In the United States alone, there are approximately 116,867 libraries of all kinds. Americans are accustomed to having free access to information that ranges far and wide. It wasn’t always that way.

Books used to be exclusively for the elite. They were too costly for the common man—and rare to boot. The tradition of social libraries began with Benjamin Franklin’s creation of “The Library Company” in 1731. This group of men shared books to enhance their discussion on various topics, and it started a trend.

Today in our society, public libraries are one of the last remaining social spaces that are free to the public to meet, share, learn, and be involved in a community. We take this social infrastructure as a given. But all over the world, even in the United States, there are groups opposed to this free sharing of knowledge with laws in place to support them.

No matter the legal obstacles, people seem to find ways to share and preserve knowledge. Even if that knowledge is taboo or forbidden, people will find a way to protect it at all costs. Our curiosity is too vast to be limited by the law. Sometimes, these hurdles cause libraries to show up in the most peculiar places.

10 Paris Catacombs

Beneath Paris, the romantic “City of Lights,” is a city of shadows. Deep underground are hundreds of miles of tunnels in a complex network that is one of the oldest in the world. It’s a darker city that few tourists experience due to the high risk of danger.

People often get lost. The walls can collapse at any moment, so many who venture there wear miners’ helmets. There’s no electricity among the endless winding canals, corridors, and crypts filled with mounds of unidentified skulls, which are estimated to be about six million deceased Parisians. There are parts so tight that you have to lie on your belly and slither forward like an inchworm, but that’s where the best parts are hidden.

Only a small section of the catacombs is accessible to tourists, while the rest has been illegal to enter since 1955. A rebellious, leaderless community has sprung up and ventures into the Paris underground anyway. These urban explorers are called cataphiles.

Away from the rules of the surface world, they are free to express themselves. They paint, sculpt, and create other art. They also build false walls, trapdoors, and secret chutes to keep away the cataflics (“catacops”) who try to catch them trespassing.^[1]

One of these secret chambers is called La Librairie. It has hand-carved shelves filled with books for the taking. You must know a cataphile who can be your guide because it can’t be found otherwise.

9 Little Free Libraries

In recent years, there has been an uplifting phenomenon where people across the United States are building Little Free Libraries in their front yards. These are “give one, take one” book exchanges. The creativity in their small box designs are impressive and range from building shelves inside an old tree stump to replicating a Dr. Who TARDIS.

For some unfathomable reason, there’s a crackdown to remove these “illegal detached structures.” After all, small community libraries are obviously the biggest threats our society is facing today.

A subset of Americans wants every aspect of community life to be regulated. Currently, their righteous battle is to tear down Little Free Libraries because being a good neighbor is apparently a crime.

In Kansas, a nine-year-old was told to remove his library or be slapped with a fine. In both Los Angeles, California, and Shreveport, Louisiana, the owners of Little Free Libraries were advised that they were violating city codes and their front yard structures needed to be disassembled.^[2]

8 Secret Locker At A Catholic School

Some will argue that schools need to ban certain books from their libraries. For example, kids probably shouldn’t be given instructions on how to build a bomb or literature that encourages violence or prejudice.

Does it make sense, however, to ban The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, or Animal Farm?

An undisclosed private Catholic school bans these books and any others that they claim undermine their religious beliefs. Nevertheless, one student took action to oppose the book bans. Her alias is Nekochan. She didn’t mean to at first, but she ended up running an illegal library from her school locker.

It started by bringing to school her favorite classic, Catcher in the Rye, which happened to be banned. She loaned it to an eager friend. This happened more and more until her locker began overflowing with banned books. So she used a neighboring locker that was empty. It grew to become an unofficial library of 62 banned books. She said:

I would be in so much trouble if I got caught, but I think it’s the right thing to do because before I started, almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading. Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I’m doing a good thing, right?^[3]

7 Shadow Libraries

Some believe strongly that access to scholarly research and academic journals shouldn’t be restricted to those with enough money to purchase them. Hence, the rise of pirate libraries (aka shadow libraries) in the digital world.

If you have tried to access scholarly literature online, then you already know that many articles are behind a paywall at their journal’s site. These paywalls limit access to at least three-quarters of scholarly research and discussion, which is a global concern.

The price for access is rising every year. Furthermore, a large chunk of scholarly research is either publicly or philanthropically funded. So, what gives?

Thanks to the open access movement, anyone with an Internet connection can be privy to this knowledge if they know where to look. For starters, there’s the website Sci-Hub, which is a digital library that doesn’t limit itself to openly licensed content.

Sci-Hub calls itself “the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers.”^[4] Its main concern is to allow universal access to knowledge.

In its wake, other websites have popped up, like Library Genesis, with similar copyright infringements. To be clear, we’re not talking about the latest Nicholas Sparks novel. These website contributors are often academics who want to participate in a global library or think tank for the sake of universal expansion of knowledge.

6 Syria’s Secret Library

If dodging snipers to get to the library doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, we wouldn’t blame you. The residents of the besieged Damascus suburb of Darayya, however, swear that it’s worth it.

Anas Ahmad is a former civil engineering student and one of the founders of the library. He described the walk to the secret library: “We have to go through bombed-out buildings to hide ourselves from snipers. We have to be extremely careful because snipers sometimes follow us in their sights, anticipating the next step we’ll take.”

Together, a community of volunteers has created an underground library hidden in the basement to keep it safe from the daily dose of destruction above. It is stocked to the brim with 14,000 books on nearly every subject, but even collecting these books is highly dangerous. Volunteers take them from bombed-out or shell-damaged buildings on the front line before they are completely destroyed.

At first, it seems strange to risk that much just for books. However, not only does this secret library unite the community in a sense of hope and inspiration, but it also serves many critical functions. Since thousands of civilians have fled and thousands more have died, there are many roles left to be filled.

Hospital volunteers use the library’s books to help them treat patients. With no dentists, people need to train themselves—for example, to extract a tooth. Aspiring teachers use books to prepare them for a class of eager students.

Besides academic literature, many read for the love of it and a way to escape the terrors of the real world. While it’s easy to say that they should be using their time and energy collecting food instead, Anas Ahmad said, “Like the body needs food, the soul needs books.”^[5]

5 Seed Libraries

The cry, “Free the seeds,” is being heard throughout the United States as the Department of Agriculture cracks down on seed libraries. For thousands of years, farmers and gardeners have freely exchanged seed varieties to grow the best crops possible.

In libraries across the nation, there are about 300 seed exchanges set up by volunteers. It allows friends and neighbors to exchange self-pollinating seeds rather than be forced to buy the standard hybrid seeds.

Now states are deciding to enforce the laws in place to restrict the practice. The laws were originally intended to protect farmers by ensuring that seeds were viable and would grow what was promised. No magic beans for Jack, for instance. These laws not only refer to sales but to nonmonetary exchanges as well. Nobody anticipated seed libraries.^[6]

However, despite the harmless acts of small-scale, person-to-person exchanges, officials feel compelled to abide by the laws as they stand. Seed libraries are not only faced with state officials’ interpretation of the laws but also the powerful corporations that are attempting to expand their control over the market.

