God wants you to get high
As two British restaurant patrons recently, found out, some fish are hallucinogenic. The two men ate some Salema porgy, a fish found in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Atlantic around European and North African coasts. One man suffered from 36 hours of visual and auditory hallucinations; the other went through hours of hallucinations and two nights of nightmares.
The condition is known as ichthyoallyeinotoxism, and is caused by eating certain herbivorous fish species, mainly from the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Apparently, the plankton and algae that the fish eat can contain indoles, a family of chemicals that act similarly to LSD. Some fish species also contain dimethyltryptamine, which is an extraordinarily powerful hallucinogen.
To quote the article:
The effects of eating ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes, such as certain mullet, goatfish, tangs, damsels and rabbitfish, are believed to be similar to LSD, and may include vivid and terrifying auditory and visual hallucinations. This has given rise to the collective common name for ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes of “dream fish”.
[…]
The poisoning can start to cause vivid hallucinations within minutes of eating a poisonous fish and may last for days, often with no other effects. There is no antidote.
Interestingly, Salema porgy is a very popular food fish, and is usually not considered hallucinogenic.
(Found via Warren Ellis)