It's used in parts of Latin America by thieves to rob people. They become delirious and detached from reality and will do whatever the thieves want.

Circe also used it in the Odyssey to turn Odysseus's men into pigs. Odysseus prevented succumbing to Circe's poison by taking galantamine from the flowers of Galanthus nivalis, which is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. Galantamine counteracts the effects of anticholinergics by inhibiting the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine.

> Circe also used it in the Odyssey to turn Odysseus's men into pigs.

What's that based on? I can't seem to find any mention (in this translation at least) of what Circe used. Beyond just "evil drugs", "baneful drugs" etc.

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

For some reason, in the humanities, especially with "pop" stuff like this, you can find a lot of extremely strong claims with basically zero backing.

At any rate it's not a translation issue. You can see in your link, which also has the original Greek, that the phrase used is "pharmaka lugros", which means precisely what the translation said. Maybe there is some other tradition besides Homer that handed it down, but it's healthy to have a lot of skepticism with claims like this.

Read post #2

https://bluelight.org/xf/threads/scopolamine.765088/