4 Cave Library In China

Over 1,000 years ago, an unknown person sealed up a chamber to a cave in the Gobi Desert that was lined 3 meters (10 ft) high with manuscripts for 152 meters (500 ft). These hidden words rested undisturbed in total darkness until they were discovered by accident.

In the early 1900s, a Taoist monk named Wang Yuanlu appointed himself as the caretaker of the cave shrines in that region. He happened to be smoking a cigarette in this particular cave when he noticed how the smoke wafted up in the direction of the back wall. He knocked down the barrier and found the hidden treasure of a lifetime, although he couldn’t read the documents.

The collection is now called the Dunhuang Library, or the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. Since it was discovered, an entire academic discipline has arisen solely around its materials. The library contains 50,000 documents in at least 17 languages.

One of the most precious artifacts is the Diamond Sutra, a copy of one of Buddha’s sermons that is the oldest ever discovered as it was written in AD 868.^[7]

It was named the Diamond Sutra by the Buddha himself as he explains that his message will “cut like a diamond blade through worldly illusion to illuminate what is real and everlasting.” The Diamond Sutra is the world’s earliest complete and dated printed book.

Even the hundreds of caves, which were carved by hand 1,700 years ago, are decorated with paintings all over the walls. They also contain the world’s largest collection of Buddhist art. The caves house artifacts that range from 2,000 brightly painted clay Buddhas to the earliest complete star chart in the world.

The library contains some unsettling documents, like a manual that explains how to perform human sacrifice in detail and a contract drawn up for the exchange of a slave girl for a silk trader’s heavy debt. There’s also magic, including a book of divination written in Turkic runes. It explains that a boy who finds eagle droppings is a good omen, but if he finds an old ox devoured by ants, the omen is very bad indeed.

Nobody knows what the library was for or why it was sealed and forgotten for so long. Someone purposefully forbade access to outsiders when they sealed the entrance shut, but the reason why remains a total mystery.

3 Library Room Behind Lock And Key

Within a padlocked room in the National Library of Australia is the country’s largest horde of off-limit materials. Its location cannot be revealed as it contains hundreds of books that are not authorized for public viewing. These inappropriate texts include materials that have potentially lethal advice, such as a guide to performing suicide or textbooks with errors in the experiments that would lead to producing toxic chemicals.

The secret room is called a giftschrank, a German term that comes from the words for “poison” and “cabinet.” After the Third Reich finally collapsed, Nazi literature was stored in giftschranks rather than being burned.

The National Library of Australia has a similar creed in that the librarians don’t want to get rid of anything. The director of Australian Collections Management, Alison Dellit, said, “Part of the role of the library is to keep the history of Australian publishing and part of this history of publishing is that sometimes people publish things that shouldn’t have been published.”^[8]

2 Illegal Activities Ramp Up In LA Libraries

Sometimes, it’s not the content of the books that’s in question but the criminal activities that take place within the library’s domain. In the case of Los Angeles, the poor librarians can’t seem to catch a break no matter what they do.

Finally, the LAPD stepped in to provide security, but they turned out to be fairly useless. The libraries paid the LAPD over $5 million for security in 2017, which provided them with a total of 10 police officers and 67 security guards.

Hollywood’s Goldwyn Library even participated in an entire undercover investigation that revealed shocking crimes ranging from drug use and theft to sex acts. Hidden cameras captured disturbing sexual behavior even as innocent children strolled by. It showed people injecting heroin and smoking crystal meth and crack. One of the undercover cops was even offered Ecstasy.

The cameras further revealed that the appointed police officers weren’t catching the crimes happening around them. They were spending most of their time texting or talking on their cell phones instead of paying attention. In one case, the camera captured a crystal meth deal that happened right in front of an LAPD officer who was fast asleep.^[9]

1 The Vatican Secret Archives

The Vatican’s mysterious archives have inspired much suspicion and speculation over the years. Some conspiracy theorists claim that it contains proof of aliens or predictions of the apocalypse, while others suspect it’s the Pope’s secret stash of pornography.

Even the popular novel The Da Vinci Code threw its best guess into the ring. With 85 kilometers (52 mi) of bookshelves, it’s easy to see why the conspiracy theories exist. It wasn’t until very recently that the Pope opened the Secret Archives up to select members of the public, and even now, it’s highly restricted access.

There’s seemingly endless correspondence between the Pope and famous historical figures like Michelangelo, Mozart, Queen Elizabeth, Abraham Lincoln, and Hitler, to name a few. There are even documents about the trials of the Knights Templar and Galileo.

There are letters from Henry VIII in which he tried to convince the Pope to grant his divorce from Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry his true love, Anne Boleyn. Mary, Queen of Scots, pleaded for the Pope to save her life right before she was executed. It goes on and on. Basically, it’s like a historian died and went to heaven. It illustrates the power that the Pope has wielded throughout human history.

When pressed, however, the official spokesperson for the archives admits that there remains a section that really is secret. Nobody has access to this part—no journalists or even the most prominent scholars.^[10]

Slowly but surely, the US is getting its head around the idea of decriminalizing marijuana. Many states now allow its regulated sale for medical purposes, recreational use, or both. By federal law, it may still be illegal to use, possess, sell, cultivate, or transport in the rest of the country, but we’re a long way away from the whole “Reefer Madness!” panic of years gone by.

So what’s with the change of heart?

Well, there are a few reasons behind it. The big one is that weed has been proven to have some impressive health benefits. But surely, no other illegal drugs can actually be good for us in any way, can they? Well, it turns out that almost all major controlled substances can actually be put to good use in one way or another.

Let’s run down 10 illegal street drugs that have some surprisingly useful medical applications.

10 Cannabis

Pot, weed, marijuana, grass, bud, herb, call it what you will. Humans have been drying out cannabis plants and smoking them for literally thousands of years. Considered one of the safer and least serious drugs around, most people will have tried getting high at least once or twice in their lives. It’s estimated that 3.8 percent of the global population are regular users of the stuff.

Medical marijuana is currently legal in 26 US states, the District of Columbia, and Guam. So you know there must be plenty of health benefits from hitting the odd bong. And there are. It’s all about the cannabinoids. Weed is packed full of them—the main one being THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), an excellent painkiller. The body even produces small amounts of cannabinoids naturally to help reduce pain when needed.^[1]

Another cannabinoid in the ol’ Mary Jane, CBC (cannabichromene) has been proven to help in the treatment of epilepsy. Weed can also reduce inflammation, help battle multiple sclerosis, stop spasms, ease bladder problems, and even prevent chemotherapy nausea.

All in all? It’s a proven useful plant.

9 Cocaine

If you’re anything like us, you probably picture a disco from the 1970s when you think of cocaine. Huge bowls full of 95 percent pure Colombian marching powder clogging up the sinuses of rich playboys and their supermodel girlfriends. But there’s a much misunderstood side to blow, you know.

Not all that long ago, cocaine was hailed as a worldwide wonder drug. It was widely used as a laxative and a cure for motion sickness, hay fever, and even alcoholism. But soon, it proved addictive. So alternatives were found.^[2]

Medicine didn’t abandon cocaine, though. It still gets used by medical professionals today (and not just when they’re at a club). Eye, nose, and throat specialists still regularly employ cocaine—usually in paste form—as an anesthetic in surgeries.

