How Peyote Works

Josh and Chuck have tackled a lot of drugs on the show, but peyote has loomed like a bad Jim Morrison poem. Learn all about this plant today. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Maine and Greater New England. We're coming to see
you guys in Portland and we can't wait. We would
love to see you there. Yep, we'll be at the
State Theater on August. If you're interested, you can get
tickets and information at s y s K live dot com.
Throws some lobster at us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

(00:28):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
w Chuck Bryan, there's Jerry over there, and uh whow,
he's Alie Payton's best record. I think, um no, no,
hold on no, it's not why he's Ali it's um
it's not Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, crooked rink between them

(00:52):
with Summer Babe. Oh no, that was the first one
that's slanted and enchanted. Okay, that was their first album.
What a classic, man. I think that's their best one,
is it not? Well? Cricket Rain gets sighted a lot
of times is sort of the peak pavement. Uh. Slanted
is for fans of like the early sloppy days lo fi,
which we both love. I like, Wow, He's out because

(01:13):
it was so strange and Weird. I haven't heard that
one very much. It's great. Okay, they're all They're all great.
I like him, even right down to the last one,
the Weird Um Polka experimental album that they came out
they're playing. Uh, they announced they're playing another couple of
reunion shows at a festival in Portugal, and I, you know,

(01:35):
we're in touch with Mr Bob Nistanovich and I texted him,
It's like, do I have to go to Portugal? Is
anything bruin here in the States. It's like, because I'll go.
What do you say? He said, Uh, nothing is of yet.
He's like, so go with God. Are you going to
go to ports your goal? Maybe if that's the only
chance to see Paven again, because I want to go
to Portugal anyway. You have frequent fire miles to use

(01:56):
an do it? You totally should and drink some port
while you're there too. Yeah. You know, my friends opening
up a wine shop in Kirkwood that is very not
exclusively Portuguese, but that's where she's from. It's going to
be featuring a lot of Portuguese wines. That works really
well with this episode, Chuck, as we'll see later on.

(02:18):
But just put a pin in Portuguese wine, okay, and
for later. All right, So you started off by saying
the words wowie's awe because we're talking about peyote, which
is an allucinogen. That's right, but um, it's a it's
from what I've seen, one of the oldest to hallucinogens.
People were eating mushrooms all over Europe, north central western

(02:39):
Europe for a very long time, sometimes accidentally, which is hysterical.
But people have been eating peyote for a really really
long time too, as we'll see, thousands and thousands of years,
and as a results, got a pretty interesting little history
to it, both ancient and modern. And really all it
comes down to is it's a bineless cactus that has

(03:01):
a very bitter taste that's not nice, never stands up
for itself. Um, but it is a spineless cactus, which
means well, if it's a spinless cactus, that means that
desert animals probably love to eat it. They don't because
it has a really bitter taste. And that bitter taste
is an alkaloid called mescaline, right, And that it's a sign.

(03:22):
It's nature signs saying don't eat me, right, but just
so happens that if we humans eat that particular alkaloid,
we say things like wow, he's alwi. That's right, right,
so uh, yeah, let's go. It is native to Mexico
in the southern US. It is technically the scientific name
is loafa Fhora william Ce. Now we decided that two

(03:45):
eyes means you pronounced both right, uh. And it grows
in northern Mexico and South Texas right along the border.
There knows no borders, that's true. And it loves the
rocky limestone. And in historical documents it's had a range
all the way up to New Mexico perhaps, and we've

(04:07):
either changed that with human interaction or that was just wrong.
But it definitely grows along the border. Yeah, and it
looks like a little uh did growing up? Did you
ever see those little tomato pincushions. Yeah, oh yeah, it
looks sort of like that, but it's not red, yeah,
I guess. And it doesn't have pin sticking out of it. Now,

(04:28):
although you could stick a pin in it, sure you
could put a bird on it, it would be very
disrespectful to the spirit within the payote though, that's right.
It probably wouldn't like that very much. That's true, like
a little Payote voodoo doll. Sure. Um. So, like we said,
the mescaline is is to tell animals stay away, don't
eat me. Um. They also think it's possible that has

(04:49):
something to do with communications between plants. It may do
a number of different things actually, But one of the
things about payote is it has this reputation, a very
mystical reputation, not just because it's a psychedelic and a leucinogen,
but because it is really really hard to find until
it's not. It's got this reputation where you'll be looking

(05:11):
all over for payote. It grows in the rocky soil,
and typically it will grow under like a creosop bush
or a mesquite tree or something like that nurse plant. Right, Um,
but you can you could have looked all over underneath
the creosoat tree or whatever, and you walk away and
then you're like, I'll just go back and look again,
and there it is, just staring you right in the face.

