Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1915 — An Intoxicating Button. [ARTICLE]

An Intoxicating Button.

Few people know that the Indians of this country are becoming addicted to a, habit-forming drug worse in its effects than the proverbial “fire water.” The commissioner of Indian affairs in his 1911 report describes peyote, the drug in question, as “ a relatively new intoxicant of a peculiarly insidious form, which has come into favor with Indians in many parts of the country.” Evidence of the little effort that has been made in an organized way to stop its use is the fact that it was lately given consideration for the first time by the Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indians and Other Dependent Peoples. Peyote, known commercially as mescal, is a species of castus grown in northern Mexico. The mescal button, about linches in diameter, is to the uninitiated disagreeable in both ordor and taste. Although a tea is made from it, it is mere gen-e-rally eaten in its dry stab l , and has hence been called “dry whiskey.” The effect upon the user is different from that of any other drug. There is trembling and nausea, a sense of dual existence, in some cases a delirium somewhat similar to delirium tremens, and an overestimation of time—minutes becoming hours and hours long periods of time. The most extraordinary effect, however, is the visual hallucinations and the effect upon the hearing. The habitue enjoys "a regular kaleidoscopic Play of most wonderful colors, an incessant flow of visions of infinite beauty, grandeur and variety, while each note produced on the piano becomes a center of a medley of other notes which appear to be surrounded by a halo of color, pulsating to the music.’’ But the most remarkable thing about the use of peyote, and that which has hindered a vigorous attack upon it by the government, has been its adoption by a religious cult as a feature of its worship.—Leslie’s Weekly. -