Developments over the Last Twenty Years

Considerable interest in this psychoactive complex arose from the 1960s fascination with LSD, and reports that ordinarily would have been restricted to the technical literature received fairly wide circulation. Psyche- delic Review and The Psychedelic Reader, for instance, reprinted Richard Evans Schultes' efforts to straighten out confusion about yogi. After collecting plants and searching out rubber sources on the Amazon for over a dozen years, Schultes gave his acccount of yagt in lectures to the Gillege of Pharmacy at the University of Texas and in Harvard Botanical Museum Leaflets. Repub- lication in more popular periodicals, issued by Leary associates, spread the word aboutyage and its use for divinatory and prophetic purposes. Schultes reported that the effects upon natives of the upper Rio Negro of Brazil,

with whom I have taken caapi many times, is pleas ant, characterized amongst other strange effects by colored visual hallucinations. In excessive doses, u is said to bring on frighteningly nightmarish visions and a feeling of extremely reckless abandon, but consciousness is not lost nor is use of the limbs unduly affected.

Heinz Kusel wrote about "Ayahuasca Drinkers among the Chama Indians" in Psychedelic Review#6 (1965). Having spent seven years trading in the Upper Amazon region, he observed that "Indians and low-class mestizos alike visit the ayabuasquero... when they are ailing, or think they need a general check-up, or want to make an important decision, or simply because they feel like it." Kusel added that for a long while it "never crossed my mind to try the liana myself." Eventually, he drank the brew three times. The first two instances were disappointing. He was glad, though, that he persisted.

There were two very definite attractions; 1 enjoyed the unreality of a created world. The images were not casual, accidental or imperfect, but fully organized to the last detail of highly complex, consistent, yet forevet changing designs. They were harmonized in color and had a slick, sensuous, polished finish. The other attraction of which I was very conscious at the time was an inexplicable sensation of intimacy with the visions. They were mine and concerned only me. I remembered an Indian telling me that whenever he drank ayahuasca, he

had such beautiful visions that he used to put his hands over his eyes for feat somebody might steal them. I felt the same way.

In 1963, the first book having page" as a subject appeared; it undoubtedly increased interest in this brew made from a "vine of the soul." In the YAGE letters, the writers William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg related their search for and use of this "magic" drink. A few anthropologists criticized their descriptions as misleading, and many readers were interested in the book as literature. Nonetheless, it has drawn continuing attention to this psychedelic drink.

Among those fascinated by native use of psychoactive plants was Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo. Naranjo traveled into the Amazon because he "wanted to go where people ate people." Naranjo took along two contem- porary items: a polaroid camera and blotter paper, on which he had drawn stars, moon and sun to mark different dosages of LSD. When he met some natives, he conveyed the idea that he was a "medicine man" and distributed the blotters, inviting the natives to try the star-doses (those of lowest potency) while gazing at the night sky. Upon his return several days later, Naranjo learned that the natives liked his "medicine," considering it very powerful. In exchange, they gave him ayahuasca, which influenced his subsequent practice of psychotherapy. He described his using harmaline and harmine in

The Healing Journey (1967).

» Since then, a number of people interested in making scientific observa- tion's or hoping to have zyage' experience have traveled to South America in search of ayahuasqueros. "Sean" roamed around the Amazon basin in a boat called "The Visionary Vine." The brothers Dennis and Terence McKenna recounted an ayahuasca-psilocybe experience that lasted allegedly for a month in the jungle; their fascinating speculative volume, The Inner Land- scape, called attention toyage" while considering topics of mind-body inter- actions.

Bruce Lamb's Wizard of the Upper Amazon (1971) presented the romantic turn-of-the-century jungle story of Manuel Cdrdova-Rios, who became an ayahuasquero after being kidnapped at age fifteen by the Amahuaca Indians of Peru. This account details his use of Banisteriopsis in hunting, healing and telepathy—including group visions.

In 1972, Marlene Dobkin de Rios issued a study—The Visionary Vine— oi yagfs uses in folk healing in an urban setting in Peru. A professor of anthropology at California State College at Fullerton, de Rios observed that the supply of ayahaasca was becoming depleted in the jungles near Iquitos, site of her investigations, and that suppliers had to search much further for it. Although her fieldwork was done largely in a slum section of Iquitos, she saw ayahuasca being used throughout the region for religious and magic rituals (to receive a protective spirit or divine guidance from theplant spirit); for diagnosing and treating disease; for divination (to learn an enemy's plans, for instance, or to check on a spouse's fidelity); for "witchcraft" (to prevent harm caused by others' malice or to cause harm to others); and for pleasure.

AppearinK in 196.1. this City UKhts hook recounts William Burroughs' South American search for yage", which he hoped might be "the ultimate fix," and similar travels by Allen Ginsberg. Andrew Weil described it as being, "distinguished by a uniformly negative tone and, according to experts on the region, considerable misinformation."

Puberty Rites

Her report and other shorter accounts increased worldwide awareness of/a^and indicate that some practices that have been associated with it are unlike those common to other psychedelics. For example,yag£ is the only mind-enhancing concoction that has been absolutely taboo on occasion for women. When a trumpet signalled the start of the puberty rites for the Yurupari, female members of the tribe fled into the jungle to avoid a death penalty for their seeing the ceremony or even the drink. In other regions, it was thought that if a woman set eyes on prepared caapi, the vine would be rendered ineffective. More generally, women were allowed to drinkjw#<? but were discouraged if they wished to become adepts, which frequently involved a year of regularly drinking ayahuasca infusions spiked with tobacco juice.