(05:32):
Trip over a rock and you land on it. Right
there's the payot. So it's got this kind of neat
little uhum reputation for for hiding, playing hide and go
seek with you, and then it's like, okay, all right,
go ahead and eat me and trip trip. I was
gonna say something else. Uh, like I said, it is
not red. Um, they can be brighter green, but uh,

(05:54):
they can also look sort of bluish. Yeah, which is interesting.
That nice like steel blue green. It's a pretty color.
It is um and they grow and usually in clusters
with multiple plants, but sometimes you can find them individually
and they I think they're very pretty, that little pink,
white and yellow flowers. Um. They grow very low to
the ground and they're just uh, it looks like you know, stubby, Yeah,

(06:18):
a little stubby tomato with um. Yeah. But it's not
it's not completely round. It has like sections. It's oh yeah,
it's almost a little bit too. Yeah. So um yeah,
I see what you mean. You know what I mean.
We're on beauty right now. Everyone. That's not true. Oh um.

(06:41):
So this plant in particular has a weird history of
getting confused with other plants because some of the other
plants that go around it are also um consumed by
some of the indigenous tribes in the area and have been.
But there's like a type of peyote plant that won't
it's not psychedelic. It just makes you kind of sleep.
There's something um called the plant that has miss colbeans

(07:04):
um that are intoxicons of their own type, but they
can also kind of kill you. Uh. There was a
while there where payote Um was called both uh Lapaphoria
Lapaphora william z and and Hellonium louini. Right, both have
two eyes on the end. And then somebody's like, now
that's the same plant. So there's a lot of confusing

(07:26):
horticultural history associated with I wonder why with payote it
was playing tricks, is what it was. So there is
a you know, people have used it not only for
um religious purposes, although that's a large part of it,
which we'll get to in depth. But it does have
some anti microbial properties. I've seen that for in really

(07:49):
low doses that um. Certain tribes have used it for indigestion,
to treat wounds, to give them energy to work on
a computer for days on end your hangovers. Uh, And
like anything psychedelic you could um technically you can use
it to help treat mental illness, but they don't study

(08:09):
that stuff in the United States. So again it's always
very hard to think about any sort of ecstasy or
magic mushrooms or anything without studying like clinical studies. Well,
they and they did study for a while. UM mescaline,
once they isolated it from peyote was used like LSD
was in the fifties until LSD came along. And they

(08:30):
used it because they thought that maybe you could glean
information about the root cause of schizophrenia by giving mescal
into people with schizophrenia. But they found out it was
too unreliable. People's experiences were too different UM and there
was no kind of UM structure that that the individual followed.

(08:51):
And plus they found out people with schizophrenia could tell
the difference between their delusions and delusions brought on by
mescal iguage. Is pretty interesting. Yeah, and when was that
in the fifties. I guess pre fifties because LSD came
along in So when you harvest peyote, UM, you cut
off that stem really close to the ground and they're

(09:12):
known as buttons. They look like I guess I've described
as pincushions, but they look like a little buttons. It
makes sense. Yeah, and Ed here Ed wrote this article
the grab st He said a typical trip is four
to six buttons and I thought that seemed like a
lot of peyote, because I had seen photos of some
buttons that were like as large as the palm of

(09:33):
your hand. And I'm trying to imagine eating eight things
that big, pier eight tomatoes that large. It's a lot
of tomatoes. But then I looked at other pictures and
I guess those were like just super big peyote buttons,
and most of them were a couple of inches and
circumference here that big. I thought they were more like
the size of a quarter or something like that. I
think between a quarter and like a silver dollar maybe,

(09:55):
or a shilling for our friends in the UK? Is
that a Is that a quid? How does that all work?
A shilling? Oh man, we're gonna get emails about it.
That's okay. A shilling is like twenty pence. I think
you're going on record. But four to six buttons, Um that,