8 MDMA

MDMA in its crystallized form can cure post–traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Naturally, the psychiatrists behind the study with this finding aren’t recommending that traumatized people start gobbling up ecstasy like M&M’S and expecting immediate positive results.

But in clinical environments, the rise in serotonin initiated by “Molly” results in calmer, happier patients who can bond nicely and easily with their therapists. These patients open up more willingly, and treatment becomes so much easier for everyone involved.^[3]

Stress and fear is repressed while on MDMA, so patients can discuss traumatic experiences without a problem. They can get to the root of their issues without having to worry about the further damage caused by remembering—and potentially reliving—their troubling experiences.

7 Crystal Meth

If you have trouble concentrating at work and find yourself daydreaming, fidgeting, and generally being distracted, there’s a chance you might be suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). If you see your doctor about it, there’s a much smaller chance that he’ll tell you to meet him in the parking lot afterward to sell you crystal meth. Although, perhaps he should . . . 

Stimulants like meth, when prescribed and taken in specific dosages (in other words, don’t try self-medicating), can regulate brain chemicals called neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine. Both help to control addictive behavior and compulsiveness.

We don’t want to convince you to start breaking bad and cooking meth in your underpants in an RV in the middle of the desert or anything, but meth can also help to combat obesity—as you can see in any “fan” of the drug. Fast weight loss programs will often recommend a drug called Desoxyn (aka dimethylbenzeneethanamine hydrochloride or pure methamphetamine).^[4]

6 Magic Mushrooms

Shrooms are great if you want to spend four hours staring at a wall, watch it bleed into a billion kaleidoscopic colors, and fail to keep up with the plot of any number of episodes of South Park. But they’re also good for a number of slightly more useful other things, too.

The chemical in mushrooms that makes you trip is called psilocybin. Researchers at the University of Arizona are confident of its ability to effectively treat patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).

Mushrooms also help to alleviate the discomfort of severe cluster headaches, so much so that otherwise well-behaved people all across the world are risking jail time by buying and taking shrooms to kill the pain that can wreck their lives. Not only do these mushrooms kill the pain, they cause longer periods between attacks.^[5]

5 Ketamine

Ketamine might be a party drug to some people, but to veterinarians, it’s a horse tranquilizer. So when we tell you that “Special K” can help with your depression, you might not be too shocked. Sure, anything that can knock out half a ton of horse is going to calm you down, right? But ketamine’s ability to fight depression goes beyond that.

A study conducted at Yale University showed that ketamine doesn’t just alleviate the symptoms of being depressed. It can actually heal parts of the brain damaged by years of acute stress, trauma, and depression by fixing disconnected synapses. One dose can get to work in hours and last up to 10 days.^[6] It’s no wonder that horses always look so pleased with themselves.

4 Mescaline

Made famous by Hunter S. Thompson’s road trip book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, mescaline is a phenethylamine found in certain types of cacti. It’s the principal active psychedelic in peyote—the drug of choice of the Navajo tribe and Doors front men alike. And strangely, it might just be the cure for alcoholism.

In many Native American tribes, hallucinogenic drugs like mescaline and DMT have long been associated with addiction. But not in the way you might think. Rather than being drugs to which you get addicted, they help stop addictions to other substances. Scientific research into these drugs has been relatively limited, but the little that has been conducted appears to bear out the idea.^[7]

Alcoholism in Native American communities is an issue. Addiction rates are twice as high as with other American ethnicities. Yet in the Native American Church (aka “Peyotism”), rates of alcoholism are extremely low. Small doses over a course of weeks have been shown to relieve the intense cravings in addicts to drink.

“Psychedelic therapy” is a controversial topic. The evidence may not be perfect, but it’s more than anecdotal.

3 LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide has its uses, too. And we’re not just talking about acid being the only way to make it through a Grateful Dead gig. Studies conducted at Maryland’s Spring Grove State Hospital showed that controlled doses of acid greatly reduced anxieties about death in terminally ill cancer patients.

Of the people monitored, a third felt “dramatically less tense” about their situation. Another third felt generally better about their fate, and the final third felt the same but no worse about their diagnosis.^[8]

2 Heroin

You don’t need us to tell you that heroin is bad. You’ve seen Trainspotting. You might even have read William S. Burroughs’s Junkie. It’s nasty stuff. But as a pain reliever? There’s none better.

The federal government’s blanket ban on horse means that you won’t find it in a US hospital. (At least, you shouldn’t be able to.) But in the UK? It’s given to pregnant women!

Perhaps to save scaring the expectant mom,^[9] it’s called “diamorphine.” But it’s heroin all the same. Injected intravenously, it relieves severe pain and reduces stress. It can also make labor last slightly longer, but it’s relatively risk-free. A one-time shot doesn’t cause addiction and has no ill effect on the body.

1 GHB

What makes so gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB) so controversial is also what makes it so useful. Taken recreationally, it produces a euphoric high and deep feelings of relaxation. It’s this depressant quality, however, that has seen GHB employed in so many date rapes. It was even the murder weapon of choice for the British serial killer Stephen Port, who would shoot his victims full of lethal doses of the stuff.^[10]

Although its reputation is tainted due to its use by violent criminals, this naturally occurring psychoactive is actually one of the most effective substances known to man when it comes to treating insomnia. GHB’s narcoleptic qualities are useful. Very useful. It’s just such a shame that they’re sometimes exploited so cynically and disgustingly.

Steve is a freelance writer who writes news stories, features, articles, reviews, and lists. But *always* forgets to write his mother a birthday card. Follow him on Twitter, or follow him into the pub and buy him a drink.

Freedom of religion tends to be taken for granted in the West, despite being illusory in practice. Every government in the world intrudes on religion and, contrary to what you might expect, it’s at least as bad today as it has been in the past. It’s just more bureaucratic.

Ranked by how widely they’re banned, here are the world’s top 10 illegal religions…

10. Obeah and Myal

Sometimes religions are only banned on paper. In Jamaica, although officially illegal, Obeah and Myal (forms of Afro-Creole witchcraft) are legally tolerated. The ban originated in the British colonial period for one pathetic reason: the practice frightened the whites, probably because it gave their slaves hope. From 1760, the year of the Tacky Rebellion (a slave uprising), Obeah and Myal were punishable by death. The law was further formalized under the Obeah Act in 1854 and for the next century Jamaicans (many hostile to Obeah) were routinely prosecuted for “rituals”. 

Other colonies followed suit with laws of their own, but most have since repealed them. Only in Jamaica, where blacks have tragically internalized colonial racism, does the Obeah Act remain in place. In June 2019, when Jamaica’s Minister of Justice suggested repeal, the public were outraged. Insisting Obeah was “evil”, they forced the government to keep the racist — and purely nominal — law in place. 

9. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is seen as such a threat in Ukraine that it’s subject to evictions and raids. The reason is the church’s historical ties to Moscow, which Zelenskiy’s government thinks could weaken Ukraine from within — despite only 4% of Ukrainians being members.

A spokesperson for the church disputes the government’s right to suppress them, pointing out the church’s historical adherence to Ukrainian law. Even the Pope has criticized the crackdown, and the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church has also urged the government to back off. “We were once banned as well,” he said, “and we survived underground.” As he put it, “banning a church doesn’t mean ending its existence.” It just creates hostility.

