All right, so I was reading my local grocery co-op's monthly newsletter today, and it read about drinking your own urine (or a friend's)...I mean, in a supportive way. In fact, there have been several members who have contacted the co-op curious if they would soon be serving urine-based drinks at the juice bar (Note: they will not be doing this.)

So obviously (well, not really.) there must be some alleged health benefits that are making these dreadlocked 'buy local' folks crave pee-smoothies.

Anybody know anything about this? Is it a health thing, or are they just doing there part to combat the fresh-water crisis?

I think there are some people who believe it has curative (that a word?) effects. I don't know to what extent it does have those properties though. Drink it because of the fresh water crisis? Then only as a gesture i think since you can't go on drinking it a lot to survive. I think

Maybe you could ask your co-op why they said that.

In South America Ancient Shaman would ingest the Amanita Muscaria mushroom, and then urinate into a gourd or some such thing, and then the villagers would drink the urine, to experience the *purified* effects of the mushroom (as Amanitas cause severe convulsions and discomfort when eaten raw, which the Shaman would experience, for the sake of others who would then drink his pee and not experience the discomfort).

Funny that the villagers didn't know what we know now, which is if you sun-bake or fire-cook an Amanita, it looses its poison, and retains its intoxicatants, and so there was no real need to drink pee. :- )


Also, in Ancient times drinking ones own urine was a way to measure the toxicity of ones self, and i suppose in modern times it could be as well.