(10:18):
like you said, it's really better. So a lot of
times people won't want to eat it. Um. There are
all different kinds of ways you can make the tea
with it, and we're not giving you a how to write,
but um, it's as simple as that. This is how
people take peyote. Sometimes they'll grind into a powder and
snorted or into a pill. I saw that you can
smoke it too, when it's dried and powdered. I've never

(10:38):
heard of that before, but I ran across it. But
here's the thing. If if you're down south of the
border and you're out hunting for peyote, uh, and if
this is something you want to do, more power to you,
but be respectful of the plant. Don't go digging it
out with a shovel by the roots because you're gonna
kill the plant. Yeah, that's extremely disrespectful to a peyote plant,

(10:58):
especially in the edition of like um groups indigenous tribes
that take payote for ritual purposes. You do not kill
the plant. You don't cut off the peyote button so
um low that the roots can't regenerate, and you don't
dig the plant out. Yet despite that, people do it
all the time. And then that combined with feral pigs

(11:18):
who like to eat it and trip, they really trip.
I don't know, they definitely like to eat peyote, so
probably um those two combined have really kind of put
a hurt and on payote um and it's range so
people who are like conscious of this stuff say, well,
you can also get mescaline out of what's called the
San Pedro cactus, which grows up in the Andes and

(11:39):
that's not threatened, are vulnerable, and then get it there. Yeah,
just go go un improve, don't stop in Mexico, keep
going south. Should we take a break. Let's take a break.
Charge all right, let's take a break, and we're gonna
talk a little bit about that mescaline right after this.
Should know okay, stuff, you should know mescaline that is

(12:18):
the primary psychedelic chemical, and that was synthesized What did
you say nineteen eighteen or nineteen nineteen nineteen by Ernest
Spa Ernest Ernest Smith. That's how you'd say the A
with the new lat Yeah, so you go Ernt Smith,
an Austrian chemist. Sorry, Ernest, I do like your name.

(12:39):
Who I did a little researchers not. This is kind
of the thing he did that's big enough. Don't you
think the guy isolated mescaline for Pete's sake? Oh no, no no, no,
I'm not knocking it. I was just uh, I thought
it was gonna be like and you know what else
he did? And this is kind of what he did.
He's known for that, right, like Joseph Priestley, who was like,
I discovered nitrous oxide and I also discovered ten other

(12:59):
things and start on Beverly Hills nine two And have
you ever seen my shirt? It's the Judas Priest logo,
but it says Jason Priestly. It's pretty great. Is his
face anywhere in it? Or is it just it just
looks like the Judas Priest logo, but it says Jason Priestley. Nice,
I gotta see that. I like some of those shirts.

(13:20):
That's it's one of the good ones. The one I
used to hate was the when Farfik new Again was
the big thing and the hippies would wear the effin gruven.
I hated those all right. So um sith sith isolated mescally.

(13:41):
In the following year, the pharmaceutical company Mark is like, oh,
we'll just turn this through. No pharmaceutical started to get
studied and released, and UM things were going along fairly
swimming lee for it. Um it's a fennel ethel amine,
which makes it different. Actually, um LSD and psilocybin, which

(14:02):
our trip to fans. They're in the indole family um
Fennell ethel mean is the family that mescalin is in
and m d M A is in. And it's no
coincidence that m d M A and mescalin are in
the same family because the chemist who created m D
m A, Alexander Shulgin, he was inspired to create something

(14:23):
like mescalin from a mescaline trip. He went on, Uh,
imagine being like, oh I really like that psychedelic I
just took let me tinker around and make my own
version of it, and he created m D M A
as a result. It's kind of an homage to mescalin.
He created m D M A and two C b U. Yeah. Well, um,
what what mescalin does? It binds to the serotonin receptors

(14:45):
in your brain, and just like UM LSD or magic
mushrooms and stuff, it's going to cause a sense of
loss of the cell for ego and ayahuasca. We did
one on that too, righte. And the interesting thing is
is ed describes a tolerance with other psychedelics. So in
other words, if you take a bunch of mescaline, uh,

