness (amaurosis), visual illusions (phantasms), suffused eyes, occasionally disturbance of hearing (as ringing in the ears, etc.), numbness of the face, confusion of head, giddiness, and delirium.

The mouth and throat become dry, constriction about the throat, nausea, vomiting, swelling, and redness of the face, and sometimes irritation of the urinary organs.

If the dose is very large, the above-named symptoms will be produced, but in a more violent form, with extravagant delirium, followed by sopor. Convulsions are rarely present, when Belladonna causes death it is usually while in a coma.

The proper remedies in poisoning by belladonna are the stomach-pump, emetics and purgatives, cold to the head; and in the comatose stage, ammonia internally, with external stimulants, electro-magnetism, etc.

Belladonna and opium appear to exert the opposite effects, especially as regards their action on the brain, the spinal cord, and heart. They are used as antidotes to each other in cases of overdose and poisoning.

For cases of Belladonna overdose the remedy is morphine. For cases of heroin, morphine, and other opiate related overdose the remedy is Belladonna. Some recommend iodine as an antidote to Belladonna overdose.

Medicinal Uses Of Belladonna

Scientists and chemists usually use the root or leaves when making Belladonna preparations, alkaloid in the root is usually between 0.4% and 0.7% and the leaves usually contain slightly less alkaloid than the root.

Scientists extract the liquid alkaloid from Belladonna, which is then made into alcoholic extracts, liniments, suppositories, and other medical preparations. Large doses paralyze the central nervous system, while small doses stimulate it.

Belladonna has been, and is being used as a recreational drug, diuretic, sedative, antispasmodic, mydriatic. It is used very successfully to treat eye diseases, because of its effect of dilating the pupil.

Atropine, an extract of Belladonna is what an eye doctor uses when they put liquid in your eye before testing you for glasses. Atropine has also been used as an antidote to opium, in calabar bean poisoning and chloroform poisoning.

It has no action on the voluntary muscles, but the nerve endings in involuntary muscles are para lysed by large doses, the paralysis finally affecting the central nervous system, causing excitement and delirium.

The various preparations of Belladonna have many uses. Locally applied, it lessens irritability and pain, and is used as a lotion, plaster or liniment in cases of neuralgia, gout, rheumatism and sciatica.

As a drug, it specially affects the brain and the bladder. In chronic albuminuria, it stimulates the kidneys to healthy action.

Belladonna is one of the most important remedies for bladder and kidney diseases. It stimulates and at the same time relieves irritation of the urinary tract. Both the solid and watery constituents of the urine are increased in amount.

It is the remedy in urinal incontinence in small children when the fault depends upon a poor pelvic circulation or chronic irritability of the bladder. It seems best adapted to that dribbling of urine in the young children.

There has been a marked benefit from minute doses of belladonna in children who urinate every twenty minutes or half hour.

It increases the rate of the heart by some 15 to 45 beats per minute, without lessening its force. This action on body circulation helps those that collapse from pneumonia, typhoid fever and other acute diseases.

Belladonna given in very small doses will protect from the infection of scarlet fever. It helps ease the pain of a very bad sore throat, and relieves local inflammation and congestion.

Plasters can be applied to injured or sprained parts of the body to limit swelling. A mixture of Belladonna plaster, salicylic acid and lead plaster can be applied to corns and bunions.

Plaster made from Belladonna can be applied to the heart region to ease pain and distress. The leaves can be added to special cigarettes for relieving spasmodic asthma, and mixtures containing Belladonna have been given to children for whooping cough and false croup.

Externally it was formerly used on parts around the eye, to dilate the pupil, before operating for cataract, to relieve internal ocular pressure in ulceration of the cornea, and also in iritis to prevent adhesions.

For these purposes a drop or two of an liquid solution is sometimes placed upon the conjunctiva. The sulphate of atropine has now superseded the use of the extract.

Both locally and internally belladonna is a prompt agent for the relief of photophobia (abnormal sensitivity to light).

The ointment, or extract, has also been applied locally in spasmodic stricture of the urethra, and of the sphincters of the bladder and rectum, in great pain along the female urethra, in strangulated hernia, spasmodic contraction of the uterus, hemorrhoids, etc.

Recreational Use Of Belladonna

Of all psychoactive drugs, alcohol and members included in the same family as Belladonna (Jimsonweed, Mandrake, etc.) have been in use the longest. They have been used in almost all parts of the globe for thousands of years.

All continents, except Antarctica, have seen the belladonna and similar alkaloids used by shaman, witches and sorcerers, who take advantage of the sensations of leaving their bodies, soar through the air, or change into an animal in their imagination. It is thought that this is where the witches riding on brooms legend was started.

The chemicals produced by the potato or nightshade family, of which Belladonna is a member, can be so terrifying and incapacitating, the physical effects often so unpleasant, and the loss of contact with ordinary reality so complete that they are used only with great caution and rarely for pleasure.

The buzz from this family of psychotropic plants is more like a delirium with very strong hallucinations than anything else.

For the same reasons, they are not regarded as a drug abuse problem and can be bought in small doses on prescription or in over-the-counter sedatives and pills for asthma, colds, and motion sickness.

They are blockers of acetylcholine receptors called anticholinergic drugs. The acetylcholine receptors control the contraction of skeletal muscles and also play an important role in the chemistry of the brain.

Few if any recreational drug users who try Belladonna, Jimsonweed, or Mandrake repeat the experience. Reports of a good trip are almost impossible to come by.

Most recreational users report that they cloud rather than clear consciousness, and nausea is a common side effect.

You have to have a certain sort of mind to be able to appreciate the sensations, and most westerners do not have the type of mind that can appreciate Belladonna.

The shaman and others who used these plants throughout the centuries were not looking to get high.

They were looking to leave their minds and/or bodies and travel on a different path that few people are able to handle, either physically or mentally.

Collecting Belladonna For Personal Use

The time of collecting and variation of alkaloid in the plant, investigators have drawn the following conclusions:

The first year's growth of belladonna contains but half the quantity of atropine present in older plants, and so are unworthy of collection. Young roots contain only hyoscyamine.

The older roots contain both hyoscyamine and atropine, the latter predominating. In young leaves atropine is present, but hyoscyamine is the predominating alkaloid. The length of keeping after gathering appears to have no influence on the alkaloid present.

From the second to the fourth year the quantity of alkaloid is fairly uniform. At these ages, and during the period of flowering, the plants should be collected.

The plant before flowering, does not have much active ingredient, but at the period of flowering the full chemical development is reached and maintained, both in roots and leaves.

Wild-grown belladonna contains a larger quantity of alkaloid than the cultivated kind. The process of flowering and leafing does not exhaust the root of its alkaloid, there being a simultaneous development in the root and leaf; therefore the roots may be gathered at the same time as the leaf.

Belladonna leaves in pressed packages several years old do not show evidence of loss of alkaloids (Lyons). Both the root and leaf of belladonna show great variations in strength, and, as has been said, appearance alone is not a sufficient criterion as to the relative value of one lot as compared with another.

The leaves must be gathered while the plant is in flower. The British Pharmacopoeia directs the leaves (gathered at the beginning of the fruiting season and separated from the stems, and dried with care) of the wild or cultivated plants.

Leaves should be fresh as possible, because older leaves are said to absorb moisture, causing decomposition of the active constituents.

Stems and musty leaves should be thrown away if the herb is desired for the preparation of the alkaloids, or if a full-strength preparation is needed.

The leaves release their medical compounds in alcohol or water. The root should be taken up in the spring or late fall from plants at least three years old.


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