It wasn't long before he realized that he had stumbled onto a psychoactive drug of immense power at very low dosages. A business trip at Sandoz took on a whole new meaning. They also pledged never to reveal the nature of the experiences they had during the Greater Mysteries. Then they would break the fast by drinking kykeon, a sacred potion colored purple and made of meal, water, and mint, and they would begin their journey into the unknown. Most honored their pledge of secrecy, and there are few reliable accounts of what happened once initiates left the larger crowd.
Most stories recount great terrors that caused shuddering, sweating, and fear.
One poet claimed that he had seen the beginning and ending of life. He learned that the whole process was in the form of a circle starting and ending in the same place and given by God. We'll never know for sure, but R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and others have suggested that ergot alkaloids were likely to have been important contributors to the terrors, hallucinations, tremors, and sweats that continually reappear in descriptions from Eleusis. The fact that kykeon was purple and that water with ergot sclerotia immersed in it turns purple was the first clue. In addition, kykeon apparently had intoxicating properties that far exceeded traditional wine.