PLANT SPIRIT MEDICINE
Experts Weigh in on the Health Benefits of Mind-Altering Plants
By Geoff Olson
Common Ground (Canada)

1 August 2011

Plants don't do much compared to animals. They're sedentary sorts, even
with time-lapse photography. We're talking about vegetative, botanical
bores. Right?

Wrong, according to Dennis McKenna, who argues against the standard take
on plants. The droll ethnopharmacologist is struggling with an
uncooperative Powerbook as he launches into a presentation at UBC on the
co-evolution of humans and plants. The genetic destinies of these two
kingdoms have been tied together for tens of thousands of years, he
argues. He notes that plants are "virtuoso chemists that use messenger
molecules as territorial signals, speaking to fungi, insects, and
herbivores. They eat light and spin out all this chemistry: the
secondary compounds... that we humans value as medicines as
flavourings, as dyes as perfumes, as cosmetics and all the kind of
things that make our life richer and sensorily more interesting."

McKenna believes western culture needs a rethink of its attitudes toward
plant life in general, and psychotropic plants in particular. He spoke
at the "Spirit Plant Medicine" conference held recently at UBC. The
conference organizers, Ashley Rose and Andrew Rezmer of Conscious Living
Radio, brought together a diverse range of speakers, including policy
analysts, ethnobotanists, filmmakers, psychologists, therapists and
artists. The theme of the conference was the healing properties and
potential of what are known in traditional cultures as "sacred" plants.

Our most effective drugs, those that have outlasted colonial empires and
the life spans of patents, did not originate as the intellectual
property of pharmaceutical companies. They were the plant-based
medicines of indigenous healers from across the world. ( Quinine is
used to treat malaria. Rattlebox is used to treat skin cancer. Henbane
is used as a sedative. Autumn Crocus treats gout. Mayapple is an
anti-tumour agent. Willow gives us aspirin, etc. ) Among the most
important plants in the indigenous pharmacopeia, and the most
problematic for industrialized nations, are those species that alter
human consciousness.

Plant-human co-evolution extends back into the mists of prehistory,
along with the human impulse to seek out psychoactive substances. In
fact, scientists have determined that a wide range of animals regularly
seek out mood-altering plants. Whether it's a group of elks seeking out
a late-season outcrop of fermented berries, bighorn sheep nibbling on a
narcotic species of lichen or commuters lining up for their morning
Starbucks fix, there appears to be a cross-species drive for
self-medication on this planet.

In 1956, Humphry Osmond, a British doctor working at a Saskatchewan
hospital, coined the term "psychedelic" from the Greek roots for "mind
revealing." The term refers to a broad range of substances that include
peyote, LSD, and psilocybin, the primary active ingredient in so-called
magic mushrooms. Mark Haden, who currently works in Addiction Services
at Vancouver Coastal Health, spoke at the conference on the recent
medical research on psychedelics, which unlike opiates and amphetamines,
are nonaddictive. Psilocybin, LSD and MDMA all show promise in treating
various health conditions. Among these are cancer-related anxiety,
posttraumatic stress disorder, migraine and cluster headaches and
obsessive-compulsive disorder. One of the most promising substances for
treating drug addictions is ibogaine, derived from an African shrub-root
alkaloid. After an eight to 20-hour dreamlike trip, proponents of
ibogaine say, the subject emerges with new insight into his b! ehaviour
patterns and a greatly diminished desire for a fix.

In 2006, Donald MacPherson, then Drug Policy Co-coordinator for the city
of Vancouver, co-authored a report that put ayahuasca and peyote in the
category of "benefit," based on their medicinal use by aboriginal
cultures and on clinical studies by researchers.

The story of ayahuasca, a non-addictive hallucinogenic tea from the
Amazon, tells of the promise and perils of "sacred plants" in the
post-industrial world. Indigenous people traditionally employ
ayahuasca, also known as yage, in healing ceremonies. It is not what
you would call a recreational drug. The foul-tasting brew, made from
cooking up two, synergistically-acting plants, induces vomiting and
excretion as a preface to its psychedelic effects. According to reports
from experiencers, the visions can range from punishing to sublime. The
sensations can range from cosmic insignificance to an ecstatic
connection with the living world. Personal issues and private traumas
may become transparent. Anthropologist Jeremy Narby, who spoke via
Skype at the conference, claims scientists who have used the substance
have experienced sudden, remarkable insights into long-standing research
problems.

