I’ve written several times about this tree in past posts and have been meaning to include it in the Herbal Explorations for some time. Thanks once again to Gavin Mounsey for putting a bee in my bonnet! His contributions are featured below.
A quick peak at a couple of those previous posts of mine to set the stage:
One of my favorite trees, the Sassafras, is flaming red now, one of the few to have changed so brilliantly in this unusually warm and dry fall in East Texas. Between now and winter is the best time to clip the leaves and dig up the tenacious roots so as to indulge in a couple of our ancestors’ favorite libations—root beer and Sassafras tea. Gumbo filé is also made from it, which is an essential ingredient in some Cajun cooking.
Our ancestors adored it, science calls it a carcinogen. At the same time vast groves of it are grown in regions of the globe more easily controlled, in order to mass extract their saffrole to make a highly concentrated and synthetic version of the popular street drug called ecstasy.
A quite undermined tree of the South, considering its illustrious origins and conspiratorial fate. It is a tree widely cultivated in Asia-Pacific as an essential ingredient to the popular drug, or versions of it anyway, generally called “ecstasy”.
At first, like cannabis, it was classified among the most harmful of substances by the FDA, though our ancestors had previously been very acquainted and attached to these and so many other suddenly ‘dangerous’ plants. Then while they were deemed “carcinogenic” by our government, simultaneously expanding was its cultivation in foreign countries for the manufacture of street drugs. This was actually before “Poppy Bush” but perhaps setting that very precedent for the former president?!
While I’ve no idea how to make the popular street drug, I can assure you it makes a deliciously fragrant tea, traditional root beer, and gumbo filé powder.
As for the drug version, I did come across this for any who wish to research further along those lines.
“The most common synthetic routes for production of MDA, MDMA, MDE (MDEA), and MDOH are from the precursor MDP-2-P. To get MDP-2-P first a natural source of safrole is acquired. Safrole can be extracted from sassafras oil, nutmeg oil, or several other sources which have been abundantly documented in Chemical Abstracts over the years. The safrole is then easily isomerized into isosafrole when heated with NaOH or KOH.”
Zubrick, James W. “The Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual: A Students Guide to Techniques.” ISBN #0471575046. Wiley John&Sons Inc. 3rd ed.
Some partial information from The Druid’s Garden, visit her post for much more!
