The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss (57 page)

We spent the next few days in a frenzy of preparations, getting our gear packed and organized for the trip. I was swept with doubts about the wisdom of striking off into the jungle, all tied somehow to thoughts of Sheila and the temporal echoes of La Chorrera. On the rainy eve of our departure, I slipped on the slick stairs as I headed below decks and landed hard but on my feet, badly shaken but unhurt. In my journal entry that night, I wondered if I was being softened up for later as one by one the stops that kept me oriented in reality were kicked away. Was I about to plunge again into a madness from which this time I wouldn’t return? No. I resolved that wasn’t going to happen.

Finally, on March 7, we managed to disengage from the increasingly tense scene in Iquitos and departed downriver for Pebas. The Heraclitus stayed behind. We’d cover the first leg by river launch and then proceed from there in stages, by speedboat. As Iquitos disappeared from view, I was brooding. In my darkened mood, I had begun to wonder why Terence had even come to Iquitos. I was there to conduct ethnobotanical fieldwork, to collect the specimens I needed to complete my investigations back in the lab. I took my mission seriously. I had no interest in returning to La Chorrera or repeating our “experiment” or anything related to that craziness. Fortunately, as I’ve noted, we’d already determined that reaching the Putumayo from the south—the first step to La Chorrera—was impossible. Nevertheless, I felt Terence might have had something in mind other than mere botanizing. I knew he’d be looking for
Virola
and other tryptamine-containing plants: samples for analysis as well as living specimens. To that extent, we were on the same page. But in his egging-on way, he wanted to push the envelope. That didn’t mean he’d push his
own
envelope. He wanted somebody else to plunge over the abyss while he watched—and, if necessary, gave a little push. I wasn’t buying it. I made it clear that I intended to carry out my research and successfully conduct my fieldwork. I was not in Peru to take mushrooms. If we stumbled on mushrooms during our travels, fine, I’d consider taking them, but I was not interested in recreating what had happened at La Chorrera. The message must have gotten through to him, because he didn’t lean on me.

Instead, he seemed to be trying to undermine the interpersonal dynamics of our group, which were already shaky enough. First he cast aspersions on Don, suggesting to me that my traveling partner was in a state of advanced culture shock and was ready at any moment to go off the deep end. Indeed, Don had grown more quiet and withdrawn, but he was a quiet man to begin with. In view of all the craziness—of being in Peru and hanging out with so many odd and complex people—I wasn’t surprised that he was keeping his own counsel. He not only had to deal with the nutty Heraclitistas but with my nutty brother. Don must have wondered what he’d gotten himself into, but I had no doubts about his sanity.

Terence then voiced doubts about Wade. It’s true that Wade and his girlfriend appeared to be having issues, but I saw this as a personal matter between them with no bearing on his abilities as an explorer. Nevertheless, Terence seized on what he saw as Wade’s macho swagger. I for one was a bit in awe of Wade and was glad he’d agreed to join our party. He had every reason to give it a pass, and I viewed his acquiescence as an act of kindness. Here was a guy who had crossed the Darién Gap on foot. He was clearly among the most experienced member of our ragtag group,
and
he spoke perfect Spanish. But Terence, in his provocative way, loved to stir things up, if only with a few snarky asides. But what was he doing? I didn’t know. Justified or not, my suspicions festered as we neared our port.

Pebas sits at the confluence of the Amazon and the Ampiyacu, which flows in from the north. Ampiyacu means “river of poisons,” after
ampi
, a virulent arrow poison used by the Witoto. The area along the Ampiyacu and its tributary, the Yaguasyacu, would be the site of our search for the orally active
Virola
preparations.

The Río Yaguasyacu, or “river of the Yaguas,” bears the name of the people who have traditionally lived nearby. They now shared their ancestral home with the Witotos and the closely related Boras who, as noted earlier, had been driven from their territory north of the Putumayo. The Witotos and Boras living in the Pebas region were a culturally traumatized people whose plant knowledge had largely degenerated or been lost. Nevertheless, we still viewed them as our best bet for obtaining samples of
oo-koo-hé
—or
ku-ru-ku
, as the Bora called it. We intended to start collecting around Puco Urquillo a short distance up the Ampiyacu, then move to Brillo Nuevo, a more remote Witoto village on the Yaguasyacu.

Don Alfredo and his first sample of
oo-koo-hé.

It took us a couple of runs to haul the entire party and our supplies upriver to Puco Urquillo. We arrived with a recorded message in Witoto for Don Alfredo, made by his granddaughter, Adriana, back in Iquitos. The impressive introduction worked. After hearing the tape, he invited us to string our hammocks in the main
maloca
, the large, oval-shaped, thatched structure that served as the village’s community center. We were in! Beyond the
maloca
, the village men apparently had their own place where they gathered after dark to chew coca, tell stories, and sing. On our first night, we heard their mournful voices wafting across the clearing. The words were in Witoto, but the melody was eerily familiar. Then it hit us: the tune was “The House of the Rising Sun,” adapted to their evening chant. The effect was incongruous and strange.

Our collecting efforts around the village were incredibly productive. Don Alfredo and his son, Vicente, took us out to collect
cumalas
—a generic name for various
Virola
species—and we found about a dozen types. They promised to provide us with
oo-koo-hé
in a day or so. The next day we repeated the exercise with a Bora man, Don Marcos, who likewise showed us a number of
cumalas
and noted those he viewed as
fuerte
—that is, suitable for making the
ku-ru-ku
. Finally, we found a medium-sized tree he said would do, chopped it down, stripped off about sixty kilograms of bark, and hauled the material back to his hut. This took about five hours.

