I make a podcast about consciousness, and this video starts with a question I couldn't let go of.
LSD came out of ergot, a fungus that grows on rye. The same organism caused ergotism, the burning, gangrenous "St. Anthony's Fire" that killed people for centuries. The same family of alkaloids gave Hofmann the molecule at Sandoz in 1938. One fungus was both a poison and the raw material for the most famous psychedelic ever made.
So how did people live alongside it for so long? Was it only ever a disease, or did anyone work with it on purpose, and why is the written record so quiet? The Eleusis/kykeon ergot hypothesis is the best-known attempt at an answer. It's still contested, and I try to say clearly in the video what's documented and what's my own reading.
Video (about 24 min), which I made:

https://youtu.be/y7z2T4-7wnw

Curious what this sub thinks. Is the "silence" in the record evidence of anything, or is it just what you'd expect from a rye fungus nobody could name?