Rather than nasty artificial drugs, wouldn't it be nice if we could just take some herbs and get better? A lot of people think so.
Indeed, a large proportion of our drugs and medicines come from plants, or are closely related to plant chemicals. There's aspirin, morphine, caffeine, cocaine, quinine, and many more. It's as if plants were going out of their way to help us.
In fact, it's more like the opposite. Most of these drugs are poisons, produced by the plant to stop animals (that means you) from eating them. As a plant, you don't want to get eaten, but being, well, rooted to the spot, you can't exactly run away. All you can do is to make animals not want to eat you. So you fill yourself with noxious, or at least nasty-tasting, chemicals.
By contrast, many plants do want their seeds to get swallowed (but not ...
