Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon (51 page)

The sigma-i receptor is widely distributed throughout the body, including
the central and peripheral nervous system. Its function has remained unclear,
and it was long considered an orphan receptor, without a known endogenous
neurotransmitter of its own. Exogenous substances with a high affinity for the
sigma-i receptor include cocaine, heroin, dextromethorphan, haloperidol,
methamphetamine, and PcP. For that reason, researchers took to calling the
unknown sigma-i neurotransmitter endopsychosin or sometimes, angeldustin.

This new research thus solves two puzzles at once. The mysterious endogenous ligand of the sigma-i receptor is AMT. In addition, the study indicates that
AMT may act at this receptor to regulate sodium ion channels in cells, and thus
affect cell signaling processes. "The finding that AMT and sigma-i receptors act
as a ligand receptor pair," the authors conclude, "provides a long-awaited connection that will enable researchers to elucidate the biological functions of both
these molecules."14

NOTES

1. Schultes, 1954; Seit, 1967; De Budowski, Marini-Bettolo, Delle Monache, &
Ferrari, 1974; McKenna, Callaway, & Grob, 1998; McKenna & Towers, 1985;
Ott, 1996, p. 164.

2. Callaway & McKenna, 1998, p. 491; Ott, 1994, pp. 81-84; Shulgin & Shulgin,
1997, pp. 418, 537; Strassman, 2001, p. 48.

3. Strassman, 2001, p. 48.

4. Strassman, 2001, p. 53.

5. Forsstrom, Tuominen, & Karkkainen, 2001; Karkkainen & Raisanen, 1992;
Karld

6. Karkkainen et al., 2005.

7. Callaway, 1988.

8. Strassman, 2001, p. 55; Brown, 2007.

9. Horgan, 2006; Strassman, 2001, p. 53.

10. Brown, 2007; Strassman, 2001, pp. 55, 69, 73, 75.

11. Strassman, 2001, pp. 68-69.

12. Birchwood, Preston, & Hallet, 1992, p. 62; Gitlin, Kaplan, Stillman, & Wyatt,
1976; Jacob & Presti, 2005, p. 931; McKenna et al., 1998, p. 68.

13. Jacob & Presti, 2005; Wallach, 2009.

14. Fontanilla et al., 2009.

And there, it seems to me, lies the heart of the matter. It is a question of
how we valorize our encounters. Whether ayahuasca lends solidity to imagination, or opens the door to the spirit realms, or transports the user to distant dimensions, it is still the quality of our meeting that matters, what we
are willing to learn, whether we are willing to be taught by what we encounter, whether we will take our chances in the epistemic murk of a transformed
world. Hillman, in his soul-making, makes all meetings magical, because he
mythologizes the everyday; soul-making makes everyone a spirit. I like to recall
what Joan of Arc says in George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan:

JOAN: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.

ROBERT: They come from your imagination.

JOAN: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.64

And in an interview with the Dauphin:

CHARLES: Oh, your voices, your voices. Why don't the voices come to me?
I am king, not you.

JOAN: They do come to you; but you do not hear them.b`-

Much attention has been focused, understandably, on the basic ayahuasca
drink, made from the ayahuasca vine and any of several plant sources of dimethyltryptamine-chacruna, chagraponga, and sameruca. But mestizo shamans are both eclectic and experimental. They frequently mix additional plant
materials into the ayahuasca drink; and in addition to the drink itself, they
make use of a remarkable variety of potentially psychoactive substances-natural, commercial, and industrial, both individually and in combination.

THE BIG THREE

The Amazon bioregion supports a remarkable variety of plants that are psychoactive to one degree or another, and mestizo shamans have tended to utilize them all. Still, throughout the Upper Amazon, the three most important
psychoactive plants are three hallucinogens-mapacho, toe, and ayahuasca,
either singly or in various combinations. This psychoactive triad may be conceptualized as embodying, respectively, the primary functions of protection,
power, and teaching. Among some indigenous peoples-Ashdninka, Asheninka, Piro, Shipibo-the Big Three have specific associations: ayahuasca is associated with knowledge of the forest and the spirits of the teaching plants;
toe is associated with the beings of the water; tobacco is associated with the
spirits of animals and birds, especially the hummingbird.,

The Role of Tobacco

Mapacho, tobacco, is the most important and almost universal shamanic
plant in the Upper Amazon.2 In many ways tobacco is more sacred than ayahuasca. Tobacco smoke invites and feeds the spirits; tobacco smoke purifies and protects the body; tobacco nurtures the magical phlegm; infusions of
tobacco bring contact with the spirits. As don Emilio Andrade Gomez says:
Without tobacco, you cannot use any plant.3

The same is true among indigenous peoples. Tobacco establishes communication with the spirits; it is the food of the spirits; it opens the mind to
an understanding of the spirit world.4 Swallowing or blowing tobacco smoke
assures success in hunting; blowing tobacco smoke on an object reveals its
true nature;5 the scent of tobacco attracts the spirits.' Among the Shuar, for
example, a sorcerer drinks green tobacco juice-a cold infusion of uncured
tobacco leaves-to release a magic dart to be hurled at a victim. A shaman
must constantly drink tobacco water to keep the darts fed so that they do not
leave; a shaman cannot even go for a walk without taking along green tobacco
leaves)

Mapacho is a species of tobacco containing very high levels of nicotine
and other psychoactive pyridine alkaloids-the highest nicotine levels of any
tobacco species; leaves from this species contain more than 8 percent nicotine, as much as twenty-six times the amount found in the common cigarette
tobacco in North America.' There is also reason to believe that psychoactive alkaloids other than nicotine are present in noncommercial varieties of
tobacco.9

There is little doubt that tobacco by itself has psychoactive effects, including the ability to induce hallucinations.'° The nicotine alkaloid in tobacco displays high acute toxicity," and acute nicotine intoxication can have significant
visual and auditory effects, including what anthropologist Johannes Wilbert,
an expert on tobacco use in South American shamanism, calls "hallucinatory
eschatological scenarios on a cosmic scale.""