(15:06):
it will build up a tolerance for LSD. Let's say,
which is I guess it hits those same receptors. Yeah,
I guess, so, which is I guess a problem if
you take a ton of LSD. But but I have
a friend from college. I won't name him. But one
of the funniest quotes h he has about the old
days is I've definitely forgotten I've taken acid and taken

(15:30):
more acid. That's a T shirt right there too. That's deep.
That's the eighties dead T shirt. It is um f
and grooven. Remember that, Yeah, I remember? No? Okay, no, no,
no mindset funking Grooven. So um. When peyote binds to

(15:52):
those serotonin receptors, some of the cells that it binds
too are responsible for something called nausea, and one of
the hallmarks of a peyote trip is you um very
typically feel nauseous and vomit for a couple of hours
sometimes leading up to the trip, and it's really slow

(16:14):
to cross the blood brain barrier, so it takes hours
to to come on. Yeah, but it also has a
real slow burn, a long burn to it, So compared
to other trips, it's actually a very long lasting trip,
sometimes twelve hours as opposed to say six eight hours
for LSD or mushrooms or something. Twelve hours is the

(16:37):
trip you're going to be on on Payote. It's also
like really well known for being extremely visual and having
some interesting like body feelings to it too. Yeah, Like
you can feel nauseous, you can feel euphoric. You can
feel euphoric and nauseous, but you're gonna feel it in
your body as well as have a lot of like
really trippy visuals. I think didn't they take peyote in

(17:00):
Doors movie? Yeah? And that's a really good he vomited
I think? Right for megrind did That's where the whole
lizard king thing came from? Because I think they took
peyote in the desert. But it's also related to peyote
in a different way too, isn't it the Doors? Right?
Because Aldus Huxley wrote Doors of Perception. He was a
big mescaling guy. Whitn't he that that book was about

(17:20):
his first mescaling trip, right, And that's where the Doors
got their name. And then Jim Morrison went on to
write a bunch of bad poetry. Oh man, I thought
American Prayer was one of the coolest albums of all time.
I bought his poetry book. I was, you know, I
was way into the doors for like everyone for a
brief time in college, and I bought the book and
ever the poetry books and everything, and did you ever
listen to the album? Yeah? I thought it was all great.

(17:43):
Now though it might I'm kind of like, that's not
a great poetry, although maybe it is. What do I know,
I'm the poet. You didn't even know it. So um.
There's one other thing about Algius Huxley too. He coined
the term psychedelic, really, and he coined it after his

(18:03):
first mescaline trip. Interesting, so mescalin, not even just peyote,
Mescalin has given the world m D m A the
doors in the word psychedelic. I'm gonna have to tell
Noel that because movie crushed listeners will laugh at this.
Noel describes about of movies as psychedelic. Oh yeah, I'll
bet he described Mandy as psychedelic. F Oh totally. I

(18:25):
mean you could have to you could not describe it
as psychedelic. Yeah, absolutely. Um, alright, so let's talk about
the history a bit. They've done some carbon dating. I
read this one study of these peyote buttons at an
archaeological dig site that said that use. It suggested that
use went as far back as fifty b C and

(18:46):
that those buttons still had mescaline in them. That would work.
Can you imagine tripping on seventy undred year old Payote buttons?
I mean, wouldn't that be something that you shouldn't do? Well?
I wonder if that makes it weaker or if it's
like a fine wine, if it's like strap in this

(19:07):
this is seven thousand year old mescaline. Yeah. Can you
imagine like a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson cellar,
which apparently that stuff is not very good to drink. Uh,
it's just like a flashy thing that super rich people
want on their shelf. Yeah. Yeah. So the name though,
they think is derived from uh can you pronounce that?

