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DungenessDank said:
I voted shrooms, but I'd like to believe cannabis

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Some scholars have proposed that the power of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from the kykeon's functioning as a psychedelic agent. Barley may be parasitized by the fungus ergot, which contains the psychoactive alkaloids lysergic acid amide (LSA), a precursor to LSD and ergonovine. It is possible that a psychoactive potion was created using known methods of the day. The initiates, sensitized by their fast and prepared by preceding ceremonies (see set and setting), may have been propelled by the effects of a powerful psychoactive potion into revelatory mind states with profound spiritual and intellectual ramifications. It is probable that the goddess Demeter brought the poppy with her from Creta to Eleusis and it is certain that opium was produced from poppies in Creta.

While modern scholars have presented evidence supporting their view that a potion was drunk as part of the ceremony, the exact composition of that agent remains controversial. Modern preparations of kykeon using ergot-parasitized barley have yielded inconclusive results, although Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin describe both ergonovine and LSA to be known to produce LSD-like effects. Terence McKenna speculated that the mysteries were focused around a variety of Psilocybe mushrooms. Various other entheogenic plants, such as Amanita muscaria mushrooms, have also been suggested, but at present no consensus has been reached. The size of the event may rule out Amanita or Psilocybe mushrooms as active ingredient, since it is unlikely that there would have been enough wild mushrooms for all participants. However a recent hypothesis suggests that Psilocybe cultivation technology was known in ancient Egypt, from which it could easily have spread to Greece.

Another theory is that the kykeon was an Ayahuasca analog involving Syrian Rue (Peganum harmala), a shrub which grows throughout the Mediterranean and also functions as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. The most likely candidate for the DMT containing plant, of which there are many in nature, would be species of Phalaris and/or Acacia. Other scholars however, noting the lack of any solid evidence and stressing the collective rather than individual character of initiation into the Mysteries, regard entheogenic theories with pointed skepticism. There is little beyond tenuous circumstantial evidence to support the theory; indeed, the few facts that led to the theory's formation in the first place are then invoked as supporting evidence, a form of circular reasoning; the scientific method requires that confirming evidence, beyond the observations used to form the hypothesis, be supplied before granting its veracity. While this may be true, the Mysteries are generally accepted to be associated with the consumption of some substance(s), possibly as a beverage, that induced visions and a feeling of oneness with at least mankind, if not the universe. This made the event particularly reliable, necessarily secret, in addition to special and certainly subject to strict sanctions if the secrecy were violated.

Use of potions or philtres for magical or religious purposes was relatively common in Greece and the ancient world. This would seem to argue against an entheogenic ceremony at Eleusis being so closely guarded a secret.

Indirect evidence in support of the entheogenic theory is that in 415 BC Athenian aristocrat Alcibiades was condemned partly because he took part in an "Eleusinian mystery" in a private house.

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