I don't recommend Datura. I don't know what astrological sign you have to be to make your peace with this stuff, but I find it really peculiar and menacing. It's about Magic, which is about power and control and usually sexuality in some invasive and dominator form. I've taken Datura a number of times and it's been interesting but it feels watery and dark and dangerous to me.
There was a period when I lived in Nepal when I became aware that the Saddhus, not content with their superior meditation techniques and their endless smoking of hashish, were also availing themselves of the seeds of Datura metel (which is conspecific to what we call Jimsonweed [actually Datura stramonium] in this country).
I thought well I should take this and find out what it is about. It was a very odd trip. I sat in my room in Bodanath, and I would sit and say "Nothing is happening....Nothing is happening." Well, you can only think that so many times! Then my mind would drift into a kind of twilight state and then these wraith-like entities--I mean they were like Victorian ghosts; they were like women in shredded damask gowns--would fly into my window carrying newspaper sheets in their outstretched arms, and they would let these sheets of newspaper flutter down onto my lap and I would begin to read. And I would be so astonished by what I was reading that it would jerk me out of the state.
And I would say "What's happening?...Nothing's happening....Nothing's happening....Nothing's happening." Then my attention would drift and this would happen again. After about a half an hour of that as the stuff began to build up, I would undergo very brief periods of unconsciousness, and when I came back I would discover that my leg had been thrown up around my head and my arm shot through and I was all knotted up! Then I would carefully unfold myself and lay back down and I remember thinking "I'm certainly glad there's no one else here." Because this is the kind of thing designed to drive a sitter into a conniption fit of alarm! And about six times over the next hour and a half I went into these compulsive spasms.
And then on another night--these English people shared a suit of rooms off of mine and to get to the bathroom I had to go through this one guy's room. So one night I hadn't taken Datura, but English Dave had, and at one point I had to go to the "John" so I debated for a long time about how this was going to disturb his trip and maybe I should piss out of the window--But that didn't seem...although in India it's perfectly all right. So finally I decided I would just walk through the room. As I was tiptoeing through the room I was aware that he was actually having sex with a girl we knew from Kathmandu. And it had a slight emotional tinge for me because I had my eye on her although I had never said anything about it to anybody. Then the next morning I mentioned this to him and he said--yes, that had been his impression as well, but in fact she wasn't there! And so it was as if I had seen someone else's hallucination!
And then what finally convinced me that Datura was too peculiar was I had another English friend who lived a couple of houses away in that little Nepali village. One day I was in the market buying potatos and this guy came along and we were just talking. And in the course of this conversation--he was telling me how he'd been taking a lot of Datura--I became aware that he thought that I was visiting him in his appartment! And I decided that's just too fucked up--to not know whether you're entertaining someone in the confines of your appartment or buying vegetables in the market. This means that you have to become too disengaged from the modalities of the real.
And of course Datura creates tremendous drying. It's a deleriant--that's what the literature calls it. I think that people all over the world utilize plants for bizarre experiences.
To find out more about Terence McKenna, visit his website Hyperborea.