(19:28):
The now? Now, it's all it's a it's the southernmost
group of the Aztecs. Okay. But the word they use
it is pay a tool p E y O t
L payotal, Yeah, payotal, payotal, payotal. That's yeah. I think
we got there. And they don't know what it means.
But some people think it might means the word glistening,

(19:50):
but not everyone is on that train. That's it you
could easily lose the the meaning of a word for glistening.
You know, that's that's a high priority. But it's a
beautiful word. But that first, The first mention of Westerners
encountering peyote is in this sixteenth century study called the
Florentine Codex, and there was a Franciscan missionary who wrote

(20:13):
it named Bernardino de Sagan Sahagun. And he wrote, and
this is in the late fifteen hundreds, on him who
eats it or drinks it, it takes effect like mushrooms.
Also also he sees many things which frightened one or
make one laugh. There you have it pretty straightforward stuff

(20:36):
for sure, but it definitely goes to show like, yeah,
people have been eating mushrooms in Europe for a very
long time. UM. So over time, from like the sixteenth
century onward in North America, UM, people would come in
contact with tribes that had like peyote rituals, and they
would try peyote themselves and they'd be like, this is crazy,
but this is great, or I puked my brains out,

(20:56):
this is awful. Um. It's all these stories kind of
started to come out. UM. And then over time peyote
used really diminished. It used to be very widespread, not
just where it grew, but even beyond its range. Like Um,
indigenous tribes in the area used to trade, so it
people who took peyote ritually. UM even after Colombian contact,

(21:22):
was pretty extensive. But then once like the missionaries took
hold and European governments took hold UM, that really got
outlawed to where it was basically boiled down to one
tribe called the Hui Chall. Actually, look that one up,
is it we It's hoy but the the c h
O L is the um the one he emphasized, So

(21:44):
it's Hochal, beautiful Charles, that's even better than Peyotal, at
least that's what the YouTube told me. The YouTube Emma
saying the one with the spiral, is that one accurate?
I'm pretty sure they're They're mostly accurate. Hoch Yeah, Okay,
So the ho ch All are very well known for
being the tribe most associated with payote ritual use these days,

(22:08):
but they're also very much opposed to UM western encroachment,
sometimes violently so. But I think those two are very
much interconnected. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. I
didn't know that. I mean, um, instead of getting rid
of all the things that we did and just swapping
it out for Christianity like they were being told to do,
they would just say, hey, man, I'll incorporate some of

(22:30):
your Christian ideas into our payote ceremonies. Yeah, and not
just them, but the Native American Church, which will talk
about later, they did basically the same thing. That's right. So, um,
you've got us uh a lot of payote use that
kind of went down to um one tribe and in
a weird way, it rebounded. No, it went, it shrank,

(22:55):
and then it contracted eventually even larger than before to
where it is today. Yeah, Peyota used today is far
more widespread than it was a thousand years ago, isn't
that interesting? Well, part of it because of you know,
American tourists, that's definitely part of it. And American tourists
were turned onto peyote by a guy who was a

(23:18):
U c. L A anthropology student back in the sixties
named Carlos Castaneda. That guy. Did you ever read any
of casts and news books? No? But he has been
sort of exposed as a fraud and a con man
in most academic circles, they will they will call him
that right in academic circles, right now, if you step
over a few rings to the new age circle. The

(23:40):
guy is a legend. And he wrote these books, um,
that were supposedly ethnographic studies about Don Juan Mattis. And
this is where Portuguese wine comes in, Chuck, did you
read this any, Carlos Castana, Yeah, okay, yeah, back in
the day, good stuff. Yeah, it was very interesting. I
only remember. I mean i'd heard of him, but from
the Bong Water song. What what is that? They had

(24:02):
a song called folk Song where she talks about you know,
I went somewhere looking for that Carlos Castana experience. Oh,
bong Waters the name of a band. Yeah, I got you. Yeah,
that's a great name for a band. They were great.
Um so Carlos Castaneta Um, he created these ethnographic studies
that he turned into books that sold like ten million copies.
And it was him being indoctrinated into the Peyote way

(24:24):
of life by a Peyote magician, a Yaqui Indian named
Don Juan Maddis. And the Portuguese wine comes in because
his long time companion is convinced that Don Juan didn't
exist and that Carlos Castaneda made him up and actually
named him after Matteus, the Portuguese wine that she and

(24:48):
he used to drink together all the time. But she's saying, like,
that doesn't mean he's a fraud. That he he you know,
combined all these lessons and everything that he learned from
his own payote trips to kind of create this character
that was like almost a spirit character, right, And everybody said, no,
he's a fraud, like this was this was put out.
There is actual anthropological field work, and he basically lied

