STUDY: RELIGIOUS USE OF PEYOTE NOT HARMFUL TO AMERICAN INDIANS

BOSTON --For John Halpern to study the effects of peyote on American
Indians who use the hallucinogenic cactus in religious ceremonies,
observing from a distance was not an option.

Halpern lived on the Navajo Nation reservation for months at a time
and participated in prayer ceremonies. Earning their trust and
cooperation would have been impossible if he refused to ingest peyote,
he said.

"It never would have happened if I hadn't done that. It's one of the
ways they take the measure of a man," said Halpern, a psychiatrist at
the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, just outside of
Boston.

A 1994 federal law allows roughly 300,000 members of the Native
American Church to use peyote as a religious sacrament, but Halpern
set out to find scientific proof for the Navajos' belief that the
substance is not hazardous to their health.

After five years of research, Halpern and other McLean researchers did
not find any evidence of brain damage or psychological problems in
church members who frequently use peyote, which contains the
hallucinogen mescaline.

In fact, they found that members of the Native American Church
performed better on some of the neuropsychological tests than other
Navajos who do not regularly use peyote.

Church members believe peyote offers them spiritual and physical
healing, but Halpern and his colleagues could not say with any
certainty that its pharmacological effects are responsible for their
test results.

"It's hard to know how much of it is the sense of community they get
(from the religion) and how much of it is the actual experience of
using the medication itself," said Harrison Pope, the study's senior
author and director of McLean's biological psychology laboratory.

Test results for 61 church members who have used peyote at least 100
times were compared against those for 79 Navajos who do not regularly
use peyote and 36 tribe members with a history of alcohol abuse but
minimal peyote use. Those who had abused alcohol fared worse on the
tests than the church members, according to the study.

The researchers argue that their findings should offer "reassurance"
to the 10,000 Native American Church members serving in the military
who were barred from using peyote before new guidelines were adopted
in 1997.

"We find no evidence that a history of peyote use would compromise the
psychological or cognitive abilities of these individuals," they wrote
in a paper published in the Nov. 4 issue of Biological Psychiatry.

The researchers are quick to note that their study draws a clear
distinction between illicit and religious use of peyote. And they did
not rule out the possibility that other hallucinogens, such as LSD,
may be harmful.

"In comparison to LSD, mescaline is described as more sensual and
perceptual and less altering of thought and sense of self," they
wrote, adding that peyote does not seem to produce "flashbacks" the
same way that LSD apparently does.

However, the researchers are optimistic that their findings could open
the door to another area of research: testing the theory that peyote
could be an effective treatment for alcoholism.

"It's an anecdote you hear from the Navajo themselves but something
that has never been formally tested in any fashion," Pope said.

Halpern settled on members of the Native American Church as ideal
subjects for his research because they have had little or no exposure
to other drugs. But he met with stiff resistance when he first visited
the Navajo reservation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

"These are very proud peoples, and many of them are smarting over the
stigmatizing cliche about (American Indians') substance abuse," he
said. "It's a real problem, but it's a real problem in many
communities."

Halpern found an ally on the reservation in Victor Clyde, who was a
vice president of the Native American Church of Navajoland. Clyde
persuaded skeptical church members to cooperate with Halpern.

"A lot of members did not want to allow him to do the research," said
Clyde, a justice of the peace in Chinle, Ariz. "No one wants to be put
under the microscope like that."

The project was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug
Abuse, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. A NIDA spokeswoman would not comment on the study.

Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor who
was not involved in Halpern's research, said the study lends
scientific weight to a long-held belief that peyote is not harmful.

"The thing that excites me most about the paper is that the study was
actually done," he said. "The U.S. government -- and NIDA, in
particular -- has been rather balky about allowing studies of
psychedelic drugs of any kind