We are all mad scientists when it comes to our favorite beverages. We mix portions of liquids, we add pinches of powders, we infuse the ineffable essences of choice plants into our cups. In our bar-caddy laboratories, we aim to control  certain qualities: flavor, temperature, shelf-life, consistency, color, bioactivity, among others. Some of these changes have wonderful, even historically important, effects. Sugar sweetens coffee enough to have convinced the early workers of industrialization to drink it. Hops make beer shelf stable enough to allow brewers to store it rather than binge. While cultures around the world have their signature additives and mixers, the indigenous peoples of Mexico had some particularly bizarre ones. 

From modern day Guatemala, all the way up to the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, indigenous Americans have been fermenting alcohol for thousands of years. The source materials for native drinks were many: honey, palm sap, cactus fruit, agave sap, corn, and mesquite pods to name a few. Most of these sources of sugar were fermented on their own into basic beers and wines, but sometimes the brewer would add a little something to change the process. Many of these additives focused on increasing the intoxicating qualities of a beverage. 

The native people in the northern reaches of this range tended to rely on intoxicants other than alcohol. Generally, these were hallucinogens. The buttons of peyote cactus, the seeds of the morning glory, and the leaves of nightshade all acted as ritual and spiritual entheogens for a wide variety of peoples. As it turns out, these substances were also put into alcoholic fermentations to infuse the resulting beer with the plants’ hallucinogenic properties.