8. Falun Gong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Nz2rDKoZ8

Falun Gong (“law wheel practice”) is a qigong-inspired meditation-based religion emphasizing “the virtues of truth, benevolence, and forbearance.” Founded by a trumpet player in 1992, it had by the end of the decade attracted more than 70 million followers, becoming the second largest faith in the country after Buddhism. It also far exceeded the Chinese Communist Party’s membership of 63 million; hence it was banned as an “evil cult.” 

There’s nothing unusual about this; all but five religions in China (Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism) are officially labeled “evil cults” or “superstitions.” But Falun Gong also became one of the “five poisons” — alongside Tibetans, Uighurs, democracy activists, and pro-independence Taiwan. It wasn’t just its numbers that threatened the CCP; its pacifist principles also go against the government’s emphasis on “materialism, political struggle, and nationalism.” The movement had even gained traction among officials themselves, undermining the regime from within.

Nowadays, practitioners of Falun Gong are routinely “disappeared” by the state, tortured, and executed. According to reports, the corpses of Falun Gong practitioners supply many of the vital organs used by China’s medical establishment.

7. The Shouters

Christianity has a long history in China, with its earliest introduction dated to 635 CE. A little over two centuries later, its almost-as-long history of suppression in China began. Today, some Christian groups are grudgingly tolerated — but only if they adhere to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TPSM). This propagandist affiliation, which tends to politicize sermons, was founded in the 1950s to suppress pastors and priests critical of the CCP.

The so-called “Shouters Sect” is one that definitely does not comply. In 1983, it became the first group to be designated “counterrevolutionary.” Then in 1995, it became the first group to be designated an “evil cult.” In practice, however, “Shouters” is a catch-all for undesirable Christians in general. The original “Shouters,” or “Callers” as they knew themselves, fot the pejorative nickname for loudly “calling on the name of Lord Jesus” during sermons. It was only after the 1982 demonstration against the TSPM that the CCP-compliant Christian community scapegoated them.

Raids and arrests are now common, and “Shouters” have received harsh sentences including life imprisonment and death. 

6. Ahmadiyya

Originating in British-occupied India during the 19th century, Ahmadiyya is a heretical Muslim sect — at least according to orthodoxy. Unlike most Muslims, they don’t believe Muhammad was the last of the prophets. In fact, Ahmadiyya is named for the much more recent, Punjab-born prophet Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908). Outlandishly he stated the obvious: Muslim society and religion had deteriorated and were now in need of reform.

Followers have since become “one of the most relentlessly persecuted communities”, with Pakistan’s first prime minister bowing to pressure from clerics and declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims. Even today, their non-Muslim status excludes them from the most basic of citizens’ rights, such as voting and obtaining a passport. And of course without a passport they’re unable to travel to Mecca. Pakistan has arrested and charged numerous Ahmadis with “blasphemy”. Malaysian authorities also call Ahmadis non-Muslim — “apostates”, in fact. Algeria, meanwhile, has been persecuting Ahmadiyya since 2016, when police raided and destroyed a newly built mosque and imprisoned the national leader.

Ironically, Ahmadiyya — like so many other religions on this list — stresses non-violence and tolerance above all.

5. Witchcraft

Although more of a catch-all for different traditions, witchcraft is often treated as religion. For example, in Cameroon, Tanzania, and the Central African Republic, it’s banned alongside other “folk or indigenous religions”. In the Gambia between 2008 and 2009, President Yahya Jammeh had up to 1,000 elderly citizens arrested and tortured on spurious witchcraft charges. In  2019, eSwatini (formerly Swaziland) cited its own (or rather its white colonial masters’) 1889 Witchcraft Act as justification for forbidding a planned witchcraft competition. In Papua New Guinea, people who use the services of witches face up to 10 years in prison and fines up to 10,000 PGK. 

In Saudi Arabia, the police force has an Anti-Witchcraft Unit tasked with hunting down astrologers, fortune tellers, sorcerers, and so on. Since there’s no legal definition of witchcraft, judges can interpret the kingdom’s religious Sharia law however they like to impose unfair punishments on the accused. An Egyptian pharmacist, for instance, was beheaded for (according to his neighbors) casting spells to break up a couple and placing Korans in the bathrooms of mosques. Often people are entrapped by the state, such as when undercover police — apparently with nothing better to do — paid a man to cast a spell. Cases also relied on confessions extracted by torture.

Meanwhile in Romania, practicing witchcraft professionally is only legal with a permit obliging witches to pay taxes on their income.

4. Christianity

Even Christianity, with its long track record of suppressing other faiths, is illegal in numerous countries. In Somalia and Comoros, it’s against the law to publicly admit to being Christian and anyone who does may be subject to harassment or death. In Mauritania, it’s even dangerous for foreign nationals to express their Christian faith. In Eritrea, only some denominations are legal.

In the Maldives, politicians win votes by keeping everyone Muslim — which they manage to do by imprisoning everyone else. Christianity is also illegal in Saudi Arabia, where Islam is all that’s permitted. Under regimes like this, as well as Iran and North Korea, Bibles are delivered by a clandestine network of underground Christian renegades.

3. Baha’i

Despite (or, let’s face it, because of) its message of peace, equality, and human unity, Baha’i is heavily restricted in its country of origin Iran. Followers are barred from higher education, national pensions, and certain jobs — for example in government, law, and, perhaps most cruelly of all, food production because they’re considered unclean. Baha’i-owned businesses are also subject to heavy restrictions or forced to shut down. A fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei instructs citizens to avoid dealing with them entirely.

They’re also subject to unlawful arrests, arbitrary detention, and, from their fellow Iranians, brutal discrimination. Literally adding insult to injury, Baha’is are even denied the usual Iranian right of diyeh (“blood money”) restitution for the murder or harm of their relatives.

Elsewhere, life can be just as harsh if not harsher. In Brunei, the “deviant” religion is banned outright, while in Egypt, followers are denied bank accounts, property, and even their own churches and religious literature. Also, couples married in the faith aren’t recognized by the Egyptian state, which means they have no access to basic spousal rights like inheritance, divorce, and residency. On national identity cards, Baha’is are designated simply with a dash — unlike Muslims, Christians, and Jews, all of whom are recognized by the state.

2. Jehovah’s Witnesses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMmFBxsOD8E

At first glance, it’s puzzling why so many governments, in very different nations, are against Jehovah’s Witnesses — especially given their avowed lack of interest in politics. But China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Morocco, the Maldives, Qatar, Uzbekistan, Comoros, and many more all ban Jehovah’s Witnesses activities. The reason is simple: for despotic regimes, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ political neutrality is a threat to national security. Never mind what Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves say in protest, or how law-abiding they are in practice; they won’t pledge allegiance to a state — not over God anyway. This is why they were banned by the Nazis.

Russia is particularly notable for stepping up its persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses since the Supreme Court banned the religion, calling it an “extremist organization” in 2017. 2019 saw almost 500 raids on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ homes, with Bibles, computers, phones, and other items being seized. 

