Hallucinogens
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Smokey Shaman
A Peruvian shaman, a type of healer who combines botanical knowledge and spiritual beliefs, leads an Ayahuasca ceremony. Ayahausca, which means “vine of the soul,” is a concoction of various plants—as many as 100 different species--that Peruvians have been boiling to create a brew that they believe has healing properties. The main chemical ingredient of ayahausca is dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a substance with hallucinogenic properties that is a controlled substance in the U.S. But the other ingredients of the brew facilitate the hallucinogen’s circulation through the body, producing the transcendental state that those who ingest ayahausca experience.
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Ceremonial Shaman
In order to prepare the psychedelic brew known as Ayahausca, apprentice shamans spend years under the tutelage of an elder healer. They study in detail the different ingredients—as many as 100—that go into the mixture, and learn about both their healing properties and the spirits believed to govern their effects. Shamans say that the spirits teach them icaros, or spirit songs, which are sung or whistled during the ceremony to call up various plants’ assistance. Shamans must understand how to choose various plant ingredients and how much of each to include in the brew, in order to produce the most successful healing for each person who participates in the ceremony.
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Growing Magic
Psilocybin mushrooms—“magic mushrooms” or “shrooms” in the parlance of psychedelic drug culture—are fungi that contain the consciousness-altering compounds psilocybin and psilocin. There are nearly 200 different species of the mushrooms, most of them in the genus Psilocybe, that are found in various parts of the world. The use of psilocybin in the western hemisphere dates back to prior to the arrival of the first Europeans. In Mexico, the Aztec emperor Montezuma held an annual event called the “feast of the revelations” at which guests ate the hallucinogenic plants. The Spanish conquerors of Mexico in the 1500s tried to wipe out rituals involving mushroom use, on the pretext that they were satanic, but the persisted in secret until modern times.
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Psychoactive Stew
Peruvians cook up a batch of ayahuasca. In the 1990s, Dr. Charles Grob , a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCLA school of medicine, became the first researcher to conduct an in-depth study on the effects of the brew on humans. In Brazil, where the ayahausca can be used legally, he compared members of a native church who use the brew as a sacrament, and found that they had been cured of various disorders, including addictions and depression, after ingesting it. Grob discovered that ayahausca seems to increase users’ sensitivity to serotonin, a mood-altering chemical produced in the brain, by increasing the number of serotonin receptors on nerve cells. He found that unlike pharmaceutical antidepressants, the brew didn’t stimulate excessive serotonin production, but instead worked by enhancing the body’s ability to utilize existing amounts of serotonin.
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Sunset Over Peru
Peruvian landscape with the sun fading in the distance. A 2010 Washington Post article reported that ayahuasca “is becoming an elixir for foreigners grappling with everything from depression to childhood trauma.” In Iquitos, a city in northeastern Peru, tour operators say that the potion and the ceremonies in which it is consumed have become an important attraction for tourists. Charles Grob, a UCLA psychiatry and pediatrics professor who was among the first to investigate ayahuasca’s properties, believes that the substance “holds great potential for helping us to further understand the mind.”
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Rainbow Skies
A neighborhood Texan sunset. According to Susan and Van Metzler’s book Texas Mushrooms: A Field Guide, the hallucinogenic “magic mushroom” Psilocybe cubensis grows wild in Texas, and is commonly found in pastures across the state following periods of cool, rainy weather. Like many other things in Texas, the magic mushroom can grow to a large size, with a cap that can be as much as three to five inches across. An adult who consumes three mushroom caps usually will begin to experience hallucinations after less than an hour, with the “trip” lasting three to four hours or more. Allergic reactions to the mushroom are common, and it can be fatal in some cases. Additionally, combining the mushroom with other drugs and/or alcohol can raise its toxicity.