It is difficult for North Americans to think of tobacco as a hallucinogen,
in large part because the tobacco species used in commercial North American cigarettes have such a relatively low nicotine content, and because North
American smokers ingest relatively small quantities, generally stopping when
the desired mood alteration has been achieved. Interestingly, there have been
scattered reports of hallucinations associated with smoking while wearing a
transdermal nicotine patch.13

In addition, nicotine may be used by the shaman to modulate the effects
of other psychoactive substances. The ingestion of tobacco may influence the
effects of both ayahuasca and toe. For example, tobacco smoke may itself contain MAO inhibitors: smokers have 3o to 40 percent lower MAO-B and 20 to
3o percent lower MAO-A activity than nonsmokers.14In addition, nicotine may modulate some of the cognitive effects of scopolamine, which is the primary
psychoactive constituent of toe. In several studies, nicotine specifically helped
to counteract the depression of performance produced by scopolamine on
both rapid information and complex processing tasks.' This means that mapacho may ameliorate the cognitive deficits induced by toe while having no
effect on its hallucinogenic properties.

FIGURE io. Mapacho in the Belk market.

Similarly, nicotine ingestion significantly improves the negative symptoms
of schizophrenia-difficulty in abstract thinking, stereotyped thinking, social
withdrawal, and blunted emotions-while having no effect on hallucinations.
Nicotine ingestion also improves general psychopathology symptoms-poor
attention, disorientation, unusual thought content, and poor impulse control.
This may be one reason why people with schizophrenia tend to be such heavy
smokers: they are medicating themselves. So smoking mapacho while drinking ayahuasca may well be a way to maintain cognitive lucidity and positive
emotionality while not interfering with the hallucinatory experience.,'

Indigenous Amazonian peoples ingest tobacco in every conceivable waysmoked, as a snuff, chewed, licked, as a syrup applied to the gums, and in the form of an enema.'? Mestizo shamans consume tobacco as a cold-water
infusion, in cigarettes, or in specially carved pipes; tobacco may also be added
to the ayahuasca drink. Tobacco is smoked as cigarettes, hand-rolled in white
paper, called mapacho in distinction from finos, commercial cigarettes; or
else in pipes, called shimitapon or cachimbo.i8 The word cachimbo is Portuguese-hence the alternative pronunciation and spelling cashimbo-which in
turn was probably derived from a West African language.19

Among the mestizos, the bowl of the pipe is often made from the dense
reddish or purplish brown heartwood of the cachimbo tree, often carved with
figures of snakes, birds, jaguars, or mermaids. Additional woods used for
pipe bowls include palisangre and quinilla, which the Yagua often incise with
symbols of the pipe spirit.20

Among mestizos the pipe stem is preferably made from the thin hollow
leg bone of the tanrrilla, sunbittern, a wading bird with significant magical
properties. I also own a pipe in the indigenous style whose stem is made from
a monkey bone.21 The Yagua make their pipe stems from the bone of a panguana, the tinamou bird.

Among mestizo shamans, such pipes are used to smoke not only tobacco
but toe leaves and the bark of the ayahuasca vine as well. Some indigenous
groups, such as the Yagua and the Ka'apor, also use pipes; there is reason
to believe that, in some cases, such pipes have only recently come to replace
rolled tobacco.22

The Role of Toe

Toe is the name given in the Upper Amazon to various species in the genus
Brugmansia, including a wide variety of cultivars. Cesar Calvo speaks of toe as
"that other powerful and disconcerting hallucinogen. 1113 It hardens the body;
it makes one immune from sorcery; it builds up and maintains shamanic
power.24 Toe contains the primary tropane alkaloids hyoscyamine, atropine,
and scopolamine;25 it may be mixed into the ayahuasca drink, ingested in the
form of raw plant materials or as a water infusion, or smoked in a cachimbo.
Smoking the leaves produces a less intense experience than ingesting an infusion or raw plant materials. It is possible to buy puros, cigars, in the Belen
market in Iquitos that are made of toe mixed with mapacho.21

Toe is considered one of the most powerful plants, a strong but dangerous
ally. The intoxication induced by scopolamine and the other tropane alkaloids
can last as long as four days, with often terrifying paranoid visions, followed
by a calmer state and then retrograde amnesia, total or partial. Clinical signs and symptoms are those of the typical peripheral anticholinergic syndrome
seen in any atropine poisoning-dilated pupils, dry mucous membranes, rapidly beating heart, fever, flushed dry skin, urinary retention, confusion, disorientation, and hallucinations. Rarely, seizures occur, and sometimes there
are tactile hallucinations, such as crawling insects. Medical students have a
mnemonic for this syndrome: blind as a bat, hot as a hare, dry as a bone, red
as a beet, and mad as a hatter. Patients are often amnesiac for events between
ingestion and recovery. Fatalities are rare but have been reported in children.
Sometimes urinary retention is so severe as to require catheterization.27