Yurupari puberty rites also differed from the psychedelic riles of other cultures in that adolescents whipped furiously at each other after drinking brown, bitter ayahuasca elixirs until their bodies were bloody with welts. A recent account of such a ceremony, which is little practiced now, can be found in Plants of the Gods (pp. 123-124). Interest in harmala compounds arose as well from reports that among the Jivaro headhunting tribes of the upper Amazon—and the Cashinahua of Peru—the "dream" contents ofyagt ex- periences were commonly regarded as constituting more important guiding principles than ordinary consciousness.

Andrew Weil is among those who feel that "No drug plant has excited more interest thznyage," In The Marriage of'the Sun and Moon, he remem- bers being offered this "tiger drug" (so called because it was said to inspire visions of big jungle cats) in the Haight-Ashbury in 1967. Later, he tried to find a more authentic experience in Colombia. Each time he got near it, the result was a "fully debased yage1 _{ritual." He concluded that'Today, alcoholism}

is replacing the ceremonial use of safer drugs" and that "traditional peoples do not automatically form good relationships with psychoactive plants." In the August 1979 High Times, Weil reports on a more recent O>lombian trip when he was successful in finding a healer using ayahuasca. His "Yage"— The Vine that Speaks" details with ten color photographs how it is prepared and used in treating illnesses.

BOTANY

Botanical understanding of what causes yage effects has been, as Schultes put it, more "fraught with confusion" than is the case with other psychedelics. Schultes and Hofmann described these confusions almost apologetically in 1973, writing that "It is difficult for the nonbotanist to understand our lack of understanding of specific delimitations of drug plants, the use of which has been known for more than a century."

Richard Spruce had set identification efforts off to a bad start by sug- gesting that^^'s peculiar qualities were from the roots of "painted caapi."

340

This was a vine he called Haemadictyon amazonicum, of which no known other example exists than what he collected (it's since been assigned to the

Prestonia genus). Although he said that the Indians considered a Banister- iopsis vine an essential ingredient, his misdirection was repeated by others. The Colombian chemist Fischer, isolating the first alkaloid myage1_{, placed it}

in the Aristohchia genus. Banisteriopsis caapi first became known as a main source in 1927, after French pharmacologists Perrot and Hamet reviewed this psychoactive complex in terms of its botany and chemistry.

Ayahuasca and Vage"

Essential to any yage concoction is bark from specific Banistenopsis

vines—generally B. caapi, often B. inebrians and sometimes B. quitensis. B. caapi climbs up adjacent tropical forest trees and keeps climbing until its flowers are exposed to direct sunlight. It is so greedy for sunlight that some- times it eventually kills supporting trees. It is occasionally started in green- houses, where it has been known to take over the roof, leaving only shadow

below. The flowers are small and pink, much like apple blossoms. Ai its base, the vine often has a diameter of six inches.

Schultes and Hofmann report that South American natives often have special names for diverse "kinds" of Ayahuasca, although the botanist frequently finds them all representative of the same species. It is usually difficult to understand the aboriginal method of classification: some may be age forms; others may come from different parts of the liana; still others may be ecological forms growing under varying conditions of soil, shade, moisture, etc The natives assert that these "kinds" have a variety of effects, and it is conceivable that they may actually have different chemical compositions. This possibility is one of the least investigated yet most significant aspects in the study of Ayahuasca.

Natives distinguish at least six different botanical sources of ayahuasca.

Two that are said to be the most powerful haven't yet been described botanically or chemically.

Cultivated Banisteriopsis caapi shoots near Rio Piraparana, Colombia are shown here branching out in all directions. This vine is a/tei

•vested when young; natives prefer it young for some purposes, claiming that the effects of young shoots are different from those of older specimens.

-^..'/ir^i.

SAOOISTERIOP9IS cc

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The Admixtures of Yag^

Ayahuasqueros often include at leasi one additive toyagf infusions to enhance states of mind brought about by B. coapi, inebriansand quiiensts. In Colombia, Daturas and closely related species of Brugmansia are sometimes used; they undoubtedly give this drink added kick but are dangerous. Often tobacco appears; other additives are listed by SchuJtes and Hofmann:

Malouetia tamaquarina and a species of Tabermaeinontanaof theApocynaosae; the acanthaceous Teliostachya lanceolaia vat. crispa or To^ Negra; CaJatbea veitchiana of the Maranihaceae; the amaranthaceous Altemanthera lehmanmt

and a species of Iresine', several ferns including Lygodium venustum and

Lomariapfts japurensts; Phrygylanthus eugeniotdes of the Mistletoe family; the mint Ocimum mtcranthum, a species of the sedge genus Cyperut; several cacti including species of Opitnlia and Epiphyllitm;a.n6. a member of the genus

Clusia of the Guttiferae.

The main additives are Psychotria carthaginensis, P. viridis, Tetrapteryi methystica and Banisteriapsis rusbyana. Leaves and stems of the last, known as oco-yag^ or chagrapanga, don't contain the ^-carboline alkaloids produced by B. caapi and inebrians; instead, they have a large amount of N,N-DMT, 5-methoxy-N,N-DMT, 5-hydroxy-N,N-DMT and N-/9 -methyltetrahydro-

0 -carboline. The other added species contain DMT-type compounds, rendered orally active by the harmala compounds in ayahuasca.