 Gang, we're reading page 142 to 144 of Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna to search for the original Tree of Knowledge, a radical history of plants, drugs, and the human evolution. The chapter that this is from is chapter 9, alcohol and the Alchemy of Spirit, Subsection, Natural and Synthetic Drugs. Quote, Discussion of alcohol gives us our first opportunity to examine the distinction between natural and synthetic drugs, for though distilled alcohol waited for hundreds of years to be joined by a second example of a chemically refined intoxicant. It was the first highly concentrated and purified drug, the first synthetic drug. This distinction is very important for the argument to be made here. Alcoholism as a social and community problem appears to have been rare before the discovery of distillation. Just as heroin addiction was the malignant flower that sprang from the relatively benign habit of opium use, so distilled alcohol changed the sacred art of the brewer and the vintner into a profane economic engine for the consumption of human hopes. It is no accident that alcohol was the first intoxicant to undergo this transformation. Alcohol can be fermented out of many kinds of fruits, grains, and plants, and so has been more widely experimented with that obscure and localized sources of more obscure and localized sources of intoxication. Indeed, fermentation is a natural process that in many cases is difficult to avoid and fermented alcohol can be produced in prodiginous and hence commercial amounts. The tahti palm of Southeast Asia produce debatably drinkable alcohol straight from the tree. Birds, raccoons, horses, and even wasps and butterflies are aware of the fleeting virtues that attend eating fermented fruit. Quote, in wild habitats most intoxications occur with the ingestion of fermented fruits, grains, or saps. Field teams have investigated dozens of cases from samurtra to the sudan involving creatures from bumblebees to bull elephants. The results in natural habitats most animals seek alcohol laden food for the smells, taste, calories, or nutrients they provide. The intoxications are side effects but not serious enough to deter future use. One sort of accidental intoxication occurs when tree sap is exposed to the proper temperature and ferments. The Northern American sap suckers, a type of woodpecker, drill pit like holes in trees that fill with a sap. The birds feed on the sap and insects attracted to the sap pit. They move on to other trees, literally leaving the door open for the sap to ferment and intoxicate other animals before the tree heals over. The drinking of fermented sap has been held responsible for an array of abnormal behavior observed in hummingbirds, squirrels, and unsuspecting sap suckers. Alcohol can be an end quote. Alcohol can be distilled by using heat to vaporize it and separate it from from its source unlike alkaloid and indoles which must somehow be extracted using solvent and then concentrate it. This fact that a simple water-cooled condenser can capture the vapor of alcohol and return it to liquid form makes it possible for alcohol to be the first intoxicant to be chemically isolated. The quality of being recaptured from its vapor state is what gave rise to the practice of referring to distilled alcohol as spirits. The first reference that we have to what might be a distilled form of alcohol occurs in the South Century AD writing of Chinese alchemist Kong Ko Hung in discussing recipes for the preparation of Kenabar Ko Hung comments, quote, they are like wine that has been fermented once. It cannot be compared with the pure clean wine that has been fermented nine times, end quote. This statement seems to imply the knowledge of methods for the preparation of very strong clear alcohols perhaps by the capture of alcohol vapor vapor in wool from which could be wrong a relatively pure liquid alcohol, end quote.