In spite of the high somatic entrance fee - it's also know indigenously
as La Purga - this "harsh teacher" is now a big deal for tourists of the
psyche. Travellers from across the world arrive in the Amazon area
looking for medicine men, or curanderos, to whack open their unconscious
minds like prize-filled pinatas. Journalists from glossy publications
fly down on the company dime to blow their minds through an archaic
biotechnology of the soul and try to describe the indescribable. ( The
domestic use of ayahuasca is currently in something of a legal limbo in
Canada. )

Harvard University ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes first identified
ayahuasca's active ingredients in the early 1950's. Although the
jungle-trekking professor had no time for the hippies and beatniks that
retraced his steps, he introduced a thrill-seeking beat writer William
Burroughs to the potion. In 1953, Burroughs arrived in Bogota and wrote
back to his poet friend Allen Ginsberg about the terrifying visions
produced by a hideous-tasting concoction the locals called yage.
Ginsberg, enticed into the jungle and a yage ceremony some years later,
wrote Burroughs back about own experiences, which included sensing a
being that "was like some great void, surrounded by all creation -
particularly coloured snakes." ( Snakes are rumoured to be dependable
visitors in ayahuasca visions. )

Burroughs and Ginsberg's correspondence, documented in The Yage Letters
( published in 1963 ), lit up some minor interest in the cultural
fringe, but the plant concoction got its biggest boost with the
Amazonian travelogues of the McKenna brothers. In the mid-seventies,
Terence and his younger brother Dennis set off into the rainforest to
investigate the Gaian "Overmind," preserving their hallucinogenic
explorations in the arcane but entertaining texts The Invisible
Landscape and True Hallucinations.

The situation today can be rather disappointing for some travellers
seeking a 'genuine' shamanic experience with ayahuasca. Ethnobotanist
Kat Harrison spoke at the UBC conference on how "lucky kids" from the
rich First World arrive into "an economy of scarcity," looking for all
the "wonderful things" that the indigenous people are surely eager to
share. Naive travellers looking to turn the inside of their skulls into
IMAX screens might as well be hitting the tarmac with bull's-eyes on
their backs, however. Harrison paints a picture of the mindset at work:
young explorers "sitting outside a gringo cafe" are chanced on by a
local claiming to be a "medicine man" and isn't it just marvellous that
the universe had their paths cross? "That's the level of discernment I'm
talking about," she says.

In Quito, one of the hotspots of ayahuasca tourism, "zombie kids" can be
seen drifting around town, Harrison says. These are young tourists who
have been psychologically bruised by quickie ceremonies with bad
concoctions. These train wrecks are partly the unfortunate outcome of
misunderstanding across cultures, Harrison adds. Excessive demand from
tourists is eliminating the plants that go into the ayahuasca brew from
the Amazon basin. A peasant farmer with a hungry family to feed, who
has hung out a shingle as a curandero, figures the white rich kids just
want to obliterate their senses - so he finds the next best thing.
Another speaker suggests some of these zombie kids may have been sold
scopolamine, a potent tranquilizer; several others at the conference
attested to sightings of "zombie kids" in Quito.

Dr. Gabor Mate ran a popular family practice in East Vancouver for two
decades and once served as Medical Coordinator of the Palliative Care
Unit at Vancouver Hospital. He shook his head as he shared a rumour
about an ayahuasca gathering in the Gulf Islands. Up to 120 people at a
time were left to plumb their own miseries and ecstasies, with a jukebox
playing and an absent organizer, he learned. "It's a money making
proposition, there's no context there and it's dangerous."

Probably the last thing Mate and other conference speakers want to see
is another moral panic over yet another drug, especially one with so
much therapeutic potential. In the psychedelic parlance, 'set and
setting' are all important - frame of mind and surroundings. In
aboriginal cultures, ceremony and ritual provide context, ensuring a
supportive context for psychic navigation of a strong medicine. In
Brazil, ayahuasca is the sacrament of a legally recognized synchretic
practice, Santo Daime. ( In 2005, the US Supreme Court approved the
ceremonial use of ayahuasca on US soil by an offshoot of the Santo
Daime, the Uniao do Vegetal. )

Given the wild west nature of some psychedelic tourism, the speakers
were in agreement of a pressing need for agreed-upon standards of use of
traditional medicinal plants in North America. Therapists,
psychologists and health professionals working with these substances
must offer full disclosure to clients and seek informed consent. ( The
agreement with clients of Iboga Therapy House, a privately funded
healing retreat on BC's Sunshine Coast, runs to 32 pages, says program
director Sandra Karpetas. )

