Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (47 page)

Artist Roger Essig has painted a picture of such a DIM being. He writes of
his experience: "This image was inspired from my first unnatural encounter
with the spirit molecule. An Entity that seemed extremely real and intelligent
appeared before me with terrific precision and speed. It dissipated as soon
as I imposed my will upon it. Many people have told me they have seen and
felt Entities similar to this representation, it seems to be archetypally inherent
within our inner domains. X85

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL UNIQUENESS OF AYAHUASCA

Ayahuasca, AMT, and the Classical Psychotropics

It is important to point out that these ayahuasca and DIM experiences are
phenomenologically distinct from those of the classical insight- or depthproducing psychotropics-LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. In many studies
of these classical psychotropics, "bona fide hallucinations, to which the subjects reacted as real, were a minor consequence of the drug" and were rarely
reported.86 Drug researchers Peyton Jacob and Alexander Shulgin go so far as
to say that, for these substances, the term hallucinogen is today "allowed as a
euphemism, although that term is also inaccurate because hallucinations are
not part of the usual syndrome.1187 Another drug researcher, David Nichols,
agrees: "Hallucinogen is now, however, the most common designation in the scientific literature, although it is an inaccurate descriptor of the actual effects
of these drugs."" Jonathon Ott, defending the term entheogen, states explicitly
that the "shamanic inebriants did not provoke hallucinations," and that the
term hallucinogen prejudiced the "transcendent and beatific states of communion with deity" he claims were characteristic of traditional use of visionary
drugs.89

The Pharmacological Distinctiveness of DMT

There are reasons to believe that DMT is distinct from the classical entheogens
not only phenomenologically but pharmacologically as well. A very rapid tolerance, known as tachyphylaxis, is produced on repeated administration of LSD,
mescaline, and psilocin, the psychoactive metabolite of psilocybin;' daily administration of LSD, for example, results in almost complete loss of sensitivity
to its effects by the fourth day.2 Such tachyphylaxis is striking. When the CIA
was doing secret human testing of hallucinogens in the 1950s, one report called
the LSD results "the most amazing demonstration of drug tolerance I have ever
seen."3 Yet no such tolerance develops for the hallucinogenic effects of DMT;4 for
example, four sequential doses of DMT fumarate administered to volunteers at
half-hour intervals gave no evidence oftolerance 5

Furthermore, in humans, cross-tolerance occurs among mescaline, LSD, and
psilocybin but not between any of these and DMT.6 Humans who are completely
tolerant to LSD show no cross-tolerance to hallucinogenic doses of DMr7 The
classical psychotropics function as agonists at the 5-HT,Q receptor site; DMr is
an agonist at the 5-HT,c and 5-HT,A receptors as well.' Daily administration of LSD
and the amphetamine hallucinogens selectively decreases cortical5-HT,Q receptor density, which is, presumably, the mechanism bywhich tolerance develops;9
but this does not occur with DMr.

NOTES

1. Nichols, 2004, pp. 141, 165.

2. Cholden, Kurland, & Savage, 1955; Isbell, Belleville, Fraser, Wilder, & Logan, 1956.

3. Quoted in Streatfeild, 2007, p. 67.

4. Goldberg, 2006, p. 269.

5. Strassman, Qualls, & Berg, 1996.

6. Balestrieri & Fontanari, 1959; Fenton, 2001, p. 478; Isbell, Wolbach, Wilder, &
Miner, 1961; Tacker & Ferm, 2002, p. 1049; Geyer & Moghaddam, 2002, p. 694;
Gitlin, Kaplan, Stillman, & Wyatt, 1976; Morrison, 1998, p. 229.

7. Rosenberg, Isbell, Miner, & Logan, 1964.

8. Glennon, 1990; Spinella, 2001, p. 452.

9. Buckholtz, Freedman, & Middaugh, 1985; Buckholtz, Zhou, & Freedman, 1988;
Buckholtz, Zhou, Freedman, & Potter, 1990; Leysen, Janssen, & Niemegeers,
1989; McKenna, Nazarali, Himeno, & Saavedra, 1989; Nichols, 2004, p. 141;
Smith, Barrett, & Sanders-Bush, 1999.

