Cats get high on the catnip plant. They salivate, twitch and get horny from it. Reindeer and bears eat mushrooms for their mind-altering effects. Migrating flocks of birds take detours for fermented fruit binges. In India, drunken elephants go on hazardous rampages drunk from either rotten windfalls or drinks stolen from humans. And primates do all kinds of sophisticated things – they chew on tobacco in the wild, quickly learn how to smoke in captivity, and Gabon mandrills dig up and eat the hallucinogenic iboga root to get ready for combat.
Source: Cultural historian Mike Jay’s book High Society – Mindaltering drugs in history and culture. (This guy’s books are a brilliant insight into connections between drugs and culture by the way.)
