YES! WE HAVE NO BANANAS

One of the funniest stories about the psychedelic function of the Banana. It was taken as far as to the FDA (Food And Drug Association) which started spying on banana buyers to put them in jail for “banana abuse”. And this is the story:

“The Great Banana Hoax” is what this rumor was called and which still resides in badly informed circles of people. This story was spread on the 3rd of March 1967 by the revolutionary students party Berkley Barb in Hippie San Francisco. It was the story of Country Joe and the Fish. The boys had heard that banana peels contained small doses of substances that had a use in the human brain as second messenger (but as we know today, never reach the human brain, no matter how many of it you smoke or eat).

They concluded you could make a drug out of bananas. They experimented by smoking dried banana peels, and for whatever reason it was decided that a new drug was born. But you were stoned most of the time anyway- from all the acid and the weed. So they were having a good time giving banana peels away at concerts and stuff. Seemed as if only the picture of smoking banana was funny enough to try it out- everyone who was in the scene did it. Remember the Donovan Song “Mellow Yellow”? There’s a line about an “electric banana”- well, I’d say there we have a clear message. And we also had the drug police looking out for banana dealers while the acid pimps were laughing behind their backs.
Only two days later the papers started to doubt the seriousness of the story, but in Haight Ashbury, bananas were sold out. The FDA had the banana peel tested the same year on psychodelic contents, of course without any mattering results.

And yet, the rumor’s still alive. German teenagers on “Bananadin” still talk about the tunneling, like rednecks talk about smoking their cow’s dung. Thank Placebo.

Remember next time you buy a banana: Don’t get high!

Source: http://www.joergo.de/bananahoax.htm