Don Marcos separated the inner cambial layers from the outer bark, tearing them into long strips that he placed in a metal pot with a few liters of water; this was allowed to simmer over a low fire for about three hours. The inner bark was blood red and had a strong, spicy aroma. Finally, he removed the bark strips from the pot and cooked down the resulting decoction until the result looked like reddish-brown chocolate sauce. This he mixed with some powdered ashes made from the rind of an unknown fruit and macerated the whole mess together. It had a doughy consistency and looked basically like excrement. It looked even more like that when he finally scraped it from the pot and deposited it on a banana leaf and kneaded into a turd-like shape. This was the finished product. When I asked him how much to take, he showed me the tip of his thumb.

A day or so later, Don Alfredo showed up with his first sample, which looked similar: a reddish-brown, turd-shaped object wrapped in a banana leaf. Altogether we ended up with seven samples: four from Don Alfredo, one from Don Marcos, one from another Bora, Don Jorge, and, back in the lab in Vancouver, a sample of
oo-koo-hé
that Terence had collected at La Chorrera on his second trip. When I finally ran the analyses back in Vancouver, our informants proved as good as their word, with one exception. All of Don Alfredo’s samples contained high levels of tryptamines, including DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and related compounds. Don Marcos’s samples were high in 5-MeO-DMT with smaller amounts of 5-MeO-N-methyltryptamine. Don Jorge’s samples had no alkaloids, and the voucher specimen revealed it was made from
Virola pavonis
, a species known to lack alkaloids.

Our “large animal biosassays” yielded definite but not spectacular effects. Terence tried the first of Don Alfredo’s preparations and said it was definitely active. I tried Don Marcos’s sample shortly after we had moved upriver to the village of Brillo Nuevo. Here’s what I wrote in my notes the next day:

16 March

I took the
ku-ru-ku
prepared by Don Marcos last night; about a gram to a gram and a half. Within 10 minutes, a strong effect was apparent. This first appeared as a strong burning sensation in my mouth, lips, and tongue, quickly developing into a general numbness of mouth parts, extending into the throat and causing a tightening of the throat, as though it was sore. It was difficult to swallow…my breath was labored. The numbness that began in the mouth gradually spread over the rest of my body and limbs…the extremities of my limbs tingled. I was somewhat alarmed at the rapidity of onset, and found myself reflecting on the use of
Virola
as an arrow poison—I can see how it could be an effective one. If I had to do any physical exertion in this state, I can imagine that it would have put my body under greater stress, possibly even lethal. All I could do was lie in my hammock and concentrate on continuing to breathe. My body felt very heavy, numb, and dissociated from my mind. There were never any frank hallucinations—only brief flashes and the feeling that they were almost ready to effluorish [sic] out. I was in this semi-narcotized state for perhaps one half hour to 45 minutes. My body also felt cold…a pronounced and abrupt lowering of body temperature that accompanied the general slowing of autonomic functions. This effect persisted the longest—in fact, I was chilly all night. After about 45 minutes…breathing eased slightly, and I fell off into a drowsy reverie somewhere between sleeping and waking…no visual hallucinations ever became the overwhelming feature of the experience. Judging from the effects, I would say the 5-MeO-DMT is the principle component of this resin. Most of the ‘pressor amine’ properties were present, but almost no ‘psychedelic’ feeling. It seems to be more effective as a general anesthetic than as a hallucinogen.

Thus Terence and I became the first non-indigenous people to bioassay the legendary orally active
Virola
“narcotic” resin, or at least the first to report on its effects. My speculation that it was mainly 5-MeO-DMT proved accurate; back in the lab, this sample analyzed out to contain a high level of 5-MeO-DMT and a small trace of 5-MeO-N-methyltryptamine. There was no DMT at all in the sample. It was interesting, but the heavy body load was a bit scary. I had no particular desire to repeat it. Compared to mushrooms, as a psychedelic this was nothing to write home about.

I was totally stoked over the results of the last few days of collecting. Our efforts had turned out to be everything I had hoped for. I managed to collect an extensive series of
cumalas
, complete with voucher specimens, pickled samples, and notes from our local informants. In addition, we had collected six fresh samples of the orally active pastes, and photographs of Don Marcos preparing one of the batches. Our fieldwork was a total success and gave me plenty of material to sort out later in the lab.

Brillo Nuevo, on the Yaguasyacu, lived up to its name: New Shine. As we moved upriver, we found our new base to be more picturesque than Puco Urquillo. We moved into a nice guest-house by the river, which, compared to the communal
maloca,
afforded us a modicum of privacy. A short stroll down a path through the forest took us to a lovely pasture where a number of zebu cattle grazed contentedly—an ideal habitat for mushrooms. Here’s what I wrote in my notebook that afternoon:

19 March

We have broken through into some kind of paradisiacal place—Brillo Nuevo is certainly paradisiacal compared to Puco Urquillo. Certainly a strange experience to walk up to those pastures after settling in here yesterday afternoon. A heavy feeling of déjà vu. After 10 years, we return to the same place (essentially) but this time, we see it clearly and understand how much we understand. But do we really know anything?

Gentle rains fell a couple of days after our arrival, assuring that mushrooms would magically manifest in the pasture within a day or two. We were not disappointed; the morning of March 21 dawned sunny and warm, and the pasture, still steaming from the showers the night before, was dotted with big clusters of carpophores. We lost no time in collecting a healthy haul of the biggest and best, and planned to take them together that very evening, or at least some of us did. Terence and I had been busy trying our
oo-koo-hé
and
ku-ru-ku
samples over the previous days, but we figured there had been sufficient time to clear the residual tryptamines from our systems.