A perennial debate is whether marijuana might have featured in the incense in Jerusalem. Some tentative evidence suggests maybe not:
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL—According to a Science News report, researchers led by Eran Arie of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and Dvory Namdar of the Volcani Center of Agricultural Research analyzed residues on two altars placed at the entrance to a shrine discovered in the 1960s at southern Israel’s site of Tel Arad. Part of a fortress guarding the kingdom of Judah’s southern border, the shrine is thought to have been in use between 760 and 715 B.C. and is now on display in the Israel Museum. The analysis detected frankincense mixed with animal fats on one of the altars. The scientists suggest the animal fat would have allowed the fire to burn hot enough to release the resin’s fragrance. Cannabis mixed with animal dung was detected on the other altar. The scientists explained that the animal dung allowed the cannabis to be burned at a lower temperature. They also determined that the amount of the psychoactive compound THC in the sample was enough to have induced an altered state of consciousness. “[C]annabis is completely new for understanding incense burning in this region, and in Judah in particular,” Arie said. Archaeobotanist Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History added that the plants may have been imported from the East along early Silk Trade routes. source: https://archaeology.org/news/2020/05/29/200601-israel-altar-cannabis/
The frankincense and fat makes sense. The altar with the dung and Cannabis, though, does not make any sense as any altar where animal dung was commingled and placed as an offering would have been considered unclean at best and sacrilege at worst. Still, it is possible the substance was used along with frankincense without the dung, but the evidence for that is not something found in this specific article. Probably, the presence of YHVH was a sufficient high, and one did not need to “add to it” for psychedelic purposes. Those that pursue psychedelics in search of the kingdom, however, often find themselves not in it as the next substance experience becomes the focus instead of YHVH.
Arad means, incidentally, a wild ass or dragon/fugitive. There is a high chance some less than holy practices cropped up here.