Bananadine is a fictional

psychoactive A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, mind-altering drug, consciousness-altering drug, psychoactive substance, or psychotropic substance is a chemical substance that alters psychological functioning by modulating central nervous system acti ...

substance which is supposedly extracted from banana peels. A hoax recipe for its "extraction" from banana peel was originally published in the ''

Berkeley Barb The ''Berkeley Barb'' was a weekly underground newspaper published in Berkeley, California, during the years 1965 to 1980. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers, covering such subjects as the anti-war mov ...

'' in March 1967. This recipe was itself an excerpt from the upcoming '' San Francisco Oracle'' issue, which was likely done in an attempt to give the hoax more validity.

History and influence

Just a few months earlier,

Donovan Donovan Phillips Leitch (born 10 May 1946), known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter and record producer. He emerged from the British folk scene in early 1965 and subsequently scored multiple international hit singles ...

's hit single "

Mellow Yellow "Mellow Yellow" is a song written and recorded by Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. Released in the US in 1966, it reached No. 2 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Outside the US, "Mellow Yellow" peaked at No. 8 in the UK in early 1967. Content ...

" (1966) had been released, and in the popular culture of the era, the song was assumed to be about smoking banana peels. On August 6, 1967, shortly after the song's release, bananadine was featured in a ''

New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazin ...

'' article titled "Cool Talk About Hot Drugs". Although the original hoax was designed to raise questions about the ethics of making

psychoactive drug A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, mind-altering drug, consciousness-altering drug, psychoactive substance, or psychotropic substance is a chemical substance that alters psychological functioning by modulating central nervous system acti ...

s illegal and prosecuting those who took them ("what if the common banana contained psychoactive properties, how would the government react?"), Cecil Adams reports in ''

The Straight Dope ''The Straight Dope'' was a question-and-answer newspaper column written under the pseudonym Cecil Adams. Contributions were made by multiple authors, and it was illustrated (also pseudonymously) by Slug Signorino. It was first published in 197 ...

'':

The wire services, and after them the whole country, fell for it hook, line, and roach clip. "Smokeouts" were held at Berkeley. The following Easter Sunday, the ''New York Times'' reported, "
beatnik Beatniks were members of a social movement in the mid-20th century, who subscribed to an anti- materialistic lifestyle. They rejected the conformity and consumerism of mainstream American culture and expressed themselves through various forms ...
s and students chanted 'banana-banana' at a ' be-in' in Central Park" and paraded around carrying a two-foot wooden banana. The
Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respo ...
announced it was investigating "the possible hallucinogenic effects of banana peels".

Nonetheless, bananadine became more widely known when

William Powell William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 – March 5, 1984) was an American actor, known primarily for his film career. Under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the ''The Thin Man (film), Thin M ...

, believing the ''Berkeley Barb'' article to be true, reproduced the method in '' The Anarchist Cookbook'' in 1970, under the name "''Musa sapientum'' Bananadine" (referring to the banana's old

binomial nomenclature In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...

). In 1971, a book of

one-line joke A one-liner is a joke that is delivered in a single line. A good one-liner is said to be pithy – concise and meaningful. Comedians and actors use this comedic method as part of their performance, and many fictional characters are also known t ...

comics was released, containing a comic in which a teen is secretly handing bunches of bananas to a zoo gorilla at night, uttering the line: "Just throw the skins back, man!"

References

External links

Sniggle.net
Article featuring a fake Bananadine recipe {{Urban legends 1960s fads and trends Bananas in popular culture Fictional medicines and drugs Hoaxes about drugs Urban legends

History and influence

See also

References

External links