Artists, musicians and writers have long known of the creative potential
of certain non-addictive substances, as have many computer programmers
and scientists. The Nobel Prize-wining biochemist Kary Mullis has
claimed he came up with the idea for the "polymerase chain reaction," a
scientifically revolutionary technique for copying fragments of DNA,
while under the influence of LSD. Spiritual experiences are also not
uncommon. And there is growing evidence that psychedelics are useful in
addressing hard-to-treat disorders, particularly alcoholism and drug
addiction. Yet these substances, many of them still illegal outside of
medical research circles, can also precipitate psychopathology in users
predisposed to psychosis - especially if they are used with no regard to
set and setting, or dosage. The best analogy for psychedelics is the
family car - it can be used as a tool to transport you safely from one
place to another, or as a joy-riding, four-wheeled weap! on.

Mate argues for the health benefits of ayahuasca and ibogaine, when they
are used with caution and respect for their power. "All illness, from
my perspective...all this represents a story, a narrative that a person
constructs very early in life. And the way they live brings them into
illness or into addiction," he observes. "What is at the core is the
connection to everything. The sacred is about getting beyond the
personality, getting the to point of authenticity beyond the conditioned
self. That is what the spiritual traditions boil down, as far as I
understand them."

Dennis McKenna believes the medical establishment's separation of health
and spirituality is arbitrary and that they are two sides of the same
existential coin. He points to a 2006 study by Roland Griffiths of John
Hopkins University on psilocybin-induced mystical experiences. More
than 60 percent of the subjects described effects that were
indistinguishable from a "full mystical experience" as measured by
established psychological parameters. One third said it was the single
most spiritually significant experience of their life and more than
two-thirds ranked it among their five most meaningful and spiritually
significant experiences. According to Griffiths, the subjects compared
it in importance to the birth of their first child or the death of a
parent. "These were not druggies," Mckenna observes. "These were
people who had never taken psychedelics. They had no particular
interest in that, but they were interested in spirituality."

"Wouldn't you think Pfizer would be interested in a drug like that?"
McKenna asked rhetorically. Perhaps not. The psychedelic experience is
simply too mercurial for corporate legal departments to endorse as
another lifestyle drug. It's all good fun grokking the invisible
landscape, until the snakes arrive. If marketers want to see consumers
blissed-out on some Huxleyan "soma," it probably won't be derived from
dreamworld roto-rooters like psilocybin or ayahuasca.

McKenna adds that the spiritual dimension of psychedelics ( or
"entheogens" as they are commonly called in this context ) is not
mutually exclusive with a scientific view of the world. "It's misguided
for anyone to try to become indigenous, unless they already are. We're
not going to become Amazonian shamans; we can learn from their
practices, and adapt them to our own post electronic twenty-first
century environment. The important thing is that there is a context."

On the one side, you have the remarkable biochemical properties of
certain plants. On the other side, you have the vast, uncharted
territory of the human psyche. In between is the visionary realm
conjured up by the overlap of these two worlds. Dr. Gabor Mate told of
a conversation with a client with ALS, a terminal illness. "After his
first ayahuasca trip, he said, 'I came here to save my life. I
understand now that saving my life doesn't necessarily mean living
longer; it means living while I'm alive.' That meant he got beyond the
conditioned personality."

Mate has worked with people on the margins of society - the drinkers,
the drug-addicted, the disturbed and discarded. Many of these people
have constructed personal narratives with unhappy endings. With
intention, there is always an opportunity to edit the text - and
depending on the person, traditional plant medicine can aid the process,
Mate observes."There is nothing more beautiful to see than someone who
comes to realize how beautiful they are inside," the doctor adds.

By the time the conference wound down, I had a writing pad full of
exclamation marks and underlined quotes. I was impressed by the
speakers' combination of conviction and caution. I was moved by the
words of Chenoa Egawa of the Native American Church, who spoke with
great eloquence on how her people's medicine gave her a voice. One of
the common reports from entheogenic experiences involves a momentary
sense of deep connection to the living world. This experience may
persist in memory as a profound truth. This is the ultimate irony: that
ingesting plants and fungi sometimes facilitates an attitude of respect
and reverence for the biosphere, the matrix of botanical life. We'd do
well to remember that, in terms of plant-human co-evolution, the
hairless primate is the junior partner. And the story is far from over.

Plants are boring? Not on your life.
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