This article was originally published on Psychedelic Spotlight and appears here with permission. I tried chewing coca leaves for a week; here's what happened.

Bolivians celebrated the centuries-old tradition of chewing coca leaves as part of Akuliku celebrations to mark the country's relationship with the traditional crop Bolivians use the leaf to help ...

The children of coqueros are markedly deficient in intelligence.…There is no doubt that the habit of chewing coca leaves is one of the most powerful reasons for the backwardness and misery of ...

Buzz is building around a new star beverage in Bolivia, where the coca leaf has long been legal despite the U.N.'s blanket prohibition due to the plant's association with cocaine.

Bitter and tough, the coca leaf chewed throughout the South American Andes for thousands of years as a natural pick-me-up has been getting an appetizing makeover in Bolivia.

People as far back as the 1600s were using cocaine, chewing on the leaves of the coca plant “for recreational purposes.” ...

Hygrine is an alkaloid present in the leaves of Erythroxylum spp. so it indicated that cocaine intake occurred through the chewing of coca leaves.

Dionicio Limachi spreads coca leaves after removing them from a coca-drying oven in Trinidad Pampa, a coca-producing area in Bolivia. For many coca growers, chewing coca leaves is a daily habit ...