July 9, 2022 • 45 mins
One day in the Amazon Basin, a shaman put together a plant containing DMT with a vine that allows the body to absorb DMT. The combination, a foul-tasting, wildly hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca, has changed cultures throughout the Americas. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, folks, it's Chuck here. It's Saturday, and that means
it's time for a Saturday Select episode curated this week
by What. This one goes all the way back to
December eleven, and that's about ayahuasca. We love doing our
episodes on various weird drugs and this is no exception.
(00:21):
So check out how ayahuasca works right now. Welcome to
Stuff you should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hold on and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
(00:42):
There's Charles w Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there, and
this is stuff you should know. The poor attempts at
Spanish edition and yet another drug cast mm hmm, covering
all the drugs everybody, one by one, and this one
(01:03):
is Aaska. We'll have to do one just specifically on
d m T sometime too, all right, because there you
know it's the d m T is the base of ayahuasca,
but it's different. I mean, there's other stuff going on
with ayahuasca that d MT doesn't have them. Spoiler alert.
DMT is its own thing for sure, from what I
can tell. Yeah, okay, so it's agreed then, Chuck, Yeah,
(01:26):
but you just ruined this whole episode. Oh sorry, well
let's go back to the beginning then. Uh yeah, ayahuasca
it has a bunch of different names. And this is
something I didn't know because I'm a dummy. I didn't
know anything about ayahuasca except to use it as jokes.
You know. It's been sort of a running punch line, like,
you know, you have to forgive me, I'm on ayahuasca,
(01:48):
that kind of thing. I got you. But uh, I
thought it was that was the name of like a plant,
and it was one planted ayahuasca sort of like what's
the what's the other plant? The corn? Yeah, just sort
of like corn um No, the one that like, you know,
(02:09):
the doors took the meal. Yeah, mescaline, yeah, but that's
not the plant. What's the plant is mescal in the
plant to what a peyote? That's right, But that's the
mescaline buttons on a peyote plant, right, which we haven't
covered yet. We should do want a peyote? Bam, another
drug cast come and at you. But ayahuasca is not
(02:32):
the name of a plant. Uh. It is actually a
concoction made from a couple of different plants. Yeah. Yeah,
And originally it was just one plant actually known as
the vine of death. Yeah, oh, let's see what we
can do. Okay, you did the time wasting throat. Clear
(02:53):
that move. It's stalling. So if you go and drink
ayahuasca today, you're probably getting one that's a combination of
a plant called psycho Tria voritas. I think I got
that and a vine known as banistereopsis copy C A
p I so Psychotria veritas and bareness. Man, there's a
(03:21):
lot of letters in that one. Yeah. But if it's
it's pronounced like it looks ye banistereopsis, you got it
all right? Copy right? And that one, the second one,
the copy is the vine. Correct, that's the o g
ayahuasca ingredient, the vine of death. And this is I
guess we haven't even really said. We've danced around it.
(03:43):
It is a a drug concoction that they have been taking,
um since who knows when, but since before Europeans arrived
in the New World, A long long time in South America. Yeah,
and specifically they think it have originated among the Napo
Runa tribe in Ecuador, right, but it's spread throughout the
(04:06):
Amazon basin and today if you are a well to
do tech worker who makes your way down to South America.
You're probably going to go to Peru to check out
your ayahuasca trip. Yeah, this became a thing, weirdly, uh
(04:26):
in Silicon Valley. Uh, if you were a young, rich
entrepreneur in Silicon Valley that has a couple of hit
apps on your hand, it became a thing to throw
on your hoodie and travel to South America to take
part in an ayahuasca ceremony. Yep, and I'm not sure.
I mean, I guess I know what happens is one
(04:49):
one dude does that and then says, bro, you gotta
do this right a late night conversation, a burning man
opens the Absolutely, that's how it went now and then
before you know it, it's a thing. Right. You know,
there's some kids in Silicon Valley being like, wait a minute,
wait a minute, are they making fun of us right now?
(05:10):
And then they feel that that hood that they've never
even put over their head itching their neck and they're
stupid stereotypes being true. Oh man, At any rate, ayahuasca yes, so, um,
it did start out as a traditional thing, but there's like,
you know, the whole popularity that grew among Westerners traveling
(05:32):
down to South America for whatever reason. I'm sure um
for vision quests for fun a drug they hadn't tried yet.
Who cares. There's a lot of reasons that people travel
down to South America to partake in this UM. Certainly
most of them not nefarious or dumb. UM. Probably a
lot of the reasons were great. But the the influx
(05:53):
of Westerners and Western money has radically altered ayahuasca and
in the Sarah premonies and rites and the people who
perform ayahuasca ceremonies just over there, like the last ten
or so years, dramatically. Yeah, one might even say that
the western white man has ruined the whole thing. I
(06:13):
think that there's I think it's been commercialized, but that
there are still very much um. The the original or
the real deal is protected in many ways by by
the people who are like, yeah, you guys, go drink
it over there. We've got our thing going on over here.
And in fact, there's at least two churches in the
United States that practice ayahuasca diets UM that that are
(06:40):
real deal religions as far as the Supreme Courts concerned, UM,
that clearly show that there are there is real, legit
ayahuasca ceremonies being practiced throughout the world. I think both
of them are are from Brazil. Yeah. In two thousand six,
h the Supreme Court said that, uh, the n I
(07:01):
Oh Do vegetal U d V was a legit religion
and they are in fact from Brazil Christian spiritualists about
seventeen thousand UH adherents all over the world. Uh. And
the literal translation of that religion is the Union of
the Plants, right, So it's like a plant religion and
(07:22):
aahuasca is at the center of this. Uh. Yeah. The
other one is a Christian syncretism like Santo. Yeah, that
one is like, um, they incorporate not just indigenous Brazilian
and South American beliefs, but also some African indigenous beliefs,
(07:44):
are folk beliefs as well. Like it's it's a whole um,
very big inclusive pantheon that that is centered around visions
from ayahuasca and like an ayahuasca sacrament. It's pretty interesting. Yeah.
Both protected in the United States by law now that
this is part of this plant concoction as part of
their religion. They cannot be arrested for doing this because
(08:08):
the legalities of it. Is is is technically illegal? Um,
it's a little great whether or not the actual plant
is illegal? Is that right? Yeah? Supposedly the plants themselves
are not illegal. It's the combination or the brew made
from them that's illegal. That's what I saw. I don't
know that that's necessarily true. And I would guess if
(08:29):
the plants are still legal now, they won't be in
two three years, because you know, why why make it legal?
Why let it be legal? Yeah? Something people get enjoyment
for it comes from the earth. Let's outlawed. Yeah. I
don't know if enjoyment is quite the right word though,
from the way that um the Grabster puts it that
(08:50):
the an ayahuasca trip is not necessarily fun. It's a
harrowing psychological, spiritual journey that you're undertaking. All right, let's
take a break, okay, alright, let see you getting excited
over there. Uh, And we'll talk a little bit more
about d m T and kind of what's going on
in your body physiologically right after this. Alright, So d
(09:36):
m T, which you mentioned at the onset, the the
one part of this concoction, the p veritas contains d
M t. You're gonna pronounce that. Oh, yes, it's methyl
trip to me. Oh look at you just rolls off
the tongue now, doesn't it. Uh. So this is something
not exclusive to p verritas. It's found in a bunch
(09:57):
of psychedelic substances, and this is something that can cause hallucinations,
perhaps changes in your perception, your state of consciousness, your
sense of self, which will really get into it has
a lot to do with the ayahuasca journey. Um. However,
if you just eat the d M t UM, it's
not gonna have this this kind of effect on you because, Uh,
(10:20):
there's an enzyme called uh monoamine oxidase, and that's gonna
break it down your in your digestive system before it
gets absorbed. So you have to combine it with this
copy vine which prevents the uptake of it. Yeah, the
copy vine has an alkaloid called harmala alkaloid, and harmalines
are psychotropic and of themselves, which is why the the
(10:45):
copy vine alone used to just be ayahuasca. But the
fact that it prevents um your your the monoamine oxidase
to break down the d M t it allows your
body to absorb it all of a sudden you're tripping balls,
although I hear it's not all of a sudden. I
think it's it takes a good thirty minutes to come on,
(11:08):
and then it takes like a supplementary boost um an
hour or so later to to really bring on like
the kind of transcendent experience that people are looking for
when they take ayahuasca. So you've got the you've got
the d m T being absorbed. That's the one to
punch right. You've got the d MT itself, and then
(11:30):
you've got the plant that allows the d m T
to be absorbed. And when you put those two things together,
the p veritas and the B copy, that's what the
that's the ayahuasca that you read about and vice that's
what they're talking about. Yeah, and these you know, this
is administered by a shaman um someone who ideally as
a shaman that knows what they're doing. And there's sometimes
(11:52):
there are other plants that are brewed in there as well,
but uh not always, And sometimes it's brewed separately and
then combined later. Sometimes times it all depends on which
shaman you go to, of what the ritual is like.