The vivid, mostly geometric visual illusions that are one of the hallmarks
of such classical hallucinogens as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin "are seldom perceived as having real outside existence."9° While such patterns appear when drinking ayahuasca, they are usually preliminary to additional and different visions, and they are frequently perceived as external or as projected
onto external surfaces-for example, the intricately patterned Persian carpet I
would see on the cleared area in front of don Romulo's jungle hut, or the patterned designs seen on the patient's body by the Shipibo shaman.9'

To the contrary, Aldous Huxley speaks of mescaline as having cleansed
his eyes-the doors of perception-and having allowed him to see the world
as new in all respects, "as Adam may have seen it on the day of creation."92
"For the artist as for the mescaline taker," he writes, using tropes that would
become normative for psychotropic experiences in the future, "draperies are
living hieroglyphs that stand in some peculiarly expressive way for the unfathomable mystery of pure being." The folds of his gray flannel trousers-an
ironic fabric, under the circumstances-"were charged with `is-ness."'93

Reflections of Huxley can be found in many subsequent accounts. Albert
Hofmann, discoverer of the psychotropic effects of LSD, speaks of "blissful
moments when the world appeared suddenly in a new brilliant light and I had
the feeling of being included in its wonder and indescribable beauty."94 Andrew Weil speaks of mescaline creating "a sense of wonder, of just wonder
and awe at the universe, at life, at consciousness. "95 Charles Tart says of his
first mescaline experience, "This initial experience was profound. My worldview wasn't fundamentally changed, but it became alive. I never realized, for
instance, that I had used the word `beauty' all my life, yet I had never before
known what `beauty' meant. "91 None of them saw elves.

These experiences are frequently characterized by the psychoanalytic term
oceanic feeling-as a dissolution of ego boundaries, a peak experience, a mystical experience, oceanic boundlessness, a temporal and spatial expansion of
consciousness beyond the usual ego boundaries.97 Such descriptions have
been profoundly influential in the field of transpersonal psychology, in which
such expanded self-concepts can "be considered to represent the degree of
self-realization, or alternatively, spiritual development, transpersonal actualization, or other concepts central to much of transpersonal theorizing.i98
Freedman, in an influential essay, speaks of the experience in terms of portentousness-"the capacity of the mind to see more than it can tell, to experience
more than it can explicate, to believe in and be impressed with more than it
can rationally justify, to experience boundlessness and `boundaryless' events,
from the banal to the profound. "99

Such descriptions are clearly different from those given for ayahuasca or
DIM. It may be worth adding that the famed Amazonian ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes drank ayahuasca scores of times, but claims never to have
had a "mystical experience.""' Rather than any earthshaking experience, he once told William S. Burroughs, "all I saw was colors," and once told Claudio
Naranjo, who asked him if he had seen jaguars, "Sorry, only wiggly lines. -01
The following two examples of my own experience may serve to illustrate this
distinction. The first is an experience with ayahuasca, and the second is with
huachuma, the San Pedro cactus, Trichocereus pachanaoi, rich in mescaline,
close kin to the peyote cactus, a brother teacher plant.102

Example 13. I am sitting in a small jungle hut after having drunk ayahuasca. After a while, I notice that the walls are covered in a beautiful,
perfectly regular tile pattern-white tiles bearing blue filigree designs.
To my right, there is now a rectangular opening in the wall near the
floor; through the opening, I can look down onto a lower level, which
contains a rectangular swimming pool about ten feet square filled with
rippling blue water. To the left of the pool is a stairway, on which young
girls go up and down, wearing blue Peruvian school uniforms over
white blouses. These things are absolutely clear, three-dimensional,
present; I can hear the rippling of the water in the pool. What I see are
things I cannot see without ayahuasca, as if they were in the same room but in another, parallel dimension; what I do not see is some hidden
beauty in the room itself, some depth of meaning in the untiled walls,
anything portentous, except that I have opened a door to an alternative
world, or am now able to see people and things in this world that I had
not been able to see before.