(25:13):
and made all this stuff up and was exposed later
on by some colleagues who really went to great trouble
to expose him and undermine him because he sold two
million books ten million books still selling them too. It's
like that guy, remember that big controversy, Like, jeez, when
was it probably twenty years ago when or maybe not

(25:33):
that long when Oprah exposed or yeah, she had him
on the show A Million Little Pieces that I read
that book. I really enjoyed it, and then found out
afterward about the fact that a lot of it was
made up, and I didn't care it was like, well, fine,
call it a novel. Then enjoyed it. Yeah, but Over
really did not let that one go. Remember, she brought
him back on for just like she went on TV,

(25:56):
like vouching for the guy or not vouching. But essentially
you're sort of vouching if you recommend his book, I guess,
but really, I I don't know. I think the follow
up episode was unnecessary and really put the guy in
the stocks. Basically. Yeah, I just remember thinking at the
time he just should not have called it a memoir,
just called it a novel. But and not to diminish
anyone's experience and rehab, which I think was the problem.

(26:17):
Is it kind of very much people, I think so.
I mean, he basically made up some stuff about a
real life tragedy that people go through. Was that twenty
years ago? I don't think it was. When when I
think I was, I think it was like fifteen, because
it was right before I worked Here's when I worked
with the Chicken Killers well set uh so peyote. As

(26:41):
far as Westerners go, um, it was really the eighteen hundreds.
Its effects were first discussed by a doctor in Texas
named J. R. Briggs, who apparently just kind of stumbled
upon it when he met someone from the Kiawa tribe
who sold him some buttons, tried it out, wrote about
it in eight seven and and get this. He he

(27:03):
wrote that he um it was a respiratory stimulant and
his heart started racing. And within a year the company
Parke Davis from Detroit, had a Payote tincture out that
They said, we'll replace the addicting cocaine for a respiratory stimulant.
And it was mescaline. Yeah, mescaline tincture. He just dropped
some mescaline. Well used to be the Wild West, didn't it. Yeah,

(27:25):
but this is a Detroit, well, the wild Midwest. I've
got one more story about this too, alright, Park Davis
out of Detroit, Alistair Crowley. I don't know how he
found out that they had this mescaline tincture, but he
shows up at their door in Detroit, you know, Alistair Crowley,
the occult. Sure, he shows up and knocks on the
door with his scepter and he goes, I hear that

(27:46):
you have some Payote tincture. Do you mind whipping me
up a special batch? And they did, and he said
it was like the best payote tincture he's ever had, really,
out of all the payot tinctures, I guess he'd had
a lot of them. He wrote a book called Like
the Irie of a Mad Drug Fiend or something like that,
So I mean he knew what he was talking about.
But that's a good read. But the chemist at a

(28:06):
pharmaceutical company whipped up a special batch of peyote tincture
for him because he showed up on the doorstep. I
wonder if he goes by the lab and he's like, guys,
this for Alistair Crowley just content, Yeah, it's a little
extra mustard in this one. So um. And there was
a pharmacologist named Louis Lewin or Lewis Lewin, and he

(28:28):
was the first to publish an analysis of these alkaloids
that we were talking about. And this is a so
stuff was going on back then in the late eighteen
hundreds that they didn't quite understand, but they were writing
about it. There's also an article from the Aspen Times,
and I think that it's just a newspaper article about
some like white pioneer types who found some peyote buttons

(28:52):
from running into an indigenous tribe and took him in Aspen,
Colorado eventually was settled exactly. That's pretty bunny. Alright, Let's
take another break here and we'll talk about the Native
American Church right after this stuff you should know, rush

(29:16):
stuff you should know, so check. There's something really weird
about payote in modern times, and that is that the
Native American Church um takes peyote. But the Native American

(29:41):
Church is made up of plenty of tribes that never
were exposed to payote traditionally. That was all a byproduct
of the forced relocation and reservation settlements that the American
government forced upon them. Right, so they'll be like a
Native American tribe in Canada that can take this. Canada

(30:03):
is nowhere near the natural range of peyote. And it's
not like it was traded all the way up into
Canada back in the day. It literally came out of
this intermingling in the Oklahoma territory. And what makes it
even more interesting to me is that you can trace
it back to basically one man named Kwana Parker, who
was a Comanche chief who was a bad a dude.