Sometimes you're included as part of it. Um. Sometimes it's
like a thick liquid t sometimes it's a paste. It's
been described. No matter what it is, it seems like
(12:14):
around the horn. Everybody says it tastes awful, so awful
that that you can very easily throw up, which is
something that's pretty common with the um. With an ayahuasca experiences.
I didn't get that from the From the taste, though,
I got that that that was like, once it's in
your body, it makes you nauseous and you throw up, right,
(12:36):
But like, oh, this taste so bad, I'm gonna puke
it up. No, No, because then it wouldn't be in
your body long enough to be absorbed. Right. Yeah, But
I think the taste and the memory of the taste,
combined with the nausea is enough to throw up. But
the whether whether you do throw up or not, it's
not necessarily like you're going to throw up there the
(12:57):
the point, one of the points of an eye ahuasca
ceremony is to throw up. You're meant to throw up um,
and you're you will actually be forced into this either
if you don't do it from the ayahuasca. You may
also be given something like tobacco juice like a water
with tobacco that's soaked in it for a while, and
you'll be told to drink that so that you will
(13:18):
throw up. Because this idea of purging, whether it's throwing
up or diarrhea, is a very frequent side effective iahuaca,
very frequent. Um. You are you are meant to be
purging your your body, and it's meant to be this
kind of symbolic spiritual purge of your ego, of all
the nastiness, of all the horrible nous that's a part
(13:41):
of you. You're getting it out as part of the
trip and as the trip sets in. Yeah, and the
taste has been described. The New York Times has said
it's like a um muddy herbal taste. Uh. Someone from
vox dot com took it a gun named Shaun Illing.
He described it as a cup of motor oil diluted
with a splash of water. So I read, I read
(14:02):
it's almost as gross as a Neco wafer. I don't
think i've ever had anco wafer? Good on you have?
You know what? Am I crazy? What are they not?
Go wafers like old timey kind of like chalky candy
that comes in a role you've seen them. Probably you've
(14:22):
seen them in my old timey candy days exactly. I'm
sure I did. Uh So all right, I guess we
should talk a little bit about uh, Like you said, um,
it's orange. It's origins in the Napo River basin by
this Runa tribe like you said, Uh, And it's called
the Vine of Death or the mother Vine. This copy
(14:43):
and they think that early on they may have just
taken this copy by itself, right, because the brew it's
got the harmlins in it that's not only an m
A o I but also has like its own kind
of psychoactive stuff going on. So that was the original Iowa. Yeah,
and we have written accounts from like the seventeen hundreds
when Jesuits would go to the Amazon to try and
(15:07):
you know, christianize folks and trip balls. Yeah, because I'm
sure the entry was like whoa, and that's it. Did
you hear about the guy that was just killed the missionary? Yes?
On setting Ali's sent in All Island. Yeah, he it's
like something from a movie. He went at first and
(15:27):
a child shot an arrow through a bible that he
was holding. Apparently I hadn't heard about that. Yeah, because
he had. He went back a few times and was
like journaling about it and said he basically like held
up his Bible. It's like something from a movie and
an arrow was shot through it. And I'm like, dude,
if that is not like, if you believe in God,
that's a sign from God. Well you you remember the
(15:50):
turnaround the man in the whole episode we talked about them. Yeah,
they were the ones that like you, like everyone knew
you just don't go anywhere near him and did some
fishermen and killed like years a few years back, and
this guy I guess had tried um. He decided he
was going to be the one. Yeah. I don't actually
know enough about the story, but he clearly was trying
(16:12):
to jane access to them. Yeah. Yeah, he was trying
to spread the word of Jesus and paid like you're
not supposed it's illegal, I think, to even trespass there.
But he paid people sort of under the table to
take him there, and they did so, and those people
were arrested and his family is saying, you need to
let these people go because he like really wanted to
(16:32):
do this. I see. It's very interesting. Yeah it is.
It's crazy, but I just like that sounds like something
you would make up from a movie, like shooting an
arrow through the Bible they're holding up, you know. Uh
So we got a little sidetrack, but we were talking
about the Jesuits like having this on record in the
seventeen hundreds when they went and they were like, hey,
there's something going down down here. That's very interesting. Yeah.
(16:54):
And even William S. Burrows wrote the Yahee Letters in
three and it was about his experience with the Aahuascar vine.
And apparently they the practitioners at the time knew, um
well into the to the the twentieth century, that you
could combine it with the p veritis fine and and
(17:16):
have a completely different experience. But that wasn't necessarily the point.
That was like an optional ceremony you could perform. But
the most, the most widespread and traditional ceremony was just
the vine of death, right. Yeah. And then at some
point somebody started putting him together and word about this
got out, and the mid two thousand's is when it
(17:37):
just ayahuasca like kind of hit the public consciousness in
the West. Yeah. I mean in the sixties, of course,
uh in in certain uh you know, subcultures in America.
They knew about it because of william S Burrows and
people seeking out you know, things like peyote and all
kinds of psychedelic experiences, but it definitely was not sort
(17:59):
of in the stream until you know, not not too
long ago. And even still I think even at the
time it was strictly the harm alines and and just
the the vine that was being used, the copy vine.
It wasn't. It wasn't. Somebody started putting it together frequently
with the the veritas plant, and that's when it became
(18:23):
hugely popular. Yeah, so popular now that there is ayahuasca
tourism big time like going on in South America. And
uh said the central part is Peru's uh a room
bomba valley. And if you, I mean, if you were
going down for an ayahuasca experience like a spiritual quest,
(18:43):
is is the reason you're going down there? I don't
fault you for that at all, um, But you have
to understand the the You have to do your research.
You can't just show up in South America and be like,
all right, somebody give me some ayahuasca. Because there are
a lot of um in scrupulous and nefarious outfits that
(19:04):
have come up to to take advantage explicitly of that
kind of Western tourist, the ill informed Western tourist who
is going to have a horrible, terrible trip and not
going to get the spiritual experience you're looking for. Um So,
you have to do your research because there are some
legitimate ayahuasca outfits in South America, but you, um, they're
(19:27):
they're not going to take you if you just show
up down there, and you're gonna end up in some
some in a bad situation. Yeah for sure. Um So,
taking part in one of these ceremonies, let's say you
do find like a legit shaman who's willing to take
your American dollars or whatever, however you're paying your gold
(19:49):
en gets and drink its. Uh, it's still it's sort
of funny. It all goes back to Burrows with the
set and setting thing, which is what he famously preached
about any psychic dellic experience is to really put a
lot of thought into the set in the setting where
you're gonna do this, so it goes well for you.
Um So, as this uh concoction is being brewed, like
(20:11):
I said before, sometimes you're taking part in this and
helping to mash it up and brew the t um.
But what they're really trying to do is, um, the
whole ceremony isn't just like for show. It's it's all
part of the thing to get you settled in and
focused on kind of the right things going in, Like
what do you want to accomplish here, what do you
(20:33):
want to find out about yourself? What questions do you
have about yourself? And really get into that that frame
of mind as they hand you your puke bucket. Although
I would recommend bringing your own, Oh yeah, I hadn't
thought about that. I would not want to reused puke bucket.
Good lord. I hadn't even considered that it would be
by O B for me, So um yeah, I can
(20:56):
just totally see how as a as a Westerner, you
would just be like, come on, we don't need the
ceremony stuff. Let's just give me the good stuff. But that,
like you said, that's the point is to ease you
into it, to get your mind and body prepared for this,
this enormous trip you're about to go on, because if
you just get dropped right in the middle of it
without any kind of preparation or without any kind of assistance,
(21:19):
you're going to lose your marbles pretty pretty well. UM.
So that that is a big part of going on
an ayahuasca journey is is having somebody who's competent, trained
and UM, empathetic and willing to stay there with you,
to prepare you, to stay with you, to keep an
eye on you. You need to be monitored. You can't
(21:40):
be up and like just running off into the jungle
by yourself, because terrible things are going to happen to
you in that situation. UM. And then to help you
afterward as well, and from from some of the preliminary
research that's starting to come in, if you undertake an
ayahuasca journey, I guess is that it's the best word
I can come up with. UM. Under the right setting,
(22:04):
under the right guidance, with the right support, both pre
during and after, it can have profound effects on your
spirituality and your sense of connectedness to the universe. It
can also possibly help you with UM with diagnosed mental
illness as well. Yeah, well we'll get to the illness
part mental illness part at the end, but UM, just
(22:25):
your standard sort of truth seeker, let's say, okay, UM,
it's very much tight into like what the and ideal
conditions and like the sixties and seventies with Ellis and
Guess beyond, but the LSD experience and that. Uh, there
was a lot of talk in the sixties about the
ego and every you know, hip musician and in the
(22:49):
United States talked about stripping away the ego, from Brian
Wilson to the Mamas and the Papa's too, you know
Neil Young. Uh is stripping away that ego of self basically,
which which means kind of getting outside yourself to the
point where, uh, you're not looking at the world around
you and how it affects you, but there there is
(23:13):
no you. There is no It's a loss of self
such that's so profound that you can only see the
world and people around you as they exist in reality. Uh.