Often these raids are early in the morning. Calling to mind Soviet-era purges, van loads of police officers (up to 20 personnel) will descend on a residence, pound on the door, and handcuff the owners. Forced to stand facing the wall for hours, the state’s bleary-eyed victims will even be denied use of their own toilets while the armed thugs carry out their search. Alternatively, law enforcement spies have been known to quietly infiltrate Jehovah’s Witnesses’ homes under the pretext of repairing their internet, only to download files from computers.

1. Psychedelic sacramental religions

So important was the freedom of religion to the Founding Fathers that its protection was enshrined in the very First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].” In practice, however, many religious practices remain illegal — from smoking weed to polygamous marriage. 

Notably, the First Amendment unofficially exempts the first Americans, the Native Americans. Because it wasn’t until 1978 that Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIFRA), aimed at correcting generations of suppression of indigenous religion. However, the sacramental use of peyote — crucial to many but federally banned — remains contentious even today. Although the AIFRA was amended to allow for such use by the Native American Church, only members of federally recognized tribes are in practice granted the concession. Citizens with Native American ancestry but no registered tribal membership are still not technically permitted.

Ayahuasca churches, such as Santo Daime and UDV, have similar problems — right around the world, thanks to America’s War on Drugs. A recent attempt in the Netherlands to legalize ayahuasca for religious use was denied, leaving followers of the religion to organize illicitly — even in “enlightened” Western Europe — for fear of arrest and imprisonment.

It’s no secret that illegal business is big business. The illegal drug trade alone qualifies as its own very large sector of the overall black market economy, accounting for 600 billion US dollars in profit annually—roughly 70 percent of the revenue of all criminal organizations in the world. In addition, about 1.5 TRILLION dollars in drug money are laundered through legitimate businesses each year—about 5 percent of global domestic product. If five percent seems small, keep in mind that we’re talking about all of the money produced by the world annually, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Within the other shady areas of global criminal enterprise, you’ll find some very odd black markets—some that you may have thought were urban myth, many involving perfectly legal commodities, and all generating an absurd amount of cash for the crooks involved. Here are ten of the oddest.

Many species of wildlife are subject to poaching and illegal trafficking, but primates—particularly chimpanzees and orangutans—are among the most heavily poached, for a number of reasons. Not only are they actually sold for consumption in some countries (yes, people eat them), they are often used in biomedical research as test subjects, and also sold as pets and to the entertainment industry. While thousands of primates are shipped to the States legally every year—mostly for research purposes, which we still think is pretty reprehensible—around 3,000 more apes are poached, and sometimes acquired legally, even if the means by which they were captured is against the law.

The United States is actually one of the few countries where keeping a great ape, one of the larger primates, is legal. Just over 100 are kept as pets in the US In Indonesia, where a lot of the poaching takes place, laws for possession amount to a slap on the wrist, usually with the animal simply being taken away.

Which is part of the problem—according to a recent United Nations report, over 22,000 apes have been lost from either poaching or poaching-related death since 2005. During that time, a whopping 27 related arrests were made in Africa and Asia—and less than a quarter of them were prosecuted. No wonder ape poaching is a gigantic share of the 10 billion dollar per year illegal wildlife trade.

While the legitimate timber industry has long struggled to mitigate its acknowledged potential damage to the environment, the illegal version of said industry has become an incredibly widespread problem. The United States alone reports 1 billion dollars in lost revenue annually from illegal logging; in countries like Brazil and Peru, it’s estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of all logging activity is illegal; and worldwide economic losses probably top 10 billion dollars per year—and that’s just the monetary impact.

Obviously, illegal logging operations aren’t subject to government controls and regulations meant to protect the environment and minimize damage to areas that are in need of protection. Clear-cutting is one of the primary causes of global climate change, and some recent studies suggest the very real possibility that all rainforest wildlife could be endangered within the next hundred years by the one-two punch of illegal logging and global warming. And in an incredibly alarming development, traffickers in illegal lumber are actually starting to emulate—and, in some cases, team up with—traffickers in illegal drugs. If you’re picturing cocaine being smuggled inside trees—that’s exactly right.

Illegal logging constitutes about 30% of the global timber trade, and nets the criminal enterprises involved roughly 10-15 billion dollars annually.

If this sounds a little far-fetched, or like something out of a horror movie, you may be surprised to know that the trade in human organs is quite real—and very big business.

The vast majority of illegally harvested organs are kidneys, as only one is needed to survive. Some desperate “patients” will undergo the illegal operation for as little as $5,000, and equally desperate recipients are known to pay forty or fifty times that much—$200,000 or more. This is prevalent in Middle Eastern and Asian countries, with the Philippines, India and Pakistan having booming markets; China actually sells the organs of executed prisoners, the only country in the world to do so. 4,500 executions take place per year in China, and some experts argue that they are planned around organ extractions.

And yes—while many people willingly give up organs for cash, many other are scammed or forced into the procedure, or made to undergo unnecessary surgeries during which the organs are extracted without their knowledge. A recent World Health Organization study put the number of illegal operations at around 10,000 annually, which potentially makes this a multi-billion dollar black market industry.

The trade in python skins is ostensibly very tightly controlled. The animals are dwindling in number, and the demand for their skins—particularly in Europe, where python skin handbags and designer snakeskin shoes are all the rage—has gone through the roof in recent years. Even in California, where the sale of pythons or their parts has been illegal since 1970, snakeskin items can still be bought at some upscale boutiques—some merchants seem to either be fine with ignoring the law, or are actually unaware of it.

Unfortunately, using skins from illegally poached animals translates to a hell of a lot more profit for those in this trade, and this booming criminal enterprise is actually threatening to outgrow the legal market for the skins. While regulations are in place—and would be effective if followed—in most regions where the practice takes place, they simply are not. As silly as it may seem, this may largely be due to the image of snakes as less-than-friendly, not-so-cuddly creatures—but they are still a critical part of their ecosystems, and are being hunted to extinction at the current pace.

Believe it or not, the annual trade in python skins tallies up right around a billion dollars worldwide—half or more of which is illegal, with the criminal enterprises taking up more of that pie every year.

A fairly recent phenomenon, the sale of human sperm over the Internet has exploded in recent years. And while this may seem fairly innocuous—even helpful, for those having trouble conceiving—at first glance, there are serious complications that lawmakers are having trouble addressing adequately.

Legitimate sperm donors are beholden to strict controls to minimize genetic defects, health problems and the like. The main problem with an individual just selling their sperm directly to another party is the obvious lack of controls—for the vast majority of the “donors”, no medical tests are performed, and the recipients have absolutely no way of knowing what they’re getting. Not to mention the thousands of infectious diseases that can be transmitted through human sperm, which is really the scary part.

While there are laws in place to regulate the sale of sperm or eggs, many of the websites that have popped up have proved very difficult to prosecute—they operate under the guise of being social networking sites, “introductory services” who merely play matchmaker and collect a fee. Worldwide annual profit estimates are hard to come by; one pair of British men were able to sign up 800 women and collect over a quarter-million pounds in a few years with a service of this type.

Abalone are edible sea snails, known as “muttonfish” in Australia and “paua” in New Zealand. They are a delicacy in these regions, as well as in Chile, France and several Asian countries; regulations governing their harvesting are lax or nonexistent practically everywhere except South Africa—which is kind of where the problem lies.

