Plant Medicines, Healing and Psychedelic Science

2. Peyote's Race Problem

Alexander DawsonIn the years since peyote became a controlled substance in Mexico and the US, a steady stream of advocates and activists have laid claim to two types of exemption, rooted in both US Law (the First Amendment) and International Law (the 1971 Vienna Convention on Psychotropic Drugs). Indigenous peyotists, in particular, have been largely successful in making a claim to a legal right to be exempt from national prohibitions on peyote possession and consumption. This has represented a significant advance in indigenous rights; yet, in both contexts it has had the unpleasant effect of signaling that a drug that is otherwise so dangerous as to be prohibited should be permitted for Indians, because they are somehow essentially different from all other citizens. This, then, is Peyote's Race Problem. The ways in which we have created a legal framework that makes peyote use licit among indigenous peoples has hardened a certain notion of profound, an unalterable difference to the point that Indian bodies are said to be incommensurably different from the bodies of others who might desire to consume peyote, but for whom it is deemed too dangerous. This presentation seeks a way out of that dilemma by asking two questions. The first is, How is it that peyote became an Indian thing? The second asks, What would the story of peyote look like if we included the long history of non-indigenous peyote use in the narrative? As for the former, in seeking to answer this question, we are confronted with a long history in which colonial and modern states have actively policed peyote, repeatedly relegating it to the realm of indigeneity even when it seemed likely to escape. And, with the latter, we see a history of people silenced, erased, and made invisible because their own experiences do not fit within systems that seek to different Indian bodies (mystical, out of control, impulsive, primitive) from European bodies (rational, ordered, disciplined).

3. Undiscovering the Pueblo Mágico: Lessons from Huautla for the Psychedelic Renaissance

Ben Feinberg

While the physiological effects of the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms are probably consistent across individuals in different cultural and historical settings, the ways in which they are perceived to work, the contexts in which they are taken, the problems they are perceived to address, and the degree to which their efficacy is assessed are all discursively constructed in ways that are fluid and contested, and may vary greatly. The town of Huautla de Jimenez, in the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico, is well known as a space where the use of mushrooms is culturally elaborated, and foreign and urban visitors have come to the area to use them since the 1950s, producing an often-imbalanced cross-cultural dialogue about their effects. In this presentation, I provide a brief overview, based on 25 years of ethnographic research, of the different expectations of visitors and Mazatec-speakers, and the changes in Mazatec discourse about mushroom use. I suggest that the Western discourse about the "therapeutic value" of mushroom use, with its focus on individual wellness, often assumes a universality that erases context and the ways in which Mazatec-speakers understand the value of the "child saints." At the same time, these differences do not forestall the possibility of productive engagement and collaborative research between Mazatec-speakers and outsiders.

4. The Use of Salvia divinorum from a Mazatec Perspective

Ana Elda Maqueda

Salvia divinorum is a medicinal and psychoactive plant endemic to the Mazatec Sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico. The Mazatec people have been using the leaves for centuries in ceremonies as a treatment for arthritis and inflammation, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, and addiction to cocaine, alcohol and inhalants, among others uses. Recent pharmacological findings support these different applications. The active principle of salvia, the terpene salvinorin-A, is a uniquely potent and highly selective kappa-opioid receptor agonist, and, as such, it has tremendous potential for the development of a wide variety of valuable medications. Among them, the most promising include safe non-addictive analgesics, antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, neuroprotectors, short-acting anesthetics that do not depress respiration, medications for the treatment of addiction to stimulants and alcohol, drugs to treat disorders characterized by alterations in perception, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and bipolar disorder, and drugs to treat diverse types of tumors. The Mazatec consider salvia to be a very powerful plant-being that should be treated with utmost respect, and the preparation for the ceremony requires a strict regimen. The Mazatec chew the fresh leaves at night while chanting and praying. In the Western use of salvia, the dry leaves are potentiated in extracts to be smoked. A lack of information about the appropriate doses and other considerations while smoking the extracts could result in overwhelming experiences due to the high potency and fast onset of the substance. For the Mazatec, smoking the plant is not the preferred mode. How could we create a bridge between the two perspectives? Besides salvinorin-A, at least 10 other compounds are present in the leaves. Is it a good idea to use only one of them, or are we missing something in the Western use? In this chapter, I will try to clarify the best ways to use salvia for medicinal, psychotherapeutic, and inner exploration purposes.

