© 1999-2026 Thomas O. Robinson. All Rights Reserved. Side effects may include spontaneous time travel.
In memory of my parents: Jim [1935-2025] and Sara [1950-2024], and the family dog, Shillelagh "Puppy" [2010-2025]
Sassafras albidum is a species of trees native to North America and Asia in the family Lauraceae (which also includes cinnamon and avocado), evolved from a lineage of tropical plants back when Earth was a hothouse and tropical forests used to extend much further north into what is now Canada, Siberia, and Greenland (roughly 50-65 million years ago during the late Cretaceous and early Paleogene eras). During this time, the family likely spread widely across the land bridges that connected Europe to Greenland and North America as well as Siberia to the North American continent. As plate tectonics shifted the shape of geology and climate change altered the course of migration, especially during the glacial formations that happened during the Oligocene and Miocene eras, the species separated into distinct, but related species across the distant continents. Botanists refer to this as the Eastern Asian – Eastern North American floristic disjunction. While they look remarkably similar, Sassafras albidum and its Asian cousins have been separated for approximately 15 to 20 million years, during which time they each developed very unique characteristics, but one interesting thing they all kept in common was a curious anti-feedent (a toxic chemical intended to repel predators and microbes) called safrole, which, like a number of other chemicals in nature's factory whose original intent was to repel creatures, humans managed to somehow acquire an immunity to some of the less pleasant effects of the chemical, and even gained some pleasure from the consumption of it. Safrole oil is commonly found in the root of the sassafras tree, and was traditionally used in the production of a series of related beverages, the best known of which was "Sarsparilla". Unfortunately for the beverage, safrole oil turns out to A. be slightly carcinogenic (resulting in a higher prevalence of certain cancers in mice, under high dosage), and B. turns out to be a precursor in the synthesis of a chemical called "Methylenedioxymethamphetamine", or MDMA for short. Resultantly, the modern version of the beverage, called "Root Beer", named for the sassafras root which it was originally derived from, is now brewed using high fructose corn syrup and wintergreen oil, but can still call its roots from a 65 million year old chemical that nature used to kill predators, that humans figured out how to use to get high. Other fun chemicals that share this property include Caffeine, Nicotine, Psilocybin, Alcohol, Morphine (the most active chemical produced by flowers in the species Papaver somniferum, commonly known as "Poppies"), [delta-9 and derivatives] tetra-hydro-cannabinol, and benzoylmethylecgonine (the active ingredient in the coca plant). Heres my point. Earth spent 65 million years to develop a chemical that says "Stay Away". Humans came along and spent 200,000 years to develop a way to say "I can use this".