Seafood is a major South African industry, and Abalone is the highest-priced product it produces. In 1995, 615 tons of Abalone were harvested in South Africa; by 2008, it had dropped dramatically to 75 tons, and the South African government ceased abalone fishing that year for fear of completely eradicating the population. The incredible drop in volume over such a short time is attributed almost entirely to illegal harvesting, and the effect of this on the South African economy has been significant.

Populations have dropped similarly, if not quite as dramatically, in Northern California and other abalone-producing regions, where a thriving illegal trade has emerged. Authorities have begun slapping seafood merchants that deal in illegal shellfish with dizzying fines upwards of $40,000, but with poaching being so profitable, it doesn’t look to slow down anytime soon. While there is no hard annual data, red abalone can fetch up to a hundred dollars apiece.

The gall bladders of black bears, and the bile that can be extracted from them, have been used extensively in Asian medicine for centuries. The bile is a supposed cure for everything, from eye ailments to cancer and AIDS, and we include “supposedly” because it has been definitively proven by medical science to have no medicinal properties whatsoever. In spite of that, the illegal trade in this product continues—and the scope of it is absolutely staggering.

Not only are bears poached en masse for their gall bladders and other parts, many Asian countries operate illegal “bear farms”, which are every bit as horrifying as that sounds. Bears are kept in small stalls, fed irregularly and not allowed to hibernate; they are continually surgically “milked” for the bile for a period of time before being killed to extract the gall bladder.

Despite this deplorable practice being thoroughly illegal, the products themselves are—incredibly—legal in many markets, including the United States; in New York City, it was recently found that 20% of markets that carry Asian products openly sell bile and gall bladders. The annual market in illegal bear parts is an unbelievable 2 billion dollars.

Most of us are aware that caviar is a) expensive and b) fish eggs which wealthy people are inexplicably fond of eating. While the concept of black market caviar might seem a bit silly, there are some pretty serious consequences of the trade—mostly for the worldwide sturgeon population, which has fallen by 90% since the 1970s due to overfishing.

A global ban on wild caviar (as opposed to farmed) in the mid ’00s failed to have the desired effect of protecting the population, and may actually have spurred increased black market activity. In 2006, the Pew Institute for Ocean Science called the sturgeon “the most vulnerable wildlife resource in the world”.

Sadly, sturgeons have been around for 200 million years, outlasting the dinosaurs with whom they once shared the planet, and this phenomenon is a serious threat to their continued existence. The demand for caviar certainly isn’t going anywhere—but with its illegal trade raking in three-quarters of a billion dollars annually, the wild sturgeon might be.

In many Middle Eastern and East European nations where alcohol is still prohibited or rigidly regulated, markets in bootleg alcohol still flourish. Some of the consequences, as well as some of the means enacted by governments to crack down on the practice, are enough to boggle the minds of those of us who take a glass of wine with dinner or a couple beers with our buddies for granted.

Countries like Iran and Iraq, where booze is straight up illegal, are known to offer up lashes—dozens of them—for alcohol production, along with the standard fines and jail time; in spite of this, the market for bootleg spirits is so strong that bootleggers simply find it to be worth the risk. So strong that Iranian factories that produce rubbing alcohol were actually forced by the government to spike it with a substance that renders it almost too bitter to drink—proving that, yes, people all over the world will take amazing risks just to get drunk.

This is most terrifyingly illustrated in two recent cases of mass deaths cause by bootleg liquor, in the Czech Republic (20 killed, dozens sickened) and India (102 dead). Again, hard data for annual profit is difficult to come by due to poor reporting in these countries—but consider that the US State of Virginia, where alcohol is perfectly legal, reports annual losses of up to 20 million dollars due to whiskey smuggling, the tip of a tremendous iceberg.

Human trafficking is second only to the illegal drug trade in terms of global annual profit. Nearly three-quarters of this trade is for the purpose you might expect (sex), and much of the rest supplies slave labor—but the splintered markets in black market adoptions are becoming a serious factor as well. In addition to the non-licensed adoption agencies one would expect, there have been cases where legitimately adopted children were simply sold for a profit by their adoptive parents.

These markets are generally not associated with each other, but are isolated and opportunistic—as in the case of southern Brazil, where the large population of blue-eyed, blond haired descendants of German immigrants is mined to satisfy the demand for such babies among Westerners. Russia and other Eastern European countries have also seen markets spring up for this same purpose, while China simply has a surplus of girls for cultural and political reasons.

While seemingly well-meaning, these types of black markets can also contribute to the coffers of criminal organizations that engage in all manner of illegal activities. And while the newborn industry is only a piece of the human-trafficking pie—that’s a 32 billion dollar pie we’re talking about.

Mike Floorwalker obsessively lists things here and on his blog, and occasionally tweets random inanities.

Have you ever felt guilty for something? You might have thought it was illegal, but it 100% wasn’t. Sometimes we feel weird about our actions, but our surroundings and beliefs could be influencing those emotions. We often use the law to measure the legality of our actions. Before you freak out, let’s learn about things that might seem illegal but actually aren’t.

Here are the top ten things that might shock you when you do them, but they are not illegal in the United States.

10 Baby Walkers Are Trouble

Baby walkers are adorable toys that are good for a child’s growth. They help infants stand upright and walk by fluttering their tiny feet on the floor. But did you know that other nations have banned them? They believe they can impair an infant’s physical and mental development. Others may see baby walkers as giving infants mobility beyond their age-appropriate abilities. But they can also prevent infants from learning essential skills like crawling, as it’s the first step to learning how to walk.

Another reason that baby walkers are potentially dangerous is that they allow children to get into hazardous situations. They could fall from the top of the stairs or wander outside. The dangers associated are what make you feel that these are illegal. Still, baby walkers are allowed in the United States, and most parents unknowingly enjoy them.

9 Don’t be Embarrassed to Window Shop

It feels weird to walk into a store, browse the products on sale, then leave without buying anything. It might sound normal to some people, but others find it unbearable. Is this illegal? Does it break any laws? Consider your freedom of choice. There are many reasons one might change their mind after entering a store, such as:

• The prices may be too high for your budget.
• The item you needed is out of stock.
• You may simply change your mind and decide you don’t need the product you came for.
• Window shopping is totally normal.

It isn’t illegal to leave any store without making a purchase. Furthermore, no law requires customers to make purchases. In fact, a common strategy for customer retention among store owners and employees is to always treat the customer with kindness and respect, regardless of their purchases—or lack thereof. So there’s no need to worry. Think of the alternative—what kind of world would it be if we were forced to spend our hard-earned money just because we entered a building?

If you feel guilty about leaving a store without a purchase, it’s not because it’s illegal—it’s because of your perception. Take your time at any store, and don’t feel obligated to buy anything for any reason.

8 Can You Pass a Police Car in Traffic?

I have always believed that police cars are allowed to go 20 mph above the speed limit at all times. With this perception, you may feel guilty each time you pass a police car with a speed below this limit. You begin to ask yourself, are you waiting to pull someone over? On many occasions, police cars are seen moving at low speeds when they patrol an area. With this in mind, you may wonder if you are breaching road safety regulations.