It's it's a pretty sort of deep, trippy thing to
try and describe in words on a podcast, But I
think that's sort of the general thing is is uh
washing that ego down to where it's not around anymore
(23:36):
and you get like a true sense of the world
around you, like for the maybe for the first time. Yeah, yeah,
and the the ego in and of itself isn't a
bad thing like it's it's they think that it developed
among animals. Is a like, that's your sense of self awareness.
That's the thing that leads you to want to preserve
your own life, to get away from danger, to realize that, like,
(23:57):
you can die because there is a you, right, It's
a very basic thing. Um. The problem is is in humans,
as we've evolved, our ego has also evolved, and it
can get to a point where it's unhealthy. It's kind
of toxic. It can help you develop bad, bad relationships,
people don't want to be around you. It can also
affect your self esteem if your egos underdeveloped. There's a
(24:19):
lot of problems that can go wrong with the ego,
and so a lot of people who prescribe psychedelics to
deal with that kind of thing say, psychedelics strip away
the ego. And now that we've gotten to the point
where where we are advanced enough as a civilization that
we can give people acid and put them in the
an MRI machine, the Wonder machine and watch what happens,
(24:41):
we've shown that, Yes, it seems like the the areas
that are responsible for generating the ego, don't they get
kind of turned off while you're under the influence of psychedelics,
and it allows you to connect, to see outside of yourself,
to see that you are connected with all of this
other stuff. So this whole ego depletion or ego stripping, UM,
(25:03):
it's a major component of not just ayahuasca but all psychedelics.
But it is a big it's a big reason why
people undertake ayahuasca UM journeys. Again. But get this, Siss,
there was something I hadn't realized before, Chuck, So that
from those m r I studies, they found that, UM,
(25:24):
there's something called the default mode network, which is the
thing that keeps your body humming and keeps your It's
the part of your brain that's going while you're not
thinking right, And they found that when the default mode
network is suppressed and your frontal cortex is activated, that's
when it seems that your um, your ego is at
(25:46):
the least, it's when your egos turned off and you're
free to connect with the universe or whatever. Right. Well,
that default mode network is a very primitive part of
our brain. It's a very primitive system of our brain,
and it kind of suggests in a way that the
loss of ego is something that we may eventually evolve to.
(26:08):
Isn't that cool? Because if your frontal cortex is what's
being activated in your default mode network is inactivated, that's
like your ancient brain and your evolved brain. One's activated
and one's one's suppressed and your egos gone. That that
says to me like, well, yeah, if we keep evolving
a frontal cortex, I wonder if we'll lose our ego
at some point, or at least it will be radically altered. Interesting,
(26:32):
I thought so too. Yeah, so what can happen? Uh?
You know, like like any sort of psychedelic trip, it's
going to be completely um singular to the person that's
doing it. There is no across the board sort of
sweeping statements you can make. But um, you strip away
that ego and anything can happen. From feeling connected to
(26:53):
the more connected to the universe or the earth or
the tree, or leaning against or maybe the father that
passed away when you were a child that you didn't
have a relationship with, or the loved one that you
currently have a toxic relationship with. You can feel sort
of a not imaginary but it is in your mind,
(27:15):
but a bond and that they're not like right there
in front of you, Um, just new understandings of relationships
that may be complicated or toxic in your life, right exactly,
like you're you're you're seeing them in a different way
because of the ego loss. Yeah, yeah, I think that's fascinating. Um.
And like you said, it is symbolic death of the ego,
(27:36):
which is why that vomiting is important. Like in theory,
I guess you're you're vomiting up that ego and then
it's go time. Um. Apparently you can hallucinate your death. Uh.
And like you said before, it's not often looked at
it's like, hey man, this is this is gonna be
a great time. Um. But at the same time, I
think it's also typically not like looked at as like
(27:58):
some horror show that you're about to undergo. Um, although
it can be. But it's just a profound emotional and
psychological experience exactly. I've never done it, I mean either,
but this is from researching it, right exactly, which is
like we've never been to the sun either. But we
(28:18):
talked about that. Yeah, that went great. Actually, now that
you mentioned it, should use a different example. Uh, let's
take another break, and then we'll talk about what you
kind of teased earlier with um uh ahuashka and how
it could be used to treat addiction or PTSD or
other mental illnesses. Right after this, Okay, Chuck, So we're
(29:00):
back and we're talking about using ayahuasca as a tool
like taking that experience of being outside of yourself have
connected to the rest of the universe of reevaluating your
life in a lot of ways to cure mental illness UM.
And one of the things that it's been I guess
(29:21):
some studies have actually shown like now this this actually
works is to treat addiction um, whether it's cigarettes or
booze or drugs or whatever, that that you can undergo
an ayahuasca ceremony. People have and have come out on
the other side like I'm good, I don't need that
the cigarettes or booze or drugs or whatever. Yeah. And
(29:43):
one of the one of the suggestions for what's going
on with this that I saw is that you are
actually healing the psychic damage that's causing you to self
medicate in the first place, something probably from your past,
and then so you with with that need to self
medicate you don't have necessarily the desire to drink or
(30:04):
smoke cigarettes or whatever that you used to, which is
a different model of addiction that's kind of starting to
gain a little bit of traction, but is also very
controversial because it makes it sound like addiction is a choice,
but you're self medicating, You're choosing to do all those
drugs and like throw your life away because of some
psychic trauma. But there there does seem to be a
(30:25):
camp in in medicine that is saying like this actually
might have legs. It kind of makes a lot of sense,
and from what I can tell, those ayahuasca studies kind
of are a checkmark in that view's favor. Yeah, and
I think that can work in conjunction with the other piece,
which is removing that ego. Even if it's for whatever
(30:46):
how many hours that you're undergoing this trip um could
just simply disrupt that. You know, you often hear about
addiction being like this sort of cycle, like a cyclical
thing um, and even just disrupting that sick coal path
of that circular path um can be enough to sort
of get you on the off ramp, uh from using Yeah,
(31:10):
get you on the off ramp gets you yeah, on
the off ramp. Yes, that's how you said, right, yeah,
and then eventually off that off ramp onto a nice
chill side street. Yeah, and maybe a nice drive into
the country past a few cows and then sleep. Yeah.
I had a at a therapist one time that talked
about getting off of the highway. It was a metaphor
(31:34):
that actually worked for me. But like choosing to get
off the highway when certain things were happening, and sometimes
something that simple is just kind of clicks in, like, oh,
if I notice something's going on, I'm speeding down the
highway towards the badness, and just get on that exit
ramp and now I'm in my neighborhood. I'm hanging out
with cows in a nice pasture. PTSD is another specifically,
(32:00):
I think a lot of times with military PTSD UM
they've been, you know, using psychedelics more and more in
Ayahuasca is no stranger to this treatment, and UM, while
it is not a magic pill, they are doing some
studies on this and it seems like, uh, and like
with all these is tough to get funding for these
kind of studies sometimes, but it does seem like it's
(32:20):
gaining more ground in the medical community to try out
these kind of experiments. Well, they're trying, like how to
get some of these studies underway in the United States,
but because ayahuasca is considered a Schedule one drug, which
is the the worst, most nefarious drugs of all, UM,
they can't. They just I don't think there's been a
single study in the US. But fortunately they can just
(32:42):
go down to South America and do the best they
can with some of the Ayahuascar centers that are down there,
and they're like, again, there are some legitimate Ayahuascar centers
that take Western tourists for ayahuasca journeys. UM, and some
groups are are going down their departner with those centers
to study people, and some of the people they're trying
(33:03):
to study our PTSD patients, and they think that if
ayahuasca is helping people with PTSD, which it seems to be,
it's it's basically negative exposure therapy where you're dredging up
all of those worst, your worst memories that are causing
your PTSD, which is bringing them to the surface and
(33:24):
allowing your awareness to kind of shine a light on
them and say, okay, I'm going to recategorize these now
and they're not being categorized as bad and and frightening
as they were before. It's not as traumatic as as
they were originally categorized. Yeah, and and specifically in this
study that you're thinking about, is uh Or talking about
(33:44):
his combat veterans suffering from PTSD and it's the Temple
of the Way of Light uh And the Amazon has
partnered with a group in Spain and the UK, the
International Center for Ethnobotanical Research and Service and PANE and
then the Beckley Foundation in the UK, and they're treating
close to six combat veterans a year and it says
(34:08):
it's the largest psychedelic study um ever undertaken. So yeah,
it's really interesting. Yeah, I know that they're using um
M d M A to treat PTSD as well. And
then I can't remember the name of that one treatment.
