Bananas and Banadine (Bannadine): The Myth of Psychedelic Bananas

"Banadine" or "Bannadine" is a supposed psychoactive substance that can be extracted from regular banana peels. It was first popularized in the 1970 book "The Anarchist Cookbook" by William Powell and has since become something of an embarrassment in the online community. The most popular "extraction" process was a 1993 that can still be found online today by people who are seeking ways to achieve a high through legal means. I will proceed to debunk this fraudulent and frankly ill-disposed article step by step so that curious people who are impressionable don't waste their time, money, and health on this ridiculous process.

Step 1-Go to the Grocery Store and buy 10 pounds of bananas. (You used to need 200 pounds, but the potency has gone up 20x in the last 30 years).

First of all, bananas can be expensive. And ten pounds of bananas is equal to several bunches of medium-sized fruit. I highly doubt that anyone (even the craziest 1960s hippie) would drop several hundred dollars to extract banadine (bannadine) from bananas when LSD and marijuana was readily available for lower prices. And those psychoactive substances actually work. Furthermore, the likelihood of bananas becoming more "potent" is ridiculous. It is true that certain characteristics of fruit can be altered through special growing techniques over time. However, the odds that a trace compound in the peels would have increased its presence by 20 times are hardly feasible. Either the banana would need to reach gargantuan size or banana growers would have needed to culture banana trees based on that particular trait (that doesn't exist to begin with).

Step 2-Remove the skins from the fruit. Save the fruit for later-if you mix it with orange juice and drink it while you're smoking, it'll make you trip real hard.

To start, in order to mix 10 pounds worth of banana fruit with orange juice, you'd need a hell of a lot of orange juice and a lot of time. Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that any psychoactive substance is synergized by orange juice or bananas. The breakdown of dextromethorphan can be inhibited by grapefruit juice, but this is the only documented case of citrus acting as a synergist of psychoactives. In any case, since banadine (bannadine) does not exist, sawdust would have just as good of a chance at boosting its effects as orange juice and bananas.

Step 3-Dry the skins in the microwave. This won't affect the potency, as bannadine is not microwave soluble.

If banadine (bannadine) was to truly be a psychedelic drug as this fellow claims, then heat would be potentially damaging to the compound. Psychedelics like LSD and LSA can be broken down due to exposure to excessive heat or light. Even if banadine (bannadine) was real, then the fact that it is non-microwave soluble is moot as well. Drugs are not microwave soluble. In fact, nothing is. Things can be heated or denatured by microwaves, but solubility refers to the ability of a substance to bind to molecules in a solution. Microwaves are waves of electromagnetic energy, not mixtures or solutions.

Step 7-Banadine is normally only active when smoked; that's why eating bananas won't do anything. However, that mush left over from step 5 is actually pretty tasty, and that's how I've discovered that bannadine is orally active if potentiated by dried peanut skins!!!

This is perhaps the most ridiculous piece of this already ridiculous tutorial. As you may have noticed, I jumped to step seven without covering steps four through six. What the guy describes is actually the correct way to perform a crude nonpolar extraction. However, the mush he's referring to would hardly be "pretty tasty" after soaking in a high-proof ethyl alcohol solution for several days. Also, you wouldn't feel any effect from eating the mush because the purpose of the nonpolar extraction would be to remove the banadine (bannadine) from the mush and bind it to the alcohol. The final piece of this silly puzzle is the mention of dried peanut skins. Nothing in a peanut is psychoactive, end of story. By mentioning this, the author adds insult to injury by making already impressionable people try something else that has no psychoactive properties. It's the final nail in the coffin that points to the author simply playing a prank.

This article was written more out of fun than out of a desire to educate the public. If you honestly think that bananas contain banadine (bannadine) or any other psychoactive compound, then you probably have some deeper problems. Proving this author was wrong was comparable to proving that Santa Claus can't be real. The truth is fairly obvious, but those who want to believe will do so. So, all I can say is to enjoy bananas for what they are: fruit.