5. Examining the Therapeutic Potential of Kratom within the American Drug Regulatory System

O. Hayden Griffin, III

Kratom is one of many traditional drugs that has recently gained attention in the West. Kratom comes from the Korth tree (Mitragynine speciosa), a plant native to Africa and Southeast Asia, but most commonly found in Thailand and Malaysia. While the first scientific reference to the plant occurred in 1836, people indigenous to Southeast Asia have used kratom for at least hundreds of years. Kratom leaves contain over twenty alkaloids. Two of these alkaloids, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), contain psychoactive properties. However, one of the things that makes kratom so interesting is that mitragynine has stimulant properties, while 7-OH has narcotic properties. Such divergent effects within a plant are rare. Within Southeast Asia, traditional kratom use includes the treatment of malaria, cough, hypertension, diarrhea, depression, analgesia, fever, and even as an opiate substance or to help patients through opiate withdrawal. The diversity of medical utility of kratom has not only led to medical research of the plant in the United States, but many Americans have begun to use it as well for a variety of medicinal and recreational purposes. To date, the complete medical utility of kratom has yet to be realized. So far, few individual states have regulated kratom, but the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has expressed some intent to do so.

6. Bubbling with Controversy: Legal Challenges for Ceremonial Ayahuasca Circles in the U.S.A.J. Hamilton Hudson and Beatriz C. Labate

The use of ayahuasca has been spreading rapidly worldwide. There are no current statistics that allow a global understanding of the numbers involved in the expansion. In the US, part of the trend has been the emergence of certain groups and organizations who publicly announce their ayahuasca ceremonies and retreats as legal. This chapter maps the existence of a series of branches and actors controversially identifying as "Native American Churches," such as the Oklevueha Native American Church (ONAC), Soul Quest, and Ayahuasca Healings and explore the public controversies surrounding them. Then it will review the legality of these churches, looking at the pertinent cases and governing law, such as the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), abd the cases of the UDV and Santo Daime: Gonzales v. O Centro Beneficiente União do Vegetal (2006), and Church of the Holy Light of the Queen v. Holder (2011), and the petition for an exemption from prosecution. Finally, it will examine the petition for an exemption from Ayahuasca Healings. This chapter provides the reader with two things, an ethnography of ayahuasca churches in the United States and a roadmap of their routes towards salvation in the law.

7. Integrating Plant Medicines and Psychiatry: Theory and Methods of a Model Clinic

Jordan SloshowerOver the past two decades, scientific evidence of the safety and therapeutic potential of plant medicines, such as ayahuasca and psilocybin, has grown significantly to the point where their eventual rescheduling and incorporation into formal psychiatric practice seems increasingly likely. However, this integration could unfold in a multitude of ways, reflecting differences in neurobiological, psychological, spiritual, indigenous, and other ontological understandings of what these substances are and how they exert their therapeutic effects. Attempts to reconcile divergent explanatory lenses and therapeutic approaches will present significant challenges to psychiatric theory and praxis as well as unique opportunities to develop new efficacious treatments, advance scientific knowledge, and promote justice and human rights. In order to achieve these objectives, a model research clinic would treat patients with plant medicines and complementary treatment modalities in a manner that a) respects and incorporates principles and practices from different traditions and paradigms, and b) fosters knowledge generation and transfer across paradigms. Such "critical paradigm integration" would employ interdisciplinary collaboration and reflexive critique in conjunction with contemporary scientific methodologies to unify various ways of understanding plant medicines and other integrative modalities, such as yoga, meditation, and sound therapy, and begin to elucidate best practices for treating various conditions. The resulting clinic would have the capacity to tailor treatments to individual patient needs and learn how variables related to the treatments themselves (dose, preparation, frequency) and to set and setting (use of psychotherapy, music, nature exposure, diet, and group or ceremonial ingestion) affect subjective experience and outcomes.

8. Whole Organisms or Pure Compounds? Entourage Effect Versus Drug Specificity

Sidarta RibeiroAs the therapeutic use of sacred plants and fungi becomes increasingly accepted by Western medicine, a tug of war has been taking place between those who advocate the traditional consumption of whole organisms, and those who defend exclusively the utilization of purified compounds. The attempt to reduce organisms to single active principles is challenged by the sheer complexity of traditional medicine. Ayahuasca, for example, is a concoction of at least two plant species containing multiple psychoactive substances with complex interactions. Similarly, cannabis contains dozens of psychoactive substances whose specific combinations in different strains correspond to different types of therapeutic and cognitive effects. The "entourage effect," a term coined in 1998 by Ben-Shabat and Mechoulam, refers to the synergistic effects of the multiple compounds present in whole organisms, which may potentiate clinical efficacy while attenuating side effects. In opposition to this view, mainstream pharmacology is adamant about the need to use purified substances, presumably more specific and safe. In this talk, I will review the evidence on both sides to discuss the scientific, economic, and political implications of this controversy.
9. Placebo Problems: Boundary Work in the Psychedelic Science Renaissance