But remember you like follow a pen with your eyes
while you're going over your worst memory, and it it
recategorizes the memories, is less scary. I want to remember
(34:31):
that one. Yeah, I can't remember what we talked about
it And but that apparently works really well too, so
without the vomiting, that's a big part of it though,
my friend just bring your own bucket. Uh. Problems with ayahuasca. Um,
it is not generally toxic and you would have to
take so much ayahuasca sort of like when we were
(34:53):
talking about marijuana, Like is there even a lethal dose?
Can you even say that? Because the lethal dose apparently
for aguasca is twenty times what you had normally taken
a typical ceremony. Uh as the grabster put it, or
uh he might have been quoting someone, but it's uh,
could could anyone even choke this much of that down? Right? Probably? Not?
(35:15):
Is that even possible? But there have been I mean,
there have been some deaths that have been related to ayahuasca,
and and when you dig a little deeper you find like, oh,
it wasn't actually the ayahuasca directly that caused this, but
the people would not have died had they not been
in South America on the ayahuasca journey, right. Yeah, There's
(35:37):
this one guy who, um who died in I believe
two thousand fourteen. He was an American, you know, he's British,
I'm sorry, and his name was Henry Miller. And he
died on the way to the hospital because he gone
kind of non responsive and the Iowa squeros Ia Iowa square. Yeah,
(35:59):
I said, um that took him to the hospital, had
him on a motorcycle. He fell off the motorcycle and
died of a head injury on the way to the hospital.
So it wasn't the ayahuasca that killed him. But he
wouldn't have been on the motorcycle in the first place
had he not been on this aahuasca trip. So the
shorthand and the headlines is a man dies from ayahuasca. Yeah.
(36:21):
There have been some other cases where like people would
be having a bad trip and maybe attack someone else
and that would lead to like violence or death or
just this year in two thousand eighteen in Peru, um
an eighty one year old shaman woman was shot and killed. Uh,
and then a Canadian man was murdered for revenge for
(36:42):
that killing. But supposedly this had nothing to do with
like being under the influence, but it was some sort
of dispute that happened during this this whole conflict. Yeah.
The woman was named Olivia are Avalo and she was
the spiritual mother of Peru's second largest indigenous tribe, the
Shapebo Canibo. And this guy, this Canadian guy named Sebastian
(37:05):
Woodruff shot and killed her, allegedly because um her son
owed him money. He was there to learn ayahuasca and
I guess he didn't feel like he'd gotten his money's worth,
so he killed her. He killed this this woman, the shaman,
the spiritual leader of the second largest tribe in in Peru,
and he was Canadian. Yes, yeah, I know it was surprising,
(37:27):
not a very Canadian thing to do. No, it really wasn't.
But the the whole thing really revealed the problems that
that have been developing from this ayahuasca tourism. First, this
guy was down there and wanted to learn about ayahuasca
so he could take it back to Canada and appropriate
this culture. There's problem one. Two, he didn't get his
money's worth, so he shot and killed the woman who
(37:49):
was supposed to be teaching him. It's a big problem
as well. But then also between the Iowa squeros and
the practitioners who are are hosting these tourists, and then
the governments of the countries that they're hosting them in.
There's tensions there as well. Because this village said there's
police everywhere. The police never come here, but then a
(38:10):
Canadian man goes missing and now our village is overrun
with with police, like, what's the what's going on here? Um,
So there's there's a lot of tension that's being there's
a lot of simmering tension that's being heated by this
this Western ayahuasca tourism, and um, it's kind of largely
(38:31):
in part because it's unregulated, but also because a lot
of people going down there don't have respect for what
they're doing. And then also a lot of the people
who are popping up as Iowa squaros don't have any
respect for what they're doing either. So the the respect
that's been given to this this tradition for so many
hundreds or thousands of years being lost, and then on
(38:51):
top of that, the ayahuasca that they're they're drinking is
so wildly more potent than what traditionally is all those
hundreds of thousands of years, you know, the Jesuits version
of ayahuasca. Um. That's really kind of I think fueling
this kind of recklessness that's that's becoming part and parcel
(39:12):
with ayahuasca used down in South America. Yeah, because some
of these areas are are poor and so all of
a sudden, it becomes a hip thing for uh, Westerners
with money to come down there with cold hard cash.
And then, like you said, they're appropriating their culture. So
that's one strike. But then to appeal to these people
(39:34):
all of a sudden, they're not as like, you know,
we don't want to freak people out maybe by being
too traditional, so we're gonna westernize our own methods a bit.
So and let's say, let's get a website going uh
and then we'll be the go to for when they
come down here. So then they're undermining their own culture. Um.
(39:54):
And it's just sort of becoming a big mess. It
sounds like yeah. And again I think like if you're
going down there, like whether you're Western or um Asian
or whoever you are, if you're going down for a
vision quest, that's not that's not what's being you know,
brought out as as the fault. The fault is if
you're if you're going down there because it's hip or
because you just want to party, or because a friend
(40:18):
did it, um, and you're not you're not being respectful
of it. Then that's where the the issue seems to
be arising from ayahuasca anything else you know. Oh yeah,
there is one thing that we didn't cover, um, that
that can happen because the copy vine is a m
AO inhibitor. There's a lot of other things, um that
(40:41):
can actually kill you that are pretty normal, like interactions.
You can have drug interactions with things as normal as
chocolate because the um monoamine oxidase typically breaks these things down. Uh.
And if it's being inhibited so that the ayahuasca can work,
it's effects you if you eat chocolate, your toast. And
(41:03):
one of the other things that that it can do
is so the motto the m A O ies prevent
your serotonin from being taken up. And that's how d
m T acts on the brain. It goes into where
serotonin receptors normally fit and just says, let's party, right. Um.
(41:23):
So with all this extra serotonin floating around, if you
also happen to be on an s s r I
as serotonin reuptake inhibitor, uh, you've got too much serotonin.
You can go into what's called serotonin shock. This is
where the diarrhea comes in. That's one of the um
the symptoms of serotonin shock. But that's one of the
mild symptoms. You can also have seizures. You your heart
(41:46):
can also stop, and you can die from having too
much serotonin flooding your brain. So that's that is a
direct way you can die from ayahuasca. But it's not
from the hallucinogen, uh the aspect of it. It's from
the M A O I. So when they're when they
show up from uh the Silicon Valley and they say
(42:06):
they're translating in there, like, hey, bro, he wants to
know if you've got anything, if you've had anything in
your body. And then you're like, no, just mine my
Selexa and a wolf down at Toblaron on the way up,
way over. I'm good, let's do this. Let's skip the ceremony.
Just let me drink that stuff, right you just yeah,
you mash the shaman's face out of your way, like
get out of here. Just give me that. I know.
(42:27):
I know why we haven't been selling tickets in Seattle
so much. Oh no, we love that's not Silicon Valley.
Oh that's right. I mean well San Francisco to we love.
We love all people. We love all of you, everybody.
We love all potential ticket buyers are egos are are
down in the pits. Uh. If you want to know
more about ayahuasca, man, do some research. Uh. There's a
(42:50):
lot of it out there, so do it. Um. And
since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, Yeah,
I'm gonna call this short and sweet. But we did
get an answer to something ing. Uh remember in the
fire Trucks episode, you could not remember that game and
we got everything from sim City to uh civilization. Yeah,
(43:12):
none of them were right. But our friend, our new pal,
Mike man Goba, Mike says this, guys that just listened
to the fire Twuks episode and also shout out to
two things. All the people who wrote in and spelled
at fire Twucks. Yeah, and then all the firefighters. We
heard from a lot of firefighters and they all, every
(43:35):
single one of them said, yep, it's chili. Josh did
not overstate the chili thing. Yeah, And they're all very
nice and said, you guys got most of this right. Um.
Anytime it's something really specific like that, we're gonna get
some stuff wrong. But they're like, you guys did a
good job. And one of them even had a joke
that said, if you're at a party, how do you
know if there's a firefighter there, and the answer is, Oh,
(43:56):
don't worry, they'll tell you that was from a firefighter.
So I guess they have a sting game about it.
Uh So, anyway, guys listening to the fire TALKX episode,
and he talked about the old game that burns buildings
to the ground if you don't have the fire station,
and that game is called Pharaoh. Yes, Pharaoh yep e
h a r a o h yep, you're building an
(44:18):
Egyptian civilization camp. And he said it's an expansion game,
the expansion games called Cleopatra, and it was one of
my favorite games, which I still play today. Keep up
the chatter, Mike Man, go thanks a lot, Mike, That's
exactly what it was, and never in a million years
would have remembered that, but it was. Indeed, Goes uh
(44:38):
oh is that what we're calling him? Yeah, all right,
thanks a lot, Goes. Well, if you want to be
like Gobs and rescue us by reminding me of something
I can't remember what it was, or just correcting my syntax,
you can get in touch with us. We're all over
social You can find those links at stuff you should
Know dot com and you can just send us an email,
(44:59):
wrap it ups to get on the bottom, and send
it off to Stuff Podcast superbs dot com. H Stuff
you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
Hello, folks, it's Chuck here. It's Saturday, and that means
it's time for a Saturday Select episode curated this week
by What. This one goes all the way back to
December eleven, and that's about ayahuasca. We love doing our
episodes on various weird drugs and this is no exception.