Ayahuasca Visions

The fact that ayahuasca or DMT experiences are different from those of the
depth- or insight-producing psychotropics does not mean that they cannot be
profound. Ayahuasca visions can be movingly beautiful-distant landscapes,
other planets, brightly lit cities, crystal fountains in the midst of distant oceans,
bright green leaves and raindrops on flowing water. Ayahuasca visions can tell
us the sources of sickness-the failed relationships, the broken promises, the
envy and arrogance of oneself and others-and point the way toward healing.
Ayahuasca visions can be like myths-"profound, imaginative, other-worldly,
universal or larger-than-life"-or like deeply salient dreams, "dreams of particular vividness or narrative coherence or notable personal significance; ... dreams
that appear to hold special significance for the dreamer's community.", I think
that poet Cesar Calvo captures this distinction when he writes that ayahuasca
allows us "to live at the same time in this and in other realities, to traverse the
endless, unmeasurable provinces of the night.... Instead of uncovering mysteries, it respects them. It makes them more and more mysterious, more fertile
and prodigal." That is why the light of ayahuasca is black, he says; ayahuasca
"irrigates the unknown territory: that is its way of shedding light."2

NOTES

i. Kirk, 1974, p. 25; Larsen, 1996, p. xix; Shafton, 1995, pp. 81-82.

2. Calvo, 1981/1995b, p. 177.

Example 14. I am on a boat traveling at dusk along jungle rivers. A few
hours earlier I had drunk huachuma. I am overwhelmed by the odors of
the jungle, as if huge trumpet-shaped flowers are blooming just beyond
my vision, as if I have tapped into the eternal cycles of blossom and decay. The jungle trees along the shore are primeval, approaching from
vast distances, passing by me with stately grace and animal power. I see
no thing that is new; what is different is the way I see what I have always
seen, now rich with association, awe inspiring, wondrously beautiful.

Anthropologist Marie Perruchon, who is married to a Shuar and is herself
an initiated uwishin, shaman, puts it this way: ayahuasca "is a plant which
has the effect that when you drink it, it allows you to see what otherwise is
invisible, and it attracts the spirits. It is not that the ayahuasca takes one to
another world, otherwise unreachable; it just opens one's eyes to what is normally hidden. There is only one world, which is shared by all beings, humans,
spirits, and animals. "I°3

Encultured Expectations in Human DMT Research

Rick Strassman's DIM research project ended prematurely, for a number of
reasons. Strassman was himself a practicing Zen Buddhist, and he had hoped
that his research would shed light on the relationship between hallucinogenic
experience and spirituality. But Strassman came to believe that any benefits of
the DIM experience were transient, even for volunteers who had incredibly intense and remarkable experiences during high-dose DIM sessions. Follow-up
interviews with the first group of volunteers, one to two years after their DIM
experiences, found little of what Strassman considered to be positive carryover into their daily lives. Even those who believed they had benefited inwardly
from their high-dose DIM experience showed little outward evidence of making significant changes in their lives-for example, taking up a spiritual or
psychotherapeutic practice, changing jobs, or increasing community service.

Strassman had apparently expected at least some of his volunteers to undergo life-changing experiences of depth or insight. "To my surprise and
sadness," Strassman said in a later interview, "people's initial high-dose
breakthrough sessions were beginning to sound a little hollow. I think this was because, by following our early volunteers, I saw that the drug experience
itself had little substantial impact on most people's lives. "I°4 The relocations,
marriages, or divorces that did occur in volunteers were all under way before
their involvement in the studies. Instead of personal growth, the volunteers
reported a disconcerting number of contacts with other-dimensional beings.

Strassman came to believe that this lack of long-term positive effect was
the result of the experimental setting itself. The biomedical model, he concluded, was intrusive and dehumanizing, as was a neutral and nondirective
supervising style. There needed to be more emphasis on treatment, he thought,
and less on descriptive mechanistic brain-chemistry studies. DIM by itself
had no beneficial effect, Strassman concluded; in fact, he became concerned
that he was harming rather than helping his volunteers.

Other factors as well led to the cessation of the New Mexico research.
Strassman had hoped to begin therapeutic work-as opposed to mechanistic studies in the hospital-with the longer-acting psilocybin, but the ethics
committee refused to allow him to take his research out of the hospital setting. Off-site therapeutic work became even less likely when a volunteer on
psilocybin had a paranoid reaction and fled the hospital. A graduate student
began taking drugs with volunteers after hours, and undermined Strassman
when he told the student to stop. Hoped-for colleagues did not arrive, and in
fact began setting up their own foundations competing for scarce resources
and colleagues. Long-term benefits were meager, and adverse effects were
adding up. The frequency with which volunteers reported contact with otherdimensional beings was unexpected and personally disorienting to Strassman. His wife developed a serious illness, and they moved to Canada so she
could be closer to family.