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Psychedelic Pills
Capsules of ground “magic mushrooms.” According to Paul Stamets’ 1996 book Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World, the most commonly cultivated psilocybin mushroom in the world is Psilocybe cubensis, a moderately potent hallucinogen that grows throughout the southeastern U.S., Mexico, Cuba, Central and northern South America, southeast Asia, and parts of Australia. In the wild, mushrooms typically grow on ground covered with manure from cattle, horses, elephants, and other animals. But growers have used genetics to breed their own versions that can be as much as 10 times as potent as the mildest wild versions of the plant.
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A Mess of Mushrooms
Dried out “magic mushrooms.” According to Paul Stamets’ 1996 book “Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World,” only about 100 of the 30,000 mushroom species in the world are “active,” meaning that they contain mind-altering substances such as psilocybin, psilocin, baeocystin, or nor-baeocystin. About 80 of those species belong to the genus Psilocybe, with the remainder found in Panaeolus, Pluteus, Gymnopilis, Conocybe, Inocybe, and a few other species. Stamets cautions mushroom pickers that while psilocyin mushrooms in the genera Psilocybe and Panaeolus are fairly simple to identify, some of the magic mushrooms from other genera can be confused with species that will injure or even kill someone who ingests them.
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Overcoming Trauma
Kim, went to take part in Ayahuasca ceremony to overcome personal trauma. In an article for National Geographic magazine, writer Kira Salak notes that drinking of ayahausca has been linked to a long list of documented cures, including the disappearance of everything from metastasized colorectal cancer to cocaine addiction. According to Salak, the brew is not addictive, and is safe to ingest. Nevertheless, she notes, western scientists have mostly ignored ayahuasca, perhaps because they are reluctant to risk their careers by researching a folk medicine that contains DMT, a substance outlawed in the U.S. Only in the past decade have a handful of researchers begun to investigate the Peruvian brew’s properties and possible value.
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Measuring Mushrooms
A scale weighs out Magic Mushrooms. The effects of ingesting hallucinogens can be unpredictable, and sometimes result in tragedy. The Athens News recently reported , for example, on the case of an Ohio University student who ingested psilocybin and then either fell or jumped from an upper-story dormitory window to his death. Another student who provided him with the hallucinogen pled guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges, and was sentenced to spend 90 days in jail. "Your honor, I'm sorry for everything that ever happened, that's all,” he told the judge at his sentencing. The prosecutor in the case told the News that there was evidence that the hallucinogenic substance had caused the dead student to go to the window.
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Glowing Golden Gate
The Golden Gate Bridge glimmering in the setting sunlight. San Francisco, traditionally a city of free-thinkers, iconoclasts and experimenters, figures prominently in the history of psychedelic drugs in America. In the 1960s, hordes of young sensation-seeking hippies flocked to the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, where they lived in communal households and attended psychedelic rock concerts at clubs such as the Fillmore. LSD and other psychedelic drugs were an integral part of the scene, and some of the songs produced by the city’s rock bands—the Jefferson Airplane’s hit “White Rabbit,” for example—were either about hallucinogenic experiences or were strongly influenced by them.
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Dose of LSD
A man opens a container holding pharmaceutical grade LSD. The late Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who inadvertently discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD in 1943 while investigating its effects on the circulatory system, was the first to experience the altered state of consciousness that the drug induces. Hofmann, who was the first to experiment with the drug while he worked for the pharmaceutical firm Sandoz, found tripping to sufficiently frightening that he decided that LSD should be taken only under carefully controlled circumstances. He recruited the German novelist Ernst Junger to join him in taking 0.05 milligrams of pure LSD at Hofmann’s home in 1951, with Mozart playing on the record player and a stick of Japanese incense and roses to provide additional sensory stimulation.
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Ayahuasca Therapy
An ayahuasca therapy ritual in Peru. According to a 2010 Washington Post article, the experience of ingesting the brew and experiencing its effects can be physically exhausting, but those who’ve used it often say that the potion provides an almost divine, transformative experience, and that by the end of the ceremony, they experience intense joy. “There is no way somebody would take ayahuasca as a recreational drug and then go out and party,” an Australian who works at one of the city’s therapy centers explained. “You just don’t take it to have fun.”