No need to worry. Passing a police car while both are moving under the speed limit is completely legal, though it may be a good idea not to go too fast. What could be worse, driving at a high or a low speed? If you understand road safety and regulations, driving at a low speed is the first step to protecting lives.

So, are you supposed to be scared if you find yourself in this situation? No, you’re alright, so long as you are not violating any laws or safety regulations.

7 Bringing Your Own Food to a Restaurant

It may not feel right to make yourself comfortable in other people’s restaurants when you have your food purchased from other shops. Restaurants operate on competitive terms where each one of them intends to make a profit. The main products sold in a restaurant are food and atmosphere. When you carry your food to go and occupy a space reserved for a potential client, it makes you feel like a criminal.

But it isn’t a crime and cannot be classified as illegal. We all have different tastes, and you may prefer to carry complimentary food items, such as drinks from a hotel room, into a space where you can enjoy them. Sometimes, the restaurant may not even offer food that you enjoy or options for certain dietary restrictions.

It’s also not a crime to reserve a table and bring your own food to it. What matters is that you have paid for one of the services offered. You are still doing business with the restaurant and not using its facilities for free.

6 Airport Security Is Legally Crossing the Line

Airports are tightly secured. When you’re not used to their security protocols, it can be irritating to go through them. Some of their more invasive procedures make you feel like a criminal—don’t even get me started on strip-searching. They make you stressed out that they’ll find illicit contraband you didn’t even know was there.

However, there is no way that passing through airport security is illegal. The security protocol is just a formality, as the security officers are obligated to provide safety measures. Feeling scared is normal, but not everything that scares you is illegal.

5 Surgeons are Allowed to Work Without Sleep

The importance of a good night’s sleep has everything to do with the performance of a particular task. When it comes to performing surgery, accuracy becomes more vital. Surgery puts a person’s life at stake, and the pressure is on. Professionals suggest that lack of a good night’s sleep deprives or impairs cognitive performance and motor skills.

How illegal can it be to perform surgery without a good night’s sleep? Strangely, no law in the United States demands that a surgeon has a good night’s sleep before performing surgery. Instead, the duty of care is solely on the surgeon’s shoulders.

4 Recording a Conversation

Recording someone in a conversation sounds like tampering with their privacy and the confidentiality of the information you share. Sometimes people share with you because of the trust they have in you and don’t wish to feel betrayed. You may wonder what the consequences would be if you recorded someone. Because of what we understand about the confidentiality of the information, it can feel illegal to record someone.

However, you may not worry anymore once you learn that many states recognize one-party consent, which legally allows you to record a conversation. The majority of the United States of America has one-party consent.

However, some states do not allow one-party consent:

• Florida
• California
• Delaware
• Montana
• Illinois
• New Hampshire
• Pennsylvania
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Washington

Recording a conversation can reduce theft and other criminal actions. It can serve as the main piece of evidence for a crime. Even though others have different views, recording a conversation has seen many people gather valid evidence used in court. If you feel you are recording a heated conversation that could threaten the lives of others, don’t hesitate to record it clearly and forward it to the authorities. It would help if you did it without any worries.

3 Buying Condoms Feels Illegal

People tend to be shy about purchasing condoms, as it feels like a perverted or criminal act. When one acts that way at the counter, the business owner or employee may find it suspicious and assume they’re criminals finding a way to steal. But the worst feeling is when you feel that publicly asking for condoms is illegal.

No law in the United States criminalizes the use of condoms. This is part of contraception recommended by experts for disease prevention and protection from unwanted pregnancies.

2 Requesting a Reasonable Accommodation

People living with a disability deserve compassion. You may feel like it’s a crime to ask your landlord or apartment manager to help you as a disabled person, but there are laws in place that obligate them to give you at least a reasonable amount of help or modifications.

It’s common for disabled people to feel guilty for reaching out and asking for help. These requests can be expensive and single you out in your community. But guilt does not mean it’s a crime—there is also no law suggesting it’s illegal to ask for help.

In the United States, you should be able to have equal use and enjoyment of your home. It’s your legal right! So if your landlord refuses to provide a reasonable modification or treats you like a criminal for asking, you might want to call a fair housing attorney.

1 Marrying Your Cousin Is Not a Crime

We’ve all likely heard of the phrase “kissing cousins.” Traditionally, it was not uncommon for cousins to marry (heck, royal families have been doing it for millennia). But you may be surprised to learn of some other noteworthy and non-royal people who have married their cousins. Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgewood, as did Albert Einstein when he married his second wife, Elsa Löwenthal née Einstein. Others include writers H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe and actress Greta Scacchi.

Although some view it with a negative stigma, the fact is you can marry your cousin in every state in the United States. The only issue is which cousin. Many ban first- and second-cousin marriage outright. But at least 25 states go so far as to allow you to marry your first cousin, which is your aunt or uncle’s child. That being said, some states permit marriage between first cousins only under certain circumstances (as in Arizona, where the couple must be over 65 years of age) or in West Virginia, where only adopted first cousins are allowed to wed). So if this is your cup of tea, then you shouldn’t feel guilty that you are breaking the law by marrying your cousin—even if many consider the practice taboo.

If you asked people what the world’s most popular drug is, what would the most common answer be? Many people will say marijuana, or cannabis if they’re pretentious potheads. There will be some people that get closer by saying tobacco or alcohol. Probably fewer than say weed, because when most of us hear the word drug we think of illegal drugs. However, none of these are correct. The right answer: caffeine. We don’t think of drinking coffee as doing drugs, but that’s what it is. So read on to find out more about the only recreational drug that your parents will encourage you to take with that Starbucks gift card they send you at Christmas.

10. It Makes You Feel Good

The main reason that people take drugs is because they make the user feel good. Drugs can make us feel so good that they’re dangerous. Some people are willing to take them despite the side effects and risks. The lows and highs for coffee aren’t quite as extreme as heroin, but as you’ll see they do exist. Let’s start with the high.

Caffeine consumption stimulates the release of the chemical dopamine, which leads to euphoria. Other drugs that rely on dopamine include cocaine and ecstasy. Recent research has shown that caffeine also acts on the same neurotransmitters that marijuana does. So, that buzz you feel when you have your first cup of joe in the morning is caused by chemicals being released in your brain’s reward system. In addition to the rise in productivity, this is another one of the positive effects of caffeine consumption.

9. It Can Have Side Effects

Like most things in life, caffeine can have some nasty side effects, especially if consumed to excess. Most of us know that it can cause insomnia, nervousness, and anxiety. However, there are other negative possibilities as well. These are much more rare, but they do occur. In some people, caffeine may cause stomach problems, nausea, vomiting, headaches, chest pains, and increased heart rate.

There are also some people who should take extra caution. It can sometimes make anxiety disorders or bipolar disorder worse. It’s also probably good to avoid it if you are pregnant or if you are a child. It also can make certain problems worse, like glaucoma, epilepsy, and high blood pressure. If you have something like that that impacts your life, make sure you talk to your doctor, or more realistically, look it up online. Again, these effects are rare but it’s good to at least keep them in mind.