(00:21):
So check out how ayahuasca works right now. Welcome to
Stuff you should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hold on and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
(00:42):
There's Charles w Chuck Brian, there's Jerry over there, and
this is stuff you should know. The poor attempts at
Spanish edition and yet another drug cast mm hmm, covering
all the drugs everybody, one by one, and this one
(01:03):
is Aaska. We'll have to do one just specifically on
d m T sometime too, all right, because there you
know it's the d m T is the base of ayahuasca,
but it's different. I mean, there's other stuff going on
with ayahuasca that d MT doesn't have them. Spoiler alert.
DMT is its own thing for sure, from what I
can tell. Yeah, okay, so it's agreed then, Chuck, Yeah,
(01:26):
but you just ruined this whole episode. Oh sorry, well
let's go back to the beginning then. Uh yeah, ayahuasca
it has a bunch of different names. And this is
something I didn't know because I'm a dummy. I didn't
know anything about ayahuasca except to use it as jokes.
You know. It's been sort of a running punch line, like,
you know, you have to forgive me, I'm on ayahuasca,
(01:48):
that kind of thing. I got you. But uh, I
thought it was that was the name of like a plant,
and it was one planted ayahuasca sort of like what's
the what's the other plant? The corn? Yeah, just sort
of like corn um No, the one that like, you know,
(02:09):
the doors took the meal. Yeah, mescaline, yeah, but that's
not the plant. What's the plant is mescal in the
plant to what a peyote? That's right, But that's the
mescaline buttons on a peyote plant, right, which we haven't
covered yet. We should do want a peyote? Bam, another
drug cast come and at you. But ayahuasca is not
(02:32):
the name of a plant. Uh. It is actually a
concoction made from a couple of different plants. Yeah. Yeah,
And originally it was just one plant actually known as
the vine of death. Yeah, oh, let's see what we
can do. Okay, you did the time wasting throat. Clear
(02:53):
that move. It's stalling. So if you go and drink
ayahuasca today, you're probably getting one that's a combination of
a plant called psycho Tria voritas. I think I got
that and a vine known as banistereopsis copy C A
p I so Psychotria veritas and bareness. Man, there's a
(03:21):
lot of letters in that one. Yeah. But if it's
it's pronounced like it looks ye banistereopsis, you got it
all right? Copy right? And that one, the second one,
the copy is the vine. Correct, that's the o g
ayahuasca ingredient, the vine of death. And this is I
guess we haven't even really said. We've danced around it.
(03:43):
It is a a drug concoction that they have been taking,
um since who knows when, but since before Europeans arrived
in the New World, A long long time in South America. Yeah,
and specifically they think it have originated among the Napo
Runa tribe in Ecuador, right, but it's spread throughout the
(04:06):
Amazon basin and today if you are a well to
do tech worker who makes your way down to South America.
You're probably going to go to Peru to check out
your ayahuasca trip. Yeah, this became a thing, weirdly, uh
(04:26):
in Silicon Valley. Uh, if you were a young, rich
entrepreneur in Silicon Valley that has a couple of hit
apps on your hand, it became a thing to throw
on your hoodie and travel to South America to take
part in an ayahuasca ceremony. Yep, and I'm not sure.
I mean, I guess I know what happens is one
(04:49):
one dude does that and then says, bro, you gotta
do this right a late night conversation, a burning man
opens the Absolutely, that's how it went now and then
before you know it, it's a thing. Right. You know,
there's some kids in Silicon Valley being like, wait a minute,
wait a minute, are they making fun of us right now?
(05:10):
And then they feel that that hood that they've never
even put over their head itching their neck and they're
stupid stereotypes being true. Oh man, At any rate, ayahuasca yes, so, um,
it did start out as a traditional thing, but there's like,
you know, the whole popularity that grew among Westerners traveling
(05:32):
down to South America for whatever reason. I'm sure um
for vision quests for fun a drug they hadn't tried yet.
Who cares. There's a lot of reasons that people travel
down to South America to partake in this UM. Certainly
most of them not nefarious or dumb. UM. Probably a
lot of the reasons were great. But the the influx
(05:53):
of Westerners and Western money has radically altered ayahuasca and
in the Sarah premonies and rites and the people who
perform ayahuasca ceremonies just over there, like the last ten
or so years, dramatically. Yeah, one might even say that
the western white man has ruined the whole thing. I
(06:13):
think that there's I think it's been commercialized, but that
there are still very much um. The the original or
the real deal is protected in many ways by by
the people who are like, yeah, you guys, go drink
it over there. We've got our thing going on over here.
And in fact, there's at least two churches in the
United States that practice ayahuasca diets UM that that are
(06:40):
real deal religions as far as the Supreme Courts concerned, UM,
that clearly show that there are there is real, legit
ayahuasca ceremonies being practiced throughout the world. I think both
of them are are from Brazil. Yeah. In two thousand six,
h the Supreme Court said that, uh, the n I
(07:01):
Oh Do vegetal U d V was a legit religion
and they are in fact from Brazil Christian spiritualists about
seventeen thousand UH adherents all over the world. Uh. And
the literal translation of that religion is the Union of
the Plants, right, So it's like a plant religion and
(07:22):
aahuasca is at the center of this. Uh. Yeah. The
other one is a Christian syncretism like Santo. Yeah, that
one is like, um, they incorporate not just indigenous Brazilian
and South American beliefs, but also some African indigenous beliefs,
(07:44):
are folk beliefs as well. Like it's it's a whole um,
very big inclusive pantheon that that is centered around visions
from ayahuasca and like an ayahuasca sacrament. It's pretty interesting. Yeah.
Both protected in the United States by law now that
this is part of this plant concoction as part of
their religion. They cannot be arrested for doing this because
(08:08):
the legalities of it. Is is is technically illegal? Um,
it's a little great whether or not the actual plant
is illegal? Is that right? Yeah? Supposedly the plants themselves
are not illegal. It's the combination or the brew made
from them that's illegal. That's what I saw. I don't
know that that's necessarily true. And I would guess if
(08:29):
the plants are still legal now, they won't be in
two three years, because you know, why why make it legal?
Why let it be legal? Yeah? Something people get enjoyment
for it comes from the earth. Let's outlawed. Yeah. I
don't know if enjoyment is quite the right word though,
from the way that um the Grabster puts it that
(08:50):
the an ayahuasca trip is not necessarily fun. It's a
harrowing psychological, spiritual journey that you're undertaking. All right, let's
take a break, okay, alright, let see you getting excited
over there. Uh, And we'll talk a little bit more
about d m T and kind of what's going on
in your body physiologically right after this. Alright, So d
(09:36):
m T, which you mentioned at the onset, the the
one part of this concoction, the p veritas contains d
M t. You're gonna pronounce that. Oh, yes, it's methyl
trip to me. Oh look at you just rolls off
the tongue now, doesn't it. Uh. So this is something
not exclusive to p verritas. It's found in a bunch
(09:57):
of psychedelic substances, and this is something that can cause hallucinations,
perhaps changes in your perception, your state of consciousness, your
sense of self, which will really get into it has
a lot to do with the ayahuasca journey. Um. However,
if you just eat the d M t UM, it's
not gonna have this this kind of effect on you because, Uh,
(10:20):
there's an enzyme called uh monoamine oxidase, and that's gonna
break it down your in your digestive system before it
gets absorbed. So you have to combine it with this
copy vine which prevents the uptake of it. Yeah, the
copy vine has an alkaloid called harmala alkaloid, and harmalines
are psychotropic and of themselves, which is why the the
(10:45):
copy vine alone used to just be ayahuasca. But the
fact that it prevents um your your the monoamine oxidase
to break down the d M t it allows your
body to absorb it all of a sudden you're tripping balls,
although I hear it's not all of a sudden. I
think it's it takes a good thirty minutes to come on,
(11:08):
and then it takes like a supplementary boost um an
hour or so later to to really bring on like
the kind of transcendent experience that people are looking for
when they take ayahuasca. So you've got the you've got
the d m T being absorbed. That's the one to
punch right. You've got the d MT itself, and then
(11:30):
you've got the plant that allows the d m T
to be absorbed. And when you put those two things together,
the p veritas and the B copy, that's what the
that's the ayahuasca that you read about and vice that's
what they're talking about. Yeah, and these you know, this
is administered by a shaman um someone who ideally as
a shaman that knows what they're doing. And there's sometimes
(11:52):
there are other plants that are brewed in there as well,
but uh not always, And sometimes it's brewed separately and
then combined later. Sometimes times it all depends on which
shaman you go to, of what the ritual is like.
