PLANT SPIRIT MEDICINE

Experts Weigh in on the Health Benefits of Mind-Altering
Plants

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.