The plant is an annual, growing up to a height of 5 feet. Upon maturity, the plant releases tiny black seeds from spiny capsules. The flowers are trumpet shaped and either white or purple. While all parts of the plant are toxic, the seeds, fruit, and leaves contain the highest level of alkaloids.

The primary psychoactive substances in Jimsonweed are the alkaloids atropine and scopolamine (also found in Belladonna). Atropine has been used in treating Parkinson's disease, peptic ulcers, diarrhea, and bronchial asthma.
It is also used to treat nerve gas poisoning. Scopolamine is available by prescription primarily for treating motion sickness.
Scopolamine has also been used as an adulterant with heroin. During a 24-hour period in December 1995, at least 60 heroin users in Newark, New Jersey, died after using heroin tainted with scopolamine.
Jimsonweed is commonly consumed in herbal tea concoctions. The seeds, leaves, and flower nectar can also be eaten or smoked. The high experienced by users often includes delirium, delusions, hallucinations, disorientation, and incoherent speech. Often users do not recall the experience.
In ancient herbal medicine, Jimsonweed was used internally to treat madness, epilepsy, and melancholy. Externally, it formed the basis of ointments for burns and rheumatism.
More recently, preparations from the plant have been used as ingredients in some asthma medicines. With this exception, however, plant is generally considered too toxic for medical applications nowadays.
Some scholars believe that vapours obtained by boiling this plant may have been used by the Delphic oracles to induce their legendary visions. More recently, in 1968, the use of Jimsonweed as a hallucinogenic drug prompted the US government to ban over-the-counter sales of products prepared from it.
Jimsonweed alkaloids are related to those found in magic mushrooms. Unlike magic mushrooms which will not cause death, even if very large quantities are consumed (a person will vomit if they take too many magic mushrooms for their body to handle), ingestion of Jimsonweed can lead to seizures, coma, and death, even if taken in not so large quantities.

NOTE: Since 1965 there has been only one report in the medical literature of a death associated with use of magic mushrooms. An 18 year old used magic mushrooms which caused an erratic heart rhythm and led to the patients death. The death was due to a pre-existing condition that was triggered by magic mushroom consumption, rather than due to an overdose.

Symptoms of Jimsonweed consumption can include intense thirst, headaches, nausea, fever, high blood pressure, dry mucous membranes, difficulty swallowing and speaking, blurred vision, photophobia, hyperthermia, confusion, agitation, combative behavior, and hallucinations.

These effects can occur within 30 to 60 minutes after ingestion. Symptoms can continue for 24 to 48 hours because the alkaloids present in Jimsonweed retard the digestive process.

Even prolonged breathing of the fragrance from Jimsonweed flowers can produce mild symptoms, and less than 5 grams of leaves or seeds eaten by a child will be fatal.
There is no antidote for Jimsonweed poisoning. Treatment normally includes pumping the patient's stomach and administering activated charcoal to absorb the contaminants.
The drug physostigmine, a mild nerve agent, is used in severe cases. Jimsonweed is bad plant to trip on. The dose and OD level are too close for comfort.
Jimsonweed is a member of the potato or nightshade family, and like most other members of the family it can be toxic. Even the potato found in most kitchens can be poisonous if it's green and sunburned, and the berries of the potato are always dangerous.

Its psychoactive properties are extraordinary, and there is certainly no plant more associated with magic and Witchcraft than the Daturas. One of the usual modalities in the Datura experience is that of mystical flight--an out-of-the-body sensation.

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