Sometimes you're included as part of it. Um. Sometimes it's
like a thick liquid t sometimes it's a paste. It's
been described. No matter what it is, it seems like
(12:14):
around the horn. Everybody says it tastes awful, so awful
that that you can very easily throw up, which is
something that's pretty common with the um. With an ayahuasca experiences.
I didn't get that from the From the taste, though,
I got that that that was like, once it's in
your body, it makes you nauseous and you throw up, right,
(12:36):
But like, oh, this taste so bad, I'm gonna puke
it up. No, No, because then it wouldn't be in
your body long enough to be absorbed. Right. Yeah, But
I think the taste and the memory of the taste,
combined with the nausea is enough to throw up. But
the whether whether you do throw up or not, it's
not necessarily like you're going to throw up there the
(12:57):
the point, one of the points of an eye ahuasca
ceremony is to throw up. You're meant to throw up um,
and you're you will actually be forced into this either
if you don't do it from the ayahuasca. You may
also be given something like tobacco juice like a water
with tobacco that's soaked in it for a while, and
you'll be told to drink that so that you will
(13:18):
throw up. Because this idea of purging, whether it's throwing
up or diarrhea, is a very frequent side effective iahuaca,
very frequent. Um. You are you are meant to be
purging your your body, and it's meant to be this
kind of symbolic spiritual purge of your ego, of all
the nastiness, of all the horrible nous that's a part
(13:41):
of you. You're getting it out as part of the
trip and as the trip sets in. Yeah, and the
taste has been described. The New York Times has said
it's like a um muddy herbal taste. Uh. Someone from
vox dot com took it a gun named Shaun Illing.
He described it as a cup of motor oil diluted
with a splash of water. So I read, I read
(14:02):
it's almost as gross as a Neco wafer. I don't
think i've ever had anco wafer? Good on you have?
You know what? Am I crazy? What are they not?
Go wafers like old timey kind of like chalky candy
that comes in a role you've seen them. Probably you've
(14:22):
seen them in my old timey candy days exactly. I'm
sure I did. Uh So all right, I guess we
should talk a little bit about uh, Like you said, um,
it's orange. It's origins in the Napo River basin by
this Runa tribe like you said, Uh, And it's called
the Vine of Death or the mother Vine. This copy
(14:43):
and they think that early on they may have just
taken this copy by itself, right, because the brew it's
got the harmlins in it that's not only an m
A o I but also has like its own kind
of psychoactive stuff going on. So that was the original Iowa. Yeah,
and we have written accounts from like the seventeen hundreds
when Jesuits would go to the Amazon to try and
(15:07):
you know, christianize folks and trip balls. Yeah, because I'm
sure the entry was like whoa, and that's it. Did
you hear about the guy that was just killed the missionary? Yes?
On setting Ali's sent in All Island. Yeah, he it's
like something from a movie. He went at first and
(15:27):
a child shot an arrow through a bible that he
was holding. Apparently I hadn't heard about that. Yeah, because
he had. He went back a few times and was
like journaling about it and said he basically like held
up his Bible. It's like something from a movie and
an arrow was shot through it. And I'm like, dude,
if that is not like, if you believe in God,
that's a sign from God. Well you you remember the
(15:50):
turnaround the man in the whole episode we talked about them. Yeah,
they were the ones that like you, like everyone knew
you just don't go anywhere near him and did some
fishermen and killed like years a few years back, and
this guy I guess had tried um. He decided he
was going to be the one. Yeah. I don't actually
know enough about the story, but he clearly was trying
(16:12):
to jane access to them. Yeah. Yeah, he was trying
to spread the word of Jesus and paid like you're
not supposed it's illegal, I think, to even trespass there.
But he paid people sort of under the table to
take him there, and they did so, and those people
were arrested and his family is saying, you need to
let these people go because he like really wanted to
(16:32):
do this. I see. It's very interesting. Yeah it is.
It's crazy, but I just like that sounds like something
you would make up from a movie, like shooting an
arrow through the Bible they're holding up, you know. Uh
So we got a little sidetrack, but we were talking
about the Jesuits like having this on record in the
seventeen hundreds when they went and they were like, hey,
there's something going down down here. That's very interesting. Yeah.
(16:54):
And even William S. Burrows wrote the Yahee Letters in
three and it was about his experience with the Aahuascar vine.
And apparently they the practitioners at the time knew, um
well into the to the the twentieth century, that you
could combine it with the p veritis fine and and
(17:16):
have a completely different experience. But that wasn't necessarily the point.
That was like an optional ceremony you could perform. But
the most, the most widespread and traditional ceremony was just
the vine of death, right. Yeah. And then at some
point somebody started putting him together and word about this
got out, and the mid two thousand's is when it
(17:37):
just ayahuasca like kind of hit the public consciousness in
the West. Yeah. I mean in the sixties, of course,
uh in in certain uh you know, subcultures in America.
They knew about it because of william S Burrows and
people seeking out you know, things like peyote and all
kinds of psychedelic experiences, but it definitely was not sort
(17:59):
of in the stream until you know, not not too
long ago. And even still I think even at the
time it was strictly the harm alines and and just
the the vine that was being used, the copy vine.
It wasn't. It wasn't. Somebody started putting it together frequently
with the the veritas plant, and that's when it became
(18:23):
hugely popular. Yeah, so popular now that there is ayahuasca
tourism big time like going on in South America. And
uh said the central part is Peru's uh a room
bomba valley. And if you, I mean, if you were
going down for an ayahuasca experience like a spiritual quest,
(18:43):
is is the reason you're going down there? I don't
fault you for that at all, um, But you have
to understand the the You have to do your research.
You can't just show up in South America and be like,
all right, somebody give me some ayahuasca. Because there are
a lot of um in scrupulous and nefarious outfits that
(19:04):
have come up to to take advantage explicitly of that
kind of Western tourist, the ill informed Western tourist who
is going to have a horrible, terrible trip and not
going to get the spiritual experience you're looking for. Um So,
you have to do your research because there are some
legitimate ayahuasca outfits in South America, but you, um, they're
(19:27):
they're not going to take you if you just show
up down there, and you're gonna end up in some
some in a bad situation. Yeah for sure. Um So,
taking part in one of these ceremonies, let's say you
do find like a legit shaman who's willing to take
your American dollars or whatever, however you're paying your gold
(19:49):
en gets and drink its. Uh, it's still it's sort
of funny. It all goes back to Burrows with the
set and setting thing, which is what he famously preached
about any psychic dellic experience is to really put a
lot of thought into the set in the setting where
you're gonna do this, so it goes well for you.
Um So, as this uh concoction is being brewed, like
(20:11):
I said before, sometimes you're taking part in this and
helping to mash it up and brew the t um.
But what they're really trying to do is, um, the
whole ceremony isn't just like for show. It's it's all
part of the thing to get you settled in and
focused on kind of the right things going in, Like
what do you want to accomplish here, what do you
(20:33):
want to find out about yourself? What questions do you
have about yourself? And really get into that that frame
of mind as they hand you your puke bucket. Although
I would recommend bringing your own, Oh yeah, I hadn't
thought about that. I would not want to reused puke bucket.
Good lord. I hadn't even considered that it would be
by O B for me, So um yeah, I can
(20:56):
just totally see how as a as a Westerner, you
would just be like, come on, we don't need the
ceremony stuff. Let's just give me the good stuff. But that,
like you said, that's the point is to ease you
into it, to get your mind and body prepared for this,
this enormous trip you're about to go on, because if
you just get dropped right in the middle of it
without any kind of preparation or without any kind of assistance,
(21:19):
you're going to lose your marbles pretty pretty well. UM.
So that that is a big part of going on
an ayahuasca journey is is having somebody who's competent, trained
and UM, empathetic and willing to stay there with you,
to prepare you, to stay with you, to keep an
eye on you. You need to be monitored. You can't
(21:40):
be up and like just running off into the jungle
by yourself, because terrible things are going to happen to
you in that situation. UM. And then to help you
afterward as well, and from from some of the preliminary
research that's starting to come in, if you undertake an
ayahuasca journey, I guess is that it's the best word
I can come up with. UM. Under the right setting,
(22:04):
under the right guidance, with the right support, both pre
during and after, it can have profound effects on your
spirituality and your sense of connectedness to the universe. It
can also possibly help you with UM with diagnosed mental
illness as well. Yeah, well we'll get to the illness
part mental illness part at the end, but UM, just
(22:25):
your standard sort of truth seeker, let's say, okay, UM,
it's very much tight into like what the and ideal
conditions and like the sixties and seventies with Ellis and
Guess beyond, but the LSD experience and that. Uh, there
was a lot of talk in the sixties about the
ego and every you know, hip musician and in the
(22:49):
United States talked about stripping away the ego, from Brian
Wilson to the Mamas and the Papa's too, you know
Neil Young. Uh is stripping away that ego of self basically,
which which means kind of getting outside yourself to the
point where, uh, you're not looking at the world around
you and how it affects you, but there there is
(23:13):
no you. There is no It's a loss of self
such that's so profound that you can only see the
world and people around you as they exist in reality. Uh.