Katherine Hendy

The re-vitalization of clinical trials with psychedelics has produced an exciting new array of studies investigating different combinations of therapeutic substances and diagnoses. Beyond the important bureaucratic negotiations that have taken place to gain approval for these studies, this new wave of studies is also negotiating a new methodological landscape of clinical research. When researchers Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer were studying the use of hallucinogens in Saskatchewan in the 1950's, their research was published as case studies. Today, placebo-controlled randomized studies are now the standard for research with psychopharmaceuticals. Because psychedelic therapy seeks to induce a radical change in consciousness-to make a subject feel different from her everyday self-blinding these studies has emerged as a methodological sticking point. However, this paper argues, that it is also a rich site for interrogating the paradoxes of placebo effects more generally. Anthropology has generally engaged with the placebo as inert: either as an example of the power of symbolic healing within Western medicine, or as the ethically fraught territory of non-treatment. In contrast, this paper frames placebos as anything but inert; they are heavily charged with efficacy within the logic of the clinical trial. Drawing upon ethnographic research with clinical researchers from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and the history of the use of placebos in medicine and in research, this paper will explore how contemporary studies are negotiating the placebo paradox.

10. Psychedelic Naturalism and Interspecies Alliance: Views From the Emerging Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Mycology Movement

Joanna SteinhardtRadical (or do-it-yourself, a.k.a. DIY) mycology is a movement that has emerged in the last decade in North America, concentrated in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. Radical mycologists specialize in easy and accessible methods of mushroom cultivation and mycological experimentation. They draw primarily on home cultivation methods innovated by Psilocybe cultivators in the 1970s and on creative applications popularized by commercial mycologist and psychedelic enthusiast Paul Stamets in the 2000s. In loosely organized volunteer-run groups, they promote a citizen science approach, including informal education and grassroots ecological restoration practices (e.g., myco-remediation). Though their agenda is broad, their engagement with psilocybin-active species is one underlying commonality. Paraphrasing Stamets, for many, Psilocybe cubensis was their "gateway mushroom." As a counterpoint to the newfound visibility and legitimacy of psilocybin, radical mycology attests to the significant permeation of psychedelia into North American countercultures in the last half-century and its influence on ideas about science, technology, and nonhuman life. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest, this chapter describes how this movement builds on the mycological and technical know-how of Psilocybe cultivation. Shaped by the constraints of criminalization, the unique morphology of fungi, and a countercultural ethos, this emergent human-fungal relationship eludes modern categories (e.g., wild/domesticated, subject/object). It is best understood as an entanglement of interspecies trajectories as these treasured fungi co-evolve into our homes, labs, gardens, and public parks.

11. Plant Knowledges: Indigenous Approaches and Interspecies Listening Toward Decolonizing Ayahuasca Research

Laura Dev



When producing knowledge about ayahuasca and other medicinal plants, it can be important to assess what the role of plants themselves are in our practices, and how we interact with plant agencies. This chapter explores the epistemological assumptions that are required for different types of knowledge-making practices, and how these practices create different types of relationships between knower and known. Scientific practices, classically, rely on a subject-object relationship between researcher and researched; but, is this a necessary condition for science? Among Shipibo healers, learning is one of the main reasons to drink ayahuasca. Accordingly, ayahuasca is not only useful for revealing diagnoses of illnesses and the proper way to heal them, but it also can facilitate communication with other plants, which in turn generate learning about botanical knowledge. Plant "dietas" are the primary practice by which Shipibo healers produce botanical knowledge, in which plants are seen as teachers and active co-participants in the production of knowledge. I examine the entanglements and tensions that exist among various knowledge-making practices, and discuss how these relationships can determine the types of knowledge that can be produced. I take a multispecies perspective to investigate how plants and humans both contribute to producing botanical knowledge, and the dynamic relationships that are formed through these practices.

12.  Gnosis Potency: DMT Breakthroughs and Paragnosis

Graham St John



Known to produce out-of-body states and profound changes in sensory perception, mood, and thought, DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) is a potent, short-lasting tryptamine that has experienced growing appeal in the last decade, independent of ayahuasca, the Amazonian visionary brew in which it is an integral ingredient. Investigating user reports available online and from other sources, this paper focuses on the "breakthrough" event commonly associated with the DMT trance. While different modalities of DMT use/experience-gnostic, therapeutic, and recreational-inform the breakthrough "event," I explore some of the commonalities: extraordinary transpersonal experience, perceived contact with "entities," and the transmission of visual language. Significantly, for a global networked community whose participants venerate DMT among a variety of entheogens, the breakthrough event enables reconnection with the natural world from which humanity is imagined to have grown alienated-a sensibility often revealed or affirmed through personal exposure to the liminal effects of DMT and other tryptamines. Examination of this "event" offers insight on the liminal ontology of tryptamines-an "entheoliminality" given primary expression in reported travels in "hyperspace," an ontological realm that appears to feature ritual-like modes of transmission. The paper concludes with an exploration of these modes in this transitional terrain.