(30:26):
He was like one of the last holdouts and then
managed to go from like um like basically at war
with white settlers in the American government to one of
the leading leading politicians of the Oklahoma Territory who actually
bridged the gap between um, the white government and the

(30:47):
Indians who have been relocated. Um he somehow rather than
just being he went from bitter enemies to Okay, let's
figure out how to do this the right way. But
he was the one who introduced payote to the Oklahoma territory. Yeah,
he went to Mexico in the eighteen eighties and I
guess brought a bunch back with him. So this stuff
is great. He said, let me just put a little

(31:08):
bit of this in my hat and I'm gonna ride
back with it. But the Native American Church became official
in nineteen eighteen, which I thought was interesting, like right
around the same time that Mescaline was synthesized. And no
one really knows how many people they have because it's
not like um ed Ed says, it's like not a
tightly knit organization. It's more like a set of principles.

(31:31):
And my the first thing he came to my head
is like, it's probably because they're not They're not after anything.
It's like the Southern Baptist convention is very everyone knows
exactly how many members there are there because it's very
strict and formal codified. Because there's uh, I imagine they
have an agenda of some sort. Sure, I don't think
there's anywhere near the same agenda as among the Native

(31:53):
American Church. But they do share the fact that they
are a Christian organization. Oh yeah, that's as far as
I know. They are Christian based Peyote Church. Interesting. Yeah,
well the other interesting thing is you said, because it's
sort of a um, a mix of all different kinds
of tribes and people's that they have just sort of

(32:14):
settled on. Um. Like it's it's not like if they
use like drums in a ceremony or a rattle and
a ceremony, it's for that specific tribe. They're more like
generic Native American items, right, Yeah, it's almost like, um,
this is yeah, there's no better way to put it really,

(32:35):
or they'll have, you know, even if they didn't use
TPS in their tribe, they will have the Peyote Ritual
ceremony in a TP its representation, part of its representation.
But also it was just a practical measure too, because
on the reservation under the very watchful eye of like
the White army officers who were in charge of ridding
Native Americans of their customs and ceremonies. They couldn't do

(32:59):
these payote rituals out in the open any longer, so
they actually took them inside in secret into TPS, which
is why they're conducted in tps still today. Originally it
was just to keep from under the eyes of the
people who are charged with overseeing them eradicating their culture. Interesting,
so they're like, let's just keep it in the TP, right,

(33:20):
what happens in the t P state, You got it. So,
a modern ceremony in the Native American church with peyote
is usually specific and it's focused on like healing most likely,
and it's led by something called a roadman. You sit
around that fire, you take your payote, and you strap
in for an all night experience where you're supposed to

(33:42):
like really be into it. You're not supposed to lay
back and look at the stars or take a nap
or anything. You're supposed to really focus on. I guess
what you're trying to accomplish, right, or what the peyote
is telling you to pay attention to. Like you're yeah,
it's not like like check out my hand. I'm waving
in of my first everybody see that funking groove in. Man,

(34:04):
how long has this been happening? It's like two hours? No, man, right.
And there's this science scientific American writer named John Horgan
who wrote about being in a um Native American church
payote ritual and he said, like, man, people were sobbing,
people were throwing up, like there was it was very solemn,
he said, and they were just being taught a lot

(34:24):
of stuff by the payote. Very interesting. And the Native
American churches in the United States the only group that
is allowed to um, trade, sell, possess, grow ingest payote.
And actually I don't think all of them can grow.
I think you have to be a licensed payo tero
to to grow or harvest payote um. But you can

(34:47):
be like I'm a member of the Native American Church
and I can take this and for a while, UM,
from I think vent eight until the nineties, you had
to be a Native America to be considered a member
of the Native American Church by the US government and
be um subject to be allowed to eat peyote. But
that's not the case anymore. No, there's a Supreme Court trial.