It's it's a pretty sort of deep, trippy thing to
try and describe in words on a podcast, But I
think that's sort of the general thing is is uh
washing that ego down to where it's not around anymore
(23:36):
and you get like a true sense of the world
around you, like for the maybe for the first time. Yeah, yeah,
and the the ego in and of itself isn't a
bad thing like it's it's they think that it developed
among animals. Is a like, that's your sense of self awareness.
That's the thing that leads you to want to preserve
your own life, to get away from danger, to realize that, like,
(23:57):
you can die because there is a you, right, It's
a very basic thing. Um. The problem is is in humans,
as we've evolved, our ego has also evolved, and it
can get to a point where it's unhealthy. It's kind
of toxic. It can help you develop bad, bad relationships,
people don't want to be around you. It can also
affect your self esteem if your egos underdeveloped. There's a
(24:19):
lot of problems that can go wrong with the ego,
and so a lot of people who prescribe psychedelics to
deal with that kind of thing say, psychedelics strip away
the ego. And now that we've gotten to the point
where where we are advanced enough as a civilization that
we can give people acid and put them in the
an MRI machine, the Wonder machine and watch what happens,
(24:41):
we've shown that, Yes, it seems like the the areas
that are responsible for generating the ego, don't they get
kind of turned off while you're under the influence of psychedelics,
and it allows you to connect, to see outside of yourself,
to see that you are connected with all of this
other stuff. So this whole ego depletion or ego stripping, UM,
(25:03):
it's a major component of not just ayahuasca but all psychedelics.
But it is a big it's a big reason why
people undertake ayahuasca UM journeys. Again. But get this, Siss,
there was something I hadn't realized before, Chuck, So that
from those m r I studies, they found that, UM,
(25:24):
there's something called the default mode network, which is the
thing that keeps your body humming and keeps your It's
the part of your brain that's going while you're not
thinking right, And they found that when the default mode
network is suppressed and your frontal cortex is activated, that's
when it seems that your um, your ego is at
(25:46):
the least, it's when your egos turned off and you're
free to connect with the universe or whatever. Right. Well,
that default mode network is a very primitive part of
our brain. It's a very primitive system of our brain,
and it kind of suggests in a way that the
loss of ego is something that we may eventually evolve to.
(26:08):
Isn't that cool? Because if your frontal cortex is what's
being activated in your default mode network is inactivated, that's
like your ancient brain and your evolved brain. One's activated
and one's one's suppressed and your egos gone. That that
says to me like, well, yeah, if we keep evolving
a frontal cortex, I wonder if we'll lose our ego
at some point, or at least it will be radically altered. Interesting,
(26:32):
I thought so too. Yeah, so what can happen? Uh?
You know, like like any sort of psychedelic trip, it's
going to be completely um singular to the person that's
doing it. There is no across the board sort of
sweeping statements you can make. But um, you strip away
that ego and anything can happen. From feeling connected to
(26:53):
the more connected to the universe or the earth or
the tree, or leaning against or maybe the father that
passed away when you were a child that you didn't
have a relationship with, or the loved one that you
currently have a toxic relationship with. You can feel sort
of a not imaginary but it is in your mind,
(27:15):
but a bond and that they're not like right there
in front of you, Um, just new understandings of relationships
that may be complicated or toxic in your life, right exactly,
like you're you're you're seeing them in a different way
because of the ego loss. Yeah, yeah, I think that's fascinating. Um.
And like you said, it is symbolic death of the ego,
(27:36):
which is why that vomiting is important. Like in theory,
I guess you're you're vomiting up that ego and then
it's go time. Um. Apparently you can hallucinate your death. Uh.
And like you said before, it's not often looked at
it's like, hey man, this is this is gonna be
a great time. Um. But at the same time, I
think it's also typically not like looked at as like
(27:58):
some horror show that you're about to undergo. Um, although
it can be. But it's just a profound emotional and
psychological experience exactly. I've never done it, I mean either,
but this is from researching it, right exactly, which is
like we've never been to the sun either. But we
(28:18):
talked about that. Yeah, that went great. Actually, now that
you mentioned it, should use a different example. Uh, let's
take another break, and then we'll talk about what you
kind of teased earlier with um uh ahuashka and how
it could be used to treat addiction or PTSD or
other mental illnesses. Right after this, Okay, Chuck, So we're
(29:00):
back and we're talking about using ayahuasca as a tool
like taking that experience of being outside of yourself have
connected to the rest of the universe of reevaluating your
life in a lot of ways to cure mental illness UM.
And one of the things that it's been I guess
(29:21):
some studies have actually shown like now this this actually
works is to treat addiction um, whether it's cigarettes or
booze or drugs or whatever, that that you can undergo
an ayahuasca ceremony. People have and have come out on
the other side like I'm good, I don't need that
the cigarettes or booze or drugs or whatever. Yeah. And
(29:43):
one of the one of the suggestions for what's going
on with this that I saw is that you are
actually healing the psychic damage that's causing you to self
medicate in the first place, something probably from your past,
and then so you with with that need to self
medicate you don't have necessarily the desire to drink or
(30:04):
smoke cigarettes or whatever that you used to, which is
a different model of addiction that's kind of starting to
gain a little bit of traction, but is also very
controversial because it makes it sound like addiction is a choice,
but you're self medicating, You're choosing to do all those
drugs and like throw your life away because of some
psychic trauma. But there there does seem to be a
(30:25):
camp in in medicine that is saying like this actually
might have legs. It kind of makes a lot of sense,
and from what I can tell, those ayahuasca studies kind
of are a checkmark in that view's favor. Yeah, and
I think that can work in conjunction with the other piece,
which is removing that ego. Even if it's for whatever
(30:46):
how many hours that you're undergoing this trip um could
just simply disrupt that. You know, you often hear about
addiction being like this sort of cycle, like a cyclical
thing um, and even just disrupting that sick coal path
of that circular path um can be enough to sort
of get you on the off ramp, uh from using Yeah,
(31:10):
get you on the off ramp gets you yeah, on
the off ramp. Yes, that's how you said, right, yeah,
and then eventually off that off ramp onto a nice
chill side street. Yeah, and maybe a nice drive into
the country past a few cows and then sleep. Yeah.
I had a at a therapist one time that talked
about getting off of the highway. It was a metaphor
(31:34):
that actually worked for me. But like choosing to get
off the highway when certain things were happening, and sometimes
something that simple is just kind of clicks in, like, oh,
if I notice something's going on, I'm speeding down the
highway towards the badness, and just get on that exit
ramp and now I'm in my neighborhood. I'm hanging out
with cows in a nice pasture. PTSD is another specifically,
(32:00):
I think a lot of times with military PTSD UM
they've been, you know, using psychedelics more and more in
Ayahuasca is no stranger to this treatment, and UM, while
it is not a magic pill, they are doing some
studies on this and it seems like, uh, and like
with all these is tough to get funding for these
kind of studies sometimes, but it does seem like it's
(32:20):
gaining more ground in the medical community to try out
these kind of experiments. Well, they're trying, like how to
get some of these studies underway in the United States,
but because ayahuasca is considered a Schedule one drug, which
is the the worst, most nefarious drugs of all, UM,
they can't. They just I don't think there's been a
single study in the US. But fortunately they can just
(32:42):
go down to South America and do the best they
can with some of the Ayahuascar centers that are down there,
and they're like, again, there are some legitimate Ayahuascar centers
that take Western tourists for ayahuasca journeys. UM, and some
groups are are going down their departner with those centers
to study people, and some of the people they're trying
(33:03):
to study our PTSD patients, and they think that if
ayahuasca is helping people with PTSD, which it seems to be,
it's it's basically negative exposure therapy where you're dredging up
all of those worst, your worst memories that are causing
your PTSD, which is bringing them to the surface and
(33:24):
allowing your awareness to kind of shine a light on
them and say, okay, I'm going to recategorize these now
and they're not being categorized as bad and and frightening
as they were before. It's not as traumatic as as
they were originally categorized. Yeah, and and specifically in this
study that you're thinking about, is uh Or talking about
(33:44):
his combat veterans suffering from PTSD and it's the Temple
of the Way of Light uh And the Amazon has
partnered with a group in Spain and the UK, the
International Center for Ethnobotanical Research and Service and PANE and
then the Beckley Foundation in the UK, and they're treating
close to six combat veterans a year and it says
(34:08):
it's the largest psychedelic study um ever undertaken. So yeah,
it's really interesting. Yeah, I know that they're using um
M d M A to treat PTSD as well. And
then I can't remember the name of that one treatment.
