AYAHUASCA AND MORE

Khat Isn't the Only New Drug

In a jungle lodge near the Tambopata River in Peru's rainforest, the
vine of death--ayahuasca--wrapped itself around me. Black velvet
tentacles gripped me, a hum rose, colors appeared--I tripped like a
high schooler.

Only people that have traveled to the Amazon River basin are likely to
have heard of ayahuasca. It isn't a popular drug in America and may
never be. The purging process involves vomiting, which limits its
appeal as a party drug. Despite the badass nickname, "the vine of
death," ayahuasca is an integrated and respected part of Amazonian
culture.

They call it a medicine in Peru, not a drug. There are three
drugs/medicines in Peru that locals manage to use safely--drugs that
American authorities would never allow Americans to use... legally.

Growing up in the United States, it was easy to think of our drug war
as normal--the natural order of things--rather than something Richard
Nixon created 35 years ago. Then I went to Infierno, Peru (yes the
town is called hell in Spanish), where I met a shaman with a rattle.
This shaman, Don Ignacio, has been taking and giving ayahuasca for
longer than America's drug war has been raging. He appears closer to
40 than 80. Don Ignacio said that people come from all over the world
so that he and the medicine can cure their mind or body. His community
respects him as an elder.

With me that night were two young French poets and a middle-aged
Peruvian housewife. Don Ignacio blew out the candle in his shack by
the river--and I saw dragons, then mermaids. The plant purges and
heals, according to locals, but I mostly went to trip.

A few weeks later, in the tiny city of Cusco, a Peruvian drug dealer
flashed me a little bag of green powder.

"Hey, do you want to buy some San Pedro?"

San Pedro, a hallucinogen made from powdered cactus, wasn't being sold
by a thug in some back alley, but in Cusco's Pike Place Market. And
the drug dealer? A professional-looking woman who placed an eight-foot
San Pedro cactus by her booth to advertise her goods.

In Cusco, people also chew coca leaves, a plant that makes it to the
U.S. in its refined form of cocaine. Chewing on a few of the
unprocessed leaves won't give you the jittery high familiar to
Americans. It will, however, help dispel altitude headaches and give a
little boost of energy. I enjoyed the leaves in a mud-brick Cusco pub
along with the local corn beer. I offered some to a gray-haired man
sitting nearby. He put out his hand and I poured. One large and
handsome leaf landed straight up in his palm. The man gasped. He
showed everyone in the entire bar, and stared at his hand for 10 minutes.

"Buena suerte," he said. Good luck.

Currently, you can't find coca leaves in Seattle, just as you couldn't
find khat once, either. But someday, Northwest backpackers are going
to discover that chewing coca leaves relieves high-altitude headaches
and a black market will flourish in the parking lot of REI.

It's inevitable. All over the world, drugs that are an integral part
of the local culture flourish. As more immigrants reach our shores,
we're going to have to rethink our approach to recreational drugs. We
have spent billions of dollars waging an unsuccessful war on pot--a
war lost long ago. Marijuana is now America's number-one cash crop. If
we couldn't defeat pot, we will not be able to defeat khat, or San
Pedro, or coca leaves.