8. You Build Up a Tolerance

Has this ever happened to you? You do something fun you’ve never done before, and the first time you do it it’s incredibly intense and memorable. The next time you do it, it’s still really, really good, but maybe not quite as intense. But you still really like it, so you do it a lot. And after a while, it’s still kind of fun but it’s not the same. You enjoy it, but not as much. You just built up a tolerance.

That’s what happens when you consume a substance often. And this happens with caffeine as well as with other drugs. In one study, subjects became desensitized to the effects of caffeine in the first four days of consumption. This tolerance building is why you tend to need more over time in order to feel the same effects. The best way to keep your tolerance low is to keep your consumption levels low. And if you feel you’re drinking too much, you can always take a few days off. But, that might be hard because…

7. It Can Cause Withdrawal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0HaQmahq4o

When someone tries to quit taking a hard drug, let’s say heroin, there are often withdrawal symptoms. Part of the reason it’s hard to quit is because the drug makes us feel good, but another reason is because stopping feels so bad. This is the case with caffeine for many people.

Attempting to stop consuming caffeine can lead to withdrawal symptoms. Caffeine use releases adrenaline, which causes an energy boost. But this energy boost wears out eventually, and many people decide that means it’s time for more caffeine. But overconsumption can wear down your adrenal gland, making you dependent on the adrenaline boost provided by caffeine. This leads to withdrawal symptoms ranging from headache to constipation to depression. Luckily, these are usually milder than the withdrawals experienced by heroin addicts and will usually go away within a week or so. Whew!

6. You Can Overdose On It

Most things should be enjoyed in moderation, if at all. Caffeine has tons of health benefits, but too much of a good thing can turn into a bad thing. According to the Mayo Clinic, up to 400 mg of caffeine per day is safe in healthy adults. But, this amount differs based on your age, weight, and sex. Caffeine overdose usually only leads to unpleasant symptoms that go away once the caffeine is flushed out of your body. So, most of the time, it’s not that bad.

Milder symptoms include dizziness, diarrhea, and fever. But you should go to the doctor if you experience trouble breathing, vomiting, or convulsions. It’s probably best you go to the doctor after that whether you drank any caffeine or not. To avoid all this, keep your daily caffeine level below 400 mg, and even less if you aren’t used to it or are a particularly small person.

5. It Can Kill You

As we said earlier, caffeine overdose usually only leads to mildly unpleasant symptoms. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. In extremely rare cases, it can actually help kill you. Again, this can only happen if large amounts are consumed in a small amount of time. Back in April, a teen in South Carolina died after drinking a McDonald’s latte, a large Mountain Dew, and an energy drink in under 2 hours.

He suffered from a caffeine induced cardiac arrhythmia. Based on estimates, he may have consumed about 470 mg of caffeine, over the daily recommended limit, in under two hours. The energy drink is particularly to blame, as it contains tons of caffeine and sugar. The American Association of Pediatrics has warned against kids and teenagers consuming energy drinks, and they say no one can ensure they are safe. Soda’s not good for you by any means, but energy drinks seem to be even more dangerous.

4. It Can Increase The Chance For Hallucinations

Caffeine is not like LSD. We’re guessing you already knew that. It does not directly cause any kind of hallucination. But, a study has linked caffeine consumption to hallucinations. It doesn’t cause hallucinations, but they are correlated. Those who consume the equivalent of 3 cups of brewed coffee (315 mg caffeine) per day were more likely to hallucinate than those who didn’t.

Caffeine has been shown to increase stress. The researchers of the study say that stress is also related to hallucinations. It’s not common at all, but stress may increase the possibility of hallucinations for those who are prone to them. On the other hand, it may be the other way around. They say it may be that those prone to hallucinations may use caffeine as a coping mechanism. The jury’s still out on this one, as they say.

3. It’s a Social Drug

Sure, a lot of times people drink caffeinated drinks on their own. In fact, that’s probably the most common way to consume it. But there is also a unique social aspect to coffee drinking. The primary locations of these social occasions are coffee shops. In the coffee shop owner’s ideal world, people would come in, purchase something expensive, and then leave. But that is not how people act for the most part.

People treat coffee shops as meeting places. They spend hours there studying, chatting, working on business presentations, or “writing” (AKA wasting time online). They are unique places, like a bar but much more relaxed. You can talk to other people, but it’s not expected. And there are probably more people getting actual work done than at the nightclub. The fact that it helps improve productivity is one of the main reasons that caffeine is the world’s most accepted drug, and also one of the reasons that people choose to do their work at coffee shops.

2. It’s Expensive

Illegal drugs are expensive. Many small fortunes have been lost to cocaine and quaaludes… at least that’s what we got out of Wolf of Wall Street. Unfortunately, caffeine is an expensive habit as well, and a much more accessible one. Some desperate addicts spend $5 on coffee per day. In a single day! A coffee habit slowly but surely eats away at one’s savings, eroding the sense of security and ease that was their savings account.

So, why is coffee so expensive? First off, it’s a volatile business, so owners tend to raise prices because of risk. The crops and market tend to fluctuate a lot, which causes uncertainty. There are tons of threats to the world’s coffee supply, and a shortage could really hurt coffee shops. So, the lower the supply of coffee goes, the higher the price will be for the shops and the customers. It’s production also requires lots of different people and organizations. It’s estimated that each coffee bean is handled by 30 different pairs of hands before it ends up in your cup. Most businesses have middlemen, and coffee’s got a ton of them. Coffee is not necessary to life, no matter what you’ve heard people say. It’s a luxury item and is therefore highly priced.  

If you want to keep your costs down, stick with the simpler variations, like black coffee. Specialty drinks are bound to be much more expensive. And to make it even cheaper, make your own at home.

1. Governments Have Tried To Ban It Before

Most recreational drugs are banned. Coffee and alcohol are pretty much the only two openly and fully accepted in American society. Alcohol is legal for anyone over the age of 21, and caffeine is totally legal for everyone. 8-year-olds drink soda chock full of sugar and caffeine. There’s no longer any actual cocaine in Coke, but there’s still a lot of white powder that’s pretty bad for you.  

In addition to the health dangers of overconsumption, there are also psychoactive effects to caffeine. It is, after all, a drug. And, like pretty much all drugs, governments have tried to ban it before. Banning drugs is like a drug to some people. In the 17th century Ottoman Empire, the consumption of coffee was a capital offense. Sultan Murad IV was fully on board the anti-caffeine train, prescribing death for coffee drinkers. That’s right, death. And he didn’t stop there. He would dress up as a commoner and walk around Istanbul trying to catch people defying his law. He carried a freaking sword around with him and when he came upon anyone sipping a latte, he would chop off their heads. Ironically, despite his anti-drug rhetoric, the Sultan didn’t heed his own warning: his death was caused by alcohol poisoning.

The coffee hate wasn’t limited to one country. In England, The Women’s Petition Against Coffee argued that coffee was to blame for tons of problems, particularly regarding men. They even blamed coffee for causing impotence. They knew they had to fight back, for The Devil’s Cup had ruined their husbands. This sounds somewhat similar to the Women’s Temperance movement. And these sorts of ideas continue into the present day, in a more restrained way. Just last year, New Jersey was considering banning people from driving after drinking coffee. But, try as they might, coffee will rebound. Despite this resistance and it’s side effects, we fully expect caffeine to continue to be the world’s most popular drug.