But remember you like follow a pen with your eyes
while you're going over your worst memory, and it it
recategorizes the memories, is less scary. I want to remember
(34:31):
that one. Yeah, I can't remember what we talked about
it And but that apparently works really well too, so
without the vomiting, that's a big part of it though,
my friend just bring your own bucket. Uh. Problems with ayahuasca. Um,
it is not generally toxic and you would have to
take so much ayahuasca sort of like when we were
(34:53):
talking about marijuana, Like is there even a lethal dose?
Can you even say that? Because the lethal dose apparently
for aguasca is twenty times what you had normally taken
a typical ceremony. Uh as the grabster put it, or
uh he might have been quoting someone, but it's uh,
could could anyone even choke this much of that down? Right? Probably? Not?
(35:15):
Is that even possible? But there have been I mean,
there have been some deaths that have been related to ayahuasca,
and and when you dig a little deeper you find like, oh,
it wasn't actually the ayahuasca directly that caused this, but
the people would not have died had they not been
in South America on the ayahuasca journey, right. Yeah, There's
(35:37):
this one guy who, um who died in I believe
two thousand fourteen. He was an American, you know, he's British,
I'm sorry, and his name was Henry Miller. And he
died on the way to the hospital because he gone
kind of non responsive and the Iowa squeros Ia Iowa square. Yeah,
(35:59):
I said, um that took him to the hospital, had
him on a motorcycle. He fell off the motorcycle and
died of a head injury on the way to the hospital.
So it wasn't the ayahuasca that killed him. But he
wouldn't have been on the motorcycle in the first place
had he not been on this aahuasca trip. So the
shorthand and the headlines is a man dies from ayahuasca. Yeah.
(36:21):
There have been some other cases where like people would
be having a bad trip and maybe attack someone else
and that would lead to like violence or death or
just this year in two thousand eighteen in Peru, um
an eighty one year old shaman woman was shot and killed. Uh,
and then a Canadian man was murdered for revenge for
(36:42):
that killing. But supposedly this had nothing to do with
like being under the influence, but it was some sort
of dispute that happened during this this whole conflict. Yeah.
The woman was named Olivia are Avalo and she was
the spiritual mother of Peru's second largest indigenous tribe, the
Shapebo Canibo. And this guy, this Canadian guy named Sebastian
(37:05):
Woodruff shot and killed her, allegedly because um her son
owed him money. He was there to learn ayahuasca and
I guess he didn't feel like he'd gotten his money's worth,
so he killed her. He killed this this woman, the shaman,
the spiritual leader of the second largest tribe in in Peru,
and he was Canadian. Yes, yeah, I know it was surprising,
(37:27):
not a very Canadian thing to do. No, it really wasn't.
But the the whole thing really revealed the problems that
that have been developing from this ayahuasca tourism. First, this
guy was down there and wanted to learn about ayahuasca
so he could take it back to Canada and appropriate
this culture. There's problem one. Two, he didn't get his
money's worth, so he shot and killed the woman who
(37:49):
was supposed to be teaching him. It's a big problem
as well. But then also between the Iowa squeros and
the practitioners who are are hosting these tourists, and then
the governments of the countries that they're hosting them in.
There's tensions there as well. Because this village said there's
police everywhere. The police never come here, but then a
(38:10):
Canadian man goes missing and now our village is overrun
with with police, like, what's the what's going on here? Um,
So there's there's a lot of tension that's being there's
a lot of simmering tension that's being heated by this
this Western ayahuasca tourism, and um, it's kind of largely
(38:31):
in part because it's unregulated, but also because a lot
of people going down there don't have respect for what
they're doing. And then also a lot of the people
who are popping up as Iowa squaros don't have any
respect for what they're doing either. So the the respect
that's been given to this this tradition for so many
hundreds or thousands of years being lost, and then on
(38:51):
top of that, the ayahuasca that they're they're drinking is
so wildly more potent than what traditionally is all those
hundreds of thousands of years, you know, the Jesuits version
of ayahuasca. Um. That's really kind of I think fueling
this kind of recklessness that's that's becoming part and parcel
(39:12):
with ayahuasca used down in South America. Yeah, because some
of these areas are are poor and so all of
a sudden, it becomes a hip thing for uh, Westerners
with money to come down there with cold hard cash.
And then, like you said, they're appropriating their culture. So
that's one strike. But then to appeal to these people
(39:34):
all of a sudden, they're not as like, you know,
we don't want to freak people out maybe by being
too traditional, so we're gonna westernize our own methods a bit.
So and let's say, let's get a website going uh
and then we'll be the go to for when they
come down here. So then they're undermining their own culture. Um.
(39:54):
And it's just sort of becoming a big mess. It
sounds like yeah. And again I think like if you're
going down there, like whether you're Western or um Asian
or whoever you are, if you're going down for a
vision quest, that's not that's not what's being you know,
brought out as as the fault. The fault is if
you're if you're going down there because it's hip or
because you just want to party, or because a friend
(40:18):
did it, um, and you're not you're not being respectful
of it. Then that's where the the issue seems to
be arising from ayahuasca anything else you know. Oh yeah,
there is one thing that we didn't cover, um, that
that can happen because the copy vine is a m
AO inhibitor. There's a lot of other things, um that
(40:41):
can actually kill you that are pretty normal, like interactions.
You can have drug interactions with things as normal as
chocolate because the um monoamine oxidase typically breaks these things down. Uh.
And if it's being inhibited so that the ayahuasca can work,
it's effects you if you eat chocolate, your toast. And
(41:03):
one of the other things that that it can do
is so the motto the m A O ies prevent
your serotonin from being taken up. And that's how d
m T acts on the brain. It goes into where
serotonin receptors normally fit and just says, let's party, right. Um.
(41:23):
So with all this extra serotonin floating around, if you
also happen to be on an s s r I
as serotonin reuptake inhibitor, uh, you've got too much serotonin.
You can go into what's called serotonin shock. This is
where the diarrhea comes in. That's one of the um
the symptoms of serotonin shock. But that's one of the
mild symptoms. You can also have seizures. You your heart
(41:46):
can also stop, and you can die from having too
much serotonin flooding your brain. So that's that is a
direct way you can die from ayahuasca. But it's not
from the hallucinogen, uh the aspect of it. It's from
the M A O I. So when they're when they
show up from uh the Silicon Valley and they say
(42:06):
they're translating in there, like, hey, bro, he wants to
know if you've got anything, if you've had anything in
your body. And then you're like, no, just mine my
Selexa and a wolf down at Toblaron on the way up,
way over. I'm good, let's do this. Let's skip the ceremony.
Just let me drink that stuff, right you just yeah,
you mash the shaman's face out of your way, like
get out of here. Just give me that. I know.
(42:27):
I know why we haven't been selling tickets in Seattle
so much. Oh no, we love that's not Silicon Valley.
Oh that's right. I mean well San Francisco to we love.
We love all people. We love all of you, everybody.
We love all potential ticket buyers are egos are are
down in the pits. Uh. If you want to know
more about ayahuasca, man, do some research. Uh. There's a
(42:50):
lot of it out there, so do it. Um. And
since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, Yeah,
I'm gonna call this short and sweet. But we did
get an answer to something ing. Uh remember in the
fire Trucks episode, you could not remember that game and
we got everything from sim City to uh civilization. Yeah,
(43:12):
none of them were right. But our friend, our new pal,
Mike man Goba, Mike says this, guys that just listened
to the fire Twuks episode and also shout out to
two things. All the people who wrote in and spelled
at fire Twucks. Yeah, and then all the firefighters. We
heard from a lot of firefighters and they all, every
(43:35):
single one of them said, yep, it's chili. Josh did
not overstate the chili thing. Yeah, And they're all very
nice and said, you guys got most of this right. Um.
Anytime it's something really specific like that, we're gonna get
some stuff wrong. But they're like, you guys did a
good job. And one of them even had a joke
that said, if you're at a party, how do you
know if there's a firefighter there, and the answer is, Oh,
(43:56):
don't worry, they'll tell you that was from a firefighter.
So I guess they have a sting game about it.
Uh So, anyway, guys listening to the fire TALKX episode,
and he talked about the old game that burns buildings
to the ground if you don't have the fire station,
and that game is called Pharaoh. Yes, Pharaoh yep e
h a r a o h yep, you're building an
(44:18):
Egyptian civilization camp. And he said it's an expansion game,
the expansion games called Cleopatra, and it was one of
my favorite games, which I still play today. Keep up
the chatter, Mike Man, go thanks a lot, Mike, That's
exactly what it was, and never in a million years
would have remembered that, but it was. Indeed, Goes uh
(44:38):
oh is that what we're calling him? Yeah, all right,
thanks a lot, Goes. Well, if you want to be
like Gobs and rescue us by reminding me of something
I can't remember what it was, or just correcting my syntax,
you can get in touch with us. We're all over
social You can find those links at stuff you should
Know dot com and you can just send us an email,
(44:59):
wrap it ups to get on the bottom, and send
it off to Stuff Podcast superbs dot com. H Stuff
you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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