(35:11):
I think it's right. The American Indian Religious Freedom ACX
and seventy nine four basically said it can't be very specific,
so it's unconstitutional. So you could technically join the Native
American Church. You could technically submit um and petition the
government and register with the government and be a peyotero

(35:35):
and grow peyote and take it and eat it. Yes,
you Chris Ball. That's who Chuck speaking to right now.
Is Chris Ball the guy who's listening. Okay, gotcha. I
hope there is one Chris Ball. I kind of hope
there's not. No for legal reasons. But this was all
necessary because here in the United States, of course, um,
it was classified as a habit forming drug in n

(35:58):
which it's not, which is not. And uh, let me see,
in nineteen seventy the US past the Comprehensive Drug Abuse
Prevention and Control Act, where they had to put everything
in categories, scheduled it as a Schedule one, labeled it
as a Schedule one substance, which is of course the
worst of the worst, they say, which is not. Uh,

(36:18):
and that's kind of it. You got anything else? Yeah,
one thing I forget to say is um even though
it's not related to LSD or mushrooms, it's frequently compared
to it in potency. And I saw that it's thirty
times less potent than then psilocybin. That pot is, yeah,
thirty times less. Put This just seemed really weird to me,

(36:38):
but I saw it in like an actual study from
San Diego State and Tijuana Tech Party School. Um, and
it's like one thousand to three thousand times less potent
than LSD. Interesting, Well, then what is this twelve hour like, well,
that doesn't mean it's not gonna like get on top

(37:00):
of you and you can have a really bad trip
and it's kind of like you're gonna trip for twelve hours.
But supposedly dose specific like a graham of gotcha, got
maybe mescalin is just completely bonkers. The difference between the two. Well,
because LSD they've sent the size down to you know,

(37:20):
it's a little tiny piece of paper, it's not eight buttons.
That's right. Uh, I think that's it. Then that's payote Yeah, um, okay, Well,
if you want to know more about Payote, go read
some Carlos Castanado books. And since I said that it's
time for the listener mail. This is on eyewitness testimony.
Hey guys, uh, I thought i'd chip in a little

(37:43):
bit about my own personal experience. So I've been living
and working in Japan for the last fifteen years. I've
noticed I'm perfectly capable of identifying Japanese. As a matter
of fact, I can sometimes recognize and pick out students
that I taught many years ago on the train or
the mall with relative ease. I live and work in
the Kansai area, which is a little smaller than New

(38:04):
York City in terms of population, so I see a
lot of people. Meanwhile, back in the States during the holidays.
One time, I was shopping with my family, spotted my
mom from across the store and walked over to her.
When I got closer, it wasn't my mom, it was
another woman that looked about the same agent height. And
he wrote back after I told him I was going
to read it and said, you know, I just want

(38:24):
to point out him just a white dude, Just a
white dude, right uh? And he said, so, I think
it's not that we are somehow magically better at identifying
our own race, but are just better at identifying the
kind of people that we are usually surrounded by, which
is usually our own race. Very good point. Was this

(38:45):
guy's name Chris Ball? No, he said, I thought you
might find that interesting. Anyway, If you're ever in Japan again, Josh,
let me know. And just one small question for you.
Did you ever take the janguage the janguage the Japanese
Language proficiency test, which I think they call the Jangled Test?
For sure? Did I ever take it? No? Had I,
I would have failed spectacularly. It's one of the great

(39:07):
shames of my life that, after all these years and
being married to a woman of Japanese ancestry, I I
speak very little Japanese. Al Right, well, he says, I've
just gotten done writing a book for the first level.
I'd love to send it to you. Oh yeah, please,
Chris is from Clayton McKnight Clayton, and he said, ps.
One of the textbooks I use in class as a
hippie character in it named Rob. No, that's what he said. Wow, Yeah,

(39:32):
I would love to have that book because I would
like to learn Japanese. Yeah, Clayton, Thanks Clayton. I've been
to Kanzi too before. They have a beautiful airport there
that was designed by Renzo Piano. Nice. It's worth even
just looking up pictures of it. That nice. Did you
ever stay in that t W a hotel in New York? No?
Have you? No? But I saw it in in a

(39:52):
magazine article and I thought it looked pretty cool. Yeah,
it does look cool. I haven't been to New York
for a while. Yeah. The problem is staying out of
the airport. Yeah JFK. I mean, I guess if you're
just like staying there overnight for a connecting flight at work,
let's do it all right. Uh. If you want to
get in touch of this, like Clayton did and um
offer us a language book or anything, or just to

(40:13):
say hi, you can go onto stuff you Should Know
dot com and check out our social links there, and
